PARTY GOVERNMENT AND WAR.
Stratford de Redcliffe Cooling Down--Tory Distrust of the French
Alliance--The Queen’s Kindness to Lord Aberdeen--The Emperor
Napoleon and Prince Albert--The Prince Visits France--The Queen at
Balmoral--Her Feelings towards the Prince of Prussia--The Queen
holds a Council of War--She Demands Reinforcements for Lord
Raglan--Napoleon’s Alarm--Prince Albert’s Plan for an Army of
Reserve--The Queen on the Austrian Proposals--Her Anxiety about the
Troops--Raglan’s Meagre Despatches--The Queen and Miss
Nightingale--At Work for the Soldiers--Extorting Information from
Lord Raglan--Ministerial Changes--Lord John Russell’s
Selfishness--A Miserly Whig Duke--The Queen’s Disgust at Russell’s
Treachery--Resignation of Russell--Fall of the Coalition--The Queen
and the Crisis--She holds out the Olive Branch to
Palmerston--Palmerston’s Cabinet--Quarrel between Mr. Disraeli and
Lord Derby--The Sebastopol Committee--Mr. Roebuck and Prince
Albert--The Vienna Conference and the Death of Czar Nicholas--The
Austrian Compromise--Parties and the War--Russell’s Humiliation--He
Resigns in Disgrace--The Queen quashes the Peace Negotiations--A
Royal Blunder--The Queen tries to Gag the Peelites--Aberdeen
Browbeaten by the Court--Canrobert’s Resignation--Crimean
Successes--Failure of the Attack on the Redan--Death of Raglan.
During the Parliamentary Session of 1854, it was very plainly shown that
Government by Party is not the best kind of Government for carrying on
diplomacy or warfare. The Opposition in the House of Commons, instead of
checking the drift of the Cabinet towards war, seemed ever bent on
hounding them on. They hardly ever gave a vote save for the purpose of
discrediting and weakening the Ministry. It is, therefore, not unfair to
infer that they rejoiced in the prospect of war, because they foresaw
that its hazards and its chances might lead to the destruction of the
Government. The temper of the Tories at this time was admirably
illustrated by Mr. Disraeli. When a motion was brought before the House
of Commons by Mr. Chambers early in February, 1854, to investigate the
claims of an English company at Madeira against Portugal, Lord
Malmesbury writes of the Ministerial defeat as follows: “I fear Disraeli
voted against the Government, as it is his policy to join with anybody
to defeat them.”[192] With such a spirit of faction animating the
Opposition, it was hardly possible for the Ministry to steer a steady
course in the stormy sea of diplomatic intrigue on which it had
embarked. Yet it is but right to say that there were some patriotic
Tories who objected very strongly to the tactics and strategy of their
Party. John Wilson Croker was so firmly opposed to the policy of the
war, and the entangling alliance with the French Emperor,[193] that he
severed his connection with the _Quarterly Review_ on this account.
Croker’s belief was that France was an unsafe ally, that the French had
manufactured the quarrel with Russia and inveigled us into it; that our
Government knowing, from the Secret Memorandum of 1844, what the Czar’s
views were, should have urged Turkey to resist the intimidation of
France at the outset. We should have warned her of the peril she stood
in from Russia, whilst at the same time we warned Russia that, though we
had no objection to induce Turkey to do her justice, we could not
sanction the partition of the Ottoman Empire. This course, says Mr.
Croker, in a remarkable letter to Lord Lyndhurst, “would have placed the
matter on its real grounds--that is, a struggle between France and
Russia, in which we should have been spectators, and eventually
mediators, but not parties, till some pretensions contrary to the
permanent balance of power should be raised by any of the
belligerents.”[194] Lyndhurst himself began towards the end of the year
to doubt whether our alliance with the French was not as dangerous as
Russian pretensions. Very few members of the House of Commons, however,
shared these doubts. The House, in fact, rapidly became unmanageable,
and, as Lord Malmesbury says in his “Memoirs” would support nothing but
the war. Bill after Bill had to be withdrawn by Aberdeen’s Government,
so that its legislative achievements can be briefly recorded. During the
first Session of the year the Oxford University Bill was passed. It
substituted for an incompetent governing oligarchy a Council of eminent
and talented men, and gave the Colleges great powers for
self-improvement. Mercantile laws were consolidated into one Act. Usury
laws were abolished. The principle of allowing traders to form Joint
Stock Companies under limited liability of partnership was affirmed by
the House of Commons, and the old system of granting such undertakings
charters from the Board of Trade, finally condemned. Lord John Russell’s
Reform Bill was one of the measures which were introduced, debated, and
withdrawn. It had produced a second crisis in the Cabinet in early
spring, which was overcome by Lord Aberdeen’s mediation between Lord
John and Lord Palmerston. This episode seriously disturbed the Queen’s
peace of mind, and in one of her letters she expresses her deep
gratitude to the Prime Minister for his devotion to her. Nothing,
indeed, is more touching than the references to the aged statesman with
which the Queen’s letters are filled at this period. She is found
frequently devising plans for the purpose of lightening the burden of
care that was crushing his spirits. On the 1st of May, Prince Arthur’s
birthday, she writes as follows:--“Though the Queen cannot send Lord
Aberdeen a card for a child’s ball, perhaps he may not disdain coming
for a short time to see a number of happy little people, including some
of his grandchildren, enjoying themselves.” In September, again, she
writes to him from Balmoral, peremptorily insisting on his leaving
London and proceeding to Scotland at once to recruit his health. At
Haddo, she says, he will be near her, and, she adds, “Lord Aberdeen
knows that his health is not his own alone, but that
[Illustration: MR. ROEBUCK (1858).]
she (the Queen) and the country have as much interest in it as he and
his own family.”[195] In midsummer she gave him her best support and
sympathy when the Peelites and the Whigs almost openly quarrelled, and
attacks on the Prime Minister were freely indulged in by his own
supporters. “Aberdeen,” writes Prince Albert in July to Stockmar, “is a
standing reproach in their eyes, because he cannot share the enthusiasm
while it is his part to lead it. Nevertheless he does his duty and keeps
the whole thing together, and is the only guarantee that the war will
not degenerate into crack-brained, fruitless absurdities”--such as the
re-organisation of Poland, the seizure of Finland, a mad project of
certain Tories like Lyndhurst, and the annexation of the Crimea. Before
Parliament met in January, 1855, the Queen was indeed so keenly sensible
of the injustice of the attacks on Lord Aberdeen, that she insisted on
his accepting the Order of the Garter as a public testimony of her
confidence in his administration, and of “her personal feelings of
regard and friendship” for himself. The end of the London season, when
the Court came to the capital to prorogue Parliament, was gloomy.
Cholera was spreading fast through the town, and even the world of
fashion had to offer up its tale of victims.[196] The Queen was
therefore fain to hurry back to Osborne as quickly as possible; and, on
the 29th of August, she writes to the King of the Belgians that she is
reconciling herself to the prospect of a long parting from her husband,
who was about to visit Napoleon III.
[Illustration: BUCKINGHAM PALACE, FROM ST. JAMES’S PARK.]
Prince Albert’s visit to France was planned by the Emperor Napoleon for
the purpose of raising his status in the eyes of his people, whose
cultured and aristocratic classes looked askance at his upstart court
and his mushroom nobility. First of all, he sounded Lord Cowley on the
subject. The Queen thought that such a visit might render the French
alliance more trustworthy than she was disposed to consider it, and the
Prince soon let Lord Cowley know he would visit France whenever he was
invited. Napoleon III. accordingly, on the 3rd of July, asked the Prince
to come and inspect the summer camp of 100,000 troops which was to be
formed between St. Omer and Boulogne, and the Prince promised to go. He
sailed from Osborne on the 3rd of September, carrying an autograph
letter from the Queen to the Emperor, who met his guest on the quay at
Boulogne on the 4th. On the 8th he returned to Osborne, on the whole
well pleased with his visit.
The 15th of September found the Court at Balmoral; indeed, it was there
that the Queen received most of the stirring news that made English
hearts beat fast during these anxious months when the Crimean struggle
was begun. She was greatly cheered by the successful landing of the
troops near Eupatoria, and her pride when the tidings of the victory of
the Alma arrived, is frankly and ingenuously expressed in her
correspondence.
On the 11th of October the Court returned to Windsor, the Queen visiting
Edinburgh, Hull, and Grimsby on the way. It was at Edinburgh that she
first heard of the abandonment of the attack on the northern front of
Sebastopol, and of Raglan’s foolish “flank march” to the south side of
the town. Prussian diplomacy had at this time again irritated both the
Queen and her husband, for when Austria was once more pressed to take
the field with us, Prussia held her back by threatening to withdraw from
the offensive and defensive alliance which had been signed between the
two countries. Prince Albert remonstrated with the Crown
Prince--afterwards Emperor of Germany--but in vain. The conduct of
Prussia was especially provoking to the Queen, because she even then saw
certain signs which indicated that the son of the Crown Prince would
probably be soon a successful suitor for her eldest daughter’s hand. Her
Majesty next induced her uncle, King Leopold, to remonstrate with the
King of Prussia. Prussia was warned that France would seize the left
bank of the Rhine, and that England would abet her. Herr Von Bismarck,
who made it his business to thwart King Leopold’s schemes, met this
threat by pointing out that whoever held the Rhine was master of
Belgium--a trifling circumstance which the Queen and Prince Albert seem
to have overlooked, when they persuaded King Leopold to press Prussia
into the service of the Allies.
When October brought the first hints of bad news from the Crimea, the
heart of the Queen grew heavy with anxiety. She now knew, by advices
from Raglan, that he had not enough troops for the task that was imposed
on him. The country was growing restive over the sluggishness of the
attack. The Queen and Prince Albert therefore implored Lord Aberdeen to
consider how reinforcements were to be sent out. On the 11th of November
her Majesty asked the Prime Minister to visit her at Windsor, and, with
the Duke of Newcastle, talk over a project of the Prince’s for raising
the Militia by ballot and sending them abroad, and for organising a
legion of foreign mercenaries. The Queen desired this step to be taken
at once, assuring her Ministers that they would have no difficulty in
getting a Bill of Indemnity from Parliament; but her suggestion was
overruled. And yet at this time Raglan was begging the Secretary for
War to send out 10,000 troops without delay! Meanwhile Napoleon III. was
alarmed to find that the English army was vanishing before Canrobert’s
eyes. Hence he offered to send out every French soldier he could muster,
if England would only find the transports. Sir James Graham found them,
and they carried, not only French troops to the Crimea, but all the
lavish stores of food and comforts which never reached those for whom
they were supplied. The terrible loss of life at Inkermann again
prompted the Queen to press on the Duke of Newcastle the necessity for
reinforcing our shattered army. Prince Albert was equally urgent in his
importunity, and on the 1st of December he was successful in persuading
the Cabinet to adopt his plan for forming an Army of Reserve at Malta.
Meantime, diplomacy was again appealed to for the purpose of ending the
war. “If Austria did her duty,” writes the Queen when as yet the tidings
of carnage were fresh in her mind, “she might have prevented much of
this bloodshed. Instead of this, her Generals do nothing but juggle the
Turks of the Principalities, and the Government shuffles about, making
advances and then retreating. We shall see now if she is sincere in her
last propositions.”[197] These were that certain demands should be made
by her on Russia. If Russia rejected them, then Austria would be willing
to join us in the war. But, on the other hand, if Russia accepted the
Austrian proposals, England and France must agree to make peace. What
then, asked Austria, were the terms which France and England would
insist on having? Prince Albert was asked by Lord Clarendon to suggest
an answer. The Prince replied very sensibly that he should not ask for
anything beyond the “Four Points” on which Austria was prepared to
insist, though it might be well, he said, to define their somewhat
elastic terms. These points were the substitution of a European for a
Russian Protectorate over the Principalities; the freedom of navigation
on the Danube; the revision of the Treaty of 1841 so as to destroy the
preponderance of Russia in the Black Sea; a guarantee from the Sultan to
the Great Powers confirming the liberties and privileges of his
Christian subjects, instead of a guarantee from the Sultan to Russia
alone. The Queen greatly approved of the Ministerial Despatch which was
drawn up on the lines of Prince Albert’s advice, and in a letter to Lord
Clarendon she gave him sound reasons for her belief that Austria was
acting honestly in the transaction, and not, as Lord Clarendon
suspected, seeking to evade her moral responsibilities.
But it was the condition of the army itself during the winter of 1854 in
the Crimea, rather than the diplomacy of the struggle that disturbed
most grievously the mind of the Queen. Official Despatches, especially
those of Lord Raglan, were culpably silent on the subject. Private
letters, however, from officers and men, teemed with complaints, and
officers in the Guards kept the Court well informed about the actual
state of things. Early in October, the _Times_ newspaper generously
opened a subscription for the benefit of the army, and sent Mr.
Macdonald to the Crimea to administer it. The services which this
gentleman rendered to the troops will never be forgotten. He seemed to
make his pence go as far as other men’s pounds, and to his skilful
administration may be traced many most important reforms which were
adopted by the Government in their methods of issuing rations to the
army. The Queen was now of opinion that the time had come for appealing
to the generosity of the people on behalf of the sufferers from the war.
On the 13th of October a Royal Commission was issued, headed by Prince
Albert, to establish the Patriotic Fund for the relief of the families
of those who had perished in the Crimea. A staff of hospital nurses was
organised under Miss Florence Nightingale--a lady whose good deeds and
kindly offices to the sick and wounded at Scutari have given her
imperishable fame. On the 5th of November she reached the scene of her
labours--as the wounded men were being brought in from Balaclava--and
the hospital which had been a foul and disorderly pest-house, was soon
rendered a wholesome and serviceable sanatorium. It was Mr. Sidney
Herbert who requested Miss Nightingale to undertake this work, and he
was bitterly condemned at the time for sanctioning such an innovation as
the introduction of a volunteer staff of thirty-seven lady nurses into a
military hospital.[198] Nor was the Queen contented merely to help all
these good works by her counsel, sympathy, and support. With her own
hands she, her daughters, and the ladies of her Household knitted
woollen comforters, socks, and mittens, and plied their needles as
busily as the most toilworn seamstresses in the East-end, making
under-clothing for the soldiers. Their example was quickly followed by
every lady of leisure in the three kingdoms. Prince Albert sent fur
coats to his brother officers in the Guards, and bountiful supplies of
tobacco for the men. He devised a series of forms in order to extract,
or rather extort, full information from Lord Raglan and his subordinates
as to the condition of the troops, and it was not till his system of
tabulated returns was adopted that the Government had the data necessary
for devising measures of relief for the miseries of the army. On the
first day of the year 1855, the Queen, in sending her congratulations to
Lord Raglan, speaks in touching language of the grief which a long
stream of Crimean reports have caused her. She urges vehemently that
every effort be made to save her troops from privation. She even goes
into particulars, and speaks sharply about the blunder which led to
green coffee beans instead of ground coffee being served out--a blunder
that was one of the notorious scandals of the time.[199]
[Illustration: MISS NIGHTINGALE AND THE NURSES IN THE BARRACKS HOSPITAL
AT SCUTARI.]
One curious change in the organisation of the Ministry took place in
1854, which, however, does not seem to have greatly concerned the Court.
The Secretaryship of State for War had hitherto been an appendage of the
Colonial Office. It was now made a separate Secretaryship, and, in an
unfortunate moment for himself, the Duke of Newcastle elected to take
the appointment, letting Sir George Grey become Secretary of State for
the Colonies. Mr. Sidney Herbert remained as “Secretary _at_ War”--a
Parliamentary secretary representing the War Office in the House of
Commons,[200] Lord John Russell becoming President of the Council.[201]
Lord John, however, who seems to have been the fly in the ointment pot
of the Coalition, soon began to find fault with the readjustment of
offices. In November he told Lord Aberdeen that the War Office ought to
be put in stronger hands than those of the Duke of Newcastle. This
suggestion, described afterwards by Mr. Disraeli as “a profligate
intrigue” worthy of the “Memoirs” of Bubb Doddington, gave offence to
the Queen. It seemed to her a treacherous attempt to disintegrate the
Cabinet, and she did not conceal her sympathy with the statesman thus
attacked. The Duke, however, generously offered to sacrifice himself so
that Lord John Russell might not have a pretext for embarrassing the
Crown by breaking up the Government at a critical moment; but the
Cabinet would not permit the Duke to be sacrificed. Even Palmerston, to
do him justice, repudiated the idea, and so Lord John again threatened
to resign. Aberdeen met this threat by persuading the Queen to overcome
her personal aversion to Palmerston, and obtaining her leave to appoint
him Leader of the House of Commons, in the event of Lord John Russell
deserting his post.
Lord John, now finding that he had made a mistake, succumbed on the 16th
of December; and so the scandal was hushed up. The Queen, however, felt
ill at ease, for, by this time, she knew that the Ministry had no
stability, and that Lord John would soon again give his colleagues more
serious trouble. But he remained in the Cabinet fully cognisant of
everything that was done by the War Department, and never expressing the
least disapproval of its management till Parliament met in January,
1855. Then, when Mr. Roebuck gave notice of his motion for inquiring
into the conduct of the war, Lord John, without the slightest warning,
resigned, saying that as he agreed with Mr. Roebuck he did not see how
the motion could be resisted. The Duke of Newcastle again offered to
retire in favour of Lord Palmerston, if haply Lord John Russell could be
thereby induced to withdraw his resignation. But again, his colleagues
refused to sacrifice him, and so they all offered to resign. This was a
cruel blow to the Queen. She protested that there was no precedent for a
Ministry resigning in the midst of a war till they were dismissed. She
implored Lord Aberdeen not to desert her at a moment when the very worst
possible effect would be produced by the spectacle of the nation
struggling through war without a Government. The Cabinet accordingly
determined to face Mr. Roebuck’s motion; but when he carried it against
them, as has already been recorded, they were compelled to retire from
office. Then the Queen had to meet one of the most perplexing and
anxious Ministerial crises of her reign. Lord Derby was appealed to. But
he found he could only obtain “independent support” from Lord
Palmerston, Mr. Sidney Herbert, Mr. Gladstone, and Lord Aberdeen’s
friends--which, he observed cynically, was “support which could never be
depended on.” He did not seem to have much faith in his own colleagues,
and he consequently declined to form a Ministry. But he sympathised with
the Queen in her vexation at the turn which events had taken--quoting to
her a remark of Walewski’s--“What influence can a country like England
pretend to have without an army and without a Government?” Lord
Lansdowne was next consulted. He was willing to form a Cabinet, but then
he was old and broken in health. He could not possibly serve for more
than a few months, and obviously his enforced retirement would again
cast everything into confusion. Lord John Russell, of course, had long
been under the hallucination that he could form an Administration
without the aid of the Peelites. His cantankerous treachery to his
colleagues, and his unscrupulous pertinacity in disintegrating the
Coalition Cabinet in circumstances most damaging to the country,
rendered him objectionable to the Queen. But still acting on Lansdowne’s
advice, she determined to let him try, so that the mortification of
failure might perchance dispel his delusion that he had still a name to
conjure with as a Party leader. He tried, and, of course, failed
ignominiously. No man trusted him or cared to serve under or with him.
The Queen, however, in her letter to Lord John, very shrewdly and
gracefully held out the olive branch to Palmerston by saying that it
would give her great pleasure if he would join the new Government.
Palmerston, feeling that the crisis was one which also called for
sacrifices on his part, offered to serve even under Lord John as
Secretary for War, if he could thereby extricate the Crown from its
difficulties. But he deemed it imperative that Lord Clarendon should
join the Ministry, and this Lord Clarendon stoutly refused to do. His
colleagues, he said, had all been loyal to him, and he would not serve
under a man who, from the time he entered the late Ministry, had
persistently embarrassed it, and intrigued for its destruction. Lord
John found that he had attempted the impossible, and on the 4th of
February the country was still without a Government, to the infinite
damage
[Illustration: HENRY VIII.’S GATEWAY, WINDSOR CASTLE.]
of its prestige in the eyes of foreign nations. The Czar rejoiced grimly
at our embarrassments. The French Emperor began to doubt whether a
stable alliance could be formed with a nation whose organic institutions
were so unstable. The Queen accordingly put an end to Russell’s
intrigues, which had wrought all this mischief, in a very summary
manner. Lord Palmerston’s public-spirited behaviour in the crisis had
obliterated all recollection of his faults in the past. Her Majesty
therefore called on Palmerston to organise a Government. The Whigs who
had served in the Coalition Cabinet agreed to serve under him. The
Peelites would have done so, but they declined because of their deep
personal regard for Aberdeen and Newcastle, who, they declared, had
been most unjustly and spitefully attacked by the majority that had
destroyed the Coalition Government.[202] Aberdeen and Newcastle,
however, remonstrated with them, and the result was that Mr. Gladstone,
Mr. Sidney Herbert, and the Duke of Argyle consented to take office
under Palmerston. When Lord Palmerston informed the Queen of this fact
she felt that for a time her troubles were over, that again she was
indebted to the disinterested devotion of Lord Aberdeen for a happy
release from her difficulties. Palmerston himself also expressed his
gratitude to Aberdeen in strong and cordial terms.[203]
[Illustration: REFRESHMENT ROOM, HOUSE OF LORDS.]
The new Cabinet was really the old one. Only Russell, Aberdeen, and
Newcastle were out of it, and Lord Panmure--a blustering person who was
clever enough to make the world believe that to be noisy was to be
energetic--was Secretary of State for War. This seemed rather to
disconcert the factious place-hunters. “The Whigs at Brooks’s,” wrote
Lady Palmerston to her son-in-law,[204] “were all up in arms at the
Government not being formed on more Liberal principles, or rather with
more of the Whig Party. They are disappointed at the Peelites joining,
and at under people of that party keeping their places, so that, in a
manner, there are hardly any places to fill up. They press, therefore,
very much for a Whig in the Duchy of Lancaster, so as to make the
Peelite division in a greater minority.” But the anger of the Tories
could scarcely be kept within bounds. They argued that, as Aberdeen and
Newcastle had not been evicted from office till after they had pretty
nearly succeeded in setting the War Department in order, their
successors would not only have a comparatively easy task, but would also
win all the glory and prestige of finishing a victorious war. Lord Derby
had missed a golden opportunity by refusing to form a Ministry; nay, he
had done something that was still more damaging to them. In his
explanation to the House of Lords he admitted that he could not govern
without the aid of the Peelites. This implied that, having tried his
colleagues in the work of administration, he had so little confidence in
their capacity, that he did not dare to trust to them alone. “Disraeli,”
writes Lord Malmesbury, “is in a state of disgust beyond all control. He
told me he had spoken his mind to Lord Derby, and told him some very
disagreeable truths.”[205] No sooner had the new Cabinet been formed
than it was seen that another effort would be made to break it up. What
was to be done with Mr. Roebuck’s Committee of Investigation? It was
somewhat unconstitutional to vest it with the functions of the
Executive, and Palmerston, on the 16th of February, appealed to the
House not to appoint the Committee, or at least to suspend its judgment
till the new Ministry had time to reform the War Department. Mr. Roebuck
denied that the Ministry was really a new one, and insisted on the
appointment of the Committee. The Peelites objected to the Committee as
a dangerous and unconstitutional precedent. Palmerston agreed with them,
but, like the majority of the Cabinet, he felt that to resist was to
court another defeat in the House of Commons; and so he decided to
yield. Sir James Graham, Mr. Sidney Herbert, and Mr. Gladstone
accordingly tendered their resignations, and in a fortnight after it was
formed the new Ministry was wrecked. On the 28th Sir George Cornewall
Lewis took Mr. Gladstone’s place as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord
John Russell re-entered the Cabinet as Colonial Secretary, and Sir C.
Wood succeeded Sir J. Graham as First Lord of the Admiralty. “Things
have gone mad here, the political world is quite crazy, and the Court is
the only institution which does not lose its tranquil bearing”--thus
wrote Prince Albert to the Dowager-Duchess of Coburg in the midst of the
agitation caused by the second Ministerial crisis of 1855.
Meantime much had been done by Lord Aberdeen, the Duke of Newcastle, and
Prince Albert, to improve the condition of the army at the seat of war.
The railway from Balaclava to the camp was being pushed on rapidly;
reinforcements were pouring in steadily. On the 13th of March Sir J.
Burgoyne writes that “the men are beginning to look tolerably hearty and
cheerful again.” A Sanitary Commission, organised by Lord Shaftesbury,
had been despatched to aid the medical staff, and there was little for
the new Ministers to do but to follow the path which Aberdeen and
Newcastle had, by their toil and self-sacrifice during the recess,
smoothed for them. The Queen, like the Peelites, was of opinion that the
Roebuck Commission could do very little good, and, by diverting the
attention of the officials from the work in hand, might do a great deal
of harm. It was the expression of an angry desire to punish somebody,
and, as Prince Albert said, it could not hope to find the right person,
“because he does not exist.”[206] If any one was to blame, it was the
Duke of Wellington, who had left the country with a loose aggregate of
battalions which was in no true sense an organised army--without leaders
trained and practised in the duties of general officers; without a
reserve, a general staff, field commissariat, ambulance, or baggage
corps; without training in the combined use of infantry, cavalry, and
artillery, with their various systems of supply and transport; in fact,
without any effective instrument whatever for waging war at a distance
from England. In vain did the Committee endeavour to fix the blame for
the disasters in the Crimea on somebody. Mr. Roebuck soon found that an
examination of the Duke of Newcastle would rather tend to clear than to
damage his reputation, and then the inevitable scapegoat was sought in
the Queen’s husband. When Mr. Roebuck consulted the Duke privately on
the subject, his Grace told him that the only really valuable advice he
and Lord Aberdeen got was from Prince Albert. He added that the Queen’s
health had suffered dreadfully from her anxiety about the troops, and
that it was therefore absurd to imagine that the Prince had been
conspiring to wreck the expedition. The Sebastopol Committee was a
failure. It did not succeed in saddling any one with a definite
responsibility for the sufferings of the army; nay, the Chairman (Mr.
Roebuck), in speaking to a resolution censuring the Aberdeen Ministry
for their management of the war, freed the Duke of Newcastle, Mr. Sidney
Herbert, and Sir J. Graham, the heads of the incriminated Departments,
from blame.[207] The only severe censure was that passed on Lord Raglan
for continuing Mr. Ward as purveyor for the hospital at Scutari after he
had been pronounced unfit for his post.
[Illustration: MR. SIDNEY HERBERT (AFTERWARDS LORD HERBERT OF LEA).]
It had been agreed, partly on the advice of the Queen, to enter a new
Conference at Vienna for the purpose of patching up a peace. To get rid
of Lord John Russell, he was sent there by Lord Palmerston as the
representative of England; and it was whilst he was on his way that he
was offered and accepted the Colonial Secretaryship, vacated by the
resignation of Mr. Sidney Herbert.[208] The basis of the Conference was
the protocol containing the “Four Points” which had been accepted in
principle by Russia on the 16th of
[Illustration: THE WINTER PALACE, ST. PETERSBURG.]
November, 1854, though Nesselrode in his despatch of 26th August to
Prince Gortschakoff, the Russian Ambassador at Vienna, had rejected
them. On the 2nd of March, the chief figure in the tragic drama of the
war passed suddenly from the scene. The failure of his plans in the
Crimea had broken the imperious spirit and proud heart of the Czar, and
he died with words of thanks to his army on his lips. “Tell my dear
Fritz” (the King of Prussia), he said to the Czarina with his last
breath, “to continue the friend of Russia, and faithful to the last
words of papa”--faithful, that is, to the principles of the Holy
Alliance. The old monarchies and the old conservatism of Europe thus
lost their most powerful champion, and a seventh part of the globe found
a new master. The Emperor Nicholas was succeeded by his son, Alexander
II., who immediately proclaimed his intention of following out loyally
the policy which his father had inherited with his crown. On the 10th of
March, Nesselrode intimated to the Russian Agents abroad that the young
Czar would enter the Vienna Conference “in a sincere spirit of concord.”
And as it was only possible to secure the neutrality of Austria by
keeping alive negotiations for peace, Russia had a powerful motive for
continuing them. But at the meetings of the Conference Prince
Gortschakoff refused to accept the plan for giving effect to the Third
Point. It proposed to destroy Russian preponderance in the Black Sea, by
binding her and Turkey never to have there more than “four ships, four
frigates, with a proportionate number of light vessels and of unarmoured
vessels exclusively adapted to the transport of troops.” Russia, as an
alternative, suggested that ships of war of all nations might have free
access through the Dardanelles or Bosphorus to the Black Sea, or, if it
were preferred, that the Sultan might admit the vessels of the Western
Powers, or of Russia, in such numbers as he pleased. This would, of
course, enable the Western Powers to check Russian preponderance. But it
would also involve the right of Russia to send ships to the
Mediterranean. To that the Western Powers would not consent, and so the
Conference was at an end. At this stage Count Buol suggested a
compromise. Why not, he asked, solve the difficulty by applying the
principle of counterpoise? One way of doing that obviously would be to
establish an actual equilibrium between the Black Sea fleets of Turkey
and Russia--the Sultan having the right to open the straits to the ships
of his allies if threatened with attack. M. de Drouyn Lhuys and Lord
John Russell did not consider that their instructions permitted them to
accept this compromise. But they both privately expressed their personal
approval of it, and promised to urge the Governments of France and
England to assent to it. The French Emperor and the British Cabinet
rejected it. M. Drouyn de Lhuys accordingly resigned office--whereas
Lord John Russell remained in the Cabinet. But he had the amazing
indiscretion after this to advocate the prosecution of the war in an
extravagant speech,[209] whereupon the Austrian Government revealed the
fact that at Vienna he had said peace might be honourably made on the
basis of Count Buol’s compromise. No English Minister in our time has
ever placed himself in a more humiliating position. Not a word could be
said in his defence. All he himself could say was that he was afraid he
might embarrass his colleagues if he retired, or if he let it be known
that he thought they were carrying on war, when peace might honourably
be concluded. The outcry against his dishonesty was so loud, that he
resigned as soon as Sir E. B. Lytton gave notice of a motion in the
House of Commons condemning his conduct.
The failure of the Conference gave rise to heated debates in Parliament,
in which the Government was attacked by a curious combination of
Parties. The House of Lords with singular want of patriotism and dignity
encouraged Lyndhurst to vilipend Prussia and sneer at Austria, at the
very moment when it was vital to our diplomatic success to conciliate
these Powers. His violent speeches prove that, despite his eloquence, he
lacked the one quality necessary to justify his interference in any
debate on Foreign Affairs. He was utterly incapable of appreciating the
difference between the interests of England and France, and those of
Austria in the negotiations--the difference between the interests and
the prepossessions of actual and contingent belligerents. But all this
criticism of the Conference, even from the point of view taken by
rhetorical mischief-makers like Lyndhurst, failed to lay bare the one
blunder in strategy which the Plenipotentiaries had perpetrated.[210]
The House of Commons, it must be allowed, came out of the debates more
creditably than had been expected. The Tories, led by Mr. Disraeli,
seemed to keep their heads cool, and scrupulously refrained from
clamouring for war because Russia had rejected the Third Point. They
refused to support the Radicals, who were for moving an Address to the
Crown virtually binding the Government to accept the Austrian proposals.
But they condemned the Ministers for the ambiguity of their policy in
reference to these proposals, and brought forward a motion assuring the
Crown that the House would support the Executive to the utmost in
prosecuting war till peace was obtained. The combative Whigs would have
committed Parliament to a declaration that the reduction of the naval
power of Russia in the Black Sea, was the essential condition of peace.
In the end, a motion, which was the Tory proposal with the implied
censure on the Ministry cut out, was carried. But all through the
debate, Peelites, Tories, and Radicals condemned the suggestion to limit
the naval power of Russia by Treaty. And they were right, for, as Mr.
Gladstone is reported to have said in conversation, it was a proposal
“to slap Russia on the face without tying her hands.” It was, in fact,
an attempt to inflict on Russia a perpetual indignity without reducing
her real power, which was not naval but military. Mr. Disraeli and Lord
Robert Cecil--afterwards Lord Salisbury--considered it an impolitic
scheme for the humiliation of Russia, and the ablest debaters pointed
out that it was one which Russia would ever be tempted to violate,
whilst the Powers had now no check on her save that of chronic war. Yet
it was for the sake of forcing this indignity on Russia, who had now
yielded every demand we made when we invaded the Crimea, that the war
was prolonged! From this moment, it is not too much to say, that the war
was no longer a hateful but an unavoidable incident of State policy. It
was the consummation of a hideous crime against humanity, for which Lord
Palmerston and his colleagues were directly responsible.[211]
[Illustration: GRAND RECEPTION ROOM, WINDSOR CASTLE]
When Lord John Russell excused himself for first recommending the
Austrian compromise, and then backing out of his opinion and advocating
war, he said mysteriously that something had come to his knowledge which
altered his views. It was suggested at the time by Mr. Disraeli that
Lord John was overawed by the objections of the Emperor of the French to
the compromise. Even had that been the case, it would not have justified
him in remaining in the Cabinet, seeing that the Emperor’s Minister, who
was in
[Illustration: THE HUNDRED STEPS, WINDSOR CASTLE.]
like case, had resigned rather than hold himself responsible for an
indefensible war. It is, however, possible to account for Lord John’s
conduct more easily by attributing it to sycophancy than to treachery,
for it is a regrettable fact that when the Austrian project was laid
before the Queen by Lord Clarendon, she used all her influence to quash
it. She wrote to him a curt note saying:--“How Lord John Russell and M.
Drouyn can recommend such proposals to our acceptance is beyond her (the
Queen’s) comprehension.” Then she encloses a brief memorandum from
Prince Albert, in which he says:--“To limit the Russian naval power to
that existing in 1853 would therefore be simply to perpetuate and
legalise the preponderance of Russia in the Black Sea, a proposal which
can neither be made nor accepted as a development of the Third
Point.”[212] It is unfortunate that such clear thinkers as the Queen and
her husband did not observe that what Austria fixed was merely the
maximum and not the minimum limit, that by mutual agreement Russia and
Turkey might cut down their ships from six to one if they chose, and
that even the maximum could be always counterbalanced by Turkey. Yet
Prince Albert would insist that a proposal which automatically
established an equilibrium was one to perpetuate a preponderance! It is
only fair to the memory of the late Emperor of the French to say that,
according to Sir Theodore Martin’s admissions, the first strong and
contemptuous rejection of the Austrian compromise came from the Queen;
that when Napoleon III. first considered the matter he hesitated before
endorsing the views which Palmerston and his colleagues meekly accepted
from the Court. What renders the policy of the Court--or rather of Baron
Stockmar, who inspired it--at this stage unintelligible is, that a month
afterwards it actually pressed upon the Cabinet a proposal for
organising a great League of the Powers to defend Turkey diplomatically
against Russia. This proposal was made on the ground that it was
impossible to inflict on Russia such losses as would force her to submit
to humiliating terms.[213]
Nor was this the only instance which can be adduced of mistaken
interference on the part of the Court. When Palmerston succeeded in
forming his Government, he pledged himself to follow out the foreign
policy of Lord Aberdeen. Aberdeen’s friends had publicly declared that
the terms which we sought to impose on Russia were needlessly
humiliating, and that in the Austrian compromise there was an ample
basis for a fair settlement, and a good reason for continuing
negotiations at Vienna. It was a matter of notoriety that Aberdeen
himself shared these views, and there were many who complained
querulously that if they had not destroyed his Ministry, the Vienna
Conference would not have been abortive. In these circumstances Prince
Albert, knowing Aberdeen’s devotion to the Queen, wrote to him
complaining especially about Mr. Gladstone’s speech on Mr. Disraeli’s
motion of the 24th of May. For the rejection of that motion had not
ended the controversy. Sir F. Baring’s amendment, which was finally
carried, was coming up for discussion on the 4th of June, and the Court
evidently did not desire a repetition of speeches containing
unanswerable arguments against abandoning negotiations for peace.[214]
Aberdeen, in fact, is summoned in this letter to the Palace to be
lectured. He is warned that the conduct of his party has displeased the
Queen, and he is warned in a tone only to be justified by the close
relations of personal friendship, which bound him to the Court, and the
Court to him.
The Queen and Prince Albert, however, utterly failed to gag the Peelites
in the debate, or browbeat them into approving of the continuance of a
bloody and wasteful war, when an honourable peace could be obtained by
patient diplomacy. To his honour it must be stated that Sir James
Graham,[215] Lord Aberdeen’s representative in the House of Commons,
delivered a speech which was even much more damaging and convincing than
Mr. Gladstone’s. Nobody attempted to answer it except Mr. Roebuck. His
tirade of invective sprang from a delusion that Graham was willing to be
satisfied with paltry concessions as the result of a great war. As he
afterwards confessed, he was completely misled by the ferocity with
which Lord John Russell in this debate condemned as worthless the very
settlement which he had vainly urged his colleagues to accept as
satisfactory. In truth, there is some reason to suspect that the
harassing toil of winter, the prolonged and exhausting anxieties of a
sad and pitiless war, had temporarily blunted Prince Albert’s keen
perceptions. Had this not been the case he would hardly have delivered
at the Trinity House banquet in June, the famous speech in which he said
that “Constitutional Government is under a heavy trial”--as if the
failure of obsolete leaders in the field, or the stupid bigotries and
moral cowardice of place-hunters in council, proved that Constitutional
Government was a dubious experiment. At a moment when the Queen’s
personal interference with the Foreign Policy of her Government, usually
so wise, prudent, and beneficial, had led to bad results, it was
maladroit on the part of Prince Albert to gird at Constitutional
Government. Very little reflection should have served to show the Court
that it was only under the Muscovite autocracy that blunders in war and
statecraft, _more_ ghastly even than our own, could possibly be
perpetrated.
When the Conference at Vienna closed, Austria, as might have been
foreseen, refused to join England in carrying on the war. On the other
hand, the King of Sardinia had, on 26th January, entered into a military
convention with the Allies, and, in return for their guarantee of his
territory, engaged to send an army of 15,000 men to the Crimea.
The war in 1855 was carried on under more favourable conditions than in
the previous year. Reinforcements were sent out quickly. The
commissariat, sanitary, and transport services were put into effective
working order. On the 17th of February, the Turks under Omar Pasha
gallantly repelled a Russian attack on Eupatoria--a feat which revived
the drooping spirits of the Allies, and restored confidence in the
fighting power of the Osmanli. The news of this defeat was peculiarly
humiliating to the Czar, whose contempt for the Turk was unbounded, and
his bitter vexation at being beaten by a despised enemy, perhaps had
some effect in undermining the vitality of his iron constitution. The
bombardment of Sebastopol began again in April--but, though the allied
trenches were pushed closer and closer to the fortress, no serious
impression was made on it. The English troops were eager for action, but
Canrobert’s weakness and irresolution held Lord Raglan back.[216]
On the 19th of May Canrobert resigned in favour of Pélissier--a soldier
with a name stained by barbarous atrocities in Africa, but still a man
of energy and determination. In a moment of happy inspiration it was
determined to intercept the supplies which the enemy was drawing from
his Circassian provinces; and on the 22nd of May an expedition of 3,800
English, 7,500 French, and 5,000 Turks, under Sir George Brown and
General d’Autemarre, left for Cape Takli at the south-west extremity of
the Straits of Kertch. It arrived there on the 24th. The Russians
evacuated Kertch on the 25th, destroying before they left vast
quantities of food and forage. The troops penetrated as far as Yenikale,
and Captain Lyons, with his little fleet of steamers, advancing up the
Sea of Azov, destroyed not only many ships but a large amount of stores.
This expedition was cleverly planned, and it destroyed supplies
sufficient for an army of 100,000 men for four months. It returned on
the 12th of June. Writing to Stockmar on the 17th of June Prince Albert
says, “At the seat of war everything is going on well.... Pélissier is a
_trouvaille_, energetic, and determined. Oddly enough, they are in Paris
(I mean Louis Napoleon is) very much dissatisfied since our successes,
‘low’ about our prospects, anxious, &c. I am at a loss to know why.” The
fact is, that the war was more unpopular in France than ever, since the
rejection of the Austrian compromise at Vienna, and the Emperor’s
proposal to go out to the Crimea, and command in person alarmed Persigny
and the Bonapartists as to the safety of the Imperial _régime_. Failure
meant ruin, and failure was on the cards.[217] Yet, on the 7th of June,
the Allies had met with a brilliant success. The French stormed the
Mamelon, and the English the Gravel Pits--an outwork in front of the
Redan. But the two formidable works--the Malakoff and Redan--were yet to
be taken, and in an evil moment Lord Raglan was persuaded by Pélissier
to sanction a combined attack on these strong-holds. The ablest
practical soldiers in the British camp declared that the Redan could not
be taken by direct assault, though it must fall if the Malakoff were
captured. Raglan was of that opinion himself. But he yielded to his
French colleague, and the result of the combined attack on both places
was a painful failure. French and English were alike repulsed, and the
loss of life which this blunder caused was sickening to contemplate.
“Cries of ‘Murder!’” writes Mr. Russell, the _Times_ correspondent,
“from the lips of expiring officers have been echoed through the camp,
but they have now died away in silence, or in the noise of active
argument and discussion.”[218] Heartbroken by this defeat, Lord Raglan
took to his bed and died on the 28th of June.
[Illustration: VIEW IN THE CRIMEA: THE PALACE WORONZOW, ALUPKA.]
The shock of Raglan’s death silenced at the time all just criticism on
his career. The most that can be said for him is said by Lord Malmesbury
in his “Memoirs of an Ex-Minister.” “I knew him well,” he writes, “and
cannot recollect a finer character. He was the Duke’s right-hand man
through the Peninsular war, and was greatly esteemed by him. Handsome
and high-bred in person, and charming in society, he was one of the most
popular of its members. He was remarkable for his coolness under fire,
and St. Arnaud, in his famous despatch after the battle of the Alma,
says of him: ‘Il avait toujours ce même calme qui ne le quitte jamais.’”
It is, alas! not given to every man to wield the Arthurian brand
Excalibur, and whatever he may have been in the Peninsula under
Wellington, in the Crimea, Raglan was almost as incompetent as St.
Arnaud, Canrobert, and Menschikoff. His blunders were as follows: (1),
According to Sir T. Martin, he approved of the invasion of the Crimea in
utter ignorance of the ground, when the campaign was proposed by the
French Emperor.[219] (2), He consented to invade the Crimea _after_ he
had discovered that it was a mad project, and when the discretionary
clause in his instructions from the Duke of Newcastle gave him an
opportunity of remonstrating with the Cabinet. (3), He invaded the
Crimea without an organised Transport Corps. (4), His blunders at the
Alma, Balaclava, and Inkermann have been already noted. (5), Till
pressure was put on him by Prince Albert, he concealed the miserable
state of the army from the Government. (6), By neglecting to make a road
between Balaclava and his camp he brought all the miseries of the winter
of ’54-’55 on his troops. (7), By attacking the Redan when he knew quite
well it was impossible to capture it, he doomed his troops to useless
and avoidable slaughter. No defence has been made for him except on the
last two counts of the heavy indictment against him. He did not make a
road from Balaclava to the camp, says Mr. Kinglake, because he had not
enough men at his disposal. This is an explanation rather than a
defence. His first duty as a general was to connect his camp with his
base. If he was unable to do that, he ought to have abandoned his
position. But is not Mr. Kinglake’s defence just a little absurd, taken
in connection with the Homeric episodes of the war? Had anybody enough
men to do anything great or valuable in the Crimea? Campbell had not
enough men to turn the tide of battle, in our favour at the Alma. But he
did it. He had not enough men to save our base at Balaclava--but he
saved it. Scarlett and Cardigan had not enough men to break through the
Russian columns in “the Valley of Death”--but they broke through them.
The Duke of Cambridge had not enough men to hold his ground at
Inkermann--but he and his Guards held it, till it was positively soaked
and saturated with their blood. Mr. Kinglake’s advocacy, indeed,
provokes one to say that scarcity of men never kept Lord Raglan back
from any enterprise, when, as at Balaclava and the Redan, the only
attainable end was the purposeless butchery of his battalions. The
feeble attack on the Redan has been justified on the ground that, as
Pélissier was determined to assault the Malakoff, and was certain to be
beaten, he was equally certain to attribute his defeat to the timidity
of the English, unless they co-operated with him. It is, however, the
business of an English general to win battles for his country--not to
lose them in deference to the childish petulance of a foreign colleague.
At the same time, it must be admitted that Raglan was greatly
embarrassed from the first by his French coadjutors, and it is because
some of his errors sprang from enforced concessions to their views, that
these have been omitted from the present catalogue of his blunders. The
truth is, that Lord Raglan was really a diplomatist, and his diplomatic
ability was essential to the consolidation of our military alliance with
France in the field. That was the sole justification for his appointment
as Commander-in-Chief. His personal courage--rivalling that of
antiquity, said St. Arnaud--was the only soldierly quality he possessed.
“He was a very perfect gentle knight,” too sweetly graceful for the rude
ravishment of war, or the weary travail of a siege. His generosity of
heart, his charm of manner, his exquisite tact, his serene temper, his
chivalrous sense of honour, his high and courtly bearing, rendered him
worthy of
“The goodliest fellowship of famous knights,
Whereof this world holds record”--
though not worthy to hold the post to which he was appointed in the
Crimea. But if he was not a great general, he was a great gentleman; and
so, when he passed away, the hand of censure fell very lightly on his
career.