Chapter XXXI: Party Government and War

Stratford de Redcliffe Cooling Down--Tory Distrust of the French
Alliance--The Queen’s Kindness to Lord Aberdeen--The Emperor
Napoleon and Prince Albert--The Prince Visits France--The Queen at
Balmoral--Her Feelings towards the Prince of Prussia--The Queen
holds a Council of War--She Demands Reinforcements for Lord
Raglan--Napoleon’s Alarm--Prince Albert’s Plan for an Army of
Reserve--The Queen on the Austrian Proposals--Her Anxiety about the
Troops--Raglan’s Meagre Despatches--The Queen and Miss
Nightingale--At Work for the Soldiers--Extorting Information from
Lord Raglan--Ministerial Changes--Lord John Russell’s
Selfishness--A Miserly Whig Duke--The Queen’s Disgust at Russell’s
Treachery--Resignation of Russell--Fall of the Coalition--The Queen
and the Crisis--She holds out the Olive Branch to
Palmerston--Palmerston’s Cabinet--Quarrel between Mr. Disraeli and
Lord Derby--The Sebastopol Committee--Mr. Roebuck and Prince
Albert--The Vienna Conference and the Death of Czar Nicholas--The
Austrian Compromise--Parties and the War--Russell’s Humiliation--He
Resigns in Disgrace--The Queen quashes the Peace Negotiations--A
Royal Blunder--The Queen tries to Gag the Peelites--Aberdeen
Browbeaten by the Court--Canrobert’s Resignation--Crimean
Successes--Failure of the Attack on the Redan--Death of Raglan.

During the Parliamentary Session of 1854, it was very plainly shown that Government by Party is not the best kind of Government for carrying on diplomacy or warfare. The Opposition in the House of Commons, instead of checking the drift of the Cabinet towards war, seemed ever bent on hounding them on. They hardly ever gave a vote save for the purpose of discrediting and weakening the Ministry. It is, therefore, not unfair to infer that they rejoiced in the prospect of war, because they foresaw that its hazards and its chances might lead to the destruction of the Government. The temper of the Tories at this time was admirably illustrated by Mr. Disraeli. When a motion was brought before the House of Commons by Mr. Chambers early in February, 1854, to investigate the claims of an English company at Madeira against Portugal, Lord Malmesbury writes of the Ministerial defeat as follows: “I fear Disraeli voted against the Government, as it is his policy to join with anybody to defeat them.”[192] With such a spirit of faction animating the Opposition, it was hardly possible for the Ministry to steer a steady course in the stormy sea of diplomatic intrigue on which it had embarked. Yet it is but right to say that there were some patriotic Tories who objected very strongly to the tactics and strategy of their Party. John Wilson Croker was so firmly opposed to the policy of the war, and the entangling alliance with the French Emperor,[193] that he severed his connection with the _Quarterly Review_ on this account. Croker’s belief was that France was an unsafe ally, that the French had manufactured the quarrel with Russia and inveigled us into it; that our Government knowing, from the Secret Memorandum of 1844, what the Czar’s views were, should have urged Turkey to resist the intimidation of France at the outset. We should have warned her of the peril she stood in from Russia, whilst at the same time we warned Russia that, though we had no objection to induce Turkey to do her justice, we could not sanction the partition of the Ottoman Empire. This course, says Mr. Croker, in a remarkable letter to Lord Lyndhurst, “would have placed the matter on its real grounds--that is, a struggle between France and Russia, in which we should have been spectators, and eventually mediators, but not parties, till some pretensions contrary to the permanent balance of power should be raised by any of the belligerents.”[194] Lyndhurst himself began towards the end of the year to doubt whether our alliance with the French was not as dangerous as Russian pretensions. Very few members of the House of Commons, however, shared these doubts. The House, in fact, rapidly became unmanageable, and, as Lord Malmesbury says in his “Memoirs” would support nothing but the war. Bill after Bill had to be withdrawn by Aberdeen’s Government, so that its legislative achievements can be briefly recorded. During the first Session of the year the Oxford University Bill was passed. It substituted for an incompetent governing oligarchy a Council of eminent and talented men, and gave the Colleges great powers for self-improvement. Mercantile laws were consolidated into one Act. Usury laws were abolished. The principle of allowing traders to form Joint Stock Companies under limited liability of partnership was affirmed by the House of Commons, and the old system of granting such undertakings charters from the Board of Trade, finally condemned. Lord John Russell’s Reform Bill was one of the measures which were introduced, debated, and withdrawn. It had produced a second crisis in the Cabinet in early spring, which was overcome by Lord Aberdeen’s mediation between Lord John and Lord Palmerston. This episode seriously disturbed the Queen’s peace of mind, and in one of her letters she expresses her deep gratitude to the Prime Minister for his devotion to her. Nothing, indeed, is more touching than the references to the aged statesman with which the Queen’s letters are filled at this period. She is found frequently devising plans for the purpose of lightening the burden of care that was crushing his spirits. On the 1st of May, Prince Arthur’s birthday, she writes as follows:--“Though the Queen cannot send Lord Aberdeen a card for a child’s ball, perhaps he may not disdain coming for a short time to see a number of happy little people, including some of his grandchildren, enjoying themselves.” In September, again, she writes to him from Balmoral, peremptorily insisting on his leaving London and proceeding to Scotland at once to recruit his health. At Haddo, she says, he will be near her, and, she adds, “Lord Aberdeen knows that his health is not his own alone, but that

she (the Queen) and the country have as much interest in it as he and his own family.”[195] In midsummer she gave him her best support and sympathy when the Peelites and the Whigs almost openly quarrelled, and attacks on the Prime Minister were freely indulged in by his own supporters. “Aberdeen,” writes Prince Albert in July to Stockmar, “is a standing reproach in their eyes, because he cannot share the enthusiasm while it is his part to lead it. Nevertheless he does his duty and keeps the whole thing together, and is the only guarantee that the war will not degenerate into crack-brained, fruitless absurdities”--such as the re-organisation of Poland, the seizure of Finland, a mad project of certain Tories like Lyndhurst, and the annexation of the Crimea. Before Parliament met in January, 1855, the Queen was indeed so keenly sensible of the injustice of the attacks on Lord Aberdeen, that she insisted on his accepting the Order of the Garter as a public testimony of her confidence in his administration, and of “her personal feelings of regard and friendship” for himself. The end of the London season, when the Court came to the capital to prorogue Parliament, was gloomy. Cholera was spreading fast through the town, and even the world of fashion had to offer up its tale of victims.[196] The Queen was therefore fain to hurry back to Osborne as quickly as possible; and, on the 29th of August, she writes to the King of the Belgians that she is reconciling herself to the prospect of a long parting from her husband, who was about to visit Napoleon III.

Prince Albert’s visit to France was planned by the Emperor Napoleon for the purpose of raising his status in the eyes of his people, whose cultured and aristocratic classes looked askance at his upstart court and his mushroom nobility. First of all, he sounded Lord Cowley on the subject. The Queen thought that such a visit might render the French alliance more trustworthy than she was disposed to consider it, and the Prince soon let Lord Cowley know he would visit France whenever he was invited. Napoleon III. accordingly, on the 3rd of July, asked the Prince to come and inspect the summer camp of 100,000 troops which was to be formed between St. Omer and Boulogne, and the Prince promised to go. He sailed from Osborne on the 3rd of September, carrying an autograph letter from the Queen to the Emperor, who met his guest on the quay at Boulogne on the 4th. On the 8th he returned to Osborne, on the whole well pleased with his visit.

The 15th of September found the Court at Balmoral; indeed, it was there that the Queen received most of the stirring news that made English hearts beat fast during these anxious months when the Crimean struggle was begun. She was greatly cheered by the successful landing of the troops near Eupatoria, and her pride when the tidings of the victory of the Alma arrived, is frankly and ingenuously expressed in her correspondence.

On the 11th of October the Court returned to Windsor, the Queen visiting Edinburgh, Hull, and Grimsby on the way. It was at Edinburgh that she first heard of the abandonment of the attack on the northern front of Sebastopol, and of Raglan’s foolish “flank march” to the south side of the town. Prussian diplomacy had at this time again irritated both the Queen and her husband, for when Austria was once more pressed to take the field with us, Prussia held her back by threatening to withdraw from the offensive and defensive alliance which had been signed between the two countries. Prince Albert remonstrated with the Crown Prince--afterwards Emperor of Germany--but in vain. The conduct of Prussia was especially provoking to the Queen, because she even then saw certain signs which indicated that the son of the Crown Prince would probably be soon a successful suitor for her eldest daughter’s hand. Her Majesty next induced her uncle, King Leopold, to remonstrate with the King of Prussia. Prussia was warned that France would seize the left bank of the Rhine, and that England would abet her. Herr Von Bismarck, who made it his business to thwart King Leopold’s schemes, met this threat by pointing out that whoever held the Rhine was master of Belgium--a trifling circumstance which the Queen and Prince Albert seem to have overlooked, when they persuaded King Leopold to press Prussia into the service of the Allies.

When October brought the first hints of bad news from the Crimea, the heart of the Queen grew heavy with anxiety. She now knew, by advices from Raglan, that he had not enough troops for the task that was imposed on him. The country was growing restive over the sluggishness of the attack. The Queen and Prince Albert therefore implored Lord Aberdeen to consider how reinforcements were to be sent out. On the 11th of November her Majesty asked the Prime Minister to visit her at Windsor, and, with the Duke of Newcastle, talk over a project of the Prince’s for raising the Militia by ballot and sending them abroad, and for organising a legion of foreign mercenaries. The Queen desired this step to be taken at once, assuring her Ministers that they would have no difficulty in getting a Bill of Indemnity from Parliament; but her suggestion was overruled. And yet at this time Raglan was begging the Secretary for War to send out 10,000 troops without delay! Meanwhile Napoleon III. was alarmed to find that the English army was vanishing before Canrobert’s eyes. Hence he offered to send out every French soldier he could muster, if England would only find the transports. Sir James Graham found them, and they carried, not only French troops to the Crimea, but all the lavish stores of food and comforts which never reached those for whom they were supplied. The terrible loss of life at Inkermann again prompted the Queen to press on the Duke of Newcastle the necessity for reinforcing our shattered army. Prince Albert was equally urgent in his importunity, and on the 1st of December he was successful in persuading the Cabinet to adopt his plan for forming an Army of Reserve at Malta.

Meantime, diplomacy was again appealed to for the purpose of ending the war. “If Austria did her duty,” writes the Queen when as yet the tidings of carnage were fresh in her mind, “she might have prevented much of this bloodshed. Instead of this, her Generals do nothing but juggle the Turks of the Principalities, and the Government shuffles about, making advances and then retreating. We shall see now if she is sincere in her last propositions.”[197] These were that certain demands should be made by her on Russia. If Russia rejected them, then Austria would be willing to join us in the war. But, on the other hand, if Russia accepted the Austrian proposals, England and France must agree to make peace. What then, asked Austria, were the terms which France and England would insist on having? Prince Albert was asked by Lord Clarendon to suggest an answer. The Prince replied very sensibly that he should not ask for anything beyond the “Four Points” on which Austria was prepared to insist, though it might be well, he said, to define their somewhat elastic terms. These points were the substitution of a European for a Russian Protectorate over the Principalities; the freedom of navigation on the Danube; the revision of the Treaty of 1841 so as to destroy the preponderance of Russia in the Black Sea; a guarantee from the Sultan to the Great Powers confirming the liberties and privileges of his Christian subjects, instead of a guarantee from the Sultan to Russia alone. The Queen greatly approved of the Ministerial Despatch which was drawn up on the lines of Prince Albert’s advice, and in a letter to Lord Clarendon she gave him sound reasons for her belief that Austria was acting honestly in the transaction, and not, as Lord Clarendon suspected, seeking to evade her moral responsibilities.

But it was the condition of the army itself during the winter of 1854 in the Crimea, rather than the diplomacy of the struggle that disturbed most grievously the mind of the Queen. Official Despatches, especially those of Lord Raglan, were culpably silent on the subject. Private letters, however, from officers and men, teemed with complaints, and officers in the Guards kept the Court well informed about the actual state of things. Early in October, the _Times_ newspaper generously opened a subscription for the benefit of the army, and sent Mr. Macdonald to the Crimea to administer it. The services which this gentleman rendered to the troops will never be forgotten. He seemed to make his pence go as far as other men’s pounds, and to his skilful administration may be traced many most important reforms which were adopted by the Government in their methods of issuing rations to the army. The Queen was now of opinion that the time had come for appealing to the generosity of the people on behalf of the sufferers from the war. On the 13th of October a Royal Commission was issued, headed by Prince Albert, to establish the Patriotic Fund for the relief of the families of those who had perished in the Crimea. A staff of hospital nurses was organised under Miss Florence Nightingale--a lady whose good deeds and kindly offices to the sick and wounded at Scutari have given her imperishable fame. On the 5th of November she reached the scene of her labours--as the wounded men were being brought in from Balaclava--and the hospital which had been a foul and disorderly pest-house, was soon rendered a wholesome and serviceable sanatorium. It was Mr. Sidney Herbert who requested Miss Nightingale to undertake this work, and he was bitterly condemned at the time for sanctioning such an innovation as the introduction of a volunteer staff of thirty-seven lady nurses into a military hospital.[198] Nor was the Queen contented merely to help all these good works by her counsel, sympathy, and support. With her own hands she, her daughters, and the ladies of her Household knitted woollen comforters, socks, and mittens, and plied their needles as busily as the most toilworn seamstresses in the East-end, making under-clothing for the soldiers. Their example was quickly followed by every lady of leisure in the three kingdoms. Prince Albert sent fur coats to his brother officers in the Guards, and bountiful supplies of tobacco for the men. He devised a series of forms in order to extract, or rather extort, full information from Lord Raglan and his subordinates as to the condition of the troops, and it was not till his system of tabulated returns was adopted that the Government had the data necessary for devising measures of relief for the miseries of the army. On the first day of the year 1855, the Queen, in sending her congratulations to Lord Raglan, speaks in touching language of the grief which a long stream of Crimean reports have caused her. She urges vehemently that every effort be made to save her troops from privation. She even goes into particulars, and speaks sharply about the blunder which led to green coffee beans instead of ground coffee being served out--a blunder that was one of the notorious scandals of the time.[199]

One curious change in the organisation of the Ministry took place in 1854, which, however, does not seem to have greatly concerned the Court. The Secretaryship of State for War had hitherto been an appendage of the Colonial Office. It was now made a separate Secretaryship, and, in an unfortunate moment for himself, the Duke of Newcastle elected to take the appointment, letting Sir George Grey become Secretary of State for the Colonies. Mr. Sidney Herbert remained as “Secretary _at_ War”--a Parliamentary secretary representing the War Office in the House of Commons,[200] Lord John Russell becoming President of the Council.[201] Lord John, however, who seems to have been the fly in the ointment pot of the Coalition, soon began to find fault with the readjustment of offices. In November he told Lord Aberdeen that the War Office ought to be put in stronger hands than those of the Duke of Newcastle. This suggestion, described afterwards by Mr. Disraeli as “a profligate intrigue” worthy of the “Memoirs” of Bubb Doddington, gave offence to the Queen. It seemed to her a treacherous attempt to disintegrate the Cabinet, and she did not conceal her sympathy with the statesman thus attacked. The Duke, however, generously offered to sacrifice himself so that Lord John Russell might not have a pretext for embarrassing the Crown by breaking up the Government at a critical moment; but the Cabinet would not permit the Duke to be sacrificed. Even Palmerston, to do him justice, repudiated the idea, and so Lord John again threatened to resign. Aberdeen met this threat by persuading the Queen to overcome her personal aversion to Palmerston, and obtaining her leave to appoint him Leader of the House of Commons, in the event of Lord John Russell deserting his post.

Lord John, now finding that he had made a mistake, succumbed on the 16th of December; and so the scandal was hushed up. The Queen, however, felt ill at ease, for, by this time, she knew that the Ministry had no stability, and that Lord John would soon again give his colleagues more serious trouble. But he remained in the Cabinet fully cognisant of everything that was done by the War Department, and never expressing the least disapproval of its management till Parliament met in January, 1855. Then, when Mr. Roebuck gave notice of his motion for inquiring into the conduct of the war, Lord John, without the slightest warning, resigned, saying that as he agreed with Mr. Roebuck he did not see how the motion could be resisted. The Duke of Newcastle again offered to retire in favour of Lord Palmerston, if haply Lord John Russell could be thereby induced to withdraw his resignation. But again, his colleagues refused to sacrifice him, and so they all offered to resign. This was a cruel blow to the Queen. She protested that there was no precedent for a Ministry resigning in the midst of a war till they were dismissed. She implored Lord Aberdeen not to desert her at a moment when the very worst possible effect would be produced by the spectacle of the nation struggling through war without a Government. The Cabinet accordingly determined to face Mr. Roebuck’s motion; but when he carried it against them, as has already been recorded, they were compelled to retire from office. Then the Queen had to meet one of the most perplexing and anxious Ministerial crises of her reign. Lord Derby was appealed to. But he found he could only obtain “independent support” from Lord Palmerston, Mr. Sidney Herbert, Mr. Gladstone, and Lord Aberdeen’s friends--which, he observed cynically, was “support which could never be depended on.” He did not seem to have much faith in his own colleagues, and he consequently declined to form a Ministry. But he sympathised with the Queen in her vexation at the turn which events had taken--quoting to her a remark of Walewski’s--“What influence can a country like England pretend to have without an army and without a Government?” Lord Lansdowne was next consulted. He was willing to form a Cabinet, but then he was old and broken in health. He could not possibly serve for more than a few months, and obviously his enforced retirement would again cast everything into confusion. Lord John Russell, of course, had long been under the hallucination that he could form an Administration without the aid of the Peelites. His cantankerous treachery to his colleagues, and his unscrupulous pertinacity in disintegrating the Coalition Cabinet in circumstances most damaging to the country, rendered him objectionable to the Queen. But still acting on Lansdowne’s advice, she determined to let him try, so that the mortification of failure might perchance dispel his delusion that he had still a name to conjure with as a Party leader. He tried, and, of course, failed ignominiously. No man trusted him or cared to serve under or with him. The Queen, however, in her letter to Lord John, very shrewdly and gracefully held out the olive branch to Palmerston by saying that it would give her great pleasure if he would join the new Government. Palmerston, feeling that the crisis was one which also called for sacrifices on his part, offered to serve even under Lord John as Secretary for War, if he could thereby extricate the Crown from its difficulties. But he deemed it imperative that Lord Clarendon should join the Ministry, and this Lord Clarendon stoutly refused to do. His colleagues, he said, had all been loyal to him, and he would not serve under a man who, from the time he entered the late Ministry, had persistently embarrassed it, and intrigued for its destruction. Lord John found that he had attempted the impossible, and on the 4th of February the country was still without a Government, to the infinite damage

of its prestige in the eyes of foreign nations. The Czar rejoiced grimly at our embarrassments. The French Emperor began to doubt whether a stable alliance could be formed with a nation whose organic institutions were so unstable. The Queen accordingly put an end to Russell’s intrigues, which had wrought all this mischief, in a very summary manner. Lord Palmerston’s public-spirited behaviour in the crisis had obliterated all recollection of his faults in the past. Her Majesty therefore called on Palmerston to organise a Government. The Whigs who had served in the Coalition Cabinet agreed to serve under him. The Peelites would have done so, but they declined because of their deep personal regard for Aberdeen and Newcastle, who, they declared, had been most unjustly and spitefully attacked by the majority that had destroyed the Coalition Government.[202] Aberdeen and Newcastle, however, remonstrated with them, and the result was that Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Sidney Herbert, and the Duke of Argyle consented to take office under Palmerston. When Lord Palmerston informed the Queen of this fact she felt that for a time her troubles were over, that again she was indebted to the disinterested devotion of Lord Aberdeen for a happy release from her difficulties. Palmerston himself also expressed his gratitude to Aberdeen in strong and cordial terms.[203]

The new Cabinet was really the old one. Only Russell, Aberdeen, and Newcastle were out of it, and Lord Panmure--a blustering person who was clever enough to make the world believe that to be noisy was to be energetic--was Secretary of State for War. This seemed rather to disconcert the factious place-hunters. “The Whigs at Brooks’s,” wrote Lady Palmerston to her son-in-law,[204] “were all up in arms at the Government not being formed on more Liberal principles, or rather with more of the Whig Party. They are disappointed at the Peelites joining, and at under people of that party keeping their places, so that, in a manner, there are hardly any places to fill up. They press, therefore, very much for a Whig in the Duchy of Lancaster, so as to make the Peelite division in a greater minority.” But the anger of the Tories could scarcely be kept within bounds. They argued that, as Aberdeen and Newcastle had not been evicted from office till after they had pretty nearly succeeded in setting the War Department in order, their successors would not only have a comparatively easy task, but would also win all the glory and prestige of finishing a victorious war. Lord Derby had missed a golden opportunity by refusing to form a Ministry; nay, he had done something that was still more damaging to them. In his explanation to the House of Lords he admitted that he could not govern without the aid of the Peelites. This implied that, having tried his colleagues in the work of administration, he had so little confidence in their capacity, that he did not dare to trust to them alone. “Disraeli,” writes Lord Malmesbury, “is in a state of disgust beyond all control. He told me he had spoken his mind to Lord Derby, and told him some very disagreeable truths.”[205] No sooner had the new Cabinet been formed than it was seen that another effort would be made to break it up. What was to be done with Mr. Roebuck’s Committee of Investigation? It was somewhat unconstitutional to vest it with the functions of the Executive, and Palmerston, on the 16th of February, appealed to the House not to appoint the Committee, or at least to suspend its judgment till the new Ministry had time to reform the War Department. Mr. Roebuck denied that the Ministry was really a new one, and insisted on the appointment of the Committee. The Peelites objected to the Committee as a dangerous and unconstitutional precedent. Palmerston agreed with them, but, like the majority of the Cabinet, he felt that to resist was to court another defeat in the House of Commons; and so he decided to yield. Sir James Graham, Mr. Sidney Herbert, and Mr. Gladstone accordingly tendered their resignations, and in a fortnight after it was formed the new Ministry was wrecked. On the 28th Sir George Cornewall Lewis took Mr. Gladstone’s place as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord John Russell re-entered the Cabinet as Colonial Secretary, and Sir C. Wood succeeded Sir J. Graham as First Lord of the Admiralty. “Things have gone mad here, the political world is quite crazy, and the Court is the only institution which does not lose its tranquil bearing”--thus wrote Prince Albert to the Dowager-Duchess of Coburg in the midst of the agitation caused by the second Ministerial crisis of 1855.

Meantime much had been done by Lord Aberdeen, the Duke of Newcastle, and Prince Albert, to improve the condition of the army at the seat of war. The railway from Balaclava to the camp was being pushed on rapidly; reinforcements were pouring in steadily. On the 13th of March Sir J. Burgoyne writes that “the men are beginning to look tolerably hearty and cheerful again.” A Sanitary Commission, organised by Lord Shaftesbury, had been despatched to aid the medical staff, and there was little for the new Ministers to do but to follow the path which Aberdeen and Newcastle had, by their toil and self-sacrifice during the recess, smoothed for them. The Queen, like the Peelites, was of opinion that the Roebuck Commission could do very little good, and, by diverting the attention of the officials from the work in hand, might do a great deal of harm. It was the expression of an angry desire to punish somebody, and, as Prince Albert said, it could not hope to find the right person, “because he does not exist.”[206] If any one was to blame, it was the Duke of Wellington, who had left the country with a loose aggregate of battalions which was in no true sense an organised army--without leaders trained and practised in the duties of general officers; without a reserve, a general staff, field commissariat, ambulance, or baggage corps; without training in the combined use of infantry, cavalry, and artillery, with their various systems of supply and transport; in fact, without any effective instrument whatever for waging war at a distance from England. In vain did the Committee endeavour to fix the blame for the disasters in the Crimea on somebody. Mr. Roebuck soon found that an examination of the Duke of Newcastle would rather tend to clear than to damage his reputation, and then the inevitable scapegoat was sought in the Queen’s husband. When Mr. Roebuck consulted the Duke privately on the subject, his Grace told him that the only really valuable advice he and Lord Aberdeen got was from Prince Albert. He added that the Queen’s health had suffered dreadfully from her anxiety about the troops, and that it was therefore absurd to imagine that the Prince had been conspiring to wreck the expedition. The Sebastopol Committee was a failure. It did not succeed in saddling any one with a definite responsibility for the sufferings of the army; nay, the Chairman (Mr. Roebuck), in speaking to a resolution censuring the Aberdeen Ministry for their management of the war, freed the Duke of Newcastle, Mr. Sidney Herbert, and Sir J. Graham, the heads of the incriminated Departments, from blame.[207] The only severe censure was that passed on Lord Raglan for continuing Mr. Ward as purveyor for the hospital at Scutari after he had been pronounced unfit for his post.

It had been agreed, partly on the advice of the Queen, to enter a new Conference at Vienna for the purpose of patching up a peace. To get rid of Lord John Russell, he was sent there by Lord Palmerston as the representative of England; and it was whilst he was on his way that he was offered and accepted the Colonial Secretaryship, vacated by the resignation of Mr. Sidney Herbert.[208] The basis of the Conference was the protocol containing the “Four Points” which had been accepted in principle by Russia on the 16th of

November, 1854, though Nesselrode in his despatch of 26th August to Prince Gortschakoff, the Russian Ambassador at Vienna, had rejected them. On the 2nd of March, the chief figure in the tragic drama of the war passed suddenly from the scene. The failure of his plans in the Crimea had broken the imperious spirit and proud heart of the Czar, and he died with words of thanks to his army on his lips. “Tell my dear Fritz” (the King of Prussia), he said to the Czarina with his last breath, “to continue the friend of Russia, and faithful to the last words of papa”--faithful, that is, to the principles of the Holy Alliance. The old monarchies and the old conservatism of Europe thus lost their most powerful champion, and a seventh part of the globe found a new master. The Emperor Nicholas was succeeded by his son, Alexander II., who immediately proclaimed his intention of following out loyally the policy which his father had inherited with his crown. On the 10th of March, Nesselrode intimated to the Russian Agents abroad that the young Czar would enter the Vienna Conference “in a sincere spirit of concord.” And as it was only possible to secure the neutrality of Austria by keeping alive negotiations for peace, Russia had a powerful motive for continuing them. But at the meetings of the Conference Prince Gortschakoff refused to accept the plan for giving effect to the Third Point. It proposed to destroy Russian preponderance in the Black Sea, by binding her and Turkey never to have there more than “four ships, four frigates, with a proportionate number of light vessels and of unarmoured vessels exclusively adapted to the transport of troops.” Russia, as an alternative, suggested that ships of war of all nations might have free access through the Dardanelles or Bosphorus to the Black Sea, or, if it were preferred, that the Sultan might admit the vessels of the Western Powers, or of Russia, in such numbers as he pleased. This would, of course, enable the Western Powers to check Russian preponderance. But it would also involve the right of Russia to send ships to the Mediterranean. To that the Western Powers would not consent, and so the Conference was at an end. At this stage Count Buol suggested a compromise. Why not, he asked, solve the difficulty by applying the principle of counterpoise? One way of doing that obviously would be to establish an actual equilibrium between the Black Sea fleets of Turkey and Russia--the Sultan having the right to open the straits to the ships of his allies if threatened with attack. M. de Drouyn Lhuys and Lord John Russell did not consider that their instructions permitted them to accept this compromise. But they both privately expressed their personal approval of it, and promised to urge the Governments of France and England to assent to it. The French Emperor and the British Cabinet rejected it. M. Drouyn de Lhuys accordingly resigned office--whereas Lord John Russell remained in the Cabinet. But he had the amazing indiscretion after this to advocate the prosecution of the war in an extravagant speech,[209] whereupon the Austrian Government revealed the fact that at Vienna he had said peace might be honourably made on the basis of Count Buol’s compromise. No English Minister in our time has ever placed himself in a more humiliating position. Not a word could be said in his defence. All he himself could say was that he was afraid he might embarrass his colleagues if he retired, or if he let it be known that he thought they were carrying on war, when peace might honourably be concluded. The outcry against his dishonesty was so loud, that he resigned as soon as Sir E. B. Lytton gave notice of a motion in the House of Commons condemning his conduct.

The failure of the Conference gave rise to heated debates in Parliament, in which the Government was attacked by a curious combination of Parties. The House of Lords with singular want of patriotism and dignity encouraged Lyndhurst to vilipend Prussia and sneer at Austria, at the very moment when it was vital to our diplomatic success to conciliate these Powers. His violent speeches prove that, despite his eloquence, he lacked the one quality necessary to justify his interference in any debate on Foreign Affairs. He was utterly incapable of appreciating the difference between the interests of England and France, and those of Austria in the negotiations--the difference between the interests and the prepossessions of actual and contingent belligerents. But all this criticism of the Conference, even from the point of view taken by rhetorical mischief-makers like Lyndhurst, failed to lay bare the one blunder in strategy which the Plenipotentiaries had perpetrated.[210] The House of Commons, it must be allowed, came out of the debates more creditably than had been expected. The Tories, led by Mr. Disraeli, seemed to keep their heads cool, and scrupulously refrained from clamouring for war because Russia had rejected the Third Point. They refused to support the Radicals, who were for moving an Address to the Crown virtually binding the Government to accept the Austrian proposals. But they condemned the Ministers for the ambiguity of their policy in reference to these proposals, and brought forward a motion assuring the Crown that the House would support the Executive to the utmost in prosecuting war till peace was obtained. The combative Whigs would have committed Parliament to a declaration that the reduction of the naval power of Russia in the Black Sea, was the essential condition of peace. In the end, a motion, which was the Tory proposal with the implied censure on the Ministry cut out, was carried. But all through the debate, Peelites, Tories, and Radicals condemned the suggestion to limit the naval power of Russia by Treaty. And they were right, for, as Mr. Gladstone is reported to have said in conversation, it was a proposal “to slap Russia on the face without tying her hands.” It was, in fact, an attempt to inflict on Russia a perpetual indignity without reducing her real power, which was not naval but military. Mr. Disraeli and Lord Robert Cecil--afterwards Lord Salisbury--considered it an impolitic scheme for the humiliation of Russia, and the ablest debaters pointed out that it was one which Russia would ever be tempted to violate, whilst the Powers had now no check on her save that of chronic war. Yet it was for the sake of forcing this indignity on Russia, who had now yielded every demand we made when we invaded the Crimea, that the war was prolonged! From this moment, it is not too much to say, that the war was no longer a hateful but an unavoidable incident of State policy. It was the consummation of a hideous crime against humanity, for which Lord Palmerston and his colleagues were directly responsible.[211]

When Lord John Russell excused himself for first recommending the Austrian compromise, and then backing out of his opinion and advocating war, he said mysteriously that something had come to his knowledge which altered his views. It was suggested at the time by Mr. Disraeli that Lord John was overawed by the objections of the Emperor of the French to the compromise. Even had that been the case, it would not have justified him in remaining in the Cabinet, seeing that the Emperor’s Minister, who was in

like case, had resigned rather than hold himself responsible for an indefensible war. It is, however, possible to account for Lord John’s conduct more easily by attributing it to sycophancy than to treachery, for it is a regrettable fact that when the Austrian project was laid before the Queen by Lord Clarendon, she used all her influence to quash it. She wrote to him a curt note saying:--“How Lord John Russell and M. Drouyn can recommend such proposals to our acceptance is beyond her (the Queen’s) comprehension.” Then she encloses a brief memorandum from Prince Albert, in which he says:--“To limit the Russian naval power to that existing in 1853 would therefore be simply to perpetuate and legalise the preponderance of Russia in the Black Sea, a proposal which can neither be made nor accepted as a development of the Third Point.”[212] It is unfortunate that such clear thinkers as the Queen and her husband did not observe that what Austria fixed was merely the maximum and not the minimum limit, that by mutual agreement Russia and Turkey might cut down their ships from six to one if they chose, and that even the maximum could be always counterbalanced by Turkey. Yet Prince Albert would insist that a proposal which automatically established an equilibrium was one to perpetuate a preponderance! It is only fair to the memory of the late Emperor of the French to say that, according to Sir Theodore Martin’s admissions, the first strong and contemptuous rejection of the Austrian compromise came from the Queen; that when Napoleon III. first considered the matter he hesitated before endorsing the views which Palmerston and his colleagues meekly accepted from the Court. What renders the policy of the Court--or rather of Baron Stockmar, who inspired it--at this stage unintelligible is, that a month afterwards it actually pressed upon the Cabinet a proposal for organising a great League of the Powers to defend Turkey diplomatically against Russia. This proposal was made on the ground that it was impossible to inflict on Russia such losses as would force her to submit to humiliating terms.[213]

Nor was this the only instance which can be adduced of mistaken interference on the part of the Court. When Palmerston succeeded in forming his Government, he pledged himself to follow out the foreign policy of Lord Aberdeen. Aberdeen’s friends had publicly declared that the terms which we sought to impose on Russia were needlessly humiliating, and that in the Austrian compromise there was an ample basis for a fair settlement, and a good reason for continuing negotiations at Vienna. It was a matter of notoriety that Aberdeen himself shared these views, and there were many who complained querulously that if they had not destroyed his Ministry, the Vienna Conference would not have been abortive. In these circumstances Prince Albert, knowing Aberdeen’s devotion to the Queen, wrote to him complaining especially about Mr. Gladstone’s speech on Mr. Disraeli’s motion of the 24th of May. For the rejection of that motion had not ended the controversy. Sir F. Baring’s amendment, which was finally carried, was coming up for discussion on the 4th of June, and the Court evidently did not desire a repetition of speeches containing unanswerable arguments against abandoning negotiations for peace.[214] Aberdeen, in fact, is summoned in this letter to the Palace to be lectured. He is warned that the conduct of his party has displeased the Queen, and he is warned in a tone only to be justified by the close relations of personal friendship, which bound him to the Court, and the Court to him.

The Queen and Prince Albert, however, utterly failed to gag the Peelites in the debate, or browbeat them into approving of the continuance of a bloody and wasteful war, when an honourable peace could be obtained by patient diplomacy. To his honour it must be stated that Sir James Graham,[215] Lord Aberdeen’s representative in the House of Commons, delivered a speech which was even much more damaging and convincing than Mr. Gladstone’s. Nobody attempted to answer it except Mr. Roebuck. His tirade of invective sprang from a delusion that Graham was willing to be satisfied with paltry concessions as the result of a great war. As he afterwards confessed, he was completely misled by the ferocity with which Lord John Russell in this debate condemned as worthless the very settlement which he had vainly urged his colleagues to accept as satisfactory. In truth, there is some reason to suspect that the harassing toil of winter, the prolonged and exhausting anxieties of a sad and pitiless war, had temporarily blunted Prince Albert’s keen perceptions. Had this not been the case he would hardly have delivered at the Trinity House banquet in June, the famous speech in which he said that “Constitutional Government is under a heavy trial”--as if the failure of obsolete leaders in the field, or the stupid bigotries and moral cowardice of place-hunters in council, proved that Constitutional Government was a dubious experiment. At a moment when the Queen’s personal interference with the Foreign Policy of her Government, usually so wise, prudent, and beneficial, had led to bad results, it was maladroit on the part of Prince Albert to gird at Constitutional Government. Very little reflection should have served to show the Court that it was only under the Muscovite autocracy that blunders in war and statecraft, _more_ ghastly even than our own, could possibly be perpetrated.

When the Conference at Vienna closed, Austria, as might have been foreseen, refused to join England in carrying on the war. On the other hand, the King of Sardinia had, on 26th January, entered into a military convention with the Allies, and, in return for their guarantee of his territory, engaged to send an army of 15,000 men to the Crimea.

The war in 1855 was carried on under more favourable conditions than in the previous year. Reinforcements were sent out quickly. The commissariat, sanitary, and transport services were put into effective working order. On the 17th of February, the Turks under Omar Pasha gallantly repelled a Russian attack on Eupatoria--a feat which revived the drooping spirits of the Allies, and restored confidence in the fighting power of the Osmanli. The news of this defeat was peculiarly humiliating to the Czar, whose contempt for the Turk was unbounded, and his bitter vexation at being beaten by a despised enemy, perhaps had some effect in undermining the vitality of his iron constitution. The bombardment of Sebastopol began again in April--but, though the allied trenches were pushed closer and closer to the fortress, no serious impression was made on it. The English troops were eager for action, but Canrobert’s weakness and irresolution held Lord Raglan back.[216]

On the 19th of May Canrobert resigned in favour of Pélissier--a soldier with a name stained by barbarous atrocities in Africa, but still a man of energy and determination. In a moment of happy inspiration it was determined to intercept the supplies which the enemy was drawing from his Circassian provinces; and on the 22nd of May an expedition of 3,800 English, 7,500 French, and 5,000 Turks, under Sir George Brown and General d’Autemarre, left for Cape Takli at the south-west extremity of the Straits of Kertch. It arrived there on the 24th. The Russians evacuated Kertch on the 25th, destroying before they left vast quantities of food and forage. The troops penetrated as far as Yenikale, and Captain Lyons, with his little fleet of steamers, advancing up the Sea of Azov, destroyed not only many ships but a large amount of stores. This expedition was cleverly planned, and it destroyed supplies sufficient for an army of 100,000 men for four months. It returned on the 12th of June. Writing to Stockmar on the 17th of June Prince Albert says, “At the seat of war everything is going on well.... Pélissier is a _trouvaille_, energetic, and determined. Oddly enough, they are in Paris (I mean Louis Napoleon is) very much dissatisfied since our successes, ‘low’ about our prospects, anxious, &c. I am at a loss to know why.” The fact is, that the war was more unpopular in France than ever, since the rejection of the Austrian compromise at Vienna, and the Emperor’s proposal to go out to the Crimea, and command in person alarmed Persigny and the Bonapartists as to the safety of the Imperial _régime_. Failure meant ruin, and failure was on the cards.[217] Yet, on the 7th of June, the Allies had met with a brilliant success. The French stormed the Mamelon, and the English the Gravel Pits--an outwork in front of the Redan. But the two formidable works--the Malakoff and Redan--were yet to be taken, and in an evil moment Lord Raglan was persuaded by Pélissier to sanction a combined attack on these strong-holds. The ablest practical soldiers in the British camp declared that the Redan could not be taken by direct assault, though it must fall if the Malakoff were captured. Raglan was of that opinion himself. But he yielded to his French colleague, and the result of the combined attack on both places was a painful failure. French and English were alike repulsed, and the loss of life which this blunder caused was sickening to contemplate. “Cries of ‘Murder!’” writes Mr. Russell, the _Times_ correspondent, “from the lips of expiring officers have been echoed through the camp, but they have now died away in silence, or in the noise of active argument and discussion.”[218] Heartbroken by this defeat, Lord Raglan took to his bed and died on the 28th of June.

The shock of Raglan’s death silenced at the time all just criticism on his career. The most that can be said for him is said by Lord Malmesbury in his “Memoirs of an Ex-Minister.” “I knew him well,” he writes, “and cannot recollect a finer character. He was the Duke’s right-hand man through the Peninsular war, and was greatly esteemed by him. Handsome and high-bred in person, and charming in society, he was one of the most popular of its members. He was remarkable for his coolness under fire, and St. Arnaud, in his famous despatch after the battle of the Alma, says of him: ‘Il avait toujours ce même calme qui ne le quitte jamais.’” It is, alas! not given to every man to wield the Arthurian brand Excalibur, and whatever he may have been in the Peninsula under Wellington, in the Crimea, Raglan was almost as incompetent as St. Arnaud, Canrobert, and Menschikoff. His blunders were as follows: (1), According to Sir T. Martin, he approved of the invasion of the Crimea in utter ignorance of the ground, when the campaign was proposed by the French Emperor.[219] (2), He consented to invade the Crimea _after_ he had discovered that it was a mad project, and when the discretionary clause in his instructions from the Duke of Newcastle gave him an opportunity of remonstrating with the Cabinet. (3), He invaded the Crimea without an organised Transport Corps. (4), His blunders at the Alma, Balaclava, and Inkermann have been already noted. (5), Till pressure was put on him by Prince Albert, he concealed the miserable state of the army from the Government. (6), By neglecting to make a road between Balaclava and his camp he brought all the miseries of the winter of ’54-’55 on his troops. (7), By attacking the Redan when he knew quite well it was impossible to capture it, he doomed his troops to useless and avoidable slaughter. No defence has been made for him except on the last two counts of the heavy indictment against him. He did not make a road from Balaclava to the camp, says Mr. Kinglake, because he had not enough men at his disposal. This is an explanation rather than a defence. His first duty as a general was to connect his camp with his base. If he was unable to do that, he ought to have abandoned his position. But is not Mr. Kinglake’s defence just a little absurd, taken in connection with the Homeric episodes of the war? Had anybody enough men to do anything great or valuable in the Crimea? Campbell had not enough men to turn the tide of battle, in our favour at the Alma. But he did it. He had not enough men to save our base at Balaclava--but he saved it. Scarlett and Cardigan had not enough men to break through the Russian columns in “the Valley of Death”--but they broke through them. The Duke of Cambridge had not enough men to hold his ground at Inkermann--but he and his Guards held it, till it was positively soaked and saturated with their blood. Mr. Kinglake’s advocacy, indeed, provokes one to say that scarcity of men never kept Lord Raglan back from any enterprise, when, as at Balaclava and the Redan, the only attainable end was the purposeless butchery of his battalions. The feeble attack on the Redan has been justified on the ground that, as Pélissier was determined to assault the Malakoff, and was certain to be beaten, he was equally certain to attribute his defeat to the timidity of the English, unless they co-operated with him. It is, however, the business of an English general to win battles for his country--not to lose them in deference to the childish petulance of a foreign colleague. At the same time, it must be admitted that Raglan was greatly embarrassed from the first by his French coadjutors, and it is because some of his errors sprang from enforced concessions to their views, that these have been omitted from the present catalogue of his blunders. The truth is, that Lord Raglan was really a diplomatist, and his diplomatic ability was essential to the consolidation of our military alliance with France in the field. That was the sole justification for his appointment as Commander-in-Chief. His personal courage--rivalling that of antiquity, said St. Arnaud--was the only soldierly quality he possessed. “He was a very perfect gentle knight,” too sweetly graceful for the rude ravishment of war, or the weary travail of a siege. His generosity of heart, his charm of manner, his exquisite tact, his serene temper, his chivalrous sense of honour, his high and courtly bearing, rendered him worthy of

“The goodliest fellowship of famous knights,
Whereof this world holds record”--

though not worthy to hold the post to which he was appointed in the Crimea. But if he was not a great general, he was a great gentleman; and so, when he passed away, the hand of censure fell very lightly on his career.