Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/408

 3G6 ORIGIN OF THE WAR OF 1853 chap, sive to Russia. Having at length succeeded in XVL forcing this measure upon England, he, after a while, pressed upon her another movement of the fleet still more hostile than the first, and again he succeeded in bringing the English Government to yield to him. Again, and still once again, he did the like, always in the end bringing England to adopt his hostile measures ; and he never desisted from this course of action until, at last, it had effected a virtual rupture between the Czar and the Western Powers. Not yet as part of this narrative, but by way of anticipation, and in order to gather into one page the grounds of the statement just made, the fol- lowing instances are given of the way in which the English Government was, from time to time, driven to join with the French Emperor in mak- ing a quarrelsome use of the two fleets : — On the 13th of July 1853, the French Emperor, through his Minister of Foreign Affairs, declared to the English Government that if the occupation of the Principalities continued, the French fleet could not longer remain at Besica Bay. On the 19th of August he declared it to be absolutely necessary that the combined fleets should enter the Darda- nelles, and he pressed the English Government to adopt a resolution to this effect. On the 21st of September he insisted that the English Govern- ment, at the same moment as the French, should immediately order up the combined squadrons to Constantinople. On the 15th of December he pressed the English Government to agree that the