"Your Majesty the Tsar."
Just as George Villiers was about to speak, Nicholas I snapped angrily.
"You still dare to come! Have you come to swindle me again? It seems you no longer wish to live."
Hearing the Tsar say this, George Villiers instead felt his heart settle.
Because if the Tsar truly intended to kill him, there would be no need to waste words on a dead man.
"Your Majesty the Tsar, this is all a political necessity. I believe you can understand. I have truly come for peace this time; I ask that you believe me.
Your country needs peace, and I am precisely the man who can bring you peace."
In truth, Nicholas I did not want to keep fighting either. More accurately, Russia could no longer keep fighting.
Although Russia appeared to have been winning and winning and winning, those victories held no value at all. The worthless lands they seized not only failed to provide economic value, but instead required enormous funds and troops to maintain stability.
Nor were these victories as glorious as they sounded. Since the war began, Russian and Ottoman troop losses had actually been about the same—this was the one point Nicholas I found most unacceptable.
Naturally, the Ottomans had not counted the losses of the locally recruited militia, but Russia likewise had not counted the losses of the Balkan resistance forces fighting alongside the Russian army.
Losses before and after totaling nearly three hundred thousand men were painful even for Russia. And that was merely the loss of manpower; the losses in logistical supplies and personnel were impossible to tally.
The greatest economic blow was not the British embargo or domestic profiteers hoarding goods to drive up prices, but the war tax.
To see just how destructive war taxes could