London
Upon receiving news that the Kingdom of Sardinia intended to enter the war, Prime Minister John Russell was delighted. No one disliked a perceptive little brother like that.
After the Near East War broke out, their support for the Ottomans had displeased many people, placing them on the opposite side of European public opinion. Even within the United Kingdom, many in the media had seized on the government and lambasted it.
Reality once again proved the importance of a good reputation. The Ottoman Empire's name stank so badly that even a joint effort by Britain and France could not whitewash it.
Public opinion was only a minor issue. It was not the first time the British had stood against international opinion. Those armchair cannons could only curse at them; they could not harm so much as a hair on their heads. John Russell did not care.
But recently, not only had the Principality of Montenegro joined the Russians, even their little brother Greece had begun making moves of its own, as though declaring just how unpopular their alliance with the Ottomans was.
To deal with pressure from the opposition, John Russell urgently needed to produce results and prove that this operation had been the right decision.
He no longer expected a military breakthrough; the odds were simply too low. With only twenty thousand British troops at the front, what results could they possibly achieve in a war involving over a million combatants? That was genuinely doubtful.
If military means would not work, then diplomacy would. That was their specialty. Was it not merely a matter of gathering allies? The British Empire had ample experience.
Back then, even Napoleon, fierce as he was, had been done in by the anti-French coalition they assembled. Though the Russians posed a considerable threat