Paris agrees to a Russian Constantinople

The British chronology of the war records under 12 April 1915 that the French government informed the Russian government that it accepted Russia’s claims to Constantinople. The documents of the Tsarist foreign ministry, published by the Soviet authorities in the 1920s, date this step two days earlier. On 10 April, that is 28 March in the Julian calendar then in use in Russia, the French embassy in Petrograd handed the Foreign Minister, Sergey Sazonov, a note verbale in which France agreed to the Russian demands. Where the later date in the chronology came from could not be established.

Consent on conditions

The note was short. The government of the Republic agreed to the memorandum on Constantinople and the Straits that the Russian ambassador, Alexander Izvolsky, had delivered in Paris at the beginning of March. It set two conditions, however. The war had to be brought to a victorious end, and France and Great Britain were to realise their plans “in the East as elsewhere”, as the Russian memorandum had foreshadowed.

Paris thus used a formula suggested by the Russians themselves. In the memorandum of 4 March Petrograd had promised its allies the same goodwill towards their designs in other parts of the Ottoman Empire and beyond. For France “elsewhere” meant above all the Rhineland. As early as 3 March Tsar Nicholas II had assured Ambassador Maurice Paléologue that France could take the left bank of the Rhine, Mainz and Koblenz, and even go further. “In the East” meant Syria and Cilicia.

Long hesitation

Great Britain had accepted the Russian demand as early as 12 March. France delayed, because the matter met enormous resistance in Paris. Throughout the 19th century France had defended the integrity of Turkey, and its banks and companies had invested huge sums in the Ottoman Empire. At the beginning of March the Foreign Minister, Théophile Delcassé, without consulting the government, had instructed Paléologue to assure Sazonov that Russia could count on France’s full goodwill. President Raymond Poincaré, however, had serious doubts. He asked whether Russia had the right to demand so much when it was taking no part in the fighting for the Dardanelles. He also feared that, sure of its prize, Russia would stop committing itself to the war with Germany and Austria-Hungary.

Paris wanted first to secure its own reward. In mid-March France put forward claims to Syria and Cilicia. The Tsar agreed, but Sazonov would not hear of handing Catholic France Palestine, with the holy places of Orthodoxy. Delcassé agreed to postpone the matter. The April note therefore named no specific lands, and French interests in the Middle East remained secured only by a vague formula. Poincaré noted in his diary that on 17 April he had asked Delcassé whether he had any proof or undertaking concerning Alexandretta and Adana. The minister replied that he did not, but that he was not worried, because everything would come in its own time.

An agreement that was never fulfilled

The French note closed the exchange of documents that historians call the Constantinople Agreement or the Straits Agreement. It consisted of the Russian memorandum of 4 March, the British reply of 12 March, the Russian answer to the British conditions of 22 March and the French note of 10 April. In Petrograd people were already thinking about setting up the future Russian capital on the Bosporus. Sazonov even appointed a diplomat, Prince Trubetskoy, as the civil commissioner who was to administer Constantinople after its capture.

The capture of the city, however, was nowhere in sight. The fleet’s attack in the Dardanelles had collapsed in March, and the landing on the Gallipoli peninsula was still being prepared. Russia agreed to French acquisitions in Syria and Cilicia only in the spring of 1916, when the partition of the Asian part of the Ottoman Empire was being agreed. After the October Revolution the Bolsheviks published the secret treaties of Tsarist diplomacy and renounced the gains promised to Russia. Constantinople remained Turkish.