XVI. Napoleon, more than most other men, was accustomed CHAP. to linger in doubt between two conflicting plans, and to delay his final adoption of the one, and his final rejection of the other, for as long a time as possible, in order to find out what might be best to be ultimately done by carrying on experiments for many months together with two rival schemes of action. But whether this double method of action was the result of idiosyncrasy or of a profound policy, it was but too well fitted for the object of drawing England into a war. The aim of the French Emperor was to keep his understanding with England in full force, and yet to give the alliance a warlike direction. If he were to adopt a policy frankly warlike, he would repel Lord Aberdeen and endanger the alliance. If he were to be frankly pacific, there would be a danger of his restoring to Europe that tranquillity which could not fail to bring him and his December friends into jeopardy. In this strait he did not exactly take a middle course. By splitting his means of action he managed to take two courses at the same time. There are people who can write at the same time with both hands. Politically, Louis Napoleon had His diplothis accomplishment. With his left hand he seemed to strive after peace; with his right he tried to stir up a war. The language of his diplomacy was pacific, and yet at the very same time he contrived that the naval forces of France and England should move macy seems pacific. At the same time England he engages in naval ments be used as the means of provoking a war. The part tending to which he took in the negotiations going on at war. provoke XVI. CHAP. Vienna, and in the other capitals of the great Powers, was temperate, just, and moderate; and it is probable that the Despatches which indicated this spirit long continued to mislead Lord Aberdeen, and to keep him under the impression that an AngloFrench alliance was really an engine of peace; but it will be seen that, as soon as the French Emperor had drawn England into an understanding with him, he was enabled to engage her in a series of dangerous naval movements, which he contrived to keep going on simultaneously with the efforts of the negotiators, so as always to be defeating their labours. The Bosphorus and nelles. In order to appreciate the exceeding force of the lever which was used for this purpose, a man ought to have in his mind the political geography of southeastern Europe, and the configuration of the seas which flow with a ceaseless current into the waters of the Ægean. The Euxine is connected with the Mediterranean the Darda- by the Straits of the Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmora, and the Straits of the Dardanelles. The Bosphorus is a current of the sea, seventeen miles in length, and in some places hardly more than half a mile broad, but so deep, even home to the shores on either side, that a ship of war can almost, as it were, find shade under the gardens of the European shorecan almost mix her spars with the cypresses which darken the coast of Asia. At its southern extremity the Bosphorus mingles with the waters of the great inlet or harbour which still often goes by the name of the Golden Horn; and at length, after passing XVI. The Sul between Constantinople and its beautiful suburb of CHAP. Scutari, the Straits open out into the land-locked basin now known as the Sea of Marmora, which used to be called the Propontis. At the foot of this inland sea the water is again contracted into a deep channel, no more, in one place, than three-quarters of a mile in breadth, and is not set free till, after a course of some forty miles, it reaches the neighbourhood of the Troad, and spreads abroad into the Ægean. These last are the famous straits between Europe and Asia which used to be called the Hellespont, and are now the Dardanelles. The Bosphorus and the Dardanelles are both so narrow that, even in the early times of artillery, they could be commanded by guns on either side, and it followed that these waters had not the character of high 'seas.' And since the land upon either side be- cient right longed to the Ottoman Empire, the Sultans always them. claimed and always enjoyed a right to keep out foreign ships of war from both the straits. Now on the Black Sea Russia had as much seabord as Turkey, and nevertheless, like every other Power, she was shut out from all right to send her armed navy into the Mediterranean through the Bosphorus Policy of and the Dardanelles. There being no other out- regard to let, her Black Sea fleet was pent up in an inland basin. Painful as this duress must needs be to a haughty State having a powerful fleet in the Euxine, it would seem that Russia has been more willing to submit to the restriction than to see the warflag of other States in the Dardanelles or the Bos tan's an to control Russia in the straits. XVI. of the Sul tan and the five Powers under the treaty of 1841. CHAP. phorus. The presence of a force greater than her own, or even rivalling it, did not comport with the kind of ascendancy which she was always seeking to establish at Constantinople and on the seabord of the Euxine. Russia, therefore, had been a willing party to the treaty The rights of 1841. By this treaty the five great Powers acknowledged the right of the Sultan to exclude armed navies from both the straits; and, on the other hand, the Sultan engaged that in time of peace he would always exercise this right of exclusion. Moreover, the five Powers promised that they would all respect this engagement by the Sultan. The result, therefore, was that, whether with or without the consent of the Sultan, no foreign squadron, at a time when the Sultan was at peace, could lawfully appear in either of the How these straits. But when the Emperor Nicholas forcibly occupied the Principalities, it was clear that this act the Czar's was a just cause of war whenever the Sultan might the Princi- think fit so to treat it; and there was fair ground for palities. rights were affected by seizure of saying that, even before a declaration of war, the invasion of the Sultan's dominions was such a violation of the state of peace contemplated by the treaty, that the Sultan was morally released from his engagement, and might be justified in asking his allies to send their fleets up through the straits. On the other hand, the appearance of foreign navies in the Dardanelles was regarded as so destructive to Russian ascendancy, that the bare prospect of it used to fill Russian statesmen with dismay; and the * There were exceptions in favour of vessels having on board the Representatives of foreign States. XVI. Emperor Nicholas held the idea in such horror that CHAP. the mere approach of the French and English fleets to the Levant wrought him, as we have seen, to a state of mind which was only too faithfully portrayed by his Chancellor's Circular. means of the Czar. It is plain, therefore, that the power of advising Powerful the Sultan to call up the French and English fleets coercing was an engine of immense force in the hands of the Western Powers; but it is also certain that this was a power which would put a much harder stress upon Russia whilst it was kept suspended over her, than it was likely to do when it came to be physically used. To subject Nicholas to the fear of having to see foreign war-flags in the straits, was to apply a pressure well fitted for coercing him; but actually to exert the power was to break its spell, and to change the Czar's wholesome dread into a frenzy of anger hardly consistent with hopes of peace. Importfraining premature ance of re from a use of the power. The naval move which the Emperor England. The French Emperor had no sooner engaged the English Government in a separate understanding, ments in than he began to insist upon the necessity of using French the naval power of France and England in the way engages which he proposed a way bitterly offensive to Russia. Having at length succeeded in forcing this measure upon England, he, after a while, pressed upon her another movement of the fleets still more hostile than the first, and again he succeeded in bringing the English Government to yield to him. Again, and still once again, he did the like, always in the end bringing England to adopt his hostile measures; and he never desisted from this course of action until, |