Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/208

 1GG OIIIGIX OF THE WAlt OF 1853 chap, while Lord Stratford was unconscious of exercis- " iug any ascendancy over his fellow-creatures, and it seemed to him that the Turks were determining this momentous question by means of their un- biassed judgments* Prince Mentschikoff was soon made aware of the refusal with which his demand was to be met, and, finding that all his communications with the Turkish Ministers gave him nothing but the faith- ful echo of the counsels addressed to them by Lord Stratford, he seems to have imagined the plan of overstepping the Turkish Ministers, and endeavouring to wring an assent to his demands from the Sultan himself. It seems probable that Lord Stratford had been apprised of this intention, and was willing to defeat it, for on the 9th lie sought a private audience of the Sultan : he sought it, of course, through the legitimate chan- nel. The Minister for Foreign Affairs went with Lord Stratford to the Sultan's apartment, and then His audience withdrew. The Ambassador spoke gravely to the ollkeSuJtuu. . . „ . Sultan of the danger with which his Empire was threatened, and then of the grounds for confidence. He was happy, he said, to find that His Majesty's servants, buth Ministers and Council, were not less inclined to gratify the Prussian Ambassador with all that could be safely conceded to him, than determined to withhold their consent from every requisition calculated to inflict a serious injury on the independence and dignity of their Sovereign. 'I had waited,' said Lord Stratford,
 * 'Eastern Papers,' part i. p. 213.