Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/198

 156 ORIGIN OF THE WAR OF 1853 CHAP. Lord Stratford watched. Him they feared, him XL they trusted, him they obeyed. It was in vain now that the Prince sought to crush the will of the Sultan and of his Ministers. Whether he threatened, or whether he tried to cajole ; whether he sent his dragoman with angry messages to the Porte, or whether he went thither in person; whether he urged the members of the Government in private interviews, or whether he obtained audience of the Sultan, he always encountered the same firmness, the same courteous deference, and, above all, that same terrible moderation which, day by day and hour by hour, was putting him more and more in the wrong. The voice which spoke to him might be the voice of the Grand Vizier, or the voice of the Eeis Effendi, or the voice of the Sultan himself ; but the mind which he was really encountering was always the mind of one man. Far from quailing under the threatening tone of the Note, the Turkish Government now deter- mined to enter into no convention with Russia, and to reject Prince Mentschikoffs proposals re- specting the protection of the Greek Church in Turkey. The Grand Vizier and the Peis Effendi calmly consulted Lord Stratford as to the manner in which they should give effect to the decision of the Cabinet, and Lord Stratford, now placed at ease by the settlement of the question of the Holy Places, contentedly prepared to encounter the next expected moves of Prince Mentschikoff.* ment of the question of the Holy Flaces was on the 22d.
 * 24th April. 'Eastern Papers,' part i. p. 160. The settle-