THE END OF THE WAR.
Lord Raglan’s Successor--“Take Care of Dowb”--Lord Panmure’s
Nepotism--The Crisis of the War--Gortschakoff’s Last Struggle--The
Battle of the Tchernaya River--France and the War--A Despondent
Court--Divided Counsels among the Allies--The Bridge of Rafts--The
Grand Bombardment--French Attack on the Malakoff--British Attack on
the Redan--Why the Attack Failed--The “Hero of the
Redan”--Pélissier’s Message to Simpson--Appeal to Sir Colin
Campbell--Evacuation of the Redan--Fall of Sebastopol--Retreat of
the Russians to the North Town--Paralysis of the Victors--The
Queen’s Anger--Her Remonstrances with Lord Panmure--A New
Commander-in-Chief--Taking Care of “Dowb”--Codrington Chosen--The
Wintry Crimean Watch--Diplomatic Humiliation of Palmerston--France
Negotiates Secretly Terms of Peace with Austria--Palmerston’s
Indignant Remonstrances--The Queen Objects to Prosecute the War
Alone--The Surrender of Palmerston--He Abandons the Turks--An
Unpopular Peace--The Tories Offer to Support the Peace--The Queen
and the Parliament of 1856.
When Lord Raglan died, General Simpson, who had been his chief of the
staff, was appointed to succeed him. It is enough to say that Simpson
was infinitely less capable than his predecessor; but, on the other
hand, he was a good-natured, pliable man, not likely to be troublesome
to the authorities at home. Mr. Alfred Varley, the eminent electrician,
told Colonel Hope, V.C., that when Lord Panmure’s despatch appointing
General Simpson to the chief command was received, the message ended
with the mysterious order--“Take care of Dowb.” Mr. Varley, who was on
duty, thinking “Dowb” was some unknown Russian general who had been
suddenly discovered by Lord Panmure, requested that the message should
be repeated. It turned out, however, that “Dowb” was merely an
abbreviation of Dowbigging, and that Dowbigging was one of Lord
Panmure’s relatives, whom he, as a Minister, pledged to suppress the
nepotism that had ruined the army, thus authoritatively recommended to
the good offices of the new Commander-in-Chief.[254] “Take care of
Dowb,” from that day till now, has indeed been the shibboleth of jobbery
and corruption in all branches of the Queen’s service. Thus, though the
crisis of the war had now come, it was only too obvious that little
could be expected from an army led by a feeble and subservient general,
and directed from home by an “administrative reformer” of Lord Panmure’s
type.
On the 21st of July, General Simpson reported that his trenches were
within two hundred yards of the Redan, which had been greatly
strengthened since the last assault, and that they could not be pushed
farther. The loss of life in the trenches was so enormous, that the
assault could not be long delayed--and yet, till Pélissier took the
Malakoff, it was madness to attack the Redan. On the other hand,
overwhelming reinforcements were being poured in from Russia, and, on
the 16th of August, Prince Gortschakoff made a bold attempt to raise the
siege. He crossed the Tchernaya river, and attacked the French and
Sardinians, but was hurled back with great loss. This came as glad
tidings to the Queen, who had heard with apprehension that the French
were beginning to cry out against the war, and that they were
complaining that France was simply a tool in the hands of England. The
victory of the Tchernaya and the Queen’s visit to Paris silenced these
murmurs for a time. Prince Albert, however, was still despondent, for no
progress was made after this battle; and his letters from the Crimea
warned him that another winter campaign would yet have to be undertaken.
The months of July and August produced in England a fresh crop of
censures in the newspapers. It was even suggested that, by way of
counteracting divided counsels among the allies, the siege should be
entirely left to the French, while the English, Sardinians, and Turks
should sally forth and attack the Russian army of observation in the
field. In September, the beginnings of a bridge of rafts between the
north and south sides of Sebastopol were seen, and, on the 5th of
September, the grand bombardment, preliminary to the assault on the
Malakoff and Redan, commenced--the French opening four miles of
cannonade at a given signal. A terrific hail of shot and shell was
almost continuously poured upon the hapless city till the 8th, when the
moment for the assault arrived. Pélissier was to hoist the tricolour on
the Malakoff when it was taken, and that was to be the signal for the
British attack on the Redan. For many hours a savage contest raged
round and on the Malakoff, but in the end the French captured the
stronghold. The British storming force of 1,000 men, with small covering
and ladder parties, then rushed forward to the outworks of the Redan. In
crossing the space of two hundred yards that intervened between their
trenches and the fortress, they were swept by a terrific fire, under
which they fell like swathes of corn before the reaper. The troops--for
the most part weedy young recruits--soon became demoralised, and many of
them had actually to be kicked into action by their sergeants. Somehow
they forced their way over the ramparts--a confused undisciplined mob in
a pitiful state of disorganisation. One figure alone stands out in this
scene of murky strife in heroic grandeur--that of Colonel Windham. He
strove with furious energy to rally the scattered remnants of regiments
which were mixed up with each other, and to hurl them against the inner
breastwork. But as at the Alma, there were no supports at hand, and
Windham sent messenger after messenger imploring Codrington to hurry
them on. His entreaties were unheeded, partly because some of the
messengers were shot, partly because Codrington, like most of the
English generals in the Crimea, did not seem to consider that slender
storming parties needed strong and instant support. At last Windham,
enraged at the useless and sickening slaughter of his men, determined to
go himself and force his chief to send the stormers succour. “Let it be
known,” he said to Captain Crealock, “in case I am killed, why I went
away.” He passed through the zone of fire in safety, reached Codrington,
and, whilst vainly arguing with him, he saw that the day was lost. The
subalterns and sergeants he had left behind--for most of the superior
officers were killed or wounded--could no longer hold the men to their
deadly work. First one, then another, and then a small group, were seen
to creep through the gaps in the Redan. Then a mad rush of
terror-stricken soldiers, yelling and shrieking in panic, proclaimed
that Windham’s mission was useless, and that the fight was over. As for
the Commander-in-Chief, where was he all the time? Cowering in a safe
corner of the trenches, where he could see little of the fight! There
Pélissier’s messenger found him when he came to ask if he would not
immediately assail the Redan again. “The trenches were,” according to
Simpson’s despatch, “subsequently to this attack, so crowded with
troops, that I was unable to organise a second assault.”
General Simpson might as well have doomed his men to sudden death as
send such a slender column as had been repulsed, to storm the Redan.
This, then, is the sum of the matter. The first assault failed because
the stormers were too few; the second was not attempted, lest they might
have been too many! Ultimately, Simpson did what he ought to have done
in the first instance; that is to say, he fell back on Sir Colin
Campbell and the Scottish Brigade.[255] But when his Highland scouts
went to reconnoitre during the night, they found the place deserted. The
losses on our side were frightful, especially in officers and sergeants.
Of the 2,447 stormers who were killed and wounded, 1,435 belonged to the
Light Division; in fact, owing to Simpson’s imbecility in sending a mere
handful of men to the attack, and Codrington’s inexcusable neglect to
hurry on supports, we sacrificed more men in failing to carry the Redan,
than Wellington lost when he captured Badajoz.[256] During the night the
Russians set fire to the town. Crossing the bridge of rafts, the enemy
fled to the northern side of the harbour, leaving us in possession, not
of Sebastopol, but, as Gortschakoff said, of a heap of blood-stained
ruins.
[Illustration: FRENCH ATTACK ON THE MALAKOFF.]
On Sunday, the 9th of September, the news that Sebastopol had fallen
was proclaimed through England. And so the siege that had gone on for
the best part of a year, which had involved the construction of seventy
miles of trenches, and the expenditure of 1,500,000 shells, came to an
end--gloriously for the French with victory at the Malakoff,
ingloriously for England with ignominious defeat at the Redan. On the
29th of September, the Russians were repulsed at Kars; but on the 28th
of November, the neglected and famine-stricken garrison, whose heroic
defence under General Fenwick Williams was one of the most brilliant
episodes of the war, had to surrender. The occupation of Kinburn and the
bombardment of Sweaborg were the only successes won by us at sea.
[Illustration: GENERAL TODLEBEN.]
When Sebastopol fell, it was not the Russians but Generals Simpson and
Pélissier who were paralysed by the catastrophe. The Allies, in fact,
seemed to sit helplessly looking on, and gave the enemy time to render
his position on the north side of the city almost impregnable. Thus once
more the besiegers became the besieged, and found themselves in even a
more perilous position than that which they held before the fall of the
city. The Queen was greatly distressed to hear that all our sacrifices
had been in vain, and that Simpson and Pélissier were even more
incompetent than Raglan and Canrobert.[257] At last her Majesty’s
impatience could no longer be controlled, nor her irritation concealed.
On the 2nd of October she wrote to Lord Panmure saying, “there may be
good reasons why the army should not move, but we have only one.... When
General Simpson telegraphed before that he must wait to know the
intentions and plans of the Russians, the Queen was tempted to advise a
reference to St. Petersburg for them.” And the intensely provoking thing
was that if the Allies had only threatened a landing between Eupatoria
and Sebastopol after the fall of the city, the Russians would have been
compelled to evacuate the Crimea.[258]
Naturally the Queen began to press the War Office to appoint a new
Commander-in-Chief, and then Ministers began to “take care of Dowb.”
There was but one great military reputation not made--for it had been
made long before--but somewhat enhanced in the Crimea. It was that of
Sir Colin Campbell, the only leader on whom even a shred of the mantle
of Wellington or Moore had fallen. The soldiers had confidence in no
other; in fact, he was the only divisional commander in the army who had
a native genius for war. But he had no “interest,” and had he been
appointed, his iron will and stubborn character would have soon asserted
themselves over the foolish counsels of Pélissier. A strong, competent
man without “interest” was in Lord Panmure’s eyes an objectionable
person. So he looked elsewhere for a successor to General Simpson.
Happening accidentally to hear from Mr. Greville of Colonel Windham’s
exploit at the Redan, Panmure suddenly resolved to appoint him
Commander-in-Chief. Mr. Greville was naturally amazed at this proposal,
and suggested that it would be better to try Windham first with a
Division before they put him over the heads of his seniors. Simpson,
however, was eager to come home; time pressed, and Campbell, having no
connection with “Dowb,” was of course impossible. As for Codrington, his
failure and bungling at the Redan ought to have rendered him impossible
also, but on the other hand he was not quite so incompetent as Simpson,
and he had “interest.” Finally, Prince Albert’s advice was taken, and
thus Codrington, as the candidate who “divided the authorities least,”
was appointed to the chief command. But the troops were divided into two
_corps d’armée_, the command of which was offered to the two senior
generals over whose heads Codrington had been passed. One of these, Sir
Colin Campbell, in bitterness of heart returned to England, firmly
determined to quit a service, which had rewarded half a century of
brilliant achievement with contemptuous neglect. The Queen, however,
came to hear of this, and touched with some twinge of remorse, sent for
the old man, and in the course of an interview with him persuaded him to
alter his intentions. She spoke to him of her anxiety as to the fate of
the army, and as a personal favour to herself, requested him to go back
to the Crimea. The rough, war-worn veteran in an instant forgot the
wrongs of a lifetime. Tears glistened in his eyes, as he assured the
Queen, in the broad provincial _patois_, which he always spoke when
under the excitement of battle or deep emotion, that he would return
immediately, and as for his rank--well, “if the Queen wished it, Colin
Campbell was ready for her sake to serve under a corporal.” To the
credit of her Majesty it must be remembered that this was the last time
Campbell was neglected. If it took him forty-six years’ hard, thankless
toil to rise to a Lieutenant-Colonelcy, in eight years he became a Field
Marshal.
But besides keeping an idle wintry watch on the plateau before
Sebastopol, there was no work in store for the army in the Crimea. The
victories won by the sword were now about to be neutralised by the pen,
and for Lord Palmerston the supreme moment of humiliation and failure
was close at hand. The corner-stone of his foreign policy, it will be
remembered, was the French alliance. If that proved to be unstable, the
policy itself was _ab initio_ a fatal blunder. And the French alliance
broke down at the critical moment when England, full of confidence in
her reorganised army, expected that the war would be prosecuted till her
disgraceful defeats at the Redan were triumphantly avenged. France, as
has been repeatedly said, was sick of the war--a fact which Palmerston
never had the moral courage to face. The war had now served the
Emperor’s purpose, for the victory of the Malakoff had glorified the
dynasty. Napoleon III., therefore, resolved to desert his ally, and in
October Palmerston learnt with dismay that 100,000 French troops were to
be immediately withdrawn from the Crimea.[259] What was still more
serious, as Prince Albert says in a letter to Stockmar, the French were
now demanding territorial compensation either in Poland, Italy, or the
left bank of the Rhine. This last demand was particularly alarming to
the Queen, who, in the spring, had warned Clarendon of its probable
consequences. “The first Frenchman,” she says, in her letter of the 15th
of April, “who should hostilely approach the Rhine, would set the whole
of Germany on fire.” But in November, Palmerston’s policy compelled
Englishmen to drink the cup of humiliation to the lees. Napoleon III.,
ignoring England, secretly negotiated with Austria the terms of peace
which were to be offered to Russia, and these were then transmitted to
the British Government, by Count Walewski, with an intimation that
England must accept them as they stood. Palmerston, angry at being thus
duped and slighted, sent a violent remonstrance to France, declaring
that England would carry on the war alone rather than accept such
terms.[260] The Emperor himself, however, wrote to the Queen advising
her to give way, and explaining why he could not consent to extort any
further sacrifices from France, for what he contemptuously called “the
microscopical advantages” which were the objects of Lord Palmerston’s
policy. The Queen in her reply says, “I make, then, full allowance for
your Majesty’s personal difficulties, and refuse to listen to any
wounded feelings of _amour propre_ which my Government might be supposed
to entertain at a complete understanding having been come to with
Austria--an understanding which has resulted in an arrangement being
placed cut and dry before us, for our mere acceptance, putting us in the
disagreeable position of either having to accept what we have not even
been allowed fully to understand (and which, so far as Austria is
concerned, has been negotiated under influences dictated by motives, and
in a spirit which we are without the means of estimating), or to take
the responsibility of breaking up this arrangement, of losing the
alliance which is offered to us, and which is so much wanted,[261] and
even of estranging the friendly feeling of the ally who advocates the
arrangement itself.”[262] One member of the Cabinet, Sir George
Cornewall Lewis, doubtless expressed the feeling of all his colleagues
when he told Mr. Greville that they felt they had no alternative but to
submit with a good grace. To this, says Mr. Greville, he “added an
expression of his disgust at the pitiful figure we cut in the affair,
being obliged to obey the commands of Louis Napoleon, and after our
insolence, swagger, and bravado, to submit to terms of peace which we
had just rejected; all which humiliation, he justly said, was the
consequence of our plunging into war without any reason, and in defiance
of all prudence and sound policy.” He might have added that it was the
inevitable result of plunging into war with a treacherous ally, on whose
fidelity Palmerston was senseless enough to stake the fortunes of the
Empire, and the sceptre of his Sovereign. The Queen personally
considered the terms which were thus thrust on England far from
adequate; still she set her face against Palmerston’s first proposal to
continue the war for the sake of winning prospective victories. After
some trivial modifications the
[Illustration: THE THRONE ROOM, ST. JAMES’S PALACE. (_From a Photograph
by H. N. King._)]
Franco-Austrian conditions were accepted by the British Government,
transmitted by Austria to Russia, and accepted by her on the 16th of
January, 1856. “Think,” said Sir George Lewis to Mr. Greville, “that
this is a war carried on for the independence of Turkey, and we, the
allies, are bound to Turkey by mutual obligations not to make peace but
by common consent and concurrence. Well, we have sent an offer of peace
to Russia, of which the following are among the terms: We propose that
Turkey, who possesses one-half of the Black Sea Coast, shall have no
ships, no ports, no arsenals in that sea; and then there are conditions
about the Christians who are the subjects of Turkey, and others about
the mouths of the Danube, to which part of the Turkish dominions are
contiguous. Now in all these stipulations so intimately concerning
Turkey, for whose independence we are fighting, Turkey is not allowed to
have any voice whatever, nor has she ever been allowed to be made
acquainted with what is going on except through the newspapers, where
the Turkish Ministers may have read what is passing, like other people.
When the French and Austrian terms were discussed in the Cabinet, at the
end of the discussion some one modestly asked whether it would not be
proper to communicate to Musurus (the Turkish Ambassador in London) what
was in agitation, and what had been agreed upon, to which Clarendon said
he saw no necessity for it whatever.”[263] But Palmerston by this time
had abandoned the Turks--indeed, he now became quite moderate, not to
say humble in his tone--permitting Clarendon to adopt or reject his
suggestions as he chose. This sudden docility naturally improved his
position at Court. “Palmerston,” writes Mr. Greville, “is now on very
good terms with the Queen, which is, though he does not know it, greatly
attributable to Clarendon’s constant endeavours to reconcile her to him,
always telling her everything likely to ingratiate Palmerston with her,
and showing her any notes or letters of his calculated to please
her.”[264]
The Prime Minister and his colleagues it seems were surprised that
Russia assented so readily to the terms of peace, and were for a time
nervous as to the verdict of the English people. “All peaces are
unpopular,” wrote Sir George Lewis to Sir Edmund Head, “and all peaces,
it seems to me, are beneficial, even to the country which is supposed to
be the loser. How greatly England prospered after the peace of 1782, and
France after the peace of 1815! I suppose that this peace, if it takes
place, will be no exception to the general rule.”[265] Fortunately, the
Court supported the Ministry in acting with the other Powers, and Mr.
Disraeli and Lord Stanley privately informed the Cabinet, that they
would accept any peace which was sanctioned by the Crown. Thus the Queen
and her Ministers were enabled to meet the Parliament of 1856 with some
measure of confidence.