Chapter XXIX: Drifting to War

Origin of the Crimean War--Russia and “the Sick Man”--Coercing
Turkey--The Dispute about the Holy Places--A Monkish
Quarrel--Contradictory Concessions--The Czar and the Tory Ministry
of 1844--The Secret Compact with Peel, Wellington, and
Aberdeen--Nesselrode’s Secret Memorandum--The Czar and Sir Hamilton
Seymour--Lord John Russell’s Admissions--The Czar’s
Bewilderment--Lord Stratford de Redcliffe--The Marplot at
Constantinople--A Hectoring Russian Envoy--The Allied Fleets at
Besika Bay--The Conference of Vienna--The Vienna Note--The Turkish
Modifications--The Case for England--The British Fleet in the
Euxine--A Caustic Letter of the Queen to Lord Aberdeen--Prince
Albert’s Warnings--The Massacre of Sinope--Internal Feuds in the
Cabinet--Lord John Russell’s Intrigues--Palmerston’s Resignation
and Return--The Fire at Windsor--Birth of Prince Leopold--The Camp
at Chobham--The Czar’s Daughters--Naval Review at Spithead--Royal
Visit to Ireland.

When Parliament was prorogued on the 20th of August, 1853, the following passage was inserted in the Queen’s Speech. “It is with deep interest and concern that her Majesty has viewed the serious misunderstanding which has recently risen between Russia and the Ottoman Porte. The Emperor of the French has united with her Majesty in earnest endeavours to reconcile differences, the continuance of which might involve Europe in war.” The war to which these differences led has ever been regarded by the Queen as the one heart-breaking calamity of her reign--a calamity hardly equalled by the great Mutiny, which, though it nearly wrecked her Eastern Empire, ended in establishing her authority more firmly than ever in her Asiatic dominions. No such tangible result as that followed, however, from the war into which the country was now being rapidly hurried. The results of this war--the battles, the siege operations, “the moving accidents by flood and field”--are all well known; but its causes are to this day very imperfectly understood by Englishmen. The folly and weakness of the Aberdeen Ministry, the influence of Prince Albert, the aggressive designs of Russia, the obstinacy and brutality of the Turks, the determination of Napoleon III. to foment a disturbance from which he might emerge with the status of a Ruler who had linked the throne of a parvenu in an alliance with an ancient monarchy, the factious desire of the Tory Opposition to entangle the Coalition Ministry in Foreign troubles--to all these causes have different writers traced the Crimean war. Let us, then, examine carefully, and closely, the development of the dispute that broke the peace of Europe in connection with the attitude to it--sometimes, it must be frankly said, a wrong attitude--which the Queen and the Court of St. James’s held.

The geographical conditions of Russia, and the political state of Turkey, favoured the outbreak of war between these States. Russia has no outlet to the sea except through the Baltic in the north, which is frozen in winter, and through the Bosphorus in the south, which is open all the year, but which is dominated by the Sultan so long as Constantinople is the capital of Turkey. Russia has, therefore, an obvious interest either in making Turkey her vassal, or in expelling the Turks from Europe, and establishing a Power at Constantinople in servitude to the Czar. It is almost a heresy to say that Russia has not aimed at seizing Constantinople herself. Yet if we are to base our judgment on authentic historical documents, and not on the heated imaginings of excited Russophobists, it is necessary to say this. The Emperor Nicholas was the most aggressive of modern Czars, and there is no reason to doubt the cynical candour with which he expressed his views on this subject to Sir George Hamilton Seymour, in his conversations with him early in the year.[98] Yet it is certain that his ideas as to the reconstitution of European Turkey in the event of the Turkish Empire breaking up, took the form of organising a series of autonomous States, which, like the Danubian Principalities in 1853, should be under his protection, though, perhaps, under the nominal suzerainty of the Turks--by that time banished to Asia Minor--“bag and baggage.” These ideas may have been right or wrong. It is, however, just to say that they were the ideas of the Czar, and that they do not correspond with the scheme for making Constantinople the capital of Russia, which most popular English writers accuse him of cherishing.[99] The interest of Russia being thus revealed, let us see where her opportunity lay. It lay in the fact that the Ottomans, though they had enough bodily strength to conquer, had never enough brain-power to govern a European Empire. In this respect they differed signally from the equally savage hordes of Manchu Tartars, who overran China, and who, instead of destroying, adapted themselves to the civilisation with which they came in contact. The Christian provinces of Turkey, and the Greek Christians, under the rule of the Sultan were misgoverned, plundered, and at times tortured by the myrmidons of a barbarous and feeble autocracy. The Russian Czar, as head of a nation fanatically devoted to the Greek cult, could always find in this misgovernment and oppression apt opportunity for interfering between the Sultan and his Greek subjects. Moreover, in every act of interference the Czar of Muscovy knows that he will be supported to the death by the fervid fanaticism of the Russian people.

But the example of other Powers was not wanting in 1853 to emphasise the promptings of interest and opportunity. In 1852 the Turks determined to strike a blow at Montenegro, with which they had for centuries waged chronic warfare. The Sublime Porte sent Omar Pasha to occupy the Principality of the Black Mountain. Austria, alarmed at the prospect, despatched Count Leiningen to Constantinople, and instructed him to press for the recall of Omar. The Porte yielded to this demand, and recalled him.[100]

Nor was Austria the only Power that was demonstrating the ease with which Turkey might be coerced. France had a dispute pending with Turkey, as to the privileges of the Roman Catholic monks in Jerusalem--a dispute into which the French Emperor, when Prince-President in 1850, had entered with vigour, for the purpose of conciliating the French clergy. Mr. Kinglake insinuates that Napoleon III. manufactured this quarrel in order to force on a European war that might strengthen his position. It is but fair to say that the Emperor inherited the controversy from Louis Philippe.[101] As it led to the assertion of claims on the part of Russia, the rejection of which by Turkey caused the Crimean war, it may be well briefly to set forth its salient points.

In 1740 the Porte, in a treaty with France, granted to the Roman Catholic monks and clergy in Jerusalem the custody of certain places in the Holy Land, associated with the memory of Christ, and to which Greek and Latin Christians were in the habit of making pilgrimages. The Great Church of Bethlehem, the Sanctuary of the Nativity, the Tomb of the Virgin, the Stone of Anointing, and the Seven Arches of the Virgin in the tomb of the Holy Sepulchre, were among the Sacred Places thus ceded.[102] During the Revolution, French zeal for maintaining the privileges of the Romish clergy in Syria grew cool, and the Holy Places in the custody of the Latin monks were shockingly neglected. The Greek Christians, however, not only visited these consecrated spots as pilgrims, but piously repaired them with the sanction of the Porte, thus acquiring by firmans from the Sultan the privilege of worshipping in them. The policy of the Porte seems to have been to induce Latins and Greeks to share the use of the sacred shrines. But Latins and Greeks, under the protection of France and Russia respectively, each claimed an exclusive right of control and guardianship over them. The dispute had been carried on in a desultory way till, in 1850, it was narrowed down to this point: France, on behalf of the Latin monks, contended that, in order to pass into the grotto of the Holy Manger, they should have exclusive possession of the key of the Church of Bethlehem, and of one of the keys--the other being in Greek custody--of each of the two doors of the Holy Manger; further, that the Sanctuary of the Nativity itself should be ornamented with a silver star, and the arms of France. In February, 1853, the Porte adjudicated on the rival claims in a letter addressed to the French Chargé d’Affaires, and in a firman to the Greek patriarch. The representative of France was told that the Latins were to have the keys they demanded. The Patriarch was told that Greeks, Armenians, and Latins should have keys also, and that the Latins were not to have any of the exclusive rights over the Holy Places that they claimed. When it became known that the Porte had thus spoken with “two voices,” France complained that the exclusive rights demanded by her under the Treaty of 1740 were denied in the firman. Russia, on behalf of the Greeks, claimed credit for moderation in accepting the firman as a compromise, and insisted on its being publicly proclaimed at Jerusalem as a charter of Greek privileges. The Porte, in deference to the opposition of France, refused to make public proclamation of the firman.[103] The Russian Consul-General left Jerusalem in high dudgeon. “The Latins,” says Mr. Walpole, “on hearing the decision of the Porte, that they should be allowed to celebrate mass once a year in the Church of the Virgin, near Gethsemane, but that they should not be allowed to disturb the altar and its ornaments, declared that it was impossible to celebrate mass on a schismatic slab of marble, and before a crucifix whose feet were separated.”[104] In this quarrel of a few ignorant monks over the mummeries of their rival rituals lay the germ of that great war in which England sacrificed the lives of 28,000 brave men, and spent £30,000,000 of sterling treasure!

The Porte endeavoured, by contradictory concessions, such as by publicly reading the firman, and by permitting the Latins to put a star over the altar of the Nativity, to please both parties--but in vain. Russia, towards the end of 1852, had moved a _corps d’armée_ on the frontier of Moldavia. France threatened to send her fleet to Syria; and in the end of February, 1853, the Czar sent Prince Menschikoff on a special mission to Constantinople, for the purpose of enforcing the Russian demands.

The turn in affairs that placed Lord Aberdeen at the head of the Queen’s Government did not tend to moderate these demands, or induce the Czar to treat the Porte with any delicacy. The Czar, in fact, was honestly convinced that his views as to the future of Turkey were, in the main, shared by Lord Aberdeen, and therefore by the British Cabinet. It was

well known that when the Czar visited England, in 1844, he had discussed the Eastern Question with the Queen and her principal advisers, and that he and Lord Aberdeen had become personal friends. His Majesty had propounded to Peel and Aberdeen his fixed idea that it would be well, in view of the impending dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, that England and Russia should agree as to the disposal of its European provinces. As Austria would follow Russia, an Anglo-Russian coalition would necessarily dictate terms to France, who, by her support of Mehemet Ali, had shown that her interests were as hostile to those of England in Egypt, as they were to those of Russia in Syria. In fact, the Czar’s conversations with the Tory Ministers in 1844 were almost identical with those which he subsequently held with Sir Hamilton Seymour in 1853. Sir Theodore Martin asserts that Peel rejected these overtures, saying that England did not regard the dissolution of Turkey as imminent, that she wanted no Turkish territory for herself, that she merely desired to prevent any government in Egypt from closing the road to India, and that she must decline to pledge herself to accept Russian plans for disposing of the Turkish territory, till events rendered its disposal a pressing question.[105] Sir Theodore Martin, however, admits that there was “a general concurrence in the principle expressed” by the Czar, that no Great Power--least of all France--should be permitted to aggrandise itself at the expense of Turkey. Now, it seems certain that up to the very moment when war was declared, the Emperor Nicholas was convinced that Lord Aberdeen’s Government would never take sides with France against him, in any quarrel about Turkey. He was convinced, despite the despatches of the British Ministry, that the ideas of the British Government and his own in regard to the future of Turkey, were in principle the same--and this conviction he evidently carried away with him from England in 1844. He must have been, therefore, too stupid to correctly understand what Peel said to him, or Peel must have said more to him than Sir Theodore Martin felt himself at liberty to record, in his masterly but discreet biography of Prince Albert. The manifest reluctance of Lord Aberdeen to thwart the Russian Emperor, and his obvious embarrassment when his duty forced him to comment publicly on Russian diplomacy in 1853, indicate that something more _was_ said. What it was has been revealed by Lord Malmesbury in an entry in his Diary under date the 3rd of June, 1853. “There is,” says Lord Malmesbury, who speaks with the authority of one who had held the seals of the Foreign Office, “a circumstance which I think must strongly influence Lord Aberdeen at this moment; which is, that when the Emperor Nicholas came to England in 1844, he, Sir Robert Peel (then Prime Minister), the Duke of Wellington, and Lord Aberdeen (then Foreign Secretary) drew up and signed a memorandum, the spirit and scope of which was to support Russia in her legitimate protectorship of the Greek religion and the Holy Shrines, and to do so without consulting France. When Lord Derby’s government came in, at first, I was unable to understand the mysterious allusions which Brunnow[106] made now and then, and which he retracted when he saw that either I knew nothing of this paper, or that I desired to ignore it. Since it was composed and written, the position of affairs in Europe is totally changed, and is even reversed. In 1840 the events in the East had then estranged England and France from one another, and Louis Napoleon did not exist as a factor in European policy. Now he is Emperor of the French, and the Duke and Peel are dead, yet it is not unnatural to believe that Nicholas, finding Lord Aberdeen Prime Minister, and the sole survivor of these three English statesmen, should feel that the moment had arrived, so long wished for by Russia, to fall upon Turkey.... He believes that Lord Aberdeen never will join France against him, and probably thinks Palmerston stultified by the drudgery of the Home Office.”[107] This passage in Lord Malmesbury’s Diary explains why Lord Beaconsfield used to say that he knew as a fact within his own knowledge, that had Lord Aberdeen not come to power in 1852, the Crimean war would never have broken out.[108] Perhaps it explains why Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright declared that if the Tories had not been driven from Office in 1852, the Crimean war would have been avoided. It is now only too easy to understand that, if he had this Secret Memorandum in his possession, the Czar Nicholas naturally believed that the British Government were not serious in their antagonism. It is also easy to understand why Lord Aberdeen always shrank from speaking the firm word of warning, which would have induced Russia to pause ere her troops crossed the Pruth, and draw back whilst it was possible to draw back with honour.

The existence of an informal understanding between the Czar and the old Tory Government of 1844 shows us why his Majesty, in conversation with Sir Hamilton Seymour, on the 9th and 14th of January, 1853, reopened the question which he believed he had virtually arranged with that Government. The last living representative of it--Lord Aberdeen--was Prime Minister of England; Turkey was in a more decrepit condition than ever; France seemed bent on reviving the Napoleonic legend--of evil omen to England in Egypt; nay, she was challenging the claim of Russia to secure protection for the Greek Christians in the Ottoman Empire--a claim which the Tory leaders in 1844 were disposed to favour.[109] The Czar therefore thought it most opportune to say to Sir Hamilton Seymour, as he had said to Wellington and Peel, that Turkey, “the Sick Man,” was dying on their hands, that England and Russia should either agree what should or should not be done with his heritage when he died, and, further, to suggest that the Christian provinces of Turkey should be organised as independent States under Russian protection, whilst England occupied Egypt and Candia.[110] Lord John Russell’s reply to these conversations must have also misled the Czar, preoccupied as he was with the fact that, in terms of the Secret Memorandum of 1844, England and Russia had agreed on a common policy in Turkey. Lord John, in effect, said that, as the British Government did not think that the Turk was quite moribund, it was premature to discuss any project, negative or positive, for disposing of his territory, and that England had no desire for territorial aggrandisement. But he went on to add that he thought the Sultan should be “advised” to treat his Christian subjects justly and humanely, because, if he did so, the Czar would not find it “necessary to apply that exceptional protection which his Imperial Majesty has found so burdensome and inconvenient, though no doubt _prescribed by duty and sanctioned by treaty_.” The words here italicised were not altogether in accord with the facts, for no treaty sanctioned in plain, definite terms this “exceptional protection;” moreover, they admitted the whole Russian case; for, as will be seen, it was precisely because the Czar was supposed to be bent on extorting from Turkey an extension of the sanction given by existing treaties to the Russian Protectorate over her oppressed Christian subjects, that Turkey and England went to war with Russia. Whether that war was right or wrong, this is certain: it was waged by the English Government to rebut a claim, which that Government at the outset admitted. The Czar, through Count Nesselrode, expressed himself satisfied with the self-denying pledges which had passed between the Russian and English Governments, and, as England had promised not to entertain any project for the protection of Turkey without a previous understanding with Russia, so Russia, he said, gave a similar undertaking to England. But he observed that the surest way to prevent the fall of Turkey would be to induce the Porte to treat the Greek Christians with equity and humanity. The English Government, delighted with this friendly communication, advised the Porte to compose the dispute between France and Russia, by offering to accept any arrangement which these two Powers would take as satisfactory. It remonstrated with France for having been the first, not only to raise the quarrel about the Holy Places, but also to support her demands by a threat of war. This was a second admission on the part of England that in this controversy Russia was in the right. Napoleon III. recalled M. de Lavalelle, his hectoring Envoy at Constantinople, and sent M. de La Cour in his place. Russia ceased her warlike preparations on the Moldavian frontier, and the war-cloud on the horizon began to melt away.

Unfortunately for the prospects of peace, Lord Aberdeen ordered Lord Stratford de Redcliffe to resume his duties as Ambassador at Constantinople.

(_From a Photograph by Messrs. Boning and Small._)]

Stratford de Redcliffe was a man of indomitable strength of character, restless energy, and invincible tenacity of purpose. His fitness for the office of a mediator between Turkey, Russia, and France, charged specially to avert war, may be estimated by the following entry in Lord Malmesbury’s Diary, under date February 25th, 1854:--“Lord Bath,” writes Lord Malmesbury, “has come back from Constantinople, and says that Lord Stratford openly boasts having got his personal revenge against the Czar by fomenting the war. He told Lord Bath so.” According to Lord Malmesbury, his hatred to the Czar dated from the time when his Majesty refused to receive him as Ambassador at St. Petersburg. It is now beyond doubt that Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, from the beginning to the end of the negotiations between the Powers, acted the part of a Marplot. As Prince Albert, in a letter to Baron Stockmar on the 27th of November, said, “The prospects of a peaceful settlement in the East do not improve. Lord Stratford fulfils his instructions to the letter, but he so contrives that we are getting constantly deeper and deeper into a war policy.” It is impossible to describe in truer words the malign and baneful influence of the diplomatist who, to gratify his personal rancour, inflicted the torture of war upon his country.

Lord Stratford de Redcliffe reached Constantinople on the 5th of April, 1853. There he found that Prince Menschikoff, at the head of a menacing mission, had arrived before him on the 28th of February. Menschikoff began operations by refusing to treat with Fuad Effendi, the Foreign Minister. Fuad resigned in favour of Rifaat Pasha. The tone of the Russian envoy then alarmed the Grand Vizier, who sought advice from Colonel Rose,[111] British Chargé d’Affaires. Colonel Rose immediately begged Admiral Dundas to bring the Mediterranean squadron to the mouth of the Dardanelles, but the Admiral refused to sail without instructions from the Cabinet, and the Cabinet disapproved of Rose’s action. France, however, thought that this act indicated an intention on the part of England to forestall her, and despatched the Toulon squadron to Salamis, without waiting to hear whether Colonel Rose’s action had been sanctioned by his Government.[112] The presence of the French fleet so near the scene of an acrid controversy between France and Russia, would have tended to neutralise the conciliatory diplomacy of England, even if Lord Stratford de Redcliffe had honestly meant to work in the interests of peace.

Lord Stratford, when he arrived at Constantinople, found the Sublime Porte in a panic. Though Russia had assured the English Government that no question then remained open between her, France, and Turkey, except that of the Holy Places, Menschikoff had demanded from the Porte a treaty, the negotiation of which, he said, must be kept secret from the Powers, acknowledging the right of Russia to a protectorate over all Greek Christians in Turkey. Ultimately he offered to accept a Note; but the objection to the concession in any such shape, was that it virtually transferred to the Russian Czar the allegiance of 12,000,000 of the Sultan’s subjects. Lord Stratford de Redcliffe advised the Porte to begin by settling the question of the Holy Places, which was the _fons et origo_ of the dispute. That question was quickly settled, and then Menschikoff promptly and peremptorily pressed the new claim of Russia to a protectorate over the Greek Church in Turkey. On the 5th of May he sent an ultimatum to the Porte demanding its surrender on this point within five days. On Lord Stratford’s advice the Porte refused to surrender, and Prince Menschikoff and his suite left Constantinople in wrath.[113] At this crisis the voice of Nicholas was for war; but that of Nesselrode, his able and tranquil Minister, was for peace. As a compromise the Czar therefore determined that the Danubian Principalities should be occupied by his troops, and held till Turkey guaranteed to Russia “the rights and privileges of all kinds which have been granted by the Sultan to his Greek subjects.”[114] On the 31st of May Nesselrode wrote to Reschid Pasha that Russian troops would cross the Pruth, and on the 2nd of June Admiral Dundas was ordered to proceed with the Mediterranean squadron to Besika Bay. The French fleet was ordered to go there also, and the allied squadrons made their appearance in Turkish waters about the same time.[115] The quarrel up till now had been one between France and Russia. It was thus suddenly transformed into one between France and England on the one side and Russia on the other. On the 2nd of July Prince Gortschakoff entered the Principalities; and then Austria, which had selfishly held aloof, became nervous as to the control of the Danube, and manifested a desire to act with the Western Powers. Turkey was advised not to treat Russian aggression on the Principalities as a _casus belli_, and the Porte met it with a protest, though it was very nearly forced by its fanatical Moslem subjects to declare war. In England the Government was condemned for its extreme reticence in Parliament as to the turn affairs were taking; and up to this point the Cabinet certainly committed three blunders. In the first place, they permitted Lord Stratford to encourage the Porte to resist Russia, without having come to a clear and definite determination to support that resistance by force, if Russia proved unbending. Secondly, they relied too much on Count Nesselrode’s smooth, pacific assurances after they knew, or ought to have known, from Prince Menschikoff’s proposal of a secret treaty to the Porte, and from the warlike demonstration on the Moldavian frontier,[116] that these assurances were illusory. Thirdly, they did not meet the proposal for a secret treaty and the demonstration on the frontier by ordering Dundas to Besika Bay, and they met the occupation of the Principalities by sending Dundas, not to the Black Sea, but only to Besika Bay. Lord Aberdeen’s apologists allege that the latter step would have caused Russia to occupy Constantinople. That is a feeble defence, for subsequent events showed that Russia could not even mobilise enough troops to hold the Principalities against the Turks. The English Government did enough to irritate the Czar, and though they did not do enough to check him, they did too much to enable them to extricate themselves with honour from the quarrel.

Something, however, had to be done for the Porte, after it had, at the bidding of England and France, refrained from defending the Principalities, which were in its dominions. A Conference of the Powers was therefore assembled at Vienna, on the 24th of June, to arrive at a pacific solution of the difficulty, and on the 31st they adopted the Vienna Note, which has become famous in European history. It was sent to Russia and Turkey for acceptance as a settlement which, in the opinion of Europe, would be equally honourable and fair to both. The Czar accepted it promptly on the 10th of August. Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, in his official capacity, advised Turkey to accept it; but he played his Government false, by plainly indicating his personal objections to it. The Porte acted on his private advice, and refused to accept the Note unless it were modified. Turkey thus dashed all hopes of peace by repudiating the advice of the Powers, and, by thus putting herself in the wrong, she put Russia in the right.

Here Lord Aberdeen and his colleagues committed another blunder. On balancing the gain against the loss to Turkey which was likely to accrue from concessions that would prevent war, they might fairly enough have told the Porte that, if it rejected the Vienna Note, it would be left to struggle with Russia single-handed. Austria, however, followed by France, England, and Prussia, asked the Czar to accept the modifications of Turkey. The Czar refused to do this, and instructed Count Nesselrode to give his reasons for refusing, whereupon Austria and Prussia veered round, and again recommended the Porte to accept the original Note. England and France, on the contrary, alleging that Count Nesselrode’s despatches proved that the Czar attached a different meaning to the Note from that which they attributed to it, declined to join Austria and Prussia in pressing Turkey to accept it. The European concert was destroyed, and it was the European concert which alone rendered war impossible.[117] Unfortunately, on this occasion, the Queen, wary and ingenious as she has shown herself during other crises in checking the “drift” of Cabinets towards war, fell too easily under the influence of Lord Aberdeen, for whom personally she ever entertained the warmest regard. He sent Nesselrode’s despatch to her, but he prepossessed her mind by pointing out to her first, that Nesselrode’s reasons for refusing to accept the Turkish modifications of the Vienna Note, showed that Russia put a different interpretation on it from that which its framers meant it to bear; and secondly, that it would be dishonourable to ask the Porte to accept it in the face of this fact. Her Majesty, easily touched by such an appeal, wrote from Balmoral a strong letter to Lord Aberdeen supporting his view with much ability. “It is evident,” she said, “that Russia has hitherto attempted to deceive us, in pretending that she did not aim at the acquisition of any _new_ right, but required only a satisfaction of honour, and an acknowledgment of the rights she already possessed by treaty--and that she does intend, and for the first time lays bare that intention, to acquire new rights of interference.” The Queen then made a suggestion which was carried out. It was that England should lay the whole case before Europe, declaring that the Russian demands were inadmissible, and “that the continuance of the occupation of the Principalities, in order to extort these demands, constitutes an unwarrantable aggression upon Turkey, and infraction of the public law of Europe.”[118] As matters stood, such an intimation to the fiery Czar was virtually a challenge to mortal combat.

Those who hold the destinies of great nations in their hands are now chary of committing themselves to war for the sake of honour or the public law of Europe. The subterfuges by which Russia disorganised Bulgaria in 1886, and got rid of Prince Alexander, whose anti-Russian proclivities had been encouraged by England, touched British honour more closely than the “explicative Note” of Count Nesselrode. Yet England, guided solely by her interests, did not make Russian interference with Bulgaria in 1886, a _casus belli_. A greater statesman than Aberdeen in 1853, also eliminated all considerations of “honour” from his policy, and looked solely to the material interest of his country. Prussia was scoffed at by Prince Albert as “a reed shaken by the wind.” But Prussia not only refused to join the Western Powers against Russia, but deterred Austria from joining them. And why? Because Herr von Bismarck had enough influence with the King to convince him that the interest of Prussia did not lie in strengthening the Western Powers, or in offending Russia, whose benevolent neutrality might one day be valuable to his country. Why, he argued, should Prussia waste her strength in helping France and Austria to weaken Russia, without the prospect of winning for Prussia “a prize worthy of us”? He was “appalled” by the notion that “we may plunge into a sea of trouble and danger on behalf of Austria, for whose sins the King displays as much tolerance as I only hope God in Heaven will one day show to mine.” The “interest of Prussia,” he said, after the Crimean war was over, “is my only rule of action, and had there ever been any prospect of our promoting this interest by taking part in the war, I should certainly never have been one of its opponents.”[119] Lord Salisbury, on the 9th of November, 1886, speaking at the Guildhall, has in our time said that England has no interest to resist Russian aggression in European Turkey, where Austria has none. Tested by that principle the policy of the Cabinet and the Crown in 1853 was chivalrous, but indefensible. Yet if the Sovereign and her Ministers erred, what is to be said of the Nation? It was simply mad for war with Russia, and the section of the Cabinet headed by Palmerston and Russell vied with the Tories in inflaming the war-fever of the hour. Aberdeen was vilified as a Russian agent--because he was desirous of maintaining peace. Prince Albert was attacked with equal scurrility as a tool of the Czar, because he was not a Russophobe, and because he did not conceal his opinion that the Turkish Government was brutal, fanatical, and ignorant.

Had Turkey accepted the Vienna Note, had the Powers not asked Russia to accept the Turkish amendments to it, had Nesselrode in refusing to accept these refrained from giving reasons for his refusal, peace would have been preserved. It is, therefore, necessary to examine the points that were at issue when the Vienna Note was rejected by Turkey. This is to be done by comparing together Menschikoff’s original Note with the Vienna Note, and the Turkish modification of it. Menschikoff started by assuming that Russia and Turkey “being mutually desirous of maintaining the stability of the orthodox Greco-Russian religion, professed by the majority of their Christian subjects, and of guaranteeing that religion against all molestation for the future,” should agree (1) that “no change shall be made as regards the rights, privileges, and immunities which have been enjoyed or are possessed _ab antiquo_ by the Orthodox Greek Churches, pious institutions, and clergy, in the dominions of the Sublime Ottoman Porte, which is pleased to secure the same to them in perpetuity on the strict basis of the _status quo_ now existing. (2) The rights and advantages conceded by the Ottoman Government, or which shall hereafter be conceded, to the other Christian rites by treaties, conventions, or special arrangements, shall be considered as belonging also to the Orthodox Church.”[120] The Vienna Note differed but slightly from this--and it may be well to put it side by side with the Turkish modifications--reproducing only the controversial passages.

VIENNA NOTE.

“If the Emperors of Russia have at all times evinced their active solicitude for the [_maintenance of the immunities and privileges of the Orthodox Greek Church in the Ottoman Empire, the Sultans have never refused to confirm them_] by solemn acts testifying their ancient and constant benevolence towards their Christian subjects.

* * * * *

The undersigned has, in consequence, received orders to declare by the present Note that the Government of his Majesty the Sultan will remain faithful to [_the letter and to the spirit of the Treaties of Kainardji and Adrianople relative to the protection of the Christian religion, and_] that his Majesty considers himself bound in honour to cause to be observed for ever, and to preserve from all prejudice either now or hereafter, the enjoyment of the spiritual privileges which have been granted by his Majesty’s august ancestors to the orthodox Greek Eastern Church, which are maintained and confirmed by him; and, moreover, in a spirit of exalted equity, to cause the Greek rite to share in the advantages granted [_to the other Christian rites by convention or special arrangement_].”

Turkish Modifications.

orthodox Greek worship and Church (le culte et l’Église orthodoxe Grecque), the Sultans have never ceased to provide for the maintenance of the privileges and immunities which at different times they have spontaneously granted to that religion and to that Church in the Ottoman Empire, and to confirm them

the stipulations of the Treaty of Kainardji, confirmed by that of Adrianople, relative to the protection by the Sublime Porte of the Christian religion, and he is, moreover, charged to make known

or which might be granted to the other Christian communities, Ottoman subjects.

Were the points of difference between the Vienna Note and that Note as modified by the Porte worth fighting for?

It is inconceivable that any English Minister or diplomatist having even a cursory acquaintance with Turkish history could agree with the Porte in affirming that the Ottoman Sultans had “never ceased to provide for” the maintenance of the privileges of their Christian subjects. “Never honestly attempted to provide for” would have been the truer statement of the fact. So the _first_ modification of the Porte may be summarily dismissed. As to the _second_, the Turks averred that it was necessary (1) because the Vienna Note extended the scope of the Treaties of Kainardji and Adrianople, and (2) because it gave the Czar new powers of interfering between the Sultan and his subjects. The 7th and 14th Articles of these Treaties, when studied, show that the Porte[121]

was clearly wrong on one point. The Sultan, said the Porte, will in future recognise the stipulations relative to protection given _by the Porte_ alone; but the Treaty had also stipulations relative to protection which was to be given by Russia. The Czar was therefore not unreasonable in suspecting that the Turks were trying, by their amendment of the Vienna Note, to cancel some of his rights under the Treaty of Kainardji. The other point at issue must be decided with reference to history. It is plain that Menschikoff’s Note, from its terms and from the tone of the Envoy who presented it as an ultimatum, might fairly be considered offensive to Turkey, and that she, therefore, had plausible reasons for rejecting it. It might be so construed as to extend to the whole Empire the Russian right of special protection, which the Treaty of Kainardji limited to a single Christian temple, and that of Adrianople restricted to two Principalities. On the other hand, the Porte, by saying that the Sultan would in future “remain faithful to the stipulations of the Treaty of Kainardji, confirmed by that of Adrianople,” was justly suspected of wriggling out of other stipulations in the latter Treaty, which were not in the former, and which made the Czar the special guardian of Christian rights in the Principalities. But holding in view the history of Turkish misrule and oppression, together with Lord Stratford de Redcliffe’s denunciations of the bad faith of the Turkish Government in keeping its promises of reform, it is impossible to blame the Czar for rejecting the Turkish amendment. That amendment consisted simply in cutting out of the Vienna Note the all-important words, “letter and spirit.” The Czar denied that Turkey had been faithful to the letter of existing treaties guaranteeing Christian privileges. All Europe admitted that she had not been faithful to the spirit of them, and that if, under Russian pressure, she ever kept the word of promise to the ear, she usually broke it to the hope. Turkey, when asked to pledge herself to be true to the spirit as well as the letter of her obligations, was, therefore, trifling with Europe in refusing to commit herself to a pledge that would have bound her by both the letter and spirit of her engagements. Here again, it seems, judgment must go against Turkey. The object of her third amendment was quite clear. The stipulation of the Vienna Note that privileges given to any Christian Church should be also enjoyed by all Greek Christians in Turkey, was a sort of “most favoured nation clause.” It made the contract keep all sects automatically on the same level. The Porte, however, by its amendment, promised Russia to give Greek Christians, not the privileges it gave to all other Christians, but only to other Christians who were Turkish subjects. No doubt the Vienna Note would have given Russia a right of complaint against Turkey in the case of Greek Christians, who were refused privileges granted to (1) Greek Christians, (2) Roman Catholics, (3) Protestants, and (4) Armenians who were not Turkish subjects. But these were few in number, and the affair of the Holy Places showed that this right of complaint could be pressed by Russia to some purpose, whether conferred by treaty or not. It almost seemed as if the third amendment of the Porte were designed to bar Russia from similar acts of intervention; in other words, to put her in a worse position than that which she held without any fresh compact whatever. Strangely enough, the one strong objection which Turkey had a right to make to the Vienna Note--namely, that it did not make the evacuation of the Principalities a condition precedent of the settlement--was not strongly pressed by Europe.

One argument, and one only, was urged with even the shadow of plausibility by England. It was that the Czar might claim, under the Vienna Note, a protectorate over the Greek Christians in Turkey, which would transfer to him the allegiance of nearly all the Sultan’s European subjects. As the Vienna Note gave the Czar nothing but what he could claim according to “the letter and to the spirit” of two existing treaties, it is difficult to understand how the English Government could advance such an argument, unless, indeed, they meant to affirm that it was futile to ask Turkey to abide by “the spirit” of any of her pledges. But if the contention of the English Cabinet is to be taken as true, what must we say of the wisdom with which the world is governed? The four Ambassadors, the four Cabinets, and the four Sovereigns of the European Powers who had the clearest interest in preserving the independence of Turkey drew up, studied, debated, and revised again and again every word and phrase of a Joint Note which they declared could be honourably and justly accepted by the Sublime Porte. When Turkey rejected it, these very same Ambassadors, Cabinets, and Sovereigns suddenly turned round and said that they had unwittingly so worded their Note that it threatened with ruin the empire which they meant it to save! And of these Powers two--England and France--entered on a profitless and calamitous war, because their Ambassadors, Ministers of State, and Sovereigns did not understand the meaning of their own words in a solemn diplomatic instrument! It is upon this hypothesis--at once so grotesque and incredible--that Lord Aberdeen’s Government justified itself in advising Turkey to reject the Vienna Note, and in making war on Russia because the Czar adhered to it after he had accepted it at the request of Europe.

England, it has been said, following the lead of Austria, encouraged the Porte to resist, and pressed Russia to accept the Turkish modification of the Note. It has been shown how, when Russia refused to do this, Austria, with whom Prussia acted, suddenly wheeled round and pressed the original Note on Turkey. England, however, had made herself sufficiently ridiculous in first recommending Turkey to accept the Note, and in then supporting her in rejecting it. Lord Aberdeen’s Government accordingly refused to recommend the Note again to Turkey, and the Government of France took the same course. The concert of the Powers which thus alone rendered peace possible was broken, and neither England nor France seemed to have made any serious effort to repair it. On the contrary, they not only approved of Lord Stratford’s conduct in summoning two ships of war from Besika Bay to Constantinople, but in September, yielding to Palmerston,[122] they put the whole fleet at his disposal. It was contrary to the Treaty of 1841 for the Porte to admit war-ships to the Bosphorus in time of peace. To send the English fleet to Constantinople was therefore a declaration on the part of England that Turkey was at war with Russia. Turkey formally declared war on Russia on the 5th, and the British Fleet entered the Bosphorus on the 30th of October. To order our Fleet to defend the Turks in the Euxine if they were attacked by Russia was a perilous step to take. Yet it is curious to observe that the Queen was the only high personage engaged in this transaction who, in the midst of the popular war frenzy, foresaw the peril of it. Even her habit of deference to Lord Aberdeen, which unfortunately led her to sanction without demur the blunders which have now been recorded, could not induce her to approve of this last and, as will be seen, most fatal error. Her trenchant criticism of it, unanswered and unanswerable to this day, is to be found in a letter which she wrote to the Prime Minister, in which she said:--“It appears to the Queen that we have taken on ourselves, in conjunction with

France, all the risks of an European war, without having bound Turkey to any conditions with respect to provoking it. The 120 fanatical Turks constituting the Divan at Constantinople are left sole judges of the line of policy to be pursued, and made cognisant at the same time of the fact that England and France have bound themselves to defend the Turkish territory. This is entrusting them with a power which Parliament would be jealous of confiding even to the hands of the British Crown. It may be a question whether England ought to go to war for the so-called Turkish independence, but there can be none that, if she does so, she ought to be the sole judge of what constitutes a breach of that independence, and have the fullest power to prevent by negotiation the breaking out of the war.”[123] Had the Queen subjected

every act of the Cabinet from the day on which Menschikoff arrived at Constantinople, to the same kind of pitiless logical analysis, even the Coalition Cabinet would have found it difficult to blunder into war. There was also another calm but acute observer of events who could not be diverted from his devotion to tangible British interests by passionate outbursts of popular _chauvinism_, and who saw at a glance the risks the Government were running. In a letter to Baron Stockmar, dated the 27th of November, Prince Albert says:--

“Six weeks ago Palmerston and Lord John carried a resolution that we should give notice that an attack on the Turkish fleet by that of Russia would be met by the fleets of England and France. Now the Turkish steam-ships are to cross over from the Asiatic coast to the Crimea, and to pass before Sebastopol! This can only be meant to insult the Russian fleet and entice it to come out, in order to make it possible for Lord Stratford to bring our fleet into collision with that of Russia, according to his former instructions, and so make an European war certain.”[124]

Just before the allied fleets were sent to defend Turkey in the Black Sea the Porte ordered Omar Pasha to demand the evacuation of Moldavia within fifteen days, and, failing compliance, to attack the Russians at once. The Russians held their ground, standing on the defensive, and the Turks crossed the Danube, inflicting on them defeats that, of course, deeply wounded the pride of the Czar. He therefore ordered the Russian squadron at Sebastopol to retaliate in the Euxine. On the 30th of November it discovered a Turkish fleet at Sinope, which, the Turks declared, was bound for Batoum. The Russian admiral, however, believed it was on its way to the Circassian coast, for the purpose of stirring up an insurrection against Russia in the Caucasus. Instead of watching it or blockading it, as he might have done, he attacked and destroyed it.

This catastrophe, of course, brought England nearer to war. A fierce cry of wrath went up from the English people. Their fleet had been sent to defend Turkey against Russia, yet it had tamely allowed Russia to perpetrate “the massacre of Sinope.” Russia knew that England stood pledged to protect Turkey from attack in the Euxine. Sinope was, therefore, a direct challenge to England, and it must be promptly taken up. The foresight of Prince Albert was thus amply justified. The Government had stupidly sent to the Black Sea a fleet strong enough to provoke Russia, but not strong enough to protect Turkey, and insinuations of treason were freely made. “The defeat of Sinope,” wrote the Prince, “upon our own element--the sea--has made the people furious; it is ascribed to Aberdeen having been bought over by Russia.” Nor was Aberdeen the only one who suffered. Prince Albert was scurrilously attacked by Tories and Radicals of the baser sort, and, almost in as many words, accused of being a Russian spy, whose influence with the Queen was paralysing her Government. But if the English Government blundered foolishly in sending the British fleet to the Black Sea with orders to protect Turkey, without first making sure that Turkey would not provoke attack, or that our fleet was strong enough to defend her, Russia blundered, not foolishly, but criminally, in attacking the Turks at Sinope. Mr. Spencer Walpole says:--“Though the attack on Sinope may be justified, its imprudence cannot be excused.”[125] But surely if it cannot be excused it is idle to “justify” it. The Czar was warned that England and France would defend Turkey if the latter was assailed in the Euxine. An attack on Turkey at Sinope, in spite of that warning, he must have known would be taken by the English and French people as a defiance, which would so madden them, that the war party in France and England must forthwith control the situation. Therefore, to say it was an “imprudence” is to say that, in the circumstances, it was a crime against civilisation. As will be seen later on, it provoked France and England to order their fleets to patrol the Black Sea, and require every Russian ship they met to put back into Sebastopol, so that a second Sinope might be prevented.

During most of this anxious time it is hardly necessary to say that the domestic life of the Queen was one of wearing excitement. At the outset of the diplomatic disputes in which her Government entangled the country it seems that she paid rather less attention than usual to foreign affairs. Palmerston was no longer at the Foreign Office, and in Lord Aberdeen, who was at the head of the Government, the Queen put the most implicit confidence. She had formed a habit of regarding him as the _beau idéal_ of a “safe” Minister, and thus, when she sat down every morning to read her official correspondence, her Majesty approached all the projects of her Government, if not with a decided bias in favour of them, at any rate without that wholesome prepossession of suspicion, that rendered her a keen and searching critic of the Foreign Policy of the country when it was under the direction of Lord Palmerston. It was not till late in the autumn that the Queen’s correspondence, so far as it has been made public, shows a disposition on her part to resume the tone of independent, outspoken, but confidential criticism, that so often checked the vagaries of Lord John Russell’s Cabinet. The Queen, in fact, put too much confidence in the sagacity of the Coalition Government. The Coalition Government, conscious that, so long as Aberdeen could be persuaded to endorse their doings, they would not be very jealously scrutinised by the Crown, entered with a light heart on the most dangerous course of diplomacy. The Queen, the Prime Minister, the Cabinet, and the Czar all set out with the most sincere and unbounded confidence in each other. In little more than twelve months they were accordingly in almost irreconcilable controversy.

After the Coalition Ministry was formed, what the Queen dreaded most was that it might break up over the question of Parliamentary Reform, or over some dispute as to the Premiership, in the event of Lord Aberdeen resigning office. Aberdeen was old and somewhat infirm, and there can be little doubt that he would have resigned soon after the Coalition was organised had not the Eastern Question risen to tie him to his post. Lord John Russell had some notion that he would be Aberdeen’s successor, and it was his fixed idea that his scheme for reforming Parliament would not have a fair chance, unless it were launched by him with all the prestige of the Premier’s advocacy in its favour. Some members of the Cabinet did not desire that this scheme should be launched at all; others, like Palmerston, were determined that it should not be launched, and that Lord John should not be Premier. A few weeks after the Ministry was constituted Lord John resigned the seals of the Foreign Office to Lord Clarendon, becoming a Minister without an office, but retaining the leadership of the House of Commons. The Queen warned him that he would grow discontented with

this position, but her warning was unheeded; and yet Lord John soon had reason to regret that he did not lay it to heart. After the Session ended he began to give Aberdeen broad hints that it would be well for him to retire, and to indicate that he himself might have to secede, if these hints were not acted on. His secession would have broken up the Coalition, which, Aberdeen knew, the Sovereign had set her heart on keeping together. Hence, every effort was made to conciliate Lord John Russell, and, as he soon became, next to Palmerston, the most zealous member of the War Party in the Cabinet, he was therefore able to exert a baneful influence on the Foreign Policy of the Ministry. This was, indeed, one reason why that policy perpetually alternated between energy and apathy. Still, the Cabinet kept together till Russell’s Reform scheme was thrust upon it. Then, on the 15th of December, the world was startled to find that Palmerston had resigned. This event, occurring as it did immediately after the massacre of Sinope, created a dreadful sensation in the country. The Press declared that Palmerston had been turned out because of the Eastern Question. He was the victim of a Court intrigue. It was whispered that Prince Albert, as a spy of Russia, had persuaded the Queen to get rid of a high-spirited Minister because he was eager to avenge against Russia the insult offered to England at Sinope. The Prince, it was said, had been detected betraying the secrets of the Government to foreign Courts. One day it was actually reported that he had been committed to the Tower on a charge of high treason, and a gaping crowd collected to see him locked up as a traitor. This clamour was raised by the Palmerstonian clique, and it gave infinite pain to the Queen. She knew as well as Lord Palmerston and his friends that these attacks were based on a tissue of falsehoods, for, as a matter of fact, Lord Palmerston had resigned simply on the question of Reform. His idea was that Lord Lansdowne, who also disliked Reform, would resign along with him, and that the public outcry would be so great that the Ministry must be shattered. The outcry _was_ great, but it was too obviously that of a personal _claque_; and Palmerston, astounded to find that the nation did not regard his retirement as an irreparable calamity, immediately begged the Cabinet to let him come back again. This they did, having, however, forced him to swallow ignominiously his objections to Lord John Russell’s Reform Bill. Then the Palmerstonian newspapers suddenly dropped their attacks on the Queen and Prince Albert, though the Tory organs kept them up in the true old crusted Protectionist style. “The best of the joke,” writes the Prince to Stockmar, “is that because he [Palmerston] went out the Opposition journals extolled him to the skies in order to damage the Ministry, and now the Ministerial journals have to do so in order to justify the reconciliation.” According to Prince Albert, it was the Duke of Newcastle and the Peelites who induced the Cabinet to let the black sheep that had gone astray, return to the fold of the Coalition.[126]

Till the Eastern Question assumed a grave aspect towards the end of the year, the Court seems to have busied itself chiefly about non-political affairs. The Queen, who shared her husband’s artistic tastes, encouraged him in early spring to form a splendid collection of copies of all Raphael’s known works, a fine series of original drawings by that master in Windsor being the nucleus of this interesting collection. It was alas! left to her Majesty to complete it, after the death of her husband made her the sole sad heir of that and many other cherished projects which they had planned together.

Curiously enough, about this time the art treasures of Windsor were very nearly destroyed. A disastrous fire broke out in the Castle on the 19th of March in one of the apartments on the floor over the dining-room on its north side. It burnt outwards, but limited itself to the upper portions of the Prince of Wales’s Tower. It would have destroyed the plate-rooms and the priceless collection known as the Jewelled Armoury, which contained, by the way, the jewelled peacock of Tippoo Sahib among its trophies, adjoining the Octagon-room. The Queen and Prince Albert were not in the Castle when the fire was discovered, but they, with the officials of the household, were soon on the spot. The scene was one of excitement, without confusion. The firemen worked with a will, but the bustle was greatest among the servants and others, who undertook to dismantle the rooms whose costly treasures were in danger. The fire began at ten on Saturday night, and was put out at four o’clock on Sunday morning. The Queen, it seems, was much agitated at first, but she and her ladies soon regained their composure, and watched the conflagration from the drawing-room all through the night.[127]

On the 7th of April another Prince was born to the Royal pair, and on the 18th the Queen was able to write to her uncle, the King of the Belgians, informing him of the event, and of her intention of naming her child after him. “It” [Leopold], she says, “is a name which is the dearest to me after Albert, and one which recalls the almost only happy days of my sad childhood.” The Prince’s other names were to be George, Duncan, and Albert--George after the King of Hanover, and Duncan, so the Queen said, as “a compliment to dear Scotland.” The compliment paid to that country in subsequently conferring on this Prince the title of Duke of Albany was a fateful one for him. It is an unlucky title, and Prince Leopold was not exempt from the evil fortune of most of those who have worn it. On the 23rd of April the Court removed to Osborne, and on the 27th of May the Queen reluctantly returned to London for the season, greatly reinvigorated by her holiday.

One of the events of the London season of 1853 was the establishment of an experimental military camp at Chobham for the purpose of practising sham-fighting. The camp took the place in the season of ’53, that had been held by the Great Exhibition in ’51, and young men of rank who were braving the perils of mimic warfare on the Sussex ridges were the idols of the hour. On

the 21st of June serious operations began in the presence of the Queen. She rode to the ground on a superb black charger, accompanied by Prince Albert, the King of Hanover, and the Duke of Coburg, the scene as she passed along the lines being most impressive. The moving incidents of the field, the noise of the firing, the shifting panorama of colour, delighted the fashionable crowds who followed her Majesty to what Mr. Disraeli would have called an arena “bright with flashing valour.” On the 14th of July the camp was broken up, and other contingents took the places of the regiments which had formed it. They, however, attempted a movement of real difficulty in endeavouring to effect the passage of the Thames at Runnymede, where the river is deep and the current rapid. Artillery on Cooper’s Hill played on the pontoon bridge murderously, in spite of which, however, it is stated in newspaper records of the day, that several regiments contrived to pass over safely. But the horses that dragged the second gun taken across, took fright, and one of them pulled the rest, with gun and gunners, into the water. The men were saved. The four leading horses, however, met with a strange death. They rose to the surface, and, with eyes and nostrils dilated with terror, beat the water in vain, for the gun, of course, held them

with the wheelers in the river. Yet such was the strength which terror imparted to them, that they dragged not only the gun but the wheelers also, close to the bank before they succumbed.

On the 28th of June Prince Albert, who had been “roughing it” with the Guards in camp, returned to town complaining of a slight cold. The Prince of Wales had measles at the time, and, to the surprise of everybody, Prince Albert, the Queen, all the Royal children except the two youngest, the Crown Prince of Hanover, the Duke and Duchess of Coburg, were smitten,[128] Prince Albert suffering more severely than any of the others. This illness prevented the Queen and her husband from visiting the camp till the 6th of August. On the 28th it broke up.

Two of the Czar’s daughters had come over on a visit to the Queen, with an autograph letter from their father recommending them to her Majesty’s protection. Care was of course taken to make them acquainted with the intense anti-Russian feeling which pervaded England, and they seem to have been utterly amazed to find that hardly any body put the slightest faith in their father’s word. They were invited to accompany the Queen to see the great naval review at Spithead, which took place on the 11th of August--a superb demonstration of the strength of England on the high seas. Twenty-five stately ships of war--six steam-ships of the line, three sailing-ships, and sixteen steam-frigates and sloops--composed the squadron that took part in this magnificent spectacle. The fleet carried 1,076 guns, 10,000 men, and was moved by steam equivalent to the power nominally of 9,680 horses, but really of double that amount--in other words, by more horse-power than the cavalry of the British army could muster at the time. The smallest of its guns was as large as the largest carried by Nelson’s ships at Trafalgar, whilst the largest threw a solid shot of 104 lbs. The review was an event that stirred to its inmost depths the pride of England, because, for the first time, a mighty fleet propelled by steam was manœuvred under the eye of the Sovereign, as if it were engaged in actual battle. The occasion was rendered unique by the presence at the review of the House of Commons--in fact, the House, on the day of the review, could not form a quorum till half-past eleven o’clock at night.[129]

About 10 o’clock in the morning, the Queen, her husband, her family, and her Russian and German guests, bore down in the Royal yacht on Admiral Cochrane’s flagship, the _Duke of Wellington_. Having remained on board her for some little time, they returned to the yacht, and then, led by the Queen in the _Victoria and Albert_, this invincible Armada put out to sea in two divisions. The weather was exceptionally fine, and most majestic was the progress of the fleet as it steamed, at the rate of eleven miles an hour, down to the Nab, where it formed line with an ease and precision of movement that astonished all beholders. Then “the enemy,” under Admiral Fanshawe, were sighted, and a memorable sham fight began amidst cyclopean thunders of artillery. When it was over, each ship made for port at racing speed, the winner being the _Agamemnon_. The effect of it all, not only on the Queen’s guests but on the country, was duly reported by Prince Albert to Stockmar, who replied, “I am well pleased that the ladies (the Russian princesses) should have been present at the manœuvres of the fleet. For what the eyes see that does the heart believe, and with what that is full of the mouth will overflow in letters to St. Petersburg.”[130] At this time the political barometer at Court was pointing to “fair,” and the Queen and Prince Albert were congratulating each other that the acceptance of the Vienna Note by Russia, would settle honourably the Russo-Turkish dispute. Though the evacuation of the Principalities was not insisted on in that Note as it ought to have been, the Queen and her husband alike regarded it as a _sine quâ non_, and never doubted that Russia would withdraw her army of occupation.[131]

At the end of August the Queen determined to visit Dublin on her way to Balmoral; and on the 29th she and her family landed at Kingstown Harbour.[132] Thence they proceeded to the Irish capital, where in their progress to the Vice-regal Lodge they met with an enthusiastic reception that recalled pleasant memories of their last tour. In the evening the city was illuminated in honour of its Royal guests. On the 30th they visited the Exhibition of Irish Industry, which had been organised at the sole expense of Mr. Dargan, a public-spirited citizen, whose simple, manly bearing so charmed the Queen that she says in one of her letters, “I would have made him a baronet but he was anxious it should not be done.” Nor was she less delighted with the products of native industry, which she inspected most carefully, and which she says convinced her that the display would be of vast use in encouraging the spirit of the people, by showing them what excellent work they could turn out by their own efforts. Though the Queen met with wretched weather, yet she records her delight with her visit--“a pleasant, gay, interesting time” she calls it--and speaks gratefully of the extreme kindness shown to her by all classes of the people. On the 3rd of September she left Kingstown, and on the 6th was enjoying the bracing air of Balmoral once more.

It was here, on the evening of the 12th, that she heard that the Vienna Note was rejected by the Turks, and that the Eastern question was again simmering in the fatal cauldron of diplomatic incapacity. From that day her Majesty’s great aim was to work, like Lord Aberdeen, for peace; but there was an end to holiday repose at Balmoral. Foreign affairs became more and more unsettled, and on the 6th of October Stockmar was implored to come over and give the Queen and her husband the benefit of his advice. Sir James Graham was staying with them at the time, and his depressed spirits reacted on the Royal family. To refuse to protect the Sultan the Queen saw would so rouse public opinion that the Coalition Ministry, which she was so anxious to support, must fall. To declare war on Russia, Prince Albert assured her, would with equal certainty ultimately destroy that Ministry. One thing only was clear to them. Aberdeen must abandon all idea of resigning in favour of Lord John Russell, and, despite age and infirmity, must remain at the head of affairs till the war-cloud passed away. On the 14th of October the Queen accordingly returned to Osborne, painfully anxious lest the concessions which Lord Aberdeen had made to Palmerston and Russell as leaders of the War Party, and on which she commented caustically in her letter of the 11th of October to the Prime Minister, would bring the country still nearer to war. What were we to go to war for? That was the question which troubled the Queen. She could understand that in some dire extremity it might be right to exact the most terrible of sacrifices from her people, to keep the Russians out of Constantinople, and prevent the balance of power from being upset to the detriment of England. That was an intelligible war

for the tangible interest of England and the civilised Powers. But such a war was a very different affair from the kind of war for which Palmerston clamoured--a war for the maintenance of the complete integrity of the Ottoman Empire. If waged, it must surely not be so waged that it would end by putting the oppressed Christians in Turkey once again in the absolute power of such a cruel dominion as that of the Porte. To this conclusion her Majesty had been forced by her close study of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe’s own despatches, describing the brutal treatment to which the Christians in Turkey were even at that time subjected. But then, of what use was it to suggest these ideas to the Cabinet, even though Lord Aberdeen supported them? When Prince Albert, at the Queen’s request, put them into the form of a Memorandum, Palmerston wrote a flippant reply to it only too closely in harmony with the popular frenzy of the time, the gist of the answer being that it was the duty of England to make war for Turkey and for Turkey alone, quite irrespective of any considerations affecting her treatment of her Christian subjects. To ask Turkey for concessions to civilisation, he argued, somewhat inconclusively, meant that we must connive at her expulsion from Europe. As for all the stories of Turkish fanaticism that had frightened the Queen, Lord Palmerston scoffingly described them as “fables invented at Vienna and St. Petersburg.”[133]

The Czar’s Manifesto of the 1st of November still further excited the War Party, and it was followed by a letter to the Queen, written by his own hand, begging her Majesty to decide between him and her Government in the dispute which had arisen from his attempt to apply the principles of the Treaty of Kainardji to the new situation which French pretensions in Syria had created in Turkey. To this the Queen replied with dignified courtesy, saying that, after repeatedly reading and studying the 7th Article of that Treaty, she could not fairly say that the Czar’s interpretation of it was correct, and adding that the continued occupation of the Principalities must lead to events “which I should deplore, in common with your Majesty.”[134] The year closed with the ferocious attacks of a certain portion of the Press on Prince Albert, and as for the future, it was dark with the signs and omens of impending war.