Between the 1st and 30th of July, while the Russians were settling down in the Principalities and acting like proprietors, projects of settlement grew and withered apace. The Four Powers were endeavouring to find out what each thought and what each would do. The idea of a Conference at Vienna occurred to several persons at once. Lord Clarendon started a scheme, based on the project of a Convention between Russia and Turkey, which he drew up. M. Drouyn de Lhuys framed a note to be signed by Turkey, and accepted by Russia. There was Count Buol's project of a fusion of Russian and Turkish ideas. Independently of all this, the representatives of the Four Powers at Constantinople got up a scheme of their own, which proved to be distasteful to everybody but the Turks. Peace projectors abounded, while Russia steadily went on with her design, occupied the Principalities in a military fashion, seized on the post-office, intercepted the Sultan's tribute, sent gunboats up the Danube, and when the Porte recalled the Hospodars, induced them to disobey the Sultan's mandate, and forced him to dismiss them. Nor did Russia stop here. She sent emissaries into Servia and Bulgaria; she scattered her manifesto broadcast; she strove to raise a spirit of disaffection; and she replied with haughtiness to the complaints of the Western Powers. In the dominions of the Sultan a corresponding spirit arose. The Czar's manifesto had been read in all his churches; the Ulemas answered by sermons calculated to raise a spirit of counter-fanaticism. It was manifest that Turkish ardour was not extinct. Lord Stratford de Redcliffe began to fear more from the rashness than the timidity of the Divan. Military and naval preparations went on briskly, and by the middle of August the Sultan had the satisfaction of knowing that he could defend Shumla, the Balkan, and the Bosphorus, if pressed by the Czar. Lord Stratford de Redcliffe did not fail to lay before his Government the real issues at stake, nor did he disguise his doubts of the possibility of coming to a settlement without resort to war.