One of the most self-willed of British Ministers was Stratford Canning (Lord Stratford de Redcliffe). It is generally accepted that his personal diplomacy at Constantinople, where he began his diplomatic career in 1808 and where he ended it in 1858 after various intervening missions, was one of the causes which brought on the Crimean war. After reciting that Lord Stratford constantly held private interviews with the Sultan and did his utmost to alarm him, urging him to reject accommodation with Russia, and promising him the armed assistance of England, John Bright stated that all this was done without instructions from the home government. Lord Clarendon wrote: “He is bent on war and on playing the first part in settling the great Eastern question.” When the war came on, Lord Granville wrote: “We have generals whom we do not trust, and whom we do not know how to replace. We have an Ambassador at Constantinople, an able man, a cat whom no one cares to bell, whom some think a principal cause of the war, others the cause of some of the calamities which have attended the conduct of the war; and whom we know to have thwarted or neglected many of the objects of his Government.” Labouchere, who served under Lord Stratford in 1862, wrote afterwards that the despatches of Stratford during the Crimean war could not be recognized as the originals from which Mr. Kinglake drew his material for a narrative of the ambassador’s career.[D] He thought that Stratford’s great power at Constantinople was due to his long stay there which made it necessary for the Turks to remain on good terms with him. Labouchere also claims that Lord Stratford misled his own government by getting the Sultan to publish certain reform decrees which he would send home as evidence of good government, never explaining that such decrees were entirely dead letters. [D] Labouchere wrote: “Lord Stratford was one of the most detestable of the human race. He was arrogant, resentful and spiteful. He hated the Emperor Nicholas because he had declined to accept him as Ambassador to Russia and the Crimean war was his revenge. In every way he endeavored to envenom the quarrel and to make war certain.” The danger and disadvantage of having a diplomat or ruler inject his personal ambitions and dislikes into his diplomacy have, unfortunately, been frequently exemplified. With respect to the causes of the Crimean war, it will be remembered that Napoleon III had a personal grudge against Emperor Nicholas who had addressed him “Sire and Good Friend” instead of “Brother” as is customary among monarchs. Though Napoleon answered him, acknowledging the compliment implied from the fact that one may choose one’s friends but not one’s brothers, yet he never forgot the slight.