Russia in the Post-Napoleonic World

 

I'm not rude. I just felt a bit frustrated because, although I presented the point about the threat to the Russian western border several times, it still looked like you ignored it.

 

Sorry for any misundestanding.

 

For example, Peter the Great, he just creates a strong power from nowhere.

 

Then his heirs destroy his achievements. Then Catherine the great comes and brings Russia to the top again.

 

This curve is a typical feature of the Russian history.

 

In fact, Nicholas I was a strong character as well, but he was a kind of shortsighted I would say.

 

Though, I believe the biggest shame of all the Russian tsars was Nicholas II. He took a very strong empire from his father and he left it in ruins.

 

Sometimes I think where would be Russia now, if instead of miserable Nicholas II, there was a new Peter the great, Catherine II or Alexander II.

With or without Austrian help, the Russian state would be bankrupt if it held out beyond 1855. Not many bankrupt states can wage a war.

 

I've very much enjoyed this debate. It's nice to see a lively one every now and then.

 

Cheers!

Unfortunately, it really looks like you simply ignore my previous posts.

 

- *bangs head against wall* No mate, I'm saying I agree with you, like eight times, but that you must consider Russia's diplomatic isolation in the context of the many other factors of internal weakness. Austria's belligerence was just one if many contributary factors. Infact, it serves to stress my very point. Russia's isolation beared no weight with policy-makers in St Petersburg, they fought the war in the absolute knowledge that they would be fighting alone against a coalition. So it very much seems that the hostility of neighbours did not bear much weight with the Tsar. Perhaps we should look at Austria's ultimatum as the excuse for Russia's shattered war effort to be concluded not in shameful defeat and collapse, but in honourable acknowledgement of its hopeless situation?

Indeed, the Austria problem provided a good "get out of jail free" card for the Russian Empire.

 

All the parties were exhausted.

 

- No, infact, they were not. Britain was the world's superpower. As Russia, and to a lesser extent France, groaned and scratched to keep themselves in the war, Britain was slowly gearing up (it was her 'Imperial Way', she never took anything seriously until she met with an unmitigated disaster, and then the entire Imperial Machine rolled in to existence and success was almost a foregone conclusion). In 1852 France was spending �17.2m on war expenditure, Russia �15.6m and Britain �10.1m. But by the end of 1854 when France was becoming a spent force and the Russian Crimean Army had suffered several shattering defeats (by the beginning of 1855 it was virtually a non-entity) Britain was spending a collossal �76.3m on its war expenditure, sending massive supplies, reinforcements, embarking on a massive ship-building programme of small gunboats that could penetrate the Russian enterior, hundreds of thousands of more armaments, and raising a force that far outnumbered the French army. In comparison Russia at it's greatest extent could muster up �31.3m, which constituted heavy borrowing on the Amsterdam and Berlin markets - which, as we know, would soon refuse Russia any more, and forced the Tsar to print paper money to sustain the war effort, which in turn forced inflation to sky rocket and put the economy and credit in the doldrums throughout the next half dozen years. France was similarly capped at �43.8m expenditure.

 

Just when the combatants were talking of peace, Britain (or shall we be more specific and say Palmerston?) was talking of breaking up the Russian Empire. A good example is your own example about the Pacific theatre. The Russians were able to repel an allied force supplied by sea on the East Coast (you'll be surprised how effective even a paper fort would be for the defenders entrenched and supplied, against invaders thousands of miles from supply bases in conditions and weather that, by itself, was lethal enough), but the Allies only returned with more ships and a greater force not long after, forcing the Russian army to withdraw under cover of snow.

 

"You say that Russia failed on every front." I know very well that Russia repelled all the attacks of the Allies except in Crimea.

 

- But that is not a success. Russia failed in its objectives. It occupied the principalities and launched offensives on the Danube to a) push through to Constantinople, and b) to force the Ottomans to capitulate. Instead, the Russian war effort was bloodied to a standstill, even before the French or British had landed their armies!

 

In Minor Asia Russians defeated the Turks (which were under British command BTW) and captured fortress Kars. Actually Russian land gains during the war far exceeded the land which the Allies controlled in Crimea

 

- Indeed, the only front that Russia could be said to have succeeded on was the Caucasus front, having won almost thier only field-victory in the war at Kuruk-deri and broken through to Kars. But Kars was very much Russia's Sebastopol. The Russians had almost 50,000 compared to Turkey's 20,000 commanded by a handful of British officers (literally about 5). Every attack was repulsed, almost as bloody as anything at Sebastopol. Indeed in one offensive on 29th September, 1855, the Russians were repulsed with the loss of 7,000 men, with the same amount wounded, massive casualties. From 1st June to 25th November Kars held out for half a year, the Russians unable to take it and finally only gaining possession when starvation and disease forced the garrison to negotiate. By this time, however, Sebastopol had fallen and peace talks were under way. Offensives on the Caucasus front were too slow, and held up by Kars for too long, to effect the overall Russian war effort.

 

The fleet of Allies also was superior, however there were no serious naval battled during this war, except the battle of Sinop in the very beginning when the Turkish fleet was decimated.

 

- Naval power was the Allies most effective weapon in the war, to underestimate its effects is to fail to understand the entire strategic element to the conflict. Allied naval supremacy forced Russia to sink the same fleet that had crippled the Turkish navy at Sinope; to keep large numbers pinned down across the expanse of the empire; enabled an effective blockade, crippling Russian trade thereby forcing the Tsar to borrow on European markets; exhausted the domestic economy; denied Russia access to resupply and restock armaments; and ultimately ruined any hopes of Russia establishing a long-sought for naval presence, anywhere. 

 

Moreover, this was was won by French. And French got tired, they lost too many men and the taking of Sevastopol for them was enough to repay the "disgrace of 1812," although the war was still very to the "complete victory" Napoleon III clearly didn't want to continue the war. After France showed its stance, Britain could do nothing. British forces were not enough to continue fighting with the Russian empire and Britain also had to agree to the terms of the Austrian ultimatum.

 

- Napoleon was always the belligerent force on the Allied Side, once he achieved French goals he would have gone so far as abandon the Alliance to make a seperate peace. Remember, France was becoming as exhausted as Russia (though not dangerously so, Russia being on the point of financial collapse and state bankruptcy) and French influence on Turkey was far greater than Britain's. Once Napoleon had decided on peace, Britain didn't have much choice. But as I have shown, it was more than capable of carrying on the fight. And I never wish to speculate in history and play the "what-if" card, but had Britain chosen to, Russia could not have survived another year, being on the verge of breakdown (by 1856 Russia had less than a quarter of the armaments it started the war with. Russia did not have the industry to create its own military supplies, and with the British blockade its capacity to wage war would not have been sustainable).

 

BTW where the weird pronouncation SeBastopol comes from. The name of the city is Sevastopol and I never encountered foreign sources calling it the other way. Sorry, it's not directly related to the topic, but I'm just curious.

 

- By all means! It's an often-used Anglicized version of the city name. Many histories in English use the version. I'm aware of the Russian name, but as I'm not Russian...

 

Thanks!

 

 

Britain, wasn't capable at all to have the war on its own. Otherwise, it would continue the war, because no one of the Lord Palmerston's initial goals was achieved. Instead Brittain had to satisfy itself with quite moderate terms of the Austrian ultimatum.

 

- I've given you sources for Britain's capability. Britain had strangled Russian trade and supply, quadrupled her military spending and as the war was ending began a massive army recruitment and ship building programme. Russia could not have sustained another 6 months of war. Bankrupts states cannot fight on, and as the Tsar was warned in 1855, the 800m ruble debt was going to, unless the Tsar sued for peace, cause a Russian collapse.

 

Remember, Palmerston wasn't in office at the beginning of the war, he did not decide Britain's initial goals. Infact, a number of British goals were achieved. The removal of the Russian threat in the Black Sea, the Dardanelles and ultimately the Mediterranean was arguably Britain's main war-aim.

 

To not recognize that Russia was thrashed by far superior fiscal-military states that she could not hope to compete with is to ignore the sources. To put it in perspective, it would be like Russian armies destroying Portsmouth - an unmitigated blow. Indeed, Part 2 of the article is almost ready to be posted. I hope it will show what defeat meant for Russia, and how she attempted to cope with it.

 

But yes, Britain did choose instead to accept French and Turkish pressure to accept the Austrian ultimatum. Britain was the leading world power at mid-century, and perhaps the leader of the Concert of Europe. The Ottoman Empire had been saved and Russian naval power crushed - fighting on would have served no purpose.

 

I've very much enjoyed this debate

 

Just one thing; wasn't Napoleon III the nephew of Napoleon I, not his grandson?

 

I have learned a good deal from those two articles, thank you.

 

It was rather a pragmatic stance and Russia tried to benefit whenevet it could from France, but never considered herself to be in allience with France (that was mainly Crimean war effect).

 

The relations with Prussia were much more cordial. BTW Bismark, was an expert on Russia he lived there many years and was fluent in Russian language. The Prussian victory in Franco-Prussian war was widely celebrated in Sankt-Petersburg.

 

Many Russian historians still blame Gorchakov for suspicions of the growing Prussian power. The say that from the pragmatic point of view, Russia should have allowed Prussia to complitely destroy France, rather ther supported the latter.