Budapest Convention of 1877

The Budapest Convention (Budapester Vertrag) was a secret agreement between Austria-Hungary and Russia in 1877 to agree on policies and the division of powers in Southeast Europe in the eventuality of war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. The so-called Eastern Question (Orientalische Frage), the division of the declining Ottoman Empire in the Balkans (Southeast Europe), was a priority of the European great powers in the nineteenth century. For Russia, obtaining assurances of Austro-Hungarian neutrality was also a priority.

The agreement was made between the Emperor Franz Joseph and the Russian Tsar Alexander II initially during the Constantinople Conference (1876-1877) and was subsequently finalised in Budapest on January 15, 1877.

The main points of the Convention of Budapest were:

In the case of a complete disintegration of the Ottoman Empire:

The agreement to make Constantinople a Free City was not in the convention proper, but in an even more secret supplementary agreement. These documents shed some light on the aims of the Russian Tsar. Like his predecessor Nicholas I, Alexander II saw an opportunity of finally realising the Greek Plan. This was a plan originally proposed between Catherine the Great and Joseph II to partition the Ottoman Empire and restore the Greek Byzantine Empire. Turkey's power would be finally broken, and the Balkans would become the sphere of influence of the double headed eagle empires of Austria and Russia (both states had adopted the double headed emblem of the Byzantine Empire the symbol of the last Byzantine dynasty, the Palaiologos).

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