Читать книгу Once A Grand Duke by Alexander Grand Duke of Russia - Alexander Mikhailovich - Страница 12

THE month of January, 1877, brought the long awaited declaration of war by Russia on Turkey.

The events of 1877 and 1878 appear thoroughly incomprehensible when analyzed after the passing of fifty-three years: one does not know whether to marvel at the nearsightedness of Disraeli or to deplore the naïveté of the Russian Imperial Government. It may be true that we had no business interfering in Balkan affairs, but then, what mysterious considerations led Lord Beaconsfield to believe in the advisability of provoking the Russian ire? One word from London would have checked the series of massacres of Slavs organized by the Turkish Government, and the most perfunctory effort at reading the future would have disclosed to Downing Street the macabre consequences of fostering any Balkan disturbances whatsoever. As it was, Emperor Alexander II found himself actually in duty bound to accept the British challenge, although opposed to war with all the forces of his kind heart and clear mind.

For nearly two years, while slowly marching through the wild Balkan provinces toward Constantinople, the Russian Army was in reality engaged in a merciless fight with the British Empire. The Turkish soldiers were invariably armed with the newest British rifles; the generals of the Sultan were following the instructions of the British strategists; and the fleet of Her Britannic Majesty made its threatening appearance in the Near Eastern waters just at the moment when the capture of Constantinople by our army was but a question of a few weeks. The Russian diplomats once more lived up to their reputation of unsurpassed stupidity and advised Emperor Alexander II to accept the so-called “friendly services” of Bismarck and to settle the Russo-Turkish differences at a Congress in Berlin.

“Der alte Jude, das ist ein Mann,” said Bismarck admiringly of Disraeli, when the latter succeeded in bluffing the Russian delegation into accepting the most grotesque terms of peace which traveled a long way toward making the future World War inevitable. In fact, “der alte Jude,” in his perennial desire to assure the maintaining of the Turkish Empire in Europe, glorified Berlin in the eyes of Constantinople, thus laying the foundation for the deadly intrigues of Kaiser Wilhelm in the Balkans. Thousands of British soldiers were to meet their doom in Gallipoli thirty-seven years later because Disraeli was trying to make things uncomfortable for St. Petersburg in 1878. No excuse, however, could be advanced for the conduct of the Russian diplomats, who instead of countering Disraeli’s move with an immediate proclamation of a Russo-German Alliance, commenced to promote a nonsensical and eventually fatal entente with France and Great Britain.