The Decline and Fall of the Ottoman Empire (30 page)

Some of Abdulhamid’s later hostility towards Great Britain sprang from misplaced confidence in his relationship with Layard during these months of protracted crisis. He knew that, while
embassy telegrams necessarily went through the Foreign Office, Layard was also in direct personal correspondence with Disraeli. The Sultan treated both the ambassador and his wife with rare
courtesy, inviting them to ‘dine in a quiet way’ with him on several occasions. He almost certainly suspected
that Layard’s news was passed on to a more
august russophobe than the Prime Minister; at one audience that winter the Sultan, so Layard informed Disraeli, expressed the ‘greatest admiration and affection for the Queen’,
‘spoke like an enlightened Christian’, and ‘referred more than once to Prince Albert and H.M.’s married life’ as a fine example. Layard thought the conversation
‘curious’.
¹⁴

Winter did not, as the Turks had hoped, assist their defenders. The Balkan snows ruled out all possibility of relieving Plevna, which on 11 December at last surrendered to the Russians. Within a
month the Tsar’s troops were in Sofia, in time to celebrate there the great Orthodox Festival of the Epiphany. By 20 January 1878 they had taken Edirne and were threatening both
Constantinople and the Gallipoli peninsula. This climax to the war coincided with the second session of the Ottoman Parliament, for which elections had been held in November and which the Sultan
formally opened on the last day of the old year. The military collapse made this second parliament more vociferous than its predecessor, attacking the mismanagement of the war with detailed
criticisms which, coming at a time when enemy artillery could be heard in the capital, made Abdulhamid fear that the religious patriotism he had encouraged earlier in the campaign would be turned
against him personally. But, whatever the mood of parliament, the Sultan personally recognized the need for peace. On 31 January an armistice was agreed at Edirne.

The end of military operations left Abdulhamid exposed to three main dangers: the anger of the parliamentary deputies; the further encroachment of the enemy; and provocative actions by his
would-be ally. The Sultan was not greatly troubled by the
Meclis
-
i Mebusan
. A fortnight after the Armistice he went in person to the lower chamber: one deputy complained that the
elected representatives of the people were not consulted over ways to avert the military disaster; another deputy went so far as to propose a curb on the Sultan’s personal expenditure.
Abdulhamid listened impassively to all that was said. That night he issued a decree dissolving the chamber on the grounds that it could not carry out its duties effectively at such a moment of
crisis for the Empire. The Sultan also authorized the arrest of the more outspoken deputies, but his Grand Vizier persuaded him to countermand this order, fearing
the
arrests would provoke a popular revolt. The deputies returned safely to their homes. Parliament, the Sultan subsequently explained, had not been abolished; it was suspended until the Empire should
be ready for it. The chamber remained empty year after year. Three decades were to pass before Abdulhamid opened a third parliament.
¹⁵

The Russians could not be sent about their business so simply or so swiftly. For three weeks after the Edirne armistice they threatened to enter Constantinople itself. To halt Grand Duke
Nicholas’s army the Sultan had been forced to make what was virtually an unconditional surrender. The armistice terms provided for the immediate withdrawal of the remaining Ottoman forces
from Bulgaria; they also stipulated that the final peace treaty would include the imposition of a war indemnity, autonomy for Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, total independence for Roumania,
Serbia and Montenegro, and a revision of the Straits Convention to accord Russia new rights over the opening and closure of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles. If the Ottoman authorities evaded any of
the armistice conditions, Grand Duke Nicholas reserved the right to order his troops forward. Some advanced units had already reached the Aegean coast at Dedeagatch, and the local Ottoman
commanders insisted that the movement of Russian units had not ceased with the signing of the armistice. This was not so; the Grand Duke scrupulously observed the terms he had laid down. But rumour
intensified the near-panic in Constantinople. On 5 February Layard telegraphed to London: ‘Armistice does not stop Russian advance. Porte in great alarm.’
¹⁶
Two days later the Russians in Bulgaria cut all telegraphic lines between Constantinople and Western Europe, forcing Layard to send his messages by way of Bombay. This ominous
development convinced Disraeli that the Russians were about to seize the Ottoman capital. On 8 February Admiral Sir Phipps Hornby, who had brought the finest battleships in the Mediterranean Fleet
up to Besika Bay a fortnight earlier, was ordered to enter the Straits, return fire if necessary, and take up station off Constantinople.

Although Abdulhamid welcomed assurances of support from Disraeli, conveyed to him both by Layard and by his own ambassador in London, he was alarmed by British naval activity. ‘The Sultan
appears to
have made up his mind that the entry of our fleet will lead to the loss of his life or at least of his throne, as it will bring the Russians into his capital, and
a general massacre of the Mussulmans and destruction of their property will ensue,’ Layard wrote to Lord Derby. ‘I have scarcely been one hour, day and night, without having one of his
Ministers in the house, or receiving a letter from them. They implore me to stop the approach of the fleet.’
¹⁷
Under no circumstances did the
Sultan dare grant permission for the warships to enter the Dardanelles; but on 13 February Hornby entered the Narrows, in breach of the Straits Convention. Thirteen months were to pass before the
British squadron sailed back into the Aegean.

As the Sultan had feared, the Russians regarded the arrival of the British ships as a hostile act. Their commander, Grand Duke Nicholas (the Tsar’s favourite brother), ordered an advance
to the Sea of Marmara, which his troops reached at San Stefano (now Yesilkoy, the site of Istanbul airport), six miles from Constantinople’s outer walls. At this point, with Britain and
Russia drifting into war, a compromise was agreed: the Grand Duke would take advantage of the new Orient Railway to move his headquarters from Edirne to San Stefano but would not send patrols
closer to the city; Hornby’s battleships would anchor eight miles south of the Golden Horn, off Prinkipo Island (Büyükada), where in 1807 Admiral Duckworth had brought his squadron
after the first British naval passage of the Dardanelles. Tension continued. The British feared that the Russians would seize the Turkish fleet and, on 14 February, Layard was instructed to seek
the immediate purchase of the four newest Ottoman ironclads.
¹⁸
But although the Ottoman Treasury was empty the Porte angrily rejected any such sale.
Meanwhile, in San Stefano painful talks continued on a draft peace treaty.

It was an odd situation. No Russian commander had ever been so close to taking Constantinople as the (militarily incompetent) Grand Duke Nicholas. Among his staff captains in these frustrating
weeks was Prince Alexander of Battenberg, whose brother Prince Louis was serving aboard the appropriately-named battleship HMS
Sultan
off Prinkipo Island. ‘This morning I rode with the
Grand Duke to the heights above San Stefano, and we saw Constantinople before us with St Sophia, all
the minarets, Scutari, etc.,’ Alexander of Battenberg wrote to his
parents. ‘Tears filled the Grand Duke’s eyes. What satisfaction it must give him to stand at the gates of Constantinople with his army!’
¹⁹
During the uncertain weeks when Russian troops could see the masts of the British warships on the horizon, Prince Alexander was welcomed aboard HMS
Sultan
by his brother
and by the battleship’s captain. Here was a further instance of that royal kinship which made Anglo-Russian collaboration more natural than Anglo-Turkish: HMS
Sultan
’s commanding
officer was Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, second son of Queen Victoria and husband of the Tsar’s only surviving daughter.

‘More Russian than the Russians’ was Prince Alexander’s verdict on the feelings of ‘the ship’s company’ in a letter to his parents. A markedly different
impression of the sympathies of Hornby’s crews was conveyed to Abdulhamid by Layard and by his Phanariot physician, Mavroyeni.
²⁰
At home British
public opinion remained divided over the Eastern Crisis, with strong backing in the provinces for Gladstone’s moral crusade on behalf of the Balkan Christians. In London, however, there was a
renewal of russophobe patriotism, a mood popularized by James MacDermott’s ‘Jingo’ music-hall song, with its raucous insistence, ‘The Russians shall not have
Constantinople’. A translation of MacDermott’s heartening chorus was passed on to the Sultan by Mavroyeni. It is said to have brought a rare smile of satisfaction to those thin, cruel
lips. He convinced himself that the British sailors in the ironclads off Prinkipo were Jingos to a man. However much he may have deplored their arrival, from late February 1878 Abdulhamid regarded
Hornby’s fleet as his lifeline to the West.

On 3 March a peace treaty was signed at San Stefano, based on the preliminary terms agreed at Edirne. It was a triumph for Panslavism.
²¹
As well as
imposing a large indemnity, giving Russia considerable gains in eastern Anatolia, and confirming the independence of Roumania and of an enlarged Montenegro and Serbia, the treaty created a
‘Big Bulgaria’ as an autonomous principality under Ottoman tributary sovereignty. Never had a Sultan accepted such terms. Abdulhamid’s one hope was that the Panslav settlement
would prove unacceptable to Russia’s rivals among the Great Powers.

Even before the treaty was signed Count Andrássy, the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister, had been alarmed by the boundaries proposed in the western Balkans, for
they encroached on Austria’s sphere of interest. He sought a new Congress of Vienna to patch up a more acceptable settlement; but the Russians would never allow their traditional rival in the
Danube basin an initiative of this character. The most the Tsar and his ministers would concede was a Congress in Berlin later that summer, under German rather than Austro-Hungarian chairmanship.
Although the German Chancellor and Foreign Minister, Otto von Bismarck, had little interest in Balkan affairs, he had equally no wish to see the whole continent plunged into war because of friction
between Vienna and St Petersburg. At Bismarck’s request, Andrássy sent out invitations to a Congress in Berlin during the very week the terms of San Stefano became generally
known.
²²

Abdulhamid mistrusted Andrássy, not least because the Vienna stock-market crash five years before had weakened the credibility of any Habsburg minister. The Sultan placed more reliance on
Disraeli. On the day the Treaty of San Stefano was signed he invited Layard to dine with him and discuss ways of revising the settlement. The ambassador spent the following week drafting a
thirty-two page memorandum for the Foreign Office in which he set out the enormities of San Stefano.
²³
He emphasized, not only the Balkan aspects of
the treaty, but the advance of the Caucasian frontier which gave Russia control of the historic caravan route from Trebizond to Tabriz and Central Asia. Layard’s memorandum intensified the
hawkish mood in Downing Street. Cabinet discussion of the question of seeking a permanent ‘place of arms’ for Britain within the Ottoman Empire led Derby to resign as Foreign Secretary;
and on 2 April Disraeli strengthened his government by appointing Lord Salisbury to succeed him. The new Foreign Secretary did not share his chief’s romantic enthusiasm for the Sultanate as a
historic institution, but he recognized the inherent dangers of a settlement which ‘solved’ the Eastern Question so decisively in Russia’s favour. At the same time,
Salisbury’s independence of judgement made him more acceptable to the Russians than his predecessor, and by shrewd negotiations in April and May he secured from the Tsar’s ambassador an
acknowledgement that the peace
treaty of San Stefano stood in need of revision.
²⁴
Without Salisbury’s patient
preparatory diplomacy there would have been no redrawing of the Ottoman frontier at the Berlin Congress in late June and July.

Although Salisbury could never be convinced that the Ottoman Empire was ‘a genuine reliable Power’, he was prepared to negotiate a secret alliance guaranteeing the integrity of the
remaining territories of the Sultan in Anatolia. But at a price. Disraeli insisted that fulfilment of the guarantee would be possible only if Great Britain had a base for operations in Asia Minor.
What was required, he told the Queen in early March, was a base which would secure ‘the trade and communications of Europe with the East from the overshadowing interference of Russia’.
Serious consideration was given to Crete (‘enormous advantages’, but desire for union with Greece ‘would infallibly produce political trouble’), the island of Stampalia
(Astipalia) in the Dodecanese, and to the leasing of Mytilene or Iskenderun. By May Disraeli had decided that ‘Cyprus is the key to Western Asia’.
²⁵
On 4 June the Cyprus Convention was signed in Constantinople: if Russia retained Kars, Batum or Ardahan, Britain would defend the Ottoman Empire in Asia against further Russian
attack in return for occupying Cyprus, which would remain under the Sultan’s sovereignty. Not until the fourth week of the Congress of Berlin did the Sultan issue the firman authorizing
British troops to establish themselves on the island; and he did so then only after the British protested that the deputation he had sent to the Berlin Congress knew nothing of the Cyprus
Convention.

At the Paris Peace Congress in 1856 Ali Pasha had impressed his fellow delegates by his statesmanship. Twenty-two years later the three Ottoman delegates to Berlin were nonentities: a Phanariot
Greek who was once Minister of Public Works; a Turkish poet and palace official, with two years’ experience of the Berlin embassy; and, more controversially, a Magdeburg-born convert to Islam
who had deserted from the Prussian army and towards whom Bismarck saw no reason to show civility. Abdulhamid personally selected this sorry trio and briefed them verbally, giving them no written
instructions. They were to save what they could in the Balkans, get the war indemnity scrapped and see that Varna, Batum and all Armenia were returned to Ottoman sovereignty.
Small wonder a Russian delegate noted in his diary of the Congress, ‘The Turks sit and speak—like logs.’
²⁶