3. All control over the mouth of the Danube was taken from Russia and entrusted to the authority of the Riverain Commission (Art. XVII.). “A Commission shall be established, and shall be composed of delegates of Austria, Bavaria, the Sublime Porte, and Würtemburg (one for each of those Powers), to whom shall be added commissioners from the three Danubian Principalities, whose nomination shall have been approved by the Porte. This Commission, which shall be permanent: (1) Shall prepare regulations of navigation and river police; (2) Shall remove the impediments, of whatever nature they may be, which still prevent the application to the Danube of the arrangements of the Treaty of Vienna; (3) Shall order and cause to be executed the necessary works throughout the whole course of the river; (4) Shall, after the dissolution of the European Commission, see to maintaining the mouths of the Danube and the neighbouring parts of the sea in a navigable state” (Art. XVII.). 4. A portion of Bessarabia on the left bank of the Danube was ceded by Russia in order to make the Turkish defence against Russia more easy, and more fully to secure the freedom of the navigation of the Danube (Art. XX.). There is no doubt Russia was beaten by the combined alliance against her. She had entirely overreached herself and miscalculated the temper of the other Powers. She had thought that an Anglo-French alliance was impossible, and that Prussia and Austria would have remained neutral. Prussia indeed did maintain a neutrality at the commencement of the war, and the King of Prussia himself said, “I am resolved to maintain a position of complete neutrality, and to this I add with proud elevation that my people and myself are of one mind. They require absolute neutrality from me.” Austria, however, only maintained a conditional neutrality. The Austrian Emperor, in replying to the Russian Ambassador, Count Orloff, said, “Then must Austria be equally free to act as her interest and dignity may direct,” if Russia was to cross the Danube, or seek to occupy fresh territory, or not evacuate the Principalities when the war was over. Later on both Prussia and Austria formed a defensive alliance against Russia, and with the consent of the Porte, the Principalities were provisionally occupied by Austria. In England Lord Aberdeen did his utmost to bring about a peace between Russia and Turkey, but it was a hopeless task. Lord Palmerston, on the other hand, described the aggressive policy of Russia as follows:—