Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 8.djvu/347

 THE CZAR NICHOLAS SEEKING PEACE. 315 previously declared, as we saw, her full, unre- CHAP. served approval of the warlike course they were !_ taking, she, in August, went on to record her concurrence in those four stated demands which, as France and England announced, they would peremptorily force on the Czar.* II. Bv way of warning to Russia, and therefore in step taken J J °. by Austria the interest of peace, the Austrian Cabinet mi- which made a beginning parted to that of St Petersburg the Protocol or ofhermedi- 1 ation. the 8th of August with its statement of the Four Demands, and so not only made a beginning of that exceptional kind of mediation between the belligerents which she afterwards pursued, but also laid the foundation of what became after a while the ' Conferences held at Vienna for put- ' ting an end to the war.' The Czar at first did not deign to heed the course , taken at warning from Austria, nor to act in any way on first by .. the jZ3X her statement of the Four Conditions which his Nicholas; adversaries meant to impose ; and seeing this she drew nearer to the Western Powers. She nego- and after- wards, tiated with them a Treaty, engaging for herself that, if peace upon the basis of the Four Condi- tions should not be assured before the end of the year, she, in concert with England and France, would go on to devise measures fitted for attain- ing the objects of the alliance. Four Conditions will be shown post, p. 323 cl seq.
 * Protocol of the 8th of August 1854. The purport of the