gland and attempted to use this country as a basis for
warlike operations in Portuguese territories.

The situation of 1826 was thus reversed. Instead of an ultra-royalist
party resting on Spain, a constitutionalist party resting on Brazil and
attempting to rest on England was now threatening the established
government at Lisbon. Wellington was anxious to maintain a strict
neutrality, but he failed to prevent a ship of war and supplies of arms
and ammunition going from Plymouth to Terceira in the Azores, where
Donna Maria was acknowledged as queen. He succeeded, however, in
preventing a larger armament, which had been raised under the name of
the Emperor of Brazil, with Rio Janeiro as its nominal destination, from
landing at Terceira. This action, though the logical consequence of the
British opposition to the conduct of Spain in 1826, was severely
criticised in England as equivalent to an intervention on behalf of
Miguel.

Meanwhile Canning's attempt to prevent the separate action of Russia in
the Eastern question had been doomed to disappointment. The destruction
of the Turkish navy at Navarino was naturally regarded at Constantinople
as an outrage, and the Porte demanded satisfaction from the ambassadors
of the allied powers. This they refused to grant on the ground that the
Turks had been the aggressors, and they in their turn demanded an
armistice between the Turkish troops and the Greek insurgents. As the
Porte remained obdurate, the ambassadors of France, Great Britain, and
Russia, acting in accordance with their instructions, left
Constantinople on December 8, 1827. But though war seemed imminent, the
tsar still disowned all idea of conquest, and professed to desire
nothing further than the execution of the treaty of London. A protocol
was accordingly signed on the 12th by which the three powers confirmed
a clause in the treaty, providing that, in the event of war, none of
them should derive any exclusive benefit, either commercial or
territorial.

The British government imagined that the powers might still effect their
object by diplomacy, and that it would not be necessary to abandon the
Turkish alliance. But any such idea must have been rudely shaken by the
hati-sherif of December 20. In that document the sultan enlarged on the
cruelty and perfidy of the Christian powers and summoned the Muslim
nations to arms: he denounced Russia in particular as the prime mover of
the Greek rebellion, the instigator of t