e custody of the Holy Places in
Palestine--presents no element of difficulty. It is, however, no easy
matter to gather up in a few pages the reasons which led to the war.
Amongst the most prominent of them were the ambitious projects of the
despotic Emperor Nicholas. The military revolt in his own capital at the
period of his accession, and the Polish insurrections of 1830 and 1850,
had rendered him harsh and imperious, and disinclined to concessions on
any adequate scale to the restless but spasmodic demands for political
reform in Russia. Gloomy and reserved though the Autocrat of All the
Russias was, he recognised that it would be a mistake to rely for the
pacification of his vast empire on the policy of masterly inactivity.
His war with Persia, his invasion of Turkey, and the army which he sent
to help Austria to settle her quarrel with Hungary, not only appealed
to the pride of Russia, but provided so many outlets for the energy and
ambition of her ruler. It was in the East that Nicholas saw his
opportunity, and his policy was a revival, under the changed conditions
of the times, of that of Peter the Great and Catherine II.

Nicholas had long secretly chafed at the exclusion of his war-ships--by
the provisions of the treaty of 1841--from access through the Black Sea
to the Mediterranean, and he dreamed dreams of Constantinople, and saw
visions of India. Linked to many lawless instincts, there was in the
Emperor's personal character much of the intolerance of the fanatic.
Religion and pride alike made the fact rankle in his breast that so many
of the Sultan's subjects were Sclavs, and professed the Russian form of
Christianity. He was, moreover, astute enough to see that a war which
could be construed by the simple and devout peasantry as an attempt to
uplift the standard of the Cross in the dominions of the Crescent would
appeal at once to the clergy and populace of Holy Russia. Nicholas had
persuaded himself that, with Lord Aberdeen at the head of affairs, and
Palmerston in a place of safety at the Home Office, England was scarcely
in a condition to give practical effect to her traditional jealousy of
Russia. In the weakness of her divided counsels he saw his opportunity.
It had become a fixed idea with the Emperor that Turkey was in a
moribund condition; and neither Orloff nor Nesselrode had been able to
disabuse his mind of the notion.

[Sidenote: NICHOLAS AND THE 'SICK MAN']

Everyone is aware that in Janua