Yet, without the conquest of Constantinople, Russia could never carry the idea of Pansclavism:  for in European Turkey a vast stock of the Sclavonic race dwells, from Bulgaria over Servia and Bosnia down to Montenegro, and across through Rumelia.  Moreover, the conquest of Constantinople is the hereditary leading idea of Russian policy.  Peter, called the Great, the founder of the Russian Empire, in making it from a half-Asiatic a European State, bequeathed this policy as a sacred legacy to all his posterity, in his political testament, which is the Magna Charta of Russian power and despotism.  All his successors have energetically followed that inherited direction.  Alexander movingly avowed that Constantinople is the key to his own house, and his brother did and does more than all his predecessors to get that key.

When the Empress Catharine visited the recently conquered Krimea, Potemkin raised to her honour a triumphal arch, with the motto—­“Hereby is the road to Constantinople.”  Czar Nicholas has since learned that it is by Vienna, rather.  Russia therefore decided to get rid of this obstacle, and to convert it out of an obstacle into a TOOL.  A direct conquest would have been dangerous, because it would have met the opposition of all Europe.  Russia therefore tried it first by monetary influence, and had pretty well advanced in it.  Metternich himself was a pensioner to Russia.  But the watchful, independent spirit of constitutional Hungary still hindered the practical result of that bribery.

And, mark well, gentlemen, in consequence of the geographical situation of her dominions, and being also sovereigns of Hungary, it was chiefly the house of Austria which was considered to be and cherished as the great bulwark against Russia—­charged especially with a jealous guardianship of Turkish rights.  And indeed had the house of Austria comprehended the conditions of her existence, attached Hungary to herself by respecting her independence and her constitutional rights, and developed the power of her hereditary dominions, and placed herself upon a constitutional basis, she could have maintained her respectable position of guardianship for centuries.  Russia was aware of that fact.

It is the intrigue of Russia, which by money and emissaries for years before infused the notion of Pansclavism among the Bohemians, Poles, Croats, Serbs, under the crown of Austria, equally as among the Sclave population of Turkey; which encouraged Austria to attack Hungary, by promising her aid in case of need.  If Austria succeeded, the constitutional life of Hungary, in many ways so offensive to Russia, was overthrown:  if Austria failed, she became a dependency of Russia.  And by the unwarrantable carelessness of some powers, the complicity of others, the latter alternative is achieved.  Austria, who was to have balanced Russia, is thrown into her scale:  instead of being a barrier, she is her vanguard, and her tool—­her high road to Constantinople, her auxiliary army to flank it.