The geographical conditions of Russia, and the political state of Turkey, favoured the outbreak of war between these States. Russia has no outlet to the sea except through the Baltic in the north, which is frozen in winter, and through the Bosphorus in the south, which is open all the year, but which is dominated by the Sultan so long as Constantinople is the capital of Turkey. Russia has, therefore, an obvious interest either in making Turkey her vassal, or in expelling the Turks from Europe, and establishing a Power at Constantinople in servitude to the Czar. It is almost a heresy to say that Russia has not aimed at seizing Constantinople herself. Yet if we are to base our judgment on authentic historical documents, and not on the heated imaginings of excited Russophobists, it is necessary to say this. The Emperor Nicholas was the most aggressive of modern Czars, and there is no reason to doubt the cynical candour with which he expressed his views on this subject to Sir George Hamilton Seymour, in his conversations with him early in the year.[98] Yet it is certain that his ideas as to the reconstitution of European Turkey in the event of the Turkish Empire breaking up, took the form of organising a series of autonomous States, which, like the Danubian Principalities in 1853, should be under his protection, though, perhaps, under the nominal suzerainty of the Turks--by that time banished to Asia Minor--“bag and baggage.” These ideas may have been right or wrong. It is, however, just to say that they were the ideas of the Czar, and that they do not correspond with the scheme for making Constantinople the capital of Russia, which most popular English writers accuse him of cherishing.[99] The interest of Russia being thus revealed, let us see where her opportunity lay. It lay in the fact that the Ottomans, though they had enough bodily strength to conquer, had never enough brain-power to govern a European Empire. In this respect they differed signally from the equally savage hordes of Manchu Tartars, who overran China, and who, instead of destroying, adapted themselves to the civilisation with which they came in contact. The Christian provinces of Turkey, and the Greek Christians, under the rule of the Sultan were misgoverned, plundered, and at times tortured by the myrmidons of a barbarous and feeble autocracy. The Russian Czar, as head of a nation fanatically devoted to the Greek cult, could always find in this misgovernment and oppression apt opportunity for interfering between the Sultan and his Greek subjects. Moreover, in every act of interference the Czar of Muscovy knows that he will be supported to the death by the fervid fanaticism of the Russian people.