fleets to the Bosphorus, the control of events passed out of their hands. If Russia should choose to disregard the moral pressure of their presence, and, resenting their entry into the Bosphorus, to avenge it on the Turks, the Allies could no longer preserve a mediatory attitude. They must become principals. This was foreseen by the Queen when she wrote thus to Lord Clarendon : "It appears to the Queen that we have taken on ourselves, in conjunction with France, all the risks of a European war, without having bound Turkey to any conditions with respect to provoking it." The justice of this view of the matter was presently made evident. The Turks, while keeping most of their fleet in the Bosphorus, had left a squadron of light war-vessels in the Black Sea. On the 3oth November it was at anchor in the port of Sinope, when Admiral Nakimoff attacked it with six ships of the line, and absolutely destroyed it, with its crews to the number of 4000 men. It is not necessary to argue that the Russians were exceeding their rights as belligerents in order to show the impolicy of this stroke. While the disparity of force deprived it of all glory, it roused public feeling, hitherto not too favourable to the Czar, to a pitch which, certainly in England, could only be appeased by arms. For long the English people had been chafing at the wrongs inflicted on the Turks, aggravated by the patience with which they were endured. Each successive step of the Czar had aroused 'deeper indignation. In the original difficulty, the position of the Sultan, pressed by such powerful rivals for an award which
1 8 France and England declare War.
could bring him only unmitigated trouble, seemed to entitle him to special indulgence. But MenschikofPs bearing throughout his mission was arrogant and provocative. The setting up of the second pretext, on the failure of the first, revealed the real intention of grinding Turkey to dust. The seizure of the Principalities showed a contempt for public law and common justice so gross that the popular mind could easily appreciate it. His manifestoes, outrageous in tone and matter, had been fuel to the flame ; and now the crash at Sinope, under the very shadow of our ships, was of a character thoroughly to exasperate a people whose element was the sea. The French could probably in no case have endured to see their fleet return without some substantial triumph, but a reckless utterance of the Czar effectually roused them from what had hitherto been a somewhat supine view of the situation. The French Emperor had addressed to him, as a final attempt, a letter suggesting a scheme of pacification, and assuring him that if it were rejected the Western Powers must declare war. In his reply, among other taunts, Nicholas said, "Russia will prove herself in 1854 what she was in 1812." This allusion to the disasters in Russia, so ruinous to the first Napoleon's power, and so humiliating to France, effectually dispelled the apathy of the French people.
When Louis Napoleon proposed to our Government that the fleets should enter the Black Sea, and if necessary compel all Russian ships met with there to return to Sebastopol, the measure hardly kept pace
T/ie War at first on the Danube. 19
with the feelings aroused in both countries. On the 27th February 1854 France and England demanded the evacuation of the Principalities by the 3Oth April as their ultimatum. No answer was vouchsafed, and on that date they declared war. If any further stimulus had been needed for the British people, it was now supplied in the publication of the Czar's conversations with Sir Hamilton Seymour, hitherto held in official secrecy. His parable of the sick man then proved much more striking and suggestive than he could have desired. It caught the popular fancy — it was seen to have indicated a foregone conclusion — and he who could foretell the sick man's dissolution, and arrange for the distribution of his possessions, was judged to have been intent ever since on fulfilling his own prophecy.