Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 2.djvu/72

42 CAUSES INVOLVING FRANCE AND ENGLAND CHAP. IV. Embarrass- laent and distress of the Czar. He rfisorts for ai<l to Fu«kiuviti'h, in prescribing the Danube <as a boundary — a boundary to be observed by himself, without the least right for expecting that it would be observed by his adversary. So now he would do the contrary of what he had done. Because he had corani-itted a military fault in forbidding himself from all enterprises against the slowly assembling forces of the Porte in 1853, he would now, in 1854, undertake an invasion which must bring him into conflict with the gathered strength of the Ottoman Empire, and that, too, when it had become certain that the armed support of France and England would not be wanting to the Sultan. But perhaps, after all, it was hardly tolerable for a haughty monarch to have to stand passive under the insulting coercion which was now to be applied to him by the "Western Powers ; and the Czar, having no means of hostile action against the territories or the ships of either France or England, could only strike at his greater foes by striking at the ally whom they had undertaken to befriend. Upon the whole, therefore, he could not so school himself as to be able to abstain from attempting an invasion of Turkey ; but the whole- some trials which he had now undergone had so far disciplined his spirit that at length, after bitter anguish, lie felt and acknowledged to him- self the want of a firm adviser. Piussia owned a great General who had never sanctioned by his counsels the error of the pre- vious year; and now — baffled — agitated — driven hither and thither by alternating impulses till his