The two last immediately gave it.

After a brief delay the Disraeli Ministry sent a decisive refusal and made no alternative proposal, though one of its members, Sir Stafford Northcote, is known to have formulated a scheme[97].

The Cabinet took a still more serious step: on May 24, it ordered the British fleet in the Mediterranean to steam to Besika Bay, near the entrance to the Dardanelles--the very position it had taken before the Crimean War[98].

It is needless to say that this act not only broke up the "European Concert," but ended all hopes of compelling Turkey at once to grant the much-needed reforms.

That compulsion would have been irresistible had the British fleet joined the Powers in preventing the landing of troops from Asia Minor in the Balkan Peninsula.