XXI.

CHAP. Czar an invasion of the Ottoman Empire; but the carrying of the enterprise beyond the valley of the Danube was to be only upon condition that Silistria should fall, and should fall before the 1st of May.*

Movement of troops in the Russian Empire.

So now the streams of battalions rumoured to be setting in upon the Lower Danube from the confines of All the Russias woke up the mind of Europe, and portended a great invasion.

* My knowledge of the counsels tendered to the Emperor by Paskievitch is derived from papers in the possession of the late Lord Raglan.

CHAPTER XXII.

XXII.

Sir John Burgoyne and Colo

ed to the

IT has been seen that without treaty, and without CHAP. the advice or knowledge of Parliament-nay even, perhaps, without a distinct conception of what it was doing the English Government had been gradually ael Ardent contracting engagements which were almost equiva- despatchlent to a defensive alliance with the Sultan. France, Levant. by virtue of her new understanding with England, had come under the same obligations; and now that an invasion of the Ottoman Empire was threatened, it became necessary that the Western Powers should take measures for its defence. At first, however, their views were limited to the defence of the Sultan's home territories, and especially those which gave the control of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus. Two Engineer officers-Colonel Ardent on the part of France, and Sir John Burgoyne on the part of England-were despatched to Turkey, with instructions to report upon the best means of aiding the Sultan to defend his home dominions; and almost at the same time it was agreed between the two Western Powers that each of them should prepare to send a small body of troops into the Levant.

СНАР.
XXII.

Troops

sent to Malta.

of this

measure.

Of the

The English force was collected at Malta. Ministers who joined in adopting this measure, some foresaw that the few battalions which they were despatching to the East were the nucleus of an army which might have to operate in the field; but others looked upon them as a force intended to support our Tendency negotiations. This ambiguity of motive was a root of evil; for the collateral arrangements which are requisite for enabling an army to live, to move, and to fight, bear a vast proportion to the mere business of collecting the men; and there is always a danger that a body of troops, sent towards the scene of action with a diplomatic intent, will be unsupported by the measures which are requisite for actual war, and yet, upon the rupture of the negotiations, will be prematurely hurried into the field. On the other hand, the councillors of a great military State are so well accustomed to know the cost and the labour which must precede the advance of an army, that the mere protrusion of a body of well-equipped troops, unsupported by the collateral appliances of war, does not tell upon their minds as a proof of an intention to act. By despatching a few battalions to Malta, without instructing Commissaries to go to the Levant and begin buying up the agricultural wealth of the country, we not only subjected our troops to the danger of their being brought into the field before supplies were ready, but also convinced the Russians that we could not determine be sincerely intending to engage in a war. Morebut a small over, the slenderness of the addition which the

Ministers

to propose

increase of

the army.

Government proposed to make to our army tended

XXII.

to prolong the Czar's fond confidence in the weight CHAP. and strength of the English Peace Party; and perhaps this dangerous error was strengthened, if Baron Brunnow was able to tell him that, in proposing to the Cabinet a material increase of our land-forces, the Duke of Newcastle stood almost alone.

ance of

Aber

Lord deen's

imprudent language.

The Prime Minister's continued persistency in the Continuuse of hurtful language was another of the causes Lord which still helped to keep the Czar blindfold. Aberdeen abhorred the bare thought of war; and he would not have suffered his country to be overtaken by it, if the coming danger had been of such a kind that it could be warded off by hating it and shunning its aspect. But it is not by intemperate hatred of war, nor yet by shunning its aspect, that war is averted. Almost to the last, Lord Aberdeen misguided himself. His loathing of war took such a shape that he could not and would not believe in it; and when at last the spectre was close upon him, he covered his eyes and refused to see. Basing himself upon the thoughtless saying of a statesman, who had laid it down that there could be no war in Europe when France and England were agreed, he seems to have imagined that, although he was suffering himself to be drawn on and on into measures which were always becoming less and less short of war, still he could maintain peace by taking care to be always along with the French Emperor; and he so clung to the paradise created by a false maxim that he could not be torn from it. He would not be roused from a dream which was sweeter

XXII.

CHAP. than all waking thoughts; and even now, to any man to whom he chanced to speak, he continued to say that there could not, there would not be war. Coming from a Prime Minister, such words as these did not fail to have a noxious weight with many who heard them. Baron Brunnow, we have seen, had looked deeper even at a much earlier period, and now again, no doubt, he took care to warn his master that Lord Aberdeen was under a passionate hatred of war which deprived him of his competence to speak in the name of his country: but by other channels the words of our Prime Minister were carried to the Emperor of Russia, and, being very welcome to him, and coinciding with his long-cherished notions, they tended to keep him in the perilous belief that Lord Aberdeen was speaking with knowledge, and that England, still clogged by her Peace Party, was unable to go to war.