Page:Wallachia and Moldavia - Correspondence of D. Bratiano whit Lord Dudley C. Stuart, M.P. on the Danubian Principalities.djvu/8

 those lent her by the Czar; and living only by the breath of the Czar, she is but a galvanized corpse.

Assuredly Russia -will not for an instant lose sight of Constantinople, she has promised herself that she will be there one day; but it is not by force of arms, and with a single bound, that she hopes to enter there. Russia is not, as is often said, a bomb which crushes everything before it, and goes straight to the end in view. If she may be compared to an instrument of war, it is rather to a rocket than a bomb. She only proceeds by ricochet. Her march is only the more sure for being tortuous and because it cannot be followed. She advances without seeming to take a single forward step; she never marches right ahead, but always sideling.

It is not the boldness of her resolutions, the suddenness of her enterprises, the bravery of her soldiers, that have given her Poland, Bessarabia on the shores of the Black Sea, and the greater part of her vast possessions. Perseverance and cunning are the true elements of Russian strength. To intimidate, or to promise protection according to circumstances; to corrupt and divide her neighbours; to incite them to civil war, so as to render necessary her intervention; to know how to wait, to take advantage of every occasion for the furtherance of designs; these are her arms, such is the whole secret of her power. And the present occasion was too good to be allowed to pass without an attempt on her part to fish in troubled waters, according to her wont The financial embarrassments of the Porte, the result of her perfidious councils ; the removal from power of Rechid Pacha and his colleagues, also accomplished by her intrigues; the risings amongst the Sclave peoples of the Ottoman Empire, excited by Russia; the question of the Holy Places, which it would perhaps have been wiser to defer, instead of creating more difficulties for the Porte at the present moment; the too long absence from Constantinople of the able and energetic representative of Great Britain—for advantage must be taken of every circumstance—above all, the preoccupation and inquietude that the proclamation of a French Empire has given rise to with