ABSTRACT
The news of Sinope unloosed a storm of extraordinary violence against Russia. The wave of emotion was resistless in England and took no account of the true facts. While strenuously fighting for peace, Stratford struggled furiously to conduct the war. He entirely failed to stop the Turkish military activities. The argument that the ‘massacre of Sinope’ was ‘a perfecdy legitimate operation of war’ is now generally accepted. It could not be so accepted at the time. Few governments have ever been subjected to pressure so sudden and so severe, and few ministers would have dared to resist it. Aberdeen thus for the third time adversely influenced events. His accession to power had convinced the Russian Emperor that England would never go to war with him. On January 12, 1854, ‘the new French proposition,’ or the ‘wine with the water left out,’ was administered by Seymour to Nesselrode.
