[101] Dispatch of M. de Beust to Baron de Prokesch at Constantinople, January 22, 1867.
[102] "What alarms me the most, is the considerable change which the pacification of the provinces of the Caucasus has given to the situation of Russia. I have no doubt that in future possibilities the most serious attacks of the Russians will be directed against our provinces of Asia Minor." Thus Fuad-Pacha expresses himself at the beginning of 1869 in his political testament addressed to the sultan.
[103] Remarks of the Emperor Nicholas to Sir Hamilton Seymour. For the rumors concerning Thessaly and Epirus, see especially the dispatch of Fuad-Pacha to the ambassadors at Paris and London, 27th February, 1867.
[104] Benedetti, My Mission in Prussia, p. 249.
[105] "I wish very much that you would send your carriage before my door, but on the condition that you get in at my house," one of the predecessors of M. de Moustier said wittily to M. de Budberg, at the Hotel of the Quay d'Orsay, some years before, but in the same way in which Russia encouraged the advances of the cabinet of the Tuileries, at the same time that it carefully avoided any positive engagement with it.
[106] The preliminaries of Nikolsburg as well as the treaty of Prague had stipulated the retrocession to Denmark of the northern districts of Schleswig after a popular vote. One knows that Prussia up to the present has evaded the execution of this engagement.
[107] M. de Beust wrote concerning these military conventions with a resigned finesse: "An alliance established between two states, one of which is weak, the other strong; an alliance which has no particular text, but which should be permanently maintained for all the eventualities of war, is not of a nature to create a belief in an international, independent existence of the weak state."—Dispatch to Count Wimpffen, at Berlin, 28th March, 1867.
[108] See [Appendix.]
[109] Speech of the assistant secretary of state, Mr. Fox, at the banquet given by the English Club of St. Petersburg to the mission extraordinary from the United States in 1866.
[110] Circular of M. de La Valette, 16th September, 1866.