War was declared by England against Russia on the 28th of March, and by France on the 27th, the military alliance between the two Powers being signed on the 12th. Lord Raglan had been appointed to command the British army, whilst Marshal St. Arnaud headed that of France, and the British troops had departed for the seat of war on the 20th of February, amidst scenes of great excitement and popular enthusiasm, which naturally inflamed the bellicose feeling of the metropolis. On the 30th of March the French occupied Gallipoli, in European Turkey, a little above the point where the Dardanelles expand into the Propontis or Sea of Marmora. The English detachments began to arrive on the 5th of April. The allies threw fortified lines across the peninsula, so that if Russia had driven back the Turks from the Danube and, crossing the Balkans to Adrianople, had made a dash for Constantinople, as in 1829, the Turks would have been paralysed by the allied forces on their right flank. But the pride of England as a maritime Power had to be gratified, and, as the ice was breaking in the Baltic, it was decided to order a great fleet to reduce Cronstadt and let the Czar hear the voice of England thundering from her cannon at the very gates of his capital. Sir Charles Napier, the Admiral appointed to command the magnificent Armada at Spithead, was entertained at an absurd Reform Club banquet on the 7th of March. There he, Lord Palmerston, and Sir James Graham, delivered themselves of flippant, vaunting orations, which Mr. Bright, in the House of Commons, denounced as “discreditable to the grave and responsible statesmen of a Christian nation.”[147] Very different was the feeling of the Queen when, on the 11th of March, she reviewed the stately procession of war-ships at Spithead, as they steamed past her yacht, while she waved her handkerchief to the Admiral and crew of the colossal _Duke of Wellington_, which brought up the rear. Before leaving town she wrote to Lord Aberdeen, “We are just starting to see the fleet, which is to sail at once for its important destination. It will be a solemn moment.[148] Many a heart will be very heavy, and many a prayer, including our own, will be offered up for its safety and glory.”[149] On the 12th of April Napier sailed from Kiöge Bay and completely blockaded the Gulf of Finland. Russia was thus paralysed when she evacuated the Principalities. Omar Pasha kept her at bay on the other side of the Pruth. Napier locked up her fleet and shipping in the Baltic. The allied armies covered Constantinople. The allied fleets swept the Euxine. The “material guarantees” which she had seized for the purpose of forcing her terms on Turkey were wrested from her hands, and as war abrogates all treaties, she had even lost the shadow of a claim to exercise her old rights of protection over the Sultan’s Christian subjects. Russia was now at the mercy of the Western Powers, and had they simply remained