Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/404

362 guage of his diplomacy was pacific, and yet at the very same time he contrived that the naval forces of France and England should he used as the means of provoking a war. The part which he took in the negotiations going on at Vienna, and in the other capitals of the great Powers, was temperate, just, and moderate; and it is probable that the Despatches which indicated this spirit long continued to mislead Lord Aberdeen, and to keep him under the impression that an Anglo-French alliance was really an engine of peace; but it will be seen that, as soon as the French Emperor had drawn England into an understanding with him, he was enabled to engage her in a series of dangerous naval movements, which he contrived to keep going on simultaneously with the efforts of the negotiators, so as always to be defeating their labours.

In order to appreciate the exceeding force of the lever which was used for this purpose, a man ought to have in his mind the political geography of south-eastern Europe, and the configuration of the seas which flow with a ceaseless current into the waters of the Ægean.

The Euxine is connected with the Mediterranean by the Straits of the Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmora, and the Straits of the Dardanelles. The Bosphorus is a current of the sea, seventeen miles in length, and in some places hardly more than half a mile broad, but so deep, even home to the shores on either side, that a ship of war can almost, as it were, find shade under the gardens