The Englishman's Counterattack

Britain, London.

"Damn it! What has that fool Aberdeen done!"

Prime Minister Robert Peel could not help but fly into a rage; he found the current situation utterly inconceivable. How had France and Austria managed to come together? And what was that idiot Majid doing!?

Canning spoke up, "Prime Minister, the most urgent matter is that we must break up the alliance between France and Austria."

Robert Peel retorted, "Damn it! That alliance of mutual suspicion never existed in the first place. Just like our own pact with the Russians, it was nothing more than a smokescreen performed for others to see!"

The latter statement hit on the essence of both alliances, yet it only deepened the confusion among the cabinet members. Why was the Prime Minister so infuriated by an alliance that did not even exist?

In reality, although Robert Peel believed it impossible for Britain and Russia to become allies, he did not mind leveraging the influence of the situation to further weaken Russia, while simultaneously crafting an image of an invincible Britain to secure a more flexible diplomatic stance.

However, the Europeans seemed to have overreacted to the affair. Consequently, not only did Britain fail to gain any advantage from the incident, but it also suffered a loss of national prestige and even severed another potential "path."

To make matters worse, the Ottomans seemed to have become frightened birds; once startled, they were prone to flying erratically, even going so far as to strike up a relationship with the Austrians.

The reason Britain was so wary of Russia was that the latter shared a border with the Ottoman Empire. While Austria was not as aggressively expansionist as Russia, it also bordered the Ottoman Empire, giving it an inherent advantage in the scramble for the Near East's legacy.