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 DROUYN DE LHUYS AND LORD JOHN RUSSELL. 351 abroad among men instead of a captured Se- chap. bastopol. ,* In effect, Marshal Vaillant's words prayed that the war should go on, without offering any new aid, as the Austrian proposals had done, towards the object of making it prosper ; but the value of his counsel depended on reasons more lofty, more general than those which only point to ' expedi- ' ency ' of the humbler and narrower sort. It was otherwise of course with diplomatists The course n • °' duty P re " discharging fixed, ascertained duties. When con- scribed to & & ' D. de Lhuye sidering the Austrian proposal on the evening of and L 01 * 1 the 17th of April, M. Drouyn de Lhuys and Lord John Eussell were not free to harbour a thought of taking the soldier-like course which we heard Vaillant afterwards counsel. Far from having any shadow of warrant to act in such a direction, they had come to Vienna instructed to negotiate a peace on the basis then already laid down, and to bring Austria under engagements for joining at once in the war, if peace should not so be attained. Some may think, as I do, that for Powers like France and England, the simple, the manful in- sistence recommended by Vaillant was better than all the best meshes contrived by diploma- tists ; but we must remember that speaking in Paris after the virtual rupture of the negotiations, and only professing to breathe the sentiment of the army as distinguished from the opinions of politicians, the Marshal was free to advise on large and paramount grounds not open to men at Vienna in the middle of April who, like Drouyn