‘The main and real object of the war’, Palmerston admitted in 1855, ‘was to curb the aggressive ambition of Russia. We went to war not so much to keep the Sultan and the Muslims in Turkey as to keep the Russians out of it.’ Palmerston envisaged the attack on the Crimea as the first stage of a long-term crusade against tsarist power in the Black Sea region and the Caucasus, Poland and the Baltic, in line with his memorandum to the cabinet on 19 March, in which he had outlined his ambitious plan for the dismemberment of the Russian Empire.
