CHAP. upon to quit the province by a Power which had XXV. assembled its forces upon his flank and rear.

He

The time

when the interests of Austria and Prussia began to

sought, indeed, to make terms, but the German Powers were peremptory. On the 14th Austria entered into a convention with the Porte, which not only legalised her determination to drive the Russian forces from the Principalities, and to occupy them with her own troops, but which formally joined Austria in an alliance with the Porte against Russia; for, by the 1st Article of the convention, the Emperor of Austria 'engages to exhaust all the 'means of negotiation, and all other means, to 'obtain the evacuation of the Danubian Princi'palities by the foreign army which occupies them, and even to employ, in case they are required, the number of troops necessary to attain this end.'* And since Russia could not invade European Turkey by land without marching through the Principalities, this undertaking by Austria involved an engagement to free the Sultan's land frontiers in Europe from Russian invasion. Exactly at the same time† Austria and Prussia addressed notes to the Powers represented at the Conference of Bamberg, in which the liberation of the commerce and navigation of the Danube was held out to Germany as the object to be attained.

Austria was upon the brink of war with Russia, was preparing to take forcible possession of the Principalities, and had despatched an officer to the English headquarters with a view to concert a *Eastern Papers,' part xii.

+14th and 16th June.

XXV.

them

from the

joint scheme of military operations, when the Czar CHAP. at length gave way, and abandoned the whole of the territory which, under the nauseous description of divide a ‘material guarantee,' had become the subject of war. Western Other causes, as will be seen, were conducing to this Powers. result; but none were so cogent as the forcible pressure which Austria had exerted, by first assembling forces in the Banat and then summoning the Czar to withdraw from the invaded provinces.

Of course, when the object which called forth the German Powers was attained, and when it transpired (as it did at the same time) that the Western Powers were resolved to abandon the common field of action, and to undertake the invasion by sea of a distant Russian province inaccessible to Austria and Prussia, then at last, and then for the first time, the German Powers found that their interests were parting them from the great maritime States of the West; for in one and the same week they were relieved from the grievance which was their motive for action, and deprived of all hope of support from the Western Powers; but it is certain that from the moment when From first the Czar first seized the Principalities to that in which Austria he recrossed the Pruth, the determination of Austria Prussia to put an end to the intrusion was never languid, and swerv was always increasing in force. It is certain, also, resolve to that up to the time when the relinquishment of the secure the Principalities began, there was no defection on the linquish part of Prussia; and that the minor States of Ger- the Princi

* Prussia began to hang back, it seems, on about the 21st of July. 'Eastern Papers,' part xi. p. 1; and this was exactly the time when her

to last

and

never

from their

Czar's re

ment of

palities.

XXV.

CHAP. many, fully alive to the importance of a struggle which promised to free the great outlet of the Danube from Russian dominion, were resolved to support Austria and Prussia with the troops of the Confederation.* As soon as the Principalities were relinquished by the Czar they were occupied by Austrian troops, in pursuance of the convention with the Porte; and thus the outrage, which during twelve months had disturbed the tranquillity of Europe, was then at last finally repressed.

interests counselled her to do so; for by that day she knew that the deliverance of the Principalities was secured and in process of execution, and had also, no doubt, learned of the determination of the Western Powers to move their forces to the Crimea, thereby uncovering Germany. Austria, with similar motives for separation, was less inclined to part from the Western Powers. See her Note of the 8th August 1854, and the various diplomatic transactions in which she took part down to the close of the war.

20th July 1854. The relinquishment of the Principalities virtually began on the 26th of June-the day when the siege of Silistria was raised—and before the end of July the Russian forces had quitted the capital of Wallachia. On the 2d of August they repassed the Pruth.

CHAPTER XXVI.

XXVI.

FOR the sake of bringing under one view the CHAP. course of action followed by the German Powers down to the moment when their object was achieved by the deliverance of the Principalities, it has been necessary, as we have said, to go forward in advance of the period reached by the main thread of the narrative. The subject thus quitted for a moment and now resumed is the policy which was disclosed by the English Government upon the opening of Parliament.

warlike

in Eng

Distinct from the martial ardour already kindled Spirit of in England, there had sprung up amongst the people adventure an almost romantic craving for warlike adventure, land. and this feeling was not slow to reach the Cabinet. Now, without severance from the German Powers, there could plainly be little prospect of adventure; for, besides that the German monarchs desired to free the Principalities with as little resort to hostilities as might be compatible with the attainment of the end, it was almost certain that the policy of keeping up the perfect union and co-operation of the four Powers would prevent war by its over

CHAP. whelming force.
XXVI. would operate by

ernment.

Like the power of the law, it coercion, and not by clangour of arms. This was a merit; but it was a merit fatal

The bear to its reception in England. The popularity of such ing of this spirit upon a policy was nearly upon the same modest level as the policy of the Gov. the popularity of virtue. All whose volitions were governed by the imagined rupture of freeing Poland, or destroying Cronstadt and lording it with our flag in the Baltic-or taking the command of the Euxine, and sinking the Russian fleet under the guns of Sebastopol; all who meant to raise Circassia, and cut off the Muscovite from the glowing South by holding the Dariel Pass, and those also who dwelt in fancy upon deeds to be done on the shores of the Caspian ;-all these, and many more, saw plainly enough that separation from the German Powers and alliance with the new Bonaparte was the only road to adventure. Lord Aberdeen was not one of these, but it was his fate to act as though he were. He was not without a glimmering perception that the firmly maintained union of the four Powers meant peace:* but he saw the truth dimly; and there being a certain slowness in his high intellectual nature, he was not so touched by his belief as to be able to make it the guide of his action. He seems to have gone on imagining that, consistently with the maintenance of a perfect union of the four Powers, there might be a separate and still more perfect union between two of them, and that this kind of alliance within alliance was a

* 129 Hansard, p. 1650.