Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 2.djvu/32

 2 CAUSKS INVOLVING FRANCE AND ENGLAND CHAT. The negotiations for a settlement were scarcely ^" interrupted, citlier by 'the formal declaration of Tiicncgo- ^yj^j. Q^. ]jy tiig hostilities which were commenced tuitions . ■' Hpenh'?^' ^''L'th'e banks of the Tianube ; and the Conference scttie7nent; ^^ ^^^^ ^0^^^" ^owcrs represented at Vienna had just agreed to the terms of a collective Note, which seemed to afford a basis for peace, when the Eng- byhe'"^'^ lish Government gave way to the strenuous urg- perorami"' Gucy of the French Emperor, and consented to a Govfrnment. incasure which ruined the pending negotiations, and generated a scries of events leading straight to a war between Eussia and the Western Powers. In the month of September, some weeks before the Sultan's final rupture with the Czar, the pious and M'arlike ardour then kindled in the Turkish Movement Empire had begun to show itself at Constantino- tinoiiie. ' pie. A placard, urging the Government to declare war, was pasted on one of the mosques. Then a petition for war was presented to the Council, and to the Sultan himself, by certain muderris, or theological students. The paper was signed by thirty-live persons of no individual distinction, but having the corporate importance of belonging to the ' Ulemah.' Though free from menace, the petition, as Lord Stratford expressed it, was worded in ' serious and impressive terms, imply- ' ing a strong sense of religious duty, and a very Ministers professed to be alarmed, and to believe that this movement was the forerunner of revolu- tion ; and Lord Stratford seems to have imagined that their alarm was genuine. It is perhaps more
 * independent disregard of consequences.' The