Triple Alliance (1788) - Evolution

Evolution

Great Britain did not want war, in so much as it would be content if Russia would retreat from its war with the Ottomans without any territorial changes, but it realized this was an unlikely outcome. Starting in August 1790, British and Prussian diplomats in Russia started pressuring the Russians to begin negotiations with the Ottomans, with no luck.

Realizing that William Pitt the Younger was seriously considering hardline politics towards Russia, and that a war with Prussia and Great Britain would likely end up with a loss, Russian Empress Catherine the Great ordered her ambassador in London, Semyon Vorontsov, to aid Pitt's opponent, Charles Fox, in the British Parliament. Vorontsov and other members of the Russian diplomatic staff had arranged, on occasion through bribery, for support from many members of the British establishment.

The United Provinces were much less interested in the war with Russia, as Russia had significant debts to Dutch bankers, which the war could jeopardize. William Eden, 1st Baron Auckland, British ambassador to the United Provinces, was on good terms with local Russian diplomatic staff, and tended to argue against any action that would involve hostilities with Russia.

Britain also failed at improving its relations with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which at that point considered itself on good terms with Russia and did not want to jeopardize those relations by getting closer to the Triple Alliance. The end of the Russo-Swedish War (1788–1790) also meant one less potential ally for the Triple Coalition, as the king of Sweden was not willing to reopen the Russian front.

By early 1791, around February, Prussian diplomacy managed to secure an agreement with Austria. Although Austria refused to switch sides, it also agreed to remain neutral in case of a war between Russia and Prussia. This convinced Pitt to assure Frederic that Britain would send a fleet to the Baltic, and to craft an ultimatum to Russia, requiring it to retreat from its war with the Ottomans or face an Anglo-Prussian intervention; by late March this position got royal approval and the debate in British parliament was to take place soon. In the meantime, in early March, Frederic Wilhelm II assured an Ottoman representative of his desire to attack Russia as soon as the Royal Navy appeared in the Baltic Sea, and encouraged him, in a handwritten letter, to continue the ongoing war with Russia and undertake a new offensive in the Balkans. Prussia's military preparations were very advanced, with about 90,000 troops massing on the border, and plans for three corps to advance on Riga. Russia itself was gearing itself to defend the Baltic sea border against the expected invasion.

Aware of the significance of the debate to take place in the British parliament in late March, Russian diplomats in London pulled out all stops to mobilize allies to oppose an Anglo-Russian conflict. Russian diplomats spent significant funds on diplomacy and propaganda. It had assured the support of about twenty British newspapers, and begun printing and distribution of many leaflets arguing against the "Russian armament" proposal of Pitt the Younger, as the issue became known in contemporary British discourse. Russian supporters included merchants with influence at the London Stock Exchange, writers and publicists such as John Paradise ("Doctor Johnson"), as well as members of the British Parliament, such as the son of Thomas Dimsdale, Charles Fox, Edmund Burke and others.

In the days before the British debate, the Dutch had offered to negotiate between Russia and the Triple Alliance, and Auckland reported that he saw documents in which Frederick Wilhelm questioned the need for the war and expressed concerns over the militant Austrian attitude (according to Polish historian Jerzy Łojek, that was either Auckland's own or Russian misinformation, or a combination of both). The debate begun on March 29. Despite criticism from the minority opponents, like Charles Fox, the House of Commons expressed its approval for the war with Russia thrice on that day. However, over the next two or three days, debates within Pitt's own government resulted in a drastic change of plans. The specific reasons for this sudden conflict within Pitt's government are not fully understood; Łojek suggests it was through the influence of Fox, Auckland and the Russian diplomacy on several of its members. Pitt could have forced the issue by creating a new government, but he decided that was not a viable solution, as a crisis in the government could result in an unpredictable shift of power. By mid- and late April, with William Grenville, 1st Baron Grenville replacing Francis Osborne, 5th Duke of Leeds as the Foreign Secretary, the British policy was now set as pro-Russian, and anti-French.

A British courier with an ultimatum and a joint British-Prussian declaration to Russia arrived in Berlin on the night of April 3 to 4, but before he left, was intercepted on April 8 by another courier ordering a delay. It was only in early June that Prussia realized that British politics had taken a significant shift, and Britain no longer desired a war with Russia. This meant the end of the Triple Alliance.