"Ambassador, do you know? The Ottoman Empire is ill, and it can no longer sustain its vast territories!"
This conversation took place in February 1853 at the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoye Selo, St. Petersburg. The speaker was none other than Tsar Nicholas I of the Russian Empire, and his audience was Lord Seymour, the plenipotentiary ambassador of Britain to the Russian Empire.
Since January 15, 1853, after the Emperor of the Russian Empire formulated the nonsensical plan to partition the Ottoman Empire, Nicholas I personally took the role of the chief architect of the partition, and it was only natural that Lord Seymour became the main target of his persuasion.
