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IN THE WAR AGAINST UUSSIA. 125 stantly, without hearing counsel from any living chap. man, he caused his docile battalions to cross the ' frontier, and kindled a bloody war. Nor was the personal government of the Em- By uic peror Francis Joseph without its share or mis- Austru. chief; for it seems clear that this was the evil course by which Austria was brought into mea- sures offensive to the Sultan, but full of danger to herself. More than once, in the autumn of 1852, Nicholas and Francis Joseph came together ; and at these ill-omened meetings, the youthful Kaiser bending, it would seem, under a weight of grati- tude, overwhelmed by the personal ascendancy of the Czar, and touched, as he well might be, by the affection which Nicholas had conceived for him, was led perhaps to use language which never would have been sanctioned by a cabinet of Aus- trian statesmen ; and, although it is understood that he abstained from actual promises, it is hard to avoid believing that the general tenor of the young Emperor's conversations with Nicholas must have been the chief cause which led the Czar to imagine that he could enter upon a policy highly dangerous to Austria, and yet safely count upon her assent. The Czar never could have hoped that Austrian councillors of state would have willingly stood still and endured his seizure of the country of the Lower Danube from Orsova down to the Euxine ; but he understood that Francis Joseph governed Austria, and he imagined that he could govern Francis Joseph as though he were his own child.