In the summer of the fateful year of 1853, a city of canvas tents
sprang up, like a growth of giant mushrooms, on Chobham Common, and the
evolutions of the troops encamped thereon, converted that usually bare
and arid expanse of heath into the semblance of a vast market-garden
crammed with perambulatory beds of the gayest and most flaunting
flowers. Ere long a Grand Military Display took place under the eyes
of British Royalty and various Foreign Crowned Heads--not to mention a
hundred thousand representatives of the British Public, whom coaches,
carriages, brakes, vans, gigs, market-carts, shandrydans, nags, and the
humble efforts of Shank’s Mare had brought to the scene of action.
Do you hear the trumpets crying and the bugles calling, and the
batteries of the Royal Artillery thundering from the sandy heights
overlooking the arena of mimic warfare? while withering volleys of
blank cartridge from a line of white-duck trousered Infantry two miles
long, shattered the glass of windows at Bagshot Hall (and, it is said,
at Farnborough) and--to the profound relief of the Special Artists
employed by the illustrated newspapers--caused the subsequent charge of
the Cavalry Brigade commanded by H.R.H. the Duke of Bambridge, to be
executed under cover of a dense and impenetrable cloud of smoke, jagged
through with spurting jets of fire.
The same sort of thing--strange to record--was taking place on the
other side of the Channel. Upon the extensive green billiard-table of
the Bruyeres, sufficiently near the French Military barrack-camp of
Helfaut, the training-maneuvers of some ten thousand representatives
of every service branch of the French Army were duly succeeded by a
Grand Inspection, carried out by Monsiegneur the Marshal de St. Arnaud,
Minister of War. A sham battle followed in the presence of the Emperor
and Empress, fresh from a triumphal tour throughout the North of France.
You are to suppose the heavy brazen field-guns belching and bellowing,
whole miles of Minié rifles blazing and cracking, the crowds of
spectators scattering for their lives as the Chasseurs de Vincennes
advanced in column at the gymnastic pace of one hundred and eighty
steps a minute, and the mounted Chasseurs charged, thundering over
the wet soggy ground. Decorations were distributed to distinguished
commanders, and a few smart sous-officiers in brand-new uniforms. Louis
David painted the beautiful Empress in the braided tunic of a Hussar,
wearing a beaver with a military plume, and mounted on a handsome
charger. What earthly brush, asked the Imperial Press organ in a gush
of inky rapture, could do justice to the grace of the Emperor?
In sober truth, the little, big-headed man with the long body and the
short legs, was a finished master of the equestrian _haute école_. Few
men in France could handle a horse better; and as he passed along the
lines upon some splendid animal, he would turn its head towards the
eagle-topped standard of each regiment, compelling his beast to bow
and caracole as its rider did homage to the avuncular emblem. This
circus-rider’s trick, no matter how often repeated--never failed to
elicit a genuine shout of “_Vive l’Empereur!_”
And what of the Northern potentate, England’s old friend and ally,
for whose warning and instruction these remarkable international
demonstrations of military power had been devised and carried out?
Physically the biggest man in his vast Empire, there was no moral
littleness about Nicholas. He was wary and subtle and diplomatic, but
he was not cunning or sly. He was a galloping terror to dishonest,
peculating officials--it is on record what retribution followed his
hawklike swoop upon the Imperial Dockyard at Cronstadt, where stores
and materials of war--being conveyed in at one of the three gates, and
duly registered by the clerks of the Receiving Department, were by a
second gate, _convanient_--as Mrs. Geogehagan would have said--smuggled
out again, and brought back _per_ medium of the third; once more to be
debited against, and paid for by the Russian Government. Also, there
was at this date--sweeping the streets of Sevastopol in company with
other persons, distinctively attired, shaven in sections, and adorned
as to the legs with irons--a convict who had--previously to the Tsar’s
last visit to that important naval stronghold--shone glorious in bright
green cloth, belaced cocked hat, and golden epaulets, as Governor of
that place.
For--though this Tsar would have dearly liked to be sole master
of Europe--though he would have gladly renamed the Bosphorus and
built a new St. Petersburg at the mouth of the Dardanelles--though
it would have gratified him to add Afghanistan and India to his
dominions--though he was often unscrupulous in the spreading of nets
for the catching of able men--though he would sacrifice soldiers
in hundreds of thousands, did he deem it necessary for the safety
of his State and his religion--though he punished Treason--real
or imaginary--with the knout and imprisonment, Siberian exile
or death--one cannot deny him to have been a high-minded and
honest-souled, if prejudiced and narrow gentleman; who strove,
according to his lights, to be just towards men, and upright before God.
There was not a drop of coward’s blood in him--those who hated him
most were ready to admit that. He would, in his grandson’s place, have
gone out from the Winter Palace alone to meet the strikers who carried
the ikons, on that 18th of January, 1905. He threw all Russia into
mourning, but he would never have marked upon the Calendar that red
St. Vladimir’s Day. Nor, having converted a peaceable demonstration
into a general massacre of children, nursemaids, discontented workmen,
and harmless citizens--would he have sat shuddering and shaking in his
guarded palace, and left his mother to play the man.
* * * * *
Though getting somewhat stout, stiff, and elderly by this time,
Nicholas was still what Mrs. Geogehagan, seeing his portrait in
the illustrated newspapers borrowed from the Mess by the Colonel’s
lady--approvingly termed “a fine upstanding figure av a man.” After
the Peace of 1815, being then a handsome young Colossus of twenty, he
had cut a dashing figure at the various Courts of Europe.... English
Society had adored and _fêted_ him--adipose elderly dowagers who had
at that date been famous dancing beauties, boasted of having been his
partners in the then newly-imported waltz.
* * * * *
In the _Memoirs_ of the late Dowager-Duchess of Strome--who as Lady
Margaretta Bawne, was a Maid of Honor to Princess Victoria, and
subsequently Lady of the Bed-chamber to the young Queen--you will
find in the chapter headed “How We Danced when I was Young” a vivid
description of a waltz experienced with the superb Grand Duke at one of
Almack’s Balls.
“It was,” says the venerable _raconteuse_, “like dancing with a
human cyclone. After the first glissade and twirl my sandals quitted
the floor--seldom to revisit it until the stopping of the music put
a termination to the furious revolutions of the dance. During the
ordeal--witnessed by an admiring crowd comprising several Crowned
Heads and half the notabilities of Europe--I lost my slippers--my
coronet--my combs--and finally my consciousness--which returned to
me--in a shock of alarmed modesty--with the resounding salute imprinted
on my cheek by His Imperial Highness at the final arpeggio.”
Lord! how we had flattered and praised and quoted him--the huge hard
man whom, for some occult reason, we now stigmatized as “The Northern
Barbarian.” He had ceased to dance when he commenced to reign--unlike
Sire my Friend, who gyrated for the admiration of his Court--as he
made his charger caracole for the approval of his Army. The Emperor
who, unarmed and unattended by even an _aide-de-camp_, had quelled
an insurrection among his Guards by giving the order to pile arms in
that bellowing Minotaur voice of his, would have ridden over--not
before--those soldiers who did not cheer.
He had no reason to be pleased with the Ruler of the Ottoman
Empire--whose tottering throne he had bolstered in 1833 and again--in
alliance with England and the two leading Powers of Germany--in 1840.
A Firman issued by the Sultan, according to the Latin Church the Key
of the great door of the Church at Bethlehem, and a Key to each of the
doors of the Altar of the Sacred Manger--and bestowing upon France
the permission to inlay on the floor of the Grotto of the Divine
Nativity an arrogant Silver Star,--doubtless emblazoned with the
Imperial Eagle--had kindled the Autocrat of all the Russias--in his
anointed character as Supreme Head of the Orthodox Church--to flaming
indignation. Nor had the diplomatic representative of Great Britain
at Constantinople--by terming the resulting dispute “a wordy war of
denominational trivialities”--cast else but oil upon the roaring flame.
Later, when Moslem troops under Omar Pasha were dispatched by the
Sublime Porte--acting under advice from a certain suspected quarter--to
operate against the Greek Christian rayahs of Montenegro--a pretty
euphemism for the plundering and burning of farms and villages--the
torture of men--the violation of women and the cutting of children’s
throats--the Barbarian of the North dispatched a small installment of
fifty thousand troops into the Danubian Principalities--picketed the
shaggy horses of his Cavalry with their noses against the frontiers of
Moldavia--ascertained that upon a certain date the foundries of Rostof
and Taganrog would infallibly carry out their contract to deliver a
mere trifle of nine hundred thousand iron projectiles of all sorts and
sizes--and sat down to play the game.
With movings of Divisions and Brigades, and marchings and
counter-marchings. With Imperial Inspections, Reviews, and sham
fights on a scale as colossal as himself. With repetitions of that
effect of the vast market-garden of perambulatory beds of the most
brilliantly-hued flowers, when a hundred thousand troops of all arms
were maneuvered at the Camp of Krasnoé Sélo. Replying to great Naval
Demonstrations at Spithead and Queenstown, Havre, and Brest and Toulon,
culminating in combined visits of the French and English fleets to
Turkish waters, with ominous increase of activity at Cronstadt and
Revel, and menacing, ominous movements of steam and sailing-squadrons
in the Baltic and on the Black Sea.