Chapter XXXIII: The End of the War

Lord Raglan’s Successor--“Take Care of Dowb”--Lord Panmure’s
Nepotism--The Crisis of the War--Gortschakoff’s Last Struggle--The
Battle of the Tchernaya River--France and the War--A Despondent
Court--Divided Counsels among the Allies--The Bridge of Rafts--The
Grand Bombardment--French Attack on the Malakoff--British Attack on
the Redan--Why the Attack Failed--The “Hero of the
Redan”--Pélissier’s Message to Simpson--Appeal to Sir Colin
Campbell--Evacuation of the Redan--Fall of Sebastopol--Retreat of
the Russians to the North Town--Paralysis of the Victors--The
Queen’s Anger--Her Remonstrances with Lord Panmure--A New
Commander-in-Chief--Taking Care of “Dowb”--Codrington Chosen--The
Wintry Crimean Watch--Diplomatic Humiliation of Palmerston--France
Negotiates Secretly Terms of Peace with Austria--Palmerston’s
Indignant Remonstrances--The Queen Objects to Prosecute the War
Alone--The Surrender of Palmerston--He Abandons the Turks--An
Unpopular Peace--The Tories Offer to Support the Peace--The Queen
and the Parliament of 1856.

When Lord Raglan died, General Simpson, who had been his chief of the staff, was appointed to succeed him. It is enough to say that Simpson was infinitely less capable than his predecessor; but, on the other hand, he was a good-natured, pliable man, not likely to be troublesome to the authorities at home. Mr. Alfred Varley, the eminent electrician, told Colonel Hope, V.C., that when Lord Panmure’s despatch appointing General Simpson to the chief command was received, the message ended with the mysterious order--“Take care of Dowb.” Mr. Varley, who was on duty, thinking “Dowb” was some unknown Russian general who had been suddenly discovered by Lord Panmure, requested that the message should be repeated. It turned out, however, that “Dowb” was merely an abbreviation of Dowbigging, and that Dowbigging was one of Lord Panmure’s relatives, whom he, as a Minister, pledged to suppress the nepotism that had ruined the army, thus authoritatively recommended to the good offices of the new Commander-in-Chief.[254] “Take care of Dowb,” from that day till now, has indeed been the shibboleth of jobbery and corruption in all branches of the Queen’s service. Thus, though the crisis of the war had now come, it was only too obvious that little could be expected from an army led by a feeble and subservient general, and directed from home by an “administrative reformer” of Lord Panmure’s type.

On the 21st of July, General Simpson reported that his trenches were within two hundred yards of the Redan, which had been greatly strengthened since the last assault, and that they could not be pushed farther. The loss of life in the trenches was so enormous, that the assault could not be long delayed--and yet, till Pélissier took the Malakoff, it was madness to attack the Redan. On the other hand, overwhelming reinforcements were being poured in from Russia, and, on the 16th of August, Prince Gortschakoff made a bold attempt to raise the siege. He crossed the Tchernaya river, and attacked the French and Sardinians, but was hurled back with great loss. This came as glad tidings to the Queen, who had heard with apprehension that the French were beginning to cry out against the war, and that they were complaining that France was simply a tool in the hands of England. The victory of the Tchernaya and the Queen’s visit to Paris silenced these murmurs for a time. Prince Albert, however, was still despondent, for no progress was made after this battle; and his letters from the Crimea warned him that another winter campaign would yet have to be undertaken.

The months of July and August produced in England a fresh crop of censures in the newspapers. It was even suggested that, by way of counteracting divided counsels among the allies, the siege should be entirely left to the French, while the English, Sardinians, and Turks should sally forth and attack the Russian army of observation in the field. In September, the beginnings of a bridge of rafts between the north and south sides of Sebastopol were seen, and, on the 5th of September, the grand bombardment, preliminary to the assault on the Malakoff and Redan, commenced--the French opening four miles of cannonade at a given signal. A terrific hail of shot and shell was almost continuously poured upon the hapless city till the 8th, when the moment for the assault arrived. Pélissier was to hoist the tricolour on the Malakoff when it was taken, and that was to be the signal for the British attack on the Redan. For many hours a savage contest raged round and on the Malakoff, but in the end the French captured the stronghold. The British storming force of 1,000 men, with small covering and ladder parties, then rushed forward to the outworks of the Redan. In crossing the space of two hundred yards that intervened between their trenches and the fortress, they were swept by a terrific fire, under which they fell like swathes of corn before the reaper. The troops--for the most part weedy young recruits--soon became demoralised, and many of them had actually to be kicked into action by their sergeants. Somehow they forced their way over the ramparts--a confused undisciplined mob in a pitiful state of disorganisation. One figure alone stands out in this scene of murky strife in heroic grandeur--that of Colonel Windham. He strove with furious energy to rally the scattered remnants of regiments which were mixed up with each other, and to hurl them against the inner breastwork. But as at the Alma, there were no supports at hand, and Windham sent messenger after messenger imploring Codrington to hurry them on. His entreaties were unheeded, partly because some of the messengers were shot, partly because Codrington, like most of the English generals in the Crimea, did not seem to consider that slender storming parties needed strong and instant support. At last Windham, enraged at the useless and sickening slaughter of his men, determined to go himself and force his chief to send the stormers succour. “Let it be known,” he said to Captain Crealock, “in case I am killed, why I went away.” He passed through the zone of fire in safety, reached Codrington, and, whilst vainly arguing with him, he saw that the day was lost. The subalterns and sergeants he had left behind--for most of the superior officers were killed or wounded--could no longer hold the men to their deadly work. First one, then another, and then a small group, were seen to creep through the gaps in the Redan. Then a mad rush of terror-stricken soldiers, yelling and shrieking in panic, proclaimed that Windham’s mission was useless, and that the fight was over. As for the Commander-in-Chief, where was he all the time? Cowering in a safe corner of the trenches, where he could see little of the fight! There Pélissier’s messenger found him when he came to ask if he would not immediately assail the Redan again. “The trenches were,” according to Simpson’s despatch, “subsequently to this attack, so crowded with troops, that I was unable to organise a second assault.”

General Simpson might as well have doomed his men to sudden death as send such a slender column as had been repulsed, to storm the Redan. This, then, is the sum of the matter. The first assault failed because the stormers were too few; the second was not attempted, lest they might have been too many! Ultimately, Simpson did what he ought to have done in the first instance; that is to say, he fell back on Sir Colin Campbell and the Scottish Brigade.[255] But when his Highland scouts went to reconnoitre during the night, they found the place deserted. The losses on our side were frightful, especially in officers and sergeants. Of the 2,447 stormers who were killed and wounded, 1,435 belonged to the Light Division; in fact, owing to Simpson’s imbecility in sending a mere handful of men to the attack, and Codrington’s inexcusable neglect to hurry on supports, we sacrificed more men in failing to carry the Redan, than Wellington lost when he captured Badajoz.[256] During the night the Russians set fire to the town. Crossing the bridge of rafts, the enemy fled to the northern side of the harbour, leaving us in possession, not of Sebastopol, but, as Gortschakoff said, of a heap of blood-stained ruins.

On Sunday, the 9th of September, the news that Sebastopol had fallen was proclaimed through England. And so the siege that had gone on for the best part of a year, which had involved the construction of seventy miles of trenches, and the expenditure of 1,500,000 shells, came to an end--gloriously for the French with victory at the Malakoff, ingloriously for England with ignominious defeat at the Redan. On the 29th of September, the Russians were repulsed at Kars; but on the 28th of November, the neglected and famine-stricken garrison, whose heroic defence under General Fenwick Williams was one of the most brilliant episodes of the war, had to surrender. The occupation of Kinburn and the bombardment of Sweaborg were the only successes won by us at sea.

When Sebastopol fell, it was not the Russians but Generals Simpson and Pélissier who were paralysed by the catastrophe. The Allies, in fact, seemed to sit helplessly looking on, and gave the enemy time to render his position on the north side of the city almost impregnable. Thus once more the besiegers became the besieged, and found themselves in even a more perilous position than that which they held before the fall of the city. The Queen was greatly distressed to hear that all our sacrifices had been in vain, and that Simpson and Pélissier were even more incompetent than Raglan and Canrobert.[257] At last her Majesty’s impatience could no longer be controlled, nor her irritation concealed. On the 2nd of October she wrote to Lord Panmure saying, “there may be good reasons why the army should not move, but we have only one.... When General Simpson telegraphed before that he must wait to know the intentions and plans of the Russians, the Queen was tempted to advise a reference to St. Petersburg for them.” And the intensely provoking thing was that if the Allies had only threatened a landing between Eupatoria and Sebastopol after the fall of the city, the Russians would have been compelled to evacuate the Crimea.[258]

Naturally the Queen began to press the War Office to appoint a new Commander-in-Chief, and then Ministers began to “take care of Dowb.” There was but one great military reputation not made--for it had been made long before--but somewhat enhanced in the Crimea. It was that of Sir Colin Campbell, the only leader on whom even a shred of the mantle of Wellington or Moore had fallen. The soldiers had confidence in no other; in fact, he was the only divisional commander in the army who had a native genius for war. But he had no “interest,” and had he been appointed, his iron will and stubborn character would have soon asserted themselves over the foolish counsels of Pélissier. A strong, competent man without “interest” was in Lord Panmure’s eyes an objectionable person. So he looked elsewhere for a successor to General Simpson. Happening accidentally to hear from Mr. Greville of Colonel Windham’s exploit at the Redan, Panmure suddenly resolved to appoint him Commander-in-Chief. Mr. Greville was naturally amazed at this proposal, and suggested that it would be better to try Windham first with a Division before they put him over the heads of his seniors. Simpson, however, was eager to come home; time pressed, and Campbell, having no connection with “Dowb,” was of course impossible. As for Codrington, his failure and bungling at the Redan ought to have rendered him impossible also, but on the other hand he was not quite so incompetent as Simpson, and he had “interest.” Finally, Prince Albert’s advice was taken, and thus Codrington, as the candidate who “divided the authorities least,” was appointed to the chief command. But the troops were divided into two _corps d’armée_, the command of which was offered to the two senior generals over whose heads Codrington had been passed. One of these, Sir Colin Campbell, in bitterness of heart returned to England, firmly determined to quit a service, which had rewarded half a century of brilliant achievement with contemptuous neglect. The Queen, however, came to hear of this, and touched with some twinge of remorse, sent for the old man, and in the course of an interview with him persuaded him to alter his intentions. She spoke to him of her anxiety as to the fate of the army, and as a personal favour to herself, requested him to go back to the Crimea. The rough, war-worn veteran in an instant forgot the wrongs of a lifetime. Tears glistened in his eyes, as he assured the Queen, in the broad provincial _patois_, which he always spoke when under the excitement of battle or deep emotion, that he would return immediately, and as for his rank--well, “if the Queen wished it, Colin Campbell was ready for her sake to serve under a corporal.” To the credit of her Majesty it must be remembered that this was the last time Campbell was neglected. If it took him forty-six years’ hard, thankless toil to rise to a Lieutenant-Colonelcy, in eight years he became a Field Marshal.

But besides keeping an idle wintry watch on the plateau before Sebastopol, there was no work in store for the army in the Crimea. The victories won by the sword were now about to be neutralised by the pen, and for Lord Palmerston the supreme moment of humiliation and failure was close at hand. The corner-stone of his foreign policy, it will be remembered, was the French alliance. If that proved to be unstable, the policy itself was _ab initio_ a fatal blunder. And the French alliance broke down at the critical moment when England, full of confidence in her reorganised army, expected that the war would be prosecuted till her disgraceful defeats at the Redan were triumphantly avenged. France, as has been repeatedly said, was sick of the war--a fact which Palmerston never had the moral courage to face. The war had now served the Emperor’s purpose, for the victory of the Malakoff had glorified the dynasty. Napoleon III., therefore, resolved to desert his ally, and in October Palmerston learnt with dismay that 100,000 French troops were to be immediately withdrawn from the Crimea.[259] What was still more serious, as Prince Albert says in a letter to Stockmar, the French were now demanding territorial compensation either in Poland, Italy, or the left bank of the Rhine. This last demand was particularly alarming to the Queen, who, in the spring, had warned Clarendon of its probable consequences. “The first Frenchman,” she says, in her letter of the 15th of April, “who should hostilely approach the Rhine, would set the whole of Germany on fire.” But in November, Palmerston’s policy compelled Englishmen to drink the cup of humiliation to the lees. Napoleon III., ignoring England, secretly negotiated with Austria the terms of peace which were to be offered to Russia, and these were then transmitted to the British Government, by Count Walewski, with an intimation that England must accept them as they stood. Palmerston, angry at being thus duped and slighted, sent a violent remonstrance to France, declaring that England would carry on the war alone rather than accept such terms.[260] The Emperor himself, however, wrote to the Queen advising her to give way, and explaining why he could not consent to extort any further sacrifices from France, for what he contemptuously called “the microscopical advantages” which were the objects of Lord Palmerston’s policy. The Queen in her reply says, “I make, then, full allowance for your Majesty’s personal difficulties, and refuse to listen to any wounded feelings of _amour propre_ which my Government might be supposed to entertain at a complete understanding having been come to with Austria--an understanding which has resulted in an arrangement being placed cut and dry before us, for our mere acceptance, putting us in the disagreeable position of either having to accept what we have not even been allowed fully to understand (and which, so far as Austria is concerned, has been negotiated under influences dictated by motives, and in a spirit which we are without the means of estimating), or to take the responsibility of breaking up this arrangement, of losing the alliance which is offered to us, and which is so much wanted,[261] and even of estranging the friendly feeling of the ally who advocates the arrangement itself.”[262] One member of the Cabinet, Sir George Cornewall Lewis, doubtless expressed the feeling of all his colleagues when he told Mr. Greville that they felt they had no alternative but to submit with a good grace. To this, says Mr. Greville, he “added an expression of his disgust at the pitiful figure we cut in the affair, being obliged to obey the commands of Louis Napoleon, and after our insolence, swagger, and bravado, to submit to terms of peace which we had just rejected; all which humiliation, he justly said, was the consequence of our plunging into war without any reason, and in defiance of all prudence and sound policy.” He might have added that it was the inevitable result of plunging into war with a treacherous ally, on whose fidelity Palmerston was senseless enough to stake the fortunes of the Empire, and the sceptre of his Sovereign. The Queen personally considered the terms which were thus thrust on England far from adequate; still she set her face against Palmerston’s first proposal to continue the war for the sake of winning prospective victories. After some trivial modifications the

Franco-Austrian conditions were accepted by the British Government, transmitted by Austria to Russia, and accepted by her on the 16th of January, 1856. “Think,” said Sir George Lewis to Mr. Greville, “that this is a war carried on for the independence of Turkey, and we, the allies, are bound to Turkey by mutual obligations not to make peace but by common consent and concurrence. Well, we have sent an offer of peace to Russia, of which the following are among the terms: We propose that Turkey, who possesses one-half of the Black Sea Coast, shall have no ships, no ports, no arsenals in that sea; and then there are conditions about the Christians who are the subjects of Turkey, and others about the mouths of the Danube, to which part of the Turkish dominions are contiguous. Now in all these stipulations so intimately concerning Turkey, for whose independence we are fighting, Turkey is not allowed to have any voice whatever, nor has she ever been allowed to be made acquainted with what is going on except through the newspapers, where the Turkish Ministers may have read what is passing, like other people. When the French and Austrian terms were discussed in the Cabinet, at the end of the discussion some one modestly asked whether it would not be proper to communicate to Musurus (the Turkish Ambassador in London) what was in agitation, and what had been agreed upon, to which Clarendon said he saw no necessity for it whatever.”[263] But Palmerston by this time had abandoned the Turks--indeed, he now became quite moderate, not to say humble in his tone--permitting Clarendon to adopt or reject his suggestions as he chose. This sudden docility naturally improved his position at Court. “Palmerston,” writes Mr. Greville, “is now on very good terms with the Queen, which is, though he does not know it, greatly attributable to Clarendon’s constant endeavours to reconcile her to him, always telling her everything likely to ingratiate Palmerston with her, and showing her any notes or letters of his calculated to please her.”[264]

The Prime Minister and his colleagues it seems were surprised that Russia assented so readily to the terms of peace, and were for a time nervous as to the verdict of the English people. “All peaces are unpopular,” wrote Sir George Lewis to Sir Edmund Head, “and all peaces, it seems to me, are beneficial, even to the country which is supposed to be the loser. How greatly England prospered after the peace of 1782, and France after the peace of 1815! I suppose that this peace, if it takes place, will be no exception to the general rule.”[265] Fortunately, the Court supported the Ministry in acting with the other Powers, and Mr. Disraeli and Lord Stanley privately informed the Cabinet, that they would accept any peace which was sanctioned by the Crown. Thus the Queen and her Ministers were enabled to meet the Parliament of 1856 with some measure of confidence.