CHAP. I.
The negotiations apparently ripening towards a settlement; The negotiations for a settlement were scarcely interrupted, either by the formal declaration of war or by the hostilities which were commenced on the banks of the Danube; and the Conference of the four Powers represented at Vienna had just agreed to the terms of a collective Note, which seemed to afford a basis for peace, when the English but ruined by the French Emperor and the English Government. gave way to the strenuous urgency of the French Emperor, and consented to a Government. measure which ruined the pending negotiations, and generated a series of events leading straight to a war between Russia and the Western Powers.
In the month of September, some weeks before the Sultan's final rupture with the Czar, the pious and warlike ardour then kindled in the Turkish Movement at Constantinople. Empire had begun to show itself at Constantinople. A placard, urging the Government to declare war, was pasted on one of the mosques. Then a petition for war was presented to the Council, and to the Sultan himself, by certain muderris, or theological students. The paper was signed by thirty-five persons of no individual distinction, but having the corporate importance of belonging to the 'Ulemah.' Though free from menace, the petition, as Lord Stratford expressed it, was worded in 'serious and impressive terms, implying a strong sense of religious duty, and a very independent disregard of consequences.' The Ministers professed to be alarmed, and to believe that this movement was the forerunner of revolution; and Lord Stratford seems to have imagined that their alarm was genuine. It is perhaps more
