The Crimean War

I hold that the real policy of England – apart from questions which involve her own particular interests, political or commercial – is to be the champion of justice and right; pursuing that course with moderation and prudence, not becoming the Quixote of the world, but giving the weight of her moral sanction and support wherever she thinks that justice is, and wherever she thinks that wrong has been done.²⁰

Urquhart’s Russophobia may have been at odds with Britain’s foreign policy in the 1840s but it had considerable support in Parliament, where there was a powerful lobby of politicians who backed his calls for a tougher line against Russia, including Lord Stanley and Stratford Canning, who replaced Ponsonby as ambassador to Constantinople in 1842. Outside Parliament, Urquhart’s backing for free trade (the major reform issue of the 1840s) won him a broad following among Midlands and northern businessmen, who were persuaded by his frequent public speeches that Russian tariffs were a major cause of Britain’s economic depression. He also had the support of influential diplomats and men of letters, including Henry Bulwer, Sir James Hudson and Thomas Wentworth Beaumont, co-founder of the British and Foreign Review, which became increasingly hostile to Russia under Urquhart’s influence.

As the decade wore on, a mood of growing Russophobia was to be found in even the most moderate intellectual circles. Highbrow periodicals like the Foreign Quarterly Review, which had previously discounted the ‘alarmist’ warnings of a Russian threat to the liberty of Europe and British interests in the East, succumbed to the anti-Russian atmosphere. Meanwhile, among the broader public – in churches, taverns, lecture halls and Chartist conventions – hostility to Russia was rapidly becoming a central reference point in a political discourse about liberty, civilization and progress that helped shape the national identity.

Sympathies for Turkey, fears for India – nothing fuelled Russophobia in Britain as intensely as the Polish cause. Championed by liberals throughout Europe as a just and noble fight for freedom against Russian tyranny, the Polish uprising – and its brutal suppression – did more than any other issue to involve the British in the affairs of the Continent and exacerbate the tensions that led to the Crimean War.

Poland’s history could hardly have been more tormented. During the previous half-century the large old Polish Commonwealth (the Kingdom of Poland united with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania) had been partitioned no less than three times: twice (in 1772 and 1795) by all three neighbouring powers (Russia, Austria and Prussia) and once (in 1792) by the Russians and the Prussians on the grounds that Poland had become a stronghold of revolutionary sentiment. As a result of these partitions the Polish kingdom had lost more than two-thirds of its territory. Despairing of ever regaining their independence, the Poles turned to Napoleon in 1806, only to see their territory further carved up on his defeat. In 1815, in the Treaty of Vienna, the European powers established Congress Poland (an area roughly corresponding to the Napoleonic Duchy of Warsaw) and placed it under the protection of the Tsar on condition that he maintain Poland’s constitutional liberties. But Alexander never fully recognized the new state’s political autonomy – it was a tall order to combine autocracy in Russia and constitutionalism in Poland – while the repressive rule of Nicholas I further alienated many Poles. Throughout the 1820s the Russians violated the terms of the treaty – rolling back the freedoms of the press, imposing taxes without the consent of the Polish parliament, and using special powers to persecute the liberals opposed to tsarist rule. The final straw came in November 1830 when the viceroy of Poland, the Tsar’s brother, Grand Duke Constantine, issued an order to conscript Polish troops for the suppression of revolutions in France and Belgium.

The uprising began when a group of Polish officers from the Russian Military Academy in Warsaw rebelled against the Grand Duke’s order. Taking arms from their garrison, the officers attacked the Belvedere Palace, the main seat of the Grand Duke, who managed to escape (disguised in women’s clothes). The rebels took the Warsaw arsenal and, supported by armed civilians, forced the Russian troops to withdraw from the Polish capital. The Polish army joined the uprising. A provisional government was established, headed by Prince Adam Czartoryski, and a national parliament was called. The radicals who took control declared a war of liberation against Russia and in a ceremony to dethrone the Tsar proclaimed Polish independence in January 1831. Within days of the proclamation, the Russian army crossed the Polish border and advanced towards the capital. The troops were led by General Ivan Paskevich, a veteran of the wars against the Turks and the Caucasian mountain tribes, whose brutal measures of repression made his name a byword for Russian cruelty in Poland’s national memory. On 25 February a Polish force of 40,000 men fought off 60,000 Russians on the Vistula to save Warsaw. But Russian reinforcements soon arrived and gradually wore down the Polish resistance. They surrounded the city, where hungry citizens began to loot and riot against the provisional government. Warsaw fell on 7 September after heavy fighting in the streets. Rather than submit to the Russians, the remainder of the Polish army, some 20,000 men, fled to Prussia, where they were captured by the Prussian government, another ruler of annexed Polish territory and an ally of Russia; Prince Czartoryski made his way to Britain, while many other rebels escaped to France and Belgium, where they were welcomed as heroes.

The reaction of the British public was just as sympathetic. After the suppression of the uprising, there were mass rallies, public meetings and petitions to protest against the Russian action and demand intervention by Britain. The call for war against Russia was joined by many sections of the press, including The Times, which asked in July 1831: ‘How long will Russia be permitted, with impunity, to make war upon the ancient and noble nation of the Poles, the allies of France, the friends of England, the natural, and, centuries ago, the tried and victorious protectors of civilized Europe against the Turkish and Muscovite barbarians?’ Associations of Friends of Poland were set up in London, Nottingham, Birmingham, Hull, Leeds, Glasgow and Edinburgh to organize support for the Polish cause. Radical MPs (many of them Irish) called for British action to defend the ‘downtrodden Poles’. Chartist groups of working men and women (engaged in the struggle for democratic rights) declared their solidarity with the Polish fight for freedom, sometimes even stating their readiness to go to war for the defence of liberty at home and abroad. ‘Unless the English nation rouses itself,’ declared the Chartist Northern Liberator, ‘we shall see the damnable spectacle of a Russian fleet armed to the teeth and crammed with soldiers, daring to sail through the English Channel, and probably to anchor at Spithead or Plymouth Sound!’²¹

The fight for freedom in Poland captured the imagination of the British public, who readily assimilated it to the ideals they liked to think of as ‘British’ – in particular, a love of liberty and the commitment to defend the ‘little man’ against ‘bullies’ (the principle upon which the British told themselves they went to war in 1854, 1914 and 1939). At a time of liberal reforms and new freedoms for the British middle class, powerful emotions were stirred by this association with the Polish cause. Shortly after the passing of the parliamentary Reform Act in 1832, the editor of the Manchester Times told a meeting of the Association of Friends of Poland that the British and the Poles were fighting the same battle for freedom: