But though everything betokened war, there were forces that worked slowly but surely for a pacific settlement.  However threatening was the attitude of Russia, her rulers really desired peace.  The war had shown once again the weakness of that Power for offence.  Her strength lies in her boundless plains, in the devotion of her millions of peasants to the Czar, and in the patient, stubborn strength which is the outcome of long centuries of struggle with the yearly tyrant, winter.  Her weakness lies in the selfishness, frivolity, corruption, and narrowness of outlook of her governing class—­in short, in their incapacity for organisation.  Against the steady resisting power of her peasants the great Napoleon had hurled his legions in vain.  That campaign of 1812 exhibited the strength of Russia for defence.  But when, in fallacious trust in that precedent, she has undertaken great wars far from her base, failure has nearly always been the result.  The pathetic devotion of her peasantry has not made up for the mental and moral defects of her governing classes.  This fact had fixed itself on every competent observer in 1877.  The Emperor Alexander knew it only too well.  Now, early in 1878, it was fairly certain that his army would succumb under the frontal attacks of Turks and British, and the onset of the Austrians on their rear.

Therefore when, on Feb. 4, the Hapsburg State proposed to refer the terms of peace to a Conference of the Powers at Vienna, the consent of Russia was almost certain, provided that the prestige of the Czar remained unimpaired.  Three days later the place of meeting was changed to Berlin, the Conference also becoming a Congress, that is, a meeting where the chief Ministers of the Powers, not merely their Ambassadors, would take part.  The United Kingdom, France, and Italy at once signified their assent to this proposal.  As for Bismarck, he promised in a speech to the Reichstag (Feb. 19) that he would act as an “honest broker” between the parties most nearly concerned.  There is little doubt that Russia took this in a sense favourable to her claims, and she, too, consented.

Nevertheless, she sought to tie the hands of the Congress by binding Turkey to a preliminary treaty signed on March 3 at San Stefano, a village near to Constantinople.  The terms comprised those stated above (p. 225), but they also stipulated the cession of frontier districts to Servia and Montenegro, while Russia was to acquire the Roumanian districts east of the River Pruth, Roumania receiving the Dobrudscha as an equivalent.  Most serious of all was the erection of Bulgaria into an almost independent Principality, extending nearly as far south as Midia (on the Black Sea), Adrianople, Salonica, and beyond Ochrida in Albania.  As will be seen by reference to the map (p. 239), this Principality would then have comprised more than half of the Balkan Peninsula, besides including districts on the AEgean Sea and around the town of Monastir, for which the Greeks have never ceased to cherish hopes.  A Russian Commissioner was to supervise the formation of the government for two years; all the fortresses on the Danube were to be razed, and none others constructed; Turkish forces were required entirely to evacuate the Principality, which was to be occupied by Russian troops for a space of time not exceeding two years.