Page:Karl Marx - The Story of the Life of Lord Palmerston - ed. Eleanor Marx Aveling (1899).pdf/44

 38 Russia. "You have asked for me, and you shall have me."

On February 20, a Russian squadron suddenly sailed from Sebastopol, disembarked a large force of Russian troops on the shores of the Bosphorus, and laid siege to the capital. So eager was Russia for the protection of Turkey, that a Russian officer was simultaneously despatched to the Pashas of Erzerum and Trebizond, to inform them that, in the event of Ibrahim's army marching towards Erzerum, both that place and Trebizond should be immediately protected by a Russian army. At the end of May, 1833, Count Orloff arrived from St. Petersburg, and intimated to the Sultan that he had brought with him a little bit of paper, which the Sultan was to subscribe to, without the concurrence of any minister, and without the knowledge of any diplomatic agent at the Porte. In this manner the famous treaty of Unkiar Skelessi was brought about; it was concluded for eight years to come. By virtue of it the Porte entered into an alliance, offensive and defensive, with Russia; resigned the right of entering into any new treaties with other powers, except with the concurrence of Russia, and confirmed the former Russo-Turkish treaties, especially that of Adrianople. By a secret article, appended to the treaty, the Porte obliged itself "in favour of the Imperial Court of Russia to close the Straits of the Dardanelles—viz., not to allow any foreign man-of-war to enter it under any pretext whatever."

To whom was the Czar indebted for occupying Constantinople by his troops, and for transferring, by virtue of the treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, the supreme seat of the Ottoman empire from Constantinople to St. Petersburg? To nobody else but to the Right Honourable Henry John Viscount Palmerston, Baron Temple, a Peer of Ireland, a Member of His Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, Knight of the Grand Cross of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath, a Member of Parliament, and His Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.