Only one point was certain. For reasons of his own, the Czar chose to leave Roumanzoff nominally in office until the result of the war should be decided, although Roumanzoff was opposed to the Czar’s policy. The chancellor did not stand alone in his hostility to the war; probably a majority of the Russian people shared the feeling. Even the army and its old General Koutousoff, though elated with an immense triumph, grumbled at being obliged to fight the battles of Germany, and would gladly have returned to their own soil. The Czar himself could not afford to break his last tie with the French interest, but was wise to leave a path open by which he could still retreat in case his war in Germany failed. If Napoleon should succeed once more in throwing the Russian army back upon Russian soil, Alexander might still be obliged to use Roumanzoff’s services if not to resume his policy. Such a suspicion might not wholly explain Alexander’s course toward Roumanzoff and Koutousoff, but no one could doubt that it explained the chancellor’s course toward the Czar. Indeed, Roumanzoff made little concealment of his situation or his hopes. Adams could without much difficulty divine that the failure of the Czar in Germany would alone save Roumanzoff in St. Petersburg, and that the restoration of Roumanzoff to power was necessary to reinvigorate the mediation. Castlereagh’s first positive refusal to accept the mediation was notified to Count Lieven in May, and was known to Roumanzoff in St. Petersburg about the middle of June. Early in July the Czar received it, and by his order Nesselrode, in a despatch to Lieven dated July 9, expressed “the perfect satisfaction which his Imperial Majesty felt in the reasons which actuated the conduct of this [British] government on a point of so much delicacy and importance.”[446] The Czar was then in the midst of difficulties. The result of the war was doubtful, and depended on Austria. Just as news of the armistice arrived in St. Petersburg, Minister Adams went to Roumanzoff, June 22, to inform him of Gallatin’s and Bayard’s appointment. Roumanzoff in return gave Adams explicit information of England’s refusal to accept the Czar’s offer. Adams immediately recorded it in his Diary:[447]-- “He [Roumanzoff] said that he was very sorry to say he had received since he had seen me [June 15] further despatches from Count Lieven, stating that the British government, with many very friendly and polite assurances that there was no mediation which they should so readily and cheerfully accept as that of the Emperor of Russia, had however stated that their differences with the United States of America involving certain principles of the internal government of England were of a nature which they did not think suitable to be settled by a mediation.”