The Crimean War Read Online Free PDF Page B

ignorance of the Russian people separates them from all community with the feelings of other nations, and prepares them to regard every denunciation of the injustice of their rulers as an attack upon themselves, and the Government has already announced by its Acts a determination to submit to no moral influences which may reach it from without.’ 18
    In another act of provocation Urquhart published in The Portfolio what purported to be copies of Russian diplomatic documents captured from the palace of Grand Duke Constantine, the governor of Poland, during the Warsaw insurrection in November 1830 and passed on by Polish émigrés to Palmerston. Most, if not all, of these documents were fabricated by Urquhart, including a ‘suppressed passage of a speech’ in which Tsar Nicholas was said to have declared that Russia would not stop its repressive measures until it had achieved the complete subjugation of Poland, and a ‘Declaration of Independence’ supposedly proclaimed by the Circassian tribes. But such was the climate of Russophobia that they were widely accepted as authentic documents by the British press. 19
    In 1836 Urquhart returned to Constantinople as secretary of the embassy. His growing fame and influence in British diplomatic and political circles had forced Palmerston to bring him back into office, although his role in the Turkish capital was rather limited. Once again, Urquhart took up the Circassian cause and attempted to stir up a conflict between Russia and Britain. In his most brazen act yet, Urquhart conspired to send a British schooner, the Vixen , to Circassia in deliberate contravention of the Russian embargo against foreign shipping on the eastern Black Sea coast imposed as part of the Treaty of Adrianople. The Vixen belonged to a shipping company, George and James Bell of Glasgow and London, that had already clashed with the Russians over their obstructive quarantine regulations on the Danube. Officially, the Vixen was transporting salt, but in fact it was loaded with a large supply of weapons for the Circassians. Ponsonby in Constantinople had been informed of the ship’s intended journey and did nothing to discourage it; nor did he reply to the Bells’ enquiries about whether the Foreign Office recognized the embargo and whether Britain would defend their shipping rights, as Urquhart had assured them that it would. The Russians were aware of Urquhart’s plans: in the summer of 1836 the Tsar had already complained to the British ambassador in St Petersburg after one of Urquhart’s followers had travelled to Circassia and promised British support for their war against Russia. The Vixen sailed in October. As Urquhart had anticipated, a Russian warship seized the Vixen on the Caucasian coast, at Soujouk Kalé, prompting loud denunciations of the Russian action and calls for war in The Times and other newspapers. Ponsonby urged Palmerston to send a fleet into the Black Sea. Although he was reluctant to recognize Russia’s embargo or its claims to Circassia, Palmerston was nevertheless not ready to be pushed into a war by Urquhart, Ponsonby and the British press. He acknowledged that the Vixen had contravened Russian regulations, which Britain recognized, but only in so far as these related to Soujouk Kalé, not to the whole Caucasian coastline.
    Recalled once again from Constantinople, Urquhart was dismissed from the foreign service and charged with a breach of official secrecy by Palmerston in 1837. Urquhart always claimed that Palmerston had known about the Vixen plan. For years he harboured a deep grudge against the Foreign Secretary for supposedly betraying him. As Britain moved towards entente with Russia, Urquhart became increasingly frustrated and extreme in his Russophobia, calling for an even stronger anti-Russian line – not discounting war – to defend Britain’s trade and its interests in India. He even accused Palmerston of being in the pay of the Russian government, a charge taken