by Simon Black, Sovereign Man:

On the fifth of April in the year 1853, a diplomat from the United Kingdom with the most quintessentially British name — Stratford Canning — arrived by boat to Constantinople and immediately took an emergency meeting with Sultan Abdulmejid of the Ottoman Empire.

After decades of relative peace, Europe was once again on the brink of war. Russia was a rising power at the time, and, eager to flex its muscles, Russia threatened to invade the Ottoman Empire over completely ridiculous reasons.