The eyes of Nicholas were still upon the south, and the eyes of Europe were upon Nicholas. There can be very little doubt that the whole of the moralising Romanoffs of the nineteenth century had, behind their professions of disinterested regard for the victims of the Turk, a more or less clearly conceived design of gaining Constantinople and passing over the Balkans, to the Mediterranean. Whatever sincerity there was in their zeal for the protection of the Christian subjects of the Sultan, they were far from insensible to the fact that these helpless Greek Christians occupied territory which would, if it were annexed, bring Russia at last to a free and warm sea. In Alexander this motive was so far checked by an effort at sincerity, that he would not interfere between the Greek and the Turk; he would be true to his later resolution to help no insurgents. Nicholas held an even sterner attitude toward insurgents, but the moment Christian subjects of the Sultan rose against _their_ ruler he entirely forgot that they were rebels against an hereditary autocracy. We shall find his successors equally lenient to rebellion in the Balkans; and it is scarcely a diplomatic secret that the Serbs, when they received the brotherly support of the last of the Romanoffs in 1914, looked silently and anxiously for a less disinterested purpose in the act of that monarch. Nicholas now had the Sultan almost in a state of vassalage, and it seemed to him that he had so far raised the prestige of Russia, and won the gratitude of Austria, that he need hardly consider the western Powers. Hence in 1853 he made a pompous objection when the Sultan granted the French certain privileges in regard to the Christians of Palestine. He sent Prince Menshikoff to Constantinople to establish a definite Russian protectorate over all the Greek Christians in the Ottoman Empire. Secretly, however, Menshikoff was to arrange an alliance with Turkey against France, in case that Power gave trouble, and the secret mission became known to the other Powers. It has been the diplomatic pastime of the Sultans for several generations to take advantage of the mutual jealousy of the Christian Powers which read them such admirable lessons in virtue. Supported, behind the scenes, by the English ambassador, the Sultan refused the Russian proposals, and Nicholas decided upon war. He so little knew the secret action of England that he discussed with the English ambassador at St. Petersburg a plan for the division of the Ottoman Empire: England should, in the teeth of France, occupy Egypt, and Russia should take Constantinople. He at least expected England to be neutral.