СНАР.
XXVI.

The question on

Mr Cobden fastened upon the 'Vienna Note,' and, with his views, he was right in drawing attention to the apparent narrowness of the difference upon which the question of peace or war was made to depend; but he surely betrayed a want of knowledge of the way in which the actions of mankind are governed when he asked that a country now glowing with warlike ardour should go back and try to obtain peace by resuming a form of words which its Government had solemnly repudiated four months before. Of course this effort failed: it could not be otherwise. Any one acquainted with the tenor of the negotiations, and with enough of the surrounding facts to make the papers intelligible, may be able to judge whether there were not better grounds than this for making a stand against the war. The evil demanding redress was the intrusion of the Russian forces into Wallachia and Moldavia; and it would seem that the judgment to be pronounced by Parliament upon a Government which had led their country to the brink of war should have been made to depend upon this question

Was it practicable for England to obtain the dewhich the liverance of the Principalities by means taken in comjudgment of Parlia- mon with the rest of the four Powers, and without resorting to the expedient of a separate understanding with the French Emperor?

ment should

have been rested.

It may be that to this question the surviving members of Lord Aberdeen's Administration can establish a negative answer, but in order to do this they will have to make use of knowledge not hitherto disclosed to Parliament.

XXVI.

A belief, nay, even a suspicion, that there was CHAP. danger of a sudden alliance between the French Emperor and the Czar, would gravely alter the conditions upon which Lord Aberdeen's Cabinet was called upon to form its judgment; but, so far as the outer world knows, no fear of this kind was coercing the Government. Upon the papers as they stand, it seems clear that, by remaining upon the ground occupied by the four Powers, England would have obtained the deliverance of the Principalities without resorting to war.

XXVII.

CHAPTER XXVII.

CHAP. THE last of the steps which brought on the final rupture between Russia and the Western Powers was perhaps one of the most anomalous transactions which the annals of diplomacy have recorded. The outrage to be redressed was the occupation by Russia of Wallachia and Moldavia. Of all the States of Europe, except Turkey itself, the one most aggrieved by this occupation was Austria. Now Austria was one of the great Powers of Europe. She was essentially a military State; she was the mistress of a vast and well-appointed army; she was the neighbour of Russia. Geographically, she was so placed that (whatever perils she might bring upon her other frontiers) her mere order to her officer commanding her army of observation would necessarily force the Czar to withdraw his troops. On the other hand, France and England, though justly offended by the outrage, and though called upon in their character as two of the great Powers to concur in fit measures for suppressing it, were far from being brought into any grievous stress by the occupation of the far-distant Principalities;

and moreover, the evil, such as it was, was one which CHAP. they could not dispel by any easy or simple applica

tion of force.

XXVII.

proposes

It was in this condition of things that Austria Austria suddenly conveyed to France, and through France that to England, the intimation of the 22d of February. and EngIn conversation with Baron de Bourqueny, Count should

6

France

land

summon

Buol said If England and France will fix a day the Czar for the evacuation of the Principalities, the expira- Principali

to quit the

ties, and

threaten war as the result of

tion of which shall be the signal for hostilities, the Cabinet of Vienna will support the summons.' The telegraph conveyed the tenor of this intimation his refusal. to London on the same day. Naturally, it was to be expected that Austria would join in a summons which she invited other Powers to send; and to this hour it seems hardly possible to believe that the Emperor of Austria deliberately intended to ask France and England to fix a day for going to war without meaning to go to war himself at the same time. Lord Clarendon, however, asked the question. Apparently he was not answered in terms corresponding with his question, but he was again told that Austria would 'support' the summons. Then, all at once, and without stipulating for the concurrence of the Power which was pressing them into action, the Governments of France and England prepared the instruments which were to bring them into a state of war with Russia.

Austria at this period had plainly resolved to go to war if the Principalities should not be relin*Eastern Papers,' part vii. p. 53.

XXVII.

Importance of

haste.

CHAP. quished by the Czar; but, before she could take the final step, it was necessary for her to come to an understanding with Prussia. This she succeeded in avoiding doing within twenty-four days from the period of the final rupture between Russia and the Western Powers; but France and England could not bear to wait. The French Emperor, rebuffed by the Czar in his endeavour to appear as the pacificator of Europe, was driven to the opposite method of diverting France from herself; and although the crisis was one in which a little delay and a little calmness would have substituted the coercive action of the four Powers for an adventurous war by the two, he once more goaded our Government on, and Pressure pressed it into instant action. M. Drouyn de Lhuys declared that, in his opinion, the sending of the proposed summons was a business which should be ' done immediately, and that the two Governments 'should write to Count Nesselrode to demand the 'immediate' withdrawal of the Russian troops from the Principalities' the whole to be concluded by a 'given time, say the end of March.'* It must be Eagerness owned, however, that the English people were pressing their Government in the same direction. Inflamed with a longing for naval glory in the Baltic, they had become tormented with a fear lest their Admiral should be hindered from great achievements for want of the mere legal formality which was to constitute a state of war. The majority of the Cabinet, though numbering on their side several of the foremost *Eastern Papers,' part vii. p. 53.

of the French Emperor.

of the

people in England.