CHAPTER XXI.

England and France in 1851--Russia under Nicholas--The Hungarian

Refugees--Dispute between France and Russia on the Holy Places--Nicholas

and the British Ambassador--Lord Stratford de Redcliffe--Menschikoff's

Mission--Russian Troops enter the Danubian Principalities--Lord Aberdeen's

Cabinet--Movements of the Fleets--The Vienna Note--The Fleets pass the

Dardanelles--Turkish Squadron destroyed at Sinope--Declaration of

War--Policy of Austria--Policy of Prussia--The Western Powers and the

European Concert--Siege of Silistria--The Principalities evacuated--Further

objects of the Western Powers--Invasion of the Crimea--Battle of the

Alma--The Flank March--Balaclava--Inkermann--Winter in the Crimea--Death of

Nicholas--Conference of Vienna--Austria--Progress of the Siege--Plans of

Napoleon III.--Canrobert and Pélissier--Unsuccessful Assault--Battle of the

Tchernaya--Capture of the Malakoff--Fall of Sebastopol--Fall of

Kars--Negotiations for Peace--The Conference of Paris--Treaty of Paris

--The Danubian Principalities--Continued discord in the Ottoman

Empire--Revision of the Treaty of Paris in 1871.

[England in 1851.]

The year 1851 was memorable in England as that of the Great Exhibition.

Thirty-six years of peace, marked by an enormous development of

manufacturing industry, by the introduction of railroads, and by the

victory of the principle of Free Trade, had culminated in a spectacle so

impressive and so novel that to many it seemed the emblem and harbinger of

a new epoch in the history of mankind, in which war should cease, and the

rivalry of nations should at length find its true scope in the advancement

of the arts of peace. The apostles of Free Trade had idealised the cause

for which they contended. The unhappiness and the crimes of nations had, as

they held, been due principally to the action of governments, which plunged

harmless millions into war for dynastic ends, and paralysed human energy by

their own blind and senseless interference with the natural course of

exchange. Compassion for the poor and the suffering, a just resentment

against laws which in the supposed interest of a minority condemned the

mass of the nation to a life of want, gave moral fervour and elevation to

the teaching of Cobden and those who shared his spirit. Like others who

have been constrained by a noble enthusiasm, they had their visions; and in

their sense of the greatness of that new force which was ready to operate

upon human life, they both forgot the incompleteness of their own doctrine,

and under-estimated the influences which worked, and long must work, upon

mankind in an opposite direction. In perfect sincerity the leader of

English economical reform at the middle of this century looked forward to a

reign of peace as the result of unfettered intercourse between the members

of the European family. What the man of genius and conviction had

proclaimed the charlatan repeated in his turn. Louis Napoleon appreciated

the charm which schemes of commercial development exercised upon the

trading classes in France. He was ready to salute the Imperial eagles as

objects of worship and to invoke the memories of Napoleon's glory when

addressing soldiers; when it concerned him to satisfy the commercial world,

he was the very embodiment of peace and of peaceful industry. "Certain

persons," he said, in an address at Bordeaux, shortly before assuming the

title of Emperor, "say that the Empire is war. I say that the Empire is

peace; for France desires peace, and when France is satisfied the world is

tranquil. We have waste territories to cultivate, roads to open, harbours

to dig, a system of railroads to complete; we have to bring all our great

western ports into connection with the American continent by a rapidity of

communication which we still want. We have ruins to restore, false gods to

overthrow, truths to make triumphant. This is the sense that I attach to

the Empire; these are the conquests which I contemplate." Never had the

ideal of industrious peace been more impressively set before mankind than

in the years which succeeded the convulsion of 1848. Yet the epoch on which

Europe was then about to enter proved to be pre-eminently an epoch of war.

In the next quarter of a century there was not one of the Great Powers

which was not engaged in an armed struggle with its rivals. Nor were the

wars of this period in any sense the result of accident, or disconnected

with the stream of political tendencies which makes the history of the age.

With one exception they left in their train great changes for which the

time was ripe, changes which for more than a generation had been the

recognised objects of national desire, but which persuasion and revolution

had equally failed to bring into effect. The Crimean War alone was barren

in positive results of a lasting nature, and may seem only to have

postponed, at enormous cost of life, the fall of a doomed and outworn

Power. But the time has not yet arrived when the real bearing of the

overthrow of Russia in 1854 on the destiny of the Christian races of Turkey

can be confidently expressed. The victory of the Sultan's protectors

delayed the emancipation of these races for twenty years; the victory, or

the unchecked aggression, of Russia in 1854 might possibly have closed to

them for ever the ways to national independence.

[Russian policy under Nicholas.]

The plans formed by the Empress Catherine in the last century for the

restoration of the Greek Empire under a prince of the Russian House had

long been abandoned at St. Petersburg. The later aim of Russian policy

found its clearest expression in the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, extorted

from Sultan Mahmud in 1833 in the course of the first war against Mehemet

Ali. This Treaty, if it had not been set aside by the Western Powers, would

have made the Ottoman Empire a vassal State under the Czar's protection. In

the concert of Europe which was called into being by the second war of

Mehemet Ali against the Sultan in 1840, Nicholas had considered it his

interest to act with England and the German Powers in defence of the Porte

against its Egyptian rival and his French ally. A policy of moderation had

been imposed upon Russia by the increased watchfulness and activity now

displayed by the other European States in all that related to the Ottoman

Empire. Isolated aggression had become impracticable; it was necessary for

Russia to seek the countenance or support of some ally before venturing on

the next step in the extension of its power southwards.

[Nicholas in England, 1844.]

In 1844 Nicholas visited England. The object of his journey was to sound

the Court and Government, and to lay the foundation for concerted action

between Russia and England, to the exclusion of France, when circumstances

should bring about the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, an event which

the Czar believed to be not far off. Peel was then Prime Minister; Lord

Aberdeen was Foreign Secretary. Aberdeen had begun his political career in

a diplomatic mission to the Allied Armies in 1814. His feelings towards

Russia were those of a loyal friend towards an old ally; and the

remembrance of the epoch of 1814, when the young Nicholas had made

acquaintance with Lord Aberdeen in France, appears to have given to the

Czar a peculiar sense of confidence in the goodwill of the English Minister

towards himself. Nicholas spoke freely with Aberdeen, as well as with Peel

and Wellington, on the impending fall of the Ottoman Empire. "We have," he

said, "a sick, a dying man on our hands. We must keep him alive so long as

it is possible to do so, but we must frankly take into view all

contingencies. I wish for no inch of Turkish soil myself, but neither will

I permit any other Power to seize an inch of it. France, which has designs

upon Africa, upon the Mediterranean, and upon the East, is the only Power

to be feared. An understanding between England and Russia will preserve the

peace of Europe." If the Czar pursued his speculations further into detail,

of which there is no evidence, he elicited no response. He was heard with

caution, and his visit appears to have produced nothing more than the

formal expression of a desire on the part of the British Government that

the existing treaty-rights of Russia should be respected by the Porte,

together with an unmeaning promise that, if unexpected events should occur

in Turkey, Russia and England should enter into counsel as to the best

course of action to be pursued in common. [455]

[Nicholas in 1848.]

[The Hungarian refugees, 1849.]

Nicholas, whether from policy or from a sense of kingly honour which at

most times powerfully influenced him, did not avail himself of the

prostration of the Continental Powers in 1848 to attack Turkey. He detested

revolution, as a crime against the divinely ordered subjection of nations

to their rulers, and would probably have felt himself degraded had he, in

the spirit of his predecessor Catherine, turned the calamities of his

brother-monarchs to his own separate advantage. It accorded better with his

proud nature, possibly also with the schemes of a far-reaching policy, for

Russia to enter the field as the protector of the Hapsburgs against the

rebel Hungarians than for its armies to snatch from the Porte what the

lapse of time and the goodwill of European allies would probably give to

Russia at no distant date without a struggle. Disturbances at Bucharest and

at Jassy led indeed to a Russian intervention in the Danubian

Principalities in the interests of a despotic system of government; but

Russia possessed by treaty protectorial rights over these Provinces. The

military occupation which followed the revolt against the Hospodars was the

subject of a convention between Turkey and Russia; it was effected by the

armies of the two Powers jointly; and at the expiration of two years the

Russian forces were peacefully withdrawn. More serious were the

difficulties which arose from the flight of Kossuth and other Hungarian

leaders into Turkey after the subjugation of Hungary by the allied Austrian

and Russian armies. The Courts of Vienna and St. Petersburg united in

demanding from the Porte the surrender of these refugees; the Sultan

refused to deliver them up, and he was energetically supported by Great

Britain, Kossuth's children on their arrival at Constantinople being

received and cared for at the British Embassy. The tyrannous demand of the

two Emperors, the courageous resistance of the Sultan, excited the utmost

interest in Western Europe. By a strange turn of fortune, the Power which

at the end of the last century had demanded from the Court of Vienna the

Greek leader Rhegas, and had put him to death as soon as he was handed over

by the Austrian police, was now gaining the admiration of all free nations

as the last barrier that sheltered the champions of European liberty from

the vengeance of despotic might. The Czar and the Emperor of Austria had

not reckoned with the forces of public indignation aroused against them in

the West by their attempt to wrest their enemies from the Sultan's hand.

They withdrew their ambassadors from Constantinople and threatened to

resort to force. But the appearance of the British and French fleets at the

Dardanelles gave a new aspect to the dispute. The Emperors learnt that if

they made war upon Turkey for the question at issue they would have to

fight also against the Western Powers. The demand for the surrender of the

refugees was withdrawn; and in undertaking to keep the principal of them

under surveillance for a reasonable period, the Sultan gave to the two

Imperial Courts such satisfaction as they could, without loss of dignity,

accept. [456]

[Dispute between France and Russia on the Holy Places, 1850-2.]

The _coup d'état_ of Louis Napoleon at the end of the year 1851 was

witnessed by the Czar with sympathy and admiration as a service to the

cause of order; but the assumption of the Imperial title by the Prince

displeased him exceedingly. While not refusing to recognise Napoleon III.,

he declined to address him by the term (_mon frère_) usually employed

by monarchs in writing to one another. In addition to the question relating

to the Hungarian refugees, a dispute concerning the Holy Places in

Palestine threatened to cause strife between France and Russia. The same

wave of religious and theological interest which in England produced the

Tractarian movement brought into the arena of political life in France an

enthusiasm for the Church long strange to the Legislature and the governing

circles of Paris. In the Assembly of 1849 Montalembert, the spokesman of

this militant Catholicism, was one of the foremost figures. Louis Napoleon,

as President, sought the favour of those whom Montalembert led; and the

same Government which restored the Pope to Rome demanded from the Porte a

stricter enforcement of the rights of the Latin Church in the East. The

earliest Christian legends had been localised in various spots around

Jerusalem. These had been in the ages of faith the goal of countless

pilgrimages, and in more recent centuries they had formed the object of

treaties between the Porte and France. Greek monks, however, disputed

with Latin monks for the guardianship of the Holy Places; and as the

power of Russia grew, the privileges of the Greek monks had increased.

The claims of the rival brotherhoods, which related to doors, keys, stars

and lamps, might probably have been settled to the satisfaction of all

parties within a few hours by an experienced stage-manager; in the hands

of diplomatists bent on obtaining triumphs over one another they assumed

dimensions that overshadowed the peace of Europe. The French and the

Russian Ministers at Constantinople alternately tormented the Sultan in

the character of aggrieved sacristans, until, at the beginning of 1852,

the Porte compromised itself with both parties by adjudging to each

rights which it professed also to secure to the other. A year more, spent

in prevarications, in excuses, and in menaces, ended with the triumph of

the French, with the evasion of the promises made by the Sultan to

Russia, and with the discomfiture of the Greek Church in the person of

the monks who officiated at the Holy Sepulchre and the Shrine of the

Nativity. [457]

[Nicholas and Sir H. Seymour, Jan., Feb., 1853.]

Nicholas treated the conduct of the Porte as an outrage upon himself. A

conflict which had broken out between the Sultan and the Montenegrins, and

which now threatened to take a deadly form, confirmed the Czar in his

belief that the time for resolute action had arrived. At the beginning of

the year 1853 he addressed himself to Hamilton Seymour, British ambassador

at St. Petersburg, in terms much stronger and clearer than those which he

had used towards Lord Aberdeen nine years before. "The Sick Man," he said,

"was in extremities; the time had come for a clear understanding between

England and Russia. The occupation of Constantinople by Russian troops

might be necessary, but the Czar would not hold it permanently. He would

not permit any other Power to establish itself at the Bosphorus, neither

would he permit the Ottoman Empire to be broken up into Republics to afford

a refuge to the Mazzinis and the Kossuths of Europe. The Danubian

Principalities were already independent States under Russian protection.

The other possessions of the Sultan north of the Balkans might be placed on

the same footing. England might annex Egypt and Crete." After making this

communication to the British ambassador, and receiving the reply that

England declined to enter into any schemes based on the fall of the Turkish

Empire and disclaimed all desire for the annexation of any part of the

Sultan's dominions, Nicholas despatched Prince Menschikoff to

Constantinople, to demand from the Porte not only an immediate settlement

of the questions relating to the Holy Places, but a Treaty guaranteeing to

the Greek Church the undisturbed enjoyment of all its ancient rights and

the benefit of all privileges that might be accorded by the Porte to any

other Christian communities. [458]

[The Claims of Russia.]

The Treaty which Menschikoff was instructed to demand would have placed the

Sultan and the Czar in the position of contracting parties with regard to

the entire body of rights and privileges enjoyed by the Sultan's subjects

of the Greek confession, and would so have made the violation of these

rights in the case of any individual Christian a matter entitling Russia to

interfere, or to claim satisfaction as for the breach of a Treaty

engagement. By the Treaty of Kainardjie (1774) the Sultan had indeed bound

himself "to protect the Christian religion and its Churches"; but this

phrase was too indistinct to create specific matter of Treaty-obligation;

and if it had given to Russia any general right of interference on behalf

of members of the Greek Church, it would have given it the same right in

behalf of all the Roman Catholics and all the Protestants in the Sultan's

dominions, a right which the Czars had never professed to enjoy. Moreover,

the Treaty of Kainardjie itself forbade by implication any such

construction, for it mentioned by name one ecclesiastical building for

whose priests the Porte did concede to Russia the right of addressing

representations to the Sultan. Over the Danubian Principalities Russia

possessed by the Treaty of Adrianople undoubted protectorial rights; but

these Provinces stood on a footing quite different from that of the

remainder of the Empire. That the Greek Church possessed by custom and by

enactment privileges which it was the duty of the Sultan to respect, no one

contested: the novelty of Menschikoff's claim was that the observation of

these rights should be made matter of Treaty with Russia. The importance of

the demand was proved by the fact that Menschikoff strictly forbade the

Turkish Ministers to reveal it to the other Powers, and that Nicholas

caused the English Government to be informed that the mission of his envoy

had no other object than the final adjustment of the difficulties

respecting the Holy Places. [459]

[Lord Stratford de Redcliffe.]

[Menschikoff leaves Constantinople, May 21.]

[Russian troops enter the Principalities.]

When Menschikoff reached Constantinople the British Embassy was in the

hands of a subordinate officer. The Ambassador, Sir Stratford Canning, had

recently returned to England. Stratford Canning, a cousin of the Premier,

had been employed in the East at intervals since 1810. There had been a

period in his career when he had desired to see the Turk expelled from

Europe as an incurable barbarian; but the reforms of Sultan Mahmud had at a

later time excited his warm interest and sympathy, and as Ambassador at

Constantinople from 1842 to 1852 he had laboured strenuously for the

regeneration of the Turkish Empire, and for the improvement of the

condition of the Christian races under the Sultan's rule. His dauntless,

sustained energy, his noble presence, the sincerity of his friendship

towards the Porte, gave him an influence at Constantinople seldom, if ever,

exercised by a foreign statesman. There were moments when he seemed to be

achieving results of some value; but the task which he had attempted was

one that surpassed human power; and after ten years so spent as to win for

him the fame of the greatest ambassador by whom England has been

represented in modern times, he declared that the prospects of Turkish

reform were hopeless, and left Constantinople, not intending to return.

[460] Before his successor had been appointed, the mission of Prince

Menschikoff, the violence of his behaviour at Constantinople, and a rumour

that he sought far more than his ostensible object, alarmed the British

Government. Canning was asked to resume his post. Returning to

Constantinople as Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, he communicated on his

journey with the Courts of Paris and Vienna, and carried with him authority

to order the Admiral of the fleet at Malta to hold his ships in readiness

to sail for the East. He arrived at the Bosphorus on April 5th, learnt at

once the real situation of affairs, and entered into negotiation with

Menschikoff. The Russian, a mere child in diplomacy in comparison with his

rival, suffered himself to be persuaded to separate the question of the

Holy Places from that of the guarantee of the rights of the Greek Church.

In the first matter Russia had a good cause; in the second it was advancing

a new claim. The two being dissociated, Stratford had no difficulty in

negotiating a compromise on the Holy Places satisfactory to the Czar's

representative; and the demand for the Protectorate over the Greek

Christians now stood out unobscured by those grievances of detail with

which it had been at first interwoven. Stratford encouraged the Turkish

Government to reject the Russian proposal. Knowing, nevertheless, that

Menschikoff would in the last resort endeavour to intimidate the Sultan

personally, he withheld from the Ministers, in view of this last peril, the

strongest of all his arguments; and seeking a private audience with the

Sultan on the 9th of May, he made known to him with great solemnity the

authority which he had received to order the fleet at Malta to be in

readiness to sail. The Sultan placed the natural interpretation on this

statement, and ordered final rejection of Menschikoff's demand, though the

Russian had consented to a modification of its form, and would now have

accepted a note declaratory of the intentions of the Sultan towards the

Greek Church instead of a regular Treaty. On the 21st of May Menschikoff

quitted Constantinople; and the Czar, declaring that some guarantee must be

held by Russia for the maintenance of the rights of the Greek Christians,

announced that he should order his army to occupy the Danubian Provinces.

After an interval of some weeks the Russian troops crossed the Pruth, and

spread themselves over Moldavia and Wallachia. (June 22nd.) [461]

[English Policy.]

In the ordinary course of affairs the invasion of the territory of one

Empire by the troops of another is, and can be nothing else than, an act of

war, necessitating hostilities as a measure of defence on the part of the

Power invaded. But the Czar protested that in taking the Danubian

Principalities in pledge he had no intention of violating the peace; and as

yet the common sense of the Turks, as well as the counsels that they

received from without, bade them hesitate before issuing a declaration of

war. Since December, 1852, Lord Aberdeen had been Prime Minister of

England, at the head of a Cabinet formed by a coalition between followers

of Sir Robert Peel and the Whig leaders Palmerston and Russell. [462] There

was no man in England more pacific in disposition, or more anxious to

remain on terms of honourable friendship with Russia, than Lord Aberdeen.

The Czar had justly reckoned on the Premier's own forbearance; but he had

failed to recognise the strength of those forces which, both within and

without the Cabinet, set in the direction of armed resistance to Russia.

Palmerston was keen for action. Lord Stratford appears to have taken it for

granted from the first that, if a war should arise between the Sultan and

the Czar in consequence of the rejection of Menschikoff's demand, Great

Britain would fight in defence of the Ottoman Empire. He had not stated

this in express terms, but the communication which he made to the Sultan

regarding his own instructions could only have been intended to convey this

impression. If the fleet was not to defend the Sultan, it was a mere piece

of deceit to inform him that the Ambassador had powers to place it in

readiness to sail; and such deceit was as alien to the character of Lord

Stratford as the assumption of a virtual engagement towards the Sultan was

in keeping with his imperious will and his passionate conviction of the

duty of England. From the date of Lord Stratford's visit to the Palace,

although no Treaty or agreement was in existence, England stood bound in

honour, so long as the Turks should pursue the policy laid down by her

envoy, to fulfil the expectations which this envoy had held out.

[British and French fleets moved to Besika Bay, July, 1853.]

[The Vienna Note, July 28.]

[Constantinople in September.]

[British and French fleets pass the Dardanelles, Oct. 22.]

Had Lord Stratford been at the head of the Government, the policy and

intentions of Great Britain would no doubt have been announced with such

distinctness that the Czar could have fostered no misapprehension as to the

results of his own acts. Palmerston, as Premier, would probably have

adopted the same clear course, and war would either have been avoided by

this nation or have been made with a distinct purpose and on a definite

issue. But the Cabinet of Lord Aberdeen was at variance with itself.

Aberdeen was ready to go to all lengths in negotiation, but he was not

sufficiently master of his colleagues and of the representatives of England

abroad to prevent acts and declarations which in themselves brought war

near; above all, he failed to require from Turkey that abstention from

hostilities on which, so long as negotiations lasted, England and the other

Powers which proposed to make the cause of the Porte their own ought

unquestionably to have insisted. On the announcement by the Czar that his

army was about to enter the Principalities, the British Government

despatched the fleet to Besika Bay near the entrance to the Dardanelles,

and authorised Stratford to call it to the Bosphorus, in case

Constantinople should be attacked. [463] The French fleet, which had come

into Greek waters on Menschikoff's appearance at Constantinople, took up

the same position. Meanwhile European diplomacy was busily engaged in

framing schemes of compromise between the Porte and Russia. The

representatives of the four Powers met at Vienna, and agreed upon a note

which, as they considered, would satisfy any legitimate claims of Russia on

behalf of the Greek Church, and at the same time impose upon the Sultan no

further obligations towards Russia than those which already existed. [464]

This note, however, was ill drawn, and would have opened the door to new

claims on the part of Russia to a general Protectorate not sanctioned by

its authors. The draft was sent to St. Petersburg, and was accepted by the

Czar. At Constantinople its ambiguities were at once recognised; and though

Lord Stratford in his official capacity urged its acceptance under a

European guarantee against misconstruction, the Divan, now under the

pressure of strong patriotic forces, refused to accept the note unless

certain changes were made in its expressions. France, England, and Austria

united in recommending to the Court of St. Petersburg the adoption of these

amendments. The Czar, however, declined to admit them, and a Russian

document, which obtained a publicity for which it was not intended, proved

that the construction of the note which the amendments were expressly

designed to exclude was precisely that which Russia meant to place upon it.

The British Ministry now refused to recommend the note any longer to the

Porte. [465] Austria, while it approved of the amendments, did not consider

that their rejection by the Czar justified England in abandoning the note

as the common award of the European Powers; and thus the concert of Europe

was interrupted, England and France combining in a policy which Austria and

Prussia were not willing to follow. In proportion as the chances of joint

European action diminished, the ardour of the Turks themselves, and of

those who were to be their allies, rose higher. Tumults, organised by the

heads of the war-party, broke out at Constantinople; and although Stratford

scorned the alarms of his French colleagues, who reported that a massacre

of the Europeans in the capital was imminent, he thought it necessary to

call up two vessels of war in order to provide for the security of the

English residents and of the Sultan himself. In England Palmerston and the

men of action in the Cabinet dragged Lord Aberdeen with them. The French

Government pressed for vigorous measures, and in conformity with its desire

instructions were sent from London to Lord Stratford to call the fleet to

the Bosphorus, and to employ it in defending the territory of the Sultan

against aggression. On the 22nd of October the British and French fleets

passed the Dardanelles.

[The ultimatum of Omar Pasha rejected, Oct. 10.]

[Turkish squadron destroyed at Sinope, Nov. 30.]

The Turk, sure of the protection of the Western Powers, had for some weeks

resolved upon war; and yet the possibilities of a diplomatic settlement

were not yet exhausted. Stratford himself had forwarded to Vienna the draft

of an independent note which the Sultan was prepared to accept. This had

not yet been seen at St. Petersburg. Other projects of conciliation filled

the desks of all the leading politicians of Europe. Yet, though the belief

generally existed that some scheme could be framed by which the Sultan,

without sacrifice of his dignity and interest, might induce the Czar to

evacuate the Principalities, no serious attempt was made to prevent the

Turks from coming into collision with their enemies both by land and sea.

The commander of the Russian troops in the Principalities having, on the

10th of October, rejected an ultimatum requiring him to withdraw within

fifteen days, this answer was taken as the signal for the commencement of

hostilities. The Czar met the declaration of war with a statement that he

would abstain from taking the offensive, and would continue merely to hold

the Principalities as a material guarantee. Omar Pasha, the Ottoman

commander in Bulgaria, was not permitted to observe the same passive

attitude. Crossing the Danube, he attacked and defeated the Russians at

Oltenitza. Thus assailed, the Czar considered that his engagement not to

act on the offensive was at an end, and the Russian fleet, issuing from

Sebastopol, attacked and destroyed a Turkish squadron in the harbour of

Sinope on the southern coast of the Black Sea (November 30). The action was

a piece of gross folly on the part of the Russian authorities if they still

cherished the hopes of pacification which the Czar professed; but others

also were at fault. Lord Stratford and the British Admiral, if they could

not prevent the Turkish ships from remaining in the Euxine, where they were

useless against the superior force of Russia, might at least in exercise of

the powers given to them have sent a sufficient escort to prevent an

encounter. But the same ill-fortune and incompleteness that had marked all

the diplomacy of the previous months attended the counsels of the Admirals

at the Bosphorus; and the disaster of Sinope rendered war between the

Western Powers and Russia almost inevitable. [466]

[Effect of the action at Sinope.]

[Russian ships required to enter port, December.]

[England and France declare war, March 27, 1854.]

The Turks themselves had certainly not understood the declaration of the

Emperor Nicholas as assuring their squadron at Sinope against attack; and

so far was the Ottoman Admiral from being the victim of a surprise that he

had warned his Government some days before of the probability of his own

destruction. But to the English people, indignant with Russia since its

destruction of Hungarian liberty and its tyrannous demand for the surrender

of the Hungarian refugees, all that now passed heaped up the intolerable

sum of autocratic violence and deceit. The cannonade which was continued

against the Turkish crews at Sinope long after they had become defenceless

gave to the battle the aspect of a massacre; the supposed promise of the

Czar to act only on the defensive caused it to be denounced as an act of

flagrant treachery; the circumstance that the Turkish fleet was lying

within one of the Sultan's harbours, touching as it were the territory

which the navy of England had undertaken to protect, imparted to the attack

the character of a direct challenge and defiance to England. The cry rose

loud for war. Napoleon, eager for the alliance with England, eager in

conjunction with England to play a great part before Europe, even at the

cost of a war from which France had nothing to gain, proposed that the

combined fleets should pass the Bosphorus and require every Russian vessel

sailing on the Black Sea to re-enter port. His proposal was adopted by the

British Government. Nicholas learnt that the Russian flag was swept from

the Euxine. It was in vain that a note upon which the representatives of

the Powers at Vienna had once more agreed was accepted by the Porte and

forwarded to St. Petersburg (December 31). The pride of the Czar was

wounded beyond endurance, and at the beginning of February he recalled his

ambassadors from London and Paris. A letter written to him by Napoleon

III., demanding in the name of himself and the Queen of England the

evacuation of the Principalities, was answered by a reference to the

campaign of Moscow, Austria now informed the Western Powers that if they

would fix a delay for the evacuation of the Principalities, the expiration

of which should be the signal for hostilities, it would support the

summons; and without waiting to learn whether Austria would also unite with

them in hostilities in the event of the summons being rejected, the British

and French Governments despatched their ultimatum to St. Petersburg.

Austria and Prussia sought, but in vain, to reconcile the Court of St.

Petersburg to the only measure by which peace could now be preserved. The

ultimatum remained without an answer, and on the 27th of March England and

France declared war.

[Policy of Austria.]

The Czar had at one time believed that in his Eastern schemes he was sure

of the support of Austria; and he had strong reasons for supposing himself

entitled to its aid. But his mode of thought was simpler than that of the

Court of Vienna. Schwarzenberg, when it was remarked that the intervention

of Russia in Hungary would bind the House of Hapsburg too closely to its

protector, had made the memorable answer, "We will astonish the world by

our ingratitude." It is possible that an instance of Austrian gratitude

would have astonished the world most of all; but Schwarzenberg's successors

were not the men to sacrifice a sound principle to romance. Two courses of

Eastern policy have, under various modifications, had their advocates in

rival schools of statesmen at Vienna. The one is that of expansion

southward in concert with Russia; the other is that of resistance to the

extension of Russian power, and the consequent maintenance of the integrity

of the Ottoman Empire. During Metternich's long rule, inspired as this was

by a faith in the Treaties and the institutions of 1815, and by the dread

of every living, disturbing force, the second of these systems had been

consistently followed. In 1854 the determining motive of the Court of

Vienna was not a decided political conviction, but the certainty that if it

united with Russia it would be brought into war with the Western Powers.

Had Russia and Turkey been likely to remain alone in the arena, an

arrangement for territorial compensation would possibly, as on some other

occasions, have won for the Czar an Austrian alliance. Combination against

Turkey was, however, at the present time, too perilous an enterprise for

the Austrian monarchy; and, as nothing was to be gained through the war, it

remained for the Viennese diplomatists to see that nothing was lost and as

little as possible wasted. The presence of Russian troops in the

Principalities, where they controlled the Danube in its course between the

Hungarian frontier and the Black Sea, was, in default of some definite

understanding, a danger to Austria; and Count Buol, the Minister at Vienna,

had therefore every reason to thank the Western Powers for insisting on the

evacuation of this district. When France and England were burning to take

up arms, it would have been a piece of superfluous brutality towards the

Czar for Austria to attach to its own demand for the evacuation of the

Principalities the threat of war. But this evacuation Austria was

determined to enforce. It refused, as did Prussia, to give to the Czar the

assurance of its neutrality; and, inasmuch as the free navigation of the

Danube as far as the Black Sea had now become recognised as one of the

commercial interests of Germany at large, Prussia and the German Federation

undertook to protect the territory of Austria, if, in taking the measures

necessary to free the Principalities, it should itself be attacked by

Russia. [467]

[Prussia.]

The King of Prussia, clouded as his mind was by political and religious

phantasms, had nevertheless at times a larger range of view than his

neighbours; and his opinion as to the true solution of the difficulties

between Nicholas and the Porte, at the time of Menschikoff's mission,

deserved more attention than it received. Frederick William proposed that

the rights of the Christian subjects of the Sultan should be placed by

Treaty under the guarantee of all the Great Powers. This project was

opposed by Lord Stratford and the Turkish Ministers as an encroachment on

the Sultan's sovereignty, and its rejection led the King to write with some

asperity to his ambassador in London that he should seek the welfare of

Prussia in absolute neutrality. [468] At a later period the King demanded

from England, as the condition of any assistance from himself, a guarantee

for the maintenance of the frontiers of Germany and Prussia. He regarded

Napoleon III. as the representative of a revolutionary system, and believed

that under him French armies would soon endeavour to overthrow the order of

Europe established in 1815. That England should enter into a close alliance

with this man excited the King's astonishment and disgust; and unless the

Cabinet of London were prepared to give a guarantee against any future

attack on Germany by the French Emperor, who was believed to be ready for

every political adventure, it was vain for England to seek Prussia's aid.

Lord Aberdeen could give no such guarantee; still less could he gratify the

King's strangely passionate demand for the restoration of his authority in

the Swiss canton of Neuchâtel, which before 1848 had belonged in name to

the Hohenzollerns. Many influences were brought to bear upon the King from

the side both of England and of Russia. The English Court and Ministers,

strenuously supported by Bunsen, the Prussian ambassador, strove to enlist

the King in an active concert of Europe against Russia by dwelling on the

duties of Prussia as a Great Power and the dangers arising to it from

isolation. On the other hand, the admiration felt by Frederick William for

the Emperor Nicholas, and the old habitual friendship between Prussia and

Russia, gave strength to the Czar's advocates at Berlin. Schemes for a

reconstruction of Europe, which were devised by Napoleon, and supposed to

receive some countenance from Palmerston, reached the King's ear. [469] He

heard that Austria was to be offered the Danubian Provinces upon condition

of giving up northern Italy; that Piedmont was to receive Lombardy, and in

return to surrender Savoy to France; that, if Austria should decline to

unite actively with the Western Powers, revolutionary movements were to be

stirred up in Italy and in Hungary. Such reports kindled the King's rage.

"Be under no illusion," he wrote to his ambassador; "tell the British

Ministers in their private ear and on the housetops that I will not suffer

Austria to be attacked by the revolution without drawing the sword in its

defence. If England and France let loose revolution as their ally, be it

where it may, I unite with Russia for life and death." Bunsen advocated the

participation of Prussia in the European concert with more earnestness than

success. While the King was declaiming against the lawlessness which was

supposed to have spread from the Tuileries to Downing Street, Bunsen, on

his own authority, sent to Berlin a project for the annexation of Russian

territory by Prussia as a reward for its alliance with the Western Courts.

This document fell into the hands of the Russian party at Berlin, and it

roused the King's own indignation. Bitter reproaches were launched against

the authors of so felonious a scheme. Bunsen could no longer retain his

office. Other advocates of the Western alliance were dismissed from their

places, and the policy of neutrality carried the day at Berlin.

[Relation of the Western Powers to the European Concert.]

The situation of the European Powers in April, 1854, was thus a very

strange one. All the Four Powers were agreed in demanding the evacuation of

the Principalities by Russia, and in the resolution to enforce this, if

necessary, by arms. Protocols witnessing this agreement were signed on the

9th of April and the 23rd of May, [470] and it was moreover declared that

the Four Powers recognised the necessity of maintaining the independence

and the integrity of the Ottoman Empire. But France and England, while they

made the presence of the Russians in the Principalities the avowed cause of

war, had in reality other intentions than the mere expulsion of the

intruder and the restoration of the state of things previously existing. It

was their desire so to cripple Russia that it should not again be in a

condition to menace the Ottoman Empire. This intention made it impossible

for the British Cabinet to name, as the basis of a European league, that

single definite object for which, and for which alone, all the Powers were

in May, 1854, ready to unite in arms. England, the nation and the

Government alike, chose rather to devote itself, in company with France, to

the task of indefinitely weakening Russia than, in company with all Europe,

to force Russia to one humiliating but inevitable act of submission.

Whether in the prosecution of their ulterior objects the Western Courts

might or might not receive some armed assistance from Austria and Prussia

no man could yet predict with confidence. That Austria would to some extent

make common cause with the Allies seemed not unlikely; that Prussia would

do so there was no real ground to believe; on the contrary, fair warning

had been given that there were contingencies in which Prussia might

ultimately be found on the side of the Czar. Striving to the utmost to

discover some principle, some object, or even some formula which might

expand the purely defensive basis accepted by Austria and Prussia into a

common policy of reconstructive action, the Western Powers could obtain

nothing more definite from the Conference at Vienna than the following

shadowy engagement:--"The Four Governments engage to endeavour in common to

discover the guarantees most likely to attach the existence of the Ottoman

Empire to the general equilibrium of Europe. They are ready to deliberate

as to the employment of means calculated to accomplish the object of their

agreement." This readiness to deliberate, so cautiously professed, was a

quality in which during the two succeeding years the Courts of Vienna and

Berlin were not found wanting; but the war in which England and France now

engaged was one which they had undertaken at their own risk, and they

discovered little anxiety on any side to share their labour.

[Siege of Silistria, May.]

[The Principalities evacuated, June.]

During the winter of 1853 and the first weeks of the following year

hostilities of an indecisive character continued between the Turks and the

Russians on the Danube. At the outbreak of the war Nicholas had consulted

the veteran Paskiewitsch as to the best road by which to march on

Constantinople. Paskiewitsch, as a strategist, knew the danger to which a

Russian force crossing the Danube would be exposed from the presence of

Austrian armies on its flank; as commander in the invasion of Hungary in

1849 he had encountered, as he believed, ill faith and base dealing on the

part of his ally, and had repaid it with insult and scorn; he had learnt

better than any other man the military and the moral weakness of the

Austrian Empire in its eastern part. His answer to the Czar's inquiries

was, "The road to Constantinople lies through Vienna." But whatever

bitterness the Czar might have felt at the ingratitude of Francis Joseph,

he was not ready for a war with Austria, in which he could hardly have

avoided the assistance of revolutionary allies; moreover, if the road to

Constantinople lay through Vienna, it might be urged that the road to

Vienna lay through Berlin. The simpler plan was adopted of a march on the

Balkans by way of Shumla, to which the capture of Silistria was to be the

prelude. At the end of March the Russian vanguard passed the Danube at the

lowest point where a crossing could be made, and advanced into the

Dobrudscha. In May the siege of Silistria was undertaken by Paskiewitsch

himself. But the enterprise began too late, and the strength employed both

in the siege and in the field operations farther east was insufficient. The

Turkish garrison, schooled by a German engineer and animated by two young

English officers, maintained a stubborn and effective resistance. French

and English troops had already landed at Gallipoli for the defence of

Constantinople, and finding no enemy within range had taken ship for Varna

on the north of the Balkans. Austria, on the 3rd of June, delivered its

summons requiring the evacuation of the Principalities. Almost at the same

time Paskiewitsch received a wound that disabled him, and was forced to

surrender his command into other hands. During the succeeding fortnight the

besiegers of Silistria were repeatedly driven back, and on the 22nd they

were compelled to raise the siege. The Russians, now hard pressed by an

enemy whom they had despised, withdrew to the north of the Danube. The

retreating movement was continued during the succeeding weeks, until the

evacuation of the Principalities was complete, and the last Russian soldier

had recrossed the Pruth. As the invader retired, Austria sent its troops

into these provinces, pledging itself by a convention with the Porte to

protect them until peace should be concluded, and then to restore them to

the Sultan.

[Further objects of the Western Powers.]

With the liberation of the Principalities the avowed ground of war passed

away; but the Western Powers had no intention of making peace without

further concessions on the part of Russia. As soon as the siege of

Silistria was raised instructions were sent to the commanders of the allied

armies at Varna, pressing, if not absolutely commanding, them to attack

Sebastopol, the headquarters of Russian maritime power in the Euxine. The

capture of Sebastopol had been indicated some months before by Napoleon

III. as the most effective blow that could be dealt to Russia. It was from

Sebastopol that the fleet had issued which destroyed the Turks at Sinope:

until this arsenal had fallen, the growing naval might which pressed even

more directly upon Constantinople than the neighbourhood of the Czar's

armies by land could not be permanently laid low. The objects sought by

England and France were now gradually brought into sufficient clearness to

be communicated to the other Powers, though the more precise interpretation

of the conditions laid down remained open for future discussion. It was

announced that the Protectorate of Russia over the Danubian Principalities

and Servia must be abolished; that the navigation of the Danube at its

mouths must be freed from all obstacles; that the Treaty of July, 1841,

relating to the Black Sea and the Dardanelles, must be revised in the

interest of the balance of power in Europe; and that the claim to any

official Protectorate over Christian subjects of the Porte, of whatever

rite, must be abandoned by the Czar. Though these conditions, known as the

Four Points, were not approved by Prussia, they were accepted by Austria in

August, 1854, and were laid before Russia as the basis of any negotiation

for peace. The Czar declared in answer that Russia would only negotiate on

such a basis when at the last extremity. The Allied Governments, measuring

their enemy's weakness by his failure before Silistria, were determined to

accept nothing less; and the attack upon Sebastopol, ordered before the

evacuation of the Principalities, was consequently allowed to take its

course. [471]

[Sebastopol.]

[The Allies land in the Crimea, Sept. 14.]

[Battle of the Alma, Sept. 20.]

The Roadstead, or Great Harbour, of Sebastopol runs due eastwards inland

from a point not far from the south-western extremity of the Crimea. One

mile from the open sea its waters divide, the larger arm still running

eastwards till it meets the River Tchernaya, the smaller arm, known as the

Man-of-War Harbour, bending sharply to the south. On both sides of this

smaller harbour Sebastopol is built. To the seaward, that is from the

smaller harbour westwards, Sebastopol and its approaches were thoroughly

fortified. On its landward, southern, side the town had been open till

1853, and it was still but imperfectly protected, most weakly on the

south-eastern side. On the north of the Great Harbour Fort Constantine at

the head of a line of strong defences guarded the entrance from the sea;

while on the high ground immediately opposite Sebastopol and commanding the

town there stood the Star Fort with other military constructions. The

general features of Sebastopol were known to the Allied commanders; they

had, however, no precise information as to the force by which it was held,

nor as to the armament of its fortifications. It was determined that the

landing should be made in the Bay of Eupatoria, thirty miles north of the

fortress. Here, on the 14th of September, the Allied forces, numbering

about thirty thousand French, twenty-seven thousand English, and seven

thousand Turks, effected their disembarkation without meeting any

resistance. The Russians, commanded by Prince Menschikoff, lately envoy at

Constantinople, had taken post ten miles further south on high ground

behind the River Alma. On the 20th of September they were attacked in front

by the English, while the French attempted a turning movement from the sea.

The battle was a scene of confusion, and for a moment the assault of the

English seemed to be rolled back. But it was renewed with ever increasing

vigour, and before the French had made any impression on the Russian left

Lord Raglan's troops had driven the enemy from their positions. Struck on

the flank when their front was already broken, outnumbered and badly led,

the Russians gave up all for lost. The form of an orderly retreat was

maintained only long enough to disguise from the conquerors the

completeness of their victory. When night fell the Russian army abandoned

itself to total disorder, and had the pursuit been made at once it could

scarcely have escaped destruction. But St. Arnaud, who was in the last

stage of mortal illness, refused, in spite of the appeal of Lord Raglan, to

press on his wearied troops. Menschikoff, abandoning the hope of checking

the advance of the Allies in a second battle, and anxious only to prevent

the capture of Sebastopol by an enemy supposed to be following at his

heels, retired into the fortress, and there sank seven of his war-ships as

a barrier across the mouth of the Great Harbour, mooring the rest within.

The crews were brought on shore to serve in the defence by land; the guns

were dragged from the ships to the bastions and redoubts. Then, when it

appeared that the Allies lingered, the Russian commander altered his plan.

Leaving Korniloff, the Vice-Admiral, and Todleben, an officer of engineers,

to man the existing works and to throw up new ones where the town was

undefended, Menschikoff determined to lead off the bulk of his army into

the interior of the Crimea, in order to keep open his communications with

Russia, to await in freedom the arrival of reinforcements, and, if

Sebastopol should not at once fall, to attack the Allies at his own time

and opportunity. (September 24th.)

[Flank march to south of Sebastopol.]

[Ineffectual Bombardment, Sept. 17-25.]

The English had lost in the battle of the Alma about two thousand men, the

French probably less than half that number. On the morning after the

engagement Lord Raglan proposed that the two armies should march straight

against the fortifications lying on the north of the Great Harbour, and

carry these by storm, so winning a position where their guns would command

Sebastopol itself. The French, supported by Burgoyne, the chief of the

English engineers, shrank from the risk of a front attack on works supposed

to be more formidable than they really were, and induced Lord Raglan to

consent to a long circuitous march which would bring the armies right round

Sebastopol to its more open southern side, from which, it was thought, an

assault might be successfully made. This flank-march, which was one of

extreme risk, was carried out safely, Menschikoff himself having left

Sebastopol, and having passed along the same road in his retreat into the

interior a little before the appearance of the Allies. Pushing southward,

the English reached the sea at Balaclava, and took possession of the

harbour there, accepting the exposed eastward line between the fortress and

the Russia is outside; the French, now commanded by Canrobert, continued

their march westwards round the back of Sebastopol, and touched the sea at

Kasatch Bay. The two armies were thus masters of the broken plateau which,

rising westwards from the plain of Balaclava and the valley of the

Tchernaya, overlooks Sebastopol on its southern side. That the garrison,

which now consisted chiefly of sailors, could at this moment have resisted

the onslaught of the fifty thousand troops who had won the battle of the

Alma, the Russians themselves did not believe; [472] but once more the

French staff, with Burgoyne, urged caution, and it was determined to wait

for the siege-guns, which were still at sea. The decision was a fatal one.

While the Allies chose positions for their heavy artillery and slowly

landed and placed their guns, Korniloff and Todleben made the

fortifications on the southern side of Sebastopol an effective barrier

before an enemy. The sacrifice of the Russian fleet had not been in vain.

The sailors were learning all the duties of a garrison: the cannon from the

ships proved far more valuable on land. Three weeks of priceless time were

given to leaders who knew how to turn every moment to account. When, on the

17th of October, the bombardment which was to precede the assault on

Sebastopol began, the French artillery, operating on the south-west, was

overpowered by that of the defenders. The fleets in vain thundered against

the solid sea-front of the fortress. At the end of eight days' cannonade,

during which the besiegers' batteries poured such a storm of shot and shell

upon Sebastopol as no fortress had yet withstood, the defences were still

unbroken.

[Battle of Balaclava, Oct. 25.]

Menschikoff in the meantime had received the reinforcements which he

expected, and was now ready to fall upon the besiegers from the east. His

point of attack was the English port of Balaclava and the fortified road

lying somewhat east of this, which formed the outer line held by the

English and their Turkish supports. The plain of Balaclava is divided by a

low ridge into a northern and a southern valley. Along this ridge runs the

causeway, which had been protected by redoubts committed to a weak Turkish

guard. On the morning of the 25th the Russians appeared in the northern

valley. They occupied the heights rising from it on the north and east,

attacked the causeway, captured three of the redoubts, and drove off the

Turks, left to meet their onset alone. Lord Raglan, who watched these

operations from the edge of the western plateau, ordered up infantry from a

distance, but the only English troops on the spot were a light and a heavy

brigade of cavalry, each numbering about six hundred men. The Heavy

Brigade, under General Scarlett, was directed to move towards Balaclava

itself, which was now threatened. While they were on the march, a dense

column of Russian cavalry, about three thousand strong, appeared above the

crest of the low ridge, ready, as it seemed, to overwhelm the weak troops

before them. But in their descent from the ridge the Russians halted, and

Scarlett with admirable courage and judgment formed his men for attack, and

charged full into the enemy with the handful who were nearest to him. They

cut their way into the very heart of the column; and before the Russians

could crush them with mere weight the other regiments of the same brigade

hurled themselves on the right and on the left against the huge inert mass.

The Russians broke and retreated in disorder before a quarter of their

number, leaving to Scarlett and his men the glory of an action which

ranks with the Prussian attack at Mars-la-Tour in 1870 as the most

brilliant cavalry operation in modern warfare. The squadrons of the Light

Brigade, during the peril and the victory of their comrades, stood

motionless, paralysed by the same defect of temper or intelligence in

command which was soon to devote them to a fruitless but ever-memorable

act of self-sacrifice. Russian infantry were carrying off the cannon from

the conquered redoubts on the causeway, when an aide-de-camp from the

general-in-chief brought to the Earl of Lucan, commander of the cavalry,

an order to advance rapidly to the front, and save these guns. Lucan, who

from his position could see neither the enemy nor the guns, believed

himself ordered to attack the Russian artillery at the extremity of the

northern valley, and he directed the Light Brigade to charge in this

direction. It was in vain that the leader of the Light Brigade, Lord

Cardigan, warned his chief, in words which were indeed but too weak, that

there was a battery in front, a battery on each flank, and that the

ground was covered with Russian riflemen. The order was repeated as that

of the head of the army, and it was obeyed. Thus

"Into the valley of Death

Rode the Six Hundred."

How they died there, the remnant not turning till they had hewn their way

past the guns and routed the enemy's cavalry behind them, the English

people will never forget. [473]

[Battle of Inkermann, Nov. 5.]

The day of Balaclava brought to each side something of victory and

something of failure. The Russians remained masters of the road that they

had captured, and carried off seven English guns; the English, where they

had met the enemy, proved that they could defeat overwhelming numbers. Not

many days passed before our infantry were put to the test which the cavalry

had so victoriously undergone. The siege-approaches of the French had been

rapidly advanced, and it was determined that on the 5th of November the

long-deferred assault on Sebastopol should be made. On that very morning,

under cover of a thick mist, the English right was assailed by massive

columns of the enemy. Menschikoff's army had now risen to a hundred

thousand men; he had thrown troops into Sebastopol, and had planned the

capture of the English positions by a combined attack from Sebastopol

itself, and by troops advancing from the lower valley of the Tchernaya

across the bridge of Inkermann. The battle of the 5th of November, on the

part of the English, was a soldier's battle, without generalship, without

order, without design. The men, standing to their ground whatever their own

number and whatever that of the foe, fought, after their ammunition was

exhausted, with bayonets, with the butt ends of their muskets, with their

fists and with stones. For hours the ever-surging Russian mass rolled in

upon them; but they maintained the unequal struggle until the arrival of

French regiments saved them from their deadly peril and the enemy were

driven in confusion from the field. The Russian columns, marching right up

to the guns, had been torn in pieces by artillery-fire. Their loss in

killed and wounded was enormous, their defeat one which no ingenuity could

disguise. Yet the battle of Inkermann had made the capture of Sebastopol,

as it had been planned by the Allies, impossible. Their own loss was too

great, the force which the enemy had displayed was too vast, to leave any

hope that the fortress could be mastered by a sudden assault. The terrible

truth soon became plain that the enterprise on which the armies had been

sent had in fact failed, and that another enterprise of a quite different

character, a winter siege in the presence of a superior enemy, a campaign

for which no preparations had been made, and for which all that was most

necessary was wanting, formed the only alternative to an evacuation of the

Crimea.

[Storm of Nov. 14.]

[Winter in the Crimea.]

On the 14th of November the Euxine winter began with a storm which swept

away the tents on the exposed plateau, and wrecked twenty-one vessels

bearing stores of ammunition and clothing. From this time rain and snow

turned the tract between the camp and Balaclava into a morass. The loss of

the paved road which had been captured by the Russians three weeks before

now told with fatal effect on the British army. The only communication with

the port of Balaclava was by a hillside track, which soon became impassable

by carts. It was necessary to bring up supplies on the backs of horses; but

the horses perished from famine and from excessive labour. The men were too

few, too weak, too destitute of the helpful ways of English sailors, to

assist in providing for themselves. Thus penned up on the bleak promontory,

cholera-stricken, mocked rather than sustained during their benumbing toil

with rations of uncooked meat and green coffee-berries, the British

soldiery wasted away. Their effective force sank at mid-winter to eleven

thousand men. In the hospitals, which even at Scutari were more deadly to

those who passed within them than the fiercest fire of the enemy, nine

thousand men perished before the end of February. The time indeed came when

the very Spirit of Mercy seemed to enter these abodes of woe, and in the

presence of Florence Nightingale nature at last regained its healing power,

pestilence no longer hung in the atmosphere which the sufferers breathed,

and death itself grew mild. But before this new influence had vanquished

routine the grave had closed over whole regiments of men whom it had no

right to claim. The sufferings of other armies have been on a greater

scale, but seldom has any body of troops furnished a heavier tale of loss

and death in proportion to its numbers than the British army during the

winter of the Crimean War. The unsparing exposure in the Press of the

mismanagement under which our soldiers were perishing excited an outburst

of indignation which overthrew Lord Aberdeen's Ministry and placed

Palmerston in power. It also gave to Europe at large an impression that

Great Britain no longer knew how to conduct a war, and unduly raised the

reputation of the French military administration, whose shortcomings, great

as they were, no French journalist dared to describe. In spite of Alma and

Inkermann, the military prestige of England was injured, not raised, by the

Crimean campaign; nor was it until the suppression of the Indian Mutiny

that the true capacity of the nation in war was again vindicated before the

world.

[Death of Nicholas, March 2, 1855.]

[Conference of Vienna, March-May, 1855.]

[Austria.]

"I have two generals who will not fail me," the Czar is reported to have

said when he heard of Menschikoff's last defeat, "Generals January and

February." General February fulfilled his task, but he smote the Czar too.

In the first days of March a new monarch inherited the Russian crown. [474]

Alexander II. ascended the throne, announcing that he would adhere to the

policy of Peter the Great, of Catherine, and of Nicholas. But the proud

tone was meant rather for the ear of Russia than of Europe, since Nicholas

had already expressed his willingness to treat for peace on the basis laid

down by the Western Powers in August, 1854. This change was not produced

wholly by the battles of Alma and Inkermann. Prussia, finding itself

isolated in Germany, had after some months of hesitation given a diplomatic

sanction to the Four Points approved by Austria as indispensable conditions

of peace. Russia thus stood forsaken, as it seemed, by its only friend, and

Nicholas could no longer hope to escape with the mere abandonment of those

claims which had been the occasion of the war. He consented to treat with

his enemies on their own terms. Austria now approached still more closely

to the Western Powers, and bound itself by treaty, in the event of peace

not being concluded by the end of the year on the stated basis, to

deliberate with France and England upon effectual means for obtaining the

object of the Alliance. [475] Preparations were made for a Conference at

Vienna, from which Prussia, still declining to pledge itself to warlike

action in case of the failure of the negotiations, was excluded. The

sittings of the Conference began a few days after the accession of

Alexander II. Russia was represented by its ambassador, Prince Alexander

Gortschakoff, who, as Minister of later years, was to play so conspicuous a

part in undoing the work of the Crimean epoch. On the first two Articles

forming the subject of negotiation, namely the abolition of the Russian

Protectorate over Servia and the Principalities, and the removal of all

impediments to the free navigation of the Danube, agreement was reached.

On the third Article, the revision of the Treaty of July, 1841, relating

to the Black Sea and the Dardanelles, the Russian envoy and the

representatives of the Western Powers found themselves completely at

variance. Gortschakoff had admitted that the Treaty of 1841 must be so

revised as to put an end to the preponderance of Russia in the Black Sea;

[476] but while the Western Governments insisted upon the exclusion of

Russian war-vessels from these waters, Gortschakoff would consent only to

the abolition of Russia's preponderance by the free admission of the

war-vessels of all nations, or by some similar method of counterpoise.

The negotiations accordingly came to an end, but not before Austria,

disputing the contention of the Allies that the object of the third

Article could be attained only by the specific means proposed by them,

had brought forward a third scheme based partly upon the limitation of

the Russian navy in the Euxine, partly upon the admission of war-ships of

other nations. This scheme was rejected by the Western Powers, whereupon

Austria declared that its obligations under the Treaty of December 2nd,

1854, had now been fulfilled, and that it returned in consequence to the

position of a neutral.

Great indignation was felt and was expressed at London and Paris at this

so-called act of desertion, and at the subsequent withdrawal of Austrian

regiments from the positions which they had occupied in anticipation of

war. It was alleged that in the first two conditions of peace Austria had

seen its own special interests effectually secured; and that as soon as the

Court of St. Petersburg had given the necessary assurances on these heads

the Cabinet of Vienna was willing to sacrifice the other objects of the

Alliance and to abandon the cause of the Maritime Powers, in order to

regain, with whatever loss of honour, the friendship of the Czar. Though it

was answered with perfect truth that Austria had never accepted the

principle of the exclusion of Russia from the Black Sea, and was still

ready to take up arms in defence of that system by which it considered that

Russia's preponderance in the Black Sea might be most suitably prevented,

this argument sounded hollow to combatants convinced of the futility of all

methods for holding Russia in check except their own. Austria had

grievously injured its own position and credit with the Western Powers. On

the other hand it had wounded Russia too deeply to win from the Czar the

forgiveness which it expected. Its policy of balance, whether best

described as too subtle or as too impartial, had miscarried. It had

forfeited its old, without acquiring new friendships. It remained isolated

in Europe, and destined to meet without support and without an ally the

blows which were soon to fall upon it.

[Progress of the siege, January-May, 1855.]

[Canrobert succeeded by Pélissier, May.]

[Unsuccessful assault, June 18.]

[Battle of the Tchernaya, Aug. 16.]

[Capture of the Malakoff, Sept. 8.]

[Fall of Sebastopol, Sept. 9.]

The prospects of the besieging armies before Sebastopol were in some

respects better towards the close of January, 1855, than they were when the

Conference of Vienna commenced its sittings six weeks later. Sardinia,

under the guidance of Cavour, had joined the Western Alliance, and was

about to send fifteen thousand soldiers to the Crimea. A new plan of

operations, which promised excellent results, had been adopted at

headquarters. Up to the end of 1854 the French had directed their main

attack against the Flagstaff bastion, a little to the west of the head of

the Man-of-War Harbour. They were now, however, convinced by Lord Raglan

that the true keystone to the defences of Sebastopol was the Malakoff, on

the eastern side, and they undertook the reduction of this formidable work,

while the British directed their efforts against the neighbouring Redan.

[477] The heaviest fire of the besiegers being thus concentrated on a

narrow line, it seemed as if Sebastopol must soon fall. But at the

beginning of February a sinister change came over the French camp. General

Niel arrived from Paris vested with powers which really placed him in

control of the general-in-chief; and though Canrobert was but partially

made acquainted with the Emperor's designs, he was forced to sacrifice to

them much of his own honour and that of the army. Napoleon had determined

to come to the Crimea himself, and at the fitting moment to end by one

grand stroke the war which had dragged so heavily in the hands of others.

He believed that Sebastopol could only be taken by a complete investment;

and it was his design to land with a fresh army on the south-eastern coast

of the Crimea, to march across the interior of the peninsula, to sweep

Menschikoff's forces from their position above the Tchernaya, and to

complete the investment of Sebastopol from the north. With this scheme of

operations in view, all labour expended in the attack on Sebastopol from

the south was effort thrown away. Canrobert, who had promised his most

vigorous co-operation to Lord Raglan, was fettered and paralysed by the

Emperor's emissary at headquarters. For three successive months the

Russians not only held their own, but by means of counter-approaches won

back from the French some of the ground that they had taken. The very

existence of the Alliance was threatened when, after Canrobert and Lord

Raglan had despatched a force to seize the Russian posts on the Sea of

Azof, the French portion of this force was peremptorily recalled by the

Emperor, in order that it might be employed in the march northwards across

the Crimea. At length, unable to endure the miseries of the position,

Canrobert asked to be relieved of his command. He was succeeded by General

Pélissier. Pélissier, a resolute, energetic soldier, one moreover who did

not owe his promotion to complicity in the _coup d'état_, flatly

refused to obey the Emperor's orders. Sweeping aside the flimsy schemes

evolved at the Tuileries, he returned with all his heart to the plan agreed

upon by the Allied commanders at the beginning of the year; and from this

time, though disasters were still in store, they were not the result of

faltering or disloyalty at the headquarters of the French army. The general

assault on the Malakoff and the Redan was fixed for the 18th of June. It

was bravely met by the Russians; the Allies were driven back with heavy

loss, and three months more were added to the duration of the siege. Lord

Raglan did not live to witness the last stage of the war. Exhausted by his

labours, heartsick at the failure of the great attack, he died on the 28th

of June, leaving the command to General Simpson, an officer far his

inferior. As the lines of the besiegers approached nearer and nearer to the

Russian fortifications, the army which had been defeated at Inkermann

advanced for one last effort. Crossing the Tchernaya, it gave battle on the

16th of August. The French and the Sardinians, with little assistance from

the British army, won a decisive victory. Sebastopol could hope no longer

for assistance from without, and on the 8th of September the blow which had

failed in June was dealt once more. The French, throwing themselves in

great strength upon the Malakoff, carried this fortress by storm, and

frustrated every effort made for its recovery; the British, attacking the

Redan with a miserably weak force, were beaten and overpowered. But the

fall of the Malakoff was in itself equivalent to the capture of Sebastopol.

A few more hours passed, and a series of tremendous explosions made known

to the Allies that the Russian commander was blowing up his magazines and

withdrawing to the north of the Great Harbour. The prize was at length won,

and at the end of a siege of three hundred and fifty days what remained of

the Czar's great fortress passed into the hands of his enemies.

[Exhaustion of Russia.]

[Fall of Kars, Nov. 28.]

[Negotiations for peace.]

The Allies had lost since their landing in the Crimea not less than a

hundred thousand men. An enterprise undertaken in the belief that it would

be accomplished in the course of a few weeks, and with no greater sacrifice

of life than attends every attack upon a fortified place, had proved

arduous and terrible almost beyond example. Yet if the Crimean campaign was

the result of error and blindness on the part of the invaders, it was

perhaps even more disastrous to Russia than any warfare in which an enemy

would have been likely to engage with fuller knowledge of the conditions to

be met. The vast distances that separated Sebastopol from the military

depôts in the interior of Russia made its defence a drain of the most

fearful character on the levies and the resources of the country. What tens

of thousands sank in the endless, unsheltered march without ever nearing

the sea, what provinces were swept of their beasts of burden, when every

larger shell fired against the enemy had to be borne hundreds of miles by

oxen, the records of the war but vaguely make known. The total loss of the

Russians should perhaps be reckoned at three times that of the Allies. Yet

the fall of Sebastopol was not immediately followed by peace. The

hesitation of the Allies in cutting off the retreat of the Russian army had

enabled its commander to retain his hold upon the Crimea; in Asia, the

delays of a Turkish relieving army gave to the Czar one last gleam of

success in the capture of Kars, which, after a strenuous resistance,

succumbed to famine on the 28th of November. But before Kars had fallen

negotiations for peace had commenced. France was weary of the war.

Napoleon, himself unwilling to continue it except at the price of French

aggrandisement on the Continent, was surrounded by a band of palace

stock-jobbers who had staked everything on the rise of the funds that would

result from peace. It was known at every Court of Europe that the Allies

were completely at variance with one another; that while the English

nation, stung by the failure of its military administration during the

winter, by the nullity of its naval operations in the Baltic, and by the

final disaster at the Redan, was eager to prove its real power in a new

campaign, the ruler of France, satisfied with the crowning glory of the

Malakoff, was anxious to conclude peace on any tolerable terms. Secret

communications from St. Petersburg were made at Paris by Baron Seebach,

envoy of Saxony, a son-in-law of the Russian Chancellor: the Austrian

Cabinet, still bent on acting the part of arbiter, but hopeless of the

results of a new Conference, addressed itself to the Emperor Napoleon

singly, and persuaded him to enter into a negotiation which was concealed

for a while from Great Britain. The two intrigues were simultaneously

pursued by our ally, but Seebach's proposals were such that even the

warmest friends of Russia at the Tuileries could scarcely support them, and

the Viennese diplomatists won the day. It was agreed that a note containing

Preliminaries of Peace should be presented by Austria at St. Petersburg as

its own ultimatum, after the Emperor Napoleon should have won from the

British Government its assent to these terms without any alteration. The

Austrian project embodied indeed the Four Points which Britain had in

previous months fixed as the conditions of peace, and in substance it

differed little from what, even after the fall of Sebastopol, British

statesmen were still prepared to accept; but it was impossible that a

scheme completed without the participation of Britain and laid down for its

passive acceptance should be thus uncomplainingly adopted by its

Government. Lord Palmerston required that the Four Articles enumerated

should be understood to cover points not immediately apparent on their

surface, and that a fifth Article should be added reserving to the Powers

the right of demanding certain further special conditions, it being

understood that Great Britain would require under this clause only that

Russia should bind itself to leave the Åland Islands in the Baltic Sea

unfortified. Modified in accordance with the demand of the British

Government, the Austrian draft was presented to the Czar at the end of

December, with the notification that if it as not accepted by the 16th of

January the Austrian ambassador would quit St. Petersburg. On the 15th a

Council was held in the presence of the Czar. Nesselrode, who first gave

his opinion, urged that the continuance of the war would plunge Russia into

hostilities with all Europe, and advised submission to a compact which

would last only until Russia had recovered its strength or new relations

had arisen among the Powers. One Minister after another declared that

Poland, Finland, the Crimea, and the Caucasus would be endangered if peace

were not now made; the Chief of the Finances stated that Russia could not

go through another campaign without bankruptcy. [478] At the end of the

discussion the Council declared unanimously in favour of accepting the

Austrian propositions; and although the national feeling was still in

favour of resistance, there appears to have been one Russian statesman

alone, Prince Gortschakoff, ambassador at Vienna, who sought to dissuade

the Czar from making peace. His advice was not taken. The vote of the

Council was followed by the despatch of plenipotentiaries to Paris, and

here, on the 25th of February, 1856, the envoys of all the Powers, with the

exception of Prussia, assembled in Conference, in order to frame the

definitive Treaty of Peace. [479]

[Conference of Paris, Feb. 25, 1856.]

[Treaty of Paris, March 30, 1856.]

In the debates which now followed, and which occupied more than a month,

Lord Clarendon, who represented Great Britain, discovered that in each

contested point he had to fight against the Russian and the French envoys

combined, so completely was the Court of the Tuileries now identified with

a policy of conciliation and friendliness towards Russia. [480] Great

firmness, great plainness of speech was needed on the part of the British

Government, in order to prevent the recognised objects of the war from

being surrendered by its ally, not from a conviction that they were

visionary or unattainable, but from unsteadiness of purpose and from the

desire to convert a defeated enemy into a friend. The end, however, was at

length reached, and on the 30th of March the Treaty of Paris was signed.

The Black Sea was neutralised; its waters and ports, thrown open to the

mercantile marine of every nation, were formally and in perpetuity

interdicted to the war-ships both of the Powers possessing its coasts and

of all other Powers. The Czar and the Sultan undertook not to establish or

maintain upon its coasts any military or maritime arsenal. Russia ceded a

portion of Bessarabia, accepting a frontier which excluded it from the

Danube. The free navigation of this river, henceforth to be effectively

maintained by an international Commission, was declared part of the public

law of Europe. The Powers declared the Sublime Porte admitted to

participate in the advantages of the public law and concert of Europe, each

engaging to respect the independence and integrity of the Ottoman Empire,

and all guaranteeing in common the strict observance of this engagement,

and promising to consider any act tending to its violation as a question of

general interest. The Sultan "having, in his constant solicitude for the

welfare of his subjects, issued a firman recording his generous intentions

towards the Christian population of his empire, [481] and having

communicated it to the Powers," the Powers "recognised the high value of

this communication," declaring at the same time "that it could not, in any

case, give to them the right to interfere, either collectively or

separately, in the relations of the Sultan to his subjects, or in the

internal administration of his empire." The Danubian Principalities,

augmented by the strip of Bessarabia taken from Russia, were to continue to

enjoy, under the suzerainty of the Porte and under the guarantee of the

Powers, all the privileges and immunities of which they were in possession,

no exclusive protection being exercised by any of the guaranteeing

Powers. [482]

[Agreement of the Conference on rights of neutrals.]

Passing beyond the immediate subjects of negotiation, the Conference

availed itself of its international character to gain the consent of Great

Britain to a change in the laws of maritime war. England had always

claimed, and had always exercised, the right to seize an enemy's goods on

the high sea though conveyed in a neutral vessel, and to search the

merchant-ships of neutrals for this purpose. The exercise of this right had

stirred up against England the Maritime League of 1800, and was condemned

by nearly the whole civilised world. Nothing short of an absolute command

of the seas made it safe or possible for a single Power to maintain a

practice which threatened at moments of danger to turn the whole body of

neutral States into its enemies. Moreover, if the seizure of belligerents'

goods in neutral ships profited England when it was itself at war, it

injured England at all times when it remained at peace during the struggles

of other States. Similarly by the issue of privateers England inflicted

great injury on its enemies; but its own commerce, exceeding that of every

other State, offered to the privateers of its foes a still richer booty.

The advantages of the existing laws of maritime war were not altogether on

the side of England, though mistress of the seas; and in return for the

abolition of privateering, the British Government consented to surrender

its sharpest, but most dangerous, weapon of offence, and to permit the

products of a hostile State to find a market in time of war. The rule was

laid down that the goods of an enemy other than contraband of war should

henceforth be safe under a neutral flag. Neutrals' goods discovered on an

enemy's ship were similarly made exempt from capture.

[Fictions of the Treaty of Paris as to Turkey.]

The enactments of the Conference of Paris relating to commerce in time of

hostilities have not yet been subjected to the strain of a war between

England and any European State; its conclusions on all other subjects were

but too soon put to the test, and have one after another been found

wanting. If the Power which calls man into his moment of life could smile

at the efforts and the assumptions of its creature, such smile might have

been moved by the assembly of statesmen who, at the close of the Crimean

War, affected to shape the future of Eastern Europe. They persuaded

themselves that by dint of the iteration of certain phrases they could

convert the Sultan and his hungry troop of Pashas into the chiefs of a

European State. They imagined that the House of Osman, which in the stages

of a continuous decline had successively lost its sway over Hungary, over

Servia, over Southern Greece and the Danubian Provinces, and which would

twice within the last twenty-five years have seen its Empire dashed to

pieces by an Egyptian vassal but for the intervention of Europe, might be

arrested in its decadence by an incantation, and be made strong enough and

enlightened enough to govern to all time the Slavic and Greek populations

which had still the misfortune to be included within its dominions.

Recognising--so ran the words which read like bitter irony, but which were

meant for nothing of the kind--the value of the Sultan's promises of

reform, the authors of the Treaty of Paris proceeded, as if of set purpose,

to extinguish any vestige of responsibility which might have been felt at

Constantinople, and any spark of confidence that might still linger among

the Christian populations, by declaring that, whether the Sultan observed

or broke his promises, in no case could any right of intervention by Europe

arise. The helmsman was given his course; the hatches were battened down.

If words bore any meaning, if the Treaty of Paris was not an elaborate

piece of imposture, the Christian subjects of the Sultan had for the

future, whatever might be their wrongs, no redress to look for but in the

exertion of their own power. The terms of the Treaty were in fact such as

might have been imposed if the Western Powers had gone to war with Russia

for some object of their own, and had been rescued, when defeated and

overthrown, by the victorious interposition of the Porte. All was hollow,

all based on fiction and convention. The illusions of nations in time of

revolutionary excitement, the shallow, sentimental commonplaces of liberty

and fraternity have afforded just matter for satire; but no democratic

platitudes were ever more palpably devoid of connection with fact, more

flagrantly in contradiction to the experience of the past, or more

ignominiously to be refuted by each succeeding act of history, than the

deliberate consecration of the idol of an Ottoman Empire as the crowning

act of European wisdom in 1856.

[The Danubian Principalities.]

[Alexander Cuza Hospodar of both Provinces.]

[Complete Union, 1862.]

[Charles of Hohenzollern, Hereditary Prince, 1866.]

Among the devotees of the Turk the English Ministers were the most

impassioned, having indeed in the possession of India some excuse for their

fervour on behalf of any imaginable obstacle that would keep the Russians

out of Constantinople. The Emperor of the French had during the Conferences

at Paris revived his project of incorporating the Danubian Principalities

with Austria in return for the cession of Lombardy, but the Viennese

Government had declined to enter into any such arrangement. Napoleon

consequently entered upon a new Eastern policy. Appreciating the growing

force of nationality in European affairs, and imagining that in the

championship of the principle of nationality against the Treaties of 1815

he would sooner or later find means for the aggrandisement of himself and

France, he proposed that the Provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia, while

remaining in dependence upon the Sultan, should be united into a single

State under a prince chosen by themselves. The English Ministry would not

hear of this union. In their view the creation of a Roumanian Principality

under a chief not appointed by the Porte was simply the abstraction from

the Sultan of six million persons who at present acknowledged his

suzerainty, and whose tribute to Constantinople ought, according to Lord

Clarendon, to be increased. [483] Austria, fearing the effect of a

Roumanian national movement upon its own Roumanian subjects in

Transylvania, joined in resistance to Napoleon's scheme, and the political

organisation of the Principalities was in consequence reserved by the

Conference of Paris for future settlement. Elections were held in the

spring of 1857 under a decree from the Porte, with the result that

Moldavia, as it seemed, pronounced against union with the sister province.

But the complaint at once arose that the Porte had falsified the popular

vote. France and Russia had now established relations of such amity that

their ambassadors jointly threatened to quit Constantinople if the

elections were not annulled. A visit paid by the French Emperor to Queen

Victoria, with the object of smoothing over the difficulties which had

begun to threaten the Western alliance, resulted rather in increased

misunderstandings between the two Governments as to the future of the

Principalities than in any real agreement. The elections were annulled. New

representative bodies met at Bucharest and Jassy, and pronounced almost

unanimously for union (October, 1857). In the spring of 1858 the Conference

of Paris reassembled in order to frame a final settlement of the affairs of

the Principalities. It determined that in each Province there should be a

Hospodar elected for life, a separate judicature, and a separate

legislative Assembly, while a central Commission, formed by representatives

of both Provinces, should lay before the Assemblies projects of law on

matters of joint interest. In accordance with these provisions, Assemblies

were elected in each Principality at the beginning of 1859. Their first

duty was to choose the two Hospodars, but in both Provinces a unanimous

vote fell upon the same person, Prince Alexander Cuza. The efforts of

England and Austria to prevent union were thus baffled by the Roumanian

people itself, and after three years the elaborate arrangements made by the

Conference were similarly swept away, and a single Ministry and Assembly

took the place of the dual Government. It now remained only to substitute a

hereditary Prince for a Hospodar elected for life; and in 1866, on the

expulsion of Alexander Cuza by his subjects, Prince Charles of

Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, a distant kinsman of the reigning Prussian

sovereign, was recognised by all Europe as Hereditary Prince of Roumania.

The suzerainty of the Porte, now reduced to the bare right to receive a

fixed tribute, was fated to last but for a few years longer.

[Continued discord in Turkish Empire.]

[Revision of the Treaty of Paris, 1871.]

Europe had not to wait for the establishment of Roumanian independence in

order to judge of the foresight and the statesmanship of the authors of the

Treaty of Paris. Scarcely a year passed without the occurrence of some

event that cast ridicule upon the fiction of a self-regenerated Turkey, and

upon the profession of the Powers that the epoch of external interference

in its affairs was at an end. The active misgovernment of the Turkish

authorities themselves, their powerlessness or want of will to prevent

flagrant outrage and wrong among those whom they professed to rule,

continued after the Treaty of Paris to be exactly what they had been before

it. In 1860 massacres and civil war in Mount Lebanon led to the occupation

of Syria by French troops. In 1861 Bosnia and Herzegovina took up arms. In

1863 Servia expelled its Turkish garrisons. Crete, rising in the following

year, fought long for its independence, and seemed for a moment likely to

be united with Greece under the auspices of the Powers, but it was finally

abandoned to its Ottoman masters. At the end of fourteen years from the

signature of the Peace of Paris, the downfall of the French Empire enabled

Russia to declare that it would no longer recognise the provisions of the

Treaty which excluded its war-ships and its arsenals from the Black Sea. It

was for this, and for this almost alone, that England had gone through the

Crimean War. But for the determination of Lord Palmerston to exclude Russia

from the Black Sea, peace might have been made while the Allied armies were

still at Varna. This exclusion was alleged to be necessary in the interests

of Europe at large; that it was really enforced not in the interest of

Europe but in the interest of England was made sufficiently clear by the

action of Austria and Prussia, whose statesmen, in spite of the discourses

so freely addressed to them from London, were at least as much alive to the

interests of their respective countries as Lord Palmerston could be on

their behalf. Nor had France in 1854 any interest in crippling the power of

Russia, or in Eastern affairs generally, which could be remotely compared

with those of the possessors of India. The personal needs of Napoleon III.

made him, while he seemed to lead, the instrument of the British Government

for enforcing British aims, and so gave to Palmerston the momentary shaping

of a new and superficial concert of the Powers. Masters of Sebastopol, the

Allies had experienced little difficulty in investing their own conclusions

with the seeming authority of Europe at large; but to bring the

representatives of Austria and Prussia to a Council-table, to hand them the

pen to sign a Treaty dictated by France and England, was not to bind them

to a policy which was not their own, or to make those things interests of

Austria and Prussia which were not their interests before. Thus when in

1870 the French Empire fell, England stood alone as the Power concerned in

maintaining the exclusion of Russia from the Euxine, and this exclusion it

could enforce no longer. It was well that Palmerston had made the Treaty of

Paris the act of Europe, but not for the reasons which Palmerston had

imagined. The fiction had engendered no new relation in fact; it did not

prolong for one hour the submission of Russia after it had ceased to be

confronted in the West by a superior force; but it enabled Great Britain to

retire without official humiliation from a position which it had conquered

only through the help of an accidental Alliance, and which it was unable to

maintain alone. The ghost of the Conference of 1856 was, as it were,

conjured up in the changed world of 1871. The same forms which had once

stamped with the seal of Europe the instrument of restraint upon Russia now

as decorously executed its release. Britain accepted what Europe would not

resist; and below the slopes where lay the countless dead of three nations

Sebastopol rose from its ruins, and the ensign of Russia floated once more

over its ships of war.