In vain did Lord Stratford exchange notes and conferences with Count Nesselrode and Prince Menschikof and the Grand Vizier and exhaust all the arts and powers of the most skilled diplomacy. In July, 1853, the Russian troops had invaded Turkish territory, and a French and English fleet soon after had crossed the Dardanelles,--no longer closed to the enemies of Russia,--had steamed by Constantinople, and was in the Bosphorus. Austria joined England and France in a defensive though not an offensive alliance, and Prussia held entirely aloof from the conflict. Nicholas had failed in all his calculations. In vain had he tried to lure England into a secret compact by the offer of Egypt--in vain had he preserved Hungary to Austria--in vain sought to attach Prussia to himself by acts of friendship; and his Nemesis was pursuing him, avenging a long series of affronts to France. Unsupported by a single nation, he was at war with three; and after a brilliant reign of twenty-eight years unchecked by a single misfortune, he was about to die, leaving to his empire the legacy of a disastrous war, which was to end in defeat and humiliation. But a strange thing had happened. For a thousand years Europe had been trying to drive Mohammedanism out of the continent. No sacrifice had been considered too great if it would help to rid Christendom of that great iniquity. Now the Turkish Empire,--the spiritual heir and center of this old enemy,--no less vicious--no less an offense to the instincts of Christendom than before, was on the brink of extermination. It would have been a surprise to Richard the lion-hearted, and to Louis IX. the saint, if they could have foreseen what England and France would do eight hundred years later when such a crisis arrived! While the Sultan in the name of the Prophet was appealing to all the passions of a mad fanaticism to arise and "drive out the foreign infidels who were assailing their holy faith"--there was in England an enthusiasm for his defense as splendid as if the cause were a righteous one.