328 THE BEARING OF THE WAR chap, cribed a kind of dishonour to the surrender of XII. any 'sovereign rights,' Lord John Kussell referred more than once to the lessons of History, sub- mitting for instance that Louis Quatorze had con- sented to the demolition of Dunquerque without its having been thought that in making the sacri- fice for the sake of peace he descended from high estate ; but Prince Gortchakoff was ready, this time, with an adequate reply. He acknowledged that a sovereign might be driven to such a con- cession after meeting an unbroken series of mili- tary disasters, but denied, as he had a full right to do, that Eussia at the time of the Conference had been brought into any such plight. She had been vanquished in each of the battles ; but her great Engineer had done much towards redressing the balance thus swayed. The Western Powers maintained that, to con- tent themselves with the ' counterpoise ' plan would be in effect to postpone the deliverance of the Sultan's dominions from the danger of Eussian aggression, and would leave it to be achieved, if at all, in a more or less distant future, by other, if any, men and by other, if any, alliances. In the face of even that argument, there is ground for maintaining that the ' counterpoise ' plan on the whole would have formed the best sort of protection to the Sultan's dominions ; * but
- The Porte seems to have so judged in 1871, for it assented
with apparent willingness to the change then made ; and indeed eo early as 1867 Fuad Pasha was willing that the Neutrality principle should be given up. Beust, vol. ii. p. 106.
