Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/223

 BETWEEN THE CZAR AND THE SULTAN. 181 all dissolved before the middle of March, and it chap. is vain to say that after that time his actions were ___1 — , governed by any rational plan of conquest. Policy required that for encroachments against Turkey he should choose a time when Europe, engaged in some other strife, might be likely to acquiesce ; far from doing this, the Czar chose a time when the four Powers had nothing else to do than to watch and restrain the aggression of Russia. Again, policy required that pressure upon the Sultan of a hostile kind should be justified by narratives of the cruel treatment of the Christians by their Turkish masters ; yet if any such causes existed for the anger of Christendom, the Emperor Nicholas never took the pains to make them known to Europe. From first to last his loose charges against the Turks for maltreatment of their Christian subjects were not only left without proof, but were even unsupported b}' anything like statements of fact. Still the Czar was not labouring under any general derangement of mind. The truth seems to be that zeal for his Church had made greater inroads upon his moral and intellectual nature than was commonly known, and that when he was under the stress of religious or rather of ecclesiastic feelings he ceased to be politic, and even perhaps ceased to be honest. It was at such times that there came upon him that tendency to act in a spirit of barbaric cunning which was really inconsistent with the general tenor of his life. But if it happened that whilst his mind was