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French Emperor, and consented to a measure which CHAP. ruined the pending negotiations, and generated a series of events leading straight to a war between Russia and the Western Powers.

at Con

nople.

In the month of September, some weeks before the Sultan's final rupture with the Czar, the pious and warlike ardour then kindled in the Turkish Empire had begun to show itself at Constantinople. A Movement placard, urging the Government to declare war, was stantipasted on one of the mosques. Then a petition for war was presented to the Council, and to the Sultan himself, by certain muderris, or theological students. The paper was signed by thirty-five persons of no individual distinction, but having the corporate importance of belonging to the Ulemah.' Though free from menace, the petition, as Lord Stratford expressed it, was worded in 'serious and impressive terms, implying a strong sense of religious duty, and ' a very independent disregard of consequences.' The Ministers professed to be alarmed, and to believe that this movement was the forerunner of revolution; and Lord Stratford seems to have imagined that their alarm was genuine. It is perhaps more The use likely that they were skilfully making the most of this by the these occurrences, with a view to embroil their mari- Ministers. time allies in the approaching war; for when they went to the Ambassadors, and asked them to take part in measures for the maintenance of public tranquillity, their meaning was that they wished to see the fleets of France and England come up into the Bosphorus; and they well knew that if this naval

made of

Turkish

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CHAP. movement could be brought to pass before the day of the final rupture between Russia and the Porte, it would be regarded by the Czar as a flagrant violation of treaty.

They succeed in alarming

the French Ambassa

dor.

A curious indication of the sagacity with which the Turkish Ministers were acting is to be found in the difference between their language to the English Ambassador and their language to M. de la Cour. In speaking to Lord Stratford they shadowed out dangers impending over the Eastern world, the upheaving of Islam, the overthrow of the Sultan's authority. Then they went straight to M. de la Cour and drew a small vivid picture of massacred Frenchmen. They did not, said M. de la Cour, conceal from him that the persons and the interests ' of his countrymen would be exposed to grave dangers, which they were sensible they were incapable of preventing, by reason of the want of union in 'the Ministry and the threats directed against them'selves.'* This skilful discrimination on the part of the Turkish Ministers seems to show that they had not at all lost their composure.

Either by their real dread, or by their crafty simulation of it, the Turkish statesmen succeeded in infecting M. de la Cour with sincere alarm. He was easily brought to the conclusion that the state of 'the Turkish Government was getting worse and worse; and that matters had got to such a state as 'to cause dread of a catastrophe, of which the in'habitants, Rayahs or Europeans, would be the first *Eastern Papers,' part ii. p. 115.

XVIII.

victims, and which would even threaten the Sultan's CHAP. 'throne.'* He called upon the English Ambassador to consult as to what was best to be done; and both he and the Austrian Internuncio expressed their readiness to join with him in adopting the needful

measures.

sure of

Stratford.

Lord Stratford does not seem to have suspected Compothat the use which the Turkish Ministers were Lord making of their divinity students was in the nature of a stratagem; but, assuming and believing their alarm to be genuine, he was still proof against the infection, and retained his calm. Indeed, he seems to have understood that a cry for war on the part of the religious authorities was a healthy sign for the Empire. He expressed to his colleagues his readiness to act in concert with them; but he said he was reluctant to take any step which was not clearly warranted by the necessities of the case, and that he desired to guard against mistake and exaggeration by gaining a more precise knowledge of the grounds for alarm. He deprecated any joint interference with the Turkish Government, and was still less inclined to join in bringing up the squadrons to Constantinople without more proofs of urgent peril than had been yet obtained; but he suggested, as an His wise opinion of his own, that the representatives of the guarded maritime Powers should obtain from their respective for preserving Admirals such an addition of steam-force as would the peace secure them from any immediate attack, and enable capital. them to assist the Government in case of an out

and

measures

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CHAP. break threatening its existence, without attracting any unusual attention, or assuming an air of intimidation.* This was done.† A couple of steamers belonging to each of the great Western Powers quietly came up to Constantinople. Tranquillity followed. Every good end was attained without ostentation or disturbance-without the evil of seeming to place the Sultan's capital under the protection of foreign Powers-and, above all, without breaking through the treaty of 1841 in a way which, however justifiable it might be in point of international law, clearly tended to force on a war.

The

French

His means

a pressure

upon the English Cabinet.

But the moderate and guarded policy of Lord Emperor. Stratford at Constantinople was quickly subverted of putting by a pressure which the French Emperor found means of putting upon the advisers of the Queen. Of course an understanding with a foreign Power is in its nature an abatement of a nation's free agency; and a statesman may be honest and wise in consenting to measures which have no other excuse than that they were adopted for the sake of maintaining close union with an ally. England had contracted a virtual alliance; and when once she had taken this step, it was needful and right that she should do and suffer many things rather than allow the new friendship to be chilled. But this yoke was pressed hard against her. It was not the wont of England to be causelessly led into an action

* The steam-force of the maritime Powers already in the Golden Horn consisted of vessels which had passed the Dardanelles by virtue of exceptions contained in the treaty of 1841.

+ Eastern Papers,' part ii. p. 121.

6

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which was violent, and provoking of violence. It CHAP. was not her wont to rush forward without need, and so to drive through a treaty that many might say she broke it. It was not her wont to be governed in the use of her fleets by the will of a foreign Sovereign. It was not her wont to hear from a French Ambassador that a given movement of her Mediterranean squadron was 'indispensably necessary,' nor to be requested to go to such a conclusion by an immediate decision.' It was not her wont to act with impassioned haste, where haste was dangerous and needless. It was not her wont to found a breach with one of the foremost Powers of Europe upon a mere hysterical message addressed by one Frenchman to another. But the French Emperor had a great ascendant over the English Government; for the power which he had gained by entangling it in a virtual alliance was augmented by the growing desire for action now evinced by the English people. He knew that at any moment he could expose Lord Aberdeen and his colleagues to a gust of popular disfavour, by causing it to be known or imagined that France was keen, and that England was lagging behind.

When M. de la Cour's account of his sensations reached Paris, it produced so deep an impression that the French Emperor, either feeling genuine alarm, or else seeing in his Ambassador's narrative an opportunity for the furtherance of his designs, determined to insist, in cogent terms, that the English Government should join him in overstepping the