For several months, the Russians' offensive had made no progress, and the Austrian Empire had shown no sign of intervening in the Balkans.
This gave the British hope. As long as they had enough time, they could keep the situation in the Near East unchanged.
Yet reality was that the Austrian Empire suddenly entered the war, and its reason for doing so was, incredibly, to defend the Holy Alliance's lawful borders.
Though the Austrian Empire did not say it outright, the meaning was obvious: it had been forced into a just war.
John Russell did not dwell on whether this war was just. The Austrian Empire's entry alone was enough to fill him with despair.
That despair could not be eased, because everyone knew Britain could not possibly defeat the Holy Alliance on land. War had never even been among the options he considered.
As for Colin Campbell's so-called theory of striking first, to John Russell it was nothing but a joke. Wear down their living strength?
Austria and Russia alone had more than a million standing troops. Wear down my ass!
How many men could this battle possibly take out? Eighty thousand? A hundred thousand?
They had only just deployed a little over two hundred thousand troops, and the Ottoman Empire was already unable to hold on. Given Britain's current economic condition, how many troops could it send to the Near East?
Besides, the entire world was in turmoil now. Britain simply could not commit all its main forces to the Balkans.
The most crucial issue was that even if Britain threw every last man into the battlefield regardless of cost, the outcome of this war would still be difficult to change.
John Russell saw only two options: one was to break apart the Holy Alliance and dismantle this