tous ceux qui
vous approchent qu'il faut continuer la guerre. Soyez bien sur que
dans l'opinion finale que je me formerai, votre position et votre
persuasion personnelle seront toujours presentes a mon esprit et
auront le plus grand poids.

[Pageheading: THE BRITISH ARMY]

_Queen Victoria to the Earl of Clarendon._

WINDSOR CASTLE, _17th January 1856_.

The Queen returns the Duke of Cambridge's and Lord Cowley's letters,
which together with the account which Lord Clarendon gives of his
interview with M. de Persigny causes the Queen no little anxiety. If
negotiations on a vague basis are allowed to be begun, the Russian
negotiator is sure to find out that the French are ready to grant
anything....

However, whatever happens, one consolation the Queen ever will have,
which is--that with the one exception of that failure on the _Redan_,
her noble Army--in spite of every possible disadvantage which any army
could labour under, _has_ invariably been victorious, and the Russians
have always and everywhere been beaten excepting at Kars, where
_famine_ alone enabled them to succeed.

Let us therefore not be (as alas! we have often been) its detractors
by our croaking.

[Pageheading: POSITION OF THE EMPEROR]

_Viscount Palmerston to Queen Victoria._

PICCADILLY, _17th January 1856_.

Viscount Palmerston presents his humble duty to your Majesty, and
concludes that Lord Lansdowne informed your Majesty that the Cabinet,
after hearing from Lord Clarendon a statement of the course of
the recent negotiations as explained by the despatches which Lord
Clarendon read, came to the decision that no further step should be
taken, and no further communication should be made to the Government
of France on the matters at issue, until the final decision of the
Russian Government on the pure and simple adoption of the Austrian
ultimatum[4] should be known. Viscount Palmerston begs to congratulate
your Majesty upon the telegraphic message received this morning from
Sir Hamilton Seymour, announcing that the Russian Government has
adopted that Austrian ultimatum. So far so well, and the success which
has attended firmness and steadiness of purpose in regard to those
conditions may be looked upon as a tolerably sure indication that a
perseverance in the same course will bring the Russian Government to
consent to those remaining conditions which the Austrian Government
has not yet (as it says) made known to the Cabinet o