ABSTRACT
The Turks had just agreed to call off the Montenegrin expedition and la Valette had barely skipped town when Menshikov arrived on 28 February 1853 at Constantinople on the Thunderer, steam frigate with two eighty-four pounders and eight lesser cannon. Menshikov's portfolio of instructions prepared him mentally and operationally for a diktat. The packet included a special historical sketch of the Holy Places dispute, which was supposed to enlighten Menshikov, but reflected entirely Titov's and Ozerov's one-sided dispatches, which had influenced the Tsar's decisions in the first place. The political analysis in the instructions simply assumed that British anti-Bonapartism and the persuasive words of Russian diplomacy in St Petersburg, London and Constantinople would serve to prevent combined Anglo-French opposition. Taken together, Menshikov's instructions were an elaborated version of the blank cheque explicit in the Tsar's December message via Brunnow to tell the British they must support Russia in Constantinople 'or face a general conflagration in the Orient'.
