In England these feelings had manifested themselves, and any English Government which should venture to shock them would have been certainly upset. Therefore, a proposed partition of Turkey by Russia was received by the English Government with decided disfavour.
Then the Czar proposed that the guardianship of the Holy Land should be entrusted to Russia. This was his great aim, and was his principal object.
England found herself in a dilemma. What was she to do? She had already refused the Czar’s first proposal, and she felt obliged to accept the second. “The three representatives of the Conservative party, namely, the Duke of Wellington, Sir Robert Peel, and Lord Aberdeen, met the Czar and signed a secret memorandum, promising to exert their personal influence on behalf of the Greeks as opposed to the Latin Church at Jerusalem, and so practically to forward Russian claims to the guardianship of the Holy Places, as opposed to those of France, who was to be ignored in the matter. This memorandum, to a certain extent favouring Russia’s claim to a protectorate of the Greek Church, was never placed in the Foreign Office archives, but was forwarded in succession from one English Foreign Secretary to another, until, as we shall show, poor Lord Aberdeen (Wellington and Peel being dead) was called on for his pound of flesh in 1853.”[58]
Thus Nicholas attained the end he had in view, and left England, well pleased with the brilliant reception he had met with. “The Greek and the Catholic Church,” Lord Palmerston had written to Canning, 1849, “are merely other names for Russian and French influence.”
France at once perceived that the Czar’s visit to England was connected with some secret arrangement to the prejudice of French interests, and felt highly indignant.
France did not lose any time, and commenced plans to overturn Russian influence in the Holy Land. Russia resented this, thinking that France would be her only enemy. The Holy Land dispute soon became general.
The Turkish compromise did not please Russia and France. “Suddenly, the French ambassador at Constantinople, M. de Lavalette, was instructed to demand that the grants[59] to the Latin Church should be strictly executed in the Holy Land.”[60]