Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/400

 358 OEIGIN OF THE WAR OF 1853 CHAP. XVI. Ills com- 1'liints to Europe. Their
 * efutation.

what was ascertainably false — of what was a cause, and what was an effect — of what happened first, and what happened last, — nay, almost, it would seem, his notions of what was the Bosphorus and what was the Hellespont,* — became as a heap of ruins. He was in the condition imagined by the Psalmist, when he prayed the Lord that his enemy might be ' confounded.' Count Nesselrode was forced to gather up his master's shivered thoughts, and, put- ting them as well as he could into the language of diplomacy, to address to all the Courts of Europe a wild remonstrance against the measures of the Western Powers. The approach of their fleets to an anchorage in the iEgean outside the Straits of the Dardanelles was treated in this despatch as though it were little less than a seizure of Con- stantinople; and it was represented that this was an act of violence which had entitled and com- pelled the Czar, in his own defence, to occupy the Principalities.-}- Lord Clarendon seized this weak pretence and easily laid it bare ; for he showed that Nicholas, in his anger, was transposing events, and that the Czar's resolve to cross the Pruth was anterior to the occurrence which he now declared to have been the motive of his action. Then, in language worthy of England, our Foreign Secretary went on to vindicate her right to send her fleets whither she chose, so long as they were on the high seas, or on the coasts of a Sovereign legiti- ' proach.' t ' Eastern Papers,' part i. p. 342.
 * See the sentence of the above text beginning ' The ap-