enjoy most privilege and consideration was a question that, some little time before, had once more risen into prominence. Which of them should enter earliest in the day into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, or should have possession of the key of the Great Church of Bethlehem, were the questions of immediate concern. The Czar took up warmly the cause of the Greek Church, of which he was the head, and which looked to him as its champion ; and it may be urged in reply to those who look on the dispute as trivial, that it did not seem so to the Russian people, and, therefore, could not seem so to the Czar. The French Emperor had taken the side of the Latin Church. It is not to be supposed that he could be actuated by any superstitious, or even earnest, feeling in favour of such claims. But he was only following the policy pursued by the French monarchy in 1819, during a similar ferment of the question, when it claimed to act as the hereditary protector of the Catholics in the East since the time of Francis the First, and he must therefore be acquitted of taking his course merely from a desire to do what was hostile or provocative to Russia. Each of these sovereigns endeavoured to put pressure on the Sultan for a decision in favour of his own clients ; and that hapless potentate, who could not be expected to evince any warmer sentiment than toleration towards either of the two infidel sects, which every true Mahometan must hold in abhorrence, made it his aim to satisfy both sovereigns, and offend neither. But his attempt, though clever, was ineffectual, and the
The Sultan accedes to the Czars Claim. 7
result was that he only partially satisfied the Latin sect, while he excited such indignation, real or simulated, in the Czar, that Nicholas at once moved two army corps to the frontier of the Danubian Principalities as. a menace, and immediately afterwards sent Prince Menschikoff as a Special Envoy to Constantinople, whose instructions must have been such as were quite inconsistent with a desire for an amicable settlement, for the British Ambassador described the language conveying his demands as "a mixture of angry complaints and friendly assurances, accompanied with peremptory requisitions as to the Holy Places in Palestine, indications of some ulterior views, and a general tone of insistence bordering sometimes on intimidation."
Thus the hostile menace was made to appear to turn on the matter of the Holy Places. But, in considering the origin of the war, it must not be forgotten that all the Czar professed to demand was the possession, and possibly the monopoly, of certain religious privileges, whereas the event which he desired to precipitate was something very different, and entirely disproportionate, namely, the dismemberment of Turkey. This was presently made plain when the Sultan put an end to the immediate dispute by acceding to the claims of Menschikoff. The question of the Holy Places, thus settled, could no longer supply the pretext for war ; what it did supply was the opportunity for prolonging the quarrel, by confusing fresh demands with the original dispute, and for rousing religious feeling in Russia against Turkey. Accordingly, the
Russia puts forth Fresh Pretensions.
Czar's Envoy, instead of accepting the concession as closing the dispute, put forth a fresh and larger pretension, requiring the Sultan to join in a convention which would virtually give Nicholas the protectorate of all the Christian subjects of the Porte. The nature of this demand was thus characterised by our Foreign Secretary, Lord Clarendon : " No sovereign, having v proper regard for his own dignity and independence, could admit proposals which conferred upon another and more powerful sovereign a right of protection over his own subjects. Fourteen millions of Greeks would henceforth regard the Emperor as their supreme protector, and their allegiance to the Sultan would be little more than nominal, while his own independence would dwindle into vassalage." And, indeed, there was a terrible precedent to warn Turkey, for the Empress Catherine had claimed a similar protectorate in Poland, in which she had very soon found the means of extending her dominion over its territory.