Russian-Turkish War 1768-1774 in the Messages of Papal Diplomats in Europe

Abstract

In 1768, Turkey, threatened by Moscow’s expansionist policies, including primarily developments in the Polish Commonwealth, declared war on Russia. It continued until 1774 and ended with the defeat of Turkey and the signing of the peace in Küczük Kajnardji under which Russia, at Turkey’s expense, consolidated itself in the Black Sea basin, and Tsarina Catherine II realized the aspirations already undertaken by Peter I, the Great. Russia’s warfare against Turkey was watched with great attention in Rome, while the papal nuncios tried to send all the information they had on the subject to Rome. The Holy See also had to take into account the course of the Russian-Turkish war in its efforts to save the status of the Catholic Church in Poland. This important aspect of the papal policy has not yet been addressed in the literature, Polish or foreign, so the following article is the first attempt to address this topic.

Information on the war was sent by papal diplomats in abundance. These came not only from the courts to which they were accredited, but also from their informants. Often, however, much of this information was not very accurate, as was the norm at the time. It would also contain false data, but in the Secretariat of State it was confronted with other sources checking their reliability, so that the picture of the war obtained by this means gave the Holy See a good idea of both the course of the conflict and the diplomatic efforts to bring about peace. Information coming from the Turkish-Russian borderlands as well as the borderlands of the Commonwealth suggesting the extension of the Russian-Turkish conflict into Poland was particularly rambling. However, the confrontation of information coming in from different sources allowed those manging the papal diplomacy to to make out a largely reliable image of the war. The papal nuncios also accurately interpreted the intentions of the various countries whether involved in the conflict or diplomatic efforts to bring about peace as, well as the interests of individual countries.