It was in such circumstances hopeless to expect that the Note of the 5th of December, which had been accepted by the Porte, and which the Four Powers agreed to recommend to Russia on the very day that the despatch of the allied fleets to the Euxine was notified to Count Nesselrode (the 13th of January), would be accepted by the Czar. Indeed, but for Nesselrode, it would have been ignored with contempt.[140] Russia, however, temporised. Taking advantage of the false step of England and France in sending their fleets to the Euxine without consulting Austria and Prussia, Russia artfully attempted to detach the German States from the European Concert. Having failed in this, the Russian Government sent two replies to the Protocol of the 13th of January, transmitting the settlement which the Powers had agreed upon, and which the Porte had accepted. The proposal of the Powers provided, amongst other things, for (1) the evacuation of the Principalities as soon as possible; (2) the renewal of the ancient treaties; (3) a formal guarantee by Turkey to all her non-Mussulman subjects of their spiritual privileges, which should likewise be communicated to all the Powers, including Russia, “accompanied with suitable assurances” to each of them; (4) a pledge from the Porte to reform its system of administration; and (5) the customary promise on the part of the Sultan to uphold the old rights and immunities granted to his Christian subjects by existing treaties. Russia rejected these proposals, and committed the blunder of extending her demands in her first series of counter-propositions.[141] But subsequently she submitted a second series of propositions, in which she withdrew the stipulations as to political refugees, and her ungenerous demand that the Porte should negotiate terms of peace at St. Petersburg, or at the Russian headquarters in Moldavia. The Powers decided that the Russian settlement could not be recommended to Turkey, their main objection being, that while their terms embodied a recognition of the principle that the Turkish concessions and guarantees were given to Europe as well as to Russia, the Russian terms proceeded on the assumption that they were given to Russia alone. The Czar here was in the wrong. In the war on the Danube the Turks had been victorious. He insisted, however, that they should sue for peace, as if they were prostrate in defeat. On the other hand, the Four Powers proposed terms which did not imply that victory or defeat rested with either belligerent. The only defence that can be made for the obstinacy of the Emperor Nicholas in thus refusing to cross the golden bridge of honourable retreat built for him by the Powers is, that the War Party in Russia was as rabid as the War Party in England. “The Emperor,” wrote Sir H. Seymour to Lord Clarendon on the 2nd of January, “is infinitely more moderate than the immense bulk of his subjects,” who denounced Nesselrode “as an alien, a traitor, and a man bought by English