Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/101

 BETWEEN THE CZAR AND THE SULTAN. 59 infidels who had torn down the crosses from the CHAP. IV. Churches of Christ, and possessed themselves of - the great city, the capital of the Orthodox Church; and, as far as they could judge, it would he a work of piety, with the permission of the Czar their father, to slaughter and extirpate the Turks. Rut this was not all. They knew that in the Turkish dominions there were ten or fourteen millions of men holding exactly the same faith as themselves, who were kept down in thraldom by the Moslems, and they had heard tales of the sufferings of these their brethren which seemed to call for vengeance. The very indulgence with which the Turks had allowed these Christians to have a distinct corporate existence in the Empire gave weight to their prayers ; for, instead of being only a disorganised multitude of sufferers, they seemed to be, as it were, a suppliant nation, ever kneeling before the great Czar, and imploring him to deliver them from their captivity. It was not possible for the Russian people to conceive any enterprise more worthy of their nation and their Church than to raise high the banner of the Cross, drive the infidel Turks out of Europe, and cause Hie broad provinces in which their Christian brethren lived and suffered to be blended with ' Holy Russia.' It is true that the Muscovite peasants were not an enterprising race of men, and it might be hard perhaps to find a villager who, if he could have his choice, would rather be a soldier of the Cross than remain at home in his hut; but the people knew that, whether there