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IV. Lord Augustus Loftus and the Eastern Crisis of 1875–18781

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2011

B. H. Sumner
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Extract

During the Eastern crisis of 1875–8 it is currently accepted that England was represented at the two key capitals of St Petersburg and Vienna by two nonentities, in sharp contrast with Elliot and Layard at Constantinople, Lord Odo Russell at Berlin, and Lord Lyons at Paris. Disraeli's strictures are well known. To him Lord Augustus Loftus was “Pomposo,” “a mere Polonius,” “a mere Livadian parasite, and afraid even of G(orchakov)'s shadow.” “As for Buchanan, that is a hopeless case.… I… can testify that it is not age, which has enfeebled his intelligence or dimmed his powers. He was, and ever has been, a hopeless mediocrity.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Historical Journal , Volume 4 , Issue 3 , 1934 , pp. 283 - 295
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1934

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Footnotes

1

A summary of this paper was communicated to the Seventh International Congress of Historical Sciences held at Warsaw in August 1933, and has been published in Résumés des communications présenées au congrès,II, 236–40 (Warsaw, 1933).

References

2 Monypenny and Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, 1929 ed., II, 983, 895, 961,921.Google Scholar

3 I ought to state that I have not worked through all the volumes in the Public Record Office relating to Russia for the last four months of 1878, and none of those for 1879, and to emphasise that the evidence used relates only to the years 1875–8, and not to the first four years of Lord Augustus Loftus's ambassadorship at St Petersburg.

4 The Dictionary of National Biography, second supplement, states, without citing any authority, that he “formed an enduring intimacy with Gorchakov” while at Stuttgart. Loftus in his Diplomatic Reminiscences, first series, vol. 1, has nothing but a formal mention of Gorchakov. Thirty years later, when Loftus was at St Petersburg, there is no evidence that the two were on close terms, and from MS. material based on the archives of the Russian embassy in London and kindly lent to me by Baron A. Meyendorff it is clear that at least in 1873 and 1875 Gorchakov had a very poor opinion of Loftus.

5 Loftus claimed in retrospect to have been on intimate terms with Jomini, Diplomatic Reminiscences, second series, II, 229.

6 His recollections of his period as military attaché, published by him under the title of With the Russians in peace and war, London, 1904, are mainly anecdotal in character, but a large number of his reports are contained in the Foreign Office papers and show clearly his activity and importance.Google Scholar

7 A later illustration of the lack of information on the part of the British embassy in St Petersburg as to the personnel of the pan-Slav agents is supplied by their confusion of Ionin, the consul at Ragusa, with his brother, an ex-consul and a still more strenuous inciter of revolutionary societies in Bosnia, Rumania and Bulgaria: Loftus to Derby, Desp. no. 549, 10 October 1877, in F.O. 65/969.

8 F.O. 363/2.

9 Schweinitz, Briefwechsel, pp. 119–22; Denhwürdigkeiten, vol. I, pp. 359–63: Die Grosse Politik…, II, pp. 80–4: Loftus's telegrams and despatches from the Crimea were published in Parliamentary Papers, 1877, C. 1640. F.O. 65/941 adds nothing material: nor do Loftus's Diplomatic Reminiscences, second series, II, 176–92.

10 Wellesley's reports relating to this mission are in F.O. 65/985. There is also important additional information in The Letters of Queen Victoria, 1862–1878, II, 560–7Google Scholar, and Monypenny and Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, 1929 ed., II, 1045–8.Google Scholar The text of the cabinet reply, of 14 August, was published in Parliamentary Papers, 1878, C. 1929, no. 4.

11 It should, however, be added that Loftus did propose to and urge on his government one suggestion—that England should require Russia not to occupy either shore of the Bosphorus (tel. no. 43, private and confidential, 20 February, F.O. 65/999).

12 Wellesley's reports are in F.O. 65/1002 and 1003. Loftus's claim in his Diplomatic Reminiscences, second series, II, 249–51, that he initiated on 2 May the idea of a confidential exchange of views in London is not borne out by his own reports at the time.