Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/200

 158 OUIGiN OF THE WAlt OF 1853 chap, ments lie was furious. Even for Nicholas the Czar it was all but impossible to endure the Am- bassador's political ascendancy ; but the bare thought of Lord Stratford's protecting Christian- ity in Turkey was more than could be borne by Nicholas the Pontiff. Men not jesting approached him with stories that the Ambassador had deter- mined to bring over the Sultan to the Church of England. His brain was not strong enough to be safe against rumours like that. He almost came to feel that the Englishman, who seemed to be en- dued with strange powers of compulsion always used for the support of Moslem dominion and for curbing the Orthodox liusso-Greek Church, was a being in his nature Satanic, and that resistance to him was as much a duty (and was a duty as thickly beset with practical difficulties) as resist- ance to the great enemy of mankind. Maddened at last by this singular kind of torment, the Czar broke loose from the restraints of policy, and was even so void of counsel that, having determined to do violence to the Sultan, he did not take the common care of giving to his action any semblance of consistency with public law. ts effect The despatches framed under the orders of a legotiatLn. monarch in this condition of mind reached Prince Mentschikoff in the beginning of May. Breath- ing fresh anger and enjoining haste, they fiercely drove him on. They urged him to an almost in- stantaneous rupture, without giving him a stand- ing-ground for his quarrel. Yet at this time the condition of things was of such a kind that a good