Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 8.djvu/382

 350 THE COUNSELS OF VAILLANT. CHAP. XII. Opening for the new policy sug- gested by Vaillant. The sound- ness of Vail- lant's con- clusion. of forcing on Russia the hated principle of ' Limi- ' tation,' the immediate resolve of both Govern- ments was in each case the same. Both resolved to go on with the war. Taking place, as we saw, on the 21st of April, the suspension and virtual rupture of all direct negotiations with Kussia had set free the Western Powers from their engagements to treat for peace on the basis assigned at Vienna. There accord- ingly was room for advice that tended to shape a new policy — a policy based in great part upon the feeling of soldiers ; and perhaps one may own that of all the public men seeking to guide the two Western Powers at this conjuncture, the most clear-sighted was he who declared himself no politician. Inspired by his knowledge of what the soldiers were thinking, and not borne down by the cares of over-anxious diplomatists, Mar- shal Vaillant proved able to see that due warlike persistency in a long-pursued enterprise was the Greater, the true Essential, and that clearly the lesser object — to be afterwards, however, attained by first attaining the greater — was that of con- triving a shield for the imagined Turks of the future by dint of parchments and words. He saw that France and England— France and Eng- land allied and in arms — could not meet the vast exigency of their repute among nations, or, as Frenchmen would say, of their 'honour,' by coming home in the face of a bitterly scorn- ful world with all their mighty armada, and a bundle of mere Kussian promises to show