Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 9.djvu/108

 78 OPERATIONS IN THE SKA OK AZOF. chap. IV. shown by their Custom-house books), would have furnished rations for four months to an army of 100,000 men.* Many of the destroyed vessels Greek: the bearing of this cir- cumstance on the Czai's sense of dignity. The moral stress put on Russia by taking the Sea of Azof. Did the Czar's in- capacity to defend his subjects tend at all to shake their old loyalty? Of the vessels destroyed very many were Greek ; and supposing, as I do, that the Czar was not without just, kingly pride, this bare fact must have touched to the quick his sense of honour and dignity. He had welcomed these gifted people, then warmly disposed towards his cause, making use of their toil and their property in what I have — not wrongly — called the interior of his empire, and yet there, even there, he had found himself unable to shield them from the power of his naval invaders. The merely physical losses sustained by the Czar were as nothing when put in comparison with the moral torture applied by carrying a naval invasion straight into the trunk of his empire. If — fermenting in the midst of a people good, kindly, humane, and still (in the mass) truly loyal — an outburst of truculent doctrine has of late seemed to hedge round the Czars with assas- sins instead of adorers, it does not of course at all follow that the origin of this hateful wickedness can safely be traced up to causes in force at the time of the war; but in spite of its Byzantine taint, what people call the ' Czar-worship ' is not, after all, quite so slavish, so utterly abject a pos- ture of trembling humanity as many believe when
 * Admiral Lyons to Lord Raglan, 2d June 1855.