The Anglo-French troops were still at Varna when, in the interests of peace, Austria brought such pressure upon the Czar that he recalled his armies from Turkish soil. But though the immediate danger to Constantinople was averted by this intervention, the governments of England and France agreed that there would be no safety for Turkey, and therefore no tranquillity in European politics, until the Russian fleet in the Black Sea had been captured or destroyed, and its base at Sebastopol levelled to the ground. When the demolition of this great naval station was thus determined on, the allies knew little of Sebastopol,[159] except that it was a fortress in the south of the Crimea, a peninsula jutting into the Black Sea from the mainland of Russia: and no soldier in western Europe had any conception of the difficulties awaiting the Anglo-French Expedition when it put to sea from Varna on September 7, 1854. Exclusive of the crews of the great fleet of warships by which the transports were escorted, the fighting men numbered about 63,000, of whom 28,000 were French, 7000 Turks, and 28,000 British. The French were under Marshal St Arnaud; Lord Raglan, who had served on Wellington’s staff in the Peninsular war, commanded the British troops. Neither of these officers lived to see the end of the campaign: St Arnaud died in September, 1854, and was succeeded by General Canrobert who, after a few months, resigned his post to General Pélissier: Lord Raglan fell a victim to cholera at the end of June, 1855, and was replaced by General Simpson. The Turks were commanded by Omar Pasha.