XXVIII. being foiled in diplomatic strife by the second Can- CHAP. ning; and instantly, without hearing counsel from any living man, he caused his docile battalions to cross the frontier, and kindled a bloody war. Emperor Nor was the personal government of the Emperor By the Francis Joseph without its share of mischief; for it of Austria. seems clear that this was the evil course by which Austria was brought into measures offensive to the Sultan, but full of danger to herself. More than once, in the autumn of 1852, Nicholas and Francis Joseph came together; and at these ill-omened meetings, the youthful Kaiser, bending, it would seem, under a weight of gratitude-overwhelmed by the personal ascendancy of the Czar-and touched, as he well might be, by the affection which Nicholas had conceived for him-was led perhaps to use language which never would have been sanctioned by a cabinet of Austrian statesmen; and although it is understood that he abstained from actual promises, it is hard to avoid believing that the general tenor of the young Emperor's conversations with Nicholas must have been the chief cause which led the Czar to imagine that he could enter upon a policy highly dangerous to Austria, and yet safely count upon her assent. The Czar never could have hoped that Austrian councillors of state would have willingly stood still and endured his seizure of the country of the Lower Danube from Orsova down to the Euxine; but he understood that Francis Joseph governed Austria, and he imagined that he could govern Francis Joseph as though CHAP. he were his own child. He could reckon,' he said, XXVIII. By the By the Even in Prussia the policy of the State seemed to be always upon the point of being shaken by the fears of the King; and although, up to the outbreak of the war, she was guilty of no defection,† it is certain that the anticipation of finding weakness in this quarter was one of the causes which led the Czar into danger. In France, after the events of the 2d of DecemEmperor. ber, the system of personal government so firmly obtained, that the narrator-dispensed from the labour of inquiring what interests she had in the question of peace and war, and what were the thoughts of her orators, her statesmen, and her once illustrious writers-was content to see what scheme of action would best conduce to the welfare and safety of a small knot of men then hanging together in Paris; and when it appeared that, upon the whole, these persons would gain in safety and comfort from the disturbance of Europe, and from a close understanding with England, the subsequent progress of the story was singularly unembarrassed by any question about what might be the policy demanded by the interests or the sentiments of France. Therefore the bearing of personal government upon the maintenance of peace was better illustrated by the French Government than by the * Memorandum by the Emperor of Russia, delivered to the English Government ubi ante. It was more than three months after the outbreak of the war that Prussia halted. XXVIII. Emperor Nicholas; for in the Czar, after all, a vast CHAP. people was incarnate. His ambition, his piety, his anger, were in a sense the passions of the devoted millions of men of whom he was indeed the true chief. The French Emperor, on the contrary, when he chose to carry France into a war against Russia, was in no respect the champion of a national policy nor of a national sentiment; and he therefore gave a vivid example of the way in which sheer personal government comes to bear upon the peace of the world. which had in about the Perhaps if a man were to undertake to distribute Share the blame of the war, the first Power he would Russia arraign might be Russia. Her ambition, her piety, bringing and her Church zeal were ancient causes of strife, War which were kindled into a dangerous activity by the question of the Sanctuaries, and by events which seemed for a moment to show that the time for her favourite enterprise against Constantinople might now at last be coming. Until the month of March 1853, these causes were brought to bear directly against the tranquillity of Europe; and even after that time they were in one sense the parents of strife, because, though they ceased to have a direct action upon events, they had set other forces in motion. But it would be wrong to believe that, after the middle of March 1853, Russia was acting in furtherance of any scheme of territorial aggrandisement; for it is plain that by that time the Czar's vague ambition had dwindled down into a mere wish to wring from the Porte a protectorate of the Greek Church CHAP. in Turkey. He had gathered his troops upon the XXVIII. Turkish frontier, and it seemed to him that he could use their presence there as a means of extorting an engagement which would soothe the pride of the Orthodox Church, and tighten the rein by which he was always seeking to make the Turks feel his power. The vain concealments and misrepresentations by which this effort of violent diplomacy was accompanied, were hardly worthy to be ranked as acts of statecraft, and were rather the discord produced by the clashing impulses of a mind in conflict with itself. Originally the Czar had no thought of going to war for the sake of obtaining this engagement, and least of all had he any thought of going to war with England. At first he thought to obtain it by surprise; and, when that attempt failed, he still hoped to obtain it by resolute pressure, because he reckoned that if the great Powers would compare the slenderness of the required concession with the evils of a great war, there could be no question how they would choose. As soon as the diplomatic strife at Constantinople began to work, the Czar got heated by it; and when at length he found himself not only contending for his Church, but contending too with his ancient enemy, he so often lost all self-command, that what he did in his politic intervals was never enough to undo the evil which he wrought in his fits of pious zeal and of rage. And when, with a cruel grace, and before the eyes of all Europe, Lord Stratford XXVIII. disposed of Prince Mentschikoff, it must be owned CHAP. that it was hard for a proud man in the place of the Czar to have to stand still and submit. Therefore, without taking counsel of any man, he resolved to occupy the Principalities; but he had no belief that even that grave step would involve him in war; for his dangerous faith in Lord Aberdeen and in the power of the English Peace Party was in full force, and grew to a joyful and ruinous certainty when he learned that the Queen's Prime Minister had insisted upon revoking the grave words which had been uttered to Baron Brunnow by the Secretary of State. This illusory faith in the peacefulness of England long continued to be his guide ; and from time to time he was confirmed in his choice of the wrong path by the bearing of the persons who represented France, Austria, and Prussia at the Court of St Petersburg; for although in Paris, in London, in Vienna, in Berlin, and in Constantinople the four great Powers seemed strictly united in their desire to restrain the encroachments of the Czar, this wholesome concord was so masked at St Petersburg by the demeanour of Count Mensdorf, Colonel Rochow, and M. Castelbajac, that Sir Hamilton Seymour, though uttering the known opinion of the other three Powers as well as of his own Government, was left to stand alone. After his acceptance of the Vienna Note, the Emperor Nicholas enjoyed for a few days the bliss of seeing all Europe united with him against the Turks, and he believed perhaps that Heaven was |