Britain and France relationship: Post Napoleonic wars.

[Dachs]

The Crimean War was caused by France. Napoleon trumped up a crisis about the keys to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to start the whole thing; he used that to question the basis of Russia's rights in the Ottoman Empire (you know, the rights that the British had agreed that they could have in 1840). The British, despite a few attempts to step back from the abyss and slightly extenuating circumstances as regarded their ambassador to the Porte, ended up going along with it anyway.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Why did they go along with it? I understood there to be an overriding desire to prevent Russia from getting Constantinople, but that certainly seems to be a British goal more than a French goal.

 

[Dachs]

Irrational fear of Russia 'getting' Constantinople was one thing. But these were the same sort of balance-of-power politics Palmerston had been advocating for some time. Russia could not, apparently, be cooperated with (even though Nikolai I built his whole foreign policy on cooperation with Britain) - it had to be treated as a rival for ultimate power, and crushed in any bid for same. The barely-sensible hysterics employed by Russell in the Commons - "fight the Russians on the Danube lest they need be fought on the Indus" - simply illustrate the point better. For many Britons, the Crimean war was 'a crime', and rightly so; for much of the government, it was a simple extension of an absurd foreign policy.

 

[Lone Cat]

And what was Russian plans on Constantinople and Greece? will they merge the two into the fledging Russian empire? or will they just prop up another puppet state (in another word. to restore Byzanti nations?)

 

[Dachs]

And what was Russian plans on Constantinople and Greece? will they merge the two into the fledging Russian empire? or will they just prop up another puppet state (in another word. to restore Byzanti nations?)

The Russians didn't plan to take over Constantinople. If there were to be any territorial gains in 1853, they were to come from Kars and the Danubian Principalities. There was a brief, abortive project to resurrect the Byzantine Empire under Yekaterina Velikaya in the 1770s, but it didn't take and it's not clear how much she believed in it anyhow. By the nineteenth century, the extent of semi-realistic panslavist plans lay in the creation of a superBulgaria as in 1878, but even that didn't work out. The Russians did want access to the Straits (which later changed to "let us have the access we currently enjoy but permit Russia to close the Straits to other countries in times of war") but control of Constantinople itself wasn't really in the cards, even in 1914-5 when the British, French, and Russians started carving up the OE.

 

[Ergo Sum]

They all had defensive alliances with Prussia against France, which conveniently activated when the French declared war. But Bavaria in particular was uneasy about fighting alongside the Prussians and the government (as opposed to King Ludwig, who had been bribed enough to love the Prussians forever) was potentially amenable to switching sides.

As for whether they mattered, well, think of this. Bazaine's army went down, but the Prussian army pretty much gave its lifeblood at Gravelotte-St. Privat to get it there. The army that marched to Sedan and fought MacMahon's Army of Chalons was in every sense a "German" army; the Prussians were in equal number with Bavarians, Württembergers, and Saxons. Without von der Tann and his two corps, the Prussians would've been in a pretty tight spot. Notably, the Bavarians stormed Bazeilles, a key French strongpoint garrisoned by their elite marines (for comparison, Bazeilles has gone down in French military history along with Puebla). Unfortunately, their postwar reputation was somewhat tarnished by a few relatively minor incidents that the Prussians ended up blowing out of proportion, like a brief retreat in the face of French cavalry near the end of the battle of Sedan.

So yeah, I'd say they mattered.

Sorry if I'm sorely lacking in German history, but given Bavaria's (and doubtless other German states') uneasy alliance with Prussia, how did Prussia convince them all to be folded into the German Empire at the close of the war? Some combination of a nationalistic response to their win against France and a mobilized army to wave in the face of any state that says no?

 

[Dachs]

Sorry if I'm sorely lacking in German history, but given Bavaria's (and doubtless other German states') uneasy alliance with Prussia, how did Prussia convince them all to be folded into the German Empire at the close of the war? Some combination of a nationalistic response to their win against France and a mobilized army to wave in the face of any state that says no?

It helped that being part of the German Empire didn't actually entail giving up a whole lot. States maintained power over direct taxation, Bavaria and Württemberg (and Saxony, but Saxony was already part of the North German Federation) kept their own armies, there were no reductions in titles or dignities for any of the kinds, usw. And, yeah, the act of fighting united against France helped a lot. Bavaria, Baden, and Württemberg had all sent large armies, and all had played their role on the battlefield. Hell, Baden had already applied to join early in 1870 (before the war started) and had been turned down.

 

[Lord Baal]

Why was Baden turned down? I've never come across that before.

 

[Dachs]

Here's what I have in Rich:

"In February 1870 Bismarck turned aside another proposal to incorporate Baden into the North German Confederation. The time for such action was premature, he said. He did not want to alarm the other south German governments, but above all he did not want to provoke a crisis with the recently liberalized [sic] Napoleonic regime 'as it signifies peace for us'. 'You know how firmly we have our common goal [of German unification] in mind,' Bismarck wrote to his representative in Baden on February 28. 'But you also know how carefully considered the motives are by which we choose our course and measure our pace.'"

Baden had a history of going off half-cocked on the latest Prussian proposals (in 1848 they were the fastest to incorporate the Prussian-proposed Confederation army reforms and effectively dissolved their army in the process, and they were once again at the forefront of Prussian army-based reform after 1866).

 

[ParkCungHee]

So much for "Bismarck planned the Franco-Prussian war?"

 

[Lord Baal]

So much for "Bismarck planned the Franco-Prussian war?"

Bismarck did absolutely everything he could to avoid the war, actually. He also tried his hardest to avoid war with Austria and Denmark. So much for the myth of him as a great warmonger.

 

[Dachs]

So much for "Bismarck planned the Franco-Prussian war?"

Well, like I said earlier...

 

[Lone Cat]

The Russians didn't plan to take over Constantinople. If there were to be any territorial gains in 1853, they were to come from Kars and the Danubian Principalities. There was a brief, abortive project to resurrect the Byzantine Empire under Yekaterina Velikaya in the 1770s, but it didn't take and it's not clear how much she believed in it anyhow. By the nineteenth century, the extent of semi-realistic panslavist plans lay in the creation of a superBulgaria as in 1878, but even that didn't work out. The Russians did want access to the Straits (which later changed to "let us have the access we currently enjoy but permit Russia to close the Straits to other countries in times of war") but control of Constantinople itself wasn't really in the cards, even in 1914-5 when the British, French, and Russians started carving up the OE.

Because Constantinople losts its importances since someone else found out how to get around Africa right?

but by the Crimean war. WHAT IF Russia finally made it to constantinople. what's their plan after that???

 

[Dachs]

Because Constantinople losts its importances since someone else found out how to get around Africa right?

Um, no, because the Russians had pretty much no prospect of actually controlling it.

but by the Crimean war. WHAT IF Russia finally made it to constantinople. what's their plan after that???

Well, they probably wouldn't have. But probably they pick up Kars and the Danubian Principalities and sign some treaties that are even more unequal than Hünkâr İskelesi.

 

[Tee Kay]

Because Constantinople losts its importances since someone else found out how to get around Africa right?

Mumble mumble Ottoman spice trade was comparable if not larger than the trade around Africa until the mid-17th century mumble mumble

 

[aronnax]

Slightly off topic, I am under the impression that Ottoman tax revenue for silk goods was even higher than that for spices. Is this correct.


Okay terribly off topic.