When the Royal Irish reached England in June, 1854, after a six months’ voyage from Calcutta, they were greeted by the news that for the first time since Waterloo Britain had become embroiled in a European war, and in alliance with France had sent troops to protect Turkey against the Russians, who had invaded the part of the Sultan’s dominions then known as the Danubian principalities. The Czar had long cast covetous eyes on Turkey, whose European provinces on the Ægean and the Sea of Marmora prevented the expansion of Russia towards the Mediterranean, and thus limited her seaboard to the Baltic and the Black Sea. In the middle of the nineteenth century Turkey appeared to be so decadent a country that its ruler was commonly described as “the sick man”; the Czar actually threw out suggestions to England that she should divide with him “the sick man’s heritage,” and on her indignant refusal he determined to bide his time and pick a quarrel with the Sultan on the first opportunity. A pretext soon presented itself in a dispute between the Greek and Latin branches of the Christian faith concerning their respective rights in the Holy Places of Jerusalem: the Czar hotly espoused the cause of the Greek Church, while the Emperor Napoleon III., reviving the historic claim of France to represent the Latin Church in Palestine, vigorously supported the views of the Roman Catholics. The Sultan, profoundly indifferent to the rivalries of those whom his religion taught him to regard as infidel dogs, attempted to propitiate both sides, but with such conspicuous ill-success that the Czar declared war against him in October, 1853, and invaded the Turkish provinces on the Danube. To defend Turkey against this wanton and unprovoked attack, England and France in the spring of 1854 landed a considerable number of troops at Varna, a Bulgarian port on the Black Sea. It was from no love of the Turks that England thus plunged into war with Russia: she took up arms in pursuance of the foreign policy which for centuries she has followed on the Continent, and sided with the weaker state--not on altruistic grounds but solely to preserve the balance of power in Europe, and to prevent the Czar from possessing himself of Constantinople, and thus obtaining direct access to the Mediterranean Sea.