rejected the most sweeping demands. Nicholas fumed at "the infernal dictatorship of this Redcliffe" whose name and political ascendancy at the Porte personified for him the whole Eastern Question, Stratford Canning, 1st Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe. The British and the French sent in naval task forces to support the Ottomans, as Russia had prepared to seize the Danubian Principalities. All the calculations of the Russian emperor turned out to be erroneous. Britain refused his proposals, it was not possible to prevent the Anglo-French rapprochement, Austria opposed his policy, the Ottoman Empire showed intransigence. On the contrary, a favourable situation was developing for Britain. Britain had great naval power and a powerful economy, but did not have a strong land army. The alliance with France, which had a strong land army, made it possible to strike at Russia. "With the help of French infantry, it was possible to overturn Russia's positions with one blow" First hostilities In February 1853, the British government of Prime Minister Lord Aberdeen reappointed Stratford Canning as British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. Having resigned the ambassadorship in January, he had been replaced by Colonel Rose as chargé d'affaires. Lord Stratford then turned around, sailed back to Constantinople, arriving there on 5 April 1853 and convinced the Sultan there to reject the Russian treaty proposal as compromising Ottoman independence. The Leader of the Opposition in the British House of Commons, Benjamin Disraeli, blamed Aberdeen and Stratford's actions for making war inevitable, which started the process that would force the Aberdeen government to resign in January 1855 over the war. Shortly after he had learned of the failure of Menshikov's diplomacy toward the end of June 1853, the Tsar sent armies under the commands of Field Marshal Ivan Paskevich and General Mikhail Gorchakov across the River Pruth into the Ottoman-controlled Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia. Fewer than half of the 80,000 Russian soldiers who crossed the Pruth in 1853 survived. By far, nearly all of the deaths would result from sickness, rather than action, since the Russian Army still suffered from medical services that ranged from bad to none. Russia had obtained recognition from the Ottoman Empire of the Tsar's role as special guardian of the Orthodox Christians in Moldavia and Wallachia. Russia now used the Sultan's failure to resolve the issue of the protection of the Christian sites in the Holy Land as a pretext for