Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 2.djvu/118

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88 CAUSES INVOLVING FRANCK AND ENGLAND CHAP, than Germany was to go through the forms which . L- were necessary for bringing themselves legally into a state of war, but for action of a serious kind they were not yet ready. Whilst they were only preparing, Austria was applying force. On the 3d of June, with the full support of Prussia, she summoned the Emperor Nicholas to evacuate the Principalities, Her summons was the sum- mons of a Power having an army on the edge of the province into which the llussian forces had been rashly extended. Such a summons was a mandate. The Czar could not disobey it. He could not stand in Wallachia when he was called upon to quit the province by a Power which had assembled its forces upon his flank and rear. He sought, indeed, to make terms, but the German Powers were peremptory. On the 14th Austria entered into a convention with the Porte, which not only legalised her determination to drive the Eussian forces from the Principalities, and to oc- cupy them with her own troops, but which form- ally joined Austria in an alliance with the Porte against Russia; for, by the 1st Article of the convention, the Emperor of Austria 'engages to ' exhaust all the means of negotiation, and all other

  • means, to obtain the evacuation of the Danubian

' Principalities by the foreign army which occu- ' pies them, and even to employ, in case they are ' required, the number of troops necessary to at- ' tain this end.' * And since Russia could not in- vade European Turkey by land without marching • ' Eastern Fiipris,' part xii.