This rivalry in philanthropic zeal was not pushed to its logical issue, war.  The British fleet stopped short of the Bosporus, but within sight of the Russian lines.  True, these were pushed eastwards slightly beyond the limits agreed on with the Turks; but an arrangement was arrived at between Lord Derby and Prince Gortchakoff (Feb. 19) that the Russians would not occupy the lines of Bulair close to Constantinople, or the Peninsula of Gallipoli commanding the Dardanelles, provided that British forces were not landed in that important strait[160].  So matters rested, both sides regarding each other with the sullenness of impotent wrath.  As Bismarck said, a war would have been a fight between an elephant and a whale.

[Footnote 160:  Hertslet, iv. p. 2670.]

The situation was further complicated by an invasion of Thessaly by the Greeks (Feb. 3); but they were withdrawn at once on the urgent remonstrance of the Powers, coupled with a promise that the claims of Greece would be favourably considered at the general peace[161].

[Footnote 161:  L. Sergeant, Greece in the Nineteenth Century (1897), ch. xi.]

In truth, all the racial hatreds, aspirations, and ambitions that had so long been pent up in the south-east of Europe now seemed on the point of bursting forth and overwhelming civilisation in a common ruin.  Just as the earth’s volcanic forces now and again threaten to tear their way through the crust, so now the immemorial feuds of Moslems and Christians, of Greeks, Servians, Bulgars, Wallachs, and Turks, promised to desolate the slopes of the Balkans, of Rhodope and the Pindus, and to spread the lava tide of war over the half of the Continent.  The Russians and Bulgars, swarming over Roumelia, glutted their revenge for past defeats and massacres by outrages well-nigh as horrible as that of Batak.  At once the fierce Moslems of the Rhodope Mountains rose in self-defence or for vengeance.  And while the Russian eagles perforce checked their flight within sight of Stamboul, the Greeks and Armenians of that capital—­nay, the very occupants of the foreign embassies—­trembled at sight of the lust of blood that seized on the vengeful Ottomans.

Nor was this all.  Far away beyond the northern horizon the war cloud hung heavily over the Carpathians.  The statesmen of Vienna, fearing that the terms of their bargain with Russia were now forgotten in the intoxication of her triumph, determined to compel the victors to lay their spoils before the Great Powers.  In haste the Austrian and Hungarian troops took station on the great bastion of the Carpathians, and began to exert on the military situation the pressure which had been so fatal to Russia in her Turkish campaign of 1854.