The Sultan's Ministers, therefore, no doubt counselled and supported by our Ambassador, Lord Stratford, who exercised a control over our relations with Turkey of a singularly independent character, promptly refused to entertain MenschikofFs proposal. To this refusal the Czar responded by causing his troops, on the 2d of July, to pass the frontier river, the Pruth, and occupy the Danubian Principalities ; and next day he issued a manifesto, stating that in doing so " it was not his intention to commence war, but to have such security as would ensure the restoration of the rights of Russia."
Tke Vienna Note. 9
This^ invasion might have been justly met by the Sultan with a counter declaration of war, and the martial spirit of his people was so thoroughly roused as to render the step imminent. But the Western Powers, in their solicitude to preserve peace, stayed it for a moment, while the representatives of France, England, Austria, and Prussia, met in conference at Vienna, in the hope of rinding a means of averting war. They framed a diplomatic instrument known as the Vienna Note, which, in their eagerness to soothe the Czar, was couched in terms that might be interpreted as sanctioning his pretensions, and which indeed (as the Austrian Government had taken means to ascertain) he would accept. On receiving this Note he at once signified his readiness to assent to it. The reply of the Turkish Government was not so speedily given, and the Mediatory Powers strongly urged it to signify acceptance. But when its reply came, it was found to point out that the Note could be construed as re-embodying the dangerous pretensions of the Czar, and that, unless certain specified modifications were introduced, the Porte must refuse its assent ; while Lord Stratford advised his Government that these objections were well founded. This made fresh correspondence necessary, in the course of which it slipped out that the Russian interpretation of the Note confirmed the apprehensions of the Porte. The Mediatory Powers, at last aware of their singular error, perceived that their Note could be held to affirm new rights of interference on the part of Russia, and not merely (as the Czar had hitherto pretended) the confirio Tiirkey declares War with Russia.
mation of old privileges. They could no longer, therefore, support their original Note ; the Czar, on his part, refused to accept the Turkish modifications of it, and the Porte felt itself compelled to demand the evacuation of the Principalities within fifteen days, with war as the alternative. This summons being disregarded, a state of war between the two countries ensued on the 23d October 1853; but for some time no acts of hostility took place beyond the assembly and movement of their respective forces.
The course of events that led to war between Russia and Turkey having been thus traced, it remains to follow the steps by which the Western Powers were drawn on to join in it. It has often been said that England drifted into the war. This was so far true that there was for us no sharp crisis, no clash of great national interests, which only the appeal to arms could compose. Our part in the war was the result of a state of feeling gradually aroused by observation of what was passing in the East, and of the steps which the British Government, with intentions anything but warlike, had slowly taken, tending to commit it to the active support of Turkey. Up to the time (after the issuing of the Turkish ultimatum) when the French and English fleets were ordered to move to the Bosphorus, it had been possible for England to restrict her part to the field of diplomacy. And that she should have committed herself to the side of Turkey was not due to her traditional policy only, for the ostensible grounds of quarrel between the two Eastern Powers were not such as necessarily to draw
How England was drawn into War. 1 1