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in St Petersburg of a complete breakdown of the sultan'spower. It brings out a central fact in Russian policytowards the Straits. Russia was always weaker at seathan Great Britain or France; hence, as long as theywere her chief potential enemies, she was primarilyconcerned to keep hostile fleets outside the Black Searather than to open the Straits for her own fleet, sincethis was almost bound to involve as well opening themto other fleets. It is true that a closed Black Sea meantthat the Russian fleet there had to be self-contained andcould not be used elsewhere, for instance in the Far Eastduring the war of 1904-5 with Japan. But it meantsome additional defence of her Black Sea lands, providedof course that Turkey herself was not at war withher.On the other hand, if Russia could secure the allianceof Turkey in war, all could be well; both Straits wouldbe opened to her warships alone. This happened inpractice only once. In 1799 Russia made alliance withTurkey against France, when Napoleon was in Egypt,and Russian warships sailed through the Straits to operatein the Mediterranean and contest the Ionian isles.Thirty years later Egypt, then under the sultan's semiindependentvassal Mehemet Ali, again threw him intothe arms of Russia. In 1833, on the reluctant invitationof the sultan, for the first and only time a Russianexpeditionary force landed at the Bosphorus, to defendConstantinople against threatened Egyptian attack. Theresult was the Russian triumph of the treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi (1833). A defensive alliance was concluded foreight years; Russia undertook to assist Turkey to thefull if she were attacked, though she was careful not toguarantee the territorial integrity of the empire; in returnTurkey promised to keep the Straits closed to all foreignwarships. Palmerston, who denounced the alliance withextreme asperity, was wrong in believing that thetreaty gave Russia the right to send warships throughthe Straits in peace-time. It did not explicitly do so.Nesselrode in fact interpreted the treaty defensively andheld that it would be neither legal nor politic to sendwarships through the Straits in peace-time, though his