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 To have led England into so futile an adventure would indeed be an unworthy termination to a long career of wise statesmanship. The Crimean war, however, was not to be averted by diplomacy. Russia was resolved upon war long before it actually broke out. Above all Nicholas was bent upon crushing the hateful ambassador who had so long successfully bearded the Emperor of All the Russias. What Stratford did was to make the war impossible to a moral state. He induced the Turks to concede the Holy Places dispute, and while firmly refusing to allow a Russian protectorate over the Greek church, he caused the sultan to issue firmans confirming all the privileges and immunities of his christian subjects, and sent a note to Count Nesselrode engaging that these privileges should never be revoked. The Russian demands had in fact been granted, so far as their ostensible object was concerned, but without giving the czar the preponderating influence in Turkey which was the real aim of his proposals. Stratford had taken away from the czar every excuse for making war. More than this, he had united the four great powers in a combination to reprobate the unwarrantable schemes of Russia. Had matters been left in his hands, there would have either been no war at all, or it would have been a war of Russia against the four powers supporting Turkey. Stratford was not responsible for the fatal alliance with Louis Napoleon, which produced the virtual separation of England and France from the European concert, and threw the burden of upholding Turkey upon the two western powers instead of upon all Europe. That was Palmerston's doing, and Palmerston admitted afterwards that he had ‘been made a catspaw of at Vienna, as Stratford wrote we should.’ If supporting a weak state against the unwarrantable demands of a stronger power caused the war, Stratford was so far responsible, but in no other sense did he contribute to the Crimean war. He indeed privately approved the Turk's rejection of the Vienna note, but that note granted precisely what had been all along refused, the Russian protectorate of the Greek church in Turkey; and it was only the obtuseness or insincerity of the statesmen who drew it up that was to blame for its rejection.

During the progress of the war, Stratford's labours were unremitting. Not unfrequently he would write all night, especially during the diplomatic activity which he displayed towards the conclusion of the war, with a view to Austrian mediation. He would be found in the morning with a mass of papers before him, still in his evening dress. He worked his secretaries and attachés hard, but they knew that he was working still harder, and his enthusiasm inspired a like zeal in his subordinates, which he was quick to note, though he seldom expressed his thanks in words. He twice visited the Crimea in 1855, on the second occasion for the purpose of investing Lord Raglan with the Order of the Bath. During the later stages of the war Stratford was greatly oppressed with the loss and destruction of life it involved, and painfully conscious of England's inability to keep on furnishing a continual supply of fresh troops, and he directed his influence towards a coalition with other powers. When the war was over he returned to London in 1858 and resigned his embassy for the last time, but paid a complimentary visit of farewell—his seventh journey to Constantinople—to Sultan Abd-el-Mejid, for whom he entertained a real regard and esteem. This closed his public career. His ambition for ministerial work at home was never gratified.

The remaining twenty years of his life were spent in the society of his wife and three daughters (who all survived him), chiefly in London and at his country house at Frant, near Tonbridge Wells, where he revived his delight in the classical authors, and especially his favourite Virgil, or immersed himself in the despatches of his special hero, the Duke of Wellington, whose portrait, with those of Nelson and George Canning, hung upon the walls. Oxford made him an hon. D.C.L., Cambridge an LL.D.; and in 1869 he received the Garter from Mr. Gladstone's government. Whenever some branch of the Eastern question agitated parliament Stratford was in his place in the House of Lords, where he would deliver one of his thoughtful, statesmanlike speeches, to which ministers of both parties listened with deference. He also contributed between 1874 and 1880 several valuable papers on Eastern politics to the ‘Times’ and the ‘Nineteenth Century,’ and the more important of these were collected with some unpublished essays in a volume entitled ‘The Eastern Question’ (1881), to which Dean Stanley contributed a memorial preface. His style was measured and sonorous, without ever degenerating into bombast or wordiness, and his thought was accurate and logical. The later course of events in Turkey had grievously disappointed him, and he was disgusted with the reckless extravagance and misrule of Abd-el-Aziz, insomuch that it was supposed that Stratford had recanted his Turkish policy. This, however, is a mistake. While admiring their better qualities, he had never defended the government of the Turks;