Chapter IX

1854-1856.

Mr. Gladstone's War Budget--Humiliation and Prayer--The Invasion
of the Crimea--The Battle of Alma--A Fruitless Victory--Effect
in England--War Correspondents--Balaklava--Cavalry Charges by
the Heavy and Light Brigades--"Our's Not to Reason Why"--Russian
Sortie--Battle of Inkermann--Breakdown of Transport and
Commissariat--Hurricane in the Black Sea--Florence
Nightingale--Fall of the Coalition Cabinet--Lord Palmerston
Forms a Ministry--Victory of the Turks at
Eupatoria--Unsuccessful Attack by the Allies--Death of Lord
Raglan--His Character--Battle of Tchernaya--Evacuation of
Sebastopol--Surrender of Kars--Conclusion of Peace.

[Sidenote: Mr. Gladstone's War Budget.]

When Mr. Gladstone introduced his War Budget on May 8, he said that the prosperity of trade and elasticity of the Revenue warranted him in meeting the expenses of the campaign out of current taxation. He calculated on this being possible by doubling the Income Tax and increasing the duty on malt and spirits. Lord Aberdeen, replying to Lord Roden in the House of Lords, stated that a Day of Humiliation and Prayer would be set apart for the success of British arms. The Queen immediately wrote to the Prime Minister, reminding him that she had not been consulted about this, and objecting to the term "humiliation."

"To say (as we probably should) that _the great sinfulness of the nation_ has brought about this war, when it is the selfishness and ambition and want of honesty of _one man_ and his servants which has done it, while our conduct throughout has been actuated by unselfishness and honesty, would be too manifestly repulsive to the feelings of everyone, and would be a mere bit of hypocrisy. Let there be a Prayer expressive of our great thankfulness for the immense benefits we have enjoyed, and for the immense prosperity of the country, and entreating God's help and protection in the coming struggle. In this the Queen would join heart and soul. If there is to be a day set apart, let it be for Prayer in this sense."

The Day of Solemn Fast, Humiliation, and Prayer was fixed, but, in accordance with the Queen's feeling, there were no abject expressions used in the Prayers prescribed, only a committal of the cause of England into the hands of the Almighty to "judge between them and her enemies."

HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN, 1841.]

Varna, a fortified seaport of Bulgaria, on the shore of the Black Sea, half way between the Bosphorus and the mouth of the Danube, was the rendezvous appointed for the British and French forces. Lord Raglan, who, as Lord Fitzroy Somerset, had lost an arm under the Great Duke at Waterloo, was Commander-in-Chief of the British Army; Maréchal Saint-Arnaud that of the French; and the veteran Omar Pasha that of the Turkish. The Russian commanders had learnt that, whatever might be the incapacity of the Sublime Porte for rule, its troops were composed of excellent fighting material when well commanded. The Turkish garrison of Silistria, on the Danube, maintained such a stubborn defence for many weeks under two English officers, Captain Butler, of the Ceylon Rifles, and Lieutenant Nasmyth, of the East India Company's Service, that at last the Russians had to raise the siege, on June 22, after losing more than 12,000 men. At Giurgevo, again, on July 7, General Soimonoff (who afterwards fell at the Battle of Inkermann) was badly beaten, and soon afterwards the whole of the Russian forces were withdrawn beyond the Pruth, and Turkish territory was free from invaders. This movement was due, no doubt, in some measure, to the action of Austria, who had demanded the evacuation of the Principalities, backed her demand by a threatening movement of troops, and actually concluded a convention with the Porte on June 14.

HER MAJESTY IN THE ROYAL PEW, ST. GEORGE'S CHAPEL, WINDSOR, 1846.]

The great arsenal and harbour of Russia was Sebastopol in the Crimea, and it was on this point that the attention of Ministers in London and Paris was chiefly concentrated. There has been great variance in the accounts of how it came to be decided that the attack of the Allies should be directed on that town. It is sufficient to state here that, on June 29, a despatch was sent to Lord Raglan, strongly urging the necessity of a prompt attack upon Sebastopol and the Russian fleet, but leaving the final decision to the discretion of the Allied Commanders. Lord Raglan did not read these instructions as leaving him any choice, but regarded them, as he afterwards stated, as "little short of an absolute order from the Secretary of State," and prepared to obey it. He was a veteran soldier, it is true, but he had acquired his experience in campaigns before the days of steam and electricity, and the incessant and rapid interchange of despatches between Downing Street and the seat of war no doubt was somewhat bewildering.

A. Corporal.
B. Sergeant.
C. Officers--Undress.
D. Full Dress.
E. Privates.

UNIFORMS OF THE ROYAL MARINES, 1837.]

[Sidenote: The Invasion of the Crimea.]

The French Commander-in-Chief, Saint-Arnaud, received similar injunctions from the Emperor Louis Napoleon, who was as strongly in favour of the project as Palmerston and the Duke of Newcastle; Lord Raglan, therefore, encountered no opposition from him on the score of strategy. After three months of inaction at Varna, during which the troops suffered severely from cholera, the invasion of the Crimea was undertaken; the Allied Forces set sail for Eupatoria, and on September 21 the Duke of Newcastle telegraphed to the Queen that 25,000 English, 25,000 French, and 8,000 Turks had safely disembarked at Kalamita Bay, near the mouth of the River Alma, about eight miles north of Sebastopol, without meeting any resistance. The advance on Sebastopol began on September 19, and on the 20th the Allies encountered the Russian army, under Prince Menschikoff, strongly entrenched on the heights south of the River Alma. Menschikoff of deliberate purpose had allowed them to disembark unmolested; he had chosen what he believed to be an impregnable position, where he intended to keep them in play till the arrival of reinforcements should enable him to leave his entrenchments and overwhelm the invaders with superior numbers; he watched them crossing the stream below his position in full confidence that they were entering the trap prepared for them. But he had underrated the individual prowess of British and French soldiers. They had discipline, individual gallantry, and physique in a high degree, but these are often only so many contributions to the aggregate of disaster unless directed by sagacious generalship, and the tactics of the Allied Forces at the Alma were of the headlong character of a schoolboy's playground. Maréchal Saint-Arnaud was in an agony of illness of approaching death, as it turned out--and there was little cohesion or concert between the English on the left and the French on the right of the attacking line. Only one thing was plain to the men of both armies--there were the Russian batteries, on the heights beyond the river, with heavy columns of infantry hanging like a grey cloud along the crests--the one thing to do was to get at them. Saint-Arnaud, addressing his Generals of Division, Canrobert and Prince Napoleon, said: "With such men as you I have no orders to give; I have but to point to the enemy!"

Royal Marine Artillery--
A. Company Sergeant-Major. B. Gunner. C. Officer.

Royal Marine Light Infantry--
D. Officer. E. Drummer. F. Sergeant. G. Private.

UNIFORMS OF THE ROYAL MARINES, 1897.]

COL. BELL, OF THE ROYAL WELSH FUSILIERS,

Obtained the Victoria Cross for gallantry in the Battle of the Alma, when he seized upon, and captured, a gun which the enemy was carrying off the field.]

[Sidenote: The Battle of the Alma.]

At two o'clock the Allies crossed the river under a plunging fire, and advanced up the opposing slopes in face of the batteries and a searching fire of musketry; the great redoubt was carried by assault; the British battalions, deployed in double rank, according to the unique practice of English field drill, poured a withering fire into the solid columns of the enemy and plied the deadly bayonet at closer quarters. About four o'clock the Russians wavered, fell back, and broke; the position was carried and the first European field since Waterloo had been won.

With pardonable emulation historians of both nations have claimed the chief glory of the day for their own people, nor does it profit now to weigh out the laurels to each with scrupulous precision. The brunt of the fighting no doubt fell to the English share; that was their good luck in what Mr. McCarthy has termed a "heroic scramble"; theirs too was the heaviest loss. One thing is certain that the day was won by the Allies, not by the skill of their generals, but by the valour and endurance of the troops, and that the two qualities which ensured success were those which chiefly distinguished the two nations respectively--the resolute steadiness and courage of the one, and the brilliant dash and fury of the other.

[Sidenote: A Fruitless Victory.]

The Battle of Alma was won, but the fruits of victory--where were they? The English had lost 2,000 men in two hours' fighting, including twenty-six officers killed; the 23rd Welsh Fusiliers having suffered worst, with eight officers killed and five wounded and nearly 200 casualties in their ranks. The French returned their loss at 1,200. What was to be set to the credit of the account? Menschikoff was in full retreat with his army in great confusion, which required only the pressure of pursuit to convert into a hopeless rout. Raglan, the pupil of the Great Duke, surely had learned a sounder lesson than to allow the enemy time to reorganise his disordered divisions. Raglan, of course, was for pursuit, but Saint-Arnaud, physically and mentally shattered, objected for the reason that he was weak in cavalry; the English commander hesitated, perhaps on good grounds, to proceed alone, and the opportunity was lost.

The news of victory caused a great revulsion of feeling in England. People had become impatient during the summer months of inaction at Varna, and disheartened by the failure of Sir Charles Napier to carry all before him in the Baltic. Bomarsund, it is true, had been taken, but Cronstadt and Sweaborg had proved impregnable. Complaints were general about the want of vigour displayed in carrying on the war, and dissatisfaction not only prevailed among the uninformed public, but even found expression from the lips of Cabinet Ministers.

COL. LLOYD LINDSAY, OF THE SCOTS FUSILIER GUARDS

(now Lord Wantage, K.C.B.), seized the colours and rallied his men when thrown into disorder in the Battle of the Alma. For this act, and for gallantry at Inkermann, he was awarded the Victoria Cross.]

MR. (NOW SIR) WM. H. RUSSELL, LL. D.

The first of War Correspondents. Born in 1821; joined the staff of the _Times_ in 1843, and has represented that paper in all the considerable wars which have occurred since.]

[Sidenote: War Correspondents.]

A novel feature in the Expedition to the Black Sea was the presence with the army of war correspondents, representing the leading daily papers. This was a symptom of that growth of journalistic enterprise which was to receive such notable impetus in the following year by the abolition of the newspaper stamp duty. The name of Mr. W. H. Russell, representing the _Times_, will be long remembered as that of the pioneer in this new and exciting form of literature. The vivid descriptions sent home of the splendid conduct of British troops in the field, and the excellent relations established between them and their ancient foes the French, were eagerly perused in England, and sent up the enthusiasm to fever heat.

But if the war letters in the newspapers were of good service in allaying public impatience by reporting valorous exploits and heroic endurance, they tended to intensify the anxiety when the campaign became prolonged towards winter, without any decisive result. It had been expected that Sebastopol would be carried by a _coup-de-main_; so it might have been, perhaps, had the victory of Alma been followed up, even on the day after the action. But the views of Maréchal Saint-Arnaud prevailed again; the project of assaulting Sebastopol on the north side was abandoned; and the Allies undertook the terribly hazardous, though, as it happened, successful flank march upon Balaklava, which, with its convenient harbour, was selected as the English base and depôt, while the French chose Kamiesch Bay.

The Battle of Alma took place on September 20; on the 23rd General Todleben, commanding the defences of Sebastopol, sunk seven war vessels at the mouth of the harbour. The Allied Fleet, from which this operation was plainly visible, were thus effectually shut out; the golden opportunity of the speedy capture of the city by a combined land and sea attack had gone by. Such an attack was made on October 17, but the fleet could only play at long bowls, and the French batteries were silenced in a few hours. The first attempt ended in failure. There was nothing for it but a prolonged siege, and the Allied Land Forces were insufficient to invest the town effectively. Moreover they were threatened by a Russian army outside, constantly reinforced by fresh troops from the interior. The besiegers themselves had to stand on the defensive.

IN THE BATTERIES BEFORE SEBASTOPOL.

Sketched on the spot.]

[Sidenote: Balaklava.]

[Sidenote: Cavalry Charges by the Heavy and Light Brigades.]

On October 25 General Liprandi attacked the English camp at Balaklava with 20,000 or 30,000 men. It is a day to be much remembered in British war annals with profound but melancholy pride, because of the blunder which cost the British Army the loss of two-thirds of its Light Cavalry. The action began by the capture by the Russians of four redoubts held by the Turks. Then took place a cavalry encounter which, though it has been eclipsed in memory by the subsequent exploit of the Light Brigade, was, in truth, not less splendid and far more fruitful. The Russian horse, numbering some 3,000 sabres advanced against the British Heavy Cavalry Brigade under General Scarlett. Immensely outnumbered as they were, and hampered by tent ropes and enclosed ground, the Scots Greys and Enniskillens charged them impetuously. For a minute or two it seemed as if these fine regiments must be swallowed up in the dense columns of the enemy, but the Royals and 4th Dragoon Guards moving up on the left, and the 5th Dragoon Guards on the right, charged the enemy on either flank, and forced them to give way and fly. The whole affair was over in less than five minutes.

Lord Raglan, who was anxiously waiting for infantry reinforcements, seeing the Russians preparing to move the guns from the captured redoubts, sent an order to Lord Lucan to prevent them doing so. "Try to prevent the enemy carrying away the guns." What guns? Captain Nolan, who carried the order, pointed to a battery of eight Russian guns at the end of the valley, supported by artillery on either flank. "There, my lord, is our enemy," said he, "and there are our guns." Lord Lucan hesitated at first, but the order seemed explicit, and he directed Lord Cardigan to form his Light Brigade into two lines. In the first line were four squadrons of the 13th Light Dragoons and 17th Lancers; in the second were four squadrons of the 4th Light Dragoons and 11th Hussars, with one squadron of the 8th Hussars as a kind of reserve. The command was given, and it was obeyed. Six hundred and seventy-three men rode down that valley of death straight for the guns, on a venture as hopeless and devoted as that of Sir Giles de Argentine at Bannockburn, and hardly less futile. Only one hundred and ninety-five returned.

THE CHARGE OF THE HEAVY BRIGADE AT BALAKLAVA.]

[Sidenote: Breakdown of Transport and Commissariat.]

On the following day the Russians made a sortie in force upon the English position at Inkermann, and although they were repulsed by Sir de Lacy Evans's division, there can be no possible doubt that the Allied Forces at this period were in imminent peril of a terrible disaster. Five days before the cavalry action of Balaklava, Raglan had informed the War Office that his army was reduced to 16,000, and that he doubted if he could maintain it in the field during the winter, even if Sebastopol should be taken first. Week after week the condition of the troops was painted in gloomier colours by the war correspondents. The transport system had broken down; supplies of all sorts were running short; the hospital arrangements were miserably inadequate for the numerous wounded and the still more numerous sick. The Turkish troops--men of the same race who had fought so well under English officers at Silistria--proved useless--worse than useless, for they had to be fed--under their own pashas in the trenches before Sebastopol.

THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE AT BALAKLAVA.]

The French Emperor took alarm. Hitherto nearly all the fighting had fallen to the share of the British, and England had very few troops ready to send as reinforcements. Louis Napoleon proposed to send 20,000 French troops if England would supply the necessary transports. This was undertaken at once; huts, warm clothing, blankets, tinned meat, and other stores were sent out in ample quantities, but very few of the cargoes reached their destination. Winter had burst upon the Black Sea with almost unexampled fury; the transports and cargo ships were scattered. Two French men-of-war and twenty-four British transports went to the bottom in the hurricane; the elements seemed to combine with man's mismanagement for the annihilation of the Allied Forces. What our soldiers had to bear, half clothed, half starved, in those bitter trenches, may be read in Kinglake's narrative.

[Sidenote: Battle of Inkermann.]

While the authorities at home were straining every nerve to send succour to the fast-dwindling army in the field, news came to England of another great battle, far more sanguinary than any previous encounter, in which once more the brunt had fallen on the British. The Grand Dukes Nicholas and Michael, with the whole forces in Sebastopol, reinforced by large bodies of troops newly arrived from the Danubian provinces, in all not less than 50,000 men, had attacked the right of the English lines early in the dark morning of November 5. The fighting continued till late in the afternoon, the French being engaged also; but General Canrobert (who had succeeded to the command vacated by the death of Saint-Arnaud), in his telegram to the Emperor, chivalrously attributed the victory to "the remarkable solidity with which the English army maintained the battle, supported by a portion of General Bosquet's division." The English loss in the Battle of Inkermann amounted to 2,573 killed and wounded, of which 145 were officers, including four generals; the French lost 1,800, while the Russian casualties were made out in their official returns at 11,959 killed, wounded, and prisoners.

THE BATTLE OF INKERMANN.]

[Sidenote: Florence Nightingale.]

The Allies paid a heavy price for this victory, but the carnage was not in vain. The power of Russia was crippled for a moment, and time was given for the succour which busy hands and brains were preparing in London and Paris. The most heartrending spectacle of all was the state of the hospitals at Scutari. No sooner did a description of them reach London than a fund was opened to supply their wants. More than £25,000 was collected, and English women organised themselves as nurses, and placed themselves under the direction of Miss Florence Nightingale. No commander so puissant--no statesman so powerful--that his name shall out-last that of this devoted Englishwoman, whose services, in spite of the usual routine official objections, were accepted by Mr. Sidney Herbert, the Secretary at War.[F] Miss Nightingale arrived at Scutari, with thirty-seven nurses, on the morning of the Battle of Inkermann, and so clearly did this devoted band prove their usefulness, that Miss Stanley, the Dean of Westminster's sister, followed not long after with forty additional assistants. To Florence Nightingale is due the glory of having initiated a movement which has extended far beyond the limits of the Crimean Campaign. No army now moves on active service without its train of skilled nurses, and the Geneva Convention has been the direct result of this first mission of mercy.

MISS FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE IN ONE OF THE WARDS OF THE HOSPITAL AT SCUTARI.

From Sketches made on the spot.]

[Sidenote: Fall of the Coalition Cabinet.]

It would be no pleasant task to retrace at length the sorrowful story of the siege. British army organisation had broken down hopelessly, and people in England were maddened by the descriptions in the Press, perhaps in some instances exaggerated, how their brothers and sons were dying in the trenches, not by steel and shell, but from the starvation, disease, exposure, vermin, to which the culpable incapacity of British officials, as it was believed, had exposed them. It was the system, rather than its agents, which was to blame; but shoulders had to be found to bear the blame, and Parliament took the only means in its power, by passing a vote of censure on Ministers, who were defeated on a motion by Mr. Roebuck by the crushing majority of 157. The Coalition Government had collapsed.

[Sidenote: Victory of the Turks at Eupatoria.]

After an ineffective attempt by Lord Derby to form a Cabinet, Lord Palmerston--the only possible man in the existing state of public opinion--became Prime Minister. Things had begun already to go better with the Allies before Sebastopol. Omar Pasha, with his despised Turks, defeated an army of 40,000 Russians under General Liprandi at Eupatoria on February 18, being supported by an effective fire from the Allied Fleet.

The news reached Czar Nicholas on March 1; he was suffering at the time from the effects of influenza, but his health was not the subject of any alarm to his Court. Nevertheless he died on March 2; peace negotiations were immediately opened at Vienna, and the new Czar consented to send a representative to the Conference "in a sincere spirit of concord."

Great Britain was represented by Lord John Russell and France by M. Drouyn de Lhuys, but the proceedings were rendered abortive by the refusal of Russia to consent to the neutralisation of the Black Sea.

LIEUT.-COLONEL SIR CHARLES RUSSELL, BART., V.C.

At the Battle of Inkermann, ammunition failing, both British and Russians hurled stones at each other. In the midst of the mêlée, Lieut.-Colonel Russell, of the Grenadier Guards, led a party into the midst of the enemy, and dislodged them from the Sand-bag Battery. He was nearly bayonetted; his life was saved by a private in the Grenadiers named Palmer.]

FIELD-MARSHAL LORD RAGLAN, 1788-1855.

Lord Fitzroy James Henry Somerset, created Baron Raglan in 1852, was the eighth and youngest son of the Fifth Duke of Beaufort. He was Military Secretary to the Duke of Wellington, 1819-1852, Master-General of Ordnance, 1852, and was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Forces in the Crimea, 1854.]

[Sidenote: Death of Lord Raglan.]

The war went on; the Allies being strengthened in a minute degree by the active adherence of the little kingdom of Sardinia, of which the gallant and resolute monarch, Victor Emmanuel, perceived ultimate advantage to his designs on the throne of Italy through alliance with Great Britain and France in a war which concerned him about as much as it did the Queen of the Sandwich Islands. The bombardment of Sebastopol was resumed on April 10, and 400 great guns battered away without much result. But the trenches were drawing ever closer round the doomed city, and the Allies made a successful expedition to Kertch on May 24, where they destroyed immense stores provided for the Russian army, as well as a convoy of cargo ships in the Sea of Azoff. On June 18 a combined assault was delivered on the Malakoff and Redan Forts, but the Allies were repulsed with heavy loss. It had been undertaken against the judgment of Lord Raglan, who yielded reluctantly to General Pelissier's urgent request. He took this reverse grievously to heart: harassed as he had been by the censures passed at home on his administration, his health gave way under this additional blow, and he succumbed to dysentery on the 29th.

HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN INVESTING THE EMPEROR NAPOLEON III. WITH THE ORDER OF THE GARTER AT WINDSOR CASTLE, April 18, 1855.

The friendly feeling between England and France which sprang out of their common interests in the war against Russia, found expression in an interchange of visits between the Sovereigns of the two countries. The Emperor Napoleon III. and his beautiful Empress visited the Queen at Windsor in April 1855. They were met at Dover by the Prince Consort on the 16th, and remained at Windsor until the 21st. One of the most impressive ceremonies of their visit was the Installation of the Emperor as a Knight of the Garter.]

In assuming the chief command of the British Army in this war, Lord Raglan had undertaken a task of peculiar and, in some respects, novel difficulty. He brought ripe experience, it is true, acquired under the greatest soldier of the century, but the lapse of years had brought about so many changes in military appliances and scientific inventions, that much of that experience was rendered obsolete. He was the first British general who had to conduct operations in the field advised, controlled, directed, censured by telegraphic despatches from the War Office. He had, moreover, to act in concert with an ally, brave, indeed, but sensitive, and it was of the nature of things that their counsels should sometimes clash, at least, that their judgment should not always be identical. Little reference has been made to the angry impatience expressed in the English press and Parliament in regard to what was freely condemned as the incapacity and dilatoriness of Lord Raglan, because time and reflection have amply vindicated his renown. But it must have been galling to him at the time, and greatly aggravated the difficulties of his position. The best evidence of his genuine force of character is found in the patient courage with which he fulfilled his office to the last, and the enthusiastic devotion which he won from all ranks serving under him.

MAJOR (NOW GENERAL) CHRISTOPHER TEESDALE, C.B., R.A., AT KARS, September 29, 1855.

He was awarded the Victoria Cross for gallant conduct in throwing himself into the midst of the Russians, who had penetrated under cover of night into the Yuksek Tabia redoubt; also for saving, at great personal risk, the enemy's wounded from the fury of the Turks.]

HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN DISTRIBUTING MEDALS TO THE HEROES OF THE CRIMEA, ON THE HORSE GUARDS PARADE, May 21, 1855.]

[Sidenote: Battle of Tchernaya.]

The command of the British forces devolved upon General Simpson. On August 16 General Liprandi made a formidable attempt to raise the siege by an attack on the French and Sardinian position on the Tchernaya, but was repulsed with tremendous slaughter. This was the last encounter in the open field. The final assault on the town was opened by a tremendous fire from the Allied batteries on September 5, and the bombardment continued without intermission throughout the 6th and 7th. On the morning of the 8th the French made a splendid dash at the Malakoff Fort, the key of Sebastopol, and captured it. The English fared not so well in an attempt to storm the Redan and suffered severely in a repulse. But the defence was at an end.

HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN AND THE PRINCE CONSORT LANDING AT BOULOGNE, August 18, 1855.

This was the first visit of an English Sovereign to France since Henry VI. was crowned in Paris in 1422. The Royal Visitors were received by the Emperor on the landing stage at Boulogne, and conveyed to the Palace of St. Cloud. During their stay in Paris they paid several visits to the Palais des Beaux Arts, a part of the Exposition Universelle in which they were greatly interested.]

REVIEW IN THE CHAMPS DE MARS AT PARIS, August 24, 1855.

During their stay in Paris, Her Majesty the Queen and the Prince Consort were present at a grand review of troops held in the Champs de Mars. Especial interest was attached to the spectacle, as at the moment the armies of France and England were fighting side by side in the final struggle in the Crimea. Canrobert, one of the heroes of the war, was present, and was decorated by the Queen with the Order of the Bath. Her Majesty, with the Empress and Princess Mathilde, are sitting together in the balcony, while the Emperor and the Prince Consort are below watching the movements of the long series of battalions.]

[Sidenote: Evacuation of Sebastopol.]

After repeated attempts to retake the Malakoff, the Russian commander resolved on evacuating the town. Fortunately the wires connected with the magazine in the Malakoff were discovered in time by the French and cut, for arrangements had been made for blowing up all the forts. One after another they went up with terrific din during the night; early on the morning of the 9th the Russians executed a masterly evacuation across a floating bridge, leaving their town in flames and their fleet at the bottom of the harbour. Sebastopol had fallen, but not into the hands of the Allies; it had been erased from the face of the earth.

HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN VISITING THE TOMB OF NAPOLEON I. IN THE INVALIDES, PARIS, August 24, 1855.]

[Sidenote: Conclusion of Peace.]

The Congress of Paris met on February 26, 1856, and a treaty of peace was signed by the plenipotentiaries of the Great Powers on March 30. The most important Article was that which guaranteed the perpetual neutrality of the Black Sea; Russia received back the ruins of Sebastopol in exchange for the wreck of Kars, and the Eastern Question was laid to rest, at least for a season.

This great reflecting telescope, still the finest in the world, is 56 feet long; the speculum or mirror of copper and tin at the bottom of the tube is 6 feet in diameter and weighs nearly 4 tons. Its nominal magnifying power is 6,000, and it reflects about 165,000 times as much light as the naked eye itself would receive. It was designed and constructed in 1845 by the late Earl of Rosse, and has rendered great service to science.]

SIR JOHN F. W. HERSCHEL, BART.

1792-1871.

Astronomer. Son of Sir Frederick W. Herschel. His first great work was his Catalogue of Double and Triple Stars; later on he catalogued the nebulæ, and made researches in Sound and Light. He discovered the solvent effects of hyposulphite of soda on silver salts--the basis of photographic processes. Created a Baronet in 1838, Master of the Mint 1850-55. For many years he was among the most prominent of English scientists.]

For this result England had to pay down four and twenty thousand lives and add forty-one millions to her National Debt; but she learned in addition to take vigilant precaution against the enervating influence of prolonged peace. To this may be added the bracing moral effect which follows on the supreme and disciplined exercise of a nation's power.

ACTION AT FATSHAN, CHINA, June 1, 1857.

The Chinese fleet of about ninety junks was completely destroyed in two severe engagements, in which the Chinese fought their guns with unexampled constancy. Owing to the shallowness of the water the British attacked in small boats.]