The Sick Man of Europe

The Ottoman Empire had been failing slowly for a century before the Crimean War finally exposed the depth of that failure. What European statesmen called 'the Eastern Question' — what to do about an empire that was clearly dying but whose collapse would create a catastrophic scramble for its territories — had haunted the Congress of Vienna and every subsequent European summit. Tsar Nicholas I crystallized the problem with characteristic bluntness when he told the British ambassador in January 1853 that the Ottoman Empire was 'the sick man of Europe' and suggested that Britain and Russia should discuss how to divide the inheritance. He meant this as a practical diplomatic proposal. The British interpreted it as a threat — which, in its implications, it certainly was.

Nicholas I ruled Russia from a position of genuine strength and profound misapprehension. His suppression of the Decembrist revolt in 1825, his crushing of the Polish uprising in 1830, and his intervention to save Austria-Hungary from the Hungarian revolution in 1849 had convinced him that Russia was the paramount continental power — the arbiter of European order. He believed, with some justification, that Britain would not fight for Ottoman interests, that France under the new Emperor Napoleon III was diplomatically isolated, and that Austria, grateful for Russian help in 1849, would remain neutral or supportive. Every one of these calculations proved catastrophically wrong.

The immediate cause of the war was a dispute over religious rights in the Holy Land — specifically, who controlled the keys to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. France, acting as protector of Catholic interests, had pressured the Ottoman Empire into granting primacy to Catholic monks. Russia, as protector of Orthodox Christianity, demanded equivalent rights for Orthodox clergy. The dispute was theologically trivial but politically explosive — it provided Nicholas with the pretext to demand a formal protectorate over all Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire, numbering perhaps twelve million people. The Ottoman Empire, advised by Britain and France, refused. Nicholas then sent Russian troops into the Ottoman-controlled Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia — effectively occupying Ottoman territory as leverage.

The Ottoman Empire declared war on Russia in October 1853, and the initial campaigns went reasonably well for both sides. Ottoman forces on the Danube mounted effective resistance. But on November 30, 1853, Vice Admiral Pavel Nakhimov's Russian Black Sea fleet destroyed an Ottoman squadron at the harbor of Sinop on the Turkish coast, killing approximately 3,000 sailors and burning the town. European newspapers called it the 'Sinop Massacre' and 'the treachery of Sinop.' Whether the attack was more than a legitimate act of war is debatable, but the public reaction in Britain and France was not. In March 1854, both countries declared war on Russia. The Crimean War had begun.