February, 1853, the Porte adjudicated on the rival claims in a letter addressed to the French Chargé d’Affaires, and in a firman to the Greek patriarch. The representative of France was told that the Latins were to have the keys they demanded. The Patriarch was told that Greeks, Armenians, and Latins should have keys also, and that the Latins were not to have any of the exclusive rights over the Holy Places that they claimed. When it became known that the Porte had thus spoken with “two voices,” France complained that the exclusive rights demanded by her under the Treaty of 1740 were denied in the firman. Russia, on behalf of the Greeks, claimed credit for moderation in accepting the firman as a compromise, and insisted on its being publicly proclaimed at Jerusalem as a charter of Greek privileges. The Porte, in deference to the opposition of France, refused to make public proclamation of the firman.[103] The Russian Consul-General left Jerusalem in high dudgeon. “The Latins,” says Mr. Walpole, “on hearing the decision of the Porte, that they should be allowed to celebrate mass once a year in the Church of the Virgin, near Gethsemane, but that they should not be allowed to disturb the altar and its ornaments, declared that it was impossible to celebrate mass on a schismatic slab of marble, and before a crucifix whose feet were separated.”[104] In this quarrel of a few ignorant monks over the mummeries of their rival rituals lay the germ of that great war in which England sacrificed the lives of 28,000 brave men, and spent £30,000,000 of sterling treasure! [Illustration: CONVENT OF THE NATIVITY, BETHLEHEM.] The Porte endeavoured, by contradictory concessions, such as by publicly reading the firman, and by permitting the Latins to put a star over the altar of the Nativity, to please both parties--but in vain. Russia, towards the end of 1852, had moved a _corps d’armée_ on the frontier of Moldavia. France threatened to send her fleet to Syria; and in the end of February, 1853, the Czar sent Prince Menschikoff on a special mission to Constantinople, for the purpose of enforcing the Russian demands. The turn in affairs that placed Lord Aberdeen at the head of the Queen’s Government did not tend to moderate these demands, or induce the Czar to treat the Porte with any delicacy. The Czar, in fact, was honestly convinced that his views as to the future of Turkey were, in the main, shared by Lord Aberdeen, and therefore by the British Cabinet. It was [Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE CHAPEL OF THE NATIVITY, BETHLEHEM.]