"The Russians must be very ambitious and aspiring."
"Yes; and now the Czar, having, as he thinks, made a friend of the youthful or boyish Emperor of Austria, believes the time has come for a coup de main. Well, Jack, if one man desires to pick a quarrel with another, and to hit him across the bows, some excuse very soon presents itself. And so war between these two countries—Turkey and Russia—has been hinged upon some dispute concerning the holy places of Palestine."
"Holy Russia!" said Jack.
"Holy Russia may be right enough, Jack, as far as the innocent people are concerned; but I believe the Emperor Nicholas to be a sly, underhand dog. The dispute was of a very simple nature, lad. There are in Palestine a Greek Church and a Latin Church. Russia is champion of the Greek, France favours the Latin Church, and the question came to be which of these should hold the key of the Church of Bethlehem; and the Turks, in trying to please both Powers, so offended Holy Russia that she sent south two great army corps to the Danubian Principalities, and at the same time dispatched Prince Menschikoff as an envoy to Constantinople to intimidate, if not to coerce, the Sultan."
"And what did the Sultan do? bastinado the Prince?"
"That might certainly have precipitated matters. But the Turks are an indolent, easy-minded kind of a people, who fight well, but only when forced; so they caved in, as we call it."
"Acceded to Russia's demands?"
"That's better English. But listen, lad. The Czar, seeing now that he couldn't get ends to meet in one way, tried another. There are a very large number of Christians in Turkey, and over these the Emperor of all the Russias next demanded a complete protectorate!
"It was the delusion, Jack, therefore, that we did not see through his ultimate designs, and that the British lion was harnessed to the plough-stilts, and never likely to lift an angry paw, which led the Czar to be so threatening towards Turkey as to cause that country to declare war against Russia, which she did on the twenty-third of October 1853. The next thing that happened was that, with the view of protecting their interests, France and Britain sent their combined fleets off to the Bosphorus.
"'If,' thought the Czar to himself, 'we can get Britain to keep quiet, we may snap our fingers at the other Powers, and crush Turkey up like an empty egg-shell. And John Bull is far too busy attending to trade and making money to bother about the Ottoman Empire. If John Bull does, why, I can suggest his having Egypt and Candia.'