Chapter 20: Akkerman or War
Akkerman Castle, Site of the Conference of Akkerman
On the 2nd of March 1826, a British vessel arrived in St. Petersburg, Russia. Aboard was the victor of Waterloo, the First Duke of Wellington, Arthur Wellesley. Wellington had been sent to Russia officially to congratulate the new Tsar Nicholas on his ascension to the throne, but his visit included a far more important task. Nicholas’ brother, the previous Tsar Alexander I had been in extensive negotiations with the British government over the plight of the Greeks in their war against the Ottomans.
Alexander had a long and winding relationship with the Sublime Porte since the war began in 1821. Tsar Alexander was initially opposed to the rebellion of the Greeks, ruthlessly denouncing the actions of his former friend and Aide de Camp, Alexander Ypsilantis when he invaded the Danubian Principalities, sparking the war.
[1] The Tsar even had the Phanariot’s name struck from every record of officers in the Russian Army and barred him refuge in Russia henceforth. His stance quickly changed following the murder of the Ecumenical Patriarch Gregory V and the massacre of Constantinople’s Greek populace in April. In response to this, Russia severed all ties to the Porte, recalled its diplomats, and threatened to support the Greeks in their war against them alongside the “Whole of Christendom” unless the Porte acquiesced to Russia’s demands for the autonomy of the Greeks. Unfortunately for Alexander and the Greeks, the Quintuple Alliance was decidedly against intervention, nor was the Whole of Christendom for that matter. With no external support, Alexander was forced to back away from war.
His second clash with the Ottomans over the Greeks came in the Winter of 1824 when he proposed hosting a congress of the Quintuple Alliance along with the Ottomans and representatives of the Greeks to reach an amiable conclusion to the conflict. By this time, Alexander intended to establish Greece as three separate Principalities comprising the Morea, Eastern Rumelia, and Western Rumelia.
[2] While they would receive more autonomy under Alexander’s proposal, they would remain tied to the Ottoman Empire as vassal states. Despite their continued failures to defeat the Greeks over three years of bitter and bloody war, the Ottoman Foreign Minister Reis Effendi immediately rejected the proposal in a scathing rebuke, one which allegedly made him blue in the face and pass out from exhaustion. While the Greeks were inclined to attend the conference, Alexander’s terms were leaked to them resulting in a public outcry from the Greeks and their immediate refusal to attend as well. Without the involvement of the Greeks or the Ottomans, the British promptly refused to attend the Congress as well and by December 1824, the effort was well and fully dead when Metternich and Talleyrand of France refused to cooperate with the Tsar.
By 1825, Britain’s stance towards Greece had begun to change as news from the East emerged in British papers. The British people had always been predisposed towards the Greeks as a fellow Christian people, long oppressed by a foreign power. The tales of Lord Byron and his adventures captivated the masses and his return to Britain in September was met with wild applause and a hero’s welcome. His return to the House of Lords after more than a decade was not met with such exuberance and he soon left London once again for the continent to rally support for the Greeks. The depravity of Ibrahim Pasha was also equally powerful in moving the British public towards intervention, yet still the British Government resisted any action in Greece, the British Foreign Minister George Canning, however, was open to the idea.
Canning’s predecessor and longtime rival, Lord Castlereagh, had been a staunch opponent of intervention in the Greek War of Independence and along with his ally, the Duke of Wellington, he had frustrated the efforts for official recognition of and support for the Greeks. Castlereagh as the architect behind the Quintuple Alliance and the Congress system strongly opposed any efforts to circumvent its authority much to the aggravation of Tsar Alexander, as he had personally had personally ended the Tsar hopes of intervention in 1821. Relations with Russia had soured under Castlereagh, but with his death in August 1822 and Canning’s reappointment to the office in mid-September of that year, Britain began a slow process of reconciliation towards Russia and the Greek rebels. Despite that, it would take another two and a half years before Britain and Russia fully aligned with one another, and no one was more influential in mending the relations between the British and the Russians than the wife of the Russian Ambassador to Great Britain, Princess Dorothea von Lieven.
Foreign Minister George Canning (Left) and Princess de Lieven (Right)
Princess von Lieven was an incredibly savvy woman, politically sophisticated, and in many ways, she was even more influential than her husband the Ambassador. She had a talent for making even the most discreet men give up their secrets. While visiting family in St. Petersburg during the Summer of 1825, she was hosted by Tsar Alexander and his Foreign Minister Karl Nesselrode on several occasions. The Tsar in his conversations with her revealed his opinions of the war in Greece, his troubles with the Quintuple Alliance, and his desire to pass reforms at home in Russia. Finding the Princess to be trustworthy and capable, the Tsar had Nesselrode entrust her with the private knowledge of his desire to break from the Quintuple Alliance and form a bilateral alliance with Britain to more effectively deal with the Greek War. Before departing for London, Nesselrode also gave the Princess a message meant to be strictly delivered to Canning with utmost secrecy. Upon her return to Britain in October, Princess von Lieven met with Canning in private while he was on holiday in Brighton. She explained the Tsar’s desire to cooperate fully with Great Britain towards a peaceful solution in Greece and most importantly, she presented the Tsar’s message to Canning:
“The Court of Russia has positive information that before Ibrahim Pasha’s army was put in motion, an agreement was entered into by the Porte with the Pasha of Egypt, that whatever part of Greece Ibrahim Pasha might conquer should be at his disposal; and that his plan of disposing of his conquest is (and was stated to the Porte to be and has been approved by the Porte) to remove the whole Greek population, carrying them off into slavery in Egypt or elsewhere, and to re-people the country with Egyptians and others of the Mohammedan religion.”
This letter revealed evidence of a clear breach of the Treaty of Kutchuk-Kainardji making Russian intervention inevitable.
[3] The delivery of the letter was clearly a ploy meant to drag Britain along as well, as they could not allow Russia to act alone for whatever reason, humanitarian or otherwise. Whether by choice or by coercion, Canning and the British government were compelled to align with Tsar Alexander and Russia in regard to Greece. Unfortunately, Tsar Alexander fell ill and died on the 1st of December before any further progress could be made towards intervention or mediation. The succession crisis that followed did little to assuage the concerns of the British Government and so it was that when Alexander’s youngest brother, Nicholas took the throne as Tsar, the Duke of Wellington was dispatched to ascertain his stance towards Greece and the Ottomans.
Tsar Nicholas I, Emperor and Autocrat of all the Russias
Tsar Nicholas was seemingly impartial to the plight of the Greeks, having just surmounted his own rebellion against his rule, and being staunchly conservative in his beliefs certainly did little to ingratiate himself to the rebellious and relatively liberal Greeks. His antagonism towards the Ottomans, however, was clearly on display. In late January, with his enemies at home defeated, and the Ottomans embarrassed once again at Missolonghi, Nicholas issued the Ottomans an ultimatum regarding their illegal occupation of the Danubian Principalities and Serbia. They were to withdraw all their forces from the Principalities, restoring their autonomy, and allow locally elected boyars to serve as the princes of Wallachia and Moldavia, as opposed to Ottoman appointed princes. The Ottomans were also required to reaffirm the Treaty of Bucharest which established Serbia as an autonomous principality under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire. Finally, a conference was to be held in Akkerman to formalize the preceding terms and the Porte’s acceptance of those terms in writing. Refusal of these terms would result in a state of war between them.
Despite Ottoman resistance, Nicholas persisted and by the beginning of March they had agreed to attend the conference at Akkerman.
[4] With the matter of the Principalities settled for now, the Tsar turned his attention to the Iron Duke and Greece. Nicholas, Nesselrode, and the Ambassador to Great Britain, Prince Christopher Henry von Lieven, negotiated with Duke Wellington and the British Ambassador Lord Strangford to resolve the long-delayed Greek Question. After only a fortnight, they reached an agreement that both Britain and Russia would jointly mediate the conflict between the Ottoman Empire and the Greeks. The terms to be enforced by the British and Russias were as follows:
· Greece would become a dependency of the Ottoman Empire, paying an agreed annual tribute.
· The Greeks would choose their own governing authorities, but in this choice the Ottoman Empire shall hold influence over the proceedings.
· Greece shall have complete freedom of conscience, of trade, and of internal administration.
· To separate Greeks from Turks, the Greeks would acquire all Turkish property in Greece.
· If mediation was rejected by the Ottoman Empire, these proposals would form the basis of intervention by Russia and Britain either jointly or separately.
· The future extent of Greece shall be settled at a later date.
· Neither Russia nor Britain would seek for herself territorial gains, exclusive influence or commercial advantage from the mediation.
· Austria, France, and Prussia would be invited confidentially to guarantee, with Russia, the final arrangement, but Britain will not be part to this guarantee.
These terms were intended to give something to both the Ottomans and the Greeks, but in truth neither party favored them. The Protocol also signaled the end of the Quintuple Alliance after barely more than a decade as the two strongest members of the alliance broke its very principles to achieve their own interests. Metternich denounced the measure as a renunciation of the order and authority they had worked so hard to reestablished after the end of the Napoleonic Wars, that it recognized the legitimacy of rebels and that any solution in the Balkans would require war. Austria and Metternich were clearly against the measure yet, surprisingly, they refrained from rejecting involvement in it completely. Instead, Metternich attempted to kill the proposal by muddying the waters, they released confusing statements, outrights lies and half-truths to anyone who would listen. Suffice to say, their efforts didn’t work.
Klemens von Metternich, State Chancellor of the Austrian Empire
Prussia, despite being the furthest from the conflict and having the lowest interest in the region, announced its tepid support for the Protocol, but also revealed that it lacked little means of supporting or enforcing it. France was clearly interested in the affairs of the Ottoman Empire and its environs and it was certainly invested in the region as it was the primary supplier and trainer of the Egyptian army and navy which were currently assailing Greece. Their interests logically extended to Greece itself. In April 1825, the French General Roche landed in Nafplion to promote the potential candidacy of the Duke of Nemours as the future King of Greece, should they win their independence.
[5] The General’s mission quickly met with difficulty as the rising influence of the British in Greece, the so called English Party, came to take hold of many the Greek magnates and notables ending their hopes of a French King for Greece. With their independent intrigues in Greece a failure, the French slowly began to align with the British and Russian initiative to mediate the end to the war. By the end of August, the French government also came out in support of the Protocol and signed as a full partner to Britain and Russia in the subsequent Treaty of London in July of the next year.
The Porte’s reaction was not as graceful. When they learned of the Protocol of St. Petersburg in the Fall, the Ottomans, as they had done before in 1824, immediately rejected the offer of mediation by the British and Russians. Having already been slighted by the Russians earlier that year, the Conference of Akkerman had proven to be little more than a farce. There was no negotiation of terms, nor any semblance of it as they were forced to capitulate to each of Tsar Nicholas’ demands, it was clear that the Conference was a production meant solely to humiliate the Porte and that accepting the mediation put forth by this Protocol would only result in further disgrace and dishonor. They would not accept, they could not accept, and so the answer once again was a firm no. Akkerman had made it so any future proposal would end in the same manner.
The Greek response to the Protocol of St. Petersburg was more nuanced, choosing to delay their response until the Ottomans had announced their opposition, they then announced their own tentative support for mediation. Though they disagreed with many of the terms, specifically remaining subject to the Porte and the uncertainties regarding territory, they viewed them as starting points from which they could advance from. They also recognized they were in desperate need for help, Missolonghi had fallen, Nafpaktos and Salona were under siege, and Ibrahim had returned to the Morea, albeit greatly weakened. Despite their past victories, they could not hope to fight the Ottomans forever. Fortunately for them, the Ottoman rejection of the Protocol had made the intervention of the Powers an inevitability, one that was now just a matter of time. They only needed to survive until they arrived.
Next Time: Perseverance on Troubled Tides
[1] Alexander was a colonel in the Russian army as commander of the 1st Hussars brigade. He served with distinction in the Napoleonic Wars. In the battle of Dresden, he lost his right arm to a cannon ball, but continued to fight despite his injury, earning him the respect of Tsar Alexander.
[2] This territory would correspond roughly to the Peloponnese, Central Greece, Thessaly, and most of Epirus. In addition to Serbia and the Danubian Principalities, Russia would have 6 satellites in the Balkans, which was a very concerning prospect for the other members of the Quintuple Alliance.
[3] The truth is Russia didn’t have any evidence of the Barbarization Project beyond what was already common knowledge. Ibrahim and the Ottoman government also denied any such intentions to do this, although they keenly refused to issue these denials in writing. Regardless, both here and in OTL, Canning and much of the British government believes it to be true.
[4] Akkerman, modern day Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi, is a port city located on the Black Sea coast of Ukraine near its border with Moldova. In 1826, Akkerman was under Russian control, and the decision to host the conference in Russian territory as opposed to neutral territory was clearly meant to humiliate the Ottomans.
[5] The Duke of Nemours, OTL King Louis Philippe, was indeed promoted as the French candidate for Greece during the war although it didn’t get very far both in OTL and in TTL.
