Causes of the War - When Monks Collide part 2

At around the same time, Tsar Nicholas stressed to Seymour and particularly to French Ambassador General de Castelbajac that if there was no agreement on rights over Christians he would be forced to occupy Moldavia and Wallachia and hold them hostage until the Turks climbed down. On the strength of these reports the British cabinet finally ordered Dundas' squadron to join the French close to the Bosphorus, and gave Stratford the authority to deploy them if required for the defence of Constantinople.

It was now that the monks played their final card with the biggest scrap yet at the Church of the Nativity. After a very serious and prolonged fight during which several Orthodox monks were killed, the Catholics succeeded in planting their star, decorated with the fleur de lys emblem of France, over the Manger.

This was the pretext that Nicholas had been waiting for. He accused the Turkish police of connivance in the murder of the Orthodox monks, and on 3rd July the Russian Southern Army Corps crossed the border into Moldavia.

Sources

Trevor Royle (1999) Crimea Little, Brown & Co

Sir Llewellyn Woodward (1962) Oxford History of England Vol 13 The Clarendon Press

William Smith (1996) France 1848-1871 Longman

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