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              [Illustration: H.R.H. THE PRINCE OF WALES.

           (_From a Photograph by Mr. A. Bassano, London._)]




                                  THE

                            LIFE AND TIMES

                                  OF

                            QUEEN VICTORIA.

                                  BY
                            ROBERT WILSON.

                             Illustrated.

                               VOL. II.

                            [Illustration]

                      CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED:
                     _LONDON, PARIS & MELBOURNE_.

                        [ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.]




CONTENTS.


CHAPTER XXI.

COLONIAL HOME RULE AND FINANCIAL REFORM.                            PAGE

Mr. Roebuck and Emigration--Self-Government and the
Colonies--Unsympathetic Whig Policy--Radicals and the Colonial
Office--The Peelites and Hudson’s Bay Company--Financial Reform--Mr.
Cobden at Variance with Mr. Bright--Combined Agitators--The
Demand for Retrenchment--Trade and the Flag--Tories and Taxes--A
_reductio ad absurdum_--A Raid on a Surplus--International
Arbitration--Parliamentary Reform--Parliament and the Jews--The
Tories oppose the Alteration of the Parliamentary Oath--Episcopal
Prejudice--Tory Obstructionists--An Ordnance Department Scandal--Mr.
Delane’s Attacks on Lord Palmerston in the _Times_--The Queen
Remonstrates against Lord Palmerston’s Recklessness--An
Anti-Palmerstonian Cabal--Lady Palmerston’s Intrigues--Lord Brougham
Betrays the Cabal--Palmerston’s Victory--Rome and France--The Second
War--The Disaster of Chillianwalla--Indignation of the Country--Lord
Gough’s Recall--Napier to the Rescue--The East India Directors Oppose
Napier’s Appointment--The Convict War at the Cape--Boycotting the
Governor                                                             385


CHAPTER XXII.

FAMILY CARES AND ROYAL DUTIES.

Education of the Prince of Wales--Selection of Mr. Birch as Tutor--The
Queen’s Jealousy of her Parental Authority--Her Letter to Melbourne on
the Management of her Nursery--Her Ideas on Education--Prince Albert’s
Plans for the Education of the Prince of Wales--Stockmar’s Advice--The
Visit to Ireland--The Queen at Waterford--“Rebel Cork” _en fête_--The
Visit to Dublin--Viceregal Festivities--The Visit to the National Model
Schools--Shiel’s Speech--The Queen and the Duke of Leinster--Farewell
at Kingstown--The Queen Dips the Royal Ensign--Loyal Ulster--The Visit
to the Linen Hall--Lord Clarendon on the Queen’s Visit--A Cruise on the
Clyde--Home in Balmoral--The Queen’s “Bothie”--The Queen’s University
of Ireland--First Plans for the Great Exhibition--Opening of the London
Coal Exchange--The Queen’s Barge--Death of Queen Adelaide            403


CHAPTER XXIII.

CLOUDS IN THE EAST AND ELSEWHERE.

Political Wreckage--Force triumphs over Opinion--The State
of France--Election of Prince Charles Louis Bonaparte as
Prince-President--The Sad Plight of Italy--Palmerston’s Anti-Austrian
Policy--Defeat of Piedmont--The Fall of Venice--Fall of the
Roman Republic--A Cromwellian Struggle in Prussia--The Queen’s
Partisanship--Her Prussian Sympathies--The Hungarian Refugees in
Turkey--A Diplomatic Conflict with Russia--Opening of Parliament--Mr.
Disraeli and Local Taxation--Parliamentary Reform--The Jonahs of the
Cabinet--The Dispute with Greece--Don Pacifico’s Case--Coercion of
Greece--Lord Palmerston meekly accepts an Insult from Russia--French
Intervention--A Diplomatic Conflict in France--Recall of the
French Ambassador--False Statements in Parliament--The Queen’s
Indignation--The Don Pacifico Debate--The _Civis Romanus sum_
Doctrine--Palmerston’s Victory--The West African Slave Trade         420


CHAPTER XXIV.

SOME EPOCH-MARKING LEGISLATION.

The Colonies and Party Government--The Movement for Autonomy--Lord John
Russell’s Colonial Bill--Tory Opposition to Colonial Federation--Mr.
Adderley’s Plan--Mr. Gladstone’s Scheme for Colonial Church Courts--The
Colonial Bills Mangled in the House of Lords--More English Doles
for Ireland--An Irish Reform Bill--Lord John Russell Proposes to
Abolish the Lord-Lieutenancy--The Queen’s Irish Policy--Her offer
to Establish a Royal Residence in Ireland--The Bungled Budget--The
Demand for Retrenchment--The Tories Insist on a Reduction of Official
Salaries--Lord John Russell’s Commission on Establishments--The
Queen and the Church--The Ecclesiastical Appeals Bill--The “Gorham
Case”--Death of Peel--The Queen’s Sorrow--A Nation in Mourning--Peel’s
Character and Career--The Queen’s Alarm about Prince Albert’s
Health--The Queen at Work--The Queen’s Reading-Lamp                  438


CHAPTER XXV.

FALL OF THE WHIG CABINET.

Debates on “No Popery”--Mutiny of the Irish Brigade--Defeat of Lord
John Russell--Lord Stanley “sent for”--Timid Tories--Lord Stanley’s
Interviews with the Queen--A Statesman’s “Domestic Duties”--Is
Coalition Possible?--The Queen’s Mistake--The Duke of Wellington’s
Advice--Return of the Whigs to Office--The Queen’s Aversions--The
“No Popery” Bill Reduced to a Nullity--Another Bungled Budget--The
Income Tax Controversy--The Pillar of Free Trade--The Window Tax
and the House Duty--The Radicals and the Slave Trade--King “Bomba”
and Mr. Gladstone--Cobden on General Disarmament--Palmerston in a
Millennial Mood--The Whig-Peelite Intrigue--The Queen and the Kossuth
Demonstrations--Another Quarrel with Palmerston--A Merry Council of
State                                                                463


CHAPTER XXVI.

THE FESTIVAL OF PEACE AND THE _COUP D’ÉTAT_.

The World’s Fair--Carping Critics--Churlish Ambassadors Rebuked by the
Queen--Opening of the Great Exhibition--A Touching Sight--The Queen’s
Comments on “_soi-disant_ Fashionables”--The Duke of Wellington’s
Nosegay--Prince Albert among the Missionaries--The Queen’s Letter to
Lord John Russell--Her Pride in her Husband--The London Season--The
Duke of Brunswick’s Balloon “Victoria”--Bloomerism--The Queen at
Macready’s Farewell Benefit--The Queen’s Costume Ball--The Spanish
Beauty--An Ugly “Lion”--The Queen at the Guildhall Ball--Grotesque
Civic Festivities--Royal Visits to Liverpool and Manchester--A
Well-Dressed Mayor--The Queen on the “Sommerophone”--The _Coup
d’État_--The Assassins of Liberty--The Appeal to France--The Queen’s
Last Quarrel with Palmerston--Palmerston’s Fall--Outcry against the
Queen--A “Presuming” Muscovite--The Queen’s Vindication              480


CHAPTER XXVII.

A YEAR OF EXCITEMENT AND PANIC.

Cassandras in the Service Clubs--The Tories and the Queen’s
Speech--Lord John Russell’s Triumph--The Militia Bill--Defeat of
the Russell Ministry--Fall of the Whig Cabinet--Palmerston’s “Tit
for Tat”--A Protectionist Government--Novices in Office--A Cabinet
of Affairs--Mr. Disraeli’s Budget--Lord John Russell’s Fatal
Blunder--The Second Burmese War--Dalhousie’s Designs on Burmah--How
the Quarrel Grew--Lambert’s Indiscretion--The Attack on Rangoon--Fall
of the Citadel--Annexation--Desultory Warfare--Dissolution of
Parliament--The General Election--Equipoise of Parties--Factions
and Free Trade--Palmerston’s Forecasts--Forcing the Hand of the
Ministry--Death of the Duke of Wellington--The Queen’s Grief--The
Nation in Mourning--The Lying-in-State--Shocking Scenes--The Funeral
Pageant--The Ceremony in St. Paul’s--A Veteran in Tears--The Laureate’s
Votive Wreath--Review of the Duke’s Character                        496


CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE LAST YEAR OF “THE GREAT PEACE.”

Abortive Attacks on the Ministry--Mr. Disraeli’s First Budget--Fall
of the Tory Cabinet--The Queen and Lord Aberdeen--Organising
the Coalition--A Ministry of “All the Talents”--The Queen and
South Kensington--A Miser’s Legacy to the Queen--Sport at
Balmoral--Proclamation of the Second Empire--The “Battle of the
Numeral”--The Queen Initiates a Policy--Personal Government in the
Victorian Age--A Servile Minister--Lord Malmesbury’s Spies--Napoleon
III. and “Mrs. Howard”--Creole Card-Parties at Kensington--Napoleon
III. Proposes to Marry the Queen’s Niece--Lord John Russell’s Education
Scheme--Mr. Gladstone’s First Budget--The India Bill--Transportation
of Convicts to Australia Stopped--The Gold Fever in Australia--The
Rush to the Diggings--The First Gold Ships in the Thames--Gold
Discoveries and Free Trade--Chagrin of the Protectionists--The Rise in
Prices--Practical Success of Peel’s Fiscal Policy--Strikes and Dear
Bread--End of the Great Peace                                        515


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          540


CHAPTER XXX.

WAR.

The War Fever in 1854--Attacks on Prince Albert--Aberdeen’s
Correspondence with the Queen--The Queen’s Opinion of
the Country--“Loyal, but a little mad”--Stockmar on the
Constitution--Prince Albert’s Position at Court--The Privileges of
a Reigning Queen’s Husband--Debates on the Prince’s Position--The
Peace and War Parties--Mr. Cobden’s Influence--A new Vienna Note--A
Challenge to Russia--The Russian Ambassador leaves London--Recall of
Sir H. Seymour from St. Petersburg--Russian Intrigues with the German
Powers--The Czar’s Counter-Propositions--His Sarcastic Letter to
Napoleon III.--An Austrian Compromise--Lord Clarendon’s _Ultimatum_ to
Russia--The Czar’s Reply--Declaration of War--Omar Pasha’s Victories
in the Principalities--The Siege of Silistria--Evacuation of the
Principalities--The Rising in Greece--The Allies at the Piræus--The
Allies occupy Gallipoli--Another English Blunder--Invasion of the
Crimea--The Duke of Newcastle and a Sleepy Cabinet--Lord Raglan’s
Opinion on the War--The Landing of the Allies at Eupatoria--Battle of
the Alma--Russian Fleet Sunk at Sebastopol--At Balaclava--Death of
Marshal St. Arnaud--The Siege of Sebastopol--Battles of Balaclava and
Inkermann--Mismanagement of the War--Public Indignation against the
Government--Mr. Roebuck’s Motion--Fall of the Coalition Ministry     574


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                                 618


CHAPTER XXXII.

ROYALTY AND THE WAR.

Financing the War--The Queen’s Opinion of War Loans--A Dreadful
Winter--Distress in the Country--The “Devil” in Devonshire--Bread
Riots--War Loans and a War Budget--The Queen and the Wounded
Soldiers--Her Condemnation of “the Hulks”--Presentation of War Medals
in Hyde Park--Visit of the Emperor and Empress of the French--A Plot
to Capture the Queen--Councils of War at Windsor--The Grand Chapter of
the Order of the Garter--Imperial Compliments--Napoleon III. in the
City--At the Opera--The Queen’s Birthday Gift to the Emperor--Scarlet
Fever at Osborne--Prorogation of Parliament--A Court Intrigue with
Dom Pedro of Portugal--The Queen Visits Paris--Her Reception at St.
Cloud--The Ball at the Hôtel de Ville--Staring at the “Koh-i-noor”--At
the Tomb of the Great Emperor--Prince Bismarck’s Introduction to the
Queen--Home again--Lord Clarendon on the Queen’s Visit to Paris--How
the Prince of Wales Enjoyed himself--At Balmoral--The Bonfire on
Craig Gowan--Sebastopol Rejoicings--“A Witches’ Dance supported by
Whisky”--Courtship of the Princess Royal--Prince Frederick William of
Prussia--His Proposal of Marriage--Attacks of the _Times_--Visit of
Victor Emmanuel--His Reputation in Paris--Memorial of the Grenadier
Guards--Fresh Charges against Prince Albert--His Vindication of the
Crimean Officers                                                     643


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                          669


CHAPTER XXXIV.

PEACE AND PARLIAMENT.

Opening of Parliament--A Cold Speech from the Throne--Moderation of
Militant Toryism--Mr. Disraeli’s Cynical Strategy--The Betrayal of
Kars--The Life Peerage Controversy--Baron Parke’s Nickname--More
Attacks on Prince Albert--Court Favouritism among Men of Science--The
Congress of Paris--How France Betrayed England--Walewski’s Intrigues
with Orloff--Mr. Greville’s Pictures of French Official Life--Snubbing
Bonapartist Statesmen--Peace Proclaimed--Popular Rejoicings--A Memento
of the Congress--The Terms of Peace--The Tripartite Treaty--The
Queen’s Opinion of the Settlement--Parliamentary Criticism on the
Treaty of Paris--Stagnation of Public Life in England--The Queen’s
“Happy Family” Dinner Party--A little “Tiff” with America--The
Restoration of H.M.S. _Resolute_--The Budget--Palmerston’s Tortuous
Italian Policy--The Failure of his Domestic Policy--The Confirmation
of the Princess Royal--Robbery of the Royal Nursery Plate--Prince
Alfred’s Tutor--Reviews of Crimean Troops--Debates on the Purchase
System--Lord Hardinge’s Tragic Death--The Duke of Cambridge as
Commander-in-Chief--Miss Nightingale’s Visit to Balmoral--Coronation
of the Czar--Russian Chicanery at Paris--A Bad Map and a False
Frontier--Quarrel between Prussia and Switzerland--Quarrel between
England and the Sicilies--Death of the Queen’s Half-Brother--Settlement
of the Dispute with Russia--“The Dodge that Saved us”                679


CHAPTER XXXV.

TWO LITTLE WARS AND A “PENAL DISSOLUTION.”

The Queen’s New Year Greeting to Napoleon III.--A Gladstone-Disraeli
Coalition--A Scene in the Carlton Club--Mr. Disraeli’s Attack on Lord
Palmerston’s Foreign Policy--The Queen Consents to Reduce the Income
Tax--A Fallacious Budget, with Imaginary Remissions--The Persian
War--General Outram’s Victories--Unpopularity of the War--Making War
without Consulting Parliament--The Rupture with China--A “Prancing
Proconsul”--The Bombardment of Canton--Defeat of Lord Palmerston,
and his Appeal to the Country--A Penal Dissolution--Abortive
Coalition between the Peelites and Tories--Mr. Gladstone and the
Intriguers--Split in the Peelite Party--Palmerston’s Victory at
the Polls--The Rout of the Manchester School--The Lesson of the
Election--Opening of the New Parliament--The Work of the Session--Mr.
Gladstone’s Obstruction of the Divorce Bill--The Settlement of the
Neufchâtel Difficulty--The Question of the Principalities--Visit of the
French Emperor to the Queen                                          699


CHAPTER XXXVI.

THE INDIAN MUTINY.

The Centenary of Plassey--Rumours of Rebellion--Causes of the
Mutiny--The Annexation of Oudh--Lord Dalhousie’s Indian Policy--Its
Disturbing Effect on the Minds of the Natives--The Royal Family of
Delhi--The Hindoo “Sumbut”--The Discontent of the Bengal Army--The
Grievances of the Sepoy--The Greased Cartridges--The Mystery of
the “Chupatties”--Mutiny of the Garrison at Meerut--The March to
Delhi--Sir Henry Lawrence at Lucknow--The Tragedy of Cawnpore--Death
of the Commander-in-Chief--Who took Delhi?--Sir John Lawrence in
the Punjab--The Saviour of India--Lord Canning at Calcutta--First
Relief of Lucknow--Despatch of Sir Colin Campbell--Second Relief of
Lucknow--Savage Fighting at the Secunder-baugh--The Queen’s Letter to
Sir Colin Campbell--His Retreat to Cawnpore--His Management of the
Campaign--Windham’s Defeat at the Pandoo River--Sir Colin Campbell’s
Victory over the Gwalior Army                                        720


CHAPTER XXXVII.

THE ROYAL MARRIAGE.

Birth of Princess Beatrice--Death of the Duchess of Gloucester--A Royal
Romance--Franco-Russian Intrigues--The Art Treasures Exhibition at
Manchester--Announcement of the Marriage of the Princess Royal--Prince
Albert’s Views on Royal Grants--The Controversy on the Grant to the
Princess Royal--Visit of the Grand Duke Constantine--The Christening
of Princess Beatrice--Prince Albert’s Title as Prince Consort
Legalised--The First Distribution of the Victoria Cross--Opposition to
the Order--The Queen’s Visit to Manchester--Departure of the Prince
of Wales to Germany--The Queen and the Indian Mutiny--Her Controversy
with Lord Palmerston--Sudden Death of the Duchess of Nemours--The
Marriage of the Princess Royal--The Scene in the Chapel--On the Balcony
of Buckingham Palace--The Illuminations in London--The Bride and
Bridegroom at Windsor--The Last Adieus--The Departure of the Bride and
Bridegroom to Germany                                                738





LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


                                                                    PAGE

The Prince of Wales (_From a Photograph by Mr.
A. Bassano, London_)      _Frontispiece_

The Western Suburbs of Victoria, Vancouver
Island                                                               385

St. George’s Chapel, Windsor                                         388

John Bright (1857)                                                   389

Royal Palace, Naples                                                 392

Lady Palmerston                                                      393

Sir Charles Napier                                                   396

The Battle of Gujerat                                                397

The British Troops Entering Multan                                   400

Sir Harry Smith                                                      401

Victoria Castle, Killiney--Bray Head in the distance                 404

Royal Visit to Ireland: the Queen Leaving Kingstown                  405

Visit of the Queen and Prince Albert to the Linen
Hall, Belfast                                                        409

Castleton of Braemar                                                 412

At Balmoral: a Morning Call                                          413

The Royal Barge                                                      416

Opening of the London Coal Exchange--Arrival of
the Royal Procession at the Custom-House Quay                        417

The Chamber of Representatives, Brussels                             420

Louis Kossuth (1850)                                                 421

The White Drawing-Room, Windsor Castle                               424

The Piræus, Athens                                                   425

Grand Entrance, Westminster Palace                                   429

Mr. (afterwards Sir Alexander) Cockburn                              432

Cape Town                                                            433

Mr. Gladstone (1855)                                                 436

Windsor Castle: View from the Quadrangle                             437

View in Phœnix Park, Dublin                                          440

Mr. Horsman                                                          441

The Funeral of Sir Robert Peel: the Tenantry
Assembling at the Lodge, Drayton Manor                               444

The Funeral of Sir Robert Peel: the Ceremony in
Drayton Bassett Church                                               445

Meeting of the Ladies’ Committee at Stafford
House in Aid of the Great Exhibition                                 449

Cambridge House, Piccadilly (1854)                                   452

The Queen and Prince Arthur (_After Winterhalter_,
1850)      _To face_                                                 452

Pate’s Assault on the Queen                                          453

Lord John Russell (1850)                                             456

The Royal Apartments, Holyrood Palace                                461

St. Stephen’s Crypt, Westminster Palace                              464

Mr. Locke King                                                       465

The Green Drawing-Room, Windsor Castle                               468

Sir George Cornewall Lewis                                           469

The Caffre War: Natives Attacking a Convoy                           472

Group of Dyaks                                                       473

Lord Carlisle                                                        476

The Great Exhibition, Hyde Park                                      477

Sir Joseph Paxton                                                    481

Opening of the Great Exhibition, Hyde Park
(_After the Picture by Eugène Lamé_)       _To face_                 482

St. George’s Hall, Liverpool                                         484

The Royal Visit to Worsley Hall: the State Barge
on the Bridgwater Canal                                              485

The Queen’s Arrival in Peel Park: Children of the
Manchester and Salford Schools Singing the
National Anthem                                                      489

The Coup d’État: Lancers Charging the Crowd in
the Boulevards of Paris                                              492

Prince Charles Louis Napoleon                                        493

Diana Fountain, Bushey Park                                          496

Harnessing the Black Horses at the Royal Mews,
Buckingham Palace (_After the Painting by
Charles Lutyens. In the Possession of the
Earl of Bradford_)                                                   497

Sidney Herbert (_After the Statue by Foley_)                         500

St. Albans, from Verulam                                             501

View near Rangoon                                                    504

Major Fraser’s Storming Party Carrying the Stockade
in Front of Rangoon                                                  505

Walmer Castle                                                        508

The Duke of Wellington (_After the Portrait by
Count D’Orsay_)                                                      509

The Wellington Monument in St. Paul’s Cathedral,
completed in 1878 (_By Alfred Stevens_)                              513

North Terrace and Wykeham Tower, Windsor
Castle                                                               516

The Duke of Argyle                                                   517

View in Braemar                                                      520

The Queen’s Visit to the Britannia Tubular Bridge                    521

Queen Victoria (_After the Equestrian Portrait
by Count D’Orsay_)      _To face_                                    521

Notre Dame, Paris (West Front)                                       524

Comte de Montalembert                                                525

Mdlle. Eugenia de Montijo, afterwards Empress
of the French                                                        529

Prince Jeróme Bonaparte                                              532

Sketch in the Outer Cloisters, Windsor Castle                        533

The Conveying of Australian Gold from the East
India Docks to the Bank of England (_After the
Engraving in the “Illustrated London News”_)                         537

Study of a Child (_After an Etching by the Queen_)                   539

Off the Coast of Asia Minor (Turkey in Asia)                         540

Bazaar in Constantinople                                             541

Convent of the Nativity, Bethlehem                                   544

Interior of the Chapel of the Nativity, Bethlehem                    545

The Nicolai Bridge across the Neva, St. Petersburg                   548

Lord Stratford de Redcliffe (_From a Photograph
by Messrs. Boning and Small_)                                        549

Town Hall, Vienna                                                    552

Prince Menschikoff                                                   553

The Mosque of Selim II. at Adrianople                                557

The Duke of Newcastle                                                560

Destruction of the Turkish Fleet at Sinope                           561

The Throne Room, Windsor Castle                                      564

Sebastopol                                                           565

Fire in the Prince of Wales’s Tower, Windsor
Castle                                                               568

The Queen at the Camp at Chobham      _To face_                      568

Runnymede                                                            569

Spithead                                                             572

Balmoral Castle from the Road                                        573

The Outer Cloisters and Anne Boleyn’s Window,
Windsor Castle                                                       577

Russian Repulse at Silistria                                         580

Lord Raglan                                                          581

The Queen Waving Farewell to the _Duke of
Wellington_ Flag-ship                                                585

Marshal St. Arnaud                                                   588

Forts Alexander and Peter the Great, Cronstadt                       589

Omar Pasha                                                           592

Map of the Crimea                                                    593

The Barracks Hospital, Scutari                                       596

Odessa                                                               597

Heights of the Alma                                                  600

Sir John Burgoyne                                                    601

Pembroke Lodge, Richmond                                             604

Codrington’s Brigade (23rd Royal Welsh Fusileers)
at the Alma                                                          605

General Canrobert                                                    608

Entrance to Balaclava Harbour                                        609

Sir Colin Campbell                                                   612

Balaclava--“The Thin Red Line” (_After the Painting
by Robert Gibb, R.S.A. In the Possession
of Archibald Ramsden, Esq., Leeds_)                                  613

Valley of Inkermann                                                  616

The Storm off Balaclava                                              617

Mr. Roebuck (1858)                                                   620

Buckingham Palace, from St. James’s Park                             621

Miss Nightingale and the Nurses in the Barracks
Hospital at Scutari                                                  625

Henry VIII.’s Gateway, Windsor Castle                                628

Refreshment Room, House of Lords                                     629

Mr. Sidney Herbert (afterwards Lord Herbert of
Lea)                                                                 632

The Winter Palace, St. Petersburg                                    633

Grand Reception Room, Windsor Castle                                 636

The Hundred Steps, Windsor Castle                                    637

View in the Crimea: The Palace Woronzow,
Alupka                                                               641

The Wounded Soldier’s Toast--“The Queen!”                            645

The Queen Distributing the Crimean Medal at the
Horseguards Parade Ground      _To face_                             647

Windsor Castle from the Brocas                                       648

The Queen Investing the Emperor of the French
with the Order of the Garter                                         649

The Waterloo Room, Windsor Castle                                    652

The Royal and Imperial Visit to the Crystal
Palace: the Procession down the Nave                                 653

The Queen at the Fête in the Forest of St. Germain                   657

Map of Crathie and Braemar                                           660

The Wooing of the Princess Royal                                     664

Count Cavour                                                         665

Balaclava: at Peace (_From a Drawing made
Twenty-five Years after the Crimean War_)                            668

Cathcart’s Hill, Crimea                                              669

French Attack on the Malakoff                                        672

General Todleben                                                     673

The Throne Room, St James’s Palace (_From a
Photograph by H. N. King_)                                           677

View in the Crimea: Jalta                                            680

Miss Nightingale                                                     681

The Emperor of Austria                                               684

The Conference of Paris, 1856                                        685

Visit of the Queen and Prince Albert to the
_Resolute_                                                           689

Portsmouth                                                           692

Sir De Lacy Evans                                                    693

View in Berne                                                        697

Old Windsor Lock (_From a Photograph by Taunt
and Co., Oxford_)                                                    701

Sir John Bowring                                                     705

Chinese Lorchas in the Canton River                                  709

The Cascade: Virginia Water                                          712

Plan of Windsor Castle                                               713

The Duke of Cambridge (_From a Photograph by
Bassano_)                                                            717

The Barracks at Meerut                                               721

Sir James Outram                                                     725

Cawnpore                                                             729

Lord Lawrence                                                        733

Scene at the First Relief of Lucknow                                 736

The Hastings Chantry, St George’s Chapel,
Windsor                                                              741

The Victoria Cross                                                   744

The Queen Distributing the Victoria Crosses in
Hyde Park                                                            745

The Crimson Drawing-Room, Windsor Castle                             749

Marriage of the Princess Royal (_After the Picture
by John Philip, R.A._)      _To face_                                751




[Illustration: THE WESTERN SUBURBS OF VICTORIA, VANCOUVER ISLAND.]




CHAPTER XXI.

COLONIAL HOME RULE AND FINANCIAL REFORM.

     Mr. Roebuck and Emigration--Self-Government and the
     Colonies--Unsympathetic Whig Policy--Radicals and the Colonial
     Office--The Peelites and Hudson’s Bay Company--Financial
     Reform--Mr. Cobden at Variance with Mr. Bright--Combined
     Agitators--The Demand for Retrenchment--Trade and the Flag--Tories
     and Taxes--A _reductio ad absurdum_--A Raid on a
     Surplus--International Arbitration--Parliamentary
     Reform--Parliament and the Jews--The Tories oppose the Alteration
     of the Parliamentary Oath--Episcopal Prejudice--Tory
     Obstructionists--An Ordnance Department Scandal--Mr. Delane’s
     Attacks on Lord Palmerston in the _Times_--The Queen Remonstrates
     against Lord Palmerston’s Recklessness--An Anti-Palmerstonian
     Cabal--Lady Palmerston’s Intrigues--Lord Brougham Betrays the
     Cabal--Palmerston’s Victory--Rome and France--The Second War--The
     Disaster of Chillianwalla--Indignation of the Country--Lord Gough’s
     Recall--Napier to the Rescue--The East India Directors Oppose
     Napier’s Appointment--The Convict War at the Cape--Boycotting the
     Governor.


Another notable event in the Colonial history of 1849 was the
introduction by Mr. Roebuck, on the 14th of May, of a Bill for the
better government of the Colonies. The debate on this measure brought
vividly before the minds of thoughtful men the folly upon which our
step-motherly treatment of the Colonies was based. “Emigration by
itself,” exclaimed Mr. Roebuck, “is misery;” and yet the idea of
colonisation which prevailed at the Colonial Office was simply to
transport as many people as possible to distant wilds, utterly
regardless of their ultimate fate. Why should we not introduce something
like system, asked Mr. Roebuck, into our Colonial policy, and recognise
the fact that it was now not tribute, but trade that we might expect to
get from them? His proposal was to have one plan for settling a colony,
another for organising it when settled, and a third for groups of
colonies in confederation or union. His panacea for all Colonial ills
was to get rid of “red tape” at the Colonial Office and to give the
Colonies Home Rule. The difficulties, said Mr. Hawes, as representing
Lord Grey and the Colonial Office, in the way of granting Home Rule to
North-American Colonies would be insuperable; besides, England had far
too many Colonies already, so that it was of little use to bring forward
schemes for settling new ones! Whigs like Lord John Russell condemned a
policy which tended to substitute a fixed Parliamentary rule for the
discretion of a responsible Minister, and contended that physical
impediments rendered the union of Canada into one Dominion impossible.
Mr. Gladstone, however, warmly supported Mr. Roebuck’s policy. Even then
the leaven of the Home Ruler was working in his mind. Mr. Roebuck was
beaten by 116 to 73. But this did not put a stop to these Colonial
debates.

On the 26th of June Sir William Molesworth moved an Address to the Queen
begging for a Commission to inquire into the Administration of the
Colonies, more especially with a view to lessen the cost of their
government, and to give free scope to individual enterprise in
colonising. He startled the House by quoting figures which showed that,
in fifteen years, “a series of remarkable events in the Colonies” had
cost England the modest sum of eighty millions sterling. It could not
have cost more to settle 4,000,000 able and energetic emigrants in
Australia alone; and yet in the whole Colonial Empire in 1849, it
appears there were not more than 1,000,000 persons of British or Irish
descent. Charles Buller some years before had condemned the Colonial
Office for its arbitrary character, its indifference to local feeling,
and its ignorance of local wants, its procrastination and vacillation,
its secrecy and irresponsibility, its servitude to parties and cliques,
its injustice, and its disorder. In this debate Lord Grey’s
Administration was held to aptly illustrate all these vices; and yet
Lord Grey had become Colonial Minister because he stood pledged to cure
them. Lord Grey’s idea of Colonial government seemed to be either to
rule the Colony with a high hand from London, or, if it had some
semblance of representative institutions, to govern it by means of a
violent Party minority in the popular Chamber, co-operating with a
majority of the Council nominated by the Crown. Self-government for
Colonies that were fit for it, and intelligent government for those that
were not, were Sir William Molesworth’s remedies. A strong plea for
reducing the extravagant outlay on official salaries and useless
military expenditure was pressed; and protests against convict
emigration, which, together with our misgovernment, drove honest English
Colonists to the United States, were entered. Mr. Hume and Mr.
Gladstone, on behalf of the Radicals and Peelites, gave a general
support to the motion; but the indefatigable Mr. Hawes came smilingly to
the defence of Lord Grey with his stereotyped “_Non possumus_,” and Lord
John Russell declared that the scope of the reference to the Commission
was too vast and wide for practical purposes. His novel argument was
that to attempt to define the limits of Imperial and local questions
must end in bitter disputes between the Colonies and the mother country.
Undeterred by the failure of the Radicals to force a rational Colonial
policy on the Whigs, the Peelites next took up the matter, and on the
19th of June Lord Lincoln moved an Address to the Crown expressing the
opinion that the Hudson’s Bay Company, to which Vancouver Island had
been granted by Royal Charter, was ill-adapted for ruling or developing
the resources of a colony founded on principles of political and
commercial freedom, and generally challenging the validity of the grant.
One would have thought that it needed little argument to demonstrate the
unwisdom of founding a colony to be ruled by an absentee proprietary,
earning its revenues by a trading monopoly. The history of the United
States was full of examples of this species of folly, and both Lord
Lincoln and Mr. Hume argued their case with the greatest ability. But
they spoke to no purpose, for just as Mr. Hume was warming to his work
the House was counted out! In these days, when the air is full of
schemes for Imperial Federation, and Home Rule, it is interesting to
note how, in 1849, the battle of Colonial Reform was fought by a
combination of Conservative Peelites and “stalwart” Radicals, against
the Whigs, who were jealously opposed to all extensions of Colonial
autonomy.

After Colonial policy, and not long after it in point of interest, came
Finance. The erratic schemes of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the
preceding year, together with the distress which afflicted the country,
had made everybody dissatisfied with the financial policy of the
Government. The Protectionists were always at hand to suggest that the
pressure of taxation was due to Free Trade. The Free Traders were never
weary of retorting that it was due to extravagant expenditure, and could
be remedied by retrenchment. Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright thus felt that
their mission in life did not end with the Repeal of the Corn Laws. If
they were to keep the ground they had taken, it seemed to them they must
start an agitation to reduce public expenditure. Mr. Bright rather
favoured the notion of agitating for an extension of the Franchise, on
the supposition that, if more taxpayers had votes, Government, in
deference to their prejudices, would be chary of augmenting public
burdens. Ultimately, however, they agreed to combine the two
agitations,[1] and work with each other as before. The popular feeling
in favour of economy was first manifested by the formation of Financial
Reform Associations in the large towns--that of Liverpool being
especially energetic--and they were soon busy discussing a practical
plan, which emanated from the fertile brain of Cobden, for the remission
of the Malt Tax and other public burdens. Cobden’s scheme was simply to
effect retrenchment by going back to the scale of expenditure that was
deemed adequate in 1835, and in this way he proposed to reduce taxation
by about £10,000,000 sterling. Quite a flutter of excitement ran through
the

[Illustration: ST. GEORGE’S CHAPEL, WINDSOR.]

House of Commons when, on the 26th of February, he brought his plan
under its notice. He contended that military expenditure had caused the
increase of £10,000,000, which he desired to reduce. Therefore he moved
that the expenditure under this head be diminished with all practicable
speed. The insular position of England was itself a sure defence against
her enemies.

[Illustration: JOHN BRIGHT (1857).]

Provided she did not interfere recklessly with foreign nations, she had
less to fear in 1849 than in 1835. Why, then, should the military and
naval expenditure of 1835 be exceeded? Vast sums of money, too, were
spent on the Colonies. Here also a reduction might be effected, for the
English taxpayer got no more food from the Colonies than the foreign one
did. At this period it was evident that Mr. Cobden had not put to the
test the sound maxim that “trade follows the flag.” The answer of the
Chancellor of the Exchequer was that in 1835, to the expenditure of
which Mr. Cobden wanted to revert, no adequate provision had been made
for the true wants of the country; and that, since then, many things had
happened to increase expenditure unavoidably. The introduction of steam
into the Navy was an illustration of these changes. Moreover, the
Government had reduced expenditure by about a million and a half
sterling--and that was surely a pledge of their earnestness as financial
reformers.

The Tories put Mr. Herries forward to attack both parties. He blamed
Ministers for encouraging the financial reformers, and denounced Mr.
Cobden for the violence of his speeches out of doors on the subject. The
policy of the Tories was to demand that expenditure should not be
lessened, whilst there was ground for anxiety as to foreign affairs. One
of their arguments was an odd one. It was that, as the revenue was still
maintained in spite of the repeal of vast sums of taxation, there was no
ground for pretending that retrenchment was necessary because the people
felt that taxation was pressing hard on them. They did not seem to see
that this was either an argument in favour of raising revenue without
imposing any taxes at all--which was a _reductio ad absurdum_--or an
argument to show that reductions of taxation still left Government with
enough money in hand to defend the interests of the country, which was
virtually an admission that Mr. Cobden’s plan, if tried, could do no
harm. The Free Traders made a bid for the rural vote by arguing that, if
the landed interest wanted the relief which the Protectionists promised
them, they ought to vote for the reduction in expenditure, which would
enable Parliament to grant that relief. Mr. Cobden’s first scheme of
Financial Reform was rejected by a vote of 275 to 78. But this did not
allay the uneasiness of the public, who began to fret over the
extraordinary delay that took place in the production of the Budget. It
was not till the 29th of June that Sir Charles Wood made his financial
statement to the House. It was not a cheering one. The expenditure,
which was £53,287,110, had exceeded the Ministerial estimate by
£1,219,379, and it exceeded the revenue of the year by £269,378. Of
course, by excluding unexpected outlays on Irish distress, Canadian
emigration, &c., a more favourable state of accounts could be shown;
but, as the excluded money had been spent, there was really no reason
for ignoring it. For the coming year his estimated expenditure, he said,
would be £52,157,696, and his estimated receipts would yield, he hoped,
a surplus over that of £94,304. Sir Charles Wood’s strongest points were
that every effort would be made to keep current expenditure within
current income, and that instead of using small surpluses to remit small
sums of taxation, they would be kept as the nucleus of large surpluses,
for the reduction of large amounts of taxation. The Radicals and
Financial Reformers were not satisfied with Sir Charles Wood’s long list
of objectionable taxes that had been removed. In spite of all that,
expenditure increased--and what was worse, there was a steady increase
in permanent burdens on the revenue, in the shape of charges for the
Public Debt. Mr. Hume demanded that Excise be done away with, and that
the example of Sir James Graham, who reduced the expenses of the
Admiralty by £1,200,000, be followed. Mr. Milner Gibson attacked the
paper duty, the newspaper stamp duty, and the tax on advertisements, as
taxes on knowledge; and he cited the petition of the Messrs. Chambers
of Edinburgh, who declared that the paper duty had stopped the
continuance of a work for the humbler classes which they were bringing
out, and of which there had been a sale of 80,000 copies. Everybody
wanted some special duty repealed, either that on hops, bricks, soap,
beer, malt, tea, or timber. The Budget was felt to be unsatisfactory,
for, as Mr. Cobden said, it made the two ends barely meet. At the close
of the Session (20th of July) Mr. Herries supplemented this discussion
by starting another question--that of raising some portion of the
supplies of the State by a fixed duty on corn. The Protectionists argued
that Sir Charles Wood’s estimates were too sanguine, and that more taxes
must be imposed on the people, unless a small duty were put on foreign
corn. This was not to be a protective duty, but one merely for revenue
purposes, and as such surely it was justifiable. It would be only a tax
on food in name; in fact, the defence of the proposal was like the Irish
vagrant’s apology for the existence of her baby--“Please, sir, it’s only
a very little one.” Of course the Free Traders sprang upon Mr. Herries
with great glee. The Tories were going round the country promising the
farmers Protection. But when they came to the House of Commons all they
ventured to ask for was a small fixed duty on corn, which was to be
levied not for protective but for revenue purposes. The position was an
awkward one for Mr. Herries. Either his small fixed duty did or did not
raise the price of corn. If it did, he was deceiving the House of
Commons. If it did not, he was deceiving his clients among the farmers.
His move was obviously one for putting heart into a desponding faction.

It has been said that Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright had come to the
conclusion that, side by side with the agitation for retrenchment, there
should be pressed forward that for Parliamentary Reform. Accordingly,
Mr. Hume introduced his motion for Parliamentary Reform in the House of
Commons on the 4th of June, demanding Household Suffrage, Vote by
Ballot, Triennial Parliaments, and something approaching to equal
electoral districts. The opposition of the Whigs, who argued that reform
was unnecessary because many good measures had been passed by
Parliament, and that to extend the franchise would endanger the
Monarchy, induced the House to reject the motion by a vote of 268 to 82.

But a topic far more interesting to the Queen, whose speciality is
Foreign Policy, was brought under the notice of the House of Commons by
Mr. Cobden a few days after Mr. Hume’s motion was disposed of. He
suggested a plan whereby wars might cease, and civilised nations might
compose their quarrels by Arbitration. On the 12th of June Cobden moved
an Address to the Crown, praying that Foreign Powers might be invited to
concur in treaties binding them to accept Arbitration in settling their
disputes with each other. The Government did not openly resist the
motion. They got rid of it by putting up Lord Palmerston to move the
“previous question;” but the tone of the debate showed that, though the
House was dubious about the practicability of Mr. Cobden’s plan, it had
been profoundly impressed with his reasoning.

[Illustration: ROYAL PALACE, NAPLES.]

The Whigs, embarrassed by the refusal of Jewish Members to take the
Parliamentary Oath, next introduced a Bill expunging from the form of
the oath the words “on the true faith of a Christian.” The only bitter
opponents of the measure were the Tories, for most of the Peelites, like
Mr. Gladstone, supported it. The Commons passed the measure readily
enough; but in the House of Lords the hostility of the Episcopal Bench
was fatal to it. Another measure was sacrificed to the ecclesiasticism
which was then prevalent in Parliament. That was the Bill to legalise
marriage with a Deceased Wife’s Sister, which Mr. Stuart Wortley
introduced on the 3rd of May, and the most vehement opponents of which
were Mr. Goulburn, Mr. Gladstone, and Sir R. Inglis. Mr. Wortley carried
the Second Reading without much difficulty; but when Mr. Goulburn
threatened to use the forms of the House to obstruct the further
progress of the measure, it was withdrawn.

Foreign affairs originated some acrimonious debates in both Houses
during the Session. On the 6th of March a question was put by Lord
Stanley to

[Illustration: LADY PALMERSTON.]

Lord Lansdowne asking if it were true that a Government contractor had
been allowed to withdraw arms from a Government store, and supply them
to the insurgents in Sicily. Lord Lansdowne could not deny that the
allegation was true; and the incident not only caused a great deal of
excitement in the country, but it was one that gave much pain to the
Queen, who naturally saw in it the reckless hand of Lord Palmerston. The
secret history of the affair was this: Mr. Delane, the editor of the
_Times_, happened to meet a Mr. Hood--an Army contractor--accidentally.
In conversation Mr. Hood incidently mentioned to Mr. Delane that when
certain Sicilian agents applied to him for stores, he explained that he
had none on hand, having supplied all he possessed to the Government.
But he observed that if he could persuade the Government to let him have
these back, he would hand them over to the Sicilian insurrectionary
agents, replacing the Government stores in due time. The contractor
applied to the Ordnance Department, stating that his application had a
political, as well as a commercial, object. The Department, therefore,
referred the matter to Lord Palmerston, who sanctioned the transaction.
The _Times_ immediately published this story, and its attacks on Lord
Palmerston for having insulted Austria, and connived at insurrection in
Sicily, annoyed the Queen so seriously that Lord John Russell compelled
Lord Palmerston to apologise to the King of Naples, for whom he
cherished a supreme contempt. But when the scandal grew clamant, Mr.
Bankes opened up an attack in the House of Commons on Lord Palmerston.
He, however, mixed up with it a great deal of general criticism on the
policy of the Government in Italy, and gave Lord Palmerston an
opportunity of winning an easy victory by posing as a friend of freedom,
and a martyr to the doctrine of nationalities. Lord Palmerston, writes
Mr. Greville, delivered, in reply to his antagonist, “a slashing,
impudent speech, full of sarcasm, jokes, and claptrap, the whole
eminently successful. He quizzed Bankes unmercifully, he expressed
ultra-Liberal sentiments to please the Radicals, and he gathered shouts,
laughter, and applause as he dashed and rattled along.”

On the 22nd of March Lord Aberdeen headed another abortive attack on the
Foreign Policy of the Government. He complained that whereas Lord
Palmerston had been active in menacing Austria if she meddled with
Sardinia, he had spoken smooth things to Sardinia--never going further
than warning her that if she broke existing treaties, she would be doing
a dangerous thing. Aberdeen’s attack was regarded as a semi-official
expression of the ideas of the Sovereign on Lord Palmerston’s policy;
and it came to this, that Palmerston had made England an object of
aversion in every capital in Europe, by interfering between Governments
and their subjects, in a manner which brought on him the animosity of
both. He had been arrogant to the despots, and, whilst he had encouraged
the rebels, he had tamely abandoned them, whenever it became irksome to
defend them. In this debate the Foreign Office was convicted of having
suppressed an important despatch relating to Austro-Sardinian affairs in
the papers laid before Parliament. The truth is that the Cabinet did not
know what was and what was not included in the papers that Lord
Palmerston chose to publish; and Lord Palmerston sometimes did not even
give his colleagues enough information to enable them to answer
questions. One example of this is worth recording, because it directly
affected the Queen. In May, Lord Lansdowne, in reply to a question of
Lord Beaumont, told the House of Lords that “no communication whatever
had been made by the Austrian Government to ours relative to their
intervention in Italy.” But Collosedo, the Austrian Minister, had five
days before that gone to Lord Palmerston and communicated to him, by
order of the Austrian Government, their objects in interfering in Italy.
Palmerston kept his colleagues in utter ignorance of this interview; and
when the truth leaked out, Lord Lansdowne had to set himself right the
best way he could. As for Palmerston, when he was challenged with
deceiving his colleagues, and suppressing the fact that this Austrian
communication had been made to him, he replied impudently that “he had
quite forgotten it.” His needlessly violent anti-Austrian policy,
coupled with delinquencies of this kind, was intensely annoying to the
Queen. Writing under the date of June 3rd, Mr. Greville, in his Journal,
says, “The Duke of Bedford told me a few days ago that the Queen had
been again remonstrating about Palmerston more strongly than ever. This
was in reference to the suppressed Austrian despatch which made such a
noise. She then sent for Lord John Russell, and told him she could not
stand it any longer, and he must make some arrangements to get rid of
Lord Palmerston. This communication was just as fruitless as all her
preceding ones. I don’t know what Lord John said--he certainly did not
pacify her; but, as usual, there it ended. But the consequences of her
not being able to get any satisfaction from her Minister have been that
she has poured her feelings and her wrongs into the more sympathetic
ears of her late Ministers, and I believe that the Queen has told Peel
everything--all her own feelings and wishes, and all that passes on the
subject.”

In these circumstances an anti-Palmerstonian cabal was naturally formed.
Lord Aberdeen, a devoted friend of the Queen, attempted to organise a
movement for driving Palmerston from office; but the great obstacle was
Peel. Nothing could induce him to upset the Ministry which was pledged
to procure a fair trial for Free Trade. The Court Party, however,
suggested that, if censured, Palmerston might resign and his colleagues
stay in; or that they might all resign, and then, when it was shown that
no other Government could be formed, and that the Peelites could render
the formation of another Ministry impossible, Lord John Russell and his
colleagues might come back to power, without Lord Palmerston. The scheme
failed; but, as Mr. Greville says, the curious thing to note about it is
“the _carte du pays_ it exhibits,” and the remarkable and most improper
position which Palmerston occupied _vis-à-vis_ the Queen and his own
colleagues. “I know not,” writes Mr. Greville, “where to look for a
parallel to such a mass of anomalies--the Queen turning from her own
Prime Minister to confide in the one who was supplanted by him; a
Minister talking over quietly and confidentially with an outsider by
what circumstances and what agency his colleague, the Minister for
Foreign Affairs, might be excluded from the Government; the Queen
abhorring her Minister, and unable to rid herself of him; John Russell,
fascinated and subjugated by the ascendency of Palmerston, submitting to
everything from him, and supporting him right and wrong, the others not
concealing from those they are in the habit of confiding in their
disapprobation of the conduct and policy of their colleague, while they
are all the time supporting the latter and excusing the former, and
putting themselves under the obligation of identifying themselves with
his proceedings, and standing or falling with them.”[2]

[Illustration: SIR CHARLES NAPIER.]

Ultimately, however, a confederacy was formed between Lords Aberdeen,
Stanley, and Brougham to oust Lord Palmerston during the last days of
the Session, and the Queen, like every other prudent politician in the
country, who had been alarmed by Palmerston’s restlessness, rejoiced in
the prospect of getting rid of him. Unfortunately, the only Peer of the
three who was in earnest in this business was Lord Aberdeen; and yet,
when the 20th of July, the day for the attack, drew nigh, it was certain
that the Government would be defeated. Palmerston then played his trump
card. Lady Palmerston wrote a letter to Brougham, who was to lead the
attack, conveying to him some mysterious threat, and he promptly
betrayed his associates. “He made a miserable speech,” writes Mr.
Greville, “which enraged his colleagues and all the opponents of the
Government, who swore

[Illustration: THE BATTLE OF GUJERAT.]

(and it was true) that he had sold them.” Brougham’s speech, however,
contained one good point which deserved to live. It was in it that he
condemned the interference, not only of our regular diplomatic body in
the affairs of the Mediterranean Powers, but also the interference of
“that mongrel sort of monster--half nautical, half political--diplomatic
vice-admirals, speculative ship-captains, observers of rebellion, and
sympathisers therewith.” The Government were in a minority in the House,
but they contrived to get a majority of twelve by proxies, in obtaining
which Lady Palmerston had displayed marvellous address. Thus was the
great game of faction played at the expense of the people in the early
years of the Queen’s reign. Not that the people cared much about the
matter, for it was only those who were behind the scenes who could
fairly appreciate what Lord Palmerston’s spirited policy really meant.
It was Radical, but it was reckless; and not only the Queen, but every
well-informed statesman--including Liberals like Mr. Cobden and Mr.
Bright--simply lived in daily terror, lest the Foreign Secretary might
suddenly involve the country in a wanton and purposeless European war.

Another important debate was raised by Lord Beaumont, on the 14th of
May, on French intervention in Rome. The States of the Church had long
been preparing for a revolt against Papal misgovernment. Pius IX.
therefore determined to modify the policy of his predecessors, and a
hapless scheme for satisfying the democracy, by appointing lay
councillors to work with or check a priestly government was tried--the
Pope refusing to bate one jot or tittle of his temporal authority. The
lay councillors could only meet and debate. They could not initiate
reforms. No sooner had this constitution been granted than the
revolution swept over Italy, and the Romans demanded the same
concessions as had been extorted by the Neapolitans. Concessions were
given with the intention that they should be withdrawn. Rossi--once
French ambassador at Rome--was made Prime Minister, and to extricate the
country from financial embarrassment, he proposed to mortgage the
property of the Church. He was, however, assassinated when entering the
Capitol; and then the Cardinals began to retract the concessions which
had been made to Liberalism. The people rose, insisting that the Pope
should protect the Constitution, and assuring him of their fidelity. He
then fled to Gaeta. Attempts to reconcile the Pontiff and his people
failed. The Roman Republic was proclaimed, and peace established, when
suddenly France interfered to restore his Holiness. It was to prevent
France from having a pretext for interfering in Italy that Lord Minto’s
mission was undertaken, and thus another failure had to be debited to
Lord Palmerston’s foreign policy. Naturally Lords Aberdeen and Brougham
taunted the Government with the failure of the Minto mission. But taunts
were powerless to extort from Ministers a statement of their relation to
the French expedition. In the House of Commons, however, those who
objected to French interference with the Roman people succeeded in
obtaining from Lord Palmerston an expression of disapproval of the
course which France had taken; but that was all.

Far and away the most important foreign debate of the Session was that
which Mr. Osborne raised on the Austro-Hungarian question in July.
Hungary had been crushed by the aid which Russia, unrebuked or
unrestrained by the shadow of a protest from Palmerston, had given her
Austrian masters; and the Liberal Party, always jealous of Austria as
the representative of Absolutist ideas, were wrathful accordingly. But
the discussion had no practical result. It was merely marked by a
declaration from Lord Palmerston, which came too late to be useful, to
the effect that the heart and soul of the country were enlisted on the
side of Hungary.

For Englishmen no debate was graver than the one on the state of the
nation, which Mr. Disraeli raised at the end of the Session. He
attributed the distress in the country to Free Trade, and he attacked
every branch of Ministerial policy. But the weak point of his brilliant
harangue was that it meant nothing, for not only was he unable to take
over the Government himself, but he had no practical proposal to make,
save his insinuated suggestion to restore Protection. Sir Robert Peel’s
speech, however, carried the House in favour of the Government. It was a
complete vindication of his fiscal policy, and its conclusion was
memorable, because in it he traced our immunity from revolutionary
excesses to his abandonment of taxes on food in 1846.

Early in the year the Queen was disturbed by evil tidings from India.
Hard fighting was reported from the banks of the Chenab. The Sikhs, it
was true, were in retreat; but our victory was a barren one, as we
captured neither prisoners, guns, nor standards, and sacrificed two of
our Generals (Cureton and Havelock), who fell at the head of their
regiments. In losing Cureton, her Majesty lost the finest cavalry
officer in her service. The fact was that, though we had conquered, we
had not subdued the Sikhs at the end of our first war with them. In
April, 1848, a Sikh chief murdered two British officers at Multan. This
was followed by a general outbreak, which was met on the whole
successfully by the desperate efforts of Lieutenant Edwardes and a mere
handful of men. Multan was besieged in June, 1848; but 5,000 of our Sikh
auxiliaries deserted to the enemy, and our army had to retreat. We had
not enough troops in the Punjab to control the rising, and our
auxiliaries under the Maharajah were not trustworthy. On the other hand,
the rebel chief Shere Sing, at the beginning of 1849, had 40,000 men
under his orders, and once again British supremacy in India was
trembling in the balance. On the 5th of March, however, still worse news
came to London. Lord Gough, with inconceivable recklessness, had, on the
14th of January, attacked the enemy in a strong position at
Chillianwalla with a small British force worn out by fatigue. The
conditions of the combat ensured disaster. Our troops, it is true, took
the Sikh positions, but during

[Illustration: THE BRITISH TROOPS ENTERING MULTAN.]

the night had to abandon them. The loss of life on our side was
enormous, and Lord Gough, though he fought like a hero in the thickest
of the _mêlée_, was not to be found at a critical moment to give orders.
The news of this disaster was received with universal indignation. The
Government attempted to allay public feeling by appointing Sir William
Gomm to succeed Lord Gough; but as Sir William was believed to be
equally incompetent, a demand for Sir Charles Napier’s appointment
became clamant. “We dined,” writes Lord Malmesbury, in his Diary on the
4th of March, “with the Colchesters, and were introduced to Sir Charles
Napier. He is a little

[Illustration: SIR HARRY SMITH.]

man, with grey hair brushed back from his face, with an immense hooked,
pointed nose, small eyes, and wears spectacles, very like the
conventional face of a Jew. He is appointed to retrieve our affairs in
India, and when the Duke of Wellington named him to the post he at first
hesitated, until the Duke told him if he did not go he would go
himself.”[3] Why did Napier hesitate? Because, it seems, the Directors
of the East India Company not only objected to his appointment, but
threatened to prevent him from having a seat on the Council, an insult
which Napier could hardly brook. “You have no idea of the difficulties
I have had in dealing with these men,” said Sir John Cam Hobhouse, then
President of the Indian Board of Control, to Mr. Greville. “I have
brought the Government, the Duke of Wellington, _and the Queen_ all to
bear upon them, and all in vain.” Mr. Greville advised Hobhouse to bring
another power--that of the House of Commons--to bear on the Company. In
other words, he advised the Government to go down boldly and inform
Parliament that they had appointed Napier, and if the Directors of the
Company refused to pay his salary as a Member of Council, to ask the
House to vote it. The Cabinet appointed Napier, and the Directors
acquiesced, fearing to face the responsibility of thwarting the
Government in doing what the Queen and the country desired.

But before Gough could be recalled, he redeemed the disaster of
Chillianwalla at Gujerat. The news of this successful battle, which was
fought on the 21st of February, reached the Queen on the 1st of April.
It meant that the crisis in India was over, and it lifted from her mind
the burden of a supreme anxiety. Multan, too, had fallen, and finally
the East India Company, admitting at last that it was impossible to
protect their frontier from attack, annexed the Punjab on the 29th of
March, 1849, thus closing the history of the Sikhs as an independent
nation. England had found in them the most fearless and formidable of
enemies. Since the annexation of their country, they have been the
staunchest and the most loyal of the Queen’s Indian subjects.

One serious colonial dispute must be noticed, for it led to an early
experiment in “boycotting.” Lord Grey, on the 4th of September, 1848, by
an Order in Council, had turned the Cape of Good Hope into a convict
settlement. The colonists resented this act with the hottest
indignation. Angry meetings were held at Cape Town; and the Governor,
Sir Harry Smith, was violently blamed because he refused to take on
himself the responsibility of suspending the “injurious and degrading
measure.” When the first convict ship, the _Neptune_, arrived in Simon’s
Bay on the 19th of September, the church bells in Cape Town were tolled
in half-minute time. The Municipality demanded that the vessel be sent
back. The populace, in mass meetings, adopted what they called “the
Pledge”--an obligation to “drop connection with any person who may
assist convicted felons.” In fact, the process which in Ireland has
recently been termed “boycotting” was resorted to, and supplies were
refused to the army, navy, and all Government establishments. The law
was impotent in face of such opposition, and very soon the Governor, Sir
Harry Smith, was compelled to bake his own bread even in his own house.
The colonists finally triumphed. The Order in Council was withdrawn, so
far as it referred to the Cape, and the _Neptune_ left, without having
landed a single convict. The episode is one of the earliest instances on
record of the successful application of “boycotting” to defeat an
unpopular policy.




CHAPTER XXII.

FAMILY CARES AND ROYAL DUTIES.

     Education of the Prince of Wales--Selection of Mr. Birch as
     Tutor--The Queen’s Jealousy of her Parental Authority--Her Letter
     to Melbourne on the Management of her Nursery--Her Ideas on
     Education--Prince Albert’s Plans for the Education of the Prince of
     Wales--Stockmar’s Advice--The Visit to Ireland--The Queen at
     Waterford--“Rebel Cork” _en fête_--The Visit to Dublin--Viceregal
     Festivities--The Visit to the National Model Schools--Shiel’s
     Speech--The Queen and the Duke of Leinster--Farewell at
     Kingstown--The Queen Dips the Royal Ensign--Loyal Ulster--The Visit
     to the Linen Hall--Lord Clarendon on the Queen’s Visit--A Cruise on
     the Clyde--Home in Balmoral--The Queen’s “Bothie”--The Queen’s
     University of Ireland--First Plans for the Great
     Exhibition--Opening of the London Coal Exchange--The Queen’s
     Barge--Death of Queen Adelaide.


In April, 1849, Prince Albert is found writing a letter to the Dowager
Duchess of Gotha announcing a very important event in the Queen’s
family. “The children,” he says, “grow more than well. Bertie (the
Prince of Wales) will be given over in a few weeks into the hands of a
tutor, whom we have found in a Mr. Birch, a young, good-looking, amiable
man.” Mr. Birch, subsequently Rector of Prestwich, near Manchester, was
eminently qualified for the grave and delicate duty for which the Queen
selected him. He had taken high honours at Cambridge, and had been not
only Captain of the School, but had also served as an under-master at
Eton. Yet Mr. Birch can hardly be credited with the Scheme of Education
adopted in the Royal Family. That had been arranged by the Queen
herself, in consultation with her consort and Baron Stockmar. Her fixed
idea was that the heart as well as the head must be trained, and that
not only must the education of her children be truly moral, but it must
be essentially English. She resolved to discover the kind of tutor whom
she could trust, and then, having found him, to trust him implicitly.

The Queen, it may here be said, has ever set an example to women of
exalted rank and station by reason of the undeviating support she has
given to those who undertook the education of her children. But in doing
this her Majesty has been most jealous in asserting her parental rights,
and punctilious in recognising the high responsibilities which they
involve. As far back as 1842, in a very pretty letter to Lord Melbourne,
she asked him for advice about the reorganisation of her nursery, and a
question came up as to the choice of the lady who should superintend it.
The Queen, accepting the fact that her public duties prevented her from
personally managing the education of her family as completely as she
might have wished, fully admitted that it was necessary to appoint a
lady of high rank and culture for that purpose. But then arose the
difficulty of satisfying her Majesty’s desire to retain in her own hands
the completest headship of her family. A governess of high rank really
competent to do the work as the Queen meant that it should be done

[Illustration: VICTORIA CASTLE, KILLINEY--BRAY HEAD IN THE DISTANCE.]

might choose to consider herself as an official responsible to the
country first, and to the parents of the Royal children afterwards.
Against such an idea the Queen most resolutely set her face. “I feel,”
her Majesty writes, on behalf of herself and her husband, that “she (the
Royal governess) ought to be responsible only to _us_, and _we_ to the
country and nation.”[4] It was in pursuance of this idea that her
Majesty made great sacrifices to keep her children as closely as
possible in contact with her. Many curious memoranda from her pen exist,
and through them all there runs the same thought--simplicity and
domesticity must be the leading characteristics of the training of the
Royal family. For example, whenever it was possible, the Queen insisted
on retaining in her own hands the _religious_ education of her family,
and it is now known that she did this from a dread lest their minds
might at the most plastic period of life receive a sectarian bias. High
Anglicanism was then militant, and many intrigues were set on foot by
its professors to effect a lodgment in the Palace. The education of the
Princess Royal, afterwards Princess Imperial of Germany, was almost
entirely supervised and directed by the Queen herself, and with results
much appreciated in Germany, where, through her tact, culture, high
character, and strong common sense, her Imperial Highness has won for
herself a position of unique political and social influence. The
education of the Prince of Wales, however, now came more directly under
the hands of Prince Albert; and one point of the highest importance to
decide was whether it should be conservative or

[Illustration: ROYAL VISIT TO IRELAND: THE QUEEN LEAVING KINGSTOWN.]

liberal in its character. Prince Albert decided that it must be liberal
in this sense, that it should prepare the Heir Apparent for taking his
position in a changeful state of society, whose institutions were, to a
great extent, in a transition stage. Every effort was to be made to
prevent him from getting into his mind a notion that existing
institutions were _sacrosanct_, and that resistance to all change was a
sacred and patriotic duty. The history of George III. had evidently not
been studied in vain. “The proper duty of Sovereigns in this country,”
wrote Stockmar to Prince Albert, “is not to take the lead in change, but
to act as a balance-wheel on the movements of the social body.” Above
all, it was determined that the education of the young Prince must be at
bottom English, and not foreign. Furnished with these principles to
guide him, and with general instructions to make the basis of the young
Prince’s training as broad and comprehensive as possible--to make it
scientific as well as classical--Mr. Birch essayed his arduous task,
aided not a little by shrewd advice from Bishop Wilberforce and Sir
James Clark, the Queen’s favourite physician.

The sweetest days of summer were clouded for the Queen in 1849 by
painful memories of the shock she received on the 19th of May. On that
day an Irishman named Hamilton, with a morbid craving for notoriety,
tried to shoot her when she was driving with her children in her
carriage down Constitution Hill. Her Majesty, with great tact, engaged
the attention of her little ones by conversation, and with a sign
directed her coachman to drive on as if nothing had happened, so that
her husband, who was riding in advance, knew nothing of the affair--not
even of the attempt of the mob to “lynch” Hamilton. His pistol was
loaded with blank cartridge, but in spite of that he was sentenced to
seven years’ transportation.

It has been said that Ireland, exhausted by the abortive rebellion of
1848, had been settling down into sullen tranquillity. There were many
signs visible of a better feeling towards the Government in the country.
The Queen accordingly suggested that it might be well to take advantage
of the improving condition of things, and pay a Royal visit to Ireland.
Her Majesty, however, primarily desired that the Irish people should
benefit, and not be burdened, by the presence of Royalty. She therefore
expressed a wish that the visit should not be made in such a form as to
put the country, which had suffered so much from distress, to any great
expense. Prince Albert, ever practical, suggested that in that case the
best way of carrying out the Queen’s idea was to make this visit a
simple yachting cruise. The Queen, he said, might call at the ports of
Cork, Waterford, Wexford, Dublin, and Belfast on her annual journey to
the North of Scotland, and perchance touch at Glasgow, thereby
compensating it for the loss of the Royal visit in 1847. Lord Clarendon
fully endorsed the views of the Queen and her husband in a letter to
Lord John Russell. “Everything,” he wrote, “tends to secure for the
Queen an enthusiastic reception, and the one drawback, which is the
general distress of all classes, has its advantage, for it will enable
the Queen to do what is kind and considerate to those who are
suffering.”

On the 27th of June the official intimation that the Queen was to visit
Ireland was received by the Irish people with every manifestation of
delight. If there were some who, rebels at heart, sympathised little
with the tone of popular feeling, they concealed their aversion. The sex
of the Sovereign indeed ensured her a courteous reception, from a nation
proud of its gallantry, and justly renowned for the warmth of its
hospitality. It was then finally decided that the visit should be made
when Parliament rose. On the 27th of August the Queen, Prince Albert,
and their four eldest children accordingly embarked for Ireland. “It is
done!” writes the amiable and somewhat effusive Lady Lyttelton, who
watched the squadron from the windows of Osborne, till it faded from her
eyes. “England’s fate is afloat ... and _we_ are left lamenting.” There
was, however, no serious cause for anxiety. When the Royal squadron
steamed into the Cove of Cork, in the golden light of a summer sunset,
the air was soon gleaming with rockets, and bonfires, kindled by the
excitable and kindly peasantry, blazed on every height in welcome of
their Queen. The next morning, the 3rd of August, brought a happy omen.
The day was dull and grey, but no sooner did the Queen set her foot on
land at the Cove--since called Queenstown in honour of the event--than a
sudden sunburst lit up the scene with dazzling radiance. The Royal party
in the _Fairy_ steamed up “the pleasant waters of the river Lee,” and
all along the route crowds of loyal people lined the banks, cheering the
Queen and her family as she passed along. In Cork itself--“rebel
Cork”--there was no sign of disaffection. Nothing could be warmer or
more cordial than the welcome accorded to her Majesty, who was touched
by the hearty gaiety and good humour of her excitable hosts. A true
kindly Celtic welcome, such as any Sovereign might have envied, made her
experiences of Cork sunny memories for many long years afterwards. The
extreme beauty of the women seems, however, to have produced an equally
deep impression on her Majesty, who refers to this point in her diary of
the visit.

On the 4th of August the Royal party proceeded to Waterford, which they
reached in the afternoon. Curiously enough, one of the ships in their
squadron of escort had actually been stationed there two years
previously, to overawe the rebellious people. Now all these dark and
bitter memories seemed to have passed away. Waterford vied with Cork in
its loyal demonstration, and the feeling of regret was universal that
the Royal party did not land and go through the town. Prince Albert and
his two sons, however, steamed up to the city from the anchorage
opposite Duncannon fort, ten miles from the town. Next came the visit to
Dublin--never to be forgotten in the annals of the Irish capital.

It was on the 5th of August, as the sun was going down, that the Royal
squadron reached Kingstown--threading its way with some difficulty
through the craft, gay with joyful bunting, that crowded the sea. The
Queen was greatly struck by the picturesque appearance of the place, and
when she and the Prince landed next morning, amidst a salute from the
men-of-war in the harbour, her reception was a revelation even to those
who had anticipated that she would be lovingly greeted. Never was there
such cheering--especially from the ladies, whose hearts were captivated
by the Royal children. If, said one old lady, the Queen would only
consent to call one of the young princes Patrick, all Ireland would die
for her. The Royal party soon arrived at the Viceregal Lodge, in the
Phœnix Park, and the routefrom Sandymount Station was again lined by
crowds of enthusiastic and loyal sightseers. It was noted that even the
poorest houses were gay with flowers. “It was a most wonderful and
striking spectacle,” says the Queen, in her notes of her visit--“such
masses of human beings, so enthusiastic, so excited, and yet perfect
order maintained.” All that was worth seeing in Dublin was seen, and the
people were charmed with the simple, gracious bearing of her Majesty,
and the ease and freedom with which she went among them. A memorable
visit was made by the Queen to the National Model Schools, where she and
the Prince were introduced by Archbishop Whateley to the venerable
Archbishop Murray, a picturesque and patriarchal Catholic prelate, whose
saintly life and generous liberal ideas had previously attracted the
attention of Prince Albert. His Grace had indeed risked much by
protecting these schools against the attacks of some of the bigots of
his church, and the Queen was powerfully impressed with the excellence
of the system of instruction given at them. Speaking of this interesting
episode in the House of Commons, Richard Lalor Shiel--the last of the
great Irish rhetoricians--said, “Amongst the most remarkable incidents
that occurred when the Queen was in Ireland was her visit to the schools
of the National Board of Education, which took place (by accident, of
course) before she visited the College of the Holy and Undivided
Trinity. It was a fine spectacle to see the consort, so worthy of her,
attended by the representatives of the Presbyterian Church, by the
Protestant Archbishop of Dublin, and by the Catholic Archbishop of
Dublin--with those venerable ecclesiastics at her side, differing in
creed, but united by the common brotherhood of Christianity in the
performance of one of the noblest duties which their common Christianity
prescribed; it was a fine thing to see the Sovereign of a great empire
surrounded by groups of those little children who gazed on her with
affectionate amazement, while she returned their looks with fondness
almost maternal; and, better than all, it was noble and thrilling,
indeed, to see the emotions by which that great lady was moved when her
heart beat with a high and holy aspiration that she might live to see
the benefits of education carried out in their full and perfect
development.” There was a levée, of course, at which four thousand
persons attended to pay their respects to their Sovereign. There was a
brilliant review of the troops in the Phœnix Park, followed by visits to
the Royal Irish Academy, the College of Surgeons, and the Royal Dublin
Society, at whose cattle-shows Prince Albert was a frequent competitor.
His speech, in reply to an Address from the Society, attracted much
attention at the time, on account of his sound advice on the economic
condition of Ireland, and the grateful thanks which he gave to the Irish
people for their marks of warm attachment to the Queen and her family.
The Prince was one of the first rural economists to impress on the
chiefs of the Society the necessity for anticipating impending changes
in agriculture. He advised them to stimulate to the utmost
stock-breeding in Ireland.

[Illustration: VISIT OF THE QUEEN AND PRINCE ALBERT TO THE LINEN HALL,
BELFAST.]

A visit paid by the Queen to Carton appears to have made a strong
impression on her. Carton is the seat of the Duke of Leinster, and his
delicate attentions to her and her family, and his skill in planning a
pleasant excursion for them, elicits from her pen the remark in her
“Diary” that his Grace was “one of the kindest and best of men.” The
Royal leave-taking at Kingstown was quite an affecting ceremony. The
crowd at the pier was denser than it had ever been within living memory,
and its shouts rent the air. When the Queen heard how her kind hosts
were bidding her Godspeed, she immediately climbed up on the paddle-box
and stood waving her handkerchief in token of her appreciation of their
loyalty. She directed the ship’s engines to be slowed, so that the
vessel might glide slowly past the pier. By a felicitous inspiration she
ordered the Royal Standard to be dipped three times, in honour of the
people on the shore, and as a mark of her grateful appreciation of their
affection.

Loyal Ulster was next visited, and, as might have been expected, the
reception of the Queen in this busy hive of industry was exceptionally
effusive, even for Ireland. Belfast was _en fête_ when the Royal
visitors landed, and old folk still speak of the scene on the quay as
marking a red letter day in their lives. Bunting was streaming
everywhere in the air. Dense crowds cheering and shouting, and waving
hats and handkerchiefs, occupied every coign of vantage, and though the
Queen had only four hours to spend in the city, she contrived, under
competent guidance, to see many of the more interesting places and
institutions which illustrate the strong character of the mixed race
whose energy, ability, pertinacity, and industry have made Ulster, with
her unkindly soil and climate, the richest province in Ireland. Ulster
commands the bulk of the linen trade of the world, and, naturally, the
institutions and factories connected with that industry arrested the
Queen’s attention during her flying visit to the commercial capital of
Ireland. An alarming gale detained her the next day in Belfast Lough,
but after it blew over the Royal party steamed away to the Scottish
shore.

The Royal visit to Ireland had two good results. It brought home to the
minds of the Irish people the fact that their country, and their
interests, were of great personal concern to the Queen and her husband.
It demonstrated to the rest of the United Kingdom the fact that the
personal attachment of the Irish people to the Monarchy was as strong as
could be desired, and that if they were rebels at heart it was not the
Queen, but the Viceregal Bureaucracy in Dublin Castle, who had soured
their blood. Everybody who had observed the effect of the Queen’s
progress through Ireland was charmed with the success of the expedition.
“I saw Lord Lansdowne last night,” writes Mr. Greville in his Journal
(14th August), “just returned from Ireland, having had an escape on the
railroad, for the train ran off the rails. He said nothing could surpass
the success of the Queen’s visit in every respect; every circumstance
favourable, no drawbacks or mistakes, all persons and parties pleased,
much owing to the tact of Lord Clarendon, and the care he had bestowed
on all the arrangements and details, which made it all go off so
admirably. The Queen herself was delighted, and appears to have played
her part uncommonly well. Clarendon, of course, was overjoyed at the
complete success of what was his own plan,[5] and satisfied with the
graciousness and attention of the Court to him. In the beginning, and
while the details were in preparation, he was considerably disgusted at
the petty difficulties that were made, but he is satisfied now. Lord
Lansdowne says the departure was quite affecting, and he could not see
it without being moved; and he thinks beyond doubt that this visit will
produce permanent good effects in Ireland.”[6] Clarendon himself was
evidently more than delighted with the effect of the Royal visit. He
informed Sir George Grey that he believed “there was not an Irishman in
Dublin who did not consider that the Queen had paid him a personal
compliment by mounting the paddle-box of her steamer as she was leaving,
and ordering the Royal Standard to be dipped in acknowledgment of the
affectionate adieus which came from the crowds on the shore.”[7] But the
odd thing was that the members of the seditious clubs who had threatened
to create disturbances when the Queen’s visit was first mooted, caught
the prevailing contagion of loyalty, and professed to be among the most
affectionate of her subjects. Still, Clarendon was far too astute a
statesman to imagine that a Royal visit would smooth away all the
difficulties of his position and administration as Viceroy. It could
not, as he acknowledges in another letter to Sir George Grey, “remove
evils which are the growth of ages.” At the same time, it indirectly
helped the country by bringing some money into it. Royalty can always
beneficially direct the expenditure of Fashion, and after the Queen had
by her example shown that there was no danger to be dreaded in visiting
Ireland, rich English tourists began to go over there holiday-making,
greatly to the advantage of the people. But when all this was apparent
to the Queen’s advisers, it seems strange that they did not then deem it
their duty to devise a plan for strengthening the golden link of the
Crown between England and Ireland. If one brief Royal visit produced
such an excellent effect, why did they not propose another? If it were
impossible to provide for the residence for the Queen regularly during a
portion of the year in Ireland, it might have been possible for the
Royal Family to arrange that in their annual visit to Balmoral they
should cruise northwards along the Irish coast, and gladden some of the
Irish towns and provinces with their presence.

Ugly weather followed the Royal squadron from Belfast Lough to the
Clyde, but a singularly brilliant reception at Glasgow compensated the
Queen for any discomforts she may have endured on the voyage. The visit
to “the second city of the Empire,” as its inhabitants love to call it,
was all too brief, for the Festival of St. Grouse had been celebrated
two days before, and Prince Albert was eagerly desirous of pressing on
to the moors. On the evening of the 14th of August--the day of the
reception at Glasgow--he wrote to Stockmar a hurried note, deploring the
“vile passage” on the 12th from Belfast to Loch Ryan, and saying how
much he had been impressed by their procession, through five to six
hundred thousand human beings all cheering wildly in the streets of
Glasgow.

[Illustration: CASTLETON OF BRAEMAR.]

On the 15th of August they were at Balmoral, the Queen recording in her
“Diary” that it seemed like a dream to her after all the excitement of
their tour to be in “our dear Highland home again.” For a brief time her
Majesty was able to enjoy a real holiday. She was not much worried by
politics--which have been, after all, the chief business of her life.
The seclusion, and the dry, bracing air of Balmoral, acted like tonics
on her mind and spirits. In a letter which he wrote to Stockmar on his
thirtieth birthday, which was gaily celebrated in the family circle at
Balmoral, Prince Albert said, “Victoria is happy and cheerful, and
enjoys a love and homage in this country, of which in the summer’s tour
we have received the most striking proofs. The children are well and
grow apace. The Highlands are glorious, and the game abundant.” One of
the pleasantest of surprises was prepared for the Queen a fortnight
after her arrival. It was an excursion to a small mountain cabin, or
“bothie” as the Highlanders call it, to which she had taken a fancy at
Alt-na-Giuthasach. In “Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the
Highlands,” the Queen gives the following description of her
expedition:--“We arrived at our little ‘bothie’ at two o’clock, and were
amazed at the transformation. There are two huts, and to the one in
which we live a wooden addition has been made. We have a charming little
dining-room, sitting-room, bedroom, and dressing-room, all _en suite_;
and there is a little room where Caroline Dawson (the Maid of Honour)
sleeps, one for her maid, and a little pantry. In the other house, which
is only a few yards

[Illustration: AT BALMORAL: A MORNING CALL.]

distant, is the kitchen, where the people generally sit, a small room
where the servants dine, and another, which is a sort of store-room, and
a loft above in which the men sleep. Margaret French (my maid),
Caroline’s maid, Löhlein[8] (Albert’s valet), a cook, Shackle[9] (a
footman), and Macdonald are the only people with us in the house, old
John Gordon and his wife excepted. Our rooms are delightfully papered,
the ceilings as well as walls, and very nicely furnished. We lunched as
soon as we arrived, and at three walked down (about twenty minutes’
walk) to the loch called ‘Muich’; which some say means ‘darkness’ or
‘sorrow.’ Here we found a large boat, into which we all got, and
Macdonald, Duncan, Grant, and Coutts rowed; old John Gordon and two
others going in another boat with the net.”

But neither the Queen nor Prince Albert was of a mind that their Irish
visit should be a fruitless one, and soon their busy brains were
brooding over schemes for Ireland which marked their interest in her
affairs. The “Godless” Colleges, which had been founded by Sir Robert
Peel, were to be opened in October. They were three in number--one in
Belfast, one in Cork, and one in Galway, and their education was to be
secular and untheological. But each College gave facilities for
conducting the spiritual training of the students under “Deans”
appointed by the various sects and churches. The Queen and her husband
had many conversations with men of light and leading of all parties in
Ireland, as to the organisation of these Colleges, and the Prince, as a
practical educationist, soon hit the blot in it. Who was to confer the
degrees? Were the Colleges to do so? Or were they to be united by the
common federating bond of a University, whose officials should guide the
examinations, and form the policy that would best advance, not the
interests of one College, but the interests of all? Her Majesty and the
Prince, when they were in Ireland, came to the conclusion that unless
the Colleges were affiliated under a University, they would soon
degenerate into sectarian seminaries. But, before taking active steps in
the matter, they laid their opinions before Sir Robert Peel. He at once
concurred in the Prince’s views; and Lord Clarendon, who had at first
felt doubtful about their soundness, ultimately accepted them also. Thus
it came to pass that the Queen’s Colleges were federated under the
Queen’s University of Ireland, and that a general desire was manifested
that Prince Albert should be the first Chancellor. This office he
declined to accept, mainly in the interest of the Queen. The Colleges
and the University, he feared, might one day become the battle-grounds
of faction, and it would then be very distressing for her Majesty to
find her husband entangled in the political blood-feuds of Ireland.
Subsequent events proved that these anticipations were correct. Lord
Clarendon ultimately accepted the Chancellorship of the Queen’s
University of Ireland.

At this time, as has been stated, the present Castle at Balmoral was not
built. Balmoral, in fact, was simply the modest family residence of a
Highland laird, and by no means well fitted for the establishment of the
Court. However, the business of the Court and the State could not be
neglected on that account, and Ministers and officials showed great zeal
and consideration in assisting her Majesty to the utmost of their power
in transacting it in such a remote corner of her Empire. In Mr.
Greville’s Journal we have a curious entry (15th September) bearing on
this point, and illustrating the holiday life of the Queen in the
Highlands at that time. “On Monday, the 3rd,” writes Mr. Greville, “on
returning from Hillingdon, I found a summons from John Russell to be at
Balmoral on Wednesday, the 5th, at half-past two, for a Council, to
order a prayer for relief against the cholera.... I started on Wednesday
morning at half-past six, and arrived at Balmoral exactly at half-past
two. It is a beautiful road from Perth to Balmoral, particularly from
Blairgowrie to the Spittal of Glenshee, and thence to Braemar. Much as I
dislike Courts and all that appertains to them, I am glad to have made
this expedition, and to have seen the Queen and Prince in their Highland
retreat, where they certainly appear to great advantage. The place is
very pretty; the house very small. They live there without any state
whatever; they live not merely like private gentlefolks, but like very
small gentlefolks--small house, small rooms, small establishment. There
are no soldiers, and the whole guard of the Sovereign and Royal Family
is a single policeman, who walks about the grounds to keep off
impertinent intruders or improper characters. Their attendants consisted
of Lady Douro and Miss Dawson, Lady and Maid of Honour; George Anson and
Gordon; Birch, the Prince of Wales’s tutor; and Miss Hildyard, the
governess of the children. They live with the greatest simplicity and
ease. The Prince shoots every morning, returns to luncheon, and then
they walk and drive. The Queen is running in and out of the house all
day long, and often goes about alone, walks into cottages, and sits and
chats with the old women. I never before was in society with the Prince
or had any conversation with him. On Thursday morning John Russell and I
were sitting together after breakfast, when he came in and sat down with
us, and we conversed for about three-quarters of an hour. I was greatly
struck with him. I saw at once (what I had always heard) that he is very
intelligent and highly cultivated; and, moreover, that he has a
thoughtful mind, and thinks of subjects worth thinking about. He seemed
very much at his ease, very gay, pleasant, and without the least
stiffness or air of dignity. After luncheon we went to the Highland
gathering at Braemar--the Queen, the Prince, four children, and two
ladies in one pony-carriage, John Russell, Mr. Birch, Miss Hildyard,
and I in another; Anson and Gordon on the box; one groom, no more. The
gathering was at the old castle at Braemar, and a pretty sight enough.
We returned as we came, and then everybody strolled about till dinner.
We were only nine people, and it was all very easy and really
agreeable--the Queen in very good humour, and talkative; the Prince
still more so, and talking very well; no form, and everybody seemed at
their ease. In the evening we withdrew to the only room there is besides
the dining-room, which serves for billiards, library (hardly any books
in it), and drawing-room. The Queen and Prince and her ladies, and
Gordon, soon went back to the dining-room, where they had a Highland
dancing-master, who gave them lessons in reels. We (John Russell and I)
were not admitted to this exercise, so we played at billiards. In
process of time they came back, when there was a little talk, and soon
after they went to bed.”[10]

[Illustration: THE ROYAL BARGE.]

[Illustration: OPENING OF THE LONDON COAL EXCHANGE--ARRIVAL OF THE ROYAL
PROCESSION AT THE CUSTOM-HOUSE QUAY. (_See p. 418._)]

Shortly before the holiday at Balmoral ended, the Queen and Prince
Albert were a little mortified to find that one of their projects, or
rather one of the Prince’s projects, was going awry. This was the
preliminary movement which was intended to lead up to the organisation
of a great International Industrial Exhibition. The idea of holding such
an exhibition had occurred to the Prince in July, 1849. It seems to have
been suggested to him by the great Frankfort Fairs of the sixteenth
century. His Royal Highness had also noticed that one or two small
pioneer exhibitions held by the Society of Arts, had produced good
effects in improving the quality of English products. He argued that an
exhibition on an international scale would produce still greater
effects, not only on our manufactures, but on those of the world. It
would be a tournament of Peace, in which the Captains of Industry would
be the competitors in the lists.

On the 30th of July, 1849, the Prince held a conference at Buckingham
Palace with four confidential persons--Mr. Henry Cole, Mr. Francis
Fuller, Mr. Scott Russell, and Mr. Thomas Cubitt, and they resolved to
hold the exhibition if possible, not in the quadrangle of Somerset
House, as the Government had suggested, but in Hyde Park itself. They
also arranged to take steps to test the feeling of the industrial
districts on the subject before going further. But in all this
preliminary work of “sounding” influential persons, the Prince had given
peremptory orders that his name should not be publicly mentioned.
Unfortunately, Mr. Cole, with Hibernian effusiveness, had been tempted
to disobey these orders at a meeting in Dublin, much to the annoyance of
the Queen and her husband. “Praising me at meetings,” wrote his Royal
Highness to Colonel Phipps, “looks as if I were to be advertised and
used as a means of drawing a full house, &c.”--and if there was anything
which was unspeakably offensive to the Queen, it was the use of her or
her husband’s name for purposes of puffery.

A few days after this disagreeable little episode (27th September) the
Queen and her family left Balmoral for Osborne. They broke their journey
at Howick, where they spent a night with Lord Grey, and in a few days
after that they received tidings which filled their hearts with the
utmost sorrow. The ever-faithful Anson, the Prince’s first Secretary,
died, and the Queen’s household was filled with the deepest regret. The
Queen herself wrote a touching letter to King Leopold, which shows how
her heart bled for the widow of her most zealous servant; and Lady
Lyttelton, writing on the 9th of November, says: “Every face shows how
much has been felt; the Prince and Queen in floods of tears, and quite
shut up.” All through the record of the Queen’s life, indeed, we find
evidence of the cordial relations which bound her to those who served
her. Their zeal indeed has been great, but it has been more than
equalled by her sympathetic appreciation of it.

Colonel Phipps succeeded Mr. Anson as Privy Purse, and Colonel
(afterwards General) Grey as the Prince’s Secretary.

When the gloom of winter began to spread over London, the loyal citizens
were sadly distressed to learn that a projected Royal visit to the city
would be robbed of more than half its _éclat_. The Queen had promised to
come and open the New Coal Exchange on the 30th of October. But alas,
her Majesty had sickened with the chicken-pox, and the ceremony was
performed by Prince Albert alone. Yet the Londoners were not without
compensation. This visit to the City was memorable because of the first
public appearance in a pageant of State, of the Prince of Wales, and the
Princess Royal. The spectacle revived picturesque memories of “the
spacious times of Great Elizabeth,” for the Royal party proceeded to
London by the silent highway of the river. Twenty-seven brawny watermen
rowed the Queen’s Barge from Westminster Stairs to the City, and,
strange to say, for once the fog and murky atmosphere of London in early
winter cleared away, and the ceremony took place in the sunshine, under
a sky of Italian brilliancy. The crowds covered every possible corner
where human beings could cluster. The long lines of shipping on each
bank of the Pool were bright with bunting, and black with swarming
sightseers. The cheering was overpowering when the fair-haired young
Prince was seen in the barge, and both the Royal children, though they
went through the ordeal quietly and prettily, were obviously a little
frightened and nervous. “The Prince,” wrote Lady Lyttelton to Mrs.
Gladstone, “was perfect in taste and manner, putting the Prince of Wales
forward without affectation, and very dignified and kind himself.” The
procession on the water was gorgeous in the extreme. State liveries were
blazing everywhere. Civic costumes of feudal times kindled many ancient
memories; and the Lord Mayor’s barge, which led the way, was a miracle
of garish splendour. Lady Lyttelton says that what struck her most was
not only the cheering, but the affectionate expression on the faces of
the people when they craned forward to get a glimpse of the little
Prince and Princess. But of one civic speaker and his speech in the
Rotunda her ladyship says it “was most pompous; and he is ridiculous in
voice and manner. And his immense size, and cloak, and wig, and great
voice addressing the Prince of Wales about his being the ‘pledge and
promise of a long race of kings,’ looked quite absurd. Poor Princey did
not seem at all to guess what he meant.” The Queen was rather
sad-hearted at missing this first public reception of her children,
which was the occasion of such an outburst of popular enthusiasm, loyal
huzzas, and joy-bells ringing all over London town, not to mention
thunderous salutations from the Tower guns--“enough,” says Lady
Lyttelton, “to drive one mad.”

On the 2nd of December the Royal home was turned into a house of
mourning. On that day the good Dowager-Queen Adelaide passed away from
among the small but appreciative circle of friends and relatives who
admired and loved her. The Queen’s grief was deep and sincere. “Though
we daily expected this sad event,” writes her Majesty to King Leopold,
“yet it came so suddenly when it did come, as if she had never been ill,
and I can hardly realise the truth now.... She was truly motherly in her
kindness to us and our children, and it always made her happy to be with
us and to see us!”[11]

Queen Adelaide, it may be here noted, was one of the earliest of funeral
reformers. Struck by the wastefulness and the bad taste of funereal
pageants, she left what the Queen calls “the most affecting directions”
for her burial, ordering that it should be conducted with the utmost
simplicity and privacy--the only exceptional arrangement being that she
desired her coffin to be borne by seamen, in homage to the memory of her
husband, William IV., the Sailor-King. A simple-hearted, kindly,
Christian lady, whose hands were ever swift in doing good--such is a
brief abstract of the life and character of the Dowager-Queen Adelaide.

[Illustration: THE CHAMBER OF REPRESENTATIVES, BRUSSELS.]




CHAPTER XXIII.

CLOUDS IN THE EAST AND ELSEWHERE.

     Political Wreckage--Force triumphs over Opinion--The State of
     France--Election of Prince Charles Louis Bonaparte as
     Prince-President--The Sad Plight of Italy--Palmerston’s
     Anti-Austrian Policy--Defeat of Piedmont--The Fall of Venice--Fall
     of the Roman Republic--A Cromwellian Struggle in Prussia--The
     Queen’s Partisanship--Her Prussian Sympathies--The Hungarian
     Refugees in Turkey--A Diplomatic Conflict with Russia--Opening of
     Parliament--Mr. Disraeli and Local Taxation--Parliamentary
     Reform--The Jonahs of the Cabinet--The Dispute with Greece--Don
     Pacifico’s case--Coercion of Greece--Lord Palmerston meekly accepts
     an Insult from Russia--French Intervention--A Diplomatic Conflict
     in France--Recall of the French Ambassador--False Statements in
     Parliament--The Queen’s Indignation--The Don Pacifico Debate--The
     _Civis Romanus sum_ Doctrine--Palmerston’s Victory--The West
     African Slave Trade.


When the year 1850 opened the counter-revolution had been accomplished.
Much political and social wreckage disfigured the Continent, but the
tempest which had produced it was over. What remained was an uneasy
after-swell agitating the restless ocean of discontent. Force had, in
fact, triumphed over opinion, and Europe was at last tranquil.

In France, after Louis Philippe fell, the country was left a prey to
four factions or parties. One demanded an absolute monarchy; another
demanded a parliamentary monarchy; a third demanded a military empire,
based on universal suffrage; a fourth demanded a republic. The partisans
of the republic triumphed in the first instance. But it fell, a victim
to the voracity of its own children. The Government of Lamartine was
poetic and Utopian,

[Illustration: LOUIS KOSSUTH (1850).]

and its experiment of creating national workshops in which the workers
were to be paid by the State, was not only fantastic but fatal. The
State found it had no work to give. It found it had no money to spend in
wages; and the artisans of the national establishments were accordingly
advised to join the army. This disastrous adventure in Socialism was
followed by another insurrection in Paris--in which, by the way, the
Archbishop of Paris and thousands of less eminent persons were slain.
What Prince Bismarck would call the “psychological moment” for the
interposition of a clever adventurer with a suggestion of compromise had
manifestly arrived. Accordingly, the advent of Prince Charles Louis
Bonaparte was hailed with a sense of relief by all parties--wearied to
despair by the futile conflicts of factions. Although M. Grévy vainly
endeavoured by a motion in the Chamber to procure the proscription of
the Prince, his Highness was elected President of the Republic on the
10th of December, 1848, by five and a half million out of seven and a
half million votes. He took the oath to preserve the Republic, without
compunction. But when the year 1850 opened, he was busily plotting for
its destruction, and manufacturing failure for its institutions.

The plight of Italy was a sad one. Austria had successfully met the
attempt to seize her Italian provinces. She had crushed Piedmont so
completely that, in 1849, there was danger lest she might be tempted to
invade that State, and thus provoke the interference of Republican
France. Lord Palmerston accordingly endeavoured to mediate between
Austria and Piedmont. The idea of mediation was chimerical, for Austria,
having made heavy sacrifices to hold her Cisalpine territories, and
having succeeded in doing so by force, could hardly be expected to
accept with equanimity Lord Palmerston’s favourite dogma, that the
Italian provinces of Austria were to her not a source of strength, but
of weakness. Austria repudiated all proposals for a conference of
mediation, unless they were limited to discuss what Piedmont owed her as
an indemnity, and the guarantees which could be given against
Piedmontese turbulence. Diplomacy had well-nigh exhausted its resources
in endeavouring to bring Austria to submit the points at issue to a
Congress at Brussels, when the whole situation was suddenly changed.
Joseph Mazzini and his school, convinced that Austria was checked by
France and England, overthrew the Governments of Florence and Rome,
which were under Austrian tutelage. Revolution headed by a monarch had
failed. Its victory, argued Mazzini, under Republican leadership, would
be a signal triumph for the Republican idea. The success of Mazzini and
his followers led to the formation of a violent anti-Austrian Ministry
in Piedmont.

But again Austria triumphed. Piedmont was crushed at Novara on the 23rd
of March, 1849. Venice was on the eve of surrender, and when the Pope,
who had fled to Gaeta, appealed to the Catholic Powers for aid, Austria
was thus quite free to help him. The prospect of Austria bringing
Central as well as North Italy under her sway alarmed France, and
accordingly the Republican Government in Paris sent an army under
Oudinot, which suppressed the Republican Government at Rome. The Grand
Duke of Tuscany was restored, the revolution in the Sicilies quenched in
blood, and the dream of Italian independence dissipated. Nor was this
the only triumph of Absolutism under Austria. The revolution in Hungary
was suppressed, but not till Russia came to the assistance of Austria.

In Prussia, too, the monarchy, after a Cromwellian struggle with a
factious Parliament, had completely restored its authority, and to
Prussia the smaller German States now began to turn for leadership in
consolidating themselves into a German Empire. Unhappily the King of
Prussia failed to respond to this feeling when Austria was struggling
with the revolution in Italy. At the beginning of 1850 he accordingly
found the feeling in favour of unifying Germany opposed by three great
Powers--France, Russia, and Austria, the last, indeed, claiming, on
behalf of the Archduke John, to be the executive head and heir of the
defunct German Confederation of 1815. By the Constitution of Kremsir,
Austria had consolidated her possessions--German, Magyar, Sclavonic, and
Italian--into one federal State, and, in a sense, she had thereby
withdrawn from the German Confederation. Her policy of obstructing
consolidation in disintegrated Germany was therefore alike ungenerous
and unjust.

Through this maze of difficulty the Queen and Prince Albert steered a
clear course. They were both partisans--one might say strong and zealous
partisans--of Teutonic consolidation under Prussia. Austria, they held,
had played for her own hand, and, by adopting Schwarzenberg’s policy of
consolidating her dominions in purely Austrian interests, she had
abandoned her claim to guide the destinies of the smaller German States,
in purely German interests. But, however strongly the Queen felt on this
point, her influence was used to moderate the extravagant anti-Austrian
antipathies of Lord Palmerston, and it largely contributed to keep the
country out of war. At last, however, a cloud rose in the East which
threatened us with calamity.

When Austria, by summoning to her aid the armed hordes of Russia,
stamped out the movement for Hungarian independence, several Hungarian
and Polish patriots--Kossuth, Ban, and others--fled to Turkey. Austria
and Russia demanded their extradition. The Sultan refused to surrender
the refugees, and De Titoff and Stürmer, Russian and Austrian
ambassadors, suspended diplomatic relations with the Porte. The Sultan
appealed to Britain and France against this outrageous violation of the
unity of nations. Britain remonstrated in firm but courteous language,
and Austria and Russia both withdrew their demands, but not before the
British fleet had moved within the forbidden limits of the Dardanelles,
in anticipation of a refusal. Lord Palmerston’s apology for thus
violating the treaty of 1841 was that the fleet had been driven into
forbidden waters by “stress of weather.” As there was notoriously no
“stress of weather,” this explanation merely irritated the Czar, and
planted in his heart the germ of that fierce hatred of England, which
culminated in the Crimean War.

Parliament was opened on the 31st of January, 1850, by Commission, and,
as had been anticipated, the Protectionists made, not an attack, but
rather a reconnoissance in force against the Government. During the
recess they had gone through the country painting the darkest pictures
of the condition of England. According to their speeches, one would have
imagined that another famine had smitten the nation; and for all this
pessimism there was but one justification. No doubt everybody who
depended on the soil for a livelihood was suffering from distress.
Prices had fallen, and farmers had not taken kindly to the new order of
things. But the masses of the people, especially in industrial centres,
were enjoying greater comfort than ever. The revenue was showing signs
of buoyancy; the foreign trade of the

[Illustration: THE WHITE DRAWING-ROOM, WINDSOR CASTLE.]

country had increased, and pauperism had diminished. All these cheering
facts were concealed from the public by the Conservative agitators, who
concentrated attention on one point--the admitted and deplorable
distress of the landed interest. The real desire of the Tory party at
this time was to turn out the Government and restore Protection. The
Duke of Richmond’s indiscreet speech on the Address in the House of
Lords proves that. But, conscious of the difficulty of suddenly
upsetting the fiscal system which was based on Free Trade, they
concealed their real purpose. Mr. Disraeli therefore supported a
Protectionist amendment to the Address in reply to the Queen’s Speech,
on the ground that the landed interests were entitled to a certain
amount of relief from public burdens, in compensation for the loss of
Protection. On the 19th of February, Mr. Disraeli had to show his hand.
He then moved for a committee to revise the Poor Law so as to mitigate
distress among the agricultural class. This debate is worth noticing,
because it may be said to have definitely originated the perennial
movement for local taxation reform, which is always an object of
enthusiasm to what may be called the country party, when out of office.
Mr. Disraeli’s idea was to transfer from local rates to the Imperial
Treasury (1), Poor Law establishment charges; (2), rates which had
nothing to do with the relief of the poor, and were only raised by

[Illustration: THE PIRÆUS, ATHENS.]

Poor Law machinery as a matter of convenience--such as rates for
registration of births, deaths, and marriages, for getting up jury
lists, and the like; and (3), the rate for supporting the casual poor.
His case was not decided on its merits. Members did not look to what was
in the motion, but to what was behind it, namely, the restoration of
Protection, or an increase in Income Tax to provide funds for the relief
of local burdens. Sir James Graham’s frank admission, as a landlord,
that relief in the rate would be swallowed by an increase in the rents,
and that it was the landlord and not the tenant who would profit,
determined many, who did not deny the abstract justice of Mr. Disraeli’s
contention, to vote against him. The sensational incident in the debate
was the speech of Mr. Gladstone, who supported Mr. Disraeli against his
own leaders. In fact, he replied to Sir James Graham. Despite the
support of Peel, the Government, instead of having a majority of forty,
as they expected, were saved from defeat only by a majority of twenty.
From that day till now a clever debater, by a skilful motion in favour
of relief of local taxation, has always been able to weaken the majority
of the strongest of Ministries. Local taxation is the vulnerable point
of Governments, and it is the one subject with which they all seem
afraid to deal in a bold and comprehensive spirit. All they do is to
denounce the evil in Opposition, and palliate its existence when in
Power.

The agitation for Parliamentary Reform had increased. Some of the
Peelites, notably Sir J. Graham, had warned Lord John Russell that they
were in favour of an extension of the franchise, and Lord John himself
had abandoned the doctrine of finality. Mr. Hume, therefore, brought
forward his annual motion on the 28th of February, hinting plainly that
he would have no objection to extend its scope so as to include female
franchise, and the substitution of an elective for a hereditary House of
Lords. It was quite certain that Lord John Russell was by this time of
opinion that some safe concessions might be made to the Radicals.
Several of his colleagues, however--_e.g._, Mr. Labouchere--were of a
different opinion, and it is accordingly right to say that those who
denounced Lord John’s “apostasy,” when he opposed Mr. Hume, were
somewhat unfair. Had the Prime Minister produced a Reform Bill this
Session, every question which it might be possible to deal with would
have been put aside. But as he was not likely to carry his own
colleagues with him in advocating reform, not only would this sacrifice
have been made in vain, but a Government which, in the existing state of
parties, was indispensable to the nation, would have fallen. Mr. Hume
was beaten by a vote of 242 against 96, though the Prime Minister’s
argument against him was rather a plea for delay, than a defiant “_Non
possumus_.”

Writing on the 10th of February, Mr. Greville says in his Journal, “The
brightness of the Ministerial prospect was very soon clouded over, and
last week their disasters began. There was first of all the Greek
affair, and then the case of the Ceylon witnesses--matters affecting
Lord Palmerston and Lord Grey”--the Jonahs of the Cabinet. “The Greek
case,” continues Mr. Greville, “will probably be settled, thanks to
French mediation, but it was a bad and discreditable affair, and has
done more harm to Palmerston than any of his greater enormities. The
other Ministers are extremely annoyed at it, and at the sensation it has
produced.” The Greek case was briefly this: Mr. Finlay, a British
subject in Athens, alleged that King Otho had enclosed a bit of his land
in the Royal Garden, and demanded compensation. The King offered him the
same compensation that had been accepted as fair by other owners of
enclosed land in Mr. Finlay’s position. This Mr. Finlay refused, and he
demanded £1,500 for the land which, it was admitted, he had bought for
£10. Don Pacifico, a Portuguese Jew from Gibraltar, sought damages for
the pillage of his house by the Athenian mob. He claimed £31,534. The
value of his furniture was shown to be £2,181. The balance was supposed
to represent the value of documents proving that he had a claim on the
Portuguese Government for £27,000. Mr. Finlay and Don Pacifico had not
raised their claims in the ordinary law courts, and to the amazement of
everybody, Lord Palmerston proposed to employ the mailed might of
England to collect their bad debts. He peremptorily ordered the Greek
Government to pay these exaggerated claims, on pain of inflicting on
Greece a blockade and reprisals within twenty-four hours. On the 18th of
January, Admiral Parker, with the Mediterranean Fleet, blockaded the
Piræus--for, contrary to Lord Palmerston’s expectations, Greece refused
to comply with his demands. The Greek Government appealed for protection
to France and Russia--whose Governments being with that of Britain joint
guarantors for the independence of Greece, were justly annoyed that
their good offices had not been invoked by Lord Palmerston. Count
Nesselrode, burning to avenge the defeat of the Czar over the question
of the Hungarian refugees in Turkey, sent a remonstrance to Lord
Palmerston, which was couched in the language of bitter contempt and
studied insolence. The French Government, on the other hand, pretending
that our agent in Athens had blundered, courteously offered to extricate
Lord Palmerston from his difficulties by using the influence of France,
to compose the dispute with Greece. On the 12th of February Lord
Palmerston ordered the British Envoy to inform Admiral Parker that he
must suspend coercive operations. It was not till the 2nd of March that
these instructions arrived, and in the interval the Admiral had been
vigorously coercing the Greeks. France was naturally irritated at this
untoward incident, all the more that Lord Palmerston’s explanation of
the delay was deemed unsatisfactory. Ultimately, the matter was settled
on Greece agreeing to pay Mr. Wyse, the British Minister, £8,500 to be
distributed by him as he thought just among the claimants--the value of
Don Pacifico’s lost vouchers against the Portuguese Government to be
determined by arbitration.

This compromise, however, was made by negotiation in London. A French
steamer conveyed the purport of it to Mr. Wyse, the British Envoy at
Athens, on the 24th of April. He, however, said that he had no
instructions from his Government to countermand his original orders,
which were to renew coercion if the French Envoy at Athens could not
induce the Greeks to submit. Coercion was therefore again applied, and
the Greek Government on the 27th submitted to Mr. Wyse’s demands. These
were more onerous in some respects than the terms agreed on by the
London Convention, and Lord Palmerston persisted in adhering to the
Athenian arrangement. M. Gros at Athens, finding he could not persuade
Mr. Wyse to act on the London Convention, had on the 21st of April
officially intimated that his action as mediator was ended. This, argued
Lord Palmerston coolly, left the British Envoy--in the absence of
instructions from England--free to renew coercion, and to enter into the
Athenian arrangement. Palmerston, in other words, claimed the right to
take advantage of his own delay, in notifying to Mr. Wyse the result of
the London Convention, to refuse to act on the finding of that
Convention. It is but fair to say that the Queen was quite as indignant
as the Government of France, at Lord Palmerston’s rude and provocative
conduct. Lord John Russell intimated to her the fact that the French
Government had met the affront with which Lord Palmerston had rewarded
their efforts to extricate him from the effect of his own blunder, by
recalling M. Drouyn de Lhuys. Her Majesty promptly directed her husband,
who acted as her confidential secretary, to send the Prime Minister one
of those curt, cutting notes, which invariably indicate her displeasure.

     “MY DEAR LORD JOHN,--Both the Queen and myself are exceedingly
     sorry at the news your letter contained. We are not surprised,
     however, that Lord Palmerston’s mode of doing business should not
     be borne by the susceptible French Government with the same good
     humour and forbearance as by his colleagues.

                                                     “Ever yours truly,

                                                               “ALBERT.

     “Buckingham Palace, 15th May, 1850.”[12]

The view which the Queen took was the fair and common-sense one, namely,
that we should act on the London Convention. The Convention of London
which we made with France gave us certain terms. By an accident, for
which Palmerston was responsible, Mr. Wyse at Athens had extorted better
ones for us at Athens. It was not high policy, but sharp practice; it
was not in the spirit of enlightened diplomacy, but in the spirit of the
meanest attorneydom, that any claim to benefit by the “accident” which
had given better terms to us at Athens than at London, was pressed by
Lord Palmerston.

But the Queen’s troubles did not end here. Her birthday was celebrated
on the 15th of May, and the absence of the French and Russian
Ambassadors from the usual Foreign Office dinner on that occasion,
naturally roused suspicion. It was not known that the French
representative had been recalled, and that France and England were in
open diplomatic conflict. What was the meaning of the absence of these
ambassadors? asked Society at the great rout at Devonshire House on the
night of the 19th. Questions to this effect were put to Ministers in
both Houses. Lord Lansdowne said that the departure of M. Drouyn de
Lhuys was purely accidental; and Lord Palmerston had the effrontery to
declare, in reply to Mr. Milner Gibson, that M. de Lhuys had merely gone
to Paris as a medium of communication between the two Governments. But
the _Times_ reported in due course that General de la Hitte, Minister of
War, had intimated from the tribune of the French Assembly that, because
Lord Palmerston’s explanations in regard to points at issue between the
two Governments were not such as France had a right to expect, “the
President had ordered General de la Hitte to recall their Ambassador
from London.” Nothing could exceed the mortification of the Queen when
she was informed of the almost simultaneous publication of these
contradictory official statements. Her detestation of equivocal and
shuffling Ministerial explanations has long passed into a proverb. Her
Majesty’s theory, in fact, is that the Minister is for the time the
trustee of the honour of the Crown, and that, especially in foreign
countries, where the relation between the British Sovereign and her
Ministers is ill understood, the Crown is held personally responsible
for what the Minister says, in all matters affecting

[Illustration: GRAND ENTRANCE, WESTMINSTER PALACE.]

the external relations of the kingdom. In plain English, the Queen has
always held that if a Minister tells a lie in Parliament, nine people
out of ten on the Continent will suspect that she has ordered or induced
him to tell it. Hence her indignation on reading Lord Palmerston’s reply
to Mr. Milner Gibson’s question was tinged with a feeling of personal
humiliation and shame. Public opinion was similarly excited when the
newspapers were studied, and fuller questions were immediately put to
Lord Lansdowne and Lord John Russell. They gave evasive and
prevaricating answers, attempting to explain away the French
Ambassador’s letter of recall, much to the disgust of all parties in
Parliament. The tide of anger rose higher every day that the scandal was
discussed. Lord John Russell told his brother, the Duke of Bedford, that
Ministers must defend Palmerston on this occasion, but, after the
dispute came to an end, he would have Palmerston dismissed from the
Foreign Office. “He is,” writes Mr. Greville on the 19th of May, “to see
the Queen on Tuesday, who will of course be boiling over with
indignation;” for by this time Baron Brunnow, the Russian Ambassador,
had warned Lord John that he, too, must ask to be relieved from his
post, as “it was impossible for him to stay here to be on bad terms with
Palmerston.”

The question has often been asked, Why did English statesmen get up in
both Houses of Parliament and tell a series of falsehoods which they
knew must be discovered in forty-eight hours by official refutation from
France? The fact is, Lord Palmerston had deceived his colleagues. He
assured them that M. de Lhuys had taken back to Paris explanations so
conciliatory, that his letter of recall would be quietly cancelled.
Assured by Palmerston that he had made the cancelling of the recall a
certainty, Lord Lansdowne and Lord John Russell assumed that the letter
of recall was suppressed, and they both answered as if it never had
existed. On the 25th of May, Mr. Greville writes:--“The morning before
yesterday the Duke of Bedford came here again. He had seen Lord John
since, and heard what passed with the Queen. She was full of this
affair, and again urged all her objections to Lord Palmerston. This time
she found Lord John better disposed than heretofore, and he is certainly
revolving in his mind how the thing can be done. He does not by any
means contemplate going out himself, or breaking up the Government. What
he looks to is this, that the Queen should take the initiative, and urge
Palmerston’s removal from the Foreign Office. She is quite ready to do
this as soon as she is assured of her wishes being attended to.”[13]

Lord John Russell screwed up his courage to the point of contemplating
the removal of Lord Palmerston from the Foreign Office to some other
department of State, he himself undertaking the duties of Foreign
Secretary along with those of the Premiership. Such a combination is
never a wise one. Even in recent times, when Lord Salisbury attempted to
unite in his own person the two offices, the strain was found to be
greater than his strength could bear; and in the case of Lord John,
whose health was at this time capricious and precarious, it was perhaps
as well that at the eleventh hour he shrank from proposing the change to
Lord Palmerston. Lord John has been accused of lack of courage in
connection with this affair. The truth is, that a perverted chivalry
prompted him to stand by Lord Palmerston. The Greek affair was hardly
defensible. But it was bruited about that the Opposition, under cover of
condemning Lord Palmerston in that special case, meant to direct a
severe attack on the foreign policy of the Government as a whole. Lord
Palmerston’s colleagues had, however, permitted themselves not only to
be identified with that policy, but had thought fit to defend every
blunder he had made in carrying it out. Lord John Russell, then, cannot
be blamed for considering that to desert the Foreign Secretary on the
Greek Question, would have been tantamount to making him the scapegoat
of the Cabinet. Hence, in spite of the Queen’s strong feeling in the
matter, it was agreed that Palmerston should not be “thrown over.”

After much fencing between the leaders of the two parties, the first of
the attacks, which led to a series of debates almost unparalleled in our
history as displays of sustained Parliamentary eloquence, was made in
the House of Lords on the 17th of June. Lord Stanley moved a vote of
censure on the Ministry for their coercive measures in Greece,
affirming, however, the general proposition that it was the right and
duty of the Government to secure to British subjects in foreign States,
the full protection of the laws of those States. The scene was a
memorable one. The House was crowded in every part, and the conflict
began with an amusing farce. The Peeress’s Gallery was crammed to
overflowing, and when Lady Melbourne and Lady Newport, under Lord
Brougham’s escort, went to their places, they found them filled, and
were ignominiously turned away. Brougham, however, espied Bunsen, the
Prussian Minister, in the gallery, and requested him to retire to his
proper seat in the Ambassadors’ quarter, but he refused. Then Brougham
went down to his own place, and avenged himself on Bunsen by calling the
attention of their lordships to the fact that there was “a stranger in
the Peeress’s Gallery,” adding, “if he does not come down, I shall move
your lordships to enforce the order of the House. It is the more
intolerable as he has a place assigned to him in another part, and he is
now keeping the room of _two Peeresses_.” As Bunsen was notoriously a
fat, overgrown man, Brougham’s malicious personality was received with
shouts of laughter. But it had no effect on the stolid Prussian, who
kept his seat till Sir Augustus Clifford, Usher of the Black Rod, made
him retire.[14]

The issue before the House was simple enough. (1), Lord Palmerston had
agreed with M. Drouyn de Lhuys that if the terms which M. Gros, the
French Envoy at Athens, proposed on behalf of Greece were rejected by
Mr. Wyse, the British Envoy, coercion should not be again applied
without special orders from Britain. But if M. Gros threw up his office
of mediator because the Greeks declined to let him offer fair terms,
then of course Mr. Wyse was to

[Illustration: MR. (AFTERWARDS SIR ALEXANDER) COCKBURN.]

resort to coercion without further instructions. (2), M. Drouyn de Lhuys
and Lord Palmerston in London agreed on a settlement, the terms of which
were less onerous than those demanded by Mr. Wyse. (3), Though this was
informally communicated by the French to Mr. Wyse, he rejected the terms
which M. Gros offered on behalf of Greece, contending that he had no
instructions from Lord Palmerston as to the adoption of any other
course. (4), M. Gros then dropped the negotiations. Mr. Wyse, again
arguing that he was without instructions, ordered coercion to be
applied, upon which the Greek Government yielded. The pith of the
dispute centred in one point. Did Palmerston or did he not send Mr. Wyse
instructions as to the arrangement made in London with M. Drouyn de
Lhuys? The French said that their Envoy abandoned negotiations because
Mr. Wyse was unreasonable. Lord Palmerston contended that Mr. Wyse was
of opinion that M. Gros had dropped mediation because the

[Illustration: CAPE TOWN.]

Greeks were unreasonable, and that therefore, in terms of the
arrangement made in London, Mr. Wyse was justified in resorting to
coercion without further instructions. Mr. Wyse may have been mistaken
in supposing that M. Gros retired from the negotiations in the
circumstances which, according to the London Convention, would have
justified a resort to coercion without further reference to Lord
Palmerston. If that were the case, the Government had a good defence;
for it would have been unfair to censure them for Mr. Wyse’s blunder.
But was it the case? How could Mr. Wyse have blundered in interpreting
the conditions of the London Convention, if no instructions in
accordance with that Convention had been sent to him? The complaint was
that the Foreign Secretary had neglected to send these instructions, and
a close and careful examination of Palmerston’s own Blue-book, fails to
bring to light the slightest proof that they ever were sent. Therefore
it was clear (1), that England had broken a binding diplomatic compact
with France, and (2), that this breach of faith had enabled Mr. Wyse at
Athens to extort by force from a small, weak Power more onerous terms
than the English Government had agreed with France to accept in London.
The House of Lords took this view of the matter, and when the debate
ended, in the grey dawn of a summer’s morning, it was found on division
that there was a majority of 37 against the Government.

Some members of the Cabinet were for resignation. Many friends of the
Government thought that Palmerston should personally offer the Queen his
resignation, begging her not to accept that of his colleagues if they
tendered theirs. But the Foreign Secretary made no offer to resign, and
at first the Cabinet resolved to take no more notice of the vote of
censure in the Upper House. Ultimately, they found that they must notice
it, and as their Foreign Policy as a whole was impugned, they decided
not to abandon the Foreign Secretary. On the 20th of June, Lord John
Russell explained why he would not resign. He gave two reasons--one good
and the other bad,--the first being one of which the Queen approved. It
was that a change of Government, in consequence of a resolution of the
House of Lords, would be unconstitutional, because, in his opinion, it
might be dangerous even to the House of Lords to lay upon it the
responsibility of controlling her Majesty’s Executive. Two precedents,
one a hundred years old, and one taken from 1833, when the Peers, on the
motion of the Duke of Wellington, censured Lord Grey’s Foreign Policy in
Portugal, were ingeniously cited by Lord John Russell in support of this
constitutional doctrine. But his second reason was characteristically
Palmerstonian. He said that the House of Lords had laid it down, that it
was the duty of the British Government to see that British subjects in
Foreign States got full protection from the laws of those States. That
was a _limitation_ of duty which Lord John Russell refused to recognise,
because, said he, a Foreign State might make bad laws, and it would be
the duty of England to prevent her subjects from being injured by those
laws. No principle is more clearly established in international law than
this--that a Sovereign State has an absolute right to dictate the terms
on which any alien shall abide on its soil.[15] If the alien does not
like the law of the Foreign State, he has no business to call on his own
countrymen to defend him by force of arms in refusing to obey it, seeing
that it was not at their request or in their interest, but of his own
free will, and in pursuit of his own fortune, he went to live or traffic
abroad. In fact, to lay it down that England might levy war on any
country, whose laws Englishmen residing in that country considered
inequitable, was tantamount to proclaiming her _hostis humani generis_.
Yet such was the doctrine which the House of Commons, in spite of the
protests of the Tories, of Radicals like Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright, and
Peelites like Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Gladstone, cheerfully accepted
from the Whigs at this period. The only thing that can be said in its
defence is that it is a doctrine which the House has never dared to
apply to a stronger Power than Greece--never to a Power like Russia,
which deports English Jews, nor like Germany, which deports English
residents, personally obnoxious to Prince Bismarck, in the most
arbitrary manner. It is doubtful if it would even dare to apply it to an
autonomous colony like Victoria, had her Government refused, as was
threatened, to permit the Irish informer, James Carey, to reside within
her frontier.

Having decided to defy the House of Lords, the Government hit on an
ingenious plan for neutralising the vote of censure. They put up Mr.
Roebuck on the 21st of June to move a vote of confidence in them not
touching the Greek dispute, but approving generally of their Foreign
Policy as one likely “to preserve untarnished the honour and dignity of
this country.” The debate, which lasted five days, was a veritable
tournament of Titans. On both sides speeches were made that touch the
highest point to which Parliamentary eloquence can reach. Mr. Cockburn,
afterwards Lord Chief Justice, delivered an oration by which, at one
bound, he leapt into the first rank of British orators. Peel delivered
the last speech he was fated to make in the great assembly, on which for
years he had played with the easy mastery of a musician on his favourite
instrument. Palmerston himself spoke for four hours and a quarter with
more than his usual dash and intrepidity, and with surprising moderation
and good taste--basing his case virtually on the application of the
_civis Romanus sum_ doctrine to British Foreign Policy. This was the
point in it which Mr. Gladstone demolished in a passionate protest, that
may be said to have become classical. But in the end the Government
triumphed by a majority of 46! Yet, on the face of the facts, they had
absolutely no case. Why, then, were they victorious? For many reasons.
In the then divided state of parties, the Government was felt to be the
only possible Government. Palmerston, by adroitly spreading the report
that the attack on

[Illustration: MR. GLADSTONE (1855).]

him was really fomented by the agents of the despotic Powers, whose
policy he had persistently opposed, won strong support from the
Radicals. The Whigs felt that as the Foreign Policy of the Government as
a whole was attacked, they were bound to defend the Ministry, quite
irrespective of Palmerston’s possibly objectionable method of carrying
out that policy. Moreover, it was undoubtedly a weak point in the
tactics of the Opposition, that they did not venture to submit in the
House of Commons, the motion of censure which they had carried in the
House of Lords. But though Lord Palmerston’s triumph was complete, the
Queen continued to be dissatisfied

[Illustration: WINDSOR CASTLE: VIEW FROM THE QUADRANGLE.]

with his reckless manner of managing the Foreign Office. Pressure was
put on him by the concurrence of Lord John Russell, the Duke of Bedford,
Lord Lansdowne, and Lord Clarendon to take another department, which,
however, he refused to do. For the time--confident in his popularity--he
was able to hold his position, but ere a year had elapsed her Majesty’s
warnings were fulfilled, and Lord John was simply compelled to force him
to retire.[16] It must be here told how this whole controversy ended.
Before the debate closed, it was announced that we had accepted, with
some trifling modifications in detail, the French proposals made on
behalf of Greece. The demands of the claimants in support of whom we had
been brought to the brink of war with France, were finally assessed at
£10,000--about one-thirtieth part of the sum they originally asked!

No other question of Foreign Policy agitated the House of Commons in
1850, save Mr. Hutt’s proposal to withdraw the British war-ships engaged
in suppressing the West African slave trade. The cost of the squadron
had made its maintenance unpopular even with Liberals, and when Lord
John Russell threatened to stake the existence of his Ministry on it,
the Queen was distressed to learn that there was every prospect of his
being defeated, at a time when a change of Government would have
produced the utmost confusion. A meeting of the Liberal Party was
convened by the Prime Minister at Downing Street, and pressure, which
they hardly dared to resist, induced the malcontents to support the
Government. Mr. Hutt’s motion was lost, many Ministerialists, however,
complaining bitterly that the Prime Minister had concussed them into
voting against their convictions.




CHAPTER XXIV.

SOME EPOCH-MARKING LEGISLATION.

     The Colonies and Party Government--The Movement for Autonomy--Lord
     John Russell’s Colonial Bill--Tory Opposition to Colonial
     Federation--Mr. Adderley’s Plan--Mr. Gladstone’s Scheme for
     Colonial Church Courts--The Colonial Bills Mangled in the House of
     Lords--More English Doles for Ireland--An Irish Reform Bill--Lord
     John Russell Proposes to Abolish the Lord Lieutenancy--The Queen’s
     Irish Policy--Her offer to Establish a Royal Residence in
     Ireland--The Bungled Budget--The Demand for Retrenchment--The
     Tories Insist on a Reduction of Official Salaries--Lord John
     Russell’s Commission on Establishments--The Queen and the
     Church--The Ecclesiastical Appeals Bill--The “Gorham Case”--Death
     of Peel--The Queen’s Sorrow--A Nation in Mourning--Peel’s Character
     and Career--The Queen’s Alarm about Prince Albert’s Health--The
     Queen at Work--The Queen’s Reading-Lamp.


Far more interesting, however, was the Colonial legislation of the
Government in 1850, which indeed might be termed epoch-marking. The
Queen had at the opening of the Session indicated in her Speech from the
Throne that a measure extending Constitutional government to the
Colonies would be introduced. It was known that she was personally of
opinion that the Colonies were giving promise of a growth so rapid, that
it would be impossible for any length of time to hold them in the
leading-strings of the Colonial Office. The incessant attacks which had
been made on Lord Grey in Parliament and in the Press merely served to
confirm the Queen in this opinion. It was, therefore, with great
satisfaction that she discovered that men of light and leading on both
sides of the House of Commons were so far agreed on the subject, that it
was deemed practicable by Lord John Russell to minimise the friction
between the Colonies and the Colonial Office, by conceding to the
Colonists large powers of representative self-government. Lord John
Russell explained the scheme which embodied these ideas on the 8th of
February. To the Cape Colony he granted two Chambers. The first was
representative, and elected under a property qualification. The second,
or Legislative Council, was to be elected by persons with a higher
property qualification, who had been named by the Crown or municipal
bodies for magisterial and municipal offices as individuals of weight
and influence. For Australia he proposed a system under which there
should be only one Legislative Council, two-thirds elected by the
people, and one-third named by the Governor, on the pattern of the
system adopted by New South Wales, but with power to the Colonists to
change to the bi-cameral or two-Chamber system if they preferred it.
Provision was made for constituting, on petition of any two Colonies, a
Federal Assembly representing all the Colonial Legislatures, to frame a
common tariff, or initiate a common policy for dealing with waste lands.
It was in introducing this great scheme that Lord John Russell said
that, whilst reserving questions of military defence, the central idea
of his Colonial policy was this: political freedom can be best promoted
in the Colonies by acting on the general rule, that while the Imperial
Government must be their representative in all foreign relations, it
will interfere in their domestic affairs no further than may be
manifestly necessary to prevent a conflict in the State itself.

By finally and formally establishing this principle, the Government of
the Queen did all that was humanly possible to repair the wrong done to
England and the English people by her grandfather, George III., who
flung away, not a crown, as did James II., but a virgin continent, to
gratify an absolutist prejudice.

The Bill passed the House of Commons, though the scheme was open to
objection. Had it not been open to objection, it would have been a
perfect Bill, “that faultless monster,” to adapt Pope’s line, “which the
world ne’er saw.” On the whole, however, it was wonderfully well
received. Its opponents objected mainly to the adoption of the
uni-cameral instead of the bi-cameral system, namely, that of governing
by one instead of by two Legislative Assemblies. Why, it was asked,
should Australia be limited to one Legislative Assembly when the Cape
was permitted to have two? Another objection was to the introduction of
a Federative Assembly, which was opposed bitterly as a novelty even by
Tory politicians like Mr. Disraeli, who in after-years strongly
advocated Imperial Federation. Another more valid objection urged by
Radicals like Sir W. Molesworth, was that the scheme gave the Colonial
Office too much power. There was good sense in his contention, supported
by Tories like Mr. Adderley (afterwards Lord Norton), that the Colonial
Parliament should not only be vested with all legislative powers which
were _not_ Imperial, but that this should be done by mentioning the
powers that _were_ Imperial, and leaving everything not mentioned in
that category, to be considered as Colonial. This point gave rise to an
able and thoughtful debate on the report of the Bill after it emerged
from

[Illustration: VIEW IN PHŒNIX PARK, DUBLIN.]

Committee, in which it may be interesting to state that Mr. Gladstone
delivered a speech in support of the Tory-Radical opposition, which may
be said to contain the germs of the principle on which his Irish Home
Rule Bill of 1886 was based. On the other hand, to Mr. Gladstone must be
credited the oddest and most ridiculous of all the amendments to the
measure. His ecclesiasticism induced him to propose that in every Colony
the Church of England be authorised to form a synod independent of the
Imperial or Colonial Government, and empowered to make laws binding on
Anglican Colonists. The idea of empowering the Anglican Church courts in
our free Colonies to make regulations, quite independently of the Crown
or the Colony, which were to be not only binding _in foro conscientiæ_,
but were also to have the force of law, in Royal and Colonial courts,
was not only mediæval, but monstrous. Yet it was only rejected by 187 to
182. Perhaps this accounted for what was by far the most trenchant
speech made in opposition to the Bill, that of the Bishop of Oxford in
the House of Lords, though even he did not venture to reject the
measure, his proposal being merely to refer

[Illustration: MR. HORSMAN.]

it to a Committee. It was a speech that would have defeated the
Government, but for Lord Grey’s conciliatory offer to go on with the
Bill even if the House struck out the clause enabling Colonial
Legislatures to alter their constitution, and the clause enabling the
Colonists to form a Federative Assembly. This won for the Government a
majority of 13. As the clause sanctioning a Federative Assembly was
carried in the Lords, against the bitter opposition of the Tories, only
by a majority of one, it was eventually abandoned. They further marred
the Bill by conferring exceptional political privileges on wealthy
squatters, and by prohibiting any Legislative Chamber from eliminating
its non-elective element. The interesting thing to notice is how the
Tory Party of the day completely stamped out the germ of that Imperial
policy of Colonial confederation which Lord John Russell and Lord Grey
so wisely strove to plant. As “amended” by the Lords, the Bill passed
into law, much to the satisfaction of the Queen, who, when she
sanctioned the measure, felt sure that a vigilant personal
superintendence of the details of Colonial, as well as foreign affairs,
would not thereafter be added to the already arduous duties and
anxieties of the Sovereign.

Ireland, as usual, was this Session the object or victim of an
eleemosynary financial policy. She had hanging over her, in the shape of
relief loans made during ten years, an unliquidated debt of £4,483,000.
Besides that, some of the Poor Law Unions were so burdened with debt
contracted for local purposes--frequently purposes of jobbery--that they
needed help. Lord John Russell therefore proposed to consolidate the
unliquidated local debts since 1839, and, subject to existing conditions
of interest, extend the period of repayment to forty years. For the
immediate relief of bankrupt and semi-bankrupt Unions he proposed
another advance from the Treasury of £300,000. The justification for
these loans, which were sanctioned, was that the Irish landowners could
not pay the interest on the local debt, in addition to the existing
poor-rates.

Ireland having been decimated by famine and emigration, it was
considered that it would not be unsafe to lower her elective franchise
to one of £8 of annual rateable value, more especially as such a
proposal tended to conciliate, without concession, the Radical agitators
for Parliamentary reform in England. It did not, however, conciliate Mr.
Hume, who caustically reminded Sir William Somerville, the Chief
Secretary for Ireland, when he introduced the Irish Franchise Bill, that
it put the franchise on a narrower basis than that of Cape Colony, and
contended that Irishmen should at least be treated as generously as
Hottentots. The Bill enacted that instead of each voter being compelled
to claim registration, local authorities should make up lists of voters,
subject to the usual objections--in other words, that the rate-book
should be a self-acting register. The Tories failed in their attack on
the Bill in the House of Commons; but in the Lords they succeeded in
raising the qualification to £15, and in altering the registration
clause so that new voters must each claim to be registered before they
were put on the voters’ roll. The two Houses ultimately accepted a
compromise. The Government agreed to increase the qualification from £8
to £12, and the Tories agreed to abandon their alteration of the
registration clauses.

On the 18th of May, Lord John Russell brought in a memorable Bill to
abolish the office of Lord-Lieutenant--an office the maintenance of
which has undoubtedly given an Imperial sanction to the Separatist
principle in Ireland. The idea of the Whigs was that the Lord-Lieutenant
was an anachronism. The Minister representing Ireland in the House of
Commons, though popularly called Secretary for Ireland, is really and
legally only Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant. Sometimes he sits
in the Cabinet when the Lord-Lieutenant does not, and then he is his
master’s superior. The Lord-Lieutenant, argued Lord John, had all the
responsibility, but never the freedom of action of a Minister of the
Crown, and the abolition of his office would facilitate that blending of
the Irish and Imperial administrations, which would go far to destroy
the Separatist feeling in Ireland. The Queen was very much inclined to
favour this step, and for a curious reason. Her Irish tour had impressed
her with the fact that her social influence in Ireland might be turned
to good account in winning the hearts of a chivalrous and generous
people, thereby converting the golden link of the Crown into a healing
institution of conciliation. But it was somewhat embarrassing to all
parties for the Sovereign to reside regularly in a country, in which the
official head of the State was her own Viceroy. Were the Viceroyalty
abolished, the Queen promised Lord John Russell that she would from time
to time visit Ireland in State, and keep up the Viceregal Lodge in
Phœnix Park as a Royal Palace. As for the business of Ireland, it would,
according to Lord John, be best carried on by a fourth Secretary of
State. The Tories opposed the Bill, because they contended that Lord
Clarendon’s success in governing Ireland proved that the Viceroyalty was
useful, and because the creation of a fourth Secretary of State was
objectionable, for it would necessitate an expensive administrative
establishment, and perchance lead to conflicts of authority between the
Irish Secretary and the Home Secretary. The Irish members were divided
in opinion. Some supported and some opposed the Bill, because it might
tend to stimulate Nationalism. Others supported and opposed it for
precisely the opposite reason. A third section, as to whose sincerity
there could be no doubt, opposed it because it would spoil the trade of
Dublin. The general feeling of the country was expressed by Peel, who
said he was willing that the experiment should be made, though he said
so with hesitancy, but he was also desirous, if it were possible, to see
the Irish Administration merged in the Home Office, and not conducted by
a fourth Secretary of State.[17] The measure was read a second time by a
vote of 295 to 70, but introduced as it was when the country was in a
fever of excitement over Lord Palmerston’s foreign quarrels, the country
took little interest in it, and it was not pressed further.

Lord Clarendon having in October, 1849, dismissed from the Commission of
the Peers, Lord Roden and other Orange magistrates who had been privy to
a fray at Dolly’s Brae in the preceding July, their case was brought
before the House of Lords this Session by Lord Stanley, on the 12th of
July. Stanley delivered a bitter attack on Lord Clarendon, but when he
made it clear that he did not propose to do anything more than move for
papers and correspondence relating to the affair, it was obvious that he
had forced on a debate merely to gratify his Orange supporters. Lord
Clarendon defended himself successfully, and convinced everybody that he
had simply done his duty as an impartial administrator.

The financial condition of the country was so favourable that Sir C.

[Illustration: THE FUNERAL OF SIR ROBERT PEEL: THE TENANTRY ASSEMBLING
AT THE LODGE, DRAYTON MANOR.]

Wood, in his Budget Speech of 15th March, said there was a surplus at
his disposal of £2,225,000. His estimates for the coming year, on the
basis of existing taxation and anticipated expenditure, led him to
expect a surplus of £1,500,000. Therefore, there was room for some
remission of taxes. The first charge on a surplus, he held ought to be
for the reduction of the National Debt--and for that purpose he set
aside half his hoped-for surplus. As to the rest, he proposed to exhaust
it: first, in reducing the Stamp Duties on the Transfer of Land, and on
mortgages under £1,000, and in converting the Stamp Duty on leases into
a uniform one of ½ per cent.; and secondly, in ameliorating the lot of
the badly-housed labouring classes by repealing the tax on bricks.
Though the Budget was ridiculed by the economists, Sir C. Wood’s
proposals were agreed to, with the exception of the alteration in the
Stamp Duties. It was argued successfully that though the new scale of
Stamp Duties would reduce the revenue derived from small sums, they
would increase, out of all proportion to this reduction, the revenue
from large sums, so that under the pretext of reducing, Sir Charles Wood
was actually increasing his revenue. Never was there such haggling and
bungling. Nobody seemed to understand a scheme which was complex in
detail, and explained by a Minister who was indistinct in his
articulation and confused in exposition. Sir Charles Wood had more than
once to withdraw his proposals, and substitute others, but finally he
accepted a reduction of ½ instead of 1 per cent. on legal conveyances,
and 1/8 instead of ½ per cent. on mortgages. The result showed that
his opponents were right, and that he was utterly wrong in his
calculations of the effect his reductions would have on the revenue of
the year.

[Illustration: THE FUNERAL OF SIR ROBERT PEEL: THE CEREMONY IN DRAYTON
BASSETT CHURCH.]

The demand for retrenchment which had been originally raised by the
Radicals, was now emphasised by the Protectionists. Following the
example of some of their party in the Colonies, they saw in an attack on
the cost of establishments, a means of annoying a Free Trade Government,
and perchance of relieving the rural taxpayers, who undoubtedly were
suffering by the loss of Protection. Mr. Henley accordingly first
appeared with a motion to reduce official salaries. Whereupon Lord John
Russell intervened with a motion for a Select Committee to inquire into
the subject. Mr. Disraeli opposed to this an amendment to the effect
that the House had enough information, and that the Government ought not
to shirk the responsibility of initiating, without delay, every
practicable reduction in the cost of establishments. His party followed
him faithfully, though some, like John Wilson Croker, condemned his
tactics and his speech as “Jacobinical.”[18] Mr. Hume also supported
him, but Mr. Bright thought that if a Committee recommended reductions,
they would be more patiently borne by the victims than if they were
enforced by the Government. Mr. Horsman outdid Mr. Disraeli and Mr.
Hume, for he demanded that ecclesiastical establishments should also
come within the purview of the Committee: Lord John, however, carried
his motion. Mr. Cobden then brought forward resolutions in favour of a
general reduction of expenditure, contending that it would be possible
to save £10,000,000 by cutting down expenditure to the standard of 1835.
The Radical financial reformers declared that their object was to reduce
taxation that pressed on Labour and impeded production, and that the
best way of doing that was to curtail expenditure on the Army and Navy,
which were in excess of the strength necessary for National Defence,
provided the Foreign Office pursued a policy of non-intervention. Whigs
and Tories united in defeating Mr. Cobden. Mr. Henry Drummond next, on
behalf of the Protectionist Tories, moved that adequate means be adopted
to reduce taxation, and thereby increase the wage-fund of the country.
His plan was to cut down all official salaries, and revise all burdens
that checked the growth of raw produce. The motion was disposed of by
carrying the “previous question,” because, though some Radicals like Mr.
Hume and Mr. Bright voted for it, most people saw in it a Protectionist
“trap.” Lord Duncan very nearly on a subsequent occasion repealed the
Window Tax,[19] but Mr. Milner Gibson failed in his attack on the Paper
Duty, as did Mr. Cayley in his effort to repeal the Malt Tax.

After much determined opposition from the Tories, with whom Mr.
Gladstone acted on this occasion, the Government succeeded in carrying
the appointment of a Royal Commission to inquire into the condition of
the Universities--a proposal which had the warm support of the Queen and
Prince Albert, in consequence of which some foolish people went about
saying that there was a conspiracy on foot to Germanise the academic
system of England.

The Bishop of London’s Ecclesiastical Appeals Bill, which was introduced
into the House of Lords on the 3rd of June, touched on matters regarding
which the Queen has always been sensitive--the relation of the Church to
the prerogative of the Crown. The principle of the Bill was that
ecclesiastical appeals should be tried, not before the Judicial
Committee of the Privy Council as representing the Queen, but before an
assemblage of Bishops, whose decision should be binding, not merely on
the Judicial Committee, but on the Queen also. This, of course,
destroyed her supremacy over the Established Church of England, a
prerogative of the Crown which has always been tenaciously guarded. The
Bill was rejected. And here it may be well to record what it was that
led to its introduction. It was introduced to tranquillise the High
Churchmen and Tractarians, who were smarting over the decision of the
famous “Gorham case.”

Mr. Gorham had been presented by the Crown to the benefice of Bramford
Speke in August, 1847. When the Bishop examined him, he found that he
was an extreme Low Churchman, and that he denied that spiritual
regeneration was conferred by the sacrament of Baptism; also that his
views on other matters, such as predestination and election, were those
of the narrowest Presbyterian Calvinists. The Bishop of Exeter refused
to institute Mr. Gorham, and, after much litigation, the case was
appealed by him from the Court of Arches to the Judicial Committee, who
decided that Mr. Gorham’s views were not incompatible with the
Thirty-nine Articles. The Judicial Committee on this occasion consisted
of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and the Bishop of London.
Associated with them were the Master of the Rolls (Lord Langdale), the
Lord Chief Justice (Lord Campbell), Mr. Baron Parke, Vice-Chancellor,
Sir J. Knight Bruce, Dr. Lushington, and the Right Hon. Pemberton Leigh.
The complaint of the Churchmen was that the ruling of a Bishop and an
ecclesiastical court on a disputed point of doctrine was not only
considered, but actually reversed by a secular tribunal the large
majority of whose members were laymen, and the clerical members of which
could not vote, but merely gave their opinion to the lay members who
formed the Judicial Committee. Churchmen passionately resented these
proceedings, and the excitement they raised was fierce and
uncontrollable. The Gorham Appeal Case was the badge of the Church’s
servitude to the State. The Bishop of London’s Bill was an attempt to
remove that badge by constituting a purely ecclesiastical tribunal to
try all ecclesiastical appeals, thereby avoiding the necessity for
submitting them to lay judges.

When the Queen prorogued Parliament the shadow of mourning was over both
Houses. Sir Robert Peel had died suddenly on the 2nd of July. Returning
on horseback from a visit to Buckingham Palace on the 29th of June, he
met Miss Ellice, one of Lady Dover’s daughters, on Constitution Hill. As
he bowed to her, his horse shied at the Green Park railings, and threw
him. His fifth rib was broken, and its jagged end pierced the lung with
a mortal wound. He lingered in great agony for three days, and it is
hardly possible to describe the extraordinary sensation his accident and
illness produced throughout the country. Party animosities vanished, and
the nation with one voice joined the Queen in the expressions of sorrow
which came from her when she said, “The country mourns over him as over
a father.”[20]

Peel’s character will, for this generation, be an enigma. Look at one
aspect of it, and it seems as the character of a patriot of the pure
Roman type, who flourished in the days “when none were for a Party, and
all were for the State.” Look at another aspect of it, and it seems as
if it were permeated by the conscious insincerity of the unscrupulous
political intriguer, whose stock-in-trade was Party principle, which he
bought and sold for power in the Parliamentary market. One thing is
clear. His abandonment of Protection could not possibly have been due to
a love of office. He knew too well when he determined to repeal the Corn
Laws, that he doomed himself to political ostracism. Two things seem to
account for Peel’s difficulties with his partisans. He saw clearly, but
he did not see far. He used his influence as a political leader to
become a Minister, but the Minister of the Queen, and not the Minister
of his Party. Long before Catholic Emancipation triumphed he ought to
have seen that its triumph was inevitable, and the same may be said of
the repeal of the Corn Laws. When he suddenly awoke to the fact that in
the one case war, and in the other famine was impending, he reversed his
policy, but he had to change front so quickly that he had not time to
“educate his Party.” On both occasions he had to choose between his
Party and the nation. On neither did he shrink from making his choice as
a patriot, even at the cost of his reputation as a far-seeing statesman,
or a faithful Party leader. Mr. Disraeli said he was not the greatest
statesman, but the greatest Member of Parliament England ever produced.
That was a just estimate of his magical power of mastering and managing
the House of Commons. But it did no justice to his genius for
administration, his vast and accurate knowledge of affairs, and latterly
the serene judicial temper of mind, in which he dealt with the most
agitating and perplexing political problems. Coldness, secretiveness,
and egotism were the only flaws in a character, which otherwise almost
realised the loftiest ideal of British patriotism.

At the beginning of 1850 the Queen became grievously alarmed about the
health of Prince Albert. The toil and anxieties of politics during the
years of revolution and counter-revolution had sadly worn his nervous
system. In addition to his work as confidential private secretary to the
Queen, his own occupations, which have been noticed from time to time in
these pages, had grown more numerous and varied each year. As Mr.
Gladstone once observed of Mr. Ayrton, “he was a cormorant for work.” As
Sir Theodore Martin says, “Ministers and diplomatists found him at every
interview possessed of an encyclopædic range of information, extending
even to the minutest details.” The Court at this time was a rich
treasure-store of information regarding the inner history of Courts and
Embassies on the Continent, on which our diplomatists were grateful to
draw for aid and suggestions, when appointed to difficult and delicate
missions. “But to the claims of politics,” writes Sir Theodore Martin,
“had to be added those which science, art, and questions of social
improvement were constantly forcing upon the Prince’s attention.... He
was habitually an early riser. Even in winter he would be up by seven,
and dispose of a great deal of work before breakfast, by the light of
the green German lamp, the original of which he had brought over with
him, and which has since become so familiar an object in our English
homes.[21] The Queen shared his early habits; but before her Majesty
joined him in the sitting-room, where their writing-tables stood always
side by side, much had, as a rule, been prepared for her
consideration--much done to lighten the pressure of those labours, both
of head and hands, which are inseparable from the discharge of the
Sovereign’s duties.”[22] These labours ultimately produced insomnia or
sleeplessness, and at the beginning of the year the Queen, writing from
Windsor to Baron Stockmar, alludes to a suggestion from their doctor
that his Royal Highness should take a trip to Brussels, and adds:--“For
the sake of his health, which, I assure you, is the cause of my shaken
nerves, I could quite bear this sacrifice. He _must_ be set right before
we go to London, or God knows how ill he may get.”

[Illustration: MEETING OF THE LADIES’ COMMITTEE AT STAFFORD HOUSE IN AID
OF THE GREAT EXHIBITION.]

The Queen’s affectionate desires could not be gratified. The business of
organising the Great Exhibition of 1851 proved more engrossing than had
been anticipated, not merely because the idea at the bottom of it was
her husband’s, but because he was found to be the only man in England
who thoroughly understood the scheme. As Lord Granville, in a letter to
Prince Albert’s secretary, remarked, his Royal Highness seemed to be
almost the only person who had considered the subject as a whole and in
details. “The whole thing,” said Lord Granville, “would fall to pieces
if he left it to itself.”

On the 21st of February a brilliant meeting in support of the
undertaking was held at Willis’s Rooms, which was attended by the
diplomatic representatives of the leading nations. This was followed up
by a grand banquet at the Mansion House, which was attended by the great
dignitaries of State, the Foreign Ambassadors, the Royal Commissioners
for the Exhibition, and the heads of the county and municipal
magistracy. After the Royal Commission had been appointed, the questions
of site, space, and finance were those which pressed for settlement, and
without doubt the last gave the Queen the utmost anxiety. The public,
she saw, must be induced to support the scheme, and meetings be
organised for the purpose of making its advantages known. Prince
Albert’s speech at this banquet, however, struck the key-note of all the
subsequent advocacy which the Exhibition received. The age, said he, was
advancing towards the realisation of a unity of mankind, to be attained
as the result and product, and not by the destruction, of national
characteristics. Science, by abridging distance, was increasing the
communicability of ideas. The principle of the division of labour was
gradually being applied everywhere, giving rise to specialism, but
specialism practised in publicity, and under the stimulus of competition
and capital. Thus was Man winning new powers in fulfilling his mission
in the world--the discovery of Natural Laws and the conquest of Nature
by compliance with them. The central idea of this Exhibition of 1851 was
to give a true test, and a living picture of the point at which
civilised Man had arrived in carrying out his mission, and to serve as a
base of operations for further efforts which might carry Humanity
upwards and onwards to a larger and loftier stage. Such, in a brief
paraphrase, were the views of Prince Albert, and they ran through the
country amidst a chorus of approval. The whole nation responded to the
appeal of his Royal Highness, despite the metaphysics and mysticism
which slightly tinged it, and the delight of the Queen was
correspondingly great. We can easily understand that King Leopold was at
first under the impression that a speech of such stately but restrained
eloquence, rich in thought and fruitful in suggestion, must have been
read. The Queen, however, informed him that he was mistaken. It was, she
says, prepared most carefully and laboriously, and then written down;
after which it was spoken freely and fluently without reference to the
manuscript. “This,” says the Queen, in her letter to the King of the
Belgians, “he does so well that no one believes he is ever nervous,
which he is.” On the 23rd of February a meeting of ladies was held at
Stafford House, under the presidency of the Duchess of Sutherland, with
the object of inviting the women of England to assist in promoting the
success of the Exhibition, and a very influential committee was formed
for this purpose.

When Easter arrived the Queen’s anxiety grew greater as she saw the
Prince showing signs of increasing fatigue. At last, yielding to her
importunity, he agreed to leave London and take a brief holiday at
Windsor. But his idea of a holiday was peculiar. It was to devise a
system of draining Osborne, and utilising the sewage, &c., of the
estate.

Age and infirmity had now begun to tell sadly on the Duke of Wellington,
and he had become anxious as to the future of the army. Whilst he was
alive and strong, as he said, he could hold the Commandership-in-chief.
But his position was entirely exceptional for a subject, and in theory
at least the office ought to be vested in the Sovereign, or some one
very near the Throne. Englishmen have ever been a little jealous of
permitting this post to be occupied by a subject. The favour it confers
on him, and the influence which--if he has a magic personality--he may
wield, might, if wedded to ambition, lead to untoward changes. But the
fact that the Sovereign was a woman rendered it impossible to vest the
Commandership-in-chief in the Crown. The Duke, therefore, to the
surprise of the Queen, who apparently had never thought about the
matter, suddenly proposed that arrangements should be made for
installing Prince Albert as his successor. It says much for the sagacity
and good sense of the Queen and Prince that neither of them liked the
proposal--although it was one which would have presented an irresistible
temptation to most young men. The Prince pleaded want of military
experience. The Duke replied that his plan was to appoint under the
Prince, as Chief of the Staff, the general who had most experience in
the army. But this did not seem to weigh much with the Queen. Probably
she knew her husband’s nature better than the Duke, and was perfectly
well aware that he would never permit himself to hold office as an
ornamental “dummy.” The revolution he wrought in Cambridge after he
became Chancellor of the University gives us an indication of what must
have happened in the army had he consented to become the Duke’s
successor. It would be wrong to say that the Queen paid much heed to the
objection on the score of inexperience. Like the Duke, she fully
believed that her husband’s extraordinary power of work, and pertinacity
of resolution, would soon fit him for the post. But, on the other hand,
it was quite clear that the work would absorb all his time. In short, as
the Prince would be certain to insist on doing the duty of the office to
the fullest extent, and on his own responsibility, it was equally
certain that if he became Commander-in-chief, he must abandon all his
other occupations--even the chemical researches on the utilisation of
sewage, in his pursuance of which he imagined at the time that he had
within his grasp a discovery that would immortalise him as a benefactor
of humanity. Moreover, how was the Queen to replace him as her private
secretary? So much assiduous service could not be expected from any
other holder of that office as Prince Albert cheerfully gave, and it was
furthermore an office the duties of which, at a time when the Sovereign
was beginning to wield an ever-increasing consultative and moderating
influence on public affairs, were necessarily augmenting. Then the Queen
also urged that as she believed the Prince was undertaking too much work
already, she could not approve of his burdening himself with more. To
sum up the views of the Queen and her husband on this difficult and
delicate affair: many able generals could do the duty of
Commander-in-chief as well, if not better, than the Prince. Nobody,
however, in the kingdom could possibly do the work he was then doing for
the Queen as well as he did it, and so the flattering proposal was put
aside. Had it been accepted, and had the Prince overhauled the Horse
Guards as he did the University of Cambridge, perhaps the terrible and
shameful disasters of the Crimea might have been avoided. On the other
hand, it may be doubted if even his patient resolution would have
enabled him to reform in so short a time the military administration
which collapsed in 1854. In that case, the Court would have been blamed,
and blamed unjustly, for the departmental catastrophes that still invest
the Crimea with bitter memories for British soldiers.

[Illustration: CAMBRIDGE HOUSE, PICCADILLY (1854).]

On the 1st of May the Duke of Connaught was born. His birthday was
coincident with that of the Duke of Wellington, and he had as his
sponsors two of the most illustrious soldiers of Europe--the great Duke
himself, and Prince William of Prussia, afterwards Emperor of Germany.
The ceremony of baptism took place on the 22nd of June, when the Prince
was christened Arthur William Patrick Albert, the Duke and the Prince of
Prussia both being present.

[Illustration: THE QUEEN AND PRINCE ARTHUR.

(_After Winterhalter, 1850._)]

As spring gave place to summer, the shadow of death fell on the Royal
Family. We have seen how genuine and profound was the Queen’s sorrow
over the death of Peel. But closely following that sad event came the
serious illness of the Duke of Cambridge, a kind-hearted Prince, noted
for his _bonhomie_ and for the profusion of his charities. The Queen was
assiduous in her attentions to her uncle, whom she dearly loved, and one
of her visits to his sick bed accidentally exposed her to a cowardly
outrage. When she was leaving Cambridge House, sad-eyed and sorrowful, a
man suddenly stepped forward and struck at her face with a cane. Her
bonnet protected her somewhat, but her forehead was cruelly bruised by
the assault. “The perpetrator is a dandy,” writes Prince Albert to
Stockmar, “whom you must have often seen in the park, where he makes
himself conspicuous.” He was one Robert Pate, formerly a lieutenant in
the army. After being tried for his offence on the 11th of July, he was
sentenced to seven years’ transportation. No motive could be assigned
for the outrage, and the jury refused to accept Pate’s plea of insanity.

[Illustration: PATE’S ASSAULT ON THE QUEEN.]

The Duke of Cambridge, it may here be said, died on the 8th of July.

Meantime, as if to add to the Queen’s private griefs, an extraordinary
attack was made in the press upon Prince Albert and the Exhibition
Commissioners. The building was to be in Hyde Park, and this invasion of
one of the pleasure-grounds of “the people” was resented. The truth is
that a rich and selfish clique of families dwelling in the neighbourhood
objected to a great public show, likely to attract multitudes of
sightseers, coming between the wind and their nobility, and they
represented “the people” for the occasion. The extent to which they were
sensitive as to the rights of the populace may be indicated by one
suggestion which they made. It was that the Exhibition be transported as
a nuisance to the Isle of Dogs, where “the people” dwell in teeming
masses. At last an attack was organised on the Exhibition Commissioners
in Parliament, and the Queen, knowing well that if it were successful,
the project must be abandoned, was sorely grieved at the folly and
prejudice which inspired the opposition. The _Times_ was very bitter.
Even Mr. Punch, notorious for his sentimental devotion to the Queen,
proved himself a sad recreant on this occasion, and Leech made fun of
the Prince, because the public were a little niggardly with their
subscriptions,[23] which fell far short of £100,000, which was the
lowest estimate tendered for the building. But though the attempt of “a
little knot of selfish persons,” as the Queen calls them in a letter in
which she implores Stockmar to come and comfort her and her husband in
their troubles, to drive the Exhibition out of Hyde Park failed, and
their attacks in Parliament collapsed, the Prince was still “plagued
about the Exhibition,” and the old symptoms of insomnia reappeared,
greatly to the alarm of her Majesty. At last a way out of all their
difficulties was opened up. It was proposed to establish a guarantee
fund to meet any deficit that might be incurred, and on the 12th of June
it was started by a subscription of £50,000 from Messrs. Peto, the
contractors. In a few days the subscriptions sufficed to solve the
financial problem. Ultimately, to the surprise of those who had scoffed
at the Prince’s sanguine anticipations, not only were the guarantors
freed from all responsibility, but when the Exhibition accounts were
closed, the Commissioners found themselves with a balance of a quarter
of a million in hand. The work was accordingly begun without further
delay.

But no sooner had one source of vexation vanished than another was
opened. In August the Queen, mortified at further displays of wayward
recklessness on Lord Palmerston’s part, and failing to inspire the Prime
Minister with enough courage to rebuke him, at last determined to take
the matter in hand herself. Although Palmerston was then at the height
of his popularity, owing to the triumph of his _civis Romanum sum_
doctrine in the Don Pacifico debate, her Majesty penned a Memorandum to
Lord John Russell, which has become historic. It is dated the 16th of
August, and was written at Osborne. In it she accepts Lord Palmerston’s
disavowal of an intention to offer her any disrespect by his past
neglect, but, to prevent fresh mistakes, she deems it as well to say
that in future she requires--

“(1) That he (the Foreign Secretary) will distinctly state what he
proposes in a given case, in order that the Queen may know as distinctly
to what she has given her Royal sanction. (2) Having once given her
sanction to a measure, that it be not arbitrarily altered or modified by
the Minister. Such an act she must consider as failure in sincerity
towards the Crown, and justly to be visited by the exercise of her
Constitutional right of dismissing that Minister. She expects to be kept
informed of what passes between him and the Foreign Ministers before
important decisions are taken based on that intercourse; to receive the
foreign despatches in good time, and to have the drafts for her approval
sent to her in sufficient time to make herself acquainted with their
contents before they must be sent off.” Lord John Russell sent this
Memorandum to Palmerston, who lightly pleaded pressure of business in
palliation of his past faults, but promised to behave better in time to
come. Had he been a man of high spirit or sensitive feelings, he would
have resigned when the Queen’s Memorandum was sent to him. High spirit,
however, was not to be expected from the Minister that sent a British
fleet to coerce Greece, though he dared not utter a word of protest
against the Russian invasion of Hungary,[24] or who, whilst he could be
swift to resent an impertinence from a decrepit Power like Spain,
accepted with the utmost meekness a rebuke from Russia in reference to
the Greek affair, couched in the language of deliberate insult. On the
contrary, whilst his friends gave out that he was manfully fighting the
battle of the people against the Sovereign and the foreign Prince, who
was “the power behind the Throne,” Palmerston was abasing himself before
both. He implored Prince Albert to intercede for him with the Queen in
order that she might grant him an interview. The Prince, in a Memorandum
dated 17th of August, 1850, writes:--

“After the Council for the Speech from the Throne for the Prorogation of
Parliament on the 14th I saw Lord Palmerston, as he had desired it. He
was very _much agitated, shook, and had tears in his eyes_, so as to
quite move me, who never under any circumstances had known him otherwise
than with a bland smile on his face.” It was not the condemnation of his
policy, he told Prince Albert, that affected him most closely. The
“accusation that he had been wanting in his respect to the Queen, whom
he had every reason to respect as his Sovereign, and as a woman whose
virtues he admired, and to whom he was bound by every tie of duty and
gratitude, was an imputation on his honour as a gentleman, and if he
could have made himself guilty of it, he was almost no longer fit to be
tolerated in society.”[25] The “almost” is

[Illustration: LORD JOHN RUSSELL (1850).]

characteristically Palmerstonian. Her Majesty, according to Prince
Albert, did not impute any _intentional_ want of regard to Lord
Palmerston; but her complaint was that he never submitted any question
to her “intact,” that is to say, he always contrived to commit the
Government before the Queen could express an opinion. As her opinion had
of late been at variance with Lord Palmerston’s, this mode of doing
business was to her objectionable. Her Majesty had always been frank
with her Ministers, and when overruled, she had accepted loyally their
decision. “She knew,” said the Prince, “that they were going to battle
together, and that she was going to receive the blows which were aimed
at the Government; and that she had these last years received several
such as no Sovereign of England had before been obliged to put up with,
and which had been most painful to her.” She did not wish to trouble
her Ministers about details. But when principles were settled at their
conferences, she thought she too should be consulted and advised.
Palmerston’s excuse was the old one--want of time; but he said he was
willing to come to the Palace at any moment to Prince Albert, and give
any explanations that might be wanted either to the Queen or her
husband.

If the Prince’s account be correct, the Minister seems to have conducted
himself throughout this interview with hysterical servility, which may,
however, have been simulated. As for his penitence, it was short-lived.
In September he had another quarrel with the Queen over the wording of a
despatch, in which he had foolishly gone out of his way to impugn the
honour of England. This despatch rose out of the Haynau incident. The
Austrian General Haynau had come to England on a visit, and the Radicals
stirred up public feeling against him on account of his brutality in
crushing the Hungarian insurrection, more especially for his cowardly
conduct in stripping women, and flogging them publicly. When he went to
visit the Brewery of Messrs. Barclay and Perkins, the workmen in the
place recognised him. They turned out _en masse_, assaulted, hustled,
and insulted “the Austrian butcher,” till he fled in terror from the
premises, and took refuge in a little public-house, from which the
police smuggled him away. Naturally, Lord Palmerston expressed his
regret to the Austrian Ambassador; but it was also necessary to send a
formal Note on the subject to the Austrian Government. This Note was a
model of Palmerstonian maladroitness. In the first place, it contained
an uncalled-for imputation on the English people, because it admitted
that they were so incapable of courtesy and self-control that no
foreigner was safe in England who happened to be unpopular. Secondly, it
implied that Haynau had been imprudent in visiting England at all. The
Queen, whose views were shared by the Prime Minister, objected to both
of these statements--one as derogatory to the honour of England, the
other as needlessly offensive to Austria. But, on her objecting, she
discovered that it was impossible to alter the Note, which had been sent
to the Austrian Ambassador _before_ the draft had been submitted to her.
The Queen, however, insisted on the withdrawal of the Note, and so did
Lord John Russell. Palmerston first of all tried to browbeat the Prime
Minister by threatening to resign. But when Lord John informed him (16th
of October) that the threat was futile, Palmerston submissively withdrew
the Note, and substituted for it another drawn up in accordance with the
Queen’s views.

Another serious conflict of opinion between the Queen and Lord
Palmerston at this period arose out of the dispute between Denmark and
the German States as to the settlement of Schleswig-Holstein. The German
population of these Duchies had revolted against the petty tyranny of
the Danes, and it was notorious that they were supported secretly by
Prussia. The rebellion was suppressed; and though almost all the
Liberals of Europe were in favour of letting the Duchies be incorporated
in Germany, the Governments of the various Powers took the contrary
view. The Austro-Prussian Convention at Olmütz, of 29th November,
restoring peace and stipulating for the disarmament of the Duchies, left
the matter uncertain; but Austria was obviously for thwarting, whilst
Prussia was for gratifying, the aspirations of the German or national
party in the Duchies. All through this controversy the Queen was
anti-Austrian, and strongly in favour of letting the
Schleswig-Hoisteiners have their own way. Palmerston, and in this he was
powerfully supported by the Tories, was violently pro-Austrian, and used
the influence of England as far as possible to prevent the Duchies
gravitating to Germany. For the moment he was successful. But subsequent
events, as all the world knows, justified the wiser and more liberal
views of the Queen.

On the 26th of August, 1850, Louis Philippe died; in fact, the sad news
of his death greeted the Queen and her husband a few days after their
return from a brief visit to the King of the Belgians at Ostend, and
marred the celebration of Prince Albert’s thirty-first birthday at
Osborne.

On the 27th of August the Royal Family migrated northwards. The Queen
and Prince Albert opened the great railway bridges at Newcastle and
Berwick, and then went on to Edinburgh, where they stayed at Holyrood
Palace.

The reception of the Queen in the “grey metropolis of the North” was
picturesque as well as enthusiastic. The Royal Company of Archers in
their quaint old costume, headed by the Duke of Buccleuch, claimed their
historic right of acting as the Queen’s body-guard, and they surrounded
her carriage as it drove through swarming crowds from the railway
station to the Palace, in which no Queen of Scotland had set foot since
Mary Stuart crossed its threshold, never to return to it again.
Immediately after her arrival, the Queen and her family began to explore
the Palace and its ruined precincts, and she records her delight in her
Diary at discovering in the crumbling Abbey the tomb “of Flora
Macdonald’s mother,” not the Flora Macdonald who assisted the Young
Pretender to escape, but a lady of the Clanranald family, who was then
serving as a Maid of Honour. Next morning the Queen and “the children”
drove round the park, and climbed Arthur’s Seat, and the Prince
proceeded to lay the foundation-stone of the National Gallery of Arts,
whilst the rest of the day was spent in sightseeing. At half-past eight
on the following morning her Majesty started for Balmoral, which she
reached in the afternoon. Here, as Prince Albert says in one of his
letters to Stockmar, they tried to strengthen their hearts amid the
stillness and solemnity of the mountains,[26] and truly they had much
need of rest. The harassing conflicts with Lord Palmerston, the deaths
of Peel, Louis Philippe, Queen Adelaide, the Duke of Cambridge, and the
faithful Anson, and the news that the Queen of the Belgians was dying,
contributed to produce in the Queen great depression of spirits.

The sport on the hills delighted the Prince. The primitive life and
guileless character of the people vastly interested the Queen, who has
left on record her account of several curious excursions she made, and
of the gathering of clansmen at Braemar, which she witnessed. Writing on
the 12th of September, 1850, her Majesty says in her “Leaves from a
Journal of Our Life in the Highlands,” “We lunched early, and then went
at half-past two o’clock, with the children and all our party, except
Lady Douro, to the Gathering at the Castle of Braemar, as we did last
year. The Duffs, Farquharsons, the Leeds’s, and those staying with them,
and Captain Forbes and forty of his men who had come over from Strath
Don, were there. Some of our people were there also. There were the
usual games of ‘putting the stone,’ ‘throwing the hammer’ and ‘caber,’
and racing up the hill of Craig Cheunnich, which was accomplished in
less than six minutes and a half; and we were all much pleased to see
our gillie Duncan,[27] who is an active, good-looking young man, win. He
was far before the others the whole way. It is a fearful exertion. Mr.
Farquharson brought him up to me afterwards. Eighteen or nineteen
started, and it looked very pretty to see them run off in their
different coloured kilts, with their white shirts (the jackets or
doublets they take off for all the games), and scramble up through the
wood, emerging gradually at the edge of it, and climbing the hill.

“After this we went into the Castle, and saw some dancing; the prettiest
was a reel by Mr. Farquharson’s children and some other children, and
the ‘Ghillie Callum,’ beautifully danced by John Athole Farquharson, the
fourth son. The twelve children were all there, including the baby, who
is two years old.

“Mama, Charles, and Ernest joined us at Braemar. Mama enjoys it all very
much; it is her first visit to Scotland. We left after the dancing.”

The Court returned to Windsor late in the autumn, and one of the first
dismal communications made to her Majesty was that of the death of the
Queen of the Belgians on the 11th of October. “Victoria is greatly
distressed,” writes Prince Albert to Stockmar. “Her aunt was her only
confidante and friend. Sex, age, culture, feeling, rank--in all these
they were so much on a par, that a relation of unconstrained friendship
naturally grew up between them.” This friendship, it may be added,
survived even the treachery of Queen Louise’s father, Louis Philippe, in
the matter of the Spanish marriages.

The end of the year 1850 was marked by another amazing epidemic of
bigotry on the part of the people and the Government, which was very
distressing to the serene and evenly balanced minds of the Queen and her
husband. This was known as the “Papal Aggression movement,” and it is
in these days difficult to understand how a sensible nation could have
been swept into its vortex.

On the 24th of September the Pope issued a Brief re-establishing the
Roman Catholic hierarchy in England. In other words, he substituted
Bishops and Archbishops deriving their titles from their sees, for the
Vicars Apostolic who govern Romish missions in heathen lands. He
partitioned England into sees, very much as the Wesleyans had mapped it
into circuits and districts. The act was purely one of ecclesiastical
administration, and of no concern to any body but the small Roman
Catholic community in England. But prominent leaders of the Church began
to talk about it in extravagant terms, as if it constituted the
spiritual annexation of England to Rome, and as if it were a formal
assertion of the authority of the Pope over that of the Queen. The
Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, Dr. Nicholas Wiseman, and Father
(now Cardinal) Newman, were particularly indiscreet in their references
to the Papal Brief. Dr. Wiseman, for example, issued a pompous Pastoral
“Given out of the Flaminian Gate of Rome,” on the 7th of October,
boasting that “Catholic England had been restored to its orbit in the
ecclesiastical firmament, from which its light had long vanished.”

Dr. Ullathorne, the Bishop of Birmingham, was one of those prelates who
had the sense and tact to see what mischief would spring from Cardinal
Wiseman’s folly, and he did his best to explain the real meaning of the
Papal Brief. But his voice was like that of one crying in the
wilderness. Did not Father Newman, preaching at Dr. Ullathorne’s
enthronisation, say that “the people of England, who for so many years
have been separated from the see of Rome, are about, of their own free
will, to be added to the Holy Church”? Was it not clear, despite the
reasonable explanations of Dr. Ullathorne and others, that what the
Papists really meant was that the Reformation was now reversed, and that
England was reconquered for Rome? Outraged Protestantism, arguing in
this fashion, without distinction of party or sect, accordingly rose in
its wrath, and hurled angry defiance at the Pope. The bigots, taking
advantage of this outburst of popular passion, demanded that the law
should step in and punish the insolent priesthood, who thus challenged
the prerogatives of the Crown.

On the 4th of November, Lord John Russell addressed to the Bishop of
Durham a letter, almost equalling Cardinal Wiseman’s in its folly. The
Prime Minister, in fact, gave expression to the worst phase of
contemporary excitement, and fully endorsed the ridiculous notion that a
prelate, who had but recently been restored to, and even then was kept
on, his throne in Rome by foreign bayonets, had established his
supremacy over England, in a manner inconsistent with the authority of
the Queen. This Durham letter further stimulated the frenzy of
intolerance into which England plunged. Meetings were held everywhere
protesting against Papal aggression, and transmitting loyal addresses to
the Queen. Guy Fawkes’ Day was celebrated with more

[Illustration: THE ROYAL APARTMENTS, HOLYROOD PALACE.

1, Throne Room; 2, Breakfast Parlour; 3, Evening Drawing-room; 4, Grand
Staircase; 5, Morning Drawing-room.]

than usual zeal, and in most towns effigies of the Pope and Cardinal
Wiseman were paraded through hooting crowds, and burnt in bonfires
amidst the derision of the populace. The Universities and the
Corporation of London in December sent deputations in great state to
Windsor to present addresses to the Queen, protesting against insidious
attacks on the authority, prerogatives, and exclusive jurisdiction of
the Crown. The Queen’s replies to these addresses were spirited but
calm, and absolutely free from intolerance. “I would never have
consented,” she tells her “aunt Gloucester” in a letter written after
the deputations had been received, “to say anything which breathed a
spirit of intolerance. Sincerely Protestant as I always have been and
always shall be, and indignant as I am at those who call themselves
Protestants, while they are in fact quite the contrary,[28] I much
regret the unchristian and intolerant spirit exhibited by many people at
the public meetings. I cannot bear to hear the violent abuse of the
Catholic religion, which is so painful and so cruel towards the many
good and innocent Roman Catholics.”[29]

On the last day of December, 1850, the Queen was gratified to hear that
one of her husband’s cherished designs had been carried out. The
building for the International Exhibition had risen from the ground in
Hyde Park with the magical rapidity of a fairy palace. The design which
had been chosen was that of a French artist, and Londoners had looked on
with amazement at the erection of the great central dome of crystal,
which dwarfed even that of St. Paul’s into insignificance. The plan for
carrying out the design was suggested by Mr. Paxton, chief
superintendent of the Duke of Devonshire’s gardens, and it was but an
expansion of the grand conservatory which he had built for his Grace at
Chatsworth. Iron and glass were the materials used for its construction.
The cast-iron columns and girders were all alike--four columns and four
girders being placed in relative positions forming a square of 24 feet,
which could be raised to any height, or expanded laterally in any
required direction, merely by joining other columns and girders to them.
The building, therefore, grew up in multiples of twenty-four, and it
could be taken to pieces just as readily as if it had been a doll’s
house, and put up on any other site in exactly the same form. As a
matter of fact, after the Exhibition was held in 1851, this wonderful
Palace of Crystal was removed to Sydenham, where it has long been one of
the raree-shows of London. The building covered 18 acres of ground, and
gave an exhibiting surface of 21 acres; in truth, it was, within ten
feet, twice the width of St. Paul’s, and four times as long. The
contractors, Messrs. Fox, Henderson, and Co., accepted the order for the
work on the 26th of July, and though there was not a single bar of iron
or pane of glass prepared at that date, they handed the completed
building over to the Commissioners, ready for painting and fitting, on
the last day of the year.




CHAPTER XXV.

FALL OF THE WHIG CABINET.

     Debates on “No Popery”--Mutiny of the Irish Brigade--Defeat of Lord
     John Russell--Lord Stanley “sent for”--Timid Tories--Lord Stanley’s
     Interviews with the Queen--A Statesman’s “Domestic Duties”--Is
     Coalition Possible?--The Queen’s Mistake--The Duke of Wellington’s
     Advice--Return of the Whigs to Office--The Queen’s Aversions--The
     “No Popery” Bill Reduced to a Nullity--Another Bungled Budget--The
     Income Tax Controversy--The Pillar of Free Trade--The Window Tax
     and the House Duty--The Radicals and the Slave Trade--King “Bomba”
     and Mr. Gladstone--Cobden on General Disarmament--Palmerston in a
     Millennial Mood--The Whig-Peelite Intrigue--The Queen and the
     Kossuth Demonstrations--Another Quarrel with Palmerston--A Merry
     Council of State.


On the 4th of February, 1851, Parliament assembled with the din of the
agitation over Papal aggression ringing in its ears. Men talked of
nothing save the legislation that might be necessary to check the
encroachments of Rome. But it was not supposed that the course of the
Government would be other than smooth, for not only was the Prime
Minister in full accord with the popular feeling against Papal
aggression, but the great International Exhibition dwarfed public
interest in purely party questions. We shall see how these anticipations
were falsified by events, and how the Whig Government was hurried to its
doom. One of the politicians behind the scenes, who forecast the fall of
the Cabinet more accurately than the public, was Mr. Cobden. “I expect,”
he writes on the 19th of February in one of his letters, “that this ‘No
Popery’ cry will prove fatal to the Ministry. It is generally thought
that the Government will be in a minority on some important question,
probably the Income Tax, in less than a fortnight. The Irish Catholic
members are determined to do everything to turn out Lord John. Indeed,
Ireland is in such a state of exasperation with the Whigs, that no Irish
member having a Catholic constituency will have a chance of being
elected again unless he votes through thick and thin to upset the
Ministry.”[30]

The Address to the Queen was carried in both Houses. The Queen’s Speech
promised a measure for resisting the assumption that a foreign Power had
a right to confer ecclesiastical titles in England; and some forthcoming
Chancery reforms, and reforms in the registration of titles, were also
promised. The Protectionists harped on their old string--agricultural
distress. The Radicals complained that the Government gave them no hope
of cutting down taxation, and grumbled because no reference was made to
Parliamentary reform. But they fought rather shy of the proposed
legislation against Papal aggression; yet speaking generally, the “No
Popery” cry was popular in both Houses of Parliament.

[Illustration: ST. STEPHEN’S CRYPT, WESTMINSTER PALACE.]

On the 7th of February, Lord John Russell moved for leave to introduce
his Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, which prevented the assumption of such
titles “in respect of places in the United Kingdom,” and he was met by a
scathing attack from Mr. Roebuck, who condemned the measure as
retrograde and reactionary. The feebleness of the Bill was in comic
contrast with the fierce agitation which had produced it, and with the
extravagant terms of the Premier’s speech, which might have led one to
suppose the Penal Laws were being re-enacted. As Mr. Roebuck said, if
Dr. Wiseman called himself Archbishop, instead of Archbishop of
Westminster, the Bill could not even touch him. For four nights did the
debate drag on, till ultimately leave to introduce the measure was
carried by a majority of 332. The Irish members, had they been sixty
Quakers instead of sixty Catholics, could dictate terms to any Ministry
in a keen party fight, and as they were determined to punish Lord John
Russell for his Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, it was obvious that on some
other question where a close division was expected the Government would
be beaten by the votes of their Irish supporters. It was an ominous sign
that they were saved from defeat only by a majority of

[Illustration: MR. LOCKE KING.]

sixteen on Mr. Disraeli’s motion for the relief of agricultural
distress. But the fatal blow came when Mr. Locke King, on the 20th of
February, brought forward his motion for leave to introduce a Bill for
equalising the town and county franchise, by reducing the latter to the
limit of £10 yearly value. Although Lord John Russell promised to bring
in a measure for improving representation, he resisted Mr. King’s
motion. It was then carried against him by a vote of 100 against 52.
“The Ecclesiastical Titles Bill,” writes Mr. Cobden to his friend Mr. J.
Parker, “is the real cause of the upset of the Whig coach, or rather of
the coachman leaping from the box to escape an upset. This measure
cannot be persevered in by any Government so far as Ireland is
concerned, for no Government can exist if fifty Irish members are
pledged to vote against them under all circumstances when they are in
danger. A dissolution would give at least fifty members to do that
work, and they would be all watched as they are now by their
constituents. This mode of fighting by means of adverse votes in the
House is far more difficult to deal with by our aristocratic rulers than
was the plan of O’Connell, when he called his monster meetings. They
could be stopped by a proclamation or put down by soldiers, but neither
of these modes will avail in the House. What folly,” adds Mr. Cobden, as
if he had even then foreseen the success of Parnellism in our day, “it
was to give a real representation to the Irish counties, and to think of
still maintaining the old persecuting ascendency.”[31] On the 22nd of
February, Lord John, as Mr. Cobden says, “leaped from the box,” for on
that day he and his colleagues resigned.

The Queen sent for Lord Stanley, who frankly told her that he could not
undertake to form a Ministry. He, however, said he would try to form one
if Lord John Russell failed to reconstruct his defeated Cabinet. Lord
Stanley’s motive for refusing office is to be found in the fact that
there was a serious division of opinion among his followers, on the one
question that was vital to their existence as a party. Some of the
ablest of them, led by Mr. Walpole and Mr. Henley, objected to any
proposal to tax foreign corn, and yet if the Protectionists refused to
do that, their _locus standi_ in the country was gone. Her Majesty next
appealed to Lord John Russell to form a coalition with the Peelites.
This project proved to be hopeless. The Peelites were bitterly opposed
to the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, and though Lord John offered to
attenuate it to the verge of absolute nullity, they could not sanction
it in any shape or form. Moreover, Sir James Graham was afraid that if
he joined a Whig Ministry he might quarrel with Lord Palmerston, and
Lord Grey was equally afraid that he might quarrel with Sir James
Graham. The Peelite leaders also thought that before a Coalition
Government could be organised with any chance of success, it must be
preceded by co-operation in opposition, between the two parties to it,
and hence they wished Lord Stanley to form a Ministry which, from its
Protectionist policy, must needs have but a brief existence. This
abortive attempt to form an alliance between the Whigs and the Peelites
is memorable, because it was the first step that led them both on the
path which brought them to the celebrated and fateful Coalition of 1852.

On the 26th of February, the Queen accordingly sent for Lord Stanley
again, and he, with a somewhat rueful countenance, pledged himself to
try and form a Cabinet. Again he failed, and for reasons which are given
by Lord Malmesbury in his diary under the date of the 28th of February.
“We met,” writes Lord Malmesbury, “at Lord Stanley’s in St. James’s
Square, and have failed in forming a Government. He had previously
requested me to take the Colonial Office, which I consider a great
compliment, as it is one of the hardest worked of places. Those
assembled were Mr. Disraeli, Sir John Pakington, Mr. Walpole, Lord
Hardwicke, Mr. Henley, Mr. Herries, Lord John Manners, and Lord
Eglinton. Everything went smoothly, each willingly accepting the
respective post to which Lord Stanley appointed him, excepting Mr.
Henley, who made such difficulties about himself, and submitted so many
upon various subjects, that Lord Stanley threw up the game, to the great
disappointment and disgust of most of the others present. Mr. Henley
seemed quite overpowered by the responsibility he was asked to undertake
as President of the Board of Trade, and is evidently a most nervous man.
Mr. Disraeli did not conceal his anger at his want of courage and
interest in the matter.... In the House of Lords, Lord Stanley announced
his failure, and did not conceal it as being caused by the want of
experience in public business which he found existed in his party. This
is possibly the case, but what really caused the break up of the
conference was the timid conduct of Mr. Henley and Mr. Herries.[32] Mr.
Herries,” adds Lord Malmesbury, “at this conference, looked like an old
doctor who had just killed a patient, and Mr. Henley like the undertaker
who was to bury him.” Lord Stanley gave a half-sarcastic turn to his
announcement in the House of Lords of the various motives which had led
his friends to refuse office. There was a titter when he said that one
gentleman had declined to serve because he was pressed with domestic
duties, which gave occasion for one of Lord Stanley’s brightest jokes.
Lady Jocelyn ironically asked Stanley who it was who was so anxious
about his domestic duties. “It is not Jocelyn,” was the cutting
reply.[33] An attempted combination with the Peelites had broken down,
though Mr. Gladstone was offered a high post in the Cabinet, and the
Queen then summoned the Duke of Wellington for his advice.

Matters were at an absolute deadlock. There were three questions in the
public mind--Protection _versus_ Free Trade, Parliamentary Reform, and
Papal Aggression. As Prince Albert put it in a memorandum which he drew
up for the Duke’s consideration, on the _first_ question Peelites,
Radicals, and Whigs were united, and formed a solid working majority. On
the _second_ question they were also united against the Protectionists.
But on the _third_ question the Whigs and Protectionists were united
against the Peelites and the Radicals reinforced by the Irish party. Any
policy that could unite Peelites, Whigs, Radicals, and Irish would
therefore furnish a majority capable of keeping in office a Cabinet that
could carry on the Queen’s Government. But the Peelites, the Irish, and
the Radicals were just as determined that there should be no anti-Papal
legislation, as the Whigs and Protectionists were determined on
demanding it. Why not, in such circumstances, leave Papal aggression an
_open question_, in a Coalition Ministry of Whigs, Peelites, and
Radicals, allowing Lord John Russell to go on with an attenuated
Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, and Sir James Graham to oppose it? This
suggestion

[Illustration: THE GREEN DRAWING-ROOM, WINDSOR CASTLE.]

obviously sprang from the opinion which the Queen had held strongly ever
since the year 1846, that the country would never get an efficient
Government till a Coalition Ministry was formed. It was, however, quite
impracticable. The Queen made no allowance for the ease with which a
Cabinet loses prestige in the atmosphere of passion which pervades the
House of Commons, where the fact that a Cabinet is even suspected of
being divided destroys its moral authority. Neither the Duke of
Wellington nor Lord Lansdowne, who was also consulted, could advise the
Queen to put forward this project. The Duke, in fact, advised her to
send for Lord John Russell once again. This was accordingly done. “The
last act of the drama fell out last night,” writes Mr. Greville on the
4th of March, “as everybody foresaw it would and must.” Lord John
returned to office with his Ministry unchanged, which, says Mr.
Greville, “was better than trying some trifling patching-up, or some
shuffling of the same pack, and it makes a future reconstruction more
easy.” On the same night Lord Granville dined at the Palace. “The Queen
and Prince Albert,” writes Mr. Greville, “both talked to him a great
deal of what has been passing, and very openly. She is satisfied with
herself, as well she may be, and hardly with anybody else;

[Illustration: SIR GEORGE CORNEWALL LEWIS.]

not dissatisfied personally with Stanley, of whom she spoke in terms
indicative of liking him. She thinks Lord John Russell and his Cabinet
might have done more than they did to obtain Graham and the Peelites,
and might have made the Papal question more of an open question; but
Granville says that it is evident she is heart and soul with the
Peelites, so strong is the influence of Sir Robert, and they are very
stout and determined about Free Trade. The Queen and Prince think this
resuscitated concern very shaky, and that it will not last. Her
favourite aversions are, first and foremost, Palmerston, and Disraeli
next. It is very likely that this latter antipathy (which no doubt
Stanley discovered) contributed to his reluctance to form a Government.
Such is the feeling about him in their minds.” Mr. Disraeli, aware of
their antipathy, had, indeed, offered to efface himself or to accept any
office, no matter how humble, that would not bring him into personal
communication with the Sovereign, in order to facilitate the return of
his party to power. It may be here convenient to note that the Queen,
though entertaining strong personal opinions about the capacity of her
Ministers, has been ever prompt to change them when they gave her good
reasons for doing so. Her antipathy to Peel in 1839 was notorious. Yet
when Peel became Prime Minister he completely won her confidence. Her
antipathy to Palmerston ceased after he left the Foreign Office and
became Prime Minister, and the same may be said of her aversion to Mr.
Disraeli, who, as Lord Beaconsfield, received from the Crown a tribute
of homage and favour rarely accorded to any subject.

The reinstatement of the Whigs pleased nobody. However, a dissolution
was dreaded, and all parties were therefore forced to tolerate them. But
they were, as a Government, utterly discredited, and their final fall
was imminent. On their return to office, the Government produced a new
edition of their Ecclesiastical Titles Bill. It consisted simply in a
declaration that the assumption of such titles was illegal. What may be
termed the stringent penal clauses were cut out, and in this form the
measure was received with universal displeasure, mingled with contempt.
The bigots complained that the measure was rendered futile. The Radicals
complained that it was a concession to the bigots. As for the Irish
members, they opposed what was left of it, simply to compel the
Government to drain the chalice of mortification to the lees. So
ingeniously was the Bill obstructed that it was not read a third time
till a month after its introduction. The House of Lords passed it after
debating the second reading for two nights. Its opponents predicted it
would be a dead letter, and events verified their prophecies. As Sir
George Cornewall Lewis said, “Neither the assumption of the territorial
title nor the prohibition to assume it was of the least practical
importance.”[34]

The story of the Parliamentary Session of 1851 may be briefly told. The
obstruction of the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill left little time for
legislation. Sir Charles Wood, as usual, bungled the Budget. He had a
comfortable surplus of £2,521,000. His estimates were careful and
judicious, and showed on the basis of existing taxation an anticipated
surplus of £1,892,000. It was in disposing of this sum that Sir Charles
plunged into a sea of difficulties. He said it would not enable him to
abolish the Income Tax, the retention of which, during the early days of
Free Trade, he recommended as necessary for the stability of the fiscal
system. Hence he proposed to spend his estimated surplus in (1),
reducing debt by about £1,000,000; (2), in commuting a tax “which bore
on the health and morals of the lower classes,” namely, the Window Tax,
into a house duty; (3), in reducing the duty on foreign and colonial
coffee to a uniform rate of threepence in the pound; (4), in reducing
the timber duty by fifty per cent.; (5), and by transferring to the
State a certain proportion of the local charge for maintaining pauper
lunatics. On the 17th of February, in Committee of Ways and Means, Sir
Charles accordingly moved that the Income Tax and Stamp Duties in
Ireland be renewed for a limited period. The manner in which the Budget
was received clearly showed that it would be unpopular. The Tories
attacked it because the Income Tax was to be retained, and the transfer
of the charge for pauper lunatics they ridiculed as a mockery of relief
to the distressed rural ratepayers. Mr. Hume complained that there was
no attempt made to reduce military expenditure by asking the Colonies to
bear the cost of their own defence. The representatives of the large
towns protested violently against commuting the Window Tax into a house
duty. The controversy was, however, cut short by Lord John Russell’s
resignation after his defeat on Mr. Locke King’s resolution, to which
reference has already been made.

On the 5th of April Sir Charles Wood, after his usual manner, brought
forward a new Budget. He proposed now to levy a uniform duty of
ninepence on the annual value of houses, and sixpence on shops, without
reference to the number of their windows. This would in nearly all cases
impose a smaller burden on houses than the Window Tax, the capricious
and unequal incidence of which had made it intensely unpopular--the
greatest relief being given to the houses which had more windows than
were proportionate to their annual value. The loss from the Window Tax
and the reduction of the duty on coffee left a surplus of £924,000 for
emergencies, and Sir Charles Wood was still deaf to the demand for the
abolition of the Income Tax. The Tories contended that the tax had been
granted to meet a deficit. There was now no deficit, therefore the tax
ought to be removed. The Whigs admitted these facts, but denied the
conclusion drawn from them. The tax, they argued, ought not to be
removed, because a new reason had risen for its continuance, namely,
that the Income Tax enabled the Government to minimise the loss to the
revenue which might be entailed by the abandonment of protective duties.
This, in fact, is the clue to all the tangled Income Tax controversies
of the time. The Income Tax was in truth the keystone of Peel’s Free
Trade policy. The Tories, therefore, spared no pains to strike it out of
the fabric of fiscal legislation which he and the Whigs had built up.
Yet the injustice and frauds perpetrated under the Income Tax were
admitted on all sides; and finally an effort was made by Mr. Hume to
limit the renewal of the tax to one year, and refer the whole question
of its assessment and incidence to a Select Committee. Mr. Hume’s motion
was carried against the Government by a vote of 244 to 230. But the
fatal objection to it, as Mr. Sidney Herbert pointed out, was that,
unless the Government had the Income Tax secured to them for three
years, they could not make permanent

[Illustration: THE CAFFRE WAR: NATIVES ATTACKING A CONVOY.]

reductions in the duties on coffee and timber. It was absurd to dream of
entering on a policy which involved further remission of taxation, so
long as £5,000,000 of the revenue--for that was what the Income Tax
brought in--depended on an annual vote of the House. Then the _concordia
discors_ of the majority was made manifest. As everybody had voted with
Mr. Hume from different motives, it was impossible to get competent men
to serve on the Committee. That difficulty, however, was after much
trouble overcome, and the Government made the best of the situation.
They accepted defeat; Lord John Russell, however, stipulating that,
whatever might be done, the national credit must be maintained. In other
words, he accepted the proposal on the ground that, though the motion
granting the Income Tax for one year only was carried, there was no
serious intention of refusing to renew the tax if necessary; and that it
would be necessary was, of course, certain, unless the £5,500,000
derived from it were replaced by protective duties. This was not a very
logical position, and Mr. Disraeli seized the opening which it gave him.
Hume’s victory, technically speaking, implied that the financial
arrangements of the country were in a provisional state.

[Illustration: GROUP OF DYAKS.]

Why, then, asked Mr. Disraeli, sacrifice any revenue at all till
something like permanence had been imparted to these arrangements? On
the 30th of July he brought forward a futile motion to this effect in a
grandiose speech, and was supported by Mr. Gladstone, whose antipathy to
the Government was fast becoming uncontrollable. Yet Mr. Gladstone’s
argument was sound enough. To surrender the Window Tax for one like the
hated House Duty, which rested on a narrow basis and was vitiated by
special anomalies of inequality and injustice of incidence, that had
secured its abolition in 1834, was surely bad finance. And what was
gained? Six-sevenths of the house property of the country were exempted
from taxation--house property being a fair enough subject for taxation,
provided it be assessed on fair general principles. Nothing could be
more precarious than the position of the Income Tax; yet but for it the
surplus in hand, which Sir Charles Wood was flinging away, would not
exist. Mr. Disraeli, however, in spite of Mr. Gladstone’s support, lost
his motion. His inconsistency in voting for Mr. Cayley’s proposal, on
the 8th of May, to abolish the Malt Tax, which yielded £5,000,000 of
revenue, and in protesting, on the 30th of June, against the sacrifice
of £1,600,000 of surplus, as ruinous to public credit, was, of course,
disastrous to his pleading.

In the debates on Colonial Policy the Government were more successful
than could have been anticipated. Mr. Baillie’s motion censuring Lord
Torrington’s maladministration of the affairs of Ceylon was defeated by
a large majority, which, says Mr. Greville, set the Cabinet, smarting
from various reverses at the time, “on their legs again.”

On the 18th of April a much more important subject was broached by Sir
W. Molesworth, who moved a series of resolutions demanding that the
Colonies should be made autonomous, and charged to provide for their own
defence. Other motions of the same sort as this one sprang from the
_animus_ against the Colonial Office which then existed among all
parties. As Mr. Urquhart said in debate, independent members were of
opinion that, if the good sense of the country did not put down the
Colonial Office, the Colonial Office would put down the Empire. The
objection of the Government to Sir W. Molesworth’s proposal was the old
one to all Colonial reforms--that it must lead to the abandonment of our
Colonial Empire. The debate was adjourned, and was not resumed.

The chronic discontent of the Cape Colonists, smarting under Lord Grey’s
abortive design to quarter convicts on them, led to some acrimonious
discussions, which aggravated popular antipathy to the costly Caffre War
which was raging. Lord John Russell, however, contrived to evade attacks
by persuading the House of Commons to appoint a Select Committee to
inquire into the relations of the Colony to the Caffre tribes.

The Radicals of the Manchester school had raised early in the Session an
agitation against Sir James Brooke, popularly called Rajah Brooke, of
Sarawak. Rajah Brooke had waged war on the Dyak tribes because they were
aggressive pirates. The Manchester school denied that the Dyaks were
pirates, and contended that Sir James Brooke simply levied war on the
natives in order to seize their territory. Mr. Hume insisted on
referring the matter to a Select Committee, but he was defeated by a
large majority, and the result of the debate was to exonerate Sir James
Brooke from the charges of brutality and barbarism that had been
advanced against him.

The slave-hunting squadron in West Africa was another question as to
which the Government were sadly harried. The cost of keeping up the
squadron rendered it extremely unpopular, and Mr. Hume forced the
Government, in Committee of Supply, to make a statement as to its work.
According to Lord Palmerston, it was active, energetic, and successful
in suppressing the infamous traffic in slaves, and the House of Commons
thought that the results of the squadron’s operations were so valuable
that England ought not to grudge the money spent upon it. On the other
hand, the Party of Economy contended that the reduction in the slave
trade was due, not to the English squadron, but to the new policy of
Brazil, whose Government had begun to co-operate with ours in seizing
slave-traders, destroying barracoons, and releasing slaves.

Foreign affairs but slightly interested Parliament in 1851. No doubt a
great deal of excitement was produced by the two letters on the State
prosecutions by the Neapolitan Government, which Mr. Gladstone addressed
to Lord Aberdeen, and much indignation was expressed at the stupid
tyranny of King “Bomba,” whose dungeons were full of political
prisoners. The charges of cruelty and injustice caused Sir De Lacy Evans
to question the Foreign Secretary on the subject in the House of
Commons, and from Lord Palmerston’s reply it turned out that above
20,000 persons were then confined in Neapolitan prisons for political
offences, most of whom had been deprived of liberty in flagrant
violation of the existing laws of their country. Copies of Mr.
Gladstone’s letter were sent by Lord Palmerston to every foreign
Government, in the hope that a joint-remonstrance from the Powers might
put an end to King Ferdinand’s outrages on civilisation.

Mr. Cobden renewed his annual motion for bringing about a general
disarmament among the European nations; and undoubtedly his speech was
received with much more sympathy than usual by the House of Commons and
the country. It was the year of the International Exhibition, and all
the world was talking of fraternity among the nations, and of their
strife being limited, in the golden future, to peaceful contests in the
fields of industry. “We are witnessing now,” said Mr. Cobden in a
memorable passage of his speech, “what a few years ago no one could have
predicted as possible. We see men meeting together from all countries in
the world, more like the gatherings of nations in former times, when
they came up for a great religious festival; we find men speaking
different languages and bred in different habits associating in one
common temple erected for their gratification and reception.” The
Government, he held, might with everlasting honour to themselves seize
the favourable hour for broaching a peace policy, and endeavour to win
the assent of Europe to a project for universal disarmament. The idea
then in men’s minds was that England should set the example by
approaching France with a proposal, that each country should reduce its
armaments to the footing on which they stood at the time of the Syrian
dispute. Lord Palmerston approved generally of Mr. Cobden’s objects, and
was willing to say that he would do everything in his power to bring
about the friendliest relations with France. But he did not wish to be
fettered beforehand with definite instructions to open up at once
negotiations for mutual disarmament; and, professing himself satisfied
with this expression of opinion, Mr. Cobden withdrew his motion.

The Jews in the Session of 1851 failed to remove the political
disabilities under which members of their community lay.[35] They
carried their point in the House of Commons. In the House of Lords,
however, the Tories threw the Jewish Disabilities Relief Bill out by a
vote of 144 to 108. A hot controversy arose over the attempt of Alderman
Salomons, the newly-elected member for Greenwich, to take the Oath
without repeating the words, “On the true faith of a Christian.” It
ended in the Alderman being removed from his seat by the
Serjeant-at-Arms, and in Lord John Russell carrying a motion denying Mr.
Salomons’s right to sit whilst he was unsworn.

[Illustration: LORD CARLISLE.]

The smaller measures of the Session included a Bill for strengthening
the appellate branch of the Court of Chancery by appointing two extra
judges. The Bill to legalise marriage with a deceased wife’s sister,
though carried in the House of Commons, was, as usual, rejected in the
Lords. Parliament was prorogued by the Queen in person on the 8th of
August, and the occasion

[Illustration: THE GREAT EXHIBITION, HYDE PARK.]

was interesting, for the representatives of the people for the first
time went into her presence from the new House of Commons, which had at
last been made ready for occupation. The long procession through the
grand corridors, between the two chambers, was accordingly a little more
orderly than usual. The Royal Speech was devoted to a brief review of a
barren but not unimportant Session.

Legislation, in fact, had been brought to a standstill by the anti-Papal
Bill, which had been obstinately obstructed. The prestige of the
Ministry was gone, and their natural strength completely abated by the
mutiny of the Irish Whigs. And yet, when Lord John Russell resumed
office after his resignation, he gained rather than lost in power, and
the attack on him became more and more languid every day. The truth is
that the people did not think much about politics after May, 1851. The
Ministry was safe after the failure of the Tories to take their places.
But it was no stronger than when it had been beaten on Mr. Locke King’s
motion, and its lease of office depended largely on the tolerance of
disdain. The people were indeed preoccupied with the Great Industrial
Exhibition of All Nations to such an extent that they paid no more
attention, during the latter half of the Session, to the doings of the
Government, than to the debates of a local vestry. “There is,” writes
Mr. Greville on the 8th of June, “a picture in _Punch_ of the
shipwrecked Government saved by the ‘Exhibition’ steamer, which really
is historically true, thanks in great measure to the attractions of the
Exhibition, which has acted on the public as well as upon Parliament....
There has been so much indifference and _insouciance_ about politics and
parties that John Russell and his Cabinet have been released from all
present danger. The cause of Protection gets weaker and weaker every
day; all sensible and practical men give it up as hopeless.”[36] That he
had been saved by the “Great Exhibition” steamer evidently did not
satisfy Lord John Russell. Hence he seems to have been ever hankering
after a plan for strengthening his Cabinet by the addition to it of a
Peelite element. Sir George Cornewall Lewis was sent down to Netherby in
September to intrigue with Sir James Graham for this purpose, but
Graham, though offered the Board of Control, or as it would now be
called the India Office, refused to join the Cabinet because he was
afraid lest Lord John Russell might make dangerous concessions to the
Party who were agitating for Parliamentary Reform. It is interesting to
note that Lord Palmerston strongly opposed this project of inviting
Graham to join the Whig Cabinet, and strove hard to induce his
colleagues to make their overtures to Mr. Gladstone. It is impossible to
blame Sir James for the course he took. Lord John Russell’s incurable
antipathy to statistical research induced him to hand over the question
of Reform to a small Ministerial Committee, consisting of Lord Minto,
Lord Carlisle, and Sir C. Wood, and so little did the Whigs love Reform,
that some of them, like Lord Lansdowne, had resolved to leave the
Cabinet if a strong Reform measure were proposed.

Another circumstance helped to weaken the Ministry. Lord Palmerston, as
usual, succeeded during the autumn in again irritating the Queen and his
own colleagues by one of his singular freaks at the Foreign Office. When
Louis Kossuth, the Hungarian patriot, arrived at Southampton on the 23rd
of October, he was welcomed by a popular demonstration, and some leading
Radicals took part in it. Lord Palmerston immediately resolved to
receive him, and it became known that if he did this the Austrian
Government would recall their Ambassador. Lord John Russell pointed out
the impropriety of the step which Lord Palmerston obstinately insisted
on taking. Palmerston’s last word on the subject to the Prime Minister
was that he considered he had a right to receive M. Kossuth privately
and unofficially, and that he would not be dictated to as to the
reception of a guest in his own house, though his office was at the
disposal of the Government. A meeting of the Cabinet was immediately
summoned, and the matter was laid before those present by Lord John
Russell. It was agreed that Lord Palmerston could not with propriety
receive Kossuth, and he promised to submit to the decision of his
colleagues. Up to this point everything went smoothly, and the Queen was
greatly relieved in mind to learn that the Foreign Secretary had been so
reasonable as to promise _not_ to insult a friendly Power. Her feeling
on the subject was that, being at peace with Austria, we had no right to
get up demonstrations in favour of persons who had been endeavouring to
upset the Austrian Government. “I was at Windsor,” writes Mr. Greville
on the 16th of November, “for a Council on Friday. There I saw Lord
Palmerston and Lord John mighty merry and cordial, talking and laughing
together. Those breezes leave nothing behind, particularly with
Palmerston, who never loses his temper, and treats everything with
gaiety and levity. The Queen is vastly displeased with the Kossuth
demonstrations, especially at seeing him received at Manchester with as
much enthusiasm as attended her own visit to that place.... Delane[37]
is just come from Vienna, where he had a long interview with
Schwarzenberg, who treated, or at least affected to do so, the Kossuth
reception with contempt and indifference.”[38] Two days after Mr.
Greville made this entry in his Diary, to the amazement of the Queen and
Lord John Russell, Lord Palmerston, addressing a deputation that waited
on him from Finsbury and Islington, expressed on behalf of England his
strong sympathy with the cause of the Hungarian revolutionary leaders.
He had kept the word of promise to the ear, but had broken it to the
hope. What he had said was infinitely more irritating to Austria than
his reception of Kossuth could have been. The breach of faith with his
indignant colleagues was inexcusable, and it prepared the way for
Palmerston’s expulsion from the Cabinet, which followed his recognition
of the _coup d’état_ in December.




CHAPTER XXVI.

THE FESTIVAL OF PEACE AND THE _COUP D’ÉTAT_.

     The World’s Fair--Carping Critics--Churlish Ambassadors Rebuked by
     the Queen--Opening of the Great Exhibition--A Touching Sight--The
     Queen’s Comments on “_soi-disant_ Fashionables”--The Duke of
     Wellington’s Nosegay--Prince Albert among the Missionaries--The
     Queen’s Letter to Lord John Russell--Her Pride in her Husband--The
     London Season--The Duke of Brunswick’s Balloon
     “Victoria”--Bloomerism--The Queen at Macready’s Farewell
     Benefit--The Queen’s Costume Ball--The Spanish Beauty--An Ugly
     “Lion”--The Queen at the Guildhall Ball--Grotesque Civic
     Festivities--Royal Visits to Liverpool and Manchester--A
     Well-Dressed Mayor--The Queen on the “Sommerophone”--The _Coup
     d’État_--The Assassins of Liberty--The Appeal to France--The
     Queen’s Last Quarrel with Palmerston--Palmerston’s Fall--Outcry
     against the Queen--A “Presuming” Muscovite--The Queen’s
     Vindication.


During the greater part of the Session of 1851 the English people, to
use a phrase of Mr. Disraeli’s, “were not up to politics.” It was the
year of the marvellous World’s Fair, or Great International Exhibition,
and the keen interest which it aroused diverted public attention from
Ministerial blundering. But though the interest of the country in the
Exhibition was strong, it was feeble compared with that which the Queen
and Prince Albert took in it. In spring, when the Court returned to
London, the Prince concentrated all his energies on the labour of
organising the arrangements for the opening of the Crystal Palace. All
through March and April he worked night and day, undaunted by the
carping criticisms of those who predicted that the direst calamities
would spring from the Exhibition. These foolish persons asserted that
the Exhibition Commissioners were simply organising a foreign invasion
of London. To attract to the capital dense crowds of foreigners, they
declared, would lead to riot, to the spread of revolutionary doctrines,
to the introduction of pestilence and of foreign forms of immorality,
and to the ruin of British trade, the secrets of which would be revealed
to our competitors in the markets of the world. Colonel Sibthorp, in the
Debate on the Address, actually implored Heaven to destroy the Crystal
Palace by hail or lightning, and others declared that the Queen would
most surely be assassinated by some foreign conspirators, on the opening
day of the great show.

The diplomatic body in London also behaved churlishly to the promoters
of the scheme, arguing that foreigners, by coming in contact with the
democratic institutions of England, would lose their taste for
Absolutism. When Prince Albert proposed that the Ambassadors should have
an opportunity of taking part in the proceedings by presenting an
Address to the Queen, M. Van de Weyer, as senior member of the
diplomatic body in London, privately asked the opinion of his colleagues
on the subject. They all gave their assent with one exception, Baron
Brunnow, who was “not at home” when M. Van de Weyer called on him. But
at a meeting of the diplomatic body it was decided by a majority of them
not to present any Address to her Majesty. This decision was arrived at
mainly by the influence of Brunnow, who said he could not permit the
Russian nation or people to be mentioned in an Address of this kind. He
was also jealous of allowing M. Van de Weyer or any other Ambassador to
speak for the Russian Government. The Queen was chagrined at this
incivility, and instructed M. Van de Weyer to tell his colleagues that
of course she could not compel them “to accept a courtesy which anywhere
else would be looked on as a favour.” Brunnow, however, held out. In the
end it was agreed that the Ambassadors should present no Address, but
merely be formally presented to the Queen at the opening function, and,
having bowed, that they should file away to the side of the platform,
where they certainly did not cut an imposing figure during the ceremony
of inauguration.

[Illustration: SIR JOSEPH PAXTON.]

On the 29th of April the Queen made a private visit to the Exhibition,
and returned from it saying that her eyes were positively dazzled with
“the myriads of beautiful things” which met her view. Though some of the
Royal Family, like the Duke of Cambridge, were afraid that there might
be a riot on the opening day, the Queen was not affected in the least by
their warnings, asserting that she had the completest faith in the good
sense, good humour, and chivalrous loyalty of her people. Nor was this
confidence misplaced. On the day of the opening, she was received with
passionate demonstrations of loyal enthusiasm from the crowds, amounting
in the aggregate to about 700,000 persons, who came forth to see her
pass. As for those who entered the building, they seemed awestruck with
astonishment at the brilliant scene, radiant with life and colour, which
lay before their eyes. At half-past eleven on the 1st of May the Royal
_cortège_ left the Palace, and filed along in a stately procession
through the enormous crowds who swarmed in the Green Park and in Hyde
Park. “A little rain fell,” writes the Queen, “just as we started, but
before we came near the Crystal Palace the sun shone and gleamed upon
the gigantic edifice, upon which the flags of all the nations were
floating. We drove up Rotten Row, and got out at the entrance on that
side. The glimpse of the transept through the iron gates, the waving
palms, flowers, statues, myriads of people filling the galleries and
seats around, gave us a sensation which I can never forget, and I felt
much moved. We went for a moment to a little side room, where we left
our shawls, and where we found Maria and Mary [now Princess of Teck],
and outside which were standing the other Princes. In a few seconds we
proceeded, Albert leading me, having Vicky at his right hand and Bertie
[Prince of Wales] holding mine.... The tremendous cheers, the joy
expressed in every face, the immensity of the building, the mixture of
palms, flowers, trees, statues, fountains, the organ (with 200
instruments and 600 voices, which sounded like nothing), and my beloved
husband, the author of this ‘Peace-Festival,’ which united the industry
of all nations of the earth--all this was moving indeed, and it was and
is a day to live for ever.”[39] When the National Anthem had been sung,
Prince Albert, at the head of the Commissioners, read their Report to
the Queen. She in turn read a short reply. A brief prayer was offered by
the Archbishop of Canterbury, and then the “Hallelujah Chorus” was sung.
The grand State procession of all the dignitaries was then formed, and
walked along the whole length of the crowded nave amidst deafening
cheers. “Every one’s face,” writes the Queen in her Diary, “was bright
and smiling, many with tears in their eyes. Many Frenchmen called out
‘Vive la Reine!’.... The old Duke and Lord Anglesey walked arm in arm,
which was a touching sight.” When the procession returned to the point
from which it started, Lord Breadalbane proclaimed the Exhibition open
in the name of the Queen, whereupon there was a flourish of trumpets and
more cheering. “Everybody,” writes the Queen,

[Illustration: OPENING OF THE GREAT EXHIBITION, HYDE PARK.

(_After the Picture by Eugène Lamé._)]

“was astonished and delighted. Sir George Grey (Home Secretary) in
tears.” On the way home her Majesty again met with a magnificent
reception. After entering the Palace, she and the Prince showed
themselves on the balcony and bowed their adieus to the vast throng,
whose loyal shouts rent the air. The most perfect order was maintained,
and, writes the Queen, “the wicked and absurd reports of dangers of
every kind which a set of people, namely, _soi-disant_ fashionables and
the most violent Protectionists spread, are silenced.... I must not,”
she adds, “omit to mention an interesting episode of this day, namely,
the visit of the good old Duke on this his eighty-second birthday to his
little godson, our dear little boy.[40] He came to us both at five, and
we gave him a golden cup and some toys, which he himself had chosen, and
Arthur gave him a nosegay.” From every quarter congratulations on the
complete success of the day poured in upon the Queen, and though 700,000
spectators lined the route between the Exhibition and the Palace, no
accidents and not a single police case could be traced to this enormous
gathering of sightseers.

One result of the Exhibition was the celebration of the one hundred and
fiftieth anniversary of the Society for Propagating the Gospel in
Foreign Parts. It was thought that the great gathering of foreigners
offered a fitting occasion for celebrating an event of the kind, and
Prince Albert was asked to preside over the commemoration. His Royal
Highness agreed, but stipulated that the celebration was to have no
denominational or sectarian turn. Representatives of all parties,
therefore, were invited; and the Prince’s speech, which he prepared with
unusual care, was marked by broad catholicity of feeling, and was
admirably in harmony with the great festival of civilisation which he
himself had organised. Lord John Russell was so deeply impressed with
the speech, that he wrote to the Queen congratulating her on the effect
that it had produced. In reply the Queen wrote as follows:--“We are both
much pleased at what Lord John Russell says about the Prince’s speech of
yesterday. It was on so ticklish a subject, that we could not feel
certain beforehand how it might be taken.” At the same time, the Queen
felt sure that the Prince would say the right thing, from her entire
confidence in his great tact and judgment. The Queen, at the risk of not
appearing sufficiently modest (and yet why should a wife ever be modest
about her husband’s merits?), must say that she thinks Lord John Russell
will admit now that the Prince is possessed of very extraordinary powers
of mind and heart. She feels so proud of being his wife, that she cannot
refrain from herself paying a tribute to his noble character.”[41]

As might have been expected, the London season of the Exhibition year
was an exceptionally brilliant one. It was marked by a strange
combination of eccentricity and gaiety. The Duke of Brunswick kept the
town talking with sufficient volubility, and his voyage to France in a
balloon, the “Victoria,” with Mr. Green, the aëronaut, was a nine days’
wonder. In midsummer “Bloomerism” whetted the wits of Londoners. The
votaries of “Bloomerism” took their name from the wife of a gallant
American officer. This lady invented a new costume for women, consisting
of loose trousers gathered at the ankles, a short, full skirt, and a
broad hat. Adventuresses and “advanced” ladies tried to popularise the
costume, but failed. Ridicule killed their cause, and when barmaids in
public-houses and “fast” women generally began to adopt “Bloomerism,”
its doom was sealed. The season of 1851 was, indeed, clouded with but
one dismal fact; the aristocracy were somewhat pinched because
agricultural prices were low, and yet the nobility bore their part in
the great vortex of hospitality, which the World’s Fair had set
whirling, bravely enough. London swarmed with distinguished foreigners,
and balls and routs and dinner-parties went on without ceasing.

[Illustration: ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LIVERPOOL.]

The first striking event of the season was the withdrawal of Macready
from the stage on the 1st of February, and from the Memoirs of that
great actor we find that the Queen made a point of being present at his
farewell performance on the 26th of February at Drury Lane--the scene of
his triumphs, not only as an actor but as a manager, who had restored
Shakespeare’s plays to the stage in their fullest integrity. Nor was
this the only performance which her Majesty honoured with her presence.
Writing on May 17th, Lord Malmesbury records that “Lady Londonderry
appeared at the Duke of Devonshire’s play in a gown trimmed with green
birds, small ones round the body and down the sides, and large ones down
the centre. The beak of one of the birds caught in the Queen’s dress,
and was some time before it could be disentangled.” On the 12th of June
there was a grand fancy ball at the Palace, the period chosen for
illustration being the time of Charles II. The nobility and gentry
appeared in the characters of their ancestors. The high officers of
State donned the costumes of their predecessors in the reign of the
“Merry Monarch.” “We went to the Queen’s Ball,” writes Lord Malmesbury;
“it is said that her Majesty received 600 excuses out of 1,400
invitations, and that she did not fill up their places. I thought it
very inferior to the first two. Most of the fancy dresses shabby, as if
they had been got up cheap.”

[Illustration: THE ROYAL VISIT TO WORSLEY HALL: THE STATE BARGE ON THE
BRIDGWATER CANAL.]

This was the season during which “the Spanish beauty,” Mademoiselle de
Montijo, afterwards Empress of the French, shone meteor-like in London
Society, and divided the honours with Narvaez, “an ugly, little fat man,
with a vile expression of countenance,” according to Lord Malmesbury,
and who, after being Prime Minister of Spain, and having headed many
pronunciamientos, uttered one famous _bon mot_ on his deathbed. When he
was asked by the priest to forgive his enemies, he answered, “I have
none, as I always got rid of them.”[42]

On the 9th of July, however, the most remarkable event of the season
took place. It was the gorgeous ball given at Guildhall by the Lord
Mayor and Corporation of the City of London to celebrate the success of
the Great Exhibition. That success was now assured. The weekly takings
at the gates had never been less than £10,298. In one week they had
amounted to £22,189, and already Prince Albert was discussing, with his
confidential advisers, what they should do with the large surplus which
they were certain they would have in hand. The crowning triumph of the
undertaking was therefore celebrated by the City magnates with more than
their usual display of lavish magnificence. The Queen and Prince Albert
accepted invitations, and when they started in their State carriage from
Buckingham Palace, they drove through dense crowds of people, amidst
shouts of congratulations delivered in all sorts of tongues. Nay, when
they left the Guildhall on the morning of the 10th of July, at daybreak,
they were amazed to find loyal crowds still waiting to cheer them, with
no diminution of enthusiasm as they drove home. “A million of people,”
writes the Prince to Baron Stockmar on the 14th of July, “remained till
three in the morning in the streets, and were full of enthusiasm towards
us.” He says, also, that the ball passed off “brilliantly,”[43] but with
this must be read, as a mild corrective, the description given by Lord
Malmesbury in his Diary, which is as follows:--“July 10th.--Went in the
evening to Madame Van de Weyer’s. I hear the ball to the Queen at the
Guildhall was extremely amusing. People very ridiculous. The ladies
passed her at a run, never curtseying, and then returned to stare at
her. Some of the gentlemen passed with their arms round the ladies’
waists, others holding them by the hand at arm’s length, as if they were
going to dance a minuet. One man kissed his hand to the Queen as he went
by, which set her Majesty off in a fit of laughter.” The ball, however,
marked the beginning of the end of this splendid season. “To-night,”
writes Prince Albert to Baron Stockmar in the letter just alluded to,
“we have our last ball. The day after to-morrow I come back here to dine
with the Agricultural Society.... On the 18th we return to Osborne for
good.” It was not, however, till the 28th of July that the Court removed
to Osborne, and on the 18th they visited the Crystal Palace once more.
This visit the Queen describes in a letter to Stockmar, in which she
says:--“The immense number of manufacturers with whom we have spoken
have gone away delighted. The thousands who are at the Crystal Palace
when we are leaving are all so loyal and so gratified, many never having
seen us before. All this will be of a use not to be described. It
identifies us with the people, and gives them an additional cause for
loyalty and attachment.”

On the 27th of August the Queen, Prince Albert, and their family left
Osborne for Balmoral, which had now been purchased by the Prince from
its owner. On the journey northwards they were received at Peterborough
by the venerable Bishop of that see, who had been her Majesty’s tutor,
and a touching interview took place between the Queen and her old
preceptor. At Boston and Doncaster loyal addresses were presented, the
party passing the night at the Angel Inn, Doncaster, much to the delight
of the inhabitants of that town. On the 28th they reached Edinburgh,
where they occupied the State apartments at Holyrood, and drove through
the town in the evening. Next day they arrived at Balmoral, where they
remained till the 7th of October. During this holiday the Queen and her
husband devoted themselves to the rural occupations that always while
away the autumn in the Highlands--the Queen walking, driving, riding,
sketching, and visiting the cottages of the poor people in her
neighbourhood, with whom she had become an especial favourite--the
Prince pursuing his favourite sport of deer-stalking, with even more
than his wonted ardour. They also entertained many distinguished guests,
among whom may be mentioned Hallam the historian, and Liebig the
chemist, who were both charmed with the welcome which they received, and
with the easy simplicity of the Queen’s life in her northern home.

On the 8th of October they proceeded to Edinburgh, and met with one or
two adventures by the way which brought vividly to the Queen’s mind the
hazards of railway travelling. When nearing Forfar the axle of a
carriage truck became overheated by friction, and the train was stopped
till the truck was uncoupled. At Kirkliston there was an explosion of
steam in one of the feeder-pipes of the engine, which delayed the train
for an hour, and prevented the Royal party from reaching Edinburgh till
eight o’clock at night. Next morning they resumed their journey. At
Lancaster, where they stopped for luncheon, the Queen and her children
went to view John of Gaunt’s ancient castle, and she was presented with
its keys at the gateway of the stronghold--two addresses being read to
her, which she herself has said were “very prettily worded.” In the
afternoon the Royal party reached Croxteth Park, the seat of the Earl of
Sefton. Next morning they started to visit Liverpool, calling on Lord
Derby at Knowsley Park on the way.

They would have been welcomed with a splendid reception from the Mayor
and Corporation and inhabitants of the great northern seaport, had not
the weather broken, and had not torrents of rain poured down without
ceasing, veiling everything and everybody in the densest fog. Still the
Queen persisted in proceeding with the appointed programme, and,
good-naturedly determined to make the best of the unpropitious elements,
she visited the eastern and southern districts of the town, inspected
the docks by land, viewed them from the Mersey from the deck of the
_Fairy_, and made a return progress through the central and northern
streets, which by this time were one sea of mud, where, however, patient
and loyal crowds stood waiting to cheer their Sovereign and her family
as they passed. “We proceeded,” writes her Majesty, “to the Council
Room, where we stood on a throne, and received the addresses of the
Mayor and Corporation, to which I read an answer, and then knighted the
Mayor, Mr. Bent, a very good man.” What seems to have pleased the Queen
most was her visit to St. George’s Hall, a building which she
enthusiastically described as “being worthy of ancient Athens.” Here she
had to step out on the balcony and stand in the rain bowing her
acknowledgments to the vast crowd who stood cheering with undamped
ardour in the street below. From Liverpool the Queen and her party,
attended by Lady Ellesmere, the Duke of Wellington, Lord and Lady
Westminster, and Lord and Lady Wilton, proceeded in a barge along the
Bridgwater Canal to Worsley Hall, the seat of Lord Ellesmere. The barge
was towed by four horses, and whilst one half was covered in, over that
part which was open an awning was stretched. “The boat,” writes the
Queen, “glided along in a most noiseless and dream-like manner amidst
the cheers of the people who lined the sides of the canal.” At Worsley
Hall the Queen met Mr. Nasmyth, the inventor of the steam-hammer, and
she seems to have been greatly delighted with his conversation, and
fascinated by his drawings and maps explaining his investigations into
the geography of the moon. The evening, indeed, was devoted mainly to
scientific conversation, this ascetic turn being given to it by the
arrival of the news that the first great submarine telegraph cable had
been successfully laid between Dover and Calais. Next day, the 10th of
October, the weather brightened, and the Royal party visited Manchester,
the working people of the town turning out in holiday garb to welcome
their Sovereign. “A very intelligent but painfully unhealthy-looking
population they all were, men as well as women”--such is the Queen’s
description of her hosts. In the Peel Park, Salford, her reception by
82,000 school children of all sects and creeds, and their singing of the
National Anthem, appear to have surprised and impressed her profoundly.
She also remarked “the beautifully dressed” Mr. Potter, the Mayor of
Manchester, “the Mayor and Corporation of which town,” writes the Queen,
“had till now been too Radical to have robes.” Mr. Potter was duly
knighted for his courtesy and kindness to the Royal party, and the Queen
expressed herself as especially delighted with the order and good
behaviour of the crowds who followed. She notes, however, in her Diary
“that there are no really fine buildings” in Manchester--an observation
which serves to mark the progress made by this now splendid city since
1851. Next day the Royal party left Worsley Hall, passed again through
Manchester, and through Stockport, Crewe, Stafford, Rugby, Weedon,
Wolverton, and Watford, where their carriages were found waiting for
them ready to post to Windsor, which they reached at half-past seven in
the evening.

On the 14th of October the Queen paid her final visit to the Great
Exhibition, and she records the fact that “an organ, accompanied by a
fine and powerful brass instrument, the Sommerophone, was being played,
and it nearly upset me.” The Sommerophone had a compass of five octaves,
and

[Illustration: THE QUEEN’S ARRIVAL IN PEEL PARK: CHILDREN OF THE
MANCHESTER AND SALFORD SCHOOLS SINGING THE NATIONAL ANTHEM.]

when played by its inventor, Herr Sommer--the only performer who could
make it discourse music--was one of the marvels of a year singularly
full of the marvellous. Next day the grand show was closed with somewhat
scant ceremony, the Queen writing in her Diary, “How sad and strange to
think that this great and bright time has passed away like a dream,
after all its triumph and success.” It is curious to observe that in the
contemporary expressions of public feeling which were prompted by the
wind-up of the Exhibition, the same note of melancholy is sounded, as if
there were abroad a half-conscious foreboding that the Festival of Peace
was only too likely to be followed by War.

These forebodings were justifiable. Affairs abroad began to assume a
threatening aspect. It has been shown how the enthusiastic
demonstrations with which Louis Kossuth had been honoured in England had
caused the Queen many anxious moments. Her mind was sadly troubled,
also, by the ostentatious display of sympathy which Lord Palmerston
extended to the Hungarian patriot, and by the veiled threat of Austria
to recall her Ambassador if these demonstrations continued. Mr. Greville
has somewhat maliciously said that the Queen’s feelings on this subject
were caused by jealousy. Kossuth’s reception at Manchester, he observes,
had been even more enthusiastic than her own. _Hinc illæ lacrymæ._ Here
Mr. Greville does her Majesty a gross injustice. The abhorrence of the
English Court for Austrian Absolutism was strong and unstinted, and most
forcible expression is given to it in many letters from Prince Albert to
Stockmar. England, however, was at peace with Austria, and had no
interest in going to war with her. But the Queen argued that it would be
impossible to keep up even the semblance of friendly relations with
foreign States, if her Foreign Secretary were to pose as the friendly
protector of every rebel leader who had attempted to upset their
Government, or received addresses in which their rulers were stigmatised
as “odious assassins.” Her anger against Lord Palmerston was not to be
appeased by his apologists, who reminded her that he was taking a
popular and democratic line, which was sure to win for the Queen the
affection of the people, thereby more than compensating her for the loss
of Austria’s goodwill. Her answer, penned by herself in a vigorous
letter to Lord John Russell on the 21st of November, was:--“It is no
question with the Queen whether she pleases the Emperor of Austria or
not, but whether she gives him a just ground of complaint or not. And if
she does so she can never believe that this will add to her popularity
with her own people.”[44] We have already[45] described the action which
was taken by the Cabinet in relation to this business, and it now
remains to record the next quarrel which her Majesty had with Lord
Palmerston, and which ultimately led to his expulsion from the Ministry.

On the morning of the 4th of December the Queen was at Osborne, and
there she was informed of the _coup d’état_ in Paris on the 2nd inst.
The Prince-President, Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, though he had
sworn to protect the Republic, had, in concert with a clique of
conspirators,[46] long before the 1st of December determined to restore
the Empire. The first thing to do was to win over the army. The next to
disgust the nation with Parliamentary institutions. The former task was
easily accomplished. The latter, however, was somewhat more difficult,
and the manner in which the conspirators set about it was most
ingenious. Every newspaper that directed attention to the dangerous
drift of the Prince-President’s policy was suppressed. He began to
conspire, says Alexis de Tocqueville, “from November 10th, 1848. His
direct instructions to Oudinot, and his letter to Ney only a few months
after his election, showed his determination not to submit to
Parliamentary Government. Then followed his dismissal of Ministry after
Ministry, until he had degraded the office to a clerkship. Then came the
semi-royal progress, then the reviews of Satory, the encouragement of
treasonable cries, the selection for all the high appointments in the
army of Paris of men whose infamous character fitted them to be tools.
Then he publicly insulted the Assembly at Dijon, and at last, in
October, we knew his plans were laid. It was then only that we began to
think what were our means of defence, but that was no more a conspiracy
than it is a conspiracy in travellers to look for their pistols when
they see a band of robbers advancing.”[47]

Two powerful motives urged the Prince-President forward. The time for
the revision of the Constitution was approaching, a fundamental law of
which was that he was ineligible for re-election at the expiry of his
term of office. This law virtually forced him to choose between
usurpation and obscurity, unless he could get it revised in his
interests. But it was evident to him that it would not be so revised,
unless popular pressure were put upon the Assembly, by some imposing
demonstration of the masses in his favour. To win their sympathies he
demanded the abolition of the Electoral Law of May 31st, 1850. That law
imposed a three years’ residential qualification on the voter, and in
practice it reduced the electorate from 10,000,000 to 7,000,000
electors. The electoral law of May 31st was therefore the
Prince-President’s moral weapon against the Assembly. The Assembly,
however, refused to further his policy on both points, and endeavoured
to protect itself against reprisals by authorising its President to
exercise such control over the army as he might deem necessary for its
protection. This in turn was resented by the Prince-President as an
attack on the prerogatives of the Executive, and Cabinet after Cabinet
fell in the course of the struggle between the Chief of the State and
the Parliament. But the end was within sight when a Bill

[Illustration: THE COUP D’ÉTAT: LANCERS CHARGING THE CROWD IN THE
BOULEVARDS OF PARIS.]

determining the responsibility of the Prince-President and his Ministers
was brought forward. It provided for the punishment and trial of
Ministers and of the Prince-President in the event of their violating
the Constitution, and it was the last measure of importance which the
Chamber was permitted to consider. On the night of the 1st of December
the Prince-President and his coadjutors secretly printed a number of
decrees, which were posted before daybreak on the walls of Paris. These
announced the dissolution of the National Assembly and of the Council of
State; the abrogation of the law of May 31st, 1850; the convocation of
the French electoral colleges from the 14th to the 21st of December; and
the proclamation of a state of siege in Paris. The Prince-President
further submitted to the electors a new programme, of which the chief
points were (1), a responsible chief named for ten years; (2), Ministers
dependent on the Executive alone; (3), a Council of State; (4), a
Legislature elected by universal suffrage without _scrutin de liste_,
and (5), a Second Assembly, or Senate, filled with all the illustrious
persons of the nation. In a word, he proposed to revive the system under
which the First Consul transformed France into a military Empire.
Proclamations appealing to the army

[Illustration: PRINCE CHARLES LOUIS NAPOLEON.]

were also issued. As for the Chamber, its members were arrested when
they attempted to offer a protest. All prominent men who might have
organised opposition among the masses were suddenly captured and thrown
into prison. At the first show of popular resistance, the troops, who
had been plied with strong drink for the occasion, fired on the
people--in fact, the army seized France, and, having gagged and bound
her, laid her at the feet of the Bonapartists. When Mr. Senior asked M.
de Tocqueville if he did not think that the contest had been virtually
forced on by the Assembly, we have said that the French statesman denied
the charge. M. de Tocqueville contended that the proposition to put the
army under the orders of the President of the Chamber was absurd,
because it was impracticable, and need not have alarmed the
Prince-President. The army had been so corrupted that it would not have
obeyed the orders of the Chamber. As for the law of responsibility, that
was not meant as a step in a conspiracy to crush the Prince-President.
This law, M. de Tocqueville assured Mr. Senior, was sent up to the
Chamber by the Council of State, who had been two years at work on it,
and the Committee of the Chamber, fearing lest it might provoke a
collision with the President, actually refused to declare it urgent.
“Though I have said,” observed De Tocqueville, “that he (the
Prince-President) has been conspiring since his election, I do not
believe that he intended to strike so soon. His plan was to wait till
next March, when the fears of May, 1852, would be most intense. Two
circumstances forced him on more rapidly. One was the candidature of the
Prince de Joinville. He thought him the only dangerous competitor. The
other was an agitation set on foot by the Legitimists in the _Conseils
Généraux_ for the repeal of the law of May 31st. That law was his moral
weapon against the Assembly, and he feared that if he delayed, it might
be repealed without him.”[48] The brutality displayed by the police who
dispersed the Legislative Assembly, and by the soldiery who fired in the
most wanton manner on the 3rd of December, without any justification
whatever, on the houses, and on peaceful passers-by along the boulevards
of Paris, was stigmatised by the public opinion of England as barbarous
and outrageous. It set the educated classes in France without
distinction of party against the Prince-President to such an extent,
that it became a mark of social and intellectual distinction to refuse
to recognise or serve under the new _régime_. In the provinces the
Prince-President’s tactics of repression were equally successful, and
some 10,000 persons were seized and transported to penal settlements,
without being convicted by any form of legal trial. The papers of the
distinguished statesmen and generals who were alleged to have been
conspiring against the Prince-President were ransacked; but no trace of
evidence was found against them, and they were accordingly never brought
to trial at all. Having thus destroyed the Constitution by the sword,
Prince Charles Louis Bonaparte appealed for a vote of indemnity to a
nation which had no alternative but to choose between him and anarchy.
The result of this appeal was a vote of 7,439,000 votes in his favour,
and 640,737 against him--M. de Montalembert, to the grief and surprise
of the educated classes, being among those who joined the majority.

What was the attitude of the Queen to these events? On the 5th of
December, Lord Palmerston sent a despatch to Lord Normanby, the British
Ambassador at Paris, stating that “it is her Majesty’s desire that
nothing should be done by her Ambassador at Paris which could wear the
appearance of an interference of any kind in the internal affairs of
France.” Lord Normanby accordingly called on M. Turgot, Minister of
Foreign Affairs, to communicate this instruction, and apologised for his
delay in making the communication. M. Turgot sarcastically replied that
the delay was not of importance, as he had two days before that heard
from M. de Walewski, the French Envoy in London, that Lord Palmerston
had approved of the deeds of the Prince-President. When the despatch
from Lord Normanby recording this interview reached the Queen, she sent
it to Lord John Russell, pointing out that Lord Palmerston’s approval of
the _coup d’état_ was not only a defiance of her own personal wishes,
but also of a resolution of the Cabinet. Lord John Russell complained to
Lord Palmerston about the matter, but instead of expressing regret, the
latter sent to Lord Normanby a despatch strongly approving of the _coup
d’état_, which, however, he concealed from the Prime Minister and the
Queen. It was not till the 18th of December that Lord John Russell was
able to inform the Queen that he had at last received from Lord
Palmerston an explanation, which was so unsatisfactory that he had been
compelled to write to that turbulent Minister “in the most decisive
terms.” In plain English, Lord John called on Palmerston to resign. He
sent in his resignation promptly enough, excusing himself by saying that
his approval of the _coup d’état_ was but the expression of a personal
and not of an official opinion. The whole correspondence was submitted
to the Queen, who accepted the resignation of the Foreign Secretary with
alacrity. “It was quite clear to the Queen,” writes Prince Albert in a
letter to the Prime Minister, “that we were entering on most dangerous
times, in which Military Despotism and Red Republicanism will for some
time be the only powers on the Continent, to both of which the
Constitutional Monarchy of England will be equally hateful.” The
calmative influence of England, her Majesty thought, should be used to
assuage and not embitter the conflicts abroad which produce such a
perilous state of things. But this influence, she held, had “been
rendered null by Lord Palmerston’s personal manner of conducting the
foreign affairs, and the universal hatred which he has succeeded in
inspiring on the Continent.”

On the 22nd of December a Cabinet Meeting unanimously condemned
Palmerston’s conduct, and the post vacated by him was accepted by Lord
Granville, who was installed at the Foreign Office on the 27th of
December. Lord Palmerston’s friends forthwith began to fill the Press
with foolish reports, that he had been dismissed because foreign Courts
had influenced the Queen against him. These insinuations were utterly
unjust. For when Baron Brunnow asked Lord John Russell to contradict
these rumours, the Queen wrote to Lord John as follows:--“Baron
Brunnow’s letter is in fact very presuming, as it insinuates the
possibility of changes of government in this country taking place at the
instigation of Foreign Ministers, and the Queen is glad that Lord John
gave him a dignified answer.” Palmerston’s dismissal, in truth, was due
to his incurable recklessness, and his inveterate habit of not only
compromising both the Queen and the Cabinet without consulting them, but
of acting contrary to the course which had been definitely adopted by
Queen and Cabinet alike, in grave and delicate affairs. Louis Napoleon
was the only personage of distinction who regretted his fall. “So long
as he was in office,” remarked the Prince-President cynically, “England
would have no allies.”

[Illustration: DIANA FOUNTAIN, BUSHEY PARK.]




CHAPTER XXVII.

A YEAR OF EXCITEMENT AND PANIC.

     Cassandras in the Service Clubs--The Tories and the Queen’s
     Speech--Lord John Russell’s Triumph--The Militia Bill--Defeat of
     the Russell Ministry--Fall of the Whig Cabinet--Palmerston’s “Tit
     for Tat”--A Protectionist Government--Novices in Office--A Cabinet
     of Affairs--Mr. Disraeli’s Budget--Lord John Russell’s Fatal
     Blunder--The Second Burmese War--Dalhousie’s Designs on Burmah--How
     the Quarrel Grew--Lambert’s Indiscretion--The Attack on
     Rangoon--Fall of the Citadel--Annexation--Desultory
     Warfare--Dissolution of Parliament--The General Election--Equipoise
     of Parties--Factions and Free Trade--Palmerston’s
     Forecasts--Forcing the Hand of the Ministry--Death of the Duke of
     Wellington--The Queen’s Grief--The Nation in Mourning--The
     Lying-in-State--Shocking Scenes--The Funeral Pageant--The Ceremony
     in St. Paul’s--A Veteran in Tears--The Laureate’s Votive
     Wreath--Review of the Duke’s Character.


Eighteen hundred and fifty-two was a year fruitful in alarms and
excitement. The excitement arose from the discovery of gold in Australia
towards the end of the year 1851, and from the rich supplies of the
precious metal which came pouring in from the new El Dorado. The alarms
arose from the unsettled state of affairs abroad, the tortuous policy of
Louis Napoleon, and Cassandra-like warnings from military writers that
the national defences were utterly untrustworthy. A troublesome Caffre
War at the Cape had also been draining away the best blood of the army
during eighteen months, and absorbing troops who could be ill spared at
home.

Parliament met on the 3rd of February, and members, of course, could
talk of nothing save the rupture between Lord Palmerston and the
Ministry. The Queen’s Speech suggested, as topics of legislation,
certain Reports of Commissions on the practice and proceedings in the
Supreme Court of Law and

[Illustration: HARNESSING THE BLACK HORSES AT THE ROYAL MEWS, BUCKINGHAM
PALACE.

(_After the Painting by Charles Lutyens, in the Possession of the Earl
of Bradford._)]

Equity, the reorganisation of the Government of New Zealand, and
Parliamentary Reform. Why, asked the Tories, was there no allusion to
agricultural distress? Was it not absurd to congratulate the country on
the fact that remission of import duties had not diminished revenue,
when revenue was only maintained by the unpopular and iniquitous Income
Tax? Why was no notice taken of the open and ostentatious defiance by
the Roman Catholics of the Act against Papal Aggression? For the
tranquillity of Ireland the Government surely ought not to take credit,
inasmuch as it was due to the exodus of the Irish people to America. As
for Parliamentary Reform, Lord Derby declared contemptuously that there
were not 500 reasonable men in the country who wanted a new Reform Bill.
These criticisms, however, fell flat. The one question of the hour was,
Why had the Foreign Secretary resigned? and explanations were given by
Lord John Russell and Lord Palmerston. “In all my experience,” says Mr.
Greville, writing of this incident, “I never recollect such a triumph as
Lord John Russell achieved, and such complete discomfiture as
Palmerston’s.... Palmerston was weak and inefficient, and it is pretty
certain he was taken by surprise, and was unprepared for all that John
Russell brought forward. Not a man of weight or influence said a word
for him, nobody but Milnes [afterwards Lord Houghton] and [Lord] Dudley
Stuart. The Queen’s letter was decisive, for it was evident his conduct
must have been intolerable to elicit such charges and rebukes; and it
cannot fail to strike everybody that no man of common spirit, and who
felt a consciousness of innocence, would have brooked anything so
insulting.”[49]

But Palmerston, though a fallen Minister, was not the man to sit meekly
under such a mortification. As he said himself, he would soon give Lord
John Russell “tit for tat.” His chance for retaliation came when the
arbitrary acts of the Prince-President of the French Republic roused the
fighting instincts of the English people. A wave of panic ran over the
country, and it was asserted that as Charles Louis Bonaparte had founded
his power by the sword, so by free use of the sword must he keep it. M.
Berryer had expressed in the Chamber the taunt which was freely
whispered through France, that the Prince-President’s aim was to
establish an “Empire without genius and without military glory.” Surely,
then, Englishmen argued, France under this unscrupulous usurper must be
forced into war, in order to divert her attention from the bondage in
which she is held by her Autocrat and his army. But if France must needs
make war so that the French people may get military glory in
compensation for civil liberty, a war on England, whose Press teemed
with insulting criticisms on the brutality of the _coup d’état_, was of
all wars the one most likely to be popular with the French soldiery.
From such reasoning it was but a corollary that England was, as usual,
utterly unprepared for attack, and a panic-cry was accordingly revived
in favour of strengthening her defensive forces. Yielding to this cry,
Lord John Russell introduced his celebrated Militia Bill, which
organised a local as distinguished from a general militia--that is to
say, a force whose regiments could be called on for service, not in any
part of the United Kingdom, but only in their own counties. This was the
weak point of the scheme, and the Duke of Wellington did not conceal his
bad opinion of it. Fortified by the Duke’s moral support, Lord
Palmerston assailed the Militia Bill of the Government with relentless
ferocity. On the 20th of February he carried against the Government, by
a majority of nine, an amendment in favour of organising a general
instead of a local militia, and Lord John Russell resigned on the 23rd
of February. Thus fell the last Whig Cabinet that has ruled England--all
succeeding Liberal Ministries being either coalitions of Whigs,
Peelites, and Radicals, or of Whigs and Radicals alone.

For reasons which have been already given, the times were not propitious
for a coalition of this sort. The Queen had therefore no option but to
send for Lord Derby, and ask him to form a Protectionist Ministry. She
was, of course, deeply sensible of the fact that by recent declarations
in favour of Protection, no Ministry of which he was the head could
command the confidence of the nation. Indeed, Lord Derby himself was
aware of this. But as his followers had joined Lord Palmerston in
ejecting the Whigs, he felt that he could not in honour shrink from the
embarrassing task of forming a Cabinet to govern the country, with a
certain majority against him in the House of Commons, and a dubious
majority at his back in the House of Lords. A futile attempt was made to
induce Lord Palmerston to join the Tory Cabinet--the Queen agreeing to
accept him as a Minister, provided he did not go to the Foreign Office,
and was not entrusted with the leadership of the House of Commons.
Palmerston refused all Lord Derby’s overtures, because he did not care
to cast in his lot with a Party which was committed to Protection. One
Tory leader, however, shared none of Lord Derby’s fears for the future.
Writing in his Diary on the 20th of February, Lord Malmesbury
says:--“Went to Disraeli’s after breakfast, and found him in a state of
delight at the idea of coming into office. He said he ‘felt just like a
young girl going to her first ball,’ constantly repeating, ‘now we have
got a _status_.’”

The chief appointments in the new Cabinet were as follows:--The Earl of
Derby, Prime Minister; Lord St. Leonards, Lord Chancellor; Mr. Disraeli,
Chancellor of the Exchequer, as to which the joke current in Society at
the time was “that Benjamin’s mess will be five times as great as the
others;”[50] the Earl of Malmesbury, Foreign Secretary; Sir John
Pakington, Colonial Secretary; Mr. Spencer Walpole, Home Secretary; Mr.
Herries, President of the Board of Control;[51] Earl of Lonsdale, Lord
Privy Seal. The only members of the Cabinet who had ever held office
before were Lord Derby and Lord Lonsdale, and the country was anxious as
to the competence of a Cabinet of novices to carry on the Government of
the Queen. “The new Government,” writes Mr. Greville, “is treated with
great contempt, and many of the appointments are pitiable.” Sir George
Cornewall Lewis, in a letter to Sir Edmund Head, remarks that “the chief
effect of the change has been that Graham and Cardwell have come to sit
among the Whigs, while Gladstone and Sidney Herbert sit below the
gangway.”[52] As for Lord Palmerston--though he got Lady Palmerston to
invite Lord John Russell to one of her parties, and otherwise showed in
public some desire to be reconciled to him--he told Lord Clarendon
privately that “John Russell had given him his independence, and he
meant to avail himself of that advantage.”[53] Moreover, to add to Lord
Derby’s perplexities, there soon arose great complaints against Mr.
Disraeli as Leader of the House of Commons. “They say,” writes Mr.
Greville, “that he does not play his part as Leader with tact and
propriety, and treats his opponents impudently and uncourteously.”

[Illustration: SIDNEY HERBERT. (_After the Statue by Foley._)]

The new Government promised the Queen that they would wind up the
affairs of the Session as quickly as possible, and as a dissolution was
objectionable at that critical moment, they assured her that they would
bring forward no contentious business. They introduced a Militia Bill,
designed to meet the objections of Lord Palmerston to the measure of
Lord John Russell. Though Mr. Walpole, the Minister in charge of the
Bill, covered the Cabinet with ridicule by proposing that every
militiaman who served two years should get a vote for the county in
which he was enrolled, public contempt was diverted from the Ministry to
the Opposition. By an inconceivable blunder, Lord John Russell, without
consulting with his colleagues, came down to the House of Commons and
opposed the second reading of a Bill, to the principle of which he knew
the majority were already committed by the vote that had expelled him
from office. He thus gave Lord Palmerston an opportunity of making a
bitter attack on him. He also led his Party to a defeat as sure as it
was disastrous. He discovered dissensions and divisions of opinion among
his followers, the exposure of which not only demoralised them, but
weakened public confidence in them as a competent governing
organisation. This blunder settled the destiny of Lord John Russell. All
sections of the Opposition now joined Mr. Bright in saying that Lord
John must never again be permitted to lead the Liberal Party. The
incident, unimportant as it seems, was of high historic significance. It
rendered the Coalition Ministry under Lord Aberdeen inevitable. It
rendered Whig Cabinets henceforth impossible in England.

[Illustration: ST. ALBANS, FROM VERULAM.]

Mr. Disraeli’s Budget speech was a brilliant performance which pleased
everybody but his own Party. Its principal point was to provide for the
continuance of the Income Tax for one year. But what made it interesting
was its glowing eulogy of the Free Trade measures of Sir Robert Peel,
not to mention the elaborate statistics by which Mr. Disraeli, while
silent on the Corn Duties, proved that incomparable benefits had been
conferred on the country by Peel’s tariffs, and by his reductions of
import duties. The oration was, of course, a bid for the accession of
Palmerston and the Peelites to the Tory Party. “Disraeli’s speech on
introducing his Budget,” writes Lord Malmesbury, “has produced a bad
effect in the country, for the farmers, though reconciled to giving up
Protection, expected relief in other ways, and he does not give a hint
at any measure for their advantage.”[54] A night or two afterwards, Mr.
Disraeli had therefore to make a vague recantation of his change of
opinions, and at a Mansion House dinner Lord Derby did his best to
explain away the Budget speech of his embarrassing colleague, by an
elaborate exposition of the doctrine of compromise, on which he said
British institutions were founded.

During the first part of the Parliamentary Session of 1852 the cause of
Parliamentary Reform made but little progress. Mr. Hume, on the 25th of
March, moved for leave to bring in a Bill for the extension of the
Franchise. Though he tried to galvanise his party into vigorous life by
a scornful and defiant retort to Lord Derby’s recent attack on
democracy,[55] the discussion of the subject was felt to be academic
rather than practical, and his motion was rejected by a vote of 244 to
39. A similar fate attended Mr. Locke King when he, too, brought in his
motion to assimilate the County and Borough Franchise. Several debates
were devoted to the question of the prevalence of bribery at elections,
and Lord John Russell’s Bill, empowering the Crown to direct a
Commission of Inquiry into any place at which an Election Committee
reported the existence of bribery, was carried through both Houses of
Parliament. The disfranchisement of Sudbury and St. Albans for corrupt
practices had left four seats in the House of Commons to dispose of. Mr.
Disraeli’s scheme for allocating them to the West Riding of Yorkshire
and the Southern Division of Lancashire was, however, rejected on Mr.
Gladstone’s amendment--a defeat which was a sharp reminder to the
Ministry that, so long as they were in a minority and refused to
dissolve Parliament, they could not hope to control the House of Commons
when contentious business came before it.

An attack on the endowment of Maynooth College by Mr. Spooner, who
demanded an inquiry into the system of education pursued at that
seminary, wasted much time. Both parties, with a General Election
impending, shrank from offending the Roman Catholic voters too deeply.
Yet they were equally afraid of displeasing the aggressive Protestantism
of the country. After repeated adjournments the matter dropped, chiefly
owing to a significant threat from Mr. Gladstone and Lord John Russell,
that to attack Maynooth was to reopen the whole question of the
distribution of ecclesiastical endowments in Ireland, a question the
discussion of which could not be advantageous to the Anglican minority
in that kingdom. A barren debate on the remission of the Hop Duty, and
Mr. Milner Gibson’s failure to carry resolutions condemning the Paper
Duty, the Duty on advertisements, and the Stamp Duty on newspapers,
together with Mr. Disraeli’s success in carrying his provisional Budget,
continuing the Income Tax for one year, sum up the financial business of
the Session. By the end of June all the measures which the Government
had proposed to pass were disposed of.

Lord Derby’s first Government may have consisted of novices, but it
evidently did excellent practical work as a Cabinet of affairs. For
between its accession to office and the dissolution of Parliament it
passed the Militia Act, the New Zealand Constitution Act, several good
Law Reforms, including an Act to simplify special pleading and to amend
procedure in the Common Law Courts, an Act extending the jurisdiction of
County Courts, and another to abolish the office of the Masters in the
Court of Chancery. Besides these, they passed useful Acts for improving
the water supply of London, and restricting intramural interments.

Parliament was prorogued by the Queen in person on the 1st of July, one
of the most interesting passages in her speech referring to the origin
of the second Burmese war, and the capture of Rangoon and
Martaban--events the record of which need not detain us long.

The second Burmese war ostensibly arose out of a complaint made to the
Indian Government by a Mr. Sheppard, master of a Madras trading
vessel.[56] He alleged that he had been imprisoned and fined by the
Governor of Rangoon on the false charge of having thrown a man
overboard. This was followed by other complaints from British subjects,
who had been ill-used by the Burmese authorities, and the Rangoon
merchants declared that, unless they were protected against the lawless
exactions of the Governor’s subordinates and dependants--who had been
told by him to get money as best they could, seeing he had none with
which to pay their salaries--they must abandon all efforts to trade in
the country. The Governor-General of India came to the conclusion that
these complaints were justifiable, and easily proved that the Treaty of
Yandaboo, made at the end of the first Burmese war, had been violated.
Commodore Lambert was accordingly sent in H.M.S. _Fox_ and two steamers
to Rangoon, with a courteous message seeking reparation from the King of
Ava, on account of the conduct of the Governor of Rangoon. The request
was refused, and it was followed by a more peremptory demand. The Court
of Ava replied in a conciliatory tone, recalled the Governor of Rangoon,
and appointed a new one, who treated Commander Fishbourne, Lambert’s
second in command, with some discourtesy. Commodore Lambert forthwith
blockaded Rangoon, and seized a vessel belonging to the Burmese
king.[57] On the 10th of January, four days after the blockade was
established, the _Fox_ was compelled to destroy a hostile stockade on
the river. After some diplomatic fencing between the Indian Government
and the King of Ava, an ultimatum was sent to his Majesty. He still
refused to make any concessions, and war was declared.

[Illustration: VIEW NEAR RANGOON.]

General Goodwin, with a contingent from the Bengal Army, sailed from

[Illustration: MAJOR FRASER’S STORMING PARTY CARRYING THE STOCKADE IN
FRONT OF RANGOON.]

India for the mouth of the Irawaddy on the 28th of March. He arrived
there on the 2nd of April, and on the 5th stormed and captured Martaban,
where the enemy, five thousand strong, fought behind a river line of
defences extending over 800 yards. In the meantime, General Goodwin had
been reinforced by a contingent from Madras, and Commodore Lambert had
destroyed the stockades on the Rangoon river. It was then determined to
attack Rangoon on the 9th of April. On the 11th, Rear-Admiral Austen
cleared the way for the army by destroying the whole line of river
defences on both banks. On the 12th three regiments of infantry and part
of the artillery were landed, and the contest was, to the surprise of
the General, commenced by the Burmese, who left their stockades and
attacked the flanks of our advance. A strong stockade which stood in the
way was carried, after severe losses. Major Fraser, Commanding Engineer,
took the ladders to the fort, and mounting its defences alone, attracted
by his gallantry the storming party round him which drove the enemy from
the position. The troops were ordered to march on Rangoon, but by a
different road from that on which the Burmese had made preparations to
meet them. They carried by assault the Grand Pagoda, the fall of which
citadel made us masters of the town. All the posts on the river fell
into our hands in turn, and on the 27th of July Lord Dalhousie, the
Governor-General of India, arrived at Rangoon, and congratulated the
army on its victories. He then returned to Calcutta. On the 9th of
October General Goodwin occupied Prome with a strong force, and in
November an expedition was sent against Pegu, which was taken, after
some sharp fighting, on the 20th of that month. After this victory Lord
Dalhousie annexed the whole province to the British dominions; indeed,
had it not been that he had an objection to expose British India to
contact with the frontier of China, he would probably have annexed the
whole of Burmah. Our small garrison at Pegu was then subjected to
harassing attacks by the Burmese, and the war dragged slowly on. The
Burmese always fled to the jungle whenever our men attacked them,
returning to annoy our troops whenever they fell back on their quarters.
Our capture of the chief centres of population and defence was not
followed by the submission of the people. There were few roads in the
country. General Goodwin had not adequate transport for his artillery.
The climate had sadly weakened his forces, so that the unexpected
prolongation of the war, however disappointing to the country, was
inevitable.

After the prorogation of Parliament, on the 1st of July, it was
dissolved on the 21st of August. On all important questions the
Government during the Session had held uncertain and ambiguous language,
appealing to the hopes of all parties alike. There was no strong feeling
in the country on any subject save that of Free Trade, and it soon
became apparent that the majority of the electors would not tolerate a
return to Protection, or the imposition of a protective duty on corn.
Still, the Protectionists were able to defeat some very able and
distinguished men, notably Sir George Cornewall Lewis in Herefordshire,
Sir George Grey in Northumberland, and Mr. Cardwell in Liverpool. In
each case their successors were feeble mediocrities. Edinburgh, however,
elected Macaulay without his even becoming a candidate. But though the
Tories did not gain enough seats to enable them to abolish Free Trade,
they had fully 300 staunch supporters who would vote like one man for
their policy. The Opposition was more numerous, but it was split up into
Whigs, Radicals, Peelites, and the Irish brigade, pledged not to give
any vote that might tend to bring Lord John Russell back to office. The
attitude of the Government was very equivocal during the contest. “They
have,” writes Mr. Greville, “sacrificed every other object to that of
catching votes; at one time, and at one place, representing themselves
as Free Traders, in another as Protectionists, and everywhere pandering
to the ignorance and bigotry of the masses by fanning the No Popery
flame. Disraeli announced that he had no thoughts, and never had any, of
attempting to restore Protection in the shape of import duties; but he
made magnificent promises of the great things the Government meant to do
for the farmers and the owners of land--by a scheme the nature and
details of which he refused to reveal.” This scheme was to be one
giving compensation by fiscal arrangements to the landed interest for
the loss of the Corn Duties. Fear of an alliance between the Whigs, the
Peelites, and the Manchester Radicals, on the basis of reduced
expenditure and fresh Reform Bills, caused many Whigs to desert their
Party. The Opposition was in a truly deplorable state. Their resentment
against Lord John Russell, to whose mismanagement they attributed their
electoral reverses, was deep and bitter. Malcontents openly advocated
that the leadership should be transferred to Lord Lansdowne; and Lord
Palmerston said that though he would be willing to join a Lansdowne
Cabinet if formed, he would never serve _under_ Lord John Russell,
though he had no objection to serve _with_ him. Lord Lansdowne’s
hostility to Parliamentary Reform rendered him incapable of leading a
Party that could not afford to dispense with Liberal votes. Moreover, he
objected from chivalrous motives to take the leadership unless Lord John
Russell asked him to do so. Lord John, on the other hand, told Sir J.
Graham that he had made up his mind not to join any Government unless he
was replaced in his post as Premier--an arrangement which would have
simply perpetuated those divisions and dissensions in the Liberal Party
that enabled the Tories to hold office. Lord Palmerston forecast the
fate of the Government with wonderful shrewdness, when he said that the
chances were they would fall on some mountebankish proposal for helping
everybody out of the taxes, without adding to the burdens on the
taxpayer.[58]

The Queen’s Speech, so to speak, showed the cloven hoof of the
Protectionists. One paragraph filled the Free Traders with the darkest
suspicions. It ran as follows:--“It gives me pleasure to be enabled, by
the blessing of Providence, to congratulate you on the generally
improved condition of the country, and especially of the industrious
classes. If you should be of opinion that recent legislation, in
contributing with other causes to this happy result, has at the same
time inflicted unavoidable injury on certain important interests, I
recommend you dispassionately to consider how far it may be practicable
equitably to mitigate that injury, and to enable the industry of the
country to meet successfully that unrestricted competition to which
Parliament in its wisdom has decided that it should be subjected.”
Writing to his wife on the day after the debate on the Address, Mr.
Cobden alluded to this paragraph as “a queer, tricky allusion to the
Free Trade question,” which “brought on a sharp attack upon the
Government last night, and as all parties are agreed to force the
Disraelites, I hope we shall bring matters to an end soon.”[59] The
great aim of the Opposition, without distinction of faction, was to
force the Government to say, frankly and fairly, whether they did or did
not accept Free Trade in its entirety. But in the meantime an event
occurred which for the moment stilled the clamour of contending
parties, and united the whole nation in one great wail of mourning.

That event was the death of the Duke of Wellington at Walmer Castle on
the 14th of September. This mournful calamity had been long expected.
But when it happened the people seemed incapable of realising it. “It
was,” said Prince Albert in a letter to Colonel Phipps, “as if in a
tissue a particular thread which was worked into every pattern was
suddenly withdrawn.” Moreover, it broke the last link that bound the
nineteenth to the eighteenth century. “He was,” wrote the Queen to King
Leopold, “the pride and good genius, as it were, of this country; the
most loyal and devoted subject, and the staunchest supporter the Crown
ever had. He was to us a true friend and most valuable adviser.... We
shall soon stand sadly alone. Aberdeen is almost the only personal
friend of the kind left to us--Melbourne, Peel, Liverpool, now the
Duke--all gone.”[60]

[Illustration: WALMER CASTLE.]

The Queen would at once, and of her own motion, have ordered a public
funeral, with the highest honours of State, for the remains of the
illustrious dead, following the precedent set in the case of Nelson.
She, however,

[Illustration: THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON.

(_After the Portrait by Count D’Orsay._)]

deemed that a solemn vote of Parliament would confer additional
distinction on the ceremony. It was thus determined that the body of the
Duke should lie in the custody of a Guard of Honour until both Houses of
Parliament could meet in November and pass a resolution in favour of
burying, in St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Victor of Waterloo by the side of
the Victor of the Nile. The pages of _Hansard_ are full of the glowing
tributes to the memory of the great Duke, paid by the foremost orators
of the Senate. Of these, one of the most brilliant came from Mr.
Disraeli, and it subsequently gave rise to a good deal of scandal. A
morning paper published a translation--said to come from the pen of the
late Mr. Abraham Hayward, Q.C.--of the eulogium passed by M. Thiers in
the French Chamber on the Emperor Napoleon I. This certainly bore such a
suspiciously close resemblance to Mr. Disraeli’s oration, that the
English orator was accused of plagiarism. But the highest tribute of
homage to the Duke of Wellington came from the English people, to whom
the Duke seemed to embody all the manly virtues of their race. To this
fact Mr. Cobden himself bears striking, though grudging, testimony in a
letter to his friend Mr. Thomasson, of Bolton, condemning the militant
policy which led to an ever-increasing war expenditure. “Let as ask
ourselves candidly,” he writes, “whether the country at large is in
favour of any other policy than that which has been pursued by the
aristocracy, Whig and Tory, for a century and a half? The man who
impersonated that policy more than any other was the Duke of Wellington,
and I had the daily opportunity of witnessing, at the Great Exhibition
last year, that all other objects of interest sank to insignificance,
even in that collection of a world’s wonders, when he made his entry
into the Crystal Palace. The frenzy of admiration and enthusiasm which
took possession of a hundred thousand people of all classes at the very
announcement of his name, was one of the most impressive lessons I ever
had of the real tendencies of the English character.”[61]

On the announcement of the Duke’s death every town in England displayed
the customary emblems of mourning. When, on the 10th of November, the
arrangements for the public funeral were well advanced, the corpse was
removed, under military escort, from Walmer Castle to the great hall in
Chelsea Hospital, where it was received by the Lord Chamberlain, and
laid in state on a bier prepared for the purpose. On the 11th, the
Queen, Prince Albert, and their family privately visited the Hospital,
and paid their last respects to their dead friend. After they left, the
Chelsea Pensioners, the Life Guards and Grenadiers, and the children of
the Duke of York’s Schools were admitted. On the 12th, the nobility and
gentry who held tickets of admission from the Lord Chamberlain came, and
then there ensued a scene of deplorable confusion. Eighteen thousand
persons passed before the bier between nine o’clock in the morning and
five in the afternoon, and many thousands more, after waiting wearily
outside in rain and gusty weather, turned away hopelessly when darkness
set in.

When the public appeared next day (Saturday) claiming admission, the
crowd before the Hospital gates in the morning simply overwhelmed the
police. As it grew and gathered, the press became unbearable, and a
surging mass of spectators fought and struggled with each other for
their lives. Yells of agony rent the air; men and women were knocked
down, or fell fainting for want of breath. Screaming children were held
aloft in the air to escape suffocation by mothers, who themselves
disappeared every minute in the struggle. A great cloud of steam exhaled
from the heaving multitude, and far and near the approaches were
impassable. After some time the police, reinforced by soldiery, gained
control over the crowd, and some 50,000 persons then passed through the
hall. On Monday better arrangements prevailed, and 50,000 persons
passed the body with the greatest ease. On Tuesday 60,000, and on
Wednesday 65,000 persons were admitted. On Saturday three persons, and
on Tuesday two, perished in the crush.

On Wednesday a squadron of cavalry conveyed the corpse to the Horse
Guards.

As it became clear that the day of the funeral (the 18th of November)
would be kept as one of almost religious solemnity, and that no business
would be done in London, the Bills of Exchange and Notes (Metropolis)
Bill was passed quickly through Parliament. It enacted that bills
falling due on the 18th of November should become payable and be
presented on the 17th, but that, if paid before 2 p.m. on the 19th, they
should not be subject to charges for notarial protest.

On the morning of the 18th of November the great funeral pageant, which
Charles Dickens irreverently termed “a masquerade dipped in ink,” passed
to St. Paul’s, through streets draped in black. Heavy rain and biting
wind did not prevent spectators from perching themselves all through the
preceding night on every spot where a glimpse of the procession could be
obtained. Windows, roofs of houses, porticoes, balconies, every “coign
of vantage” were covered with mourners. A million and a half of
spectators gazed at the procession, and few ever forgot the strange and
sudden silence into which the multitude was everywhere hushed, when the
head of the column appeared, led by the dark, frowning masses of the
Rifle Brigade, marching to the beat of muffled drum and the wail of the
“Dead March” in _Saul_. Solemnly,

    “Sad and slow,
     As fits an universal woe,”

one of the most wondrous of military pageants filed past to the strains
of mournful martial music. When the car with the remains of the Duke
appeared, a thrill of sorrowful emotion surged through the crowd at each
point of the route, as they saw “warriors carry the warrior’s pall.”
Strange unutterable thoughts were aroused at the sight of the narrow and
curiously emblazoned tenement which contained all that Time and Death
had left of him who had overcome the master of modern Europe, but who,
in turn, had himself fallen before a Conqueror unconquerable by the
mightiest. To this exaltation of feeling succeeded an outburst of homely
grief when the Duke’s favourite charger, led by his venerable groom,
appeared following his master’s coffin. When the procession came to
Temple Bar it was received by the Lord Mayor and Corporation, and at ten
minutes to twelve it reached St. Paul’s.

The appearance of the cathedral will never be forgotten. Tiers of seats
covered with black cloth rose on every side of the nave. The sombre
draperies of the interior threw up the florid architecture of the great
Protestant temple in relief of dazzling whiteness, and rows of gas jets
round the cornices shed a soft, warm radiance on the scene. The service
was choral. The Dean read the lesson, and when the “Nunc dimittis” was
chanted, a dirge accompanied by trumpets followed, at the end of which
the body was slowly lowered into the vault, the while the organ and wind
instruments pealed forth the sad strains of the “Dead March.” As the
coffin slowly vanished from view a wave of intensely sorrowful emotion
passed over the vast assembly of mourners. Prince Albert visibly shook
with grief. The veteran Marquis of Anglesey lost control of his
feelings. Tears suddenly coursed down his furrowed cheeks, and, stepping
forward, he placed his trembling hand on the vanishing coffin, as if to
bid a last farewell to his old chief and companion in arms. The rest of
the service proceeded in the usual manner, the conclusion of the ritual
being Handel’s anthem--“His body is buried in peace.” Thereupon Garter
King at Arms stepped forward and proclaimed the style and titles of the
illustrious dead, and the Comptroller of the Household of the Duke
advanced, broke his staff of office, and handed the pieces to Garter
King at Arms, who laid them in the grave. The Bishop of London
pronounced the benediction, and all was over.

The Queen and Prince Albert were of opinion that no _éloge_ on the great
Duke was in better taste than Lord John Russell’s; but, perhaps, the one
that will best stand the test of time was that of Alfred Tennyson:--

    “Where shall we lay the man whom we deplore?
     Here in streaming London’s central roar,
     Let the sound of those he wrought for,
     And the feet of those he fought for,
     Echo round his bones for evermore.

           *       *       *       *       *

     Mourn, for to us he seems the last,
     Remembering all his greatness in the past,
     No more in soldier fashion will he greet
     With lifted hand the gazer in the street.
     O friends, our chief state-oracle is mute:
     Mourn for the man of long-enduring blood,
     The statesman-warrior, moderate, resolute,
     Whole in himself, a common good.
     Mourn for the man of amplest influence,
     Yet clearest of ambitious crimes,
     Our greatest yet with least pretence,
     Great in council and great in war,
     Foremost captain of his time,
     Rich in sowing common-sense,
     And, as the greatest only are,
     In his simplicity sublime.
     O good grey head, which all men knew,
     O voice from which their omens all men drew,
     O iron nerve to true occasion true,
     O fall’n at length that tower of strength
     Which stood four-square to all the winds that blew.
     Such was he whom we deplore.
     The long self-sacrifice of life is o’er.
     The great World-victor’s victor will be seen no more.”

[Illustration: THE WELLINGTON MONUMENT IN ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL,
COMPLETED IN 1878. (_By Alfred Stevens._)]

Though much has been written about the career of the Duke of Wellington,
a brief review of his character may not be amiss here. “His striking
characteristic was his judgment,” writes Mr. Spencer Walpole. “He had no
doubt in addition capacity and courage. He could not have fought
Salamanca without the one, and he would not have held Waterloo without
the other. But in capacity he was not, possibly, superior to Moore; in
courage he was not superior to Gough. He was a great general, not
because he had a great intellect, but because he made fewer mistakes
than other men.”[62] His success in war was as conspicuous as his
failure in politics, and for the simplest of reasons. He was the only
great soldier of his time who understood that to triumph in battle it
is necessary to have the most exact and minute knowledge of the
mechanism of an army, to know as thoroughly how a soldier’s knapsack
should be buckled, as how a mighty campaign should be planned. In this
consisted his superiority over Napoleon I., who concentrated his mind on
the grand scheme of a battle or a campaign, leaving to his subordinates
the task of carrying it out in detail. All Napoleon’s subordinates could
do the work of subordinates better than their Imperial master. Not one
of Wellington’s subordinates, from the Marquis of Anglesey himself down
to the humblest private, could do his individual work better than the
Duke could do it for him. It was this easy mastery in handling all the
machinery of war that enabled him to readjust his arrangements so much
more quickly than his opponents could, when any part of a
carefully-planned scheme miscarried. But just because he did not possess
the same minute and exact knowledge of the political organism, he
constantly fell into grievous errors in statesmanship. Starting with
wrong premises in politics, he perpetually blundered into erroneous
conclusions. His saving virtue as a politician was his strong common
sense. It taught him with unerring certitude when a thing _must_ be done
long before his reasoning faculty, obscured by faulty data, taught him
that it ought to be done. He never regarded himself as in any sense the
servant of the people. It was as the sworn servant of the Crown that he
always spoke and acted, and the only test he ever applied to any project
of legislation was whether it was likely to strengthen or weaken the
Monarchy. No considerations of personal consistency, conviction, or
convenience could deter him from accepting or abandoning a policy or a
principle, if it could be shown that by doing either he prevented the
authority of his Sovereign from being undermined. Duty to the Crown was
the pole-star of his life. To gain a point for the advantage of his
Sovereign he would even push aside all considerations of personal
dignity. Sir Francis Doyle tells a story about him which illustrates
most curiously this dominant trait in his character. One day, when Sir
Francis Doyle’s father was dining at Apsley House, the Duke said to him,
“After the battle of Talavera I wanted the Spanish force to make a
movement, and called upon Cuesta to take the necessary steps, but he
demurred. He said, by way of answer, ‘For the honour of the Spanish
Crown I cannot attend to the directions of the British general, unless
that British general go upon his knees and entreat me to follow his
advice.’ Now,” proceeded the Duke, “I wanted this thing done, while as
to going upon my knees I did not care a twopenny damn, so down I
plumped.”[63] This little anecdote gives one a clearer insight into the
secret of the Duke of Wellington’s public life than all the biographies
of him that have ever been written.




CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE LAST YEAR OF “THE GREAT PEACE.”

     Abortive Attacks on the Ministry--Mr. Disraeli’s First Budget--Fall
     of the Tory Cabinet--The Queen and Lord Aberdeen--Organising the
     Coalition--A Ministry of “All the Talents”--The Queen and South
     Kensington--A Miser’s Legacy to the Queen--Sport at
     Balmoral--Proclamation of the Second Empire--The “Battle of the
     Numeral”--The Queen Initiates a Policy--Personal Government in the
     Victorian Age--A Servile Minister--Lord Malmesbury’s
     Spies--Napoleon III. and “Mrs. Howard”--Creole Card-Parties at
     Kensington--Napoleon III. Proposes to Marry the Queen’s Niece--Lord
     John Russell’s Education Scheme--Mr. Gladstone’s First Budget--The
     India Bill--Transportation of Convicts to Australia Stopped--The
     Gold Fever in Australia--The Rush to the Diggings--The First Gold
     Ships in the Thames--Gold Discoveries and Free Trade--Chagrin of
     the Protectionists--The Rise in Prices--Practical Success of Peel’s
     Fiscal Policy--Strikes and Dear Bread--End of the Great Peace.


No sooner had the Duke of Wellington been buried than rival parties
resumed the war of faction. The Free Traders, who had been resuscitating
the old anti-Corn Law organisation in the North of England, resolved to
force from the Ministry an unambiguous declaration against Protection.
Mr. Charles Villiers accordingly moved a series of resolutions on the
23rd of November, affirming, that the Free Trade policy of the country
had been wise, just, and beneficial[64]--“three odious epithets,” said
Mr. Disraeli, which could not be accepted by the Tory Party. He
ridiculed this attempt to revive the cries of “exhausted factions and
obsolete politics.” He was himself fain, however, to propose a
resolution, which admitted that Free Trade had cheapened the necessaries
of life, which bound the Government to adhere to that policy, but which
did not contain any formal recantation of Protectionist principles.[65]
Mr. Bright hit the weak spot in these tactics when he asked, was it
safest to let the national verdict on Free Trade be drawn up by Mr.
Villiers, who advocated it, or by Mr. Disraeli, who did not advocate it,
and the majority of whose followers were pledged to exact from the
people some kind of compensation to the landed interest for the repeal
of the bread tax? Had it suited Lord Palmerston to let the Ministry be
beaten, nothing could have prevented their defeat. But, as we have seen,
he had resolved never to serve under Lord John Russell; and there was
too much reason to fear that at the moment Lord John was the only
possible Premier in the event of Lord Derby resigning office.

“A moderate resolution,” writes Sir George Cornewall Lewis to Sir Edmund
Head, “had been prepared by Graham, and assented to by Lord John and
Gladstone. Charles Villiers was willing to move it, but Cobden insisted
on something stronger, in the secret hope that the House would reject
it, and thus damage itself in public opinion, thereby promoting the
cause of Parliamentary Reform. Palmerston got possession of the
resolution prepared by Graham, and moved it as an intermediate
proposition.”[66] The resolution affirmed the principle of Free Trade,
but not in terms obtrusively offensive to the Tories. It was eagerly
accepted by Mr. Disraeli, who saw in it the means of deliverance from
his enemies, and it was carried by a majority of 468 to 53--the minority
representing all the Tories who were prepared to cling to Protection,
even after it had been formally abandoned by Mr. Disraeli in his
audacious address to his constituents.[67]

Mr. Disraeli’s tactics in thus evading defeat have sometimes been cited
as a proof of his skill. In reality, they were the outcome of
inexperience and exaggerated self-confidence. He did not correctly
understand why Sir James Graham and Mr. Gladstone desired to move a
moderate resolution. They were, of course, anxious not to turn out the
Ministry before Mr. Disraeli’s Budget saw the light. They were morally
certain that it would contain some fantastic proposals, which must not
only wreck the popularity of the Government, but destroy public
confidence for ever in Mr. Disraeli’s financial skill. Events proved
that they were right in their calculation.

[Illustration: NORTH TERRACE AND WYKEHAM TOWER, WINDSOR CASTLE.]

On the 3rd of December, in a speech of dazzling brilliancy, Mr. Disraeli
introduced his famous and fatal Budget. It reduced the Malt Tax by
one-half. The House Duty was raised from 9d. to 1s. 6d. in the £, and
extended from houses of £20 to houses of £10 rental. Light dues paid by
ships other than for the support of lighthouses pure and simple were
taken off. Tea duties were to be reduced gradually by small annual
amounts from 2s. 2¼d. to 1s. a

[Illustration: THE DUKE OF ARGYLE.]

pound. The Income Tax was to be extended to funded property and salaries
in Ireland. A distinction was drawn in taxing permanent and precarious
incomes, the exemption for industrial incomes being limited to £100 a
year, and for incomes from property to £50; and the rates of assessment
per £ were 7d. on incomes from rent of land and from funds, but only
5¼d. on incomes from farming, trade, and salaries. Farmers’ incomes
were to be taken as a third instead of a half of their rents. The
remissions were so balanced by the additions to taxation that no surplus
on the estimated revenue could be shown. A surplus of £400,000 was,
however, manufactured by appropriating as revenue the repayments on
local loans made to the Exchequer Loan Commission--repayments hitherto
used for clearing off debt. The scheme could not stand criticism. After
four nights’ debate, it was utterly demolished, Mr. Gladstone’s speech
attacking it being one of the few which are said to have ever really
turned doubtful votes in the House of Commons. The addition to the House
Tax, pressing, as it did, on those who would come within the extended
range of the Income Tax, infuriated the urban voters. The remission of
half the Malt Tax failed to satisfy a landed interest, hungering for
compensation for the abolition of the Corn Laws, because a reduced Malt
Tax, it was agreed, benefited nobody but the publicans and the brewers.
An extension of the Income Tax to funded property, Mr. Gladstone
contended, was a breach of Mr. Pitt’s pledge to the public creditor, in
1798, that no distinct and special tax should ever be laid on the
stockholder as such. Mr. Gladstone, like all the eminent financial
authorities, protested against recognising the illusory principle of a
graduated Income Tax, which lurked in the distinction made between
permanent and precarious incomes. He further protested against the
danger of estimating too narrowly for the services of the year, and
urged with incontestable force that it was a vicious principle to reckon
as surplus revenue £400,000 of repayments on the score of local
loans--that is to say, to regard the repayment of borrowed money as true
income. The Government were beaten on their Budget, by a vote of 305 to
286, on the morning of the 17th of December.[68] In the evening Lord
Derby handed his resignation to the Queen at Osborne.

Her Majesty, fully aware of the reasons that rendered Lord John Russell
an impossible Premier, now saw her way to organising the strong
Government of capable and experienced statesmen which, ever since 1846,
she had held could only be formed by a coalition of the Whigs and the
Peelites. She accordingly summoned Lord Aberdeen and Lord Lansdowne to
assist her out of the Ministerial crisis. Gout prevented Lord Lansdowne
from attending at Osborne. His ill-health, together with his loyalty to
Lord John Russell, and the disinclination of the Peelites to serve under
him, rendered it impossible for him to accept the Premiership. It was
equally impossible for the Queen to ask Lord Palmerston to become Prime
Minister, after the recent events which had led to his dismissal from
the Foreign Office. Hence Lord Aberdeen, though the head of the smallest
faction, was the candidate for the Premiership who least divided the
Opposition. He was therefore charged with the task of forming a
Cabinet.[69] On the 28th of December the famous Coalition Ministry was
organised--Lord Cranworth was Lord Chancellor; Lord Aberdeen, Prime
Minister; Mr. Gladstone, Chancellor of the Exchequer; Lord Palmerston,
Home Secretary; Lord John Russell,[70] Foreign Secretary; the Duke of
Newcastle, Colonial Secretary; Mr. Sidney Herbert, War Secretary; Sir J.
Graham, First Lord of the Admiralty; Lord Granville, President of the
Council; Sir C. Wood, President of the Board of Control; the Duke of
Argyle, Lord Privy Seal; Sir W. Molesworth, Chief Commissioner of Works;
the Marquis of Lansdowne, a Minister without office. “The success of our
excellent Aberdeen’s arduous task,” writes the Queen to the King of the
Belgians, “and the formation of so brilliant and strong a Cabinet would,
I was sure, please you. It is the realisation of the country’s and our
own most ardent wishes, and it deserves success, and will, I think,
command support.”[71] The Queen here simply reflected public opinion.
Never had a Cabinet of abler men, individually speaking, ruled England
since the Ministry of “All the Talents” fell from power. But the
Sovereign and her people both forgot that in our strange and anomalous
constitution no Cabinet is, as a rule, so weak as a Cabinet of strong
men. This Ministry, which started on its career on the flood-tide of
Court and popular favour, was destined, by its vacillation in foreign
policy, to lead the country into the terrible calamity of a European
war. It was doomed to fall amidst the execrations even of those who,
like Mr. Cobden, declared that to his dying day he could never
sufficiently regret giving one of the votes that brought it into power.

After the formation of the Government, the usual explanations of the
position of affairs were given in both Houses of Parliament, Lord Derby
attempting to show that the destruction of his Ministry had been plotted
by an unprincipled combination of hostile factions. On the contrary, as
Sir George Cornewall Lewis says in one of his letters, “there was no
real anxiety on the part of the Opposition to turn out the Government;
the sections of it were divided, and there was none of that ‘coalition’
which Lord Derby spoke of. The Budget, however, was more than human
flesh and blood could bear. The promises of a substitute for Protection
which Disraeli had made at the Elections rendered it necessary that the
Government should propose something which appeared for the benefit of
the agriculturists. They sounded some of their supporters among the
county members as to a transfer from the local rates to the Consolidated
Fund; but I believe the answer they got was, that a measure which
destroyed the power of the magistrates and the local authorities would
not be acceptable to their party. They had nothing then to propose but a
reduction of the Malt Tax, which created a large deficit, and rendered
an increase of taxation necessary. This latter object was effected by
doubling and enlarging the House Tax. Disraeli was evidently very
confident of the success of his Budget, and impatient to produce it. But
when it had been out a week it was clear the country would not agree to
it. The farmers did not care about the reduction of the Malt Tax; but
the towns did care very decidedly for the increase of the House Tax, and
showed a strong objection to it.... Having made their Budget a means of
redeeming their promise to give their party an equivalent for
Protection, they could not modify it, and therefore defeat on it was
vital.”[72] On the 31st of December all the appointments under the new
Government were filled up, and Parliament was adjourned till the 10th of
February, 1853.

[Illustration: VIEW IN BRAEMAR.]

In the early part of the year the Queen was much distressed by reason of
her husband’s anxieties in connection with the affairs of the Great
Exhibition. His idea was to apply the surplus in the hands of the
Exhibition Commissioners

[Illustration: QUEEN VICTORIA.

(_After the Equestrian Portrait by Count D’Orsay_)]

to the purchase of a site at South Kensington, for the Science and Art
Institution which he hoped to see created. Ninety acres of land were
bought for £342,500, of which sum Government advanced £177,500, with the
intention of transferring the National Gallery to the site. The agent of
the Commissioners, however, had in purchasing the land stupidly agreed
to take it on a building lease, under conditions which would have
destroyed their plans, and involved them in the dilemma of repudiating
their agent, or incurring liabilities to erect dwelling-houses, which
they dared not undertake. The vendor, Baron Villars, generously
permitted them to make other arrangements for buying the fee-simple of
the land; but the anxieties of the Prince during the period when the
issue was in suspense preyed terribly on his mind and health, and the
Queen has herself recorded how she exhausted all means in her power to
cheer and sustain him in his distress.

[Illustration: THE QUEEN’S VISIT TO THE BRITANNIA TUBULAR BRIDGE.]

Her Majesty’s birthday was spent in the sunshine of domestic happiness
at Osborne. In the festivities of the season the Queen, early in June,
assures her uncle, King Leopold, that she and her family joined only to
a limited extent. They gave two State balls and two State concerts. They
go, she says, three or four times a week to the play or opera, are
hardly ever later than midnight in going to bed and, but for the
fagging business of public affairs, the Season “would be nothing to us.”
During the summer, life at Osborne was diversified by several short
yachting excursions round the South Coast. In August the Queen planned
and carried out a brief visit to her uncle, King Leopold of Belgium,
reaching Antwerp on the 10th in the Royal yacht in a tempest of wind and
rain. At the King’s country seat at Laeken the Royal party spent four
bright and happy days, saddened only by the too visible gap in the
family circle, left by the death of Queen Louise. The disagreeable and
tempestuous voyage homeward was only broken by a charming visit to
Terneusen, where the simple hospitality and quaint old-world ways of the
villagers greatly delighted her Majesty, who seems to have passed a
pleasant day among them.

On the 30th of August her Majesty was amazed to receive information at
Balmoral to the effect that an eccentric old barrister called Nield had
bequeathed a legacy of £250,000 to her. John Camden Nield was a miser,
who had pinched and starved himself for thirty years to add to his
patrimony. The Queen very properly resolved to refuse the legacy if Mr.
Nield had any relations living who had a claim to the money;[73] but as
it appeared he had none, she accepted the gift. The holiday at Balmoral
was as bright and happy as could be wished. “Nothing,” writes Lord
Malmesbury, who was in attendance on the Queen at this time, “can exceed
the good nature with which I am treated, both by her Majesty and the
Prince. Balmoral is an old country house in bad repair, and totally
unfit for Royal personages.... The Royal party consists of the Duchess
of Kent, the ladies in waiting, Colonel Phipps, and Sir Arthur Gordon.
The rooms are so small that I am obliged to write my despatches on my
bed, and to keep the window constantly open to admit the necessary
quantity of air; and my private secretary, George Harris, lodged
somewhere three miles off. We played at billiards every evening, the
Queen and the Duchess being constantly obliged to get up from their
chairs to be out of the way of the cues. Nothing could be more cheerful
and evidently perfectly happy than the Queen and Prince, or more kind to
every one round them. I never met any man so remarkable for the variety
of information on all subjects as the latter, with a great fund of
humour _quand il se déboutonne_.” The Prince himself records in his
Diary,[74] however, that “Balmoral is in full splendour, and the people
there are very glad that it is now entirely our own.” On the 4th of
September Lord Malmesbury writes:--“The Prince had a wood driven not far
from the house. After we had been posted in line, two fine stags passed
me, which I missed. Colonel Phipps fired next, and lastly, the Prince,
without any effect. The Queen had come out to see the sport, lying down
in the heather by the Prince, and witnessed all these fiascos, to our
humiliation.”[75] This happy holiday was sadly broken by the death of
the Duke of Wellington, which brought the Court unexpectedly back to
Windsor in October, their route being through Edinburgh, Preston,
Chester, and North Wales, where they inspected, on the 14th of October,
the Britannia tubular bridge over the Menai Straits. The Queen drove
through the bridge in a State carriage drawn by men, while Prince
Albert, accompanied by Mr. R. Stephenson, walked across on the roof of
the tube. On reaching the south end, the party descended to the water’s
edge, from which they obtained a complete view of the magnificent
proportions of the gigantic structure.

During 1852 one striking event in Foreign Affairs that occupied the
attention of the Queen was the transformation of the French Republic
into the Second Empire. In Paris, on the 1st of January, Charles Louis
Napoleon was installed at Notre Dame as President of France, and he
promulgated a new Constitution, preserving little of the form and none
of the spirit of Liberty. The whole Executive was to be vested in the
President, who was to be advised by a Council of State, a Senate of
nobles nominated for life, and a powerless legislative body elected by
universal suffrage for six years, whose transactions at the demand of
five members could be kept secret. The next step taken by the
Prince-President was to issue Decrees on the 23rd of January, compelling
the Orleans Princes to sell their real and personal property in France
within a year, and confiscating the property settled on the family by
Louis Philippe previous to his accession in 1830. This raised a storm of
indignation among all Frenchmen who were not accomplices of the
Prince-President in the _coup d’état_, and it caused Montalembert to
resign his seat on the Consultative Commission of the 2nd of December.
De Morny and Fould also resigned, M. de Persigny replacing the
former.[76] To the Queen, whose partiality for the Orleans family was
well known, these Decrees were painfully offensive. The
Prince-President’s strongest partisan in England, Lord Malmesbury, wrote
a letter remonstrating with him, and the reply serves to illustrate the
character of the men who consented to serve in the Senate. “He (the
Prince-President),” says Lord Malmesbury in a letter to Lord Cowley,
British Ambassador at Paris, “declared the confiscation necessary, as
even some of his own Senators had been tampered with by Orleanist agents
and money.”[77] On September 13th this patriotic Senate prayed for “the

[Illustration: NOTRE DAME, PARIS (WEST FRONT).]

re-establishment of the hereditary sovereign power in the Bonaparte
family;” and on the 4th of November the Prince-President announced that
he had in view the restoration of the Empire, and ordered the French
people to be consulted on the matter. The French people, when consulted,
were for the restoration--7,839,552 voting “Yes,” and 254,501 “No.” The
vote was cast on the 21st of November, three days after Wellington was
laid in the grave. As Cobden said, one might almost picture the third
Napoleon rising from the yet open tomb of the vanquisher of the
first.[78] On the 2nd of December Charles Louis Napoleon was declared
Emperor of the French under the title of Napoleon III. The Constitution
of January was confirmed with some slight modifications. A Royal title
was given to Jérôme Bonaparte, Napoleon’s uncle. St. Arnaud, Magnan, and
Castillane were created Marshals of France; and then there arose the
first of the Imperial difficulties--that of obtaining recognition from
the European Courts.

[Illustration: COMTE DE MONTALEMBERT.]

The Queen took a thoroughly sensible view of the situation. The
atrocities of December and the confiscation of the Orleans property had
not prepossessed her Majesty in favour of the French Emperor. But in her
opinion there was no essential difference between such a Republic as had
been established by the _coup d’état_ strengthened by the Constitution
of January, and a military Empire without glory or genius. If the vast
majority of Frenchmen were desirous of transforming their
Prince-President into an Emperor, that was their affair, and Foreign
Courts had no concern in the matter. The Queen was, therefore, strongly
in favour of recognising the title of the Emperor of the French, and of
according to him the customary courtesy of addressing him in ceremonial
communications as _mon frère_.[79] The Northern Courts, however, could
not bring themselves to treat as an equal, an adventurer who, to use
his own expression in announcing his marriage in the Chamber on the 22nd
of January, 1853, “had frankly taken up before Europe the _position de
parvenu_.” Ultimately they all yielded to facts, and with the exception
of Russia, agreed to address Charles Louis Bonaparte as their “brother.”
The haughty autocrat of Muscovy, who had smiled on him approvingly when
he strangled Liberty in France, frowned on the attempt to raise on its
ruins a fabric of Empire, claiming parity with the ancient dominion of
the Romanoffs. The Czar, therefore, persisted in addressing the French
Emperor, not as “my brother,” but “my cousin.” This trivial slight is
mentioned here, because it had subsequently a potent influence on the
fortunes of England.

“England,” writes Sir Theodore Martin, “conceded the phrase _mon frère_
without a grudge.”[80] That is a somewhat misleading statement. It was
certainly decided in England that the Emperor should be recognised some
little time before the Empire was proclaimed, because everybody knew
that its proclamation was inevitable. Having determined that the
Prince-President was to be recognised in some fashion as Emperor, a
question as to style was raised by the pedants of diplomacy, which
showed where the “grudge” lay. It gave rise to that most grotesque of
diplomatic struggles--the once famous but now forgotten Battle of the
Numeral. Charles Louis Bonaparte, through his envoys, let it be known at
the Court of the Queen that he meant to call himself Napoleon III. “Why
Napoleon the Third?” asked alarmed Diplomacy. “Clearly he means to filch
from us a recognition of the ephemeral title of the Duc de Reichstadt,
the son and heir of Napoleon I., who was proclaimed when the First
Empire crashed into ruins.” It was a crafty device to avenge Waterloo
with the blast of a herald’s trumpet, and to wipe out fifty years of
French history, just as the Parliament of the Restoration tried to
efface the Commonwealth by dating the statutes of 1660, as of the
twelfth year of the Merry Monarch’s reign. The usurper might be
recognised by England as Napoleon II., perhaps, but never, argued Lord
Malmesbury, as Napoleon III., for that would have countenanced more than
our recognition of the Second Empire was actually meant to convey. It
would have implied a recognition of the Emperor’s _hereditary_, as
distinguished from his _elective_, title to the Throne. Most wearisome
were the disputes and most tiresome the conferences between Lord
Malmesbury, then Foreign Secretary, and the French Ambassador on this
subject. At last it was agreed that we should accept the disagreeable
numeral, after the French Government admitted in writing that it was not
to imply our recognition of the Emperor’s hereditary right to the
Imperial Crown of France. From first to last, however, Lord Malmesbury
and the other diplomatists were mistaken. Very little reflection might
have taught them that if the numeral were meant to efface Waterloo, and
the Monarchies of the Bourbons and the Barricades, the usurper would
have styled himself Napoleon V., and not Napoleon III., for his elder
uncle Joseph and his father Louis both survived the young and ill-fated
Duc de Reichstadt. A hereditary title, moreover, would not need to have
been consecrated by a _plebiscite_, and the reign of its wearer would
not have been dated from 1852, but from the date of Louis Bonaparte’s
death. It is, therefore, natural to ask how Charles Louis Bonaparte came
to style himself the Third and not the Second Emperor. The explanation
illustrates the facility with which the tragicomedy of fussy English
diplomacy is transformed into farce at the touch of fact. Lord
Malmesbury, who is rendered supremely ridiculous by the story, tells it
himself as follows in his Diary:--

“December 29 (1852). We went to Heron Court. Whole country under water.
Lord Cowley[81] relates a curious anecdote as to the origin of the
numeral III. in the Emperor’s title. The Prefect of Bourges, where he
slept the first night of his progress, had given instructions that the
people were to shout ‘Vive Napoléon!’ But he wrote ‘Vive Napoléon!!!’
The people took the three notes of interjection for a numeral. The
President, on hearing it, sent the Duc de Mortemart to the Prefect to
know what the cry meant. When the whole thing was explained, the
President, tapping the Duke on the shoulder, said, ‘_Je ne savais pas
que j’avais un Préfet Machiavéliste._’”[82]

After the proclamation of the French Emperor, his matrimonial schemes
touched the family connections of the Queen somewhat closely. The
Emperor’s marriage, in truth, was the favourite topic for gossip and
scandal in every high social circle in Europe. As a matter of fact,
Charles Louis Napoleon was averse from marriage. Two women were already
devoted to him; perhaps more zealously than any bride of exalted rank
could ever be. One was Madame Favart de l’Anglade, a creole, who lived
some time at Kensington Gate, and whose whist and dinner parties have,
perhaps, not yet been quite forgotten in the old Court suburb. (Lord
Malmesbury, it may be said in passing, was told by Kisseleff, the
Russian Ambassador at Paris, that had the _coup d’état_ failed, Charles
Louis Bonaparte and De Morny were to have fled for concealment to this
lady’s house.) The other woman who exercised so much influence on the
Prince-President’s life was a Mrs. Howard. She was his mistress, and he
created her Comtesse de Beauregard after he broke off his intimacy with
her.[83] This event was virtually an intimation of his intention to
marry. He was anxious to have an heir--for obviously none of the
Bonapartes were fit to succeed him. To perpetuate a dynasty a Royal
bride would be useful, and to enable him to obtain a Royal bride,
Charles Louis Bonaparte persuaded France to proclaim him Emperor.

His first project was to seek in marriage the Princess Caroline
Stephanie de Vasa, a grand-daughter of the Grand Duchess of Baden, and
daughter of Prince Gustave de Vasa, son of the last King of Sweden of
the old legitimate dynasty. The proposal was not accepted, and the lady
afterwards married a German Prince. In December, however, Walewski was
sent to the English Court to ask the hand of the Princess Adelaide of
Hohenlohe for his Imperial master, greatly to the disquietude of the
Queen, who was her aunt. On the 28th of December, when the Tory
Ministers went to Windsor to deliver up their seals of office, the Queen
began at once to discuss this delicate affair with them. Lord Malmesbury
says:--“The Prince (Albert) read a letter from Prince Hohenlohe on the
subject, which amounted to this, that he was not sure of the settlement
being satisfactory, and that there were objections of religion and
morals. The Queen and Prince talked of the marriage reasonably, and
weighed the _pros_ and _cons_. Afraid the Princess should be dazzled if
she heard of the offer. I said I knew an offer would be made to the
father. Walewski would go himself. The Queen alluded to the fate of all
the wives of the rulers of France since 1789, but did not object
positively to the marriage.”[84] This project, however, fell to the
ground, and the Emperor, tired of being rejected by Princesses, acted on
the wise apophthegm of Ovid--_Si qua vis apte nubere, nube pari_. On the
22nd of January, 1853, he announced his intention of marrying Eugenia de
Montijo, Countess of Théba, daughter of the Donna Maria Manuela
Kirkpatrick, Dowager Countess de Montijo, by the Count de Montijo, an
officer of rank in the Spanish army. The father of the Donna Maria
Manuela Kirkpatrick was British Consul at Malaga, and supposed to be
descended from the assassin of the Red Comyn, whose family motto, “I mak
sickar” (“I make sure”), perpetuates grim

[Illustration: MDLLE. EUGENIA DE MONTIJO, AFTERWARDS EMPRESS OF THE
FRENCH.]

memories of his loyalty to the Bruce. His Majesty told the deputations
from the Senate, the Legislative Body and the Council of State, that
whilst it was his aim to place France once more within the pale of the
old Monarchies, that result would be better attained by policy than by
“Royal alliances, which create feelings of false security, and
frequently substitute family interests for those of the nation.” Now,
any dispute which engages Europe in diplomatic controversy that finally
leads to war, is apt to produce fresh groupings of the Powers. An
Imperial parvenu seeking for a respectable ally finds in these new
groupings excellent opportunities for insinuating himself into “the pale
of the old monarchies.” Hence the Emperor’s marriage was a sinister omen
for England, because it was his fixed idea that England was the most
profitable ally France could have. The Queen, however, on hearing that
the Emperor’s marriage was a love match, imagined that his abandonment
of an attempt to contract a Royal alliance gave additional force to his
assurance at Bordeaux, on the 9th of October, 1852, that the “Empire was
Peace,” and that under its guidance France was about to enter on a busy
epoch of Industrialism. English Society approved of the marriage,[85]
and the Press was loud in its praises of the Imperial pair.[86] Nobody,
indeed, had the faintest suspicion at the time that war was in store for
us--a war which gave the French Emperor that very alliance with England
for which he was then scheming. But before describing the events that
led up to the most disastrous calamity that darkens the Queen’s reign,
it may be well to sketch briefly the chief points in the Home Policy of
her Majesty’s Ministers during 1853.

It has been said that there were only two great projects in which the
Queen interested herself during this year, filled, as it was, with
distracting anxieties as to foreign affairs--the Budget and the India
Government Bill. There was, however, a third: Lord John Russell’s
scheme--unhappily abortive--for establishing a national system of public
instruction.

Parliament met on the 10th of February, and Mr. Disraeli called Sir
James Graham and Sir Charles Wood to account for speaking rudely of the
French Emperor in their hustings addresses. Nothing came of his pungent
attack, and public interest in politics was languid till April arrived,
when Mr. Gladstone introduced his celebrated Budget--the first of a
series that enabled him to divide with Sir Robert Peel the glory of
being the greatest Finance Minister of the Victorian age.

Mr. Gladstone found that Mr. Disraeli, by under-estimating his revenue
and over-estimating his expenditure, had left him with a surplus, not of
£461,000, but of £2,307,000.[87] Unexpected military expenditure, due to
dread of a French invasion, had reduced this surplus to £807,000. The
primary feature in Mr. Gladstone’s Budget was the extension of the tax
on personal property devised by will to real property, and also to
personal property that passed by settlement. This, Mr. Gladstone
reckoned, would ultimately bring in £2,000,000, and put him in a
position to deal with the Income Tax, which came to an end in 1853. He
proposed to continue the Income Tax at sevenpence in the pound for two
years, then to reduce it to sixpence, and in three years after that to
reduce it to fivepence. He extended the tax to Ireland, but, by way of
compensation, remitted the debts which Ireland had recently incurred to
the Imperial Treasury. He increased the duties on Scotch spirits from
3s. 5d. to 4s. 8d., and on Irish spirits from 2s. 8d. to 3s. 4d. a
gallon, and thus, he reckoned, he had a surplus of £2,151,000 to spend.
How did he spend it? He abolished the duty on soap, thereby terminating
the last of the taxes on the four “necessaries”--salt, leather, and
candles were the other three--which Adam Smith condemned a century
before.[88] He reduced the taxes on 256 minor articles of food, besides
tea, advertisements, carriages, dogs, male servants, apples, cheese,
cocoa, butter, and raisins. He reduced the rate of postage to the
Colonies--a reduction which, it is surprising to find, had not been even
suggested by Mr. Disraeli or any of his predecessors in the highest of
Imperial interests. An ingenious feature in his Budget was his
manipulation of the Funds. Old Three per Cent. Consols, which could be
paid off at a year’s notice, sold for a little over par, that is to say,
£100 of stock sold for a little more than £100. New Three per Cents,
however, which were not redeemable for twenty years, sold for
£103--_i.e._, £100 of stock was worth in the market £103, the difference
of £3 representing the value of the State guarantee to pay interest on
the stock for twenty years. Hence, he said, if he gave a like guarantee
for some of the unguaranteed stock, he might lay hands on the increment
of value thereby added to it for the benefit of the State. He
accordingly permitted fundholders to exchange £100 of Consols, or
“Reduced Three per Cents.” for Exchequer bonds,[89] or for £82 10s. in
New Three and a Half per Cent. Stock, guaranteed for forty years to pay
£2 17s. 9d. of interest, or for £110 irredeemable Two and a Half per
Cent. Stock. Mr. Spencer Walpole has said

[Illustration: PRINCE JÉRÔME BONAPARTE.]

that “in breadth, in comprehension, in boldness, in knowledge, and in
originality,” Mr. Gladstone’s first Budget will compare with Peel’s
greatest efforts in 1842 and 1845.[90] But even Mr. Walpole admits that,
whereas Peel’s Budgets can be tested by results, Mr. Gladstone’s can be
judged of only from its intention. The Crimean war--which he did not
foresee, and which, as will be shown presently, was then brewing--upset
all his calculations. It was not favourable to conversion of debt;
moreover, the new succession duty did not bring in one-fourth of the
estimated sum.[91] Only one important change was effected in the scheme.
The duty on advertisements, which Mr. Gladstone proposed should be
reduced to 6d., was abolished by the odd and novel method of moving and
carrying an amendment substituting the cipher (0) for the figure 6(d.),
in the resolution of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Mr. Hume
challenged the competence of the House of Commons in Committee to adopt
a resolution with a “nought” in it instead of a definite figure, but the
Speaker ruled against him.

[Illustration: SKETCH IN THE OUTER CLOISTERS, WINDSOR CASTLE.]

The India Bill was introduced by Sir C. Wood on the 3rd of June, 1853.
The complaints against the system under which India was ruled were that
it led to wars, deficits, maladministration of justice, neglect of
public works and of education. The Dual Government of the Imperial Board
of Control and the Court of Directors of the East India Company was
maintained, but the Court of Directors was reduced from thirty members
to eighteen, twelve of whom were to be chosen by the Company, and six
nominated by the Crown, who were to be Indian officials of ten years’
service. The new system, which was to prevail till Parliament chose to
change it, put an end to the old plan of leasing the Indian Empire for a
term of years to a Company of merchant adventurers. As to patronage,
competition was substituted for nomination as the mode of entering the
public service. Direct appointments to the Indian Army were, however,
left in the hands of the Directors of the Company. The scheme was warmly
discussed, the friends of the Company insisting on immediate
legislation; its enemies, thinking that in time they might be able to
educate the country up to the point of abolishing the authority of the
Directors, and transferring the government of India absolutely to the
Crown,[92] pressed for delay. Mr. Disraeli and the bulk of the Tories
were for postponing legislation, but in the end the Government carried
the Bill.

Lord John Russell, on the 4th of April, explained his scheme for
establishing a system of national education. The main point in it was
that it empowered Municipal Authorities to raise a rate in aid of
voluntary schools, the rate to be applied to pay twopence in the week
for each scholar, provided fourpence or fivepence were contributed from
other sources. The scheme was, however, abandoned. Lord John had in his
speech foreshadowed the introduction of a Bill imposing drastic reforms
on the Universities, and this roused the Tory Party to obstruct his
proposals. It is but fair to draw attention to this Bill, because Lord
John Russell is entitled to the credit of having been the first
statesman to present a comprehensive scheme for organising primary
education, based on the principle that it is the duty of the community
to provide for the instruction of the people by levying an education
rate. This, said Mr. W. J. Fox, was “a most important step in the
progress of public instruction.”

A Bill empowering the Local Governments in Canada to deal with Clergy
Reserves was introduced by Mr. F. Peel on the 15th of February. It is
notable because the debates on it illustrate the difference between the
ideas of the two parties in the State as to Colonial Government--the
Tories in those days being on the whole opposed to granting the Colonies
privileges of self-government, whilst the Liberals favoured such grants.
In 1791 it was enacted that whenever the Crown disposed of waste lands
in Canada, one-seventh of their value should be reserved for the support
of the Protestant clergy. The funds, it seems, had not been fairly
distributed, the Established Churches of England and Scotland having
received the largest share of them. In 1840 the Imperial Legislature had
confirmed this appropriation by restraining the Canadian Legislatures
from meddling with these funds. The Bill of the Government simply gave
the Canadian Legislature the right of dealing with them as it thought
fit, on the ground that the disposal of lands which derived their value
from Canadian capital and Canadian enterprise was a matter of Colonial
rather than of Imperial concern. The Bill was passed.

On the 11th of July a Bill for altering the punishment of transportation
was introduced into the House of Lords by the Lord Chancellor. Only one
Colony--Western Australia--was willing to receive convicts, and not more
than 800 to 1,000 a year could be sent there. The Government proposed,
therefore, to limit transportation to such cases of crime as would carry
a sentence of fourteen years’ imprisonment, and substitute shorter
periods of imprisonment for offences, which up till now had been
punished by varying periods of transportation.

This proposal, which was carried, was forced on the State by the great
changes which had been effected in the Australian Colonies after the
discovery of gold in New South Wales. Here it may be well to notice the
manner in which these gold discoveries were made, and their effect on
the prosperity of the Empire.

It was on the 10th of September, 1852, that the West India mail steamer
brought news to England which revived the old yearning for the discovery
of the fabled El Dorado--dormant in the English breast since the days of
Raleigh. Gold, it was reported, had been found near Bathurst, in New
South Wales, where a frantic rush to the diggings had taken place. The
merchant left his warehouse, the shopman his counter, even the lawyers
deserted their clients--all eager to join in the headlong race to the
mines. But all the gold they were likely to win could not possibly
balance the loss caused to the Colony at the time by the mad stampede of
the shepherds, who abandoned their countless flocks for the mines. The
gold fever was further exacerbated by the subsequent discovery of
another rich deposit in Victoria. America had found her El Dorado in
California; Englishmen accordingly heard with pride that they, too, had
come into a richer heritage in the hitherto despised convict settlements
of Australasia. On the 23rd of November, 1852, three vessels from
Australia sailed into the Thames with a cargo of seven tons of solid
gold. The _Eagle_ brought 160,000 ounces, worth £600,000, and she had
made the passage from Melbourne to the Downs in seventy-six days; the
_Sapphire_ and _Pelham_, from Sydney, brought 14,668 ounces and 27,762
ounces respectively; the _Maitland_, from Sydney, followed with 14,326
ounces; the _Australia_, the first steamer that arrived from these
Colonies, next came in with a still larger quantity; and in December the
_Dido_ appeared with a cargo of gold-dust valued at £400,000.

Politically the Protectionists tried to turn these discoveries to some
account. They had predicted that Free Trade would ruin the country. On
the contrary, £6,000,000 of taxation had been remitted since 1846, and
yet there was no shrinkage of revenue. Exports had risen from
£58,000,000 to £78,000,000, the shipping trade was brisker than ever,
and on the 1st of January, 1853, there were not quite 800,000 paupers in
the country.[93] Even the landed interest could not pretend to have been
ruined, seeing that the Income Tax assessment under Schedule B, which
is levied on rents of agricultural land, had risen from £46,328,811 in
1845 to £46,681,488 in 1852. This tide of prosperity under Free Trade
seemed certain to flow rather than to ebb, so that the Tories were
taunted with the utter failure of their dismal Protectionist prophecies.
It need hardly be said that the Queen, who, as a strong Free Trader, had
watched with deep anxiety the result of the great revolution in fiscal
policy which she had helped Peel to initiate, was intensely gratified,
not to say relieved in mind, when the figures illustrating the
commercial condition of her realm were brought under her notice. The
Protectionists, however, had an answer to these facts. It was, they
averred, the unexpected discovery of gold in Australia that had saved
the country from the ruin which they predicted must come from Free
Trade. It may be pointed out that the figures we have given for the
purpose of showing how the trade of the country stood after 1846, cover
the period _before_, and not the period _after_, gold was imported from
Australia--a circumstance which the Queen and Prince Albert were quick
to note and appreciate. The Tory Protectionists, in fact, completely
misunderstood the effect which would be produced by any sudden increase
in the supply of gold. That effect was two-fold: (1) on the mother
country, and (2) on the Australian Colonies.

There is very little mystery about the effect of an increase in the
production of gold. The more we put into the market the less valuable
will it become. If we double the quantity of gold in circulation, it
follows that an article which could be bought for a sovereign will not
be sold for less than two sovereigns. The price of the article is thus
said to rise, whereas the value, or, properly speaking, the purchasing
power of the gold, for which it is exchanged, is said to fall. An
increase in the stock of gold ought, therefore, to lead to a rise in
prices, and to a fall or depreciation in the value of the metal. In 1853
some foolish persons therefore predicted that gold would soon be as
cheap as silver; and yet, though the supply was trebled, gold was not
trebly depreciated in value. “Undoubtedly some effect,” says Mr.
Walpole, “was consequently made on prices; but the effect was probably
only slowly and gradually felt. Gold was absorbed in vast and
unprecedented quantities in the arts, and the supply which was actually
available for barter was not immediately augmented to the same
degree.”[94] It is difficult to understand how so able a writer has been
led into an error which must vitiate every deduction drawn from the
effect of the Australian gold discoveries on the prosperity of the
English people, in the Victorian period. Nobody has ever been able to
estimate even approximately the amount of gold that is absorbed in the
arts. All that we know is that the amount is so small, that it could not
affect such an enormous increase in the supply as that which came from
Australia.[95] Besides, as gold did not fall much in value, it was not
likely that it would be much absorbed in the arts. But, then, what
became of all the gold that was so suddenly poured into England from
Australia? Some of it was absorbed in coinage,[96] but not enough to
account for the absorption of the vast quantity that remained. The key
to the puzzle is, in truth, to be found in the statistics of commerce
which we have already cited.

[Illustration: THE CONVEYING OF AUSTRALIAN GOLD FROM THE EAST INDIA
DOCKS TO THE BANK OF ENGLAND.

(_After the Engraving in the “Illustrated London News.”_)]

The value of gold was kept up in spite of the sudden increase in the
supply, because, under Free Trade, the commerce of the country began to
expand by leaps and bounds. The Australian supplies, in fact, were
absorbed in trade, for it is obvious that the sudden expansion of
business which followed from Free Trade must have caused a corresponding
demand for money, not only to conduct the operations of barter, but to
pay the wages of the additional workers who produced the articles sold
for money. When this fact is grasped, it is easy to understand what the
Australian gold discoveries did for England. Had no new supplies of gold
been found in 1853, Free Trade would have brought serious disasters in
its wake, but not precisely in the form predicted by the Tories. The
sudden expansion of trade would have caused a sudden demand for gold;
the value of gold must have risen. Supposing gold had thus doubled in
value, then the prices of commodities would have been halved, that is to
say, one hundred oxen would have sold only for as many sovereigns as
fifty sold for before the value of gold was thus increased. Everybody
who had to make a fixed money payment, such as rent or interest, would
have had their payment doubled, for they would have had to produce twice
as much to meet their obligations as originally sufficed for that
purpose. The burden of the National Debt, for example, would have been
doubled, for, to pay every pound’s worth of interest to the fundholder,
the public would have had to realise what represented two pounds’ worth
of wealth when the interest was first fixed. In fact, the only people
who would have gained, would have been the few who had to receive fixed
payments, at the expense of the many who had to make them. The discovery
of gold at a time when a liberated and expanding trade was causing an
increased demand for the metal was thus a providential coincidence. By
preventing the demand from outrunning the supply, it prevented a sudden
increase in the value of the metal, which must have reduced prices and
upset all the monetary arrangements of the country.

What was the effect of the discovery of gold on the Australian Colonies?
Very much the same as the discovery of rich deposits of any other
saleable ore, excepting in this respect, that gold is the one metal that
commands an immediate sale, at a high and very slightly varying price.
Land, Labour, and Capital are the three great requisites of production.
Of these Australia, prior to 1853, had only the first in abundance. The
gold mines attracted a rush of emigrants to Australia. But gold mining
is a lottery in which the prizes fall to the few. The average earnings
of the digger were soon found to be lower than the wages paid in other
employments. Hence crowds of men who had been attracted to the mines
soon left them, and were ready to follow other pursuits, so that the
gold rush gave Australia the second element in production--labour. But
the gold which was won, and the demands of the mining population, soon
stimulated industry and increased wealth in the Colonies--in other
words, the gold rush brought to Australia the third requisite of
production--capital.

The Australian gold discoveries, therefore, transformed an insignificant
penal settlement into a rich and queenly Commonwealth, and saved England
from the gold famine, with its disastrous fall in prices, which a sudden
expansion of trade must inevitably have produced after Protective duties
were abolished. There were, however, two shadows on the picture. The
gold rush to Australia depleted the labour market at home. The demands
of the Australian Colonies for British goods, after gold had been
discovered, were enormous. A sudden diminution in the supply of labour,
combined with a corresponding increase in the demand for the goods which
Labour produces, naturally led to a demand in England for increased
wages. Strikes broke out all over the country. Labour was scarce and
business brisk, and though the conflict was, except in rare cases,
unaccompanied by violence, it may be said that generally speaking
victory lay rather with the workers than with their masters. Wages were
forced up, which was perhaps fortunate, because, as the year wore on, it
soon became apparent that a bad harvest in England, France, and Germany
would seriously increase the price of food.[97] The enormous impetus
given to industry, and the rise in wages which followed, enabled skilled
labour to bear this increase in the price of bread. The unskilled
labourers, however, who from lack of organisation cannot “strike” with
much effect, suffered acutely, especially towards the end of the year.
But by that time a calamity was within measurable distance, which
diverted the minds of the English people from dear bread and bad
harvests. That calamity was the Crimean war, which rendered 1853 the
last year of “The Great Peace” which followed the battle of Waterloo.

[Illustration: STUDY OF A CHILD.

(_After an Etching by the Queen._)]

[Illustration: OFF THE COAST OF ASIA MINOR (TURKEY IN ASIA).]




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.

[Illustration: BAZAAR IN CONSTANTINOPLE.]

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!

[Illustration: CONVENT OF THE NATIVITY, BETHLEHEM.]

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

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE CHAPEL OF THE NATIVITY, BETHLEHEM.]

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.

[Illustration: THE NICOLAI BRIDGE ACROSS THE NEVA, ST. PETERSBURG.]

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

[Illustration: LORD STRATFORD DE REDCLIFFE.

(_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.

[Illustration: TOWN HALL, VIENNA.]

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.

[Illustration: PRINCE MENSCHIKOFF.]

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]

[Illustration: THE MOSQUE OF SELIM II. AT ADRIANOPLE.]

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

[Illustration: THE DUKE OF NEWCASTLE.]

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

[Illustration: DESTRUCTION OF THE TURKISH FLEET AT SINOPE. (_See_ p.
562.)]

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.

[Illustration: THE THRONE ROOM, WINDSOR CASTLE.]

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

[Illustration: SEBASTOPOL.]

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

[Illustration: FIRE IN THE PRINCE OF WALES’S TOWER, WINDSOR CASTLE.
(_See_ p. 567.)]

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

[Illustration: THE QUEEN AT THE CAMP AT CHOBHAM.]

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.

[Illustration: RUNNYMEDE.]

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

[Illustration: SPITHEAD.]

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]

[Illustration: BALMORAL CASTLE FROM THE ROAD.]

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.




CHAPTER XXX.

WAR.

     The War Fever in 1854--Attacks on Prince Albert--Aberdeen’s
     Correspondence with the Queen--The Queen’s Opinion of the
     Country--“Loyal, but a little mad”--Stockmar on the
     Constitution--Prince Albert’s Position at Court--The Privileges of
     a Reigning Queen’s Husband--Debates on the Prince’s Position--The
     Peace and War Parties--Mr. Cobden’s Influence--A new Vienna Note--A
     Challenge to Russia--The Russian Ambassador leaves London--Recall
     of Sir H. Seymour from St. Petersburg--Russian Intrigues with the
     German Powers--The Czar’s Counter-Propositions--His Sarcastic
     Letter to Napoleon III.--An Austrian Compromise--Lord Clarendon’s
     _Ultimatum_ to Russia--The Czar’s Reply--Declaration of War--Omar
     Pasha’s Victories in the Principalities--The Siege of
     Silistria--Evacuation of the Principalities--The Rising in
     Greece--The Allies at the Piræus--The Allies occupy
     Gallipoli--Another English Blunder--Invasion of the Crimea--The
     Duke of Newcastle and a Sleepy Cabinet--Lord Raglan’s Opinion on
     the War--The Landing of the Allies at Eupatoria--Battle of the
     Alma--Death of Marshal St. Arnaud--Russian Fleet Sunk at
     Sebastopol--At Balaclava--The Siege of Sebastopol--Battles of
     Balaclava and Inkermann--Mismanagement of the War--Public
     Indignation against the Government--Mr. Roebuck’s Motion--Fall of
     the Coalition Ministry.


No writer has described more effectively than Mr. Cobden the sudden
change that hurried the country into the military alliance with France
against Russia which was made operative in 1854. Suppose, he said, an
invalid had been ordered in the spring of 1853 to go to Australia and
back for the benefit of his health. When he left home he must have noted
that “the Militia was preparing for duty; the coasts and dockyards were
being fortified; the Navy, Army, and Artillery were all in course of
augmentation; inspectors of artillery and cavalry were reported to be
busy on the Southern coast; deputations from railway companies, it was
said, had been waiting on the Admiralty and Ordnance to explain how
rapidly the commissariat and military stores could be transported from
the Tower to Dover or Portsmouth; and the latest paragraph of news from
the Continent was that our neighbours on the other side of the Channel
were practising the embarkation and disembarkation of troops by night.
He left home amidst all these alarms and preparations for a French
invasion. But he returns, and, supposing he has not been hearing or
giving heed to tidings from Europe, in what condition does he find his
country? He steps on shore at Liverpool, and the first newspaper he sees
informs him that the English and French fleets are lying side by side in
Besika Bay. An impending naval engagement between the two Powers is
naturally the idea that first occurs to him; but, glancing at the
leading article of the journal, he learns that England and France have
entered on an alliance, and that they are on the eve of commencing a
sanguinary struggle against Russia.”[135] He would have also found the
Tory organs of public opinion vieing with the demagogic Press in
denouncing the Queen’s husband as a traitor to his wife and as a servile
spy of Russia; from which, if he had been a shrewd man, he would have
inferred that the Queen had been again guilty of the atrocious crime of
differing from Lord Palmerston, and that Prince Albert had been
criticising rather too plainly his bellicose Foreign Policy.

During the first few weeks of 1854 society, indeed, could talk of little
else than the “treason” of Prince Albert. The Queen’s vexation found
frequent expression in letters to Lord Aberdeen, and that amiable
Minister did what he could to comfort her. The Prince, however, treated
his slanderers with well-simulated contempt, but, in spite of that,
their injustice stung him to the quick, and he suffered much both in
health and spirits. Yet nothing could be done in his defence till
Parliament met, and the Queen was, therefore, fain to believe that the
country, as she says in a letter to Stockmar, was “as _loyal_ as ever,
only a little mad.” Long and ponderous essays from Stockmar on the
Constitutional prerogatives of the Crown, and the political functions of
Prince Albert, as her Majesty’s private secretary, did little to dispel
the gloom that settled over the Court. The fact is that Stockmar
slightly erred in imagining that the hostility to the Prince was really
due to wrong ideas on these interesting points. As Prince Albert bluntly
put it, one main element in the agitation against him was the hatred of
the old High Tory Party towards him, in the first place, because of his
friendship with Peel, and, secondly, because of his success with the
Great Exhibition.[136] The grumblers of the military clubs, too, joined
in the cry against his Royal Highness because, when Adjutant-General
Browne resigned, after quarrelling with Lord Hardinge, the
Commander-in-Chief, about the weight of the soldier’s knapsack, the
Prince was supposed to have taken Lord Hardinge’s side. The masses, too,
had never seriously thought out the question of the position which an
able man who was husband of a reigning Queen was certain, through the
mere dictates of nature, to take in the counsels of the Sovereign. It
struck them like a galvanic shock when they discovered that for fourteen
years the Prince had been actively helping to govern them, whilst the
omniscient flunkeys of the Press were almost daily smothering him with
adulation for his “wise abstinence from politics.” Having stupidly
deceived themselves as to the precise influence which the Prince
wielded, they were in the right state of mind to be deceived by the
Prince’s enemies as to the influence which he did not wield, and which
he never sought to wield. These reasons, and not the dubiety of the
British Constitution as to the political rights of the husband of an
English Queen, gave rise to much of the foolish clamour of the hour.

It need hardly be said that when Parliament met on the 31st of January,
the leaders of both parties in both Houses summarily disposed of the
falsehoods which had been uttered to the discredit of the Court. The
Debates on the Address on this occasion are of high historical and
Constitutional importance, because they defined with great precision the
position of the consort of a queen regnant in the British Constitution,
establishing beyond doubt his right to assist the Sovereign with advice
in all matters of State. The address of Lord Campbell may be usefully
referred to as giving the legal view of the question; but the speeches
which delighted the Queen most were those of Lord John Russell, who, she
says, in a letter to Stockmar, “did it admirably,” and “dear, excellent
Lord Aberdeen, who has taken it _terribly to heart_.” It was, however,
Lord Campbell’s address which gave most satisfaction to Prince Albert.
The common-sense view of the question obviously was, that if the husband
of a queen regnant in England embarrassed her Majesty’s responsible
Ministers by unconstitutional interference, the fault must be theirs and
not his. The Constitution places in their hands the formidable weapon of
resignation, and resignation in such circumstances simply means that
government is rendered impossible till the unconstitutional interference
which is objected to is stopped.

Nobody has stated with greater correctness the political situation of
the country at the beginning of 1854 than Sir George Cornewall Lewis.
“If,” said he, in a letter to Sir Edmund Head, “war is averted, there
will be a Reform Bill, which is likely to lead to an early Dissolution.
If war arrives, the Reform Bill and all other similar measures likely to
produce party struggles and divisions must be postponed.”[137] The
Tories had, therefore, one strong temptation to encourage the War Party.
Those Whigs who, like Lord Palmerston, dreaded Reform, were in like
case, except Lord John Russell, who, with a Reform Bill on the anvil,
was foolish enough to share with Palmerston the leadership of the War
Party in the Cabinet. As the war would be one against Russia, the
mainstay of despotism in Europe, the Radicals, mindful of how the
revolution was stamped out in Hungary, were for once on the side of war.
Nobody, in fact, had any genuine desire for peace save the Queen, Prince
Albert, and the Peelites, who desired “peace with honour,” and the
Cobdenites, who seemed to desire “peace at any price.” The Peace Party
was strong in brains and common-sense, but weak in numbers. The
strength

[Illustration: THE OUTER CLOISTERS AND ANNE BOLEYN’S WINDOW, WINDSOR
CASTLE.]

of the War Party lay in its numbers, and it would be absurd to assert
that, with leaders like Derby, Disraeli, Palmerston, and Russell, it
lacked intellectual ability. As usual, numbers won the day, and an
abnormal alliance of “the classes and masses” rendered the Peace
Party--sadly weakened in moral authority by the Moravian fanaticism of
the Cobdenites--utterly impotent. Mr. Cobden cherished the illusion that
his influence had strengthened the Peace Party. Yet, with the exception
of Lord Palmerston, Lord John Russell, Lord Derby, and Lord Lyndhurst,
no public men did more to make peace impossible than Mr. Cobden and Mr.
Bright, the tone of whose pacific speeches acted on the pugnacious
temper of the country as soothingly as a sting on an open and irritable
wound.[138]

As might be expected, the Eastern policy of Ministers was fiercely
attacked in both Houses of Parliament. But to understand the point of
these attacks and the relation of the Queen to them, one must explain
what was done after Sinope drove England into a frenzy of anger only
comparable with that of the Danes when Nelson destroyed their fleet at
Copenhagen.

To rightly appraise the criminal blunder of Russia at Sinope, it is
necessary to remember that when that “massacre” occurred, the European
Powers had agreed on a new Note embodying what they considered an
honourable settlement of the dispute between Russia and Turkey. That was
the Note of the 5th of December, and Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, under
orders from Lord Clarendon, persuaded the Porte to accept it. This was a
great step towards peace, for all that remained was to induce the Czar
to be equally reasonable. But on the very day (the 13th of January,
1854) when the Powers, in concert at Vienna, decided to press this
settlement on Russia, Sir Hamilton Seymour was instructed by Lord
Clarendon to intimate to Count Nesselrode at St. Petersburg that England
and France had lifted the gage of battle flung to them at Sinope. Russia
was informed that the English and French fleets had sailed for the Black
Sea, charged to “require” every Russian ship they met to put back to
port. This irritated the Czar, who professed to regard it as “a flagrant
act of hostility.”[139] Yet the Czar, or rather Nesselrode--who, like
Lord Aberdeen, was braving infinite obloquy on account of his pacific
proclivities--was willing to condone the act, if England would only
state formally that she would impose on Turkish ships the same
restrictions she imposed on those of Russia. Lord Clarendon, in his
despatch, dated the 31st of January, did not make this statement, and
accordingly, on the 4th of February, the Russian Ambassador in London
announced that he and his retinue must return at once to St. Petersburg.
On the 7th of February Lord Clarendon ordered the British Ambassador at
the Court of the Czar to return to England; the French Government took
the same course, and thus the rupture between Russia and the Western
Powers became complete. It was in such circumstances hopeless to expect
that the Note of the 5th of December, which had been accepted by the
Porte, and which the Four Powers agreed to recommend to Russia on the
very day that the despatch of the allied fleets to the Euxine was
notified to Count Nesselrode (the 13th of January), would be accepted by
the Czar. Indeed, but for Nesselrode, it would have been ignored with
contempt.[140] Russia, however, temporised. Taking advantage of the
false step of England and France in sending their fleets to the Euxine
without consulting Austria and Prussia, Russia artfully attempted to
detach the German States from the European Concert. Having failed in
this, the Russian Government sent two replies to the Protocol of the
13th of January, transmitting the settlement which the Powers had agreed
upon, and which the Porte had accepted.

The proposal of the Powers provided, amongst other things, for (1) the
evacuation of the Principalities as soon as possible; (2) the renewal of
the ancient treaties; (3) a formal guarantee by Turkey to all her
non-Mussulman subjects of their spiritual privileges, which should
likewise be communicated to all the Powers, including Russia,
“accompanied with suitable assurances” to each of them; (4) a pledge
from the Porte to reform its system of administration; and (5) the
customary promise on the part of the Sultan to uphold the old rights and
immunities granted to his Christian subjects by existing treaties.
Russia rejected these proposals, and committed the blunder of extending
her demands in her first series of counter-propositions.[141] But
subsequently she submitted a second series of propositions, in which she
withdrew the stipulations as to political refugees, and her ungenerous
demand that the Porte should negotiate terms of peace at St. Petersburg,
or at the Russian headquarters in Moldavia. The Powers decided that the
Russian settlement could not be recommended to Turkey, their main
objection being, that while their terms embodied a recognition of the
principle that the Turkish concessions and guarantees were given to
Europe as well as to Russia, the Russian terms proceeded on the
assumption that they were given to Russia alone. The Czar here was in
the wrong. In the war on the Danube the Turks had been victorious. He
insisted, however, that they should sue for peace, as if they were
prostrate in defeat. On the other hand, the Four Powers proposed terms
which did not imply that victory or defeat rested with either
belligerent. The only defence that can be made for the obstinacy of the
Emperor Nicholas in thus refusing to cross the golden bridge of
honourable retreat built for him by the Powers is, that the War Party in
Russia was as rabid as the War Party in England. “The Emperor,” wrote
Sir H. Seymour to Lord Clarendon on the 2nd of January, “is infinitely
more moderate than the immense bulk of his subjects,” who denounced
Nesselrode “as an alien, a traitor, and a man bought by English
gold”--precisely the language which the same kind of people in England
applied to Lord Aberdeen. In fact, the Czar himself was rapidly losing
his popularity and authority because of the deference he was showing to
the Powers, and it is probable that if he had made further concessions
he would have been assassinated. But inasmuch as Nicholas himself, in
spite of the advice of his three ablest servants,[142] had roused the
fanaticism and fury of his subjects by his policy, even this defence,
though it explains, does not justify his conduct.

[Illustration: RUSSIAN REPULSE AT SILISTRIA.]

[Illustration: LORD RAGLAN.]

Yet, by a strange stroke of fortune, war between Russia and the Western
Powers was still avoided. War with Russia was hateful to the French
people--almost as hateful as a military alliance with Turkey. But the
Emperor Napoleon III., for dynastic reasons, was committed to such a
war, and on the 29th of January he accordingly wrote a pacific letter to
the Czar couched in language certain to provoke his wrath. Nicholas
answered it with infinite _hauteur_, two contemptuous sentences in his
reply stinging the Bonapartists into rage.[143] France now had her War
Party rampant, and this did not improve the outlook. Still, one last
effort was made in the cause of peace. On the 22nd of February the
Austrian Minister, Count Buol, told the French Ambassador at Vienna
that if England and France would only fix “a delay”[144] for the
evacuation of the Principalities, and agree to keep the peace till that
term ran out, Austria would join them in sending Russia a summons to
retire across the Pruth. It was tolerably certain that what Austria did,
Prussia would do, and here again the European Concert was united in
putting irresistible diplomatic pressure on Russia. Lord Clarendon,
hearing of this, very naturally asked the German Powers how they would
act if the joint summons were ignored by the Czar. Clarendon seems to
have taken it for granted that they would in that case join England in
going to war, for, without waiting for their reply, he sent to St.
Petersburg on the 27th of February an ultimatum to Russia, demanding the
evacuation of the Principalities under threat of war. When the replies
from the German Powers arrived on the 28th of February, Lord Clarendon
found that Austria merely promised to support England in sending the
summons, but not to support her in any action she might take in the
event of its being ignored; whereas Prussia, though she thought the
summons a good thing to send, was not quite sure if she would join the
other Powers in sending it. Thus the English Government, by Lord
Clarendon’s impetuous indiscretion, again broke up the European Concert;
but now under circumstances of supreme peril, for he had positively
committed England to enforce alone against Russia, a proposal which not
only originated with Austria, but in the enforcement of which the
interest of Austria, menaced by a Russian occupation of Moldavia, was
obviously greater than that of either England or France. France joined
England in this foolish step, and the German States, well pleased to see
the Western Powers fighting their battles, and relieved from
responsibility by Lord Clarendon’s precipitate action on the 27th of
February, astutely kept out of the fray. The Czar instructed Nesselrode
to inform Consul Michele at St. Petersburg on the 18th of March that he
did not think fit to reply to Lord Clarendon’s ultimatum,[145] and thus,
with France as an ally, England went into the war--for the evacuation of
the Principalities.

The case of the Tory Opposition in Parliament against the Government was
now unanswerable. Their leaders had systematically blamed the Government
for not warning Russia at the outset that the invasion of the
Principalities would be a _casus belli_. Had that been done, Russia
might have held her hand, whereas it was not done till retreat for
Russia meant humiliation.

But, strange as it may seem, the English Government had still one more
blunder open to them. The Turks, under Omar Pasha, had not only held the
line of the Danube against Russia, but they had won important victories.
In May, 1854, the Russians, under Paskiewitch, attacked Silistria; but
the Turks, animated by the heroism and admirably served by the skill of
some English officers, beat off the enemy, and on the 22nd of June the
Russians raised the siege. Two weeks afterwards Gortschakoff was
repulsed at Giurgevo, and the Russians were soon driven back across the
Pruth.

The evacuation of the Principalities, to bring about which England had
gone to war, was thus achieved. The one blunder which was now left for
England to commit was to ignore this fact and refrain from taking
advantage of it. And this was precisely what England did. Yielding to
the popular passion of the hour,[146] the Government found a new object
to fight for, namely, the destruction of Russia as an enemy to Mankind.
And yet, with this amazing fact on record, there are still people on the
Continent who aver that England is a practical nation, which never
fights for an idea!

War was declared by England against Russia on the 28th of March, and by
France on the 27th, the military alliance between the two Powers being
signed on the 12th. Lord Raglan had been appointed to command the
British army, whilst Marshal St. Arnaud headed that of France, and the
British troops had departed for the seat of war on the 20th of February,
amidst scenes of great excitement and popular enthusiasm, which
naturally inflamed the bellicose feeling of the metropolis. On the 30th
of March the French occupied Gallipoli, in European Turkey, a little
above the point where the Dardanelles expand into the Propontis or Sea
of Marmora. The English detachments began to arrive on the 5th of April.
The allies threw fortified lines across the peninsula, so that if Russia
had driven back the Turks from the Danube and, crossing the Balkans to
Adrianople, had made a dash for Constantinople, as in 1829, the Turks
would have been paralysed by the allied forces on their right flank. But
the pride of England as a maritime Power had to be gratified, and, as
the ice was breaking in the Baltic, it was decided to order a great
fleet to reduce Cronstadt and let the Czar hear the voice of England
thundering from her cannon at the very gates of his capital. Sir Charles
Napier, the Admiral appointed to command the magnificent Armada at
Spithead, was entertained at an absurd Reform Club banquet on the 7th of
March. There he, Lord Palmerston, and Sir James Graham, delivered
themselves of flippant, vaunting orations, which Mr. Bright, in the
House of Commons, denounced as “discreditable to the grave and
responsible statesmen of a Christian nation.”[147] Very different was
the feeling of the Queen when, on the 11th of March, she reviewed the
stately procession of war-ships at Spithead, as they steamed past her
yacht, while she waved her handkerchief to the Admiral and crew of the
colossal _Duke of Wellington_, which brought up the rear. Before leaving
town she wrote to Lord Aberdeen, “We are just starting to see the fleet,
which is to sail at once for its important destination. It will be a
solemn moment.[148] Many a heart will be very heavy, and many a prayer,
including our own, will be offered up for its safety and glory.”[149] On
the 12th of April Napier sailed from Kiöge Bay and completely blockaded
the Gulf of Finland. Russia was thus paralysed when she evacuated the
Principalities. Omar Pasha kept her at bay on the other side of the
Pruth. Napier locked up her fleet and shipping in the Baltic. The allied
armies covered Constantinople. The allied fleets swept the Euxine. The
“material guarantees” which she had seized for the purpose of forcing
her terms on Turkey were wrested from her hands, and as war abrogates
all treaties, she had even lost the shadow of a claim to exercise her
old rights of protection over the Sultan’s Christian subjects. Russia
was now at the mercy of the Western Powers, and had they simply remained
passive, she would soon have been compelled to sue for peace on their
terms. But the War Party in England, disappointed that this supreme
advantage had been gained without gilding British arms with glory,
scoffed at the idea of settling the original dispute between Russia and
Turkey on these terms. The British Government accordingly resolved, not
merely to bring Russia to reason, but to humiliate her and punish her in
such a manner that her power in South-Eastern Europe would be utterly
broken. As it was this determination which led to the calamitous
invasion of the Crimea, it may be well to trace the diplomatic history
of such an astounding blunder.

On the 9th of April, after war had been declared, the four
Powers--England, France, Austria, and Prussia--signed a Protocol at
Vienna which bound them (1) to remain united in maintaining the
integrity of Turkey, and in safeguarding, under the guarantee of Europe,
the liberties of her Christian inhabitants by every means compatible
with the independence of the Sultan; (2) to enter into no arrangement
with Russia or any other Power which might be inconsistent with this
object without first of all discussing it in concert. On the 20th of
April Austria and Prussia concluded an offensive and defensive alliance.
In separate Notes they summoned Russia to evacuate the Principalities.
On the 29th of July, when Omar Pasha was just about to drive the
Russians back to their territory, Count Nesselrode replied to Austria
stating that the Czar accepted the principles of the Protocol of the 9th
of April. But before evacuating the Principalities, he requested the
Cabinet of Vienna to give

[Illustration: THE QUEEN WAVING FAREWELL TO THE “DUKE OF WELLINGTON”
FLAG-SHIP.]

him some guarantee that hostilities would cease.[150] Austria was
willing to persuade England and France to agree to the condition which
the Czar thus made, a condition _sine quâ non_ of evacuation, but Count
Buol Schauenstein instructed the Austrian ambassador at St. Petersburg
to warn Nesselrode that if the Maritime Powers remained obdurate,
Austria must still insist on the withdrawal of Russia from Moldavia and
Wallachia. Prussia, however, refused to take part in a Conference which
Austria suggested might advantageously be held to consider the Russian
terms. King Frederick William and Manteuffel thought that in offering to
evacuate the Principalities, Russia had made a sufficient concession to
the interests of Germany. But Lord Clarendon was of a different
opinion.[151] England, he saw, would no longer be content with the mere
evacuation of the Principalities, which was the sole object of the war.
Imitating the initial blunder of the Czar, he insisted on getting a
“material guarantee” against any future molestation of Turkey. The
exclusive right of Russia to protect Moldavia and Wallachia must, he
said, be abolished, and instead of it a European Protectorate
established. Russia must also cease to control the chief mouth of the
Danube. The ill-defined relations of Russia to the Christian subjects of
the Porte, embodied in the Treaty of 1841, must be defined in the
interests of the balance of power in Europe, and the independence of
Turkey. Russia must finally renounce her claim to exercise any
individual or official right of protecting Turkish subjects, no matter
what their religion might be. The position of Russia as a naval Power in
the Black Sea must also be modified.[152] The Czar rejected these
terms[153]--indeed, if he had accepted them when as yet he had not
suffered any crushing defeat from the Western Powers, his life would not
have been worth many days’ purchase. Austria and Turkey concluded a
Treaty on the 14th of June, in virtue of which Austria was to occupy the
Principalities on behalf of the Sultan. On the 23rd of August the
Austrian army entered Wallachia, thus setting the Turks free to
co-operate with the Allies for the defence of Constantinople. But at
this point the war passed from the defensive to the offensive stage, and
it will therefore be convenient to trace the movement of opinion in
England which powerfully influenced the change in our plans.

The attacks on Prince Albert created an unusual interest in the opening
of Parliament on the 30th of January, 1854. When the Queen passed in her
State procession from her palace to the House of Lords, the route was
lined by a seething crowd of enthusiasts, who cheered her wildly as she
went by. She was evidently more popular than even the Turkish
Ambassador, who was the idol of West-End mobs in these mad, foolish, and
to us, the rising generation, far-off days. The Speech from the Throne
referred somewhat hopefully to the diplomatic negotiations which were
then going on between the Powers. But it contained an ominous intimation
that her Majesty thought it necessary to increase the strength of the
army and navy, “with the view of supporting her representations, and of
more effectually contributing to the restoration of peace.” She
announced a comprehensive programme of domestic legislation, comprising
a Reform Bill, with Bills to remodel Parliamentary Oaths, to reform the
methods of selection for the Civil Service, to change the law of removal
and settlement, and to renovate the tribunal for trying disputed
Parliamentary Elections. If Ministers imagined that they would thus
divert attention from the Eastern Question they were mistaken. In both
Houses the Opposition attacked the Speech bitterly. They denied that the
Government had used its best efforts to preserve peace, because its
policy was a tangle of vacillation and inconsistency. They complained
that the part played by England had been shrouded in secrecy and
mystery, so that the country had to look to foreign sources for such
scraps of information as had come to it. Ministers had shown such lack
of energy that the Emperor of Russia had been led to regard them as his
instruments, or, if that were not the case, as men who had not the
courage to vindicate British honour by British arms. Were we at war with
either or both of the belligerent Powers--Russia or Turkey--or were we
not? If not, why send our fleet to the Black Sea to enforce against
Russia a compulsory armistice? If we were, why was war not waged boldly
and with vigour? Was it not foolish to dissipate the energies of the
country in Reform controversies when it might any day find itself forced
to make war in real earnest? The Vienna Note was denounced as a betrayal
of Turkey, and the aggressive policy of Russia was unsparingly
condemned. The Ministerial defence was weak and spiritless.

After the Russian Ambassador left London the Government was pressed to
divulge what it knew of Count Orloff’s suspicious mission to
Vienna,[154] as to which it was wondrously secretive; and various
debates sprang up, notably one in the House of Commons on the 17th of
February, which was raised by Mr. Layard on the official papers that had
been published. To remove the impression produced by adverse criticism,
Ministers seemed to think that the more bellicose they made their
speeches the better.[155] “We mean to fight, so do not weaken the hands
of the Government unless you are prepared to take its place”--this was
the gist of the Ministerial rhetoric. As to their policy of protracted
negotiation, Ministers argued, reasonably enough, that forbearance in
the circumstances could not be a crime. Mr. Hume and Mr. Roebuck took
this view, and, on the whole, the debates, together with the Blue-books,
may be said to have won for the Government a favourable verdict from the
country. Mr. Cobden, however, had the audacity to challenge this verdict
and to oppose, on what to the present generation seem sensible grounds,
the whole policy of the war. His long speeches and pamphlets on this
subject can be summed up in three sentences. Either we were going to
fight Russia for the sake of Turkey, or for the sake of protecting the
liberties of Europe from the encroachment of the Russian autocrat. If we
were fighting for the sake of Turkey, we were fighting in a cause that
we ought to be ashamed of. If we

[Illustration: MARSHAL ST. ARNAUD.]

were fighting to protect European civilisation from Russia, we ought to
let the Powers nearest to the source of danger--Austria and
Germany--begin first. This argument was indeed the only one that had the
least effect on the House. Members were, however, so completely
frightened by the clamour of London Society and the London Press, that
even those who agreed with Cobden did not dare to say so.[156] His
simple but lucid exposition of the Turkish system of Government which we
were asked to maintain, had unexpectedly disturbed the minds, not only
of the Nonconformists, but of many good Churchmen

[Illustration: FORTS ALEXANDER AND PETER THE GREAT, CRONSTADT.]

also. It was, perhaps, slightly emphasised by the taunt of the Czar in
his Manifesto of the 9th of February to the effect that England and
France were fighting for Islam against Russia, who was striving to
protect Christianity. The War Party feared that there might be a
reaction against them, and accordingly they very cleverly induced Lord
Shaftesbury, on the 10th of March, to answer this portion of the
Manifesto, and not only to prove that the Grand Turk did more than the
Czar to advance the progress of Christianity, but also to defend the
righteousness of making an alliance with any Power, heathen though it
might be, to maintain “the cause of right, justice, and order, against
the aggressions even of professing Christians.” Of this speech Lord
Shaftesbury says in his Diary that nothing pleased him more than the
statement of Lord Clarendon that the debate which he originated “was
most opportune.”[157] From a Ministerial point of view it was opportune.
Mr. Morley complains that the Nonconformists, who “have so seldom been
found fighting on the wrong side,” were now so seriously divided that
they did nothing to help Mr. Cobden to resist the warlike policy of the
Government.[158] Their neutrality explains why Clarendon was so effusive
in his congratulation to the Peer whose influence over this section of
the community was supreme.

But the whole question soon passed out of the region of debate. On the
27th of March, the Queen’s message proclaiming war--though oddly enough
the word war is not mentioned in it--was read to both Houses of
Parliament; and on the 31st a loyal address agreeing to it was duly
moved and carried, after a debate which was worthier of such an occasion
than many others that had preceded it. The Opposition leaders seem to
have been sobered by the solemnity of the moment, and all parties
practically supported the Government with the helpless unanimity of
despair. In the Upper House, Lord Grey alone uttered a strong protest
against the war. In the House of Commons, Mr. Bright and the Marquis of
Granby were the only speakers who were for peace. The violent
Russophobists found in Mr. Layard an energetic champion. He condemned
the Government, first, because it had not coerced Russia immediately
after the massacre of Sinope, and secondly, because even now Ministers
did not specifically declare that the object of the war was to lock up
Russia within well-defined limits, so as to cripple her for ever. The
Tory leaders were more cautious. They naturally made capital out of the
Secret Correspondence,[159] already referred to (pp. 546-7). They had
little difficulty in convicting the Government of misleading the Czar as
to their rooted objection to his Turkish policy. Lord John Russell had
not rejected the Russian proposals with the sternness of one who had
serious hostility to them. He had, indeed, admitted the very claim which
he and his colleagues were now about to rebut by war.[160] A “hybrid
policy of credulity and connivance,” as Mr. Disraeli once called it,
could have no other result than that of tempting the Czar to advance
pretensions which he could not withdraw without prejudicing his Imperial
position, and it is strange that this aspect of the affair was dealt
with somewhat leniently by the critics and enemies of the Ministry. The
questions that seemed to be of supreme interest to both Houses were
really two--What was the object of the war? Where were our allies? To
the one question the answer was vague. To the other the reply was
neither frank nor candid. Lord Clarendon said that the object of the war
was “to check and repel the unjust aggression of Russia”--which, as
things stood, meant to force her out of the Danubian Principalities.
But, he added, to ask what was the object of the war was to ask on what
terms peace would be made?--a question the answer to which must depend
on chances nobody could forecast. As for allies, it was easy to say that
France was with us. The difficulty was to say what the German Powers
would do. Ministers felt that Cobden had pierced their armour when, in
the adjourned debate on Mr. Layard’s motion (20th Feb.), he asked
whether it would not be sensible to let those Powers who were nearest
Russia--and must therefore suffer first from her aggression--begin the
fighting. Parliament must therefore be cajoled into a belief that
Austria and Prussia would join us. Both Houses knew that though Austria
and Prussia had concurred with England and France in recommending Russia
to evacuate the Principalities, they had not pledged themselves to
co-operate with us in war. Still, said Lord John Russell, when Austria
was asked what she would do in the event of war breaking out, “the
answer was at the time satisfactory,” and if Prussia had only fallen in
with her views, he would have had a most satisfactory statement to make
to the House. Though Prussian views seemed to Lord John “too narrow,
taking in German interests alone,” he (Lord John) trusted that a short
time would bring Prussia “to the conclusion that the disturbance of the
balance of Power and the aggrandisement of Russia were matters of
concern to Prussia as well as to other Powers.”

Lord John Russell unscrupulously deceived the House of Commons and the
country on both points. The whole course of the negotiations had shown
first, that Prussia considered the Czar’s final concessions sufficient,
and, secondly, that Austria, though regretting that Russia did not do
more to mollify Lord Clarendon, refused to admit that a declaration of
war was necessary for that purpose. Lord John Russell’s statement as to
Prussia was not only untrue, but the dates of the official despatches
prove that he and his colleagues must have known it to be untrue.[161]
When it was made in the House of Commons by him, and virtually in the
same form in the House of Lords by Lord Clarendon, neither Austria nor
Prussia had given any direct answer whatever to the question as to what
they would do if war broke out. The Prussian Minister, indeed, said he
did not think that Prussia would join the Powers in such a

[Illustration: OMAR PASHA.]

war.[162] But a still grosser deception was the delusive assurance that
Prussia would yet come to our assistance. The Government knew too well
that the views of Prussia were such as to absolutely destroy this hope.
The King of Prussia looked upon war against Russia on the issue raised
as a crime, and he had written an autograph letter to the Queen, a fact
which was concealed from Parliament, saying so in the plainest words. He
reminded her of what it is to be feared the Queen, like most of her
countrymen, did not then sufficiently realise--the agonies of a great
war such as that of 1813-15--agonies that he had seen, but which, alas!
her Majesty and the new generation had only read about. Yet that was a
war worth the horrors of its sacrifices. Was this one now impending
worth similar sacrifices?

[Illustration: MAP OF THE CRIMEA.]

Hardly, argued the King, for even England had at last become ashamed of
the cause she had taken up--that of the Turk, and her endeavour now was
to persuade herself and the world that it was for another cause--the
equilibrium of Europe, menaced by the preponderance of Russia--that she
was about to draw the sword. “The preponderance of Russia,” he writes in
this letter, “is to be broken down! Well! I, her neighbour, have never
felt this preponderance, and have never yielded to it.” It was war for
an idea, and, adds the King with intense earnestness, “Suffer me to ask,
‘Does God’s law justify war for an idea?’” He implores the Queen to
reconsider the Russian proposals in a friendly spirit, sifting what is
really objectionable from them, and pledges himself that if a golden
bridge is built to save the Czar’s honour, the Czar will cross it. But
one word the King craves leave to speak plainly to the Queen: “For
Prussia and myself,” he writes, “_I am resolved to maintain a position
of complete neutrality_; and to this I add, with proud elation, _my
people_ and myself are of one mind. They _require_ absolute neutrality
from me. They say (and I say), ‘What have we to do with the Turk?’
Whether he stand or fall in no way concerns the industrious Rhinelanders
and the husbandmen of the Riesengeberg and Bernstein.” Russia, he
admits, might have perhaps pressed hard on the Turk. However, “it was
the Turk, not we, who suffered, and the Turk has plenty of good
friends, but the Emperor is a noble gentleman, and has done us no harm.
Your Majesty will allow that this North German sound practical sense is
difficult to gainsay.” Yet it was with such a letter in their possession
that the Government led the country to believe, first, that Austria, who
could not possibly move without Prussia, would join us in the war; and,
second, that Prussia would also draw her sword for a cause which she
declared we ourselves were even then ashamed of!

On the 17th of March, 1854, the Queen, nettled by the rough practical
“North German sense” in this letter from the King of Prussia,
endeavoured to answer it--her draft being submitted to Lord Clarendon
and Lord Aberdeen for approval. Her answer, according to Sir Theodore
Martin, indicates a “firm hand” and “admirable tact.”[163] To the
political student of the present day it indicates neither the one nor
the other. There was no tact in scoffing at the King’s “North German
sound practical sense” by saying, “Had such language fallen from the
King of Hanover or of Saxony, I would have understood it,” and there was
more weakness and sentimentality than firmness and statecraft in the
hand that added, “But up to the present hour I have regarded Prussia as
one of the five great Powers which, since the Peace of 1815, have been
the guarantors of treaties, the guardians of civilisation, the champions
of right, and ultimate arbitrators of the nations; and I have for my
part felt the holy duty to which they were thus divinely called, being
at the same time perfectly alive to the obligations, serious as they
are, and fraught with danger, which it imposes. Renounce these
obligations, my dear brother, and in doing so you renounce for Prussia
the status she has hitherto held.”[164] If the example thus set by
Prussia--that of making the interests of the Prussian people the supreme
object of her policy--should find imitators, the Queen contended,
“European civilisation is abandoned as a plaything to the winds; right
will no longer find a champion, nor the oppressed an umpire to appeal
to.”

Such was the reply which the Queen made to what Sir Theodore Martin
calls “the amiable but most mischievous weakness” that pervaded the
letter from the King of Prussia. Such was the appeal which she made to
what Sir Theodore calls “a sentiment higher than the short-sighted and
selfish policy which it announced.” The King’s letter was perhaps
amiable--but it was not weak. Its policy was perhaps selfish--a
Sovereign who draws or sheathes the sword, save from motives of national
selfishness, is guilty of a crime against his people--but it was not
shortsighted. As Mr. Lowe, in his biography of Prince Bismarck, says,
“Every one is now agreed, in the words of Leopold von Ranke, that his
(the King of Prussia’s) neutrality during the Crimean War was the
condition precedent of the great achievements which afterwards made
Germany one.”[165] Prussia, in fact, was at this moment master of the
situation; and it is amazing that the Queen, through her German
connections, did not know it. Herr von Bismarck had been sent on a
secret mission to the minor German States. His intrigues had rendered it
certain that if Austria joined the Western Powers in war, Prussia would
step into her place as the dominant power in Germany.[166] In fact, but
one excuse is given for the grave error of the English Court in not
seizing the opportunity offered by the letter of the King of Prussia for
building the “golden bridge” over which his Majesty pledged his word the
Czar would even then have gladly retreated. The Queen’s reason in her
reply was that the resources of diplomacy--its Protocols, Notes,
Conventions, &c., &c.--had been exhausted, and that “the ink that has
gone to the penning of them might well be called a second Black
Sea.”[167] A sanguine and proud young Princess must not be too harshly
judged by History for a light jest, even on such a momentous issue. In a
few brief months it was wiped out with her tears and her people’s blood.
Moreover, her Majesty, as will be seen later, did not forget the hard
stern lesson read to her by this “war for an idea,” when she saved
England from a similar calamity in the dispute between Germany and
Denmark over the Duchies.

Only one thing now vexed the hearts of the War Party. The Address in
answer to the Queen’s Message announcing war was carried. But the debate
did not definitely commit the Government to a war for the purpose of
breaking the power of Russia.

There was, however, an insurrection in the Greek provinces of Turkey,
which gave promise of bloodshed, for early in March Nesselrode had
authorised the agents of Russia to support the insurgents. King Otho of
Greece gave them unofficial support. The atrocious cruelty of the
Turkish Bashi-bazouks, according to one party, had caused the rising,
whilst another party held that it was due to Russian intrigue. Doubtless
it was due to both causes, more especially as it was the hope of getting
rid of the torture of Turkish misrule, that led the Greeks to listen
eagerly to the Russian intriguers. The insurrection was easily strangled
by the Allies who occupied the Piræus on the 25th of May; but one of its
incidents was the expulsion of the Greeks from Constantinople. Now, as
the Greeks in those days carried on nearly all the trade of Turkey,
dealing with Manchester and Glasgow to the extent of £3,000,000 a year,
a strong attack might have been made against the Ministry. They could
have been taunted with going to war for British interests in support of
the Turks, who were destroying our trading agencies in Turkey. Mr.
Cobden saw this point clearly, and though he put it before the House of
Commons, he spoilt it by foolishly arguing, on sentimental grounds, that
we ought not to support an act as barbarous as the Edict of Nantes. Lord
John Russell won an easy victory over him by virtually ignoring the
question of English commercial interests, and showing that there was no
parallel between the expulsion of Frenchmen from France on account of
their religious opinions, and the expulsion from Turkey of the subjects
of a foreign Prince who was fomenting rebellion. As for the atrocities
of the Turks, the House of Commons was, of course, told that they were
the natural results of Russian ambition, “for which there was scarcely
one apologist but Mr. Cobden!”

[Illustration: THE BARRACKS HOSPITAL, SCUTARI.]

In the meantime the war had to be financed, and the country reconciled
to increased taxation. Mr. Gladstone’s ordinary, as distinguished from
his War Budget, was introduced on the 6th of March, when his position
was this.

[Illustration: ODESSA.]

He had collected £54,025,000 of revenue, or £1,035,000 in excess of what
he had counted on. He had spent £51,171,000, which, in spite of military
operations, was less by £1,012,000 than he had estimated. His balance in
hand from the past year was £2,854,000. For the coming year his
estimates must necessarily be increased by additional military
outlay,[168] which would bring up his estimated expenditure to
£56,189,000. As the revenue he could depend upon from existing taxes was
only £53,349,000, he had therefore a deficit of £2,840,000. Had there
been no need to increase his estimates,[169] he might have had a surplus
of £1,166,000 for the remission of taxation. As things stood, how was
the deficit to be met? Not by a loan, answered Mr. Gladstone, because no
nation had mortgaged its industry to such a frightful extent as England,
whose National Debt of £750,000,000 exceeded that of all countries in
the world put together. Without pledging themselves to pay all future
war charges out of the revenue of each year, Mr. Gladstone said it was
as yet possible for the House of Commons “to put a stout heart upon the
matter, and to determine that so long as these burdens are bearable, and
so long as the supplies necessary for the service of the year can be
raised within the year, so long we will not resort to the system of
loans.” The expenses of a war, he observed, “are the moral check which
it has pleased the Almighty to impose upon the ambition and the lust of
conquest that are inherent in nations.” He therefore proposed to
increase the Income Tax by one-half, but to collect the whole of the
increase in the first six months of 1854; in other words, he doubled the
tax in the first half year. He was assailed on two grounds. The Tories
protested against the doctrine of meeting war expenditure out of current
revenue, and they taunted him with the failure of his scheme for the
conversion of the debt,[170] which, they pretended, had been disastrous.
“The next Party conflict,” wrote Prince Albert in a letter to Stockmar
on the 18th of April, “will be upon finance. Gladstone wants to pay for
the war out of the current revenue, so long as he does not require more
than ten millions sterling above the ordinary expenditure, and to
increase the taxes for the purpose. The Opposition are for
borrowing--that is, increasing the debt--and do not wish to impose in
the meantime any further burdens on themselves. The former course is
manly, statesmanlike, and honest; the latter is convenient, cowardly,
perhaps popular. We shall see.”[171] This is a masterly summary of the
great financial controversy that raged throughout the Session of 1854.
It leaves nothing more to be said save this, that when Mr. Gladstone
explained his second or War Budget (8th of May), after war had been
declared, his eloquence carried the country in favour of his policy. He
obtained his war expenditure by doubling the Income Tax and increasing
the duty on spirits and malt, and he pointed to the rapidly-growing
trade of the nation as a proof that it ought not to adopt the course
which Pitt found ruinous,[172] and which Prince Albert so justly
described as “convenient and cowardly.”

Perhaps the first Budget in February had slightly sobered the
country--at all events, the 26th of April was set apart for a day of
Fast, Humiliation, and Prayer. Over this a slight controversy had broken
out. The Queen was a little offended that Lord Aberdeen had announced,
without consulting her, in the House of Lords, on the 31st of March,
that such a Fast would be proclaimed. She thought Fasts of Humiliation
were resorted to too often, and that it was hypocritical to publicly
confess in the stereotyped form that “the great sinfulness of the nation
had brought about this war.” Therefore she desired that the Fast should
be called a Day of Prayer and Supplication, and urged Lord Aberdeen “to
inculcate the Queen’s wishes into the Archbishop’s mind, that there be
no Jewish imprecations against our enemies.” Her desire was to adapt the
prayer in the Church Service, “To be used before a Fight at Sea,” to the
occasion.[173] According to Mr. Greville, bankers in the City pointed
out that if the word “Fast” were omitted, Bills would be payable on that
day and not on the day before, as Masterman’s Act provides in such
cases. The Queen was, therefore, persuaded by Lord Aberdeen to proclaim
“a Day of Solemn _Fast_, _Humiliation_, and Prayer, to be kept on the
26th.” It was observed solemnly in the United Kingdom, India, and the
Colonies, by British subjects of all races and creeds.

When it was found that the object for which the war was undertaken--the
evacuation of the Principalities--had been effected by the retreat of
the Russians across the Pruth on the 28th of July, there was some fear
lest the taxpayers, who were painfully digesting Mr. Gladstone’s War
Budget, might consider enough had been done to bring Russia to reason.
Russia, it has been shown, was now in such a position that her
surrender, under the passive pressure of the Powers, was inevitable, so
as a matter-of-fact enough _had_ been done. But the growth of this
feeling had to be stopped, for the War Party insisted that Russia must
be rendered incapable of again disturbing Europe. It was a curious
revival of a policy, the practicability of which Napoleon I. had ruined
himself to illustrate. Yet on the 19th of June Lord Lyndhurst invited
the House of Lords to preside at its resurrection. The long, virulent,
and passionate harangue by which he endeavoured to excite the hatred of
England against Russia, his indictment of her as an enemy of the human
race, his appeals for her destruction in the sacred interests of liberty
and civilisation, drew forth cheer after cheer even from that frigid
Assembly of patricians. It produced a prodigious effect on the country,
and forthwith Englishmen worked themselves up into a belief that unless
a mortal blow were dealt at Russia, Europe would be overrun by Cossacks,
and every honest man in England would be buried alive in Siberia. Lord
Aberdeen ventured to protest against Lyndhurst’s extravagant and
scurrilous abuse of the Czar, and to remind the Peers that in 1829, when
Turkey was at his mercy, he had not seized Turkish territory, but had
been content with the Treaty of Adrianople. For this Aberdeen was
denounced as a tool of Russia, who desired to patch up a hasty and
dishonourable peace.

[Illustration: HEIGHTS OF THE ALMA.]

[Illustration: SIR JOHN BURGOYNE.]

Mr. Layard, on the 23rd of June, gave notice of motion in the House of
Commons, “that, in the opinion of this House, the language held by the
First Minister of the Crown was calculated to raise grave doubts in the
public mind as to the objects and results of the present war, and to
lessen the prospect of a durable peace.” Even the Queen wrote to the
aged statesman a letter scolding him because he had annoyed the public
by “an impartial examination of the Emperor of Russia’s conduct.” She
admired Aberdeen’s courage and honesty, but expressed a hope--in the
circumstances her “hope” was a command--that in any explanation of his
unlucky speech “he will not undertake the ungrateful and injurious task
of vindicating the Emperor of Russia from any of the exaggerated charges
brought against him and his policy, at a time when there is enough in
that policy to make us fight with all our might against it.”[174] What
Aberdeen said was that he objected to Russian aggression on Turkey, but
as for Russian aggression on Europe, he did not fear it in the least.
There was nothing in that to cause offence, except to those who,
suddenly finding that Russian aggression on Turkey had been repelled by
Omar Pasha, supported by the hostile demonstrations of the Western
Powers, were now at a loss to discover another form of Russian
encroachment, real or imaginary, to repel. There must therefore, cried
Lyndhurst and the War Party, be no talk of peace till the Russian fleet
in the Black Sea was destroyed, and the walls of Sebastopol razed to the
ground. “For the future,” exclaimed Lord Derby, “it was impossible to
permit the Black Sea to be a Russian lake, or that the Danube should be
a Russian ditch, choked with mud and filth.”[175] A great army had been
sent to Turkey; but the fighting and the glory had fallen to Omar Pasha
on the Danube. As Lord Hardwicke said, in the debate in the House of
Lords on a Vote of Credit (24th of July), “if the present campaign
closed without some great deed of arms equal to the power and dignity of
this country, Her Majesty’s Government would lie under a heavy
responsibility.”

Lord John Russell, in defending this Vote of Credit in the House of
Commons, said that the Government had now three objects in view besides
the evacuation of the Principalities: (1) to place Turkey under the
protection of the European Powers, to whom, and not to Russia alone, she
should be asked for the future to guarantee the privileges of her
Christian subjects; (2) to deprive Russia of her special right of
protecting the Principalities under the Treaty of Adrianople; (3) to
reduce the power of Russia in the Black Sea, so that she should not be
able to menace Turkey. In connection with this third aim, Lord John
threw out a sinister allusion to the destruction of Sebastopol, which
Mr. Disraeli protested he heard with “consternation,” and which Lord
John vainly endeavoured to explain away. The German Powers objected as
much to the occupation of Russian territory by England or Turkey, as to
the occupation of Turkish territory by Russia. Lord John Russell had,
therefore, emulated Lyndhurst in his eagerness to give Austria and
Prussia a pretext for refusing England and France their co-operation.

It was in truth easy to whet the fashionable appetite for adventure and
glory. The country sulked over the inaction of the British fleet in the
Baltic and the army at Varna. Yet the fleet under Napier, though it
failed to make good the foolish vaunting of its commander when he
started, did some useful work. It found the frowning fortifications of
Cronstadt impregnable,[176] but at all events it shut up the Russian
navy in their harbours, and swept their commerce from the sea. Captain
Hall’s daring reconnoissance of Hango Bay in the month of May, elicited
a tribute of admiration from the Grand Duke Constantine himself. Admiral
Plumridge destroyed Bomarsund, a fortress built to dominate the Gulf of
Bothnia. But in the Pacific the Allies were decidedly less successful in
August in their attack on Petropaulovski. The English Admiral, Price,
had committed suicide, and was succeeded by Sir F. Nicholson. On the 4th
of September an attempt was made to take the place in the rear, but
owing to the treachery of two guides, our men were misled and repulsed.
They were driven over a precipice 70 feet high which lay between them
and the shore, many of them being killed, and still more being wounded
in taking a headlong leap for their lives.

In the Black Sea the record was more brilliant. The first shot fired in
the war was at Odessa, which was bombarded for ten hours on the 22nd of
April, in revenge for an outrage committed by the Russians, who fired on
a flag of truce. This was followed by a challenge to the Russian fleet
in Sebastopol, which was not accepted. On the 12th of May the _Tiger_
ran aground off Odessa, and had to strike her flag. Her crew were made
prisoners, but treated with the utmost kindness and courtesy by the
Russians. The captain (Gifford) died of his wounds on the 19th of June,
and the lieutenant (Royer) was sent to St. Petersburg by order of the
Czar, who at once set him free. Captain Parker, on the 8th of July,
destroyed the Russian works at the Sulina mouth of the Danube.

In May there were 20,000 French on the European and 10,000 British
troops on the Asiatic side of the Danube. Gallipoli was fortified, and
works thrown up in order to check the Russians had they crossed the
Danube. Constantinople was also fortified, and then the Allies
concentrated at Varna, ready, if need be, to carry war into the enemy’s
territory. They were encamped at a spot which was saturated with the
germs of malaria, and which was chosen with a reckless disregard of
sanitary considerations. During June and July malaria, dysentery, and
cholera decimated their ranks. They sat brooding listlessly in the
shadow of death all through that fatal summer, chafing, as did their
countrymen at home, over their inglorious fortune. Cardigan’s
reconnoissance of the country up to Trajan’s Wall on the confines of the
Dobrudscha alone broke the monotony of their existence, and on his
return they were cheered by his news of the disastrous retreat of the
Russians on Bessarabia. On the 26th of August a Council of War was held
at Varna, and the rumour that the army was to be led to the invasion of
the Crimea flew through the disheartened camp like tidings of great joy.
It has been shown by what steps the English Government was lured on to
this fatal decision. Yet it is due to Lord Aberdeen’s Cabinet to say,
that it was not at first unanimous as to the expediency of widening the
area of conflict, and attempting to break the power of Russia, “by
razing Sebastopol to the ground.” Mr. Kinglake[177] has stated that this
enterprise was sanctioned at a Cabinet meeting held on June 28 in Lord
John Russell’s house (Pembroke Lodge). Mr. Kinglake, at a loss to
explain to posterity how a number of intelligent men could have approved
an act of such stupendous folly, has invented an ingenious theory. The
Duke of Newcastle, as Secretary of State for War, subsequently blamed
Lord Raglan for mismanaging the campaign. But Mr. Kinglake has
constituted himself Lord Raglan’s champion, and he accordingly
endeavours to lay as much blame as possible on the Duke. The Duke came
to the meeting, says Mr. Kinglake, with a ponderous despatch, which he
proposed, with the approval of his colleagues, to send to Lord Raglan
ordering him to invade the Crimea. As he went on reading it, one
Minister after another fell asleep. When he finished, they awoke, and
sanctioned the Duke’s instructions without knowing what they were. It is
unfortunately not possible to save the reputation of the Aberdeen
Ministry by making drowsiness an excuse for blundering. Sir George
Cornewall Lewis, in one of his letters,[178] gives the flattest
contradiction to Mr. Kinglake’s amusing fable, and so does Sir Theodore
Martin.

[Illustration: PEMBROKE LODGE, RICHMOND.]

[Illustration: CODRINGTON’S BRIGADE (23RD ROYAL WELSH FUSILIERS) AT THE
ALMA.]

An eccentric Member of the House of Commons, Mr. H. Drummond, in one of
the debates on the War, said that there was a division of labour in the
operations, for whilst we found the money, the French Emperor found the
brains. The project of wounding Russia in a vital point by invading the
Crimea, was originated by the French Emperor, who possibly thought his
illustrious uncle’s experiment at Moscow needed no verification. The
French Emperor’s plan was submitted to the Queen on the 14th of March as
one approved of by Lord Raglan, Lord de Ros, Lord Clarendon, and the
Duke of Newcastle. It was dropped because some sensible person suggested
that it would be hardly safe to leave Constantinople, then covered by
the allied troops, at the mercy of the Russians. But after
Constantinople was fortified against attack, the mischievous idea was
revived. On the 28th of June it was embodied in the draft despatch
containing the instructions to Lord Raglan, which was sanctioned by
that fatigued Cabinet, the Members of which, according to Mr. Kinglake,
fell asleep. One other fact may be cited against Mr. Kinglake. The plan
was opposed by certain Members of the Ministry who, though they thought
something should be done to limit Russia’s opportunities of interfering
with Turkey in future, felt sure that an invasion of the Crimea must end
in failure. They complained that nobody knew what could be done with the
Crimea even if it were taken, or how the Russians could be stopped from
rebuilding Sebastopol, except by another war, after it was destroyed.
But why has there ever been any controversy over the point at all?
Simply because the project was such a mad one, that everybody who had
anything to do with it, has been anxious to blame somebody else for
originating it. The Ministry and their apologists declared that they
left the whole affair to the discretion of Lord Raglan. He was only
instructed to invade the Crimea if as a soldier he thought an invasion
practicable. Lord Raglan and his friends declared that he had no
discretion in the matter, and that the instructions of the Cabinet
amounted to an order from the Secretary of State for War, which he as
the General in command had no option but to obey. Lord Aberdeen’s
account of the matter to the Queen was that, “although the expedition to
the Crimea was pressed very warmly” on Lord Raglan, “the final decision
was left to the judgment and discretion” of Raglan and St. Arnaud,
“after they should have communicated with Omar Pasha.” Sir George
Cornewall Lewis, in the letter already quoted, says he does not think
that the Cabinet could have given Raglan a wider discretion, because
they would have probably thought they were throwing too much
responsibility on him. But the obvious truth is that, as the Cabinet and
the General had approved of the plan in March, they were alike
responsible for it, and that if it had not been disastrous to their
reputations, they would have each claimed credit for it.[179] Mr.
Kinglake says that St. Arnaud was also opposed to the invasion of the
Crimea, but it was his Imperial Master’s plan, and he had to adopt it
against his better judgment. Possibly, Raglan’s doubts, confided to Sir
G. Brown at Varna, sprang from conferences with St. Arnaud.[180]

The order to invade was dated the 28th of June, and two months were
spent in preparing for the expedition. At the last moment it was found
that there was no means of embarking and disembarking the cavalry and
artillery. This difficulty was cleverly overcome by Mr. Roberts, a
master in the navy. “Roberts did more for us than anybody,” said Lord
Raglan to Admiral Lyons. He set the Turkish caïques in rows, and built
great pontoons on them buoyant enough to support the enormous weight of
horses and guns.[181] On the 13th of September the expedition sighted
the shores of the Crimea. The allied troops skilfully disembarked
without loss or confusion at the Old Fort, a spot twenty miles south of
Eupatoria. Twenty thousand French and twenty thousand English soldiers,
with a powerful artillery, were thus thrown upon a hostile coast in
perfect marching order in one single day. On the 19th of September they
moved southwards, and got touch of the Russians under Prince
Menschikoff. These were 40,000 strong, and they held a fortified
position on the heights of the Alma, a little river which flowed between
them and the Allies. On the morning of the 20th the battle began. St.
Arnaud was to attack, and if possible turn the Russian left. When that
had been done, the English were to dash at the right wing of the
Russians. St. Arnaud was farther away from his objective point than our
men, and before he completed his manœuvre, he seems to have asked Lord
Raglan to advance. Abandoning the original plan of the battle, Raglan
moved forward on the swarming masses of Russians in front of him, and
drove them from their position. In this contest one sees nothing
admirable save the rough masculine vigour of the English attack, and the
skill with which the battle was planned by St. Arnaud. Lord Raglan’s
conduct was likened by the Secretary of State to that of the Duke of
Wellington. As a matter of fact, at the outset he seems to have plunged
into the river with his Staff, dashed on into the enemy’s lines, till he
found himself on the extreme left of the French, without any control
over his army. It was really led into action by his Generals of
Divisions, who, till after the crisis of the battle was over, seemed
scarcely conscious of the existence of their Commander-in-Chief.[182]
The French attack was dashing, but somehow it did not succeed
quickly.[183] As for the Russians, they were clumsily handled.
Menschikoff chose a good position--so good that he staked his field
defence of Sebastopol on it. But he manœuvred in massive columns, so
that his front did not nearly cover all his ground. He seemed nervously
anxious to meet attacks in detail, hurrying regiments from point to
point wherever he thought his troops were being hard pressed, to the
utter confusion of his formation. His subordinates were so stupid that
they did not even think of bringing their strongest arm, the cavalry,
into action.

[Illustration: GENERAL CANROBERT.]

Curiously enough at this point, the expedition, owing to Menschikoff’s
bungling, had success within its grasp. The defence of Sebastopol was
staked upon the army of the Alma. The stronghold lay at the mercy of the
Allies after that army was routed, and could have been taken next
morning by a _coup de main_. Raglan, to do him justice, was eager to
press on, but St. Arnaud held him back. The Allies then spent three days
in burying the dead, and by that time the Russians had considerably
strengthened their fortifications. Raglan again urged that the city
should be attacked, but, as St. Arnaud was unwilling to risk an
assault, it was agreed that the invaders should march round to the south
of the citadel, and attack it from that aspect. On the 29th St. Arnaud,
whose health and brain had been long failing him, died, and Canrobert,
an equally sluggish soldier, succeeded to his command. Whilst the Allies
were, at Raglan’s instigation, marching round to the south of
Sebastopol, they were for a whole day exposed to a flank attack from the
enemy, which, had it been delivered, would have simply cut them to
pieces. Menschikoff’s incapacity saved them from this disaster, and on
the 28th of September the Russians, who had been looking for an attack
from the north, to their surprise found their feeble works on the south
at the mercy of their enemies. Some of the divisional commanders, like
Cathcart and Campbell, were eager for storming the place at once, and,
had they done so, they could have captured it with hardly any
appreciable loss. Sir John Burgoyne--then supposed to be infallible as a
military engineer--and General Canrobert thought the risks too great,
and said that the army must wait till the siege-train was brought up.
Raglan yielded to Canrobert’s hesitancy and Burgoyne’s ignorance.

[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO BALACLAVA HARBOUR.]

The Russians, who expected every moment to see the enemy swarming over
their walls, must have looked on the unintelligible paralysis of the
Allies as an intervention of Providence on their behalf. Oddly enough,
when Raglan was making his flank march from north to south, Menschikoff,
instead of springing on him and destroying his army, was marching with
equal stupidity from the south to the north.[184] Here the allied attack
was looked for; here all available troops were hurried. Nachimoff, who
remained on the south bank of the harbour, had just 3,000 troops to hold
indefensible works against an army of 40,000 men. He behaved with high
spirit; he sank his ships so as to block the channel. Admiral Korniloff
hastened from the north side to his aid and took command, and filled the
troops with his own determination to hold out to the last, no matter how
heavy were the odds against them. Colonel Todleben--whose master mind
was about to revolutionise the art of fortification--accompanied him,
and these two perfectly dauntless men, profiting by the blunder of
Canrobert and Burgoyne, simply wrecked the expedition of the Allies. The
time spent in waiting for the siege-train was precisely what Todleben
prayed for.

Inspirited by Korniloff’s enthusiasm, and guided by Todleben’s genius,
the Russians toiled like galley-slaves to strengthen their
fortifications. Korniloff succeeded in inducing Menschikoff to march
25,000 troops into the town, so that on the 17th of October, when the
siege-train of the Allies had arrived, Sebastopol, which had been at
their mercy on the 25th of September, was virtually impregnable. On the
17th of October an attempt was made to demolish the earthworks of the
enemy by a general bombardment, after which it was the intention of the
Allies to dash forward and storm the southern half of the town.[185] The
English batteries did not fail, for they seriously damaged the Redan
Fort of the enemy. Nachimoff’s sacrifice of the sunken fleet, however,
prevented our ships from getting far enough up the harbour to assist our
land force, and though the sea batteries were open to attack, shoal
water prevented our ships from getting close enough to them to do them
much harm.[186] The failure of the bombardment was followed up by a
series of attacks on the position of the Allies, the results of which
may now be summarised. The great flank march from north to south had
left every road from Russia open to the enemy. Reinforcements swarmed
into the Crimea, even from the Russian Army of the Danube, which was
liberated when the Austrians occupied the Principalities. The English
army at the end of October numbered 25,000. The French had 40,000 in the
field. But 120,000 combatants had rallied to the standards of Prince
Menschikoff. They held not a fortress but a great entrenched camp,
defended by impregnable works on which, says Lord Raglan, plaintively,
in one of his despatches, “an apparently unlimited number of heavy guns,
amply provided with gunners and ammunition, are mounted.” Now, it is a
rule of warfare that the besieging force should be five times as strong
as the besieged. No general with a grain of prudence will attempt to lay
siege to a stronghold unless his force is three times as strong as that
of the garrison, and unless he has an army of observation besides to
protect him from molestation. Before Sebastopol the besiegers were only
half as strong as the besieged, and they had no covering force whatever.
Like the Athenians at Syracuse, the besiegers had become the besieged.
If Lord Raglan did not complete the parallel by sacrificing his army to
an eclipse of the moon, he did his best to emulate that historic
achievement by sacrificing it to the flank march from the Belbeck to
Balaclava.[187]

In these circumstances the Russians promptly adopted offensive tactics.
Menschikoff ordered Liprandi to march round to the rear of the British
position and attack Balaclava, from which we drew our supplies, and on
the 25th of October the Russians suddenly drove the Turks from the
redoubts that formed one of our chief defences. This gave him the
northern half of the Balaclava valley. The British cavalry were
withdrawn from the southern half westwards behind redoubts, which were
still in our hands, and the road to Balaclava, with all our shipping and
our stores, was clear. Yet not quite clear. Sir Colin Campbell and the
93rd Highlanders were in the way, and his consummate skill and their
stubborn valour saved our base of operations. At a glance Campbell saw
that Liprandi meant to annihilate the Scots, by hurling against them
overwhelming masses of cavalry covered by artillery. To such an onset a
single regiment in square formation could obviously offer no effective
resistance whatever. In an instant Campbell conceived the novel and
daring project of receiving the Russian cavalry in line.[188] Such a

[Illustration: SIR COLIN CAMPBELL.]

manœuvre could be possible only where a commander and his troops had
implicit confidence in each other, and where officers and men, instinct
with barbaric strength and courage, went forth to battle under the iron
discipline of civilised warfare. In grim silence the Scots obeyed the
stern, curt orders of their leader, and formed the famous “thin red line
tipped with steel,” on the solidity of which, for a moment, the fate of
the army depended. Their flanks were covered by the Turks who had fled
from the redoubts. A hundred sick men, who crawled from the hospital to
rally round their chief, were formed under Lieutenant-Colonel Daveney as
“supports.” The Russian commander, with great ability, modified his plan
of attack and struck swiftly not only at the centre, but strongly at
Campbell’s right flank, where the Turks were posted. The dense masses of
cavalry first reeled and then broke up when they came within the central
zone of fire, but the Turks fled, leaving the “thin red line” uncovered
on the right. The Russians, feeling that the game was now in their
hands, charged again, confident that they could roll up the line at this
unprotected spot. Campbell was, however, equally alert. When the Turks
ran away he ordered his grenadier company to wheel to the right. It went
swiftly and silently round, with automatic precision, like a door on a
hinge, and met the

[Illustration: BALACLAVA--“THE THIN RED LINE.”

(_After the painting by Robert Gibb, R.S.A., in the possession of
Archibald Ramsden, Esq., Leeds._)]

Russian squadrons with a scorching storm of fire, that sent them flying
in confusion from the field. “During the rest of the day,” said Sir
Colin Campbell, with a touch of grim humour in his despatch, “the troops
under my command received no further molestation from the Russians.” A
still more formidable body of Russian horse, however, had swooped down
on our Heavy Cavalry (Brigadier-General Scarlett). The Scots Greys and
Enniskilling Dragoons sprang forward to meet them, tore through the
first and second lines of the enemy, and, supported by the Dragoon
Guards, broke up their heavy masses in utter rout. At this moment Lord
Raglan ordered Lord Lucan, who was in command of the cavalry, to advance
his Light Brigade and prevent the Russians from carrying away some of
the guns which the Turks had abandoned in the redoubts. When the order
was carried to Lucan by Captain Nolan, Raglan’s aide-de-camp, the
Russians had recovered from their reverses and had completely re-formed
on their own ground. Raglan’s order, therefore, had come to mean that
Lucan was to hurl his slender Light Cavalry Brigade, utterly devoid of
supports, against a great army holding a strong position, flanked and
covered on all sides by murderous artillery. For a moment he hesitated,
appalled by the hideous madness of the order. A taunt from Nolan stung
him to the quick, and he spoke the word that sent Cardigan into the
“valley of death” with the far-famed Six Hundred.

    “Long shall the tale be told,
     Yea, when our babes are old”--

how they rode onward--through the smoke and fire that belched forth from
the iron throats of the Russian cannon--how they clove their way through
the Russian masses and cut down the gunners at their guns--how they cut
their way back, “stormed at with shot and shell,” a broken remnant of
wounded and dismounted troopers, who had to report that they had failed
to do that which even the demigods of ancient legend would not have been
reckless enough to attempt. Nolan was killed at the very first
onset--whilst riding far in advance cheering on the Brigade.[189] “It
was magnificent, but it was not war” was the comment of the French
General Bosquet, on this horrible sacrifice--a sacrifice so horrible
that, when it was over, even the Russians ceased firing and stood
motionless and awe-stricken, gazing at the sickening scene. They claim
Balaclava as a victory. Certainly they took more than half the field
from us; but on the other hand, thanks to the obstinate tenacity of the
93rd Highlanders, we repelled their attack on our base of operations,
which was, of course, their objective point.[190]

After this fight the Russians concentrated an overwhelming force and
planned an attack on our position at Inkermann. Its weakest point, in
spite of the warnings of Lieutenant-General Sir De Lacy Evans, had been
left badly protected, and on the 5th of November the Russians surprised
our pickets. Having driven them in they fell on our Second Division, who
had barely time to stand to their arms when they found themselves
struggling with overwhelming masses of the enemy. Pennefather was in
command, for, unfortunately, De Lacy Evans was disabled. Instead of
retiring in order and attempting to ward off the attack by artillery,
Pennefather hurried up little mobs of troops to his outposts, and there
waged a dreadful hand to hand fight against an army ten times as strong
as his own. It was “a soldiers’ battle” that raged through the morning
on these misty heights--a confused _melée_, in which officers lost their
men, and men lost their officers--in which, when ammunition failed, the
English troops fought with bayonets; when these broke or bent, with
stones; and when these failed, with clenched fists. Column after column
of Russians was hurled at our little force--but without avail. No man
could be moved from his position till he was shot or cut down, and the
indomitable courage of the Duke of Cambridge and his Guards--for his
Royal Highness, though he lacked skill and knowledge, never lacked
pluck--held the Russians in check so long, that the French had time to
come to the rescue. Then the enemy beat a retreat. We retook the
positions we had lost, and once again demonstrated that the English
infantry were without a rival in the world. The Russian plans were so
laid, that it was a mathematical certainty our army must be driven into
the sea. Two sons of the Czar had been invited to witness this
catastrophe. And, in spite of the splendid fighting qualities of our
men, the catastrophe must have happened, had it not been for two
blunders which the Russians committed. In the first place, Menschikoff,
who seems to have been even a stupider person than Raglan or Burgoyne,
attacked in massive columns. This so reduced his fighting front that our
weak detachments formed in line decimated them with their fire, and when
our artillery came into action every shot and every shell also told on
them with deadly effect. The Russian sortie from Sebastopol, moreover,
was mismanaged. The commander lost his way in the mist, and instead of
falling on us, he found himself entangled with the French far away on
our left, so that he gave no real aid to the main attack.

The Russians lost 12,000 men in this battle, the French lost 1,800, and
the British lost 2,600. It was therefore clear that the siege must be
raised, or that the Allies must enter on a winter campaign. Up till now
the troops had suffered very little hardship; but, alas! when winter set
in they were doomed to cruel suffering. A terrific storm on the 14th of
November blew

[Illustration: VALLEY OF INKERMANN.]

down their tents and destroyed twenty-one vessels in Balaclava Bay laden
with supplies. It rendered the valley from Balaclava to the camp--a
distance of nine miles--almost impassable. Two-thirds of the transport
horses died, and there was hardly any forage obtainable for the
remainder. Cholera--the germs of which had been carried to the Crimea
from Varna--raged in our lines, and those who escaped it fell victims to
scurvy, dysentery, or fever. “Between the beginning of November,” writes
Mr. Spencer Walpole, “and the end of February, 8,898 British troops
perished in hospital. At the last of these dates 13,608 men were still
in hospital.”[191] The state of the hospitals was so bad that men died
there more quickly than on the field. Part of the ghastly tale of
mismanagement had been told by Mr. W. H. Russell, the special
correspondent of the _Times_, when Parliament met on the 12th of
December, and empowered the Queen to raise a foreign legion and utilise
the Militia for foreign service--measures forced on the Ministry by
Prince Albert. But soon after it separated the cry of distress from the
Crimea grew too loud to be stifled. When it rang through England the
people turned on the Government in furious anger, and called them to
account for their gross mismanagement of the war. The Duke of Newcastle,
being Secretary of State for War, was blamed because he was alleged to
be incompetent. Aberdeen was blamed because it was said he was at heart
a Russian. The scurrilous charges against Prince Albert were revived,
and he was accused of impeding the operations of our army by his
treacherous interference. As a matter of fact, these charges were all
untrue. Prince Albert, Aberdeen, and Newcastle were the three men who
alone had courage to face the situation, when they suddenly discovered
that the military system of England had failed them, and that the
military machine which they inherited from Wellington had broken down.
They had toiled long and wearily to mend it when the distinguished
persons who afterwards attacked them were away enjoying their holidays.
But when Parliament reassembled on the 23rd of January, 1855, the
gathering storm broke on the head of the Government. Mr. Roebuck gave
notice of a motion for the appointment of a committee to inquire into
the mismanagement of the war; Lord John Russell deserted his colleagues
and resigned. The Ministry, who resisted Mr. Roebuck’s motion, were
beaten, on a division, by 305 votes to 148, and the Coalition Government
resigned on the 31st of January, 1855. The army was starving, with
abundance of supplies within its reach, through the sheer stupidity of
those whose duty it was to feed it. Its camp was a hospital, and its
hospitals were pest-houses. The nation was utterly humiliated. As for
the War Party, which was really responsible for the invasion of the
Crimea, it naturally destroyed the Ministry which had stooped to be the
instrument of its braggart passions and its ignorant policy.

[Illustration: THE STORM OFF BALACLAVA.]




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

[Illustration: MR. ROEBUCK (1858).]

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.

[Illustration: BUCKINGHAM PALACE, FROM ST. JAMES’S PARK.]

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]

[Illustration: MISS NIGHTINGALE AND THE NURSES IN THE BARRACKS HOSPITAL
AT SCUTARI.]

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

[Illustration: HENRY VIII.’S GATEWAY, WINDSOR CASTLE.]

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]

[Illustration: REFRESHMENT ROOM, HOUSE OF LORDS.]

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.

[Illustration: MR. SIDNEY HERBERT (AFTERWARDS LORD HERBERT OF LEA).]

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

[Illustration: THE WINTER PALACE, ST. PETERSBURG.]

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]

[Illustration: GRAND RECEPTION ROOM, WINDSOR CASTLE]

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

[Illustration: THE HUNDRED STEPS, WINDSOR CASTLE.]

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.

[Illustration: VIEW IN THE CRIMEA: THE PALACE WORONZOW, ALUPKA.]

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.




CHAPTER XXXII.

ROYALTY AND THE WAR.

     Financing the War--The Queen’s Opinion of War Loans--A Dreadful
     Winter--Distress in the Country--The “Devil” in Devonshire--Bread
     Riots--War Loans and a War Budget--The Queen and the Wounded
     Soldiers--Her Condemnation of “the Hulks”--Presentation of War
     Medals in Hyde Park--Visit of the Emperor and Empress of the
     French--A Plot to Capture the Queen--Councils of War at
     Windsor--The Grand Chapter of the Order of the Garter--Imperial
     Compliments--Napoleon III. in the City--At the Opera--The Queen’s
     Birthday Gift to the Emperor--Scarlet Fever at Osborne--Prorogation
     of Parliament--A Court Intrigue with Dom Pedro of Portugal--The
     Queen Visits Paris--Her Reception at St. Cloud--The Ball at the
     Hôtel de Ville--Staring at the “Koh-i-noor”--At the Tomb of the
     Great Emperor--Prince Bismarck’s Introduction to the Queen--Home
     again--Lord Clarendon on the Queen’s Visit to Paris--How the Prince
     of Wales Enjoyed himself--At Balmoral--The Bonfire on Craig
     Gowan--Sebastopol Rejoicings--“A Witches’ Dance supported by
     Whisky”--Courtship of the Princess Royal--Prince Frederick William
     of Prussia--His Proposal of Marriage--Attacks of the _Times_--Visit
     of Victor Emmanuel--His Reputation in Paris--Memorial of the
     Grenadier Guards--Fresh Charges against Prince Albert--His
     Vindication of the Crimean Officers.


Early in 1855 her Majesty became anxious, not to say nervous, as to the
plans that were to be adopted for financing the war. Her personal
prepossessions were all in favour of Mr. Gladstone’s policy--which was
that of meeting expenditure out of current revenue. But then the cost of
the campaign was now so enormous that it was impossible to increase
taxation so as to cover it. The winter had been severe. Though the end
of December and the first thirteen days of January had been like summer,
during the night of the 13th, says Sir F. Hastings Doyle, “the wind
shifted suddenly to the N.N.E., and a savage frost came on which lasted
at least two months without intermission or abatement.”[220] Outdoor
workers found themselves without employment. Gangs of hungry-eyed
labouring men began to parade the streets of London, levying black-mail
on well-to-do householders. Ultimately mobs of roughs attacked and
plundered the bakers’ and chandlers’ shops in the East End on the 21st
and 22nd of February, and in Liverpool, where some 15,000 riverside
labourers were out of work, terrible scenes of riot and outrage were
enacted. It was a time when the abstraction of capital from the country
by raising a war loan would be a slight evil, compared with that which
might follow from the imposition of heavy war taxes on a discontented
and suffering industrial population. It was therefore decided that the
cost of the war should be met by a loan.

Sir George Cornewall Lewis brought forward his Budget on the 30th of
April. He could estimate for a prospective revenue of £63,000,000. This,
however, still left him with a deficit of £23,000,000, which he raised
(1), by a Three per Cent. Loan of £16,000,000; (2), by an addition to
taxation which brought in £4,000,000; (3), by raising £3,000,000 on
Exchequer Bills. “The additional taxes,” Sir George Lewis wrote to his
friend Sir E. Head, “were, however, assented to without resistance by
the House, who feared a larger addition to the Income Tax, and thought
that if they objected to my proposition, taxes which they disliked still
more would be substituted.” As for the loan, the Money Market, he says,
“was in a state favourable for such an operation; for at present there
is an abundance of money, but a want of profitable investment for the
purpose of trade.”[221] The loan of £2,000,000 to Sardinia was
sanctioned without much demur, but the loan of £5,000,000 to Turkey was
violently objected to--especially by the Tories and Cobdenites. It was
raised under the joint guarantee of France and England--an arrangement
which many people thought might create disputes between the guarantors.
Lord Palmerston, in fact, only carried the loan through by a vote of 135
to 132. Lord Aberdeen’s followers opposed the transaction, and their
opposition was resented by the Queen, who had already concluded and
ratified the arrangement with the French Emperor for guaranteeing the
loan.

[Illustration: THE WOUNDED SOLDIER’S TOAST--“THE QUEEN!”]

In other respects, however, the relations of the Court to the war were
less open to criticism. It has already been stated how her Majesty
toiled with her own hands to aid those who were striving to mitigate the
sufferings of the army during the Crimean winter. She wrote a letter to
the Commander-in-Chief on the subject that touched the heart of every
soldier in camp or hospital. Mr. Augustus Stafford, in the debate on Mr.
Roebuck’s motion in the House of Commons (26th of January), thrilled his
audience by telling them how he saw a wounded man, after hearing the
letter read, propose the Queen’s health in a draught of bark and
quinine. Mr. Stafford said to him it was a bitter cup for a loyal toast;
to which the man replied, with a smile, “Yes, and but for these words of
the Queen I could not have got it down.” Nor was her Majesty less
assiduous in her attention to the wounded, when their haggard and
mournful contingents began to return. On the 3rd of March she went down
to Chatham with her husband and her two eldest sons to inspect the
Military Hospital at Fort Pitt and Brompton. The wounded men who could
crawl from their beds were drawn up on the lawn, each bearing a card
with a description of his name, services, and wounds. Along this gaunt
array the Queen passed, sad-eyed and thoughtful, speaking a few kind and
cheering words to the sufferers whose wounds or services especially
attracted her notice. Contemporary reports of course stated that the
Sovereign was well pleased with the manner in which those poor men were
treated. But two days afterwards she sent a sharp letter to Lord
Panmure, which showed that she had been using her eyes to good purpose
during her inspection. He must, she says, have some really serviceable
military hospitals built for the sick without delay. The poor men at
Fort Pitt were well treated; but, she complains, “the buildings are
bad--the wards more like prisons than hospitals, with the windows so
high that no one can look out of them--and the most of the wards are
small, with hardly space to walk between the beds.” Her criticisms on
the dining arrangements are trenchant; and then she goes on to argue
that though Lord Panmure’s plan of building hulks may do very well at
first, it will not do for any length of time. “A hulk,” she contends,
“is a very gloomy place, and these poor men require their spirits to be
cheered, as much as to have their physical sufferings attended to. The
Queen is particularly anxious on this subject, which is, she may truly
say, constantly in her thoughts, as, indeed, is everything connected
with her beloved troops, who have fought so bravely and borne so
heroically all their sufferings and privations.”[222]

“I myself,” said Queen Elizabeth to her troops at Tilbury, “will be your
general and your judge, and the rewarder of every one of your virtues in
the field.” If Queen Victoria has never either in statecraft or power
attained the position held by that leonine woman, she did not fail to
emulate her in her devotion to the gallant men who bled and died for
England in the desolate Chersonese. The Queen’s visit to the hospital at
Chatham, and her reception there by the soldiers, prompted her to take
the unusual course of suggesting to Lord Clarendon, on the 22nd of
March, that she should with her own hands present war medals to the
officers and men who were at home disabled or on leave. On the 18th of
May a Royal daïs was accordingly put up in the centre of the Horse
Guards parade ground, with barriers enclosing from the crowd of
spectators, a space for the heroes of the ceremony. At eleven o’clock
the Queen, Prince Albert, and their family appeared, and at a signal the
soldiers who were to be decorated stood before her. They passed along in
single file, each handing a card recording his name and services to an
officer, who delivered it to the Queen. She then presented each hero
with his medal, saying a kindly word to every man as he went by. It was
a strange and impressive spectacle. Gaunt, pallid forms, maimed and

[Illustration: THE QUEEN DISTRIBUTING THE CRIMEAN MEDAL AT THE
HORSEGUARDS PARADE GROUND.]

mutilated, hobbled along on crutches--or staggered forward, aided by
walking-sticks--and for officers and men alike the Queen had words of
sympathy that drew tears from many an eye. From the highest Prince of
the blood--the Duke of Cambridge was the first to step forward for his
medal--to the humblest private, writes the Queen to King Leopold, “all
received the same distinction for the bravest conduct in the severest
actions, and the rough hands of the brave and honest private soldier
came for the first time in contact with that of their Sovereign and
their Queen. Noble fellows! I feel as if they were my own children; my
heart beats for them as for my nearest and dearest.”[223] Captain
Currie, of the 14th, was so feeble that he almost failed to reach the
daïs on his crutches, and his condition profoundly touched the heart of
the Queen. Captain Sayer, of the 23rd Fusiliers, could not be lifted out
of his chair, so the Queen bent over him gracefully and pinned his medal
to his breast, with a few words of comfort and hope. Colonel Sir T.
Troubridge, of the 7th Fusiliers, who, when he had both his feet shot
away at Inkermann, refused to leave his command till the battle was won,
was also unable to leave his chair. When the Queen gave him his medal
she whispered in his ear that she would reward his courage by making him
one of her own aides-de-camp, whereupon he answered, “I am now amply
repaid for everything.” It was a scene which moved the hearts of all who
took part in it, with the exception, perhaps, of the brusque and
churlish Secretary of State for War. Lord Malmesbury says, “After the
ceremony, Lady Seymour, whom I met, told me that Mrs. Norton, talking
about it to Lord Panmure, asked, ‘Was the Queen touched?’ ‘Bless my
soul, no!’ was the reply. ‘She had a brass railing in front of her, and
no one could touch her.’ Mrs. Norton then said, ‘I mean was she moved?’
‘Moved!’ answered Lord Panmure, ‘she had no occasion to move.’ Mrs.
Norton then gave it up in despair.”[224]

When the Emperor of the French first hinted at his intention of going to
the Crimea, the idea frightened everybody. His own _entourage_, knowing
his ignorance of the art of war, and convinced that defeat meant ruin
for him and for them, were in despair. The Queen, too, was alarmed,
because she foresaw infinite danger from the scheme. The Emperor would
naturally desire to take supreme command of both armies, whereas the
English people would not permit British troops to serve under a foreign
sovereign, whose antecedents were doubtful, and whose friendship was
uncertain. The French and English Governments therefore privately
suggested to the Queen that she should now invite the Emperor and
Empress to pay their promised visit to England, hoping that the Queen’s
influence might be used for the purpose of preventing him from
proceeding to the seat of war.[225] The invitation was accepted, and
the rooms in Windsor which had been occupied by the Czar Nicholas and
King Louis Philippe were set apart for the Imperial guests.

[Illustration: WINDSOR CASTLE FROM THE BROCAS.]

At noon on the 16th of April, after some mishaps in the dense fog which
shrouded the Channel, the Imperial yacht reached the Admiralty Pier at
Dover, where Prince Albert was waiting to receive his guests. The Prince
went on board, shook hands with the Emperor, and then going down to the
cabin reappeared with the Empress on his arm. They landed amidst
complimentary salvoes of artillery from the castle, the salutes of the
military, and the ringing cheers of the crowd. The Royal party then
proceeded to London, and when they arrived at the Bricklayers’ Arms
Station, they found dense masses of people assembled to welcome them.
Their route lay along the line of streets leading to the Great Western
station, where they took train for Windsor. Lord Malmesbury writes in
his Diary, “Lady Ossulton, Lady Manners, my wife and I went to Lord
Carrington’s house in Whitehall to see the Emperor of the French pass.
The weather was beautiful and bright, the streets were choked with
people. The _cortège_ made its appearance at 6.15 p.m.; there were but
six open carriages, four of them escorted by a squadron of Life Guards,
and a good many outriders in scarlet liveries. They passed very slowly
at a walk

[Illustration: THE QUEEN INVESTING THE EMPEROR OF THE FRENCH WITH THE
ORDER OF THE GARTER.]

and were enthusiastically cheered the whole way from the South Eastern
to the Great Western terminus.... On going up St. James’s Street, the
Emperor was seen to point out to the Empress the house where he formerly
lived in King Street. This was at once understood by the crowd, who
cheered louder than ever. On passing the Horse Guards the Emperor stood
up in his carriage and saluted the colours, and was of course immensely
cheered.”[226] At Windsor the excitement was intense, and the Queen was
on tiptoe of expectation. Referring to the arrival of the visitors, she
writes, “I cannot say what indescribable emotions filled me--how much
all seemed like a wonderful dream. These great meetings of sovereigns,
surrounded by very exciting accompaniments, are always very
agitating.”[227] Her Majesty advanced and the Emperor kissed her hand.
She saluted him once on each cheek, and then, as she says, “embraced the
very gentle, very graceful, and evidently very nervous Empress.” The
Duke of Cambridge and the Prince of Leiningen and the Royal children
were presented--“Vicky (now Princess Imperial of Germany) with very
alarmed eyes making very low curtesies.” In the Throne Room other
presentations followed. At dinner, however, the Emperor put the Queen
quite at her ease. He assumed the soft, low voice and the melancholy
manner of the hero of some romance of mystery. They talked about the
war--the Queen gently dissuading him from going to the Crimea, he
mournfully expressing his apprehension of disasters unless he went out,
and complaining of the blunders of the generals. Next morning (the 17th)
the subject was renewed during a long walk after breakfast. This time
the Empress was eager in pressing the Emperor to proceed to Sebastopol,
where, she said with truth, he was perhaps safer than in Paris. In the
afternoon the Royal Family and their Imperial guests reviewed the
Household troops, surrounded by gay crowds, full of effusive enthusiasm
for our Allies. At dinner they discussed the manifold iniquities of
Austria, and mourned over her decadence, because she would not fight to
vindicate a plan for reducing the Russian navy in the Black Sea to six
ships instead of eight. At night there was a ball in the Waterloo
Room--an odd place in which to find the granddaughter of George III.
dancing with the nephew of Napoleon I. The sombre memories of the hall,
however, did not prevent the Queen’s guest from dancing, as she herself
records, “with great dignity and spirit.” Next morning (the 18th) at
breakfast the Emperor received a telegram announcing the death of M.
Ducos, the Minister of Marine,[228] and at eleven o’clock a grand
Council of War was held in the Emperor’s rooms, at which those present
were Prince Albert, Lords Palmerston, Panmure, Hardinge, and Cowley,
Sir Charles Wood, Sir John Burgoyne, Count Walewski, and Marshal
Vaillant. “Something should be done somewhere, and by somebody in the
Crimea,” seems to have been the resolution to which the council came.
Though unanimous in urging the Emperor not to go there, it failed to
convince him that he ought to stay at home. In the afternoon Prince
Albert, when out walking with the Emperor, submitted a plan of his own
for reorganising the Allied Forces, which the Emperor approved. It was
sent on to Palmerston, Panmure, Hardinge, and Burgoyne, and they
resolved to draw up a memorandum on the subject for the next Conference.

The Council of War of the 18th sat on from 11 till 2 p.m., and at 4 p.m.
a Grand Chapter of the Order of the Garter was held in the Throne
Room--the Emperor being invested with the insignia of the Order--in all
the pomp and circumstance of Royal State. The Queen sat at the head of
the table with a vacant chair on her right hand; Garter King-at-Arms
summoned each Knight in the order of his creation, beginning with the
Marquis of Exeter and ending with Lord Aberdeen. The Prelate of the
Order read the new statute dispensing with existing statutes in favour
of the Emperor of the French, who was then introduced by Prince Albert
and the Duke of Cambridge. The Queen and the assembled Knights stood up
to receive the Emperor, who passed on and sat in the chair on the
Queen’s right hand. Her Majesty having proclaimed the Emperor’s
election, the King-at-Arms presented the Garter to the Queen, who,
assisted by her husband, buckled it on the Emperor’s left leg, after
which she placed the riband over his Majesty’s left shoulder, the
Chancellor of the Order pronouncing the admonition. The accolade was
then presented to the new Knight, and the ceremony was over. “It is one
bond the more,” said the Emperor as he walked with the Queen to his
apartments--“I have given my oath of fidelity to your Majesty and to
your country.” But all the world knows, neither bond nor oath was strong
enough to prevent him from subsequently intriguing with Russia against
England, when the Congress of Paris met to settle the questions raised
by the sudden termination of the Crimean War. Yet, the Imperial
flatteries served the purpose of the moment, for the Queen wrote, “These
words are very valuable from a man like him, who is not profuse in
phrases, and who is very steady of purpose.”[229] After dinner her
Majesty seems to have been chiefly amused by Marshal Vaillant’s
confidential conversation with her, in which he manifested great terror
lest the Emperor would take command of the Army in the Crimea. In the
evening there was an orchestral concert. “The Queen, Emperor, and
Empress,” writes Lord Malmesbury, “with the Royal Family, their suites,
and those invited to the banquet, entered soon after ten, and seated
themselves without speaking to any one. As soon as music was over the
company passed before the Queen and Emperor.... The Queen had arranged
everything herself, made out the lists of invitations for both parties
at Windsor, and the concert for to-morrow at Buckingham Palace. Very
few, except Cabinet Ministers, are asked twice. Even Lady Breadalbane,
who is one of the Court, was invited only for the evening party last
night, and had to sleep at a pastrycook’s, there being no room at the
Castle.”[230]

[Illustration: THE WATERLOO ROOM, WINDSOR CASTLE.]

Next day (the 19th) the Emperor and Empress had to visit the City, and
hosts and guests seemed alike sad and nervous when the Royal party set
forth. There was just a chance that some sufferer from the crime of
December, 1851, might wreak his vengeance on the perpetrator of it. The
Lord Mayor and Corporation, however, gave their guests a splendid
reception. London decked itself forth with loyal bunting. Crowds cheered
the Emperor and Empress on their way, and the town rang with “_Partant
pour la Syrie_,” which dismal air Cockneydom in those days preferred to
the “Marseillaise,” as the symbol of the French alliance, and, perhaps,
also as being less trying to the nerves of its guest.[231] The
Corporation gave their Imperial visitor a sumptuous banquet. With
characteristic delicacy of taste they served him with sherry, which

[Illustration: THE ROYAL AND IMPERIAL VISIT TO THE CRYSTAL PALACE: THE
PROCESSION DOWN THE NAVE.]

they produced proudly, because it was from the famous butt that had been
bought for £600 by Napoleon I. in his palmy days. In the evening the
Imperial visitors went with the Queen to the opera, where _Fidelio_ was
played. “We literally drove through a sea of human beings,” writes the
Queen, “cheering and pressing near the carriage.”[232] When the Royal
party appeared after the first act was over, the audience in Her
Majesty’s Theatre rose and hailed them with deafening cheers, the Queen
leading the Emperor and Prince Albert the Empress forward, so as to
emphasise the fact that they were especially the objects of this
demonstrative greeting.[233] Next day, the 20th of April, was the
Emperor’s birthday. When the Queen congratulated him in the morning it
seems he looked confused, because for the moment he had forgotten all
about the event. He, however, kissed her hand gratefully when she
presented him with her gift--a little pencil-case--and was much touched
with the other present he received--“two violets, the flower of the
Bonapartes--from Prince Arthur.”[234] Amidst great crowds cheering most
enthusiastically the Royal party drove to the Crystal Palace. They went
through the building in perfect privacy, and then walked on to the
balcony to see the fountains play. But when they returned to luncheon
they found that quite a crowd of sightseers had been admitted, and were
lining the avenue of the nave. It was a trying moment. The rows of
spectators through which the Royal party had to walk were almost
touching them, and Emperor and Empress both dreaded assassination. The
Queen, nervous as she was, courageously took the Emperor’s arm, feeling
sure her presence would protect him; and so the day passed without any
unpleasantness. In the evening there was another meeting of the Grand
Council of War, the Queen being present. Again the Council failed to
decide on a plan of operations. But it was admitted that they could come
to an agreement as to the stake to be played for in the game of war, and
this agreement, under seven heads, was drawn up by Prince Albert, and
signed by Marshal Vaillant and Lord Panmure.[235] Next day (the 21st)
the guests left amidst tender farewells on both sides. At Lady
Malmesbury’s dinner-party that day, Lord Adolphus Fitzclarence told the
company that the leave-taking was very affecting. “Everybody cried--even
the _suite_. The Queen’s children began, as the Empress had been very
kind to them, and they were sorry to lose them, and this set off the
Maids of Honour.”[236] The Emperor’s last words to the Queen were, “I
believe that having spent my birthday with your Majesty will bring me
good luck, that and the little pencil-case you gave me.”[237] The Queen
wrote in her Diary, “I am glad to have known this extraordinary man,
whom it is certainly impossible not to like when you live with him, and
not even to a considerable extent to admire.... I believe him to be
capable of kindness, affection, friendship, and gratitude.” Prince
Albert’s admiration, on the other hand, was not quite so unqualified,
and the Queen notes that he preferred the Empress to the Emperor. When
the Emperor returned to Paris he found that his reception in England had
done much to increase his _prestige_. But he also discovered that he
must abandon his intention of going to the Crimea. On the 25th of April
he communicated this welcome news to the Queen in a letter abounding
with engaging expressions of gratitude, for her kindness and hospitality
to him and his Imperial consort.

On the 28th of June Prince Albert writes to Stockmar saying, “Uncle
Leopold comes on Tuesday with Philippe and Carlo, and by the end of the
week we purpose to get away from the thoroughly used-up air of London.
The political folly and the levity of parties and the press, amidst the
terrible mass of business, makes our head reel.”[238] When these
visitors reached Osborne they found the Queen depressed and sorrowful.
Scarlet fever had attacked the Princes Arthur and Leopold and the
Princess Louise, and her Majesty was naturally afraid lest her young
Belgian relatives might be smitten also. Fortunately this peril was
avoided, and the Queen, encouraged by the approaching prorogation of
Parliament, gradually regained her cheerfulness. She had suffered from
intense anxiety during the Session, and it was with a deep sense of
relief that she found herself able to prorogue both Houses by Commission
on the 14th of August. The Speech from the Throne dwelt on the
advantages derived from cementing the French alliance. The Legislature
was also congratulated on having passed several useful measures--amongst
which those establishing local self-government in the metropolis,
sanctioning the formation of Limited Liability Companies, and abolishing
the stamp duty on newspapers, may be mentioned.

The allusion to the French alliance was made with skill and tact. “You
will come to Paris this summer,” said the Emperor to the Queen when he
was bidding her farewell at Windsor. “Yes,” she replied, “if my public
duties do not prevent me.” These duties it was now obvious would in no
way prevent her, and it was therefore determined that the Queen and her
husband should spend eight days with the Emperor and Empress. The visit
was to begin on the 18th of August, and before that day came round the
British fleet in the Baltic and the allied armies in the Crimea had won
some slight successes, which rendered the war a little less unpopular
than it had been in France. Still, despite the victory at Tchernaya, it
was unpopular. France, according to Frenchmen, was spending blood and
treasure for English interests. The alliance between the two countries
was giving England the time and experience needed to improve her
defective military system--leaving her in relation to France stronger
than ever. As for the political parties--Legitimists, Orleanists, and
Democrats--they looked on the Queen’s visit with hostility, because it
was meant to strengthen the hands of a usurper, whom they all hated. The
visit therefore was not made under auspicious circumstances. Just before
the Queen started on this journey the King of Portugal arrived at
Osborne, and on the 4th of August the Prince tells Stockmar how they had
to lodge him on their yacht, to keep him out of danger from scarlet
fever--the two eldest children in the Royal Family having alone escaped
the malady. Many visits were interchanged, however, between the King and
the Queen and Prince Albert. The Queen, indeed, at the request of her
Ministers, had agreed to persuade King Pedro to join us in the war, a
proposal which he, however, very sensibly rejected.[239]

It was in the early dawn of Saturday, the 18th of August, that the Queen
and Prince Albert, accompanied by the Prince of Wales and the Princess
Royal, embarked at Osborne, and, escorted by a steam squadron, proceeded
to Boulogne, where they arrived at one o’clock in the afternoon. Salutes
of cannon from the heights, volleys of musketry from the troops, and
enthusiastic cheers from the people greeted the visitors. When the Royal
yacht came to the pier the Emperor hastened on board, saluted the Queen,
kissing her hand and both cheeks, and then shook hands with Prince
Albert, the Prince of Wales, and the Princess Royal. The Queen and her
family drove to the station, the Emperor and Marshal Magnan riding on
each side of her carriage. They took train to Paris, where they were
cordially received. From the terminus of the Strasbourg Railway to the
Palace of St. Cloud the houses were all in festal array, and 200,000
National Guards formed a double line for five miles along the route.
This brilliant display was somewhat lost on the Queen, for her arrival
was delayed till seven in the evening. She, however, had the pleasure of
seeing Paris under the flare of illumination, and when she approached
the Arc de Triomphe her escort carried blazing torches, which gave a
strange picturesque effect to the scene. She was welcomed to the Palace
of St. Cloud, which had been set apart for her, by the Empress and the
ladies and high officers of the household; and Prince Albert describes
their reception by the people as “splendid” and “enthusiastic.” The
Queen says in her Diary, “I felt bewildered but enchanted--everything is
so beautiful.” Sunday, the 19th, was devoted to a quiet morning drive
with the Emperor, who was in high spirits over the Crimean news, and to
church-going--service being held in one of the rooms of the palace by
the chaplain to the British Embassy. Then there was a charming drive in
the afternoon to Neuilly, and later on a dinner-party, at which
Canrobert appeared, almost fresh from the Crimean trenches. He sat next
the Queen, and was surprised to find that she was nearly as well
acquainted with the details of the war as he was himself. On Monday, the
20th, the Emperor escorted his guests to breakfast--“the coffee quite
excellent, and all the cookery very plain and very good,” writes the
Queen, and served “on a small round table as we have at home.” A visit
to the Exhibition of Fine Arts, luncheon at the Elysée, a long drive
through the chief streets of Paris, and a theatrical performance in the
evening (at the Palace) of the _Demoiselles de St. Cyr_, formed the
programme. Tuesday, the 21st, was dedicated to a visit to the Palace of
Versailles and the Trianon, associated with mournful memories of Marie
Antoinette and the ladies of her court, who used to retire at times to
this retreat to play at Arcadian simplicity. In the evening, after
dinner, the Queen and her hosts went to the Opera, where her Majesty’s
reception was most cordial and gratifying. The notabilities of Parisian
society were there, and they were all charmed with the easy, cheerful,
high-spirited bearing of the Queen. On Wednesday, the 22nd, she visited
the Exhibition of Industry, remarking that the English exhibits of china
were the most striking. Then she drove to

[Illustration: THE QUEEN AT THE FÊTE IN THE FOREST OF ST. GERMAIN.]

the Tuileries, and accepted an invitation from the Préfet and the
Municipality of Paris to a ball at the Hôtel de Ville. The Queen, Prince
Albert, the Prince of Wales, and Princess Royal next drove through Paris
_incognito_, and in the evening were entertained at a great dinner, at
which eighty guests were present. At this dinner the Queen and the
Emperor talked long and earnestly over the Anglo-French alliance--he
telling her that Drouyn de Lhuys had suggestively reminded him how Louis
Philippe became unpopular because of his alliance with England; the
Queen retorting that it was not Louis Philippe’s friendship with
England, but his insincerity and treachery, which caused his fall. On
Thursday, the 24th, the Louvre was visited, and in the evening the Queen
attended the ball at the Hôtel de Ville--the opening quadrille being
danced by her Majesty, the Emperor, Prince Albert, the Princess
Mathilde, Prince Napoleon, Lady Cowley, Prince Aldebert of Bavaria, and
Mdle. Haussmann, daughter of the Prefect of the Seine. The scene was
brilliant beyond conception. It was a triumph of decorative art having,
as the Queen said, “all the effect of the Arabian Nights.” Picturesque
Arabs from Algeria at one part of the proceedings came forward and did
homage to the Emperor and his guests, staring admiringly at the
Koh-i-noor which the Queen wore in her diadem. The Royal party made the
tour of the rooms, tarrying for a little in the _Salle du Trône_, where
Robespierre was wounded and Louis Philippe proclaimed; and where the
Emperor gallantly said to the Queen, “This occasion will banish from us
all sad remembrances.” On Friday, the 24th, the Queen visited a second
time the Palais d’Industrie, lunched at the École Militaire, and
witnessed a review of the troops. Their smart uniforms, her Majesty
writes, “are infinitely better made and cut than those of our soldiers,
which provokes me much.” After this the Queen drove to the Hôtel des
Invalides, to visit the tomb of the first Emperor. As she stood before
the coffin leaning on the Emperor’s arm, by a strange coincidence, while
the organ of the church was pealing forth the solemn strains of the
English National Anthem, a dreadful thunder storm broke overhead. At
dinner the Emperor and Queen that day entertained each other with
complaints about the incapacity of their generals in the Crimea, and in
the evening another visit, but not in State, was paid to the Opera. On
Saturday, the 24th, the Queen attended a hunt in the forest of St.
Germain, where she was received by the local _curé_ and a bevy of
village maidens, one of whom broke down in the middle of her
complimentary address to the visitors, though when the _curé_ prompted
her, greatly to the Queen’s amusement, she went on glibly to the end. In
the evening there was a grand State Ball at Versailles, the Empress, as
she appeared at the head of the grand staircase, says the Queen,
“looking like a fairy queen or nymph,” and surprising even the Emperor
into exclaiming, “_Comme tu es belle!_” (“How lovely you are!”) After a
splendid display of fireworks there was dancing, and many distinguished
guests were presented to the Queen, amongst others Count Bismarck, then
Prussian Minister to Frankfort. But he did not make himself agreeable to
her Majesty, for when she expressed her admiration for Paris as a
beautiful city, he replied, “Yes, even more beautiful than St.
Petersburg”--a very significant indication of his strong pro-Russian
sympathies. On Sunday, the 26th, Prince Albert’s birthday was quietly
celebrated, and the Queen and Emperor had some serious talk over the
persecution of her friends--the Orleans Princes and Princesses--in the
course of which she very frankly and honestly explained to the Emperor
the precise nature of her relations to them. Monday, the 27th, was
devoted to leave-takings and the journey home. At Boulogne there was an
inspection of troops and the camps of Hensault and Ambleteuse were
visited, and late at night the Queen steamed away in her yacht from
Boulogne Harbour. “_Adieu, Madame, au revoir_,” to which I replied, “_Je
l’espère bien_”--these, according to the Queen, were the parting words
which passed between her and her Imperial host. By half-past eight next
morning her Majesty reached Osborne, finding her younger sons waiting on
the beach to welcome her home.

The Queen was deeply impressed, she says, with the Emperor’s quietness,
gentleness, and simplicity of manner. She felt encouraged to confide in
him without reserve, and was greatly charmed by his kindness and
attention to her children, and his admiration for Prince Albert. The
Prince, however, did not quite share the Queen’s enthusiasm for their
host, though he admitted that the Emperor had great powers of
fascination when he chose to exert them. Lord Clarendon, who was
Minister in attendance on her Majesty, told Mr. Greville that during
this visit “the Queen was delighted with everything, and especially with
the Emperor himself, who, with perfect knowledge of women, had taken the
surest way to ingratiate himself with her. This it seems he began when
he was in England, and followed it up at Paris. After her visit the
Queen talked it all over with Clarendon, and said ‘it is very odd; but
the Emperor knows everything I have done, and where I have been ever
since I was twelve years old; he even recollects how I was dressed, and
a thousand little details it is extraordinary he should be acquainted
with.’ She has never before been on such a social footing with anybody,
and he has approached her with the familiarity of their equal positions,
and with all the experience and knowledge of womankind he has acquired
during his long life, passed in the world and in mixing in every sort of
society. She seemed to have played her part throughout with great
propriety and success. Old Jérôme[240] did not choose to make his
appearance till just at the last moment, because he insisted on being
treated as a king, and having the title of ‘Majesté’ given him--a
pretension Clarendon would not hear of her yielding to.... Clarendon
said nothing could exceed the delight of the Queen at her visit to
Paris, at her reception, at all she saw, and that she was charmed with
the Emperor. They became so intimate, and she on such friendly terms
with him, that she talked to him with the utmost frankness, and even
discussed with him the most delicate of all subjects--the confiscation
of the Orleans property, telling him her opinion upon it. He did not
avoid the subject, and gave her the reasons why he thought himself
obliged to take that course; that he knew all this wealth was employed
in fomenting intrigues against his government, which was so new that it
was necessary to take all precautions to avert such dangers. She replied
that even if this were so, he might have contented himself with
sequestrating the property and restoring it when he was satisfied that
all danger on that score was at an end. I asked Clarendon what he
thought of the Emperor himself, and he said that he liked him and that
he was very pleasing, but he was struck with his being so indolent and
so excessively ignorant. The Prince of Wales was put by the Queen under
Clarendon’s charge, who was desired to tell him what to do in public,
when to bow to the people, and whom to speak to. He said that the
Princess Royal was charming, with excellent manners and full of
intelligence. Both the children were delighted with their _séjour_, and
very sorry to come away. When the visit was drawing to a close, the
Prince said to the Empress that he and his sister were both very
reluctant to leave Paris, and asked if she could not get leave for them
to stay there a little longer. The Empress said she was afraid this
would not be possible, as the Queen and Prince Albert would not be able
to do without them; to which the boy replied, ‘Not do without us! don’t
fancy that, for there are six more of us at home, and they don’t want
_us_.’”[241]

[Illustration: MAP OF CRATHIE AND BRAEMAR.]

Writing to the Dowager Duchess of Coburg from Osborne, on the 30th of
August, Prince Albert says--“We purpose making an escape on the 5th
(September) to our mountain home, Balmoral. We are sorely in want of the
moral rest, and the bodily exercise.” Balmoral was reached on the 7th,
and “the new house,” though not finished, was found to be quite
habitable, and “very comfortable.” The Queen was charmed with its
appearance, and the home-like welcome she received from her dependants,
an old shoe being thrown after her for luck when she entered the Hall.
And truly it brought luck--for in two days afterwards Deeside was ruddy
with the blaze of the bonfire which was lit on Craig Gowan heights to
celebrate the fall of Sebastopol. The bonfire had been prepared the year
before, when the false news of the fall of Sebastopol had arrived, and
the wind had blown it down on Inkermann Day (5th of November). It was
again built up, and on the evening of the 10th, writes Prince Albert to
Stockmar, “it illuminated all the peaks round about, and the whole
scattered population of the valleys understood the sign, and made for
the mountain, where we performed towards midnight a veritable Witches’
Dance, supported by whisky.”[242]

In the same letter the Prince writes, “Prince Fritz William comes here
to-morrow evening. I have received a very friendly letter from the
Princess of Prussia.” This, says Sir Theodore Martin, made Stockmar’s
heart beat fast. He was the recognised matrimonial agent of the House of
Coburg, and one of his cherished projects was to arrange a marriage
between the young and handsome heir of the Prince of Prussia and the
Princess Royal, who, of all the Queen’s children, was in an especial
degree his favourite. The young Prussian Prince was indeed the only
possible suitor in Europe whose prospects rendered him worthy to mate
with a daughter of England. The Queen felt that the day would come when
he would be Heir-Apparent not to the Crown of Prussia, but to the
Imperial Throne of the German Empire. His family was one of the
wealthiest in Europe. His father, afterwards the German Emperor, was a
very dear and valued friend of the Queen and her husband, and the young
Prince Fritz himself had all those qualities of mind and heart which
Prince Albert desired to see in the husband of his eldest child. But the
affair was one of some delicacy, because the Queen abhorred the idea of
what she called “a political marriage;” indeed, as she was on somewhat
unfriendly terms with the King of Prussia, and as Prussia was hated and
despised by the English people at the time, the alliance was, from a
political point of view, far from desirable. Her Majesty, moreover, had
no intention of sanctioning any engagement which might be objectionable
to her daughter, and the ultimate decision, therefore, lay with the
Princess herself, who at the time knew nothing of the hopes or fears
that centred round her. The gossip of Society had connected her name
with that of Prince Frederick William. But on the Queen’s return from
France at the end of August Prince Albert told Lord Clarendon there was
no truth in these rumours.[243] On the 20th of September the Prince laid
his proposal of marriage before the Queen and her husband, and they
accepted it so far as they were concerned, but asked him not to speak to
the Princess on the subject till after her confirmation. The Princess
was only sixteen years of age at the time, and the Queen was of opinion
that there should be no thought of marriage till the following spring,
when her daughter would have passed her seventeenth birthday. On the
23rd Prince Albert writes to Stockmar, telling him that “Victoria is
greatly excited. Still, all goes smoothly and prudently,” and that the
young Prince is “really in love” with the little lady, “who does her
best to please him.” The Crown Prince and Princess of Prussia, he says,
“are in raptures at the turn the affair has taken.” But when a handsome
young Prince is “really in love” with a charming young Princess who
“does her best to please him,” and they are both living in the free,
unrestrained intercourse of English family life in a romantic Highland
retreat, it is hardly practicable to prevent them from coming to an
understanding. The Prussian Prince seems to have appealed successfully
to the Queen’s good nature, and he soon obtained leave to make his
proposal to the Princess before his visit came to an end. “During our
ride up Craig-na-ban,” writes the Queen, in “The Leaves from a Journal,”
“he (Prince Fritz) picked up a piece of white heather (the emblem of
good luck), which he gave to her (the Princess Royal), and this enabled
him to make an allusion to his hopes and wishes as they rode down Glen
Girnoch.” The lady consented, and the happy pair were betrothed. “The
young people,” writes Prince Albert to Stockmar, on the 2nd of October,
“are passionately in love with each other, and the integrity,
guilelessness, and disinterestedness of the Prince are quite touching.”

“Our Fritz,” as the Prince was affectionately called, was no idle youth
of fashion. He was already Colonel of the 1st Foot Guards, and a
thorough soldier.[244] In every branch of the Army he had gone through a
hard apprenticeship, as may be seen from the peremptory instructions
which had been issued when he was ordered to serve with Colonel von
Griesheim’s Dragoons. He had to master every elementary detail of drill
and organisation, and his knowledge was tested by stern judges.[245]
Col. von Griesheim gives the following account of an interview he had
with Prince Fritz’s mother in the autumn of 1854:--“Prince Frederick
William,” he says, “was then twenty-three. He was a young man of notably
amiable manners. I received orders to wait upon his mother the Princess
at the Palace, when she told me that she wished to speak to me as the
new Commander of the Regiment, and I must do her the justice to say that
she did not allow her motherly love for a son, or her anxiety to secure
his personal comforts, to stand in the way of his duty. On the contrary,
she begged me that I would in no way unduly spare the Prince, but insist
on his learning his profession in every branch, so that he might be in a
position to judge what was the real amount of labour which a military
life entailed. She also desired that in non-military matters no special
external respect might be shown him, expressing, at the same time, her
confidence that neither I nor my brother-officers would abuse the
relationship in which we were placed. She was sure I should not forget
that it was the training of our future king that was entrusted to me,
and that I should recognise the obligation of setting things in their
true light, that a true judgment might be formed concerning them. The
Princess was proceeding to talk over a number of incidental matters
when, quite unaccompanied, the Prince of Prussia came into the room. He
looked surprised, and said, ‘Ah! I see the new Commander is receiving
the orders of the dear mamma.’ He laughed good-humouredly, and holding
out his hand with the cordiality peculiar to him, added that I did not
need any instruction from him, and that the length of time he had known
me was a guarantee that the Prince was in good hands. Turning to his
wife he smiled, and said in an undertone, “I trained Griesheim, and now
he shall train our son.’”[246]

Prince Frederick William had thoroughly fulfilled the hopes of his
parents and his tutor, and he was precisely the type of man likely to
win favour in Prince Albert’s eyes. It was, therefore, with supreme
disgust that the Queen and her husband discovered an attempt would be
made to prejudice public opinion against the marriage. The engagement
was not to be announced till after Easter. And yet the _Times_ began to
attack the Queen, Prince Albert, and the Prussian Court, for bringing
about such an alliance. The country was told that the Princess Royal was
being sacrificed to “a paltry German dynasty,” and Prince Fritz was
jeered at as a poor creature, who would have to pick up a livelihood in
the Russian service, and “pass these years which flattering anticipation
now destines to a Crown, in ignominious attendance as a General Officer
on the levee of his Imperial master, having lost even the privilege of
his birth, which is conceded to no German in Russia.” Malignity as well
as ignorance inspired this abuse, for it was at that time the cue of a
certain section of polite society to hold Prince Albert up to odium on
every possible occasion as a tool of the despotic European Courts. As a
matter of fact, the young Prince’s sympathies were with the Opposition
rather than with the Government in Prussia, and he was in the habit of
seeking Prince Albert’s advice as to how he should steer his course in
the stormy sea of Prussian politics. Very sound and wise guidance did
the Prince get from his future father-in-law, who viewed with delight
and hopefulness his assiduous efforts to fit himself for his high
destiny. “In another way,” he writes to the young Prince, “Vicky is also
busy; she has learned much in various directions.... She now comes to me
every evening from six to seven, when I put her through a kind of
general catechising, and, in order to give precision to her ideas, I
make her work out certain subjects by herself, and bring me the results
to be revised. Thus she is now engaged in writing a short compendium of
Roman history.”[247]

[Illustration: THE WOOING OF THE PRINCESS ROYAL.]

On the 30th of November the King of Sardinia, accompanied by Count
Cavour, arrived in London to visit the Queen and Prince Albert. A
rough, frank, good-humoured cavalry officer, passionately devoted to
field sports, and fired with an ardent love of Italy and a bitter hatred
of all foes of Italian Unity--such was our ally, Victor Emmanuel. He had
been preceded by his social reputation in Paris, which was, in truth,
such as to make the Queen somewhat nervous. Lord Malmesbury, writing in
his Diary on the 29th of November, says, “The King of Sardinia, who is
here (Paris), is as vulgar and coarse as possible.”[248]

[Illustration: COUNT CAVOUR.]

However, his Majesty was received with much kindness by the English
people, and on the day after his arrival the Queen and Prince took him
to see Woolwich Arsenal and the Hospitals, only too well filled with
wounded Crimean soldiers. The Artillery Parade on the Common was viewed
by the King with great delight. On Monday, the 3rd of December, Prince
Albert accompanied his Royal guest to Spithead, where they inspected
the fleet and went over the old _Victory_, and a new ship of war, to be
named after his Majesty. On Tuesday, the 4th, Victor Emmanuel visited
the City of London in State, where he met with an effusive welcome, that
greatly impressed him. The reply to the Address presented to him by the
Corporation, which was delivered by the King--though “writ in choice
Italian” for him by his crafty mentor, Cavour--pledging him to support
us to the last in our struggle with Russia if the peace negotiations
then going on failed, vastly increased his popularity. Next day he was
invested by the Queen with the Order of the Garter, and on Thursday he
left at five o’clock in the morning for Boulogne. It was bitterly cold
and bleak, yet, to the surprise of Cavour, the Queen was up betimes to
bid her guest farewell, with all the cordiality of a true English
hostess. Many good stories, most of which will not bear repetition here,
were told of this visit. “I was presented,” writes Lord Malmesbury on
the 5th of December, “to the King of Sardinia by Prince Albert, who told
him that I was an ‘_Ancien Ministre d’Affaires Etrangères_.’ ‘_A quelle
époque?_’ answered the King. I said, ‘In 1852, under Lord Derby’s
Government.’ The King replied, ‘_Que faites-vous à présent?_’ To which
the Prince said, ‘_II fait de l’opposition, car il faut toujours faire
quelque chose dans ce pays_.’ ‘_Ah_,’ replied the King, ‘_donc vous êtes
opposé à mon voyage en Angleterre, et à mon alliance_.’”[249] Lord
Clarendon, says Mr. Greville, “gave me an account of his conversations
both with the King and Cavour. He thinks well of the King, and that he
is intelligent, and he has a very high opinion indeed of Cavour, and was
especially struck with his knowledge of England, and our institutions
and constitutional history. I was much amused after all the praises that
have been lavished on Sardinia for the noble part she has played, and
for taking up arms in so _unselfish_ a manner, that she has, after all,
a keen view to her own interests, and wants some solid pudding as well
as so much empty praise.” In fact, Sardinia wanted some territorial
advantage, which, of course, in view of our relations with Austria at
the time, England could not obtain for her. Hence Victor Emmanuel
complained that after spending 40,000,000 francs on the war, he had
nothing to show his people for it.[250] “The King and his people,”
writes Mr. Greville, “are far better satisfied with their reception here
than in France, where, under much external civility, there was very
little cordiality, the Emperor’s intimate relations with Austria
rendering him little inclined towards the Piedmontese. Here the Queen
was wonderfully cordial and attentive. She got up at five in the morning
to see him depart. His Majesty appears to be frightful in person, but a
great, strong, burly, athletic man, brusque in his manners, unrefined in
his conversation, very loose in his conduct, and eccentric in his
habits. When he was at Paris his talk in society amused or terrified
everybody, but here he seems to have been more guarded. It was amusing
to see all the religious societies hastening with their addresses to
him, totally forgetting that he is the most dissolute fellow in the
world; but the fact of his being excommunicated by the Pope and his
waging war with the ecclesiastical power in his own country covers every
sin against morality, and he is a great hero with the Low Church people
and Exeter Hall. My brother-in-law said he looked at Windsor more like a
chief of the Heruli or Longobardi than a modern Italian prince, and the
Duchess of Sutherland said that of all the Knights of the Garter she had
seen, he was the only one who seemed as if he would have the best of it
with the Dragon.”[251] If Clarendon expressed to Mr. Greville great
admiration for the Sardinian Monarch, he must have been of a singularly
forgiving disposition. For Lord Malmesbury says that when Prince Albert
presented Lord Clarendon to his Majesty as the Secretary of State for
Foreign Affairs, Victor Emmanuel remarked, “_J’ai entendu parler de
vous_,” adding, “_C’est fini_,” which, says Lord Malmesbury, in plain
English meant--“Be off. I’ve nothing more to say to you.”[252]

On the 6th of October, 1854, the Queen had issued a Royal Warrant for
regulating promotion and retirement in the army, which now caused her
much vexation. The warrant enabled lieutenant-colonels, after three
years’ service, to become by right full colonels. This privilege was
confined to line regiments, and the officers of the Guards accordingly
sent a memorial to the Crown begging that it should be extended to them
also. Prince Albert, as Colonel of the Grenadiers, had signed their
petition, and in the middle of December the _Times_ attacked him with
great acrimony for pampering the Guards, and charged him with using his
influence over the Queen for purposes of military jobbery. The old
story, accusing the Prince of interfering with the army and of having
intrigued to become Commander-in-Chief, was vamped up again. It has
already been seen that these accusations were absolutely false, and the
impossibility of contradicting them publicly gave her Majesty great
pain. She knew nothing about the Guards’ memorial, and all the Prince
knew about it was that he had signed it as a matter of formality,
because it was only through him as their colonel, that the officers of
his regiment could, according to the regulations, forward any petition
to the Government. The memorial was dealt with by the Secretary of
State, Lord Panmure, who, as a matter of fact, did _not_ grant its
prayer. That the Prince sometimes interfered with military
administration was quite true. When the War Department broke down he
toiled hard to help the Duke of Newcastle to set it on its legs again.
When the Queen began to fret over the meagreness of Raglan’s despatches,
he showed the Department how to draw up a series of forms that would
compel Raglan to keep the Secretary of State fully aware from day to
day of the state of the Crimean army. When the Prince of Prussia wrote
to him warning him that the conduct of the English officers in the
Crimea, who were supposed to be deserting their posts “on urgent private
affairs,” was bringing disgrace on the name of England, Prince Albert
did what ought to have been done by Lord Panmure, when the story was
promulgated in the press--that is to say, he sifted the facts, and gave
the lie direct to the slanderous fable.[253] To these attacks the Prince
had become indifferent; but they irritated the Queen, who resented their
injustice, and chafed against her powerlessness to give them public
denial.

[Illustration: BALACLAVA: AT PEACE.

(_From a Drawing made Twenty-Five Years after the Crimean War._)]

[Illustration: CATHCART’S HILL, CRIMEA.]




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.

[Illustration: FRENCH ATTACK ON THE MALAKOFF.]

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

[Illustration: GENERAL TODLEBEN.]

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

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

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

[Illustration: THE THRONE ROOM, ST. JAMES’S PALACE. (_From a Photograph
by H. N. King._)]

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

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




CHAPTER XXXIV.

PEACE AND PARLIAMENT.

     Opening of Parliament--A Cold Speech from the Throne--Moderation of
     Militant Toryism--Mr. Disraeli’s Cynical Strategy--The Betrayal of
     Kars--The Life Peerage Controversy--Baron Parke’s Nickname--More
     Attacks on Prince Albert--Court Favouritism among Men of
     Science--The Congress of Paris--How France Betrayed
     England--Walewski’s Intrigues with Orloff--Mr. Greville’s Pictures
     of French Official Life--Snubbing Bonapartist Statesmen--Peace
     Proclaimed--Popular Rejoicings--A Memento of the Congress--The
     Terms of Peace--The Tripartite Treaty--The Queen’s Opinion of the
     Settlement--Parliamentary Criticism on the Treaty of
     Paris--Stagnation of Public Life in England--The Queen’s “Happy
     Family” Dinner Party--A little “Tiff” with America--The Restoration
     of H.M.S. _Resolute_--The Budget--Palmerston’s Tortuous Italian
     Policy--The Failure of his Domestic Policy--The Confirmation of the
     Princess Royal--Robbery of the Royal Nursery Plate--Prince Alfred’s
     Tutor--Reviews of Crimean Troops--Debates on the Purchase
     System--Lord Hardinge’s Tragic Death--The Duke of Cambridge as
     Commander-in-Chief--Miss Nightingale’s Visit to
     Balmoral--Coronation of the Czar--Russian Chicanery at Paris--A Bad
     Map and a False Frontier--Quarrel between Prussia and
     Switzerland--Quarrel between England and the Sicilies--Death of the
     Queen’s Half-Brother--Settlement of the Dispute with Russia--“The
     Dodge that Saved us.”


Parliament was opened by the Queen in person on the 31st of January,
1856, vast crowds flocking to Westminster for the purpose of testifying
their interest in the negotiations for peace. The Royal speech was a
brief and business-like summary of the events that had led up to these
negotiations, and it announced measures for assimilating the mercantile
law of England and Scotland, simplifying the law of partnership, and
reforming the system of levying dues on merchant shipping. Complaint was
made that the references to the achievements of the army were cold and
unsympathetic, as if the speech were that, not of a Sovereign, but of a
Minister, and Lord Derby was perhaps right in saying that had her
Majesty been left to the promptings of her heart, her Address would not
have been open to this objection. Those who had observed the warm
womanly sympathy she had shown to the wounded soldiers, or who had
witnessed her agitation when she decorated the maimed Crimean heroes,
knew well that had she been free to speak as she felt, she would have
uttered eloquent words of thanks and praise to cheer the troops still
keeping watch and ward in the Crimea.

The general feeling expressed in both Houses of Parliament was that, if
we had determined to prosecute the war till Russia sued for peace, we
should certainly have obtained more honourable terms than those which
had been now accepted by us. But Mr. Disraeli wisely curbed the
bellicose spirit of his party, and declared that to continue the war
merely for the sake of adding lustre to our arms, would bring us no
honour. From being vindicators of public law we should in that case sink
to the level of “the gladiators of history.” Policy as well as prudence
forced moderation on militant Toryism. Mr. Disraeli in a letter to Lord
Malmesbury, written on the 30th of November, 1855, says,

[Illustration: VIEW IN THE CRIMEA: JALTA.]

“it seems to me that a Party that has shrunk from the responsibility of
conducting a war, would never be able to carry on an Opposition against
a Minister for having concluded an unsatisfactory peace, however bad the
terms.”[266] Lord Derby’s determination to refuse office when Lord
Aberdeen fell from power, therefore doomed the Opposition to meek
inactivity. “We are off the rail of politics,” said Mr. Disraeli in the
letter just quoted, “and must continue so as long as the war lasts.”
Hence one can have no difficulty in agreeing with Sir Theodore Martin
when he asserts, that “it was only to be expected of a statesman like
Mr. Disraeli, that he should refrain from embarrassing by a word the
Ministers on whom devolved the difficult duty of protecting the national
interests and honour, in negotiating terms of peace.”[267] There was no
division on the Address. But Lord Derby attacked the Government for the
abandonment of Kars, in deference, he insinuated, to the wishes

[Illustration: MISS NIGHTINGALE.]

of the French Emperor, who feared that the war in Asia Minor would
dangerously enhance British prestige in that region. On the 28th of
April Mr. Whiteside also raised a debate on the subject in the House of
Commons, but the Tory party was so unwilling to follow its leaders, that
Lord Derby regretted the matter had ever been stirred. The discussion
merely established the facts that Lord Stratford had cruelly neglected
to press General Williams’ appeals for reinforcements on the Porte, that
the Government had culpably neglected to give Williams the money
(£100,000) which would have provisioned Kars. But as the fortress was to
be restored to the Turks, and as General Williams was to be consoled
with a baronetcy, the House of Commons thought the matter had better
drop, and Mr. Whiteside’s motion was lost by a majority of 303 to 176.
Much more serious was the defeat inflicted on the Government on another
subject which deeply interested the Queen--that of Baron Parke’s life
peerage.

Writing on the 9th of January, 1856, in his Diary, Lord Campbell says,
“Bethell, the Solicitor-General, has made Baron Parke a peer. The
judicial business of the House of Lords could not go on another session
as it did last. Pemberton Leigh was first offered a peerage, and I wish
much that he had accepted it, but he positively refused to be
_pitchforked_. I don’t know that anything less exceptional could be done
than applying next to Baron Surrebutter.”[268] At the Lord Chancellor’s
levee on the first day of Hilary Term, Lord Campbell asked him if there
was any truth in the story that Parke’s peerage was to be for life. On
hearing that it was, Lord Campbell replied, “Then sorry am I to say that
I must make a row about it.” At first he thought that the grant of a
life peerage was not illegal--for Coke asserted its legality--but merely
unconstitutional. When, however, Lord Campbell studied the precedents,
he became convinced that “no life peerage had been granted to any man
for more than 400 years, and that there was no authenticated instance of
a peer ever having sat and voted in the House of Lords having in him a
life peerage only--the life peerages relied upon being superinduced on
pre-existing peerages, _e.g._, De Vere, Earl of Oxford (a title which
had been in his family since the Conquest), was created by Richard II.
Marquis of Dublin for life.” Lord Campbell goes on to say, “My eyes were
opened. The power of the Crown to give a right to vote in the House must
depend on the exercise of the power; and no one _had_ voted in right of
a peerage for life more than _of a peerage granted during the pleasure
of the King_--for the granting of which there was at least one
precedent.”[269]

When Sir Theodore Martin says that “the right of the Crown to create a
life peerage with a right to sit in Parliament” was “scarcely disputed
in the discussions which arose,” his anxiety to exaggerate the Queen’s
prerogative has led him into a grave error. As Lord Campbell says, “It
was not necessary to resort to the doctrine of desuetude,” for “the
non-exercise of a prerogative, ever since the Constitution was settled,
afforded a strong inference that it had never lawfully existed.” The
fact is that the arguments in favour of recognising the right of the
Crown to create a peer for life, with the right of voting in the House
of Lords, would have been equally good for creating a peer with a
similar right, during the Sovereign’s pleasure. A peer who could at any
moment be deprived of his rank and senatorial privileges would, of
course, either be a creature of the Court or the minion of the Minister.
Lord Lyndhurst, therefore, had little difficulty in carrying a motion
referring Baron Parke’s Letters Patent to a Committee of Privileges,
which reported against the right asserted by the Crown. The Government
yielded, and Sir James Parke was finally created an hereditary peer in
the ordinary way, under the title of Lord Wensleydale.

The rebuff was annoying to the Queen; all the more that it led to a
fresh series of attacks on Prince Albert. He was accused of having
attempted to extend the Queen’s prerogative with the ulterior object of
packing the House of Lords with certain scientific men who were supposed
to be Court favourites.[270] In his “Memoirs,” according to Mr.
Greville, General Grey “told his brother, the Earl, that his Royal
Highness knew nothing of the matter till after it had been settled.” The
truth is that nobody was cognisant of the affair except the Lord
Chancellor, Lord Granville, and Lord Palmerston. Mr. Greville says,
“George Lewis told me that the life peerage had never been brought
before the Cabinet, and he knew nothing of it till he saw it in the
_Gazette_,”[271] which illustrates the thoughtless manner in which Lord
Palmerston allowed himself to be committed to a step, that roused public
jealousy against the Crown and the Court. Lord Malmesbury also states,
that when Lord Derby was dining one day with the Queen, she told him
that if she had had any idea that the question would have created such a
disturbance, she would never have dreamt of granting Parke his life
peerage.[272]

Fortunately the negotiations for peace were now proceeding apace at
Paris. The Queen had written a letter to the French Emperor, which Lord
Clarendon had delivered to him, earnestly insisting on the necessity of
unity of action between France and England at the Congress of the
Powers. The Emperor told Lord Clarendon it was “a charming letter;” but
in spite of his flattering account of it, the influence of France from
first to last was turned against England in the discussions between the
plenipotentiaries. Possibly this was due to the constitutional indolence
and weakness of the Emperor, who permitted Walewski to manage matters
his own way, and as for Walewski, he betrayed Lord Clarendon at every
opportunity. Napoleon III. was really in the hands of his _entourage_,
and they were to a great extent in the hands of Russia.[273] Lord
Cowley, indeed, informed Mr. Greville that Walewski privately made known
to Orloff, the Russian plenipotentiary, not only the points he must
yield, but those as to which he might safely defy Lord Clarendon with
the open or secret support of France.

“The signing of the Treaty of Peace with Russia,” writes Lord
Malmesbury

[Illustration: THE EMPEROR OF AUSTRIA.]

on the 30th of March, “was announced by the firing of cannon from the
Tower and Horse Guards. Numbers collected in the streets, but no
enthusiasm was shown.”[274] In fact, when the terms became known there
was much popular disappointment, and the _Sun_ newspaper actually
appeared in deep mourning over our national humiliation. On the next
morning a great crowd assembled in front of the Mansion House. At ten
o’clock the Lord Mayor, attended by the Sheriffs, the Sword-bearer,
Mace-bearer, and City Marshal, advanced to the stone balcony, and amidst
loud cheers read a despatch from the Home Secretary informing him that
the Treaty was signed. At noon the Lord Mayor proceeded in state to the
Royal Exchange, where a great number of ladies had mingled with the
crowd, and read the despatch again.

[Illustration: THE CONFERENCE OF PARIS, 1856.]

And what were the terms of peace? The Powers admitted Turkey to
participate in all the advantages of the public law of Europe, and they
agreed that in any future dispute with the Porte, the matter must be
submitted to arbitration before force was used by either side. The
Sultan was bound by the Treaty to communicate to the Powers a firman
improving the condition of his Christian subjects, but this instrument,
it was stipulated, gave the Powers no collective or individual right to
interfere between Turkey and her Christian subjects. The Black Sea was
neutralised--_i.e._, all ships of war were excluded from it, and the
establishment of arsenals on its coasts was prohibited. But the Euxine
was declared free to the trading vessels of all nations, and the Powers
were at liberty to keep a few armed ships of light draught for police
duty on the neutralised sea. The navigation of the Danube was declared
free. Russia ceded Bessarabia to Turkey. The privileges and immunities
of Wallachia, Moldavia, and Servia were guaranteed, but the Sultan was
permitted to garrison the latter province. Russia and Turkey were bound
to restore to each other the conquests they had respectively made in
Asia. On the invitation of France the Congress was asked to consider the
position of Greece, the Roman States, and the two Sicilies. It was also
asked to condemn the licence of the Belgian Press, and to formulate new
rules for maritime warfare. These discussions came to naught, but it was
agreed by the “Declarations of Paris” that privateering should be
abolished; that, with the exception of contraband, an enemy’s goods must
be free from capture under a neutral flag, a neutral’s goods being also
respected under an enemy’s flag; and that “paper blockades” should not
be recognised, _i.e._, a blockade to be effective must in future be
maintained by a force strong enough to cut off access to the coasts of
an enemy.[275] It will be observed that there was nothing in this
instrument to provide means for punishing Russia if she broke it. Hence,
on the 15th of April, France, Austria, and England signed what was
called the Tripartite Treaty, binding each other jointly or severally to
go to war against any Power that violated the Treaty of Paris. This
compact was treated like a dead letter when Russia attacked Turkey in
1877. “The peace,” said Prince Albert in a letter to Stockmar, “is not
such as we could have wished, still infinitely to be preferred to the
prosecution of the war, with the present complication of general
policy.” That was in truth the verdict of the country. Comparing the
terms with those which we might have obtained at Vienna in 1855, it was
a humiliating settlement for England, in no way justifying the
continuance of the war after the battle of Inkermann. Comparing them
with the terms which the Czar might have obtained before the invasion of
the Crimea, the settlement was humiliating to Russia.

In Parliament the debates on the Treaty were on the whole favourable to
the Government. Complaint was, however, made that no effective steps had
been taken to protect Turkey from Russian aggression in Asia Minor; that
the Circassians had been abandoned; that Lord Clarendon in the Congress
had not protested with enough warmth against the attacks made on the
Belgian Press; that no definite provision had been made to prevent
Russia from building war-ships at Nicolaieff; that the government of
the Principalities had been left an open question; and that by the
Declarations rights of search at sea, which were extremely useful to a
naval power during war, were surrendered. It is true that, by agreeing
to abolish privateering, England sacrificed what may be called her right
of fighting with naval volunteers; and it seems as if the American
doctrine--namely, that to the merchant whose ships are plundered, it
matters little whether the mischief is done by a man-of-war or a
privateer--is sensible. On the other hand, it was obvious that England
could not carry on a naval war for a year on the principle that free
ships did not make free goods, without coming into collision with every
neutral State in the world. But to all objections there was, of course,
one answer. No better terms could be got unless England was prepared to
carry on the war alone. Yet, as a matter of fact, Russia had suffered so
severely during the winter, that it is probable she might have been more
complaisant at Paris, had Lord Clarendon been firmer, and had Napoleon
III. not perfidiously played into her hands.

The solitary result of the Crimean War, says Mr. Spencer Walpole, was to
“set back the clock for some fourteen years.”[276] Still he seems to
think that it “was perhaps worth some sacrifice, to prove that England
was still ready to strike a blow for a weak neighbour whom she believed
to be oppressed.” This would have been a gain had it added to English
prestige. But the war really diminished that prestige. M. De
Tocqueville, after returning from a Continental tour, said to the late
Mr. Senior, “I heard universal and unqualified praise of the heroic
courage of your soldiers, but at the same time I found spread abroad the
persuasion that the importance of England had been overrated as a
military power properly so called--a power which consists in
administering as much as in fighting, and, above all, that it was
impossible (and this had never before been believed) for her to raise
large armies, even under the most pressing circumstances. I never heard
anything like it since my childhood. You are supposed to be entirely
dependent on us.... A year ago we probably overrated your military
power. I believe that now we most mischievously underrate it. A year ago
nothing alarmed us more than a whisper of the chance of a war with
England. We talk of one now with great composure. We believe that it
would not be difficult to throw 100,000 men upon your shores, and we
believe that half that number would walk over England or Ireland.”[277]

After peace had been proclaimed, public life in England stagnated for a
time, and party rancour temporarily disappeared. Ministers and
Ex-Ministers met in society on the friendliest terms, and Lord
Malmesbury describes a dinner party which the Queen gave on the 7th of
May in honour of Baron Brunnow, at which the leaders of both factions
were present--“the happy family I call them,” says the Queen in a letter
to King Leopold. “Lord John Russell was there,” says Lord Malmesbury,
“and very civil to me, as when I arrived he crossed the room to come to
speak to me--a thing he never did before. He began by saying ‘You gave
it them well last night,’[278] and seemed quite delighted at the
Government being bullied.... I had to take Lady Clarendon to dinner. She
was at first very cross, but I ended by laughing her out of her bad
humour.”[279] A slight ripple on the calm waters was due to the
suspension of diplomatic relations with the United States. In raising
recruits under the Foreign Enlistment Act, it seems some overzealous
British agents had given the American Government not unreasonable cause
to complain that we were violating their law during the war. The dispute
became acute, when the British Minister to the United States was
requested to leave Washington--but the quarrel was not a serious one.
“The Americans,” Prince Albert informs Stockmar on the 16th June, “have
sent away our Minister, but accompanied the act with such assurances of
friendship and affection, and of their perfect readiness to adjust all
points of difference in conformity with our wishes, that it will be
difficult to give theirs his _congé_ in return.” As a matter of fact the
British Government apologised, and on the 16th of March, 1857, Lord
Napier was received at Washington as Mr. Crampton’s successor. In truth
there was no real ill-feeling at all between the two nations--and of
this a curious proof was given at the end of the year. H.M.S. _Resolute_
which had been attached to the last Arctic expedition had been abandoned
in the ice. Some American explorers found her adrift and took her to the
United States. There she was re-fitted at the expense of the Government,
and sent back to England as a present to the Queen. When _Resolute_ made
her appearance at Cowes, the Queen insisted on going in person, on the
16th of December, to receive the gift. Her courteous reception of the
American officers touched them deeply, and Lord Clarendon informed her
Majesty that Mr. Dallas, the American Minister, told him, his countrymen
were quite overwhelmed with the kindness which they had everywhere
received.

Lord Palmerston’s unwearied attention to business, and his popularity
after peace had been proclaimed, almost silenced criticism on his
domestic policy. It had been supposed that the Budget would tempt the
Opposition to attack him, because the Chancellor of the Exchequer had a
dismal story to tell when the House of Commons met after Whitsuntide.
The expenditure for the past year had come to £88,428,355, or
£22,723,854 in excess of the revenue. In fact, during the three years
ending with 1856 the war had cost England

[Illustration: VISIT OF THE QUEEN AND PRINCE ALBERT TO THE “RESOLUTE.”]

£77,588,000. After making the most cautious estimates, Sir George
Cornewall Lewis said that for the coming year, on the basis of existing
taxation, his expected revenue would fall short of his anticipated
expenditure by £7,000,000. As no new taxes were to be levied, he was
compelled to find the money by borrowing, and, of course, no remission
of taxation could in such circumstances be looked for. The House
sanctioned the scheme of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but he was
warned that in future reduced estimates would be demanded.

More than one attempt was made by Mr. Disraeli to assail the Italian
policy of Lord Palmerston. That policy was somewhat tortuous, for whilst
the English Foreign Office was perpetually encouraging Sardinia to
protest against the Austrian occupation of North Italy, England had,
with Austria and France, become a party to the Tripartite Treaty
guaranteeing the execution of the Treaty of Paris. Mr. Disraeli argued
that it was inconsistent to stir up Sardinia and the discontented
populations of Italy against Austria, at a time when we had by the
Tripartite Treaty virtually bound ourselves in a close alliance with the
Austrian Empire. The tyrannical Government of Sicily also elicited
remonstrances from England, against which Russia protested, on the
ground that we had no right to interfere between King “Bomba” and his
subjects. But no enthusiasm was roused on these subjects--in fact, the
country did not desire a change of Government at the time, and every
effort to weaken the Ministry was therefore futile. Yet the home policy
of the Ministry was a signal failure. They succeeded in assimilating the
mercantile law of England and Scotland; but their first Bill to amend
the law of partnership was abandoned in March. A second one was
introduced, and abandoned in July. A Bill for the amendment of the Poor
Law met the same fate. The Bill to regulate lunatic asylums in Ireland,
and a Bill to relieve merchant vessels of tolls and dues were also
abandoned. Ministers were equally unfortunate with their Divorce Bill,
and with their Bills to establish jurisdiction over wills, and to check
the criminal appropriation of trust property. Their Church Discipline
Bill was rejected by the Lords. The Bills to reconstruct the Irish Court
of Chancery and the Insolvency Court were dropped.[280] The Jury Bill,
Juvenile Offenders Bill, and Dublin Police Bill were also given up. The
Civil Servants’ Superannuation Bill, the London Municipal Reform Bill,
the Bill for the local management of the metropolis, a burial Bill, a
vaccination Bill, a Bill dealing with the Queen’s College in Ireland,
and a Scotch education Bill were all abandoned. A Bill enabling two
Bishops to retire on handsome terms was passed, though the arrangement
was denounced as simoniacal, and the County Police Bill also became law.
But the legislative failures of the Government showed that it had no
firm hold over the House of Commons, and that its position was safe,
merely because the nation was not in a mood for change so soon after
its energies had been exhausted in a costly and inglorious war.
Moreover, Parties were still disorganised. Lord John Russell’s isolation
and the position of the Peelites being disturbing factors in the
situation. Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli, however, began to draw nearer
and nearer to each other, Lord Stanley being regarded as the connecting
link between them, and some of the Whigs, a little alarmed at the
prospect of a hostile coalition, began to hint that Palmerston would be
wise to attract the Peelites back to his standard. The fact is, the war
left the country profoundly disgusted with Party government. Sir James
Graham told Mr. Greville that hitherto the party system had been
efficient for government, because patronage had been “the great
instrument for keeping parties together.” Peel, however, broke up the
old party system in 1846, and now, said Sir James Graham, “between the
Press, the public opinion which the Press had made, and the views of
certain people in Parliament, of whom Gladstone is the most eminent and
strenuous, patronage was either destroyed or going rapidly to
destruction.”[281] To some extent the Queen shared these views, but in
the event of any mishap leading to Palmerston’s resignation, the idea of
the Court was to organise a coalition under Clarendon. Parliament was
prorogued on the 29th of July.

Outside politics the life of the Queen during 1856 was not very
eventful. On the 20th of March the confirmation of the Princess Royal
brought together an interesting family gathering at the private chapel
at Windsor. Prince Albert led the princess in, and was followed by the
Queen and King Leopold of Belgium. The officers of State, and of the
household, and most of the members of the Royal Family, were present,
and the Bishop of Oxford, Lord High Almoner, read the preface, the
Archbishop of Canterbury performing the ceremony. Several guests were
present, and in describing the event to Stockmar the Prince dwells with
some pride on the fact that the Princess came through the ordeal of Dean
Wellesley’s preliminary examination a few days before with great
success.[282] The choice of the Navy as Prince Alfred’s profession had
now been made, and in April the Queen and Prince Albert, after much
anxious thought, selected a tutor for their son. He is described by the
Prince in one of his letters as “a distinguished and most amiable young
officer of Engineers ... one Lieutenant Cowell, who was Adjutant of Sir
Harry Jones at Bomarsund and before Sebastopol.... He is only
twenty-three, and has had a high scientific training. By this a great
load has been taken off my heart.”[283]

[Illustration: PORTSMOUTH.]

During the spring of the year the wounded from the Crimea had been
pouring in. In February the Queen presented Miss Florence Nightingale
with a jewel, somewhat resembling the badge of an Order of Knighthood,
for her services at Scutari. On the 16th of April her Majesty went to
Chatham with her husband to visit these victims of the war. She passed
through the wards much affected by the sight of some of the more ghastly
wounds, speaking kind and comforting words of sympathy to those who had
suffered most severely. The Camp at Aldershot was also visited on the
18th of April, and 14,000 troops were reviewed, her Majesty riding along
the line whilst the men presented arms. Next morning was a field day,
and the Queen appeared on the ground on horseback, wearing a
Field-Marshal’s uniform, with the Star of the Garter over a dark-blue
riding-habit. On the 23rd of April the splendid fleet

[Illustration: SIR DE LACY EVANS.]

at Spithead was reviewed. The spectacle was one of surpassing
magnificence, and upwards of 100,000 persons witnessed it, crowding
every spot from which a view could be obtained between Fort Monckton and
Southsea Castle. The Solent was alive with yachts and craft of all
kinds, decked with bunting, which fluttered gaily in the light breeze.
The Queen’s yacht left Portsmouth Harbour at noon, steamed down and
returned through the double line of war-ships. As the yacht rounded the
_Royal George_ and _Duke of Wellington_ they opened a Royal salute, and
their yards were suddenly manned, as if by magic, with seamen, each
trying to cheer louder than his comrade. This manœuvre was repeated in
succession by every ship in the fleet, and the effect was imposing and
impressive. A mimic attack on Southsea Castle followed, and at night
the whole fleet was suddenly and simultaneously illuminated with blue
lights from yards and portholes.

“Our army,” Prince Albert wrote, in April, “has begun to return, and it
will require redoubled exertions to keep up its organisation.” In fact,
already an active party in the Cabinet had begun to demand heavy
retrenchment on military expenditure. The Queen had long been convinced
that hurried retrenchments led to wasteful panic expenditure, and was
very much concerned when she heard what was being mooted in the
Ministry. Hence she wrote to Lord Palmerston expressing her strong
feeling that retrenchment should be moderate and gradual. “To the
miserable reductions of the last thirty years,” she says, “is entirely
owing our state of helplessness when the war began;” and surely, she
urged, Ministers were not going to forget the lesson taught by our
sufferings in the Crimea. What, however, was most seriously wanted was a
new military system which would properly utilise the money already voted
for the army, and prevent it from being jobbed into the hands of
incompetent persons with powerful family interest. Sir De Lacy Evans, on
the 4th of March, made an effort to persuade the House of Commons to
abolish the purchase system, which he described as “a stain upon the
service and a dishonour to England,” and Lord Goderich warmly advocated
the application of some effective tests of competence to candidates for
commissions. But though everybody sympathised with Evans, nobody would
help him to carry out his ideas. In the abstract, said Lord Palmerston,
purchase was bad. No one would propose such a system if we were
establishing an army for the first time. It existed only in the British
army, but, then, it did exist, and it had existed so long that it was
hard to get rid of it without injustice to individuals,[284] and great
expenditure in compensation. Yet the highest estimate made of the value
of commissions did not exceed £8,000,000--less than half the sum voted
every year by the House of Commons for the troops; and even that sum
would have had to be paid, not at once, but over a long series of years,
under any scheme, to release an army which had been pawned to its
officers. Prince Albert, in conjunction with Lord Hardinge, drew up a
plan for a new military organisation, which, however, did not touch
questions of patronage or promotion. On the 19th of May the Queen laid
the foundation stone of the great military hospital at Netley, the first
of the kind in England, and an institution which we owe entirely to her
Majesty. “Loving my dear, brave army as I do,” she writes to King
Leopold, “and having seen so many of my poor sick and wounded soldiers,
I shall watch over this work with maternal anxiety,”[285] A visit from
Prince Frederick William of Prussia brought sunshine into the Royal
household, and gladdened the heart of the Queen’s eldest daughter, who
was supremely happy at once again meeting her betrothed. It was during
this visit that the Princess met with an accident, on the 25th of June,
that might have ended fatally. She was sitting at her table in
Buckingham Palace, reading a letter, when the sleeve of her dress caught
fire from a candle. Luckily Miss Hildyard and Miss Anderson (who were in
the room at the time) promptly rolled the Princess in the hearthrug and
extinguished the flames, though her arm was severely burnt from below
the elbow to the shoulder.

On the 8th of July the Queen again went to Aldershot to review a great
body of Crimean troops, the Royal party including the King of the
Belgians and Prince Oscar of Sweden. Unfortunately the weather somewhat
marred the grandeur of the spectacle, but it became fair enough ere the
day was done to admit of the regiments forming in three sides of a
square round the Queen’s carriage. Then the officers who had been under
fire, with four men from each company and troop, stepped forward, and
her Majesty, rising, addressed them a few words of welcome and thanks.
She told them to say to their comrades that she had herself watched
anxiously over their difficulties and hardships, and mourned with deep
sorrow for the brave men who had fallen in their country’s cause. When
she ceased to speak, the cry of “God save the Queen” burst forth from
every lip. The air was black with helmets, bearskins, and shakoes, which
the men tossed up with delight. Flashing sabres were waving and glancing
along the lines, and on every hillside crowds caught up the cheering
that rose from the serried and glittering ranks of the army. Unhappily
the day was saddened by a strange and melancholy occurrence. Lord
Hardinge was seized with a fit whilst talking to the Queen. “He fell
forward,” says Prince Albert, “upon the table before which he was
standing. I assisted him to the nearest sofa, where he at once resumed
what he was saying with the greatest clearness and calmness, merely
apologising that he had made such a disturbance. When he was moved to
London it was found his right side was paralysed.” Next day the Guards
and Highlanders arrived, and were received by the Queen and enthusiastic
crowds in the Park. “They marched past in fours,” writes Lord
Malmesbury, “preceded by their colonels on horseback and their bands, in
heavy marching order. Certainly they looked as if they had done work;
their uniforms were shabby, many having almost lost all colour, their
bearskins quite brown, and they themselves, poor fellows, though they
seemed happy, and were laughing as they marched along, were very thin
and worn.”[286] Lord Hardinge’s career was now closed. On the 9th of
July he resigned, and on the 24th of September he died. On the 12th of
July the Cabinet accordingly advised the Queen to appoint her cousin,
the Duke of Cambridge, Commander-in-Chief, in succession to Lord
Hardinge, and her Majesty was gratified to find that the arrangement was
one which was highly popular with the troops. Thus the intention of
Wellington was fulfilled, and the army again passed under the direct
command of a Prince of the Blood Royal.

The Prince and Princess of Prussia paid a visit to England in August,
arriving on the 10th and leaving on the 29th, by which time the Court
had retired to Osborne. On the 30th, after spending two days in
Edinburgh, the Queen and her family arrived at Balmoral. “We found the
house finished,” writes the Queen in her Diary, “as well as the offices,
and the poor old house gone!”[287] It was a stormy, tempestuous holiday,
but the Queen made the best of it. On the 21st of September Sir James
Clark introduced Miss Florence Nightingale to the Queen, who was greatly
charmed with her, and with whom her Majesty held grave consultations as
to the reforms that were needed in military hospitals. The coronation of
the Czar at Moscow, on the 7th of September, was attended by Lord
Granville as the Queen’s representative, and when his reports reached
Balmoral, Prince Albert, in a letter to Stockmar, said that they
regarded these as “an apotheosis and homage paid to the vanquished, and
which cannot fail to inspire both worshipper and worshipped with
dangerous illusions in regard to the real state of things.”

The Queen was now getting alarmed as to the carrying out of the Treaty
of Peace. She saw Russia making strenuous efforts to separate France and
England. Instead of restoring Kars to the Turks, the Russians demolished
the fortifications, and prolonged their military occupation of the
country in defiance of the Treaty of Paris. They tried to filch Serpent
Island at the mouth of the Danube, under the pretext that it was inside
the new line of their frontier. They sought to push their new frontier
as far south as Lake Jalpuk, because the Powers, misled by a faulty map,
had permitted them to retain the Moldavian town of Bolgrad.[288] In each
case the Emperor of the French was inclined to support the Russian
claim. The British fleet was therefore ordered to occupy the Black Sea
till the deadlock was ended, and when Chreptovitch, the new Russian
ambassador, threatened to leave England because this step had been
taken, Lord Palmerston coolly told him “the sooner he did so the
better,” if he did not mean to give England satisfaction.[289]

The King of Prussia now began to press the Queen to interfere in a
quarrel between him and the Swiss Republic. Neuenburg or Neufchâtel, by
dynastic inheritance, had come into the possession of Frederick I. in
1707. In 1806 it was ceded to Napoleon, who gave it to Berthier, the
most diplomatic of his generals. After the Great Peace it was granted an
oligarchic constitution,

[Illustration: VIEW IN BERNE.]

and received as a Canton into the Swiss Confederation, but its vassalage
to the House of Hohenzollern was formally acknowledged. In 1848 the
Republican citizens of Neuenburg broke the bond that tied them to the
Prussian crown, and though the Protocol of London of the 24th May, 1852,
recognised the Prussian claim to the Province, the Province ignored the
Protocol of London. In the autumn of 1856 the Prussian party in
Neuenburg attacked the Republicans, but the Swiss Federal troops
ruthlessly suppressed the rising, and not only killed twelve royalists,
but had the audacity to throw a hundred others into prison, simply
because they were loyal to their feudal lord. The King of Prussia
objected to their being put on trial, and demanded their surrender, but
it was a far cry from Berlin to Berne, and the stubborn Switzers paid no
heed to his demands. Napoleon III. menaced them in vain. Austria, always
pleased to see Prussia humbled in Germany, threw obstacles in the way of
Prussian troops marching through the territory of the Confederation to
coerce Switzerland, and Napoleon did not dare to outrage French opinion
by letting them march through Alsace-Lorraine. In England, Palmerston
smiled grimly over the embarrassment of Russia’s most faithful ally. He
said to the Hanoverian Minister in London when Prussia was threatening
coercion, “the Prussians will incur much expense, and in January
Switzerland will condemn the captives and then amnesty them; _donc la
farce sera finie, et la Prusse y sera pour les frais_.”[290]

Nor was this the only anxiety at Court. King “Bomba’s” misgovernment in
southern Italy, and his brutal treatment of persons arbitrarily arrested
on suspicion of disloyalty, were provoking revolution. An outbreak in
the south must lead to a rising in the north, which in turn must involve
France and Sardinia in war with Austria. England and France, finding
their remonstrances disregarded by the Neapolitan Government, withdrew
their legations from Naples in October, and ordered the fleet to make a
demonstration in the bay. This step was sanctioned by the Queen not
without some misgiving, because to suspend diplomatic relations with a
State because its internal government is not to our liking, was to
establish a dangerous diplomatic precedent. It evoked from Russia a
cutting remonstrance, which, however, Lord Palmerston had to accept as
best he could.

On the 19th of October the Court returned to Windsor, and on the 17th of
November, Stockmar, in response to a pressing appeal to come and advise
the Queen in the midst of her growing difficulties, paid her what was
destined to be his last visit. He found her heavily stricken with grief
because of the death of her half-brother, Prince Leiningen, on the 13th.
“We three,” (the Prince, the Princess Hohenlohe, and the Queen), she
writes to King Leopold, “were very fond of each other, and never felt or
fancied that we were not real _Geschwister_ (children of the same
parents). We knew but _one_ parent--_our_ mother.”[291] The last day of
the year brought with it one consolation. The Conference in Paris had
settled our dispute with Russia, and a map was signed by the
plenipotentiaries which met the requirements of the Czar, without giving
Russia strategical advantages which she had tried to obtain.[292]




CHAPTER XXXV.

TWO LITTLE WARS AND A “PENAL DISSOLUTION.”

     The Queen’s New Year Greeting to Napoleon III.--A
     Gladstone-Disraeli Coalition--A “Scene” in the Carlton Club--Mr.
     Disraeli’s Attack on Lord Palmerston’s Foreign Policy--The Queen
     Consents to Reduce the Income Tax--A Fallacious Budget, with
     Imaginary Remissions--The Persian War--General Outram’s
     Victories--Unpopularity of the War--Making War without Consulting
     Parliament--The Rupture with China--A “Prancing Proconsul”--The
     Bombardment of Canton--Defeat of Lord Palmerston, and his Appeal to
     the Country--A Penal Dissolution--Abortive Coalition between the
     Peelites and Tories--Mr. Gladstone and the Intriguers--Split in the
     Peelite Party--Palmerston’s Victory at the Polls--The Rout of the
     Manchester School--The Lesson of the Election--Opening of the New
     Parliament--The Work of the Session--Mr. Gladstone’s Obstruction of
     the Divorce Bill--The Settlement of the Neufchâtel Difficulty--The
     Question of the Principalities--Visit of the French Emperor to the
     Queen.


Writing on New Year’s Day in 1857, Lord Malmesbury says in his Diary,
“The Conference opened yesterday on the questions of Bolgrad and the
Isle of Serpents, which the Russians falsely claim as being included in
the Treaty of Peace. The Swiss are making energetic preparations for
resisting the threatened invasion of Neufchâtel by Prussia; whilst
England and France are using their utmost exertions to prevent a war.
England has declared war against Persia, and Admiral Seymour has
bombarded Canton to avenge an insult offered to our flag.”[293] The
Queen, in a letter conveying her greetings to the Emperor of the French,
also observes, mournfully, that “the New Year again begins amid the din
of warlike preparation;” and there was undoubtedly a feeling of
disappointment in England that the Peace of Paris had not brought peace
to the world. Yet the general condition of the country was prosperous.
Crime, however--especially fraud and murder--had increased shockingly,
and severe moralists in Pall Mall went about predicting that Parliament
must now devote a Session to social legislation--especially penal
legislation--so as to purge a corrupt people of its wickedness. But the
corrupt people, much to the Queen’s regret, was of quite another
opinion--and so were the political factions. The constituencies were
beginning to murmur against taxation. Now that war was over, they
demanded sweeping reductions in the income and other taxes, which
involved the diminution of the army and navy to such slender dimensions,
that her Majesty felt certain they would be as unfit to cope with a
sudden emergency as they were when the Crimea was invaded. As for the
factions, they were determined to turn out the Government, which they
knew existed solely on the credit Palmerston had obtained by carrying on
war when the nation wanted it, and ending it when the nation was getting
sick of the struggle. The Queen was hostile to any abrupt change of
Government at a time when she could see no means of replacing
Palmerston’s Cabinet by a stronger one, and she viewed with
disapprobation the subterranean intrigues which were going on between
the Tories and the Peelites. That Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli were
attempting, through the medium of Lord Stanley, to form a Coalition, was
known at the Court; nay, it was even said that Mr. Gladstone was to take
the leadership of the Tory Party in the House of Commons. Sir William
Jolliffe, the Tory Whip, when pressed on the point in December, 1856,
told Mr. George Byng that this was “not true at present; that he could
not say what might or might not happen hereafter, but that he (Mr.
Gladstone) could not be accepted as a leader, and must, in any case,
first serve in the ranks.” Only a short time before that some of the
younger members of the Party had visited the drawing-room of the Carlton
Club with the amiable intention of throwing Mr. Gladstone out of the
window. That they had now modified their repugnance to him indicates how
keen their hunger for office had grown. But that the Tory Party was
disorganised through Mr. Disraeli’s unpopularity, and also because Lord
Palmerston’s policy, though Liberal abroad, was really too Conservative
at home to be successfully attacked, is clear from a letter which Lord
Derby wrote to Lord Malmesbury on the prosperity of the Conservatives at
the close of 1856.[294]

Parliament was opened on the 3rd of February, 1857, and the Queen’s
Speech naturally referred to the wars and rumours of war that filled the
air. Law Reform and the Bank Act were the only subjects of domestic
interest dwelt upon. Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Sidney Herbert now appeared
almost anxious to join Lord Derby; and the Tories, on their part, were
quite prepared to support Mr. Gladstone in demanding that the Income Tax
be reduced to 5d. in the current year, and abolished altogether in 1860,
as had been agreed on in 1853.[295] Mr. Disraeli’s attack, on the other
hand, was directed against the Foreign Policy of the Government. He
complained that at the very time Lord Clarendon was encouraging the
hopes of Count Cavour and of Italy at the Congress of Paris, France had
signed a Secret Treaty guaranteeing to Austria her Italian provinces,
and had signed it by the advice of England. Lord Palmerston denied the
existence of this Secret Treaty. But he admitted that in 1854, when
there was some hope that Austria would take part in the war, an
agreement was made to the effect that should Russia raise an
insurrection in North Italy, France would help Austria to put it down,
if Austrian armies were actually co-operating with the Allies against
Russia. In the Upper House, Lord Aberdeen voted for the amendment to the
Address with many of the Tories--a somewhat unusual thing for an
ex-Premier to do--and this, along with Mr. Gladstone’s cordial support
of Mr. Disraeli, was taken to be a sign that the Peelites desired to
coalesce with the Opposition. Lord John Russell, who was a kind of
political Ishmaelite, also spoke bitterly about the abortive
demonstration of the fleet at Naples, which had drawn upon us insulting
remonstrances, and had not coerced King Ferdinand into good behaviour.
On the 17th of February Mr. Disraeli compelled Lord Palmerston to admit
that “a military convention,” if not a Secret Treaty, between France and
Austria _had_ been signed, but only as a temporary arrangement. When,
however, Mr. Disraeli persisted in saying it was a Secret Treaty, and
that on the face of it there was no limit to the period of its
operation, Palmerston lost his temper, a circumstance so extraordinary
that it convinced the House he had been again caught tripping.

[Illustration: OLD WINDSOR LOCK.

(_From a Photograph by Taunt and Co., Oxford._)]

After many harassing consultations, the Queen felt that it was
impossible for the Cabinet to resist the growing agitation against the
Income Tax. The coalition between Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli was too
ominous to be disregarded; and so, on the 10th of February, she wrote to
King Leopold, “We think we shall be able to reduce the Income Tax and
yet maintain an efficient navy, and the _organisation_ of the army,
which is even more important than the number of the men.”[296] When Sir
George Cornewall Lewis brought in his Budget on the 13th of February, it
was found that he reduced the Income Tax from 1s. 4d. to 7d. in the
pound; but of course this was still 2d. above the peace limit fixed in
1853. The complaint of the Opposition was that the Government imposed
that 2d. merely to promote what Mr. Disraeli called the “turbulent and
aggressive policy” abroad by which Lord Palmerston diverted the
attention of the country from its own affairs at home.[297] Mr.
Gladstone attacked the Budget all along the line. Sir George Lewis, he
said, pretended to remit £11,000,000 of taxation. But of that sum
£4,470,000 were war taxes, which necessarily dropped when war was over,
and though Sir George brought the tea duty down from 1s. 9d. to 1s. 7d.
on the lb., and on sugar from 20s. per cwt. to 18s. 4d., that still
raised from tea and sugar £1,400,000 more than the old peace duties drew
from them. The real remission, then, was not £11,000,000, but
£3,184,000. The faults of the Budget were obviously two. It virtually
ignored the pledge of the Government in 1853 to abolish the Income Tax
in 1860. Instead of cutting down expenditure so as to render it possible
to keep that pledge, it increased expenditure above the peace limit, so
as to make it impossible to surrender the Income Tax.[298] The accepted
financial policy of the country had been to grant an Income Tax during
peace solely to enable the Government to remit taxes on articles of
popular consumption. It was granted merely to give an elastic revenue
time to recover from sudden remissions of indirect taxation. Sir George
Lewis, however, still kept the tax above the peace limit, and his small
reductions on the tea and sugar duties left them standing above the
peace limit also. Moreover, he maintained his expenditure on a scale
which created deficits that rendered the continuance of the Income Tax,
without compensating remissions of indirect taxes, inevitable. In fact,
Sir George Lewis may be said to have introduced the vicious principle of
modern finance, by which a temporary Income Tax is insidiously converted
into a permanent one, and by which, under cover of extraordinary
disbursement during a war, the country is left after peace is declared
with a residue of that outlay clinging to the estimates, as ordinary and
permanent annual expenditure. The Budget, however, was carried through
in a slightly modified form, but the sudden dissolution of Parliament in
March compelled Sir George Lewis to levy his new taxes not on a
descending scale for three years, but for the ensuing year only. With a
view to the popular vote to which Lord Palmerston was about to appeal,
Sir George then surrendered 2d. of the tea duty, which brought it down
to 1s. 5d. on the pound. But he made no adequate provision for the
Persian war, or the war with China. His alteration of the tea duty of
course rendered his surplus a myth, and his Budget, with an inflated
expenditure, went forth, as Mr. Gladstone complained, with a deficiency
of ways and means. In fact, on the eve of an appeal to the
constituencies, a prudish Chancellor of the Exchequer “went to the
country” with a profligate electioneering Budget.

Mention has been already made of a “little war” that was being waged
with Persia. It had sprung out of the irrepressible desire of the Shah
to hold Herat, and from the traditional belief of the Foreign Office
that when Herat was in Persian hands, “the key of India” was in the
pockets of the Czar.[299] In 1851 Persia had promised that she would not
meddle with Herat if the Afghans did not attempt to seize it. But the
Governor of Candahar advanced on the coveted city, whose ruler appealed
to Persia for protection. The Indian Government admitted that there was
no danger to India in Persia responding to this appeal. The Foreign
Office, however, suspended diplomatic relations with the Court of
Teheran.[300] Persia then agreed to retire from Herat when the Afghans
withdrew, and negotiations went on in a dilatory fashion till the
Crimean War broke out, when the Czar urged Persia to resist and become
his ally. The Shah’s Prime Minister held his Imperial master back, and
Mr. Thomson, a typical representative of the Foreign Office in Persia,
by way of further conciliating the friendly Premier, appointed as First
Secretary of the British Legation, a disreputable person who had been
dismissed from the Persian service, and whose family were among the most
active enemies of the anti-Russian Minister. The Minister refused to
receive this individual--Meerza Hashim by name. By way of compensating
him Mr. Murray, who succeeded Mr. Thomson, appointed him British agent
at Shiraz, a place where we had no right to have an agent at all, but
where, by the courtesy of the Persian Government, we had been allowed to
have one.[301] The Persian Premier then threatened to arrest Meerza
Hashim. As a matter of fact, he arrested his wife, and maliciously
insinuated in a despatch, when Mr. Murray demanded her release, that he
had compromised himself with the lady. Murray accordingly struck his
flag and demanded an apology, whereupon Persia issued a manifesto
declaring that the Afghans were advancing on Herat, and threatening to
seize that fortress. In July, 1856, a British force was ordered to
proceed from Bombay to occupy the island of Karrack and the city of
Bushire. By this time the Crimean War was over, and Persia could get no
aid from her Russian ally. A Persian ambassador therefore was sent to
Paris to negotiate for peace, but he broke his journey at Constantinople
to arrange the terms with Stratford de Redcliffe. Whilst there, news
came that Persia had captured Herat. Stratford demanded its evacuation,
and the dismissal of the Prime Minister. This latter demand the Persian
Envoy rejected. The English Government therefore went on with the war.
It was, however, declared by the Indian Government that war was waged
for the recovery of Herat, which Persia had offered to evacuate, whereas
the British Government, in their declaration, stated that their object
was the dismissal of the Persian Premier,[302] who had foiled the
attempt of Russia to drag the Shah into the Crimean War. The Expedition,
led by General Outram, occupied Karrack and captured Bushire. But these
victories did not really determine the issue. In England the war had
become unpopular. Palmerston had begun it, and carried it on without
consulting the House of Commons, by the simple expedient of using the
revenues of India to meet its expenses. This was a source of supplies
which the House, of course, could not control. At the beginning of the
Session it was currently rumoured that the Government would soon be
called to account for a proceeding which the Representative Chamber was
bound to view with jealousy and suspicion.

These mutterings of hostility alarmed Palmerston, for he had already
determined to dissolve Parliament and appeal to the country against the
condemnation which the House of Commons had passed on his policy in
China. Whilst, as yet, the full bearing of his Persian policy was
imperfectly understood by the constituencies, he hastened to make peace,
and Persia, after her defeats, was not disposed to be obstinate. But the
Shah refused to dismiss his Prime Minister, and Palmerston was
accordingly fain to withdraw his demand, and be content with an apology
for the imputations which had been cast on Mr. Murray’s character. Such
was the inglorious end of a war which is one of the least creditable
events in Lord Palmerston’s career. As might be expected, when the
General Election was over, and the new Parliament met, Ministers were
fiercely attacked for declaring and prosecuting the war
unconstitutionally without consulting the House of Commons. The country
was now fully alive to the danger that lurked in such a monstrous
extension of the Queen’s prerogative as would permit her to use the
revenues of India, which the House of Commons could not control, for
carrying on war outside the Indian Empire. The only real control which
the people have over the Crown is their power to stop supplies for the
army. The Persian War, however, proved that the Crown could draw
supplies and troops from India, without any Parliamentary sanction
whatever. Palmerston’s policy had thus put into the hands of the Queen
a deadlier weapon of despotism than either the Tudors or the Stuarts had
dared to wield. But the attack, damaging as it was, failed to upset the
Ministry; though the House, in 1858, at Mr. Gladstone’s suggestion,
forced the Government to accept a clause in the India Bill which
disallowed such pretensions on the part of the Crown.[303]

But at the beginning of the Session of 1857 it was not Persia but China
that really engrossed the attention of the country. A dispute between
Sir John Bowring, Governor of Hong Kong, and the Chinese authorities at
Canton, raised an issue which made it easy for the Peelites to unite
with the Tories, and the Cobdenites with both.

[Illustration: SIR JOHN BOWRING.]

The Chinese War of 1857 occupies an unique place in the events of the
Victorian epoch, because it was a war which was provoked by a member of
the Peace Society. In October, 1856, the Chinese authorities arrested
twelve Chinamen on board a native lorcha called the _Arrow_, on a charge
of piracy. The British Consul, asserting that the _Arrow_ was a British
ship, contended very properly that the accused should have been demanded
from him. Nine of the Chinamen were released. Sir John Bowring thereupon
insisted on the release of the other three, and an apology within
forty-eight hours, on pain of immediate reprisals. The three men were
released; but the Chinese Governor courteously refused to apologise,
because, he said, as the _Arrow_ was _not_ a British ship, no wrong had
been done to the British flag. This was literally true, for Sir J.
Bowring, as everybody now admits, was utterly mistaken as to the
nationality of the lorcha. The courtesy of the Chinese in surrendering
the prisoners in deference to an illegal demand, which Bowring had
couched in terms of offensive arrogance, was rewarded next day by the
bombardment of the luckless commercial city of Canton--a barbarous act
which could be justified by the laws neither of God nor of man. In fact,
“a prancing pro-Consul,” to use a famous phrase of Sir William
Harcourt’s, had virtually usurped the prerogative of the Crown, and
levied war on a foreign Government on his own responsibility. Instead of
recalling Bowring and the British Consul, Lord Palmerston, without
giving the matter much thought, identified himself with their
proceedings, though many Members of his Cabinet, notably Lord Granville
and Mr. Labouchere, who afterwards were forced to defend Bowring in
Parliament, personally disapproved of his conduct.[304] But Ministers
virtually abandoned the case of the _Arrow_ when the controversy grew
hot. “As usual,” writes Mr. Morley, “they shifted the ground from the
particular to the general; if the Chinese were right about the _Arrow_
they were wrong about something else; if legality did not exactly
justify violence, it was at any rate required by policy; Orientals
mistake justice for fear; and so on through the string of well-worn
sophisms, which are always pursued in connection with such
affairs.”[305] The real truth, as the Tory leaders said in the debates
in both Houses of Parliament, was that Bowring’s vanity had been hurt
because the Chinese had refused to receive him in Canton. When he sent
Admiral Sir M. Seymour to bombard the port he tacked on to his original
ultimatum a demand that foreigners should be freely admitted to the
city, on the ground that this privilege, though ceded by the Treaty of
1846, had never been granted. Admitting that his interpretation of this
disputed point in the Treaty was correct, neither he nor Lord Palmerston
had any right to force that interpretation on China by war. Their duty
was to have acted in concert with the Governments of France and the
United States, who were equally interested in the question, and in this
way to exhaust the resources of diplomacy, before appealing to the
arbitrament of the sword. Every Member of both Houses of Parliament who
was not an infatuated partisan of Lord Palmerston’s took this view of
the case; and when Mr. Cobden, on the 26th of February, brought forward
a motion condemning the policy of the Government, he carried it, after a
debate which lasted many nights, by a majority of sixteen.[306] In the
House of Lords the Government repelled the attack, on the 27th of
February, by a majority of thirty-six; and had the division been taken
on the same night in the Commons, the majority, after Cobden’s and
Russell’s speeches, would have been so enormous that Palmerston would
hardly have dared to ask the Queen to dissolve Parliament. But he
adroitly delayed matters, held a meeting of his Party, harangued them,
and threatened them with a dissolution, and so, by the 4th of March,
when the division was taken, the majority against him dwindled to
sixteen. On the 5th of March, Ministers announced that Parliament would
be dissolved and the sense of the country taken on the issue. The
antipathy of the Queen to “penal dissolutions,” indeed, to any
dissolution of Parliament, if it can be avoided, was overcome by Lord
Palmerston representing that the majority against him was exceedingly
small--that it was made up of a coalition of factions, whose leaders,
agreeing only on one point, could not possibly form a stable Government.
On the other hand, from a General Election a Government of some kind
would be evolved with a solid working majority, an advantage of supreme
importance in the eyes of the Sovereign.

Then the game of intrigue began. Lord Malmesbury was sent to Mr. Sidney
Herbert to negotiate an alliance between the Tories and the Peelites,
his proposal being, says Lord Malmesbury, “that we should not take a
hostile part towards each other’s candidates.” By this arrangement it
was supposed that no personal enmities would be made, and the difficulty
of organising an actual coalition, if such should be deemed necessary,
would therefore be minimised.[307] Mr. Herbert rejected these overtures,
because the Peelites had become so much divided in opinion and so weak
in influence, that his desire was to see them dispersed. Lord Malmesbury
then sounded Mr. Gladstone at the Carlton Club. “He had,” writes his
lordship, “seen Sidney Herbert, who told him of our interview, and
Gladstone said he quite disagreed with his views, and had told him
so.... His leanings are apparently towards us, but he was quite of my
opinion that no sort of agreement should be made beyond the one I had
proposed.”[308] In fact, Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Herbert had very nearly
quarrelled over the matter. Writing to Sir George Lewis on the 16th of
March, the late Mr. A. Hayward says, “Gladstone and S. Herbert have come
to an explanation which has ended very like the lovers’ separation in
Little’s poems:--

    ‘You may down _that_ pathway rove,
     While I shall take my way through _this_.’

Sidney Herbert takes the Liberal and Gladstone the Derbyite turn. I know
no one who will follow Gladstone’s lead in the matter, except, perhaps,
Lord A. Harvey.”[309]

As a rule in England, the Minister who dissolves Parliament and appeals
to the country is beaten. The General Election of 1857 was a startling
exception to that rule. For Palmerston it was a complete victory. For
his opponents it was not a defeat--but a rout. Cobden, Bright, Gibson,
Fox, and Miall were rejected by the very men whose fortunes they had
made by their Free Trade policy. As Mr. Morley says, “nothing had been
seen like it since the disappearance of the Peace Whigs in 1812, when
Brougham, Tierney, Lamb, and Horner all lost their seats.”[310] The
Peelites suffered almost as cruelly. The Conservative ranks were sadly
thinned, for twenty-four counties were won by the Ministry; in fact, the
_Times_ declared, that the Tories would “never again, as a party, become
candidates for office.”[311] The “Manchester School” lost its
supporters, (1), because it had got the reputation of factiously
opposing all Governments; (2), because the manufacturers, enriched by
Free Trade, had ceased to be Radical; and (3), because they thought that
when Palmerston forced Bowring into Canton at the point of the bayonet,
cotton goods would go in with him. The Peelites were beaten (1), because
they were divided among themselves; and (2), because they were a small
faction, and in a General Election a small faction generally is crushed
in the collision between the great parties. The Tories lost adherents
(1), because the farmers resented their support of an amendment moved by
their natural enemy, Mr. Cobden; and (2), because rumours were spread
abroad by Lord Palmerston’s agents that they were about to coalesce with
Mr. Gladstone, who represented the principles of “the traitor Peel.”
Lord Palmerston triumphed (1), because his only Liberal rival, Lord John
Russell, had alienated the country by his tortuous disloyalty to two
Ministries, and incurred the hatred of the Dissenters by his defence of
Church Rates; (2), because his personal popularity, after bringing the
wars with Russia and Persia to an end, was unbounded; and (3), because
he and his satellites poured forth speeches, inflated with cheap and
vulgar “patriotic” claptrap, to such an extent that even Mr. Greville
says in his “Memoirs” that he was “disgusted at the enormous and
shameful lying with which the country is deluged.”[312] England,
moreover, was involved in a war with China, and after all Palmerston was
the only political leader who had proved that he could carry on a war
with least discredit to the country.[313] The election was, therefore,
a personal one. Constituents did not scrutinise closely the principles
or capacity of candidates, so long as they promised to support Lord
Palmerston,[314] and so numbers of Parliamentary Reformers crept
unnoticed into the House. But in such cases the loyalty of a majority
lasts no longer than the popularity of the leader. Let him make one
false step that forfeits popularity, and then his supporters desert him,
disinterring what they call their “principles” from buried election
addresses to justify their “new departure.”

[Illustration: CHINESE LORCHAS IN THE CANTON RIVER.]

It was unfortunate that neither the Queen nor Prince Albert recognised
this fact, and that they both imagined that Palmerston’s
principles--which, in domestic policy, were reactionary and
illiberal--were as popular as Palmerston himself. The only true and just
criticism of this historic Election, which sent 189 new Members to the
House of Commons, and for a time broke the old parties to pieces, was
passed by the Duke of Newcastle. Writing to Mr. Hayward on the 10th of
April, he says:--“I come to the conclusion that Palmerston will be
disappointed with his new Parliament. The gain to _Liberal opinion_ is
very great, and the Derby party is for the present smashed; but in these
gains are to be found Palmerston’s disadvantages. Nobody _can_ fear the
alternative of a Derby Ministry, and if Palmerston _rises_ to the
occasion he will soon find his popularity gone and his Government in
danger. It is all nonsense to suppose that the China vote has really
influenced the decision of the country; but there is a question which
alone Palmerston cares about (and that in an _adverse_ sense), which has
gained ground everywhere, and is now established as the question of the
day--Reform of Parliament; and I have no belief in a _good_ measure
coming from unwilling men; and _how_ unwilling are the influential men
in the present Cabinet my former association with them pretty well
informs me.”[315]

From this Election the history of the Queen’s reign enters on a fresh
phase. Underlying every party intrigue and combination there is
henceforth to be detected an irrepressible though concealed antagonism
between the Parliamentary Reformers and their opponents. In England, it
is a curious fact that political parties always exhaust their ingenuity
in veiling the real issue between them. When a Government is punished by
dismissal, it is not dismissed for the blunder it has committed, but
because it has done, or refused to do, something else, which is hardly
hinted at in public, but which has offended a powerful body of its
supporters. Palmerston was a Minister whose ardent, impetuous
temperament, and confidence in his own dexterity, rendered him prone to
commit blunders. A Minister of that type can go on blundering with
impunity so long as he is supposed to be trustworthy on the one great
question which lies closest to the hearts of that section of his
supporters, who are prepared to sacrifice him for their cause. But
whenever they discover that he is not to be trusted, they take advantage
of his first mistake to combine with his enemies and overthrow him. In
the new Parliament of 1857, it was therefore clear that Palmerston’s
personal ascendency would last till the party of Parliamentary Reform
discovered that they had absolutely nothing to expect from him, save
open or concealed hostility. It was because the Queen did not grasp this
fact that she was startled to find, a few months after Parliament met,
how rapidly Palmerston’s popularity was waning. Prince Albert also,
strangely enough, mistook the verdict of the country in 1857, as being
one cast solely against “the peace-at-any-price people.”[316]

On the 7th of May the House of Commons began the business of the new
Session. On that day the Lord Chancellor read the Queen’s Speech, which,
contrary to general expectation, did not contain any reference to
Parliamentary Reform. It was, says Lord Malmesbury, “the lamest
production, even for a Queen’s Speech, I ever read.”[317] However, it
gave a soothing account of foreign affairs, and intimated not only that
the main stipulations of the Treaty of Paris had been carried out, and
that the Neufchâtel difficulty was in a fair way of being settled, but
it announced the signature of a Treaty of Peace with Persia. The only
subject for regret in our foreign relations was, of course, the war with
China. The legislative programme was meagre in the extreme, for the only
important Bills promised were, one relating to the jurisdiction of the
Ecclesiastical Courts over wills and divorce, and another to check
fraudulent breaches of trust. The Address was carried with very little
debate, the Radicals being satisfied to let the question of
Parliamentary Reform sleep, because Lord Palmerston promised that during
the recess the Cabinet would give the subject serious consideration. It
was, in truth, a dull and uneventful Session.

But a slight fillip of interest was imparted to it by the revival of the
old controversy as to the admission of Jews to Parliament. The election
of Baron Rothschild as one of the Members for the City of London
compelled the Government to deal with the matter, and Lord Palmerston
brought forward a Bill, on the 15th of May, to alter the law relating to
Parliamentary Oaths, and remove from the statute book one of the last
relics of mediæval bigotry. Although it was bitterly opposed by many
Tories, such as Sir F. Thesiger and Mr. Whiteside, the Bill passed the
House of Commons, but only to be thrown out by the House of Lords. Lord
John Russell then tried to solve the problem by bringing in a Bill to
extend the operation of the Act, 1 and 2 Vict. cap. 106, giving a
discretion as to the forms on which certain oaths are administered. But
while this Bill was in progress it was proposed to free the Jews from
their Parliamentary disabilities by applying to their case the
provisions of the Act 5 and 6 William IV. cap. 62. This Act was passed
to enable a solemn declaration to be substituted for an oath in certain
instances. The only question was whether the Act could be stretched so
as to include the oath imposed on Members of Parliament. On Lord John
Russell’s motion a Select Committee was appointed to inquire if the Act
applied to Parliamentary Oaths, but in due time they reported that it
did not. This virtually ended the controversy for the Session, and Lord
John Russell could only give notice that he would renew the agitation
next year.

Undoubtedly the legal and social reforms proposed by the Government in
1857 were those which created most excitement in the country. The
Ecclesiastical Courts had been long threatened with extinction, and at
last the Government dealt them a fatal blow. Bills were introduced in
May transferring to purely secular tribunals their Testamentary
Jurisdiction and the greater part of their control over the Marriage
Laws, and though the establishment of the new Court of Probate was not
much opposed, the Divorce Bill was fiercely debated. Members who were
under sacerdotal influence attacked this measure with

[Illustration: THE CASCADE: VIRGINIA WATER.]

the utmost ferocity. Indeed, it was not opposed, but factiously
obstructed, clause by clause and line by line, Mr. Gladstone being the
most energetic of its opponents.[318] It was, however, passed, and
undoubtedly the Government won some credit in the country by the
pertinacity with which they piloted this embarrassing measure through
both Houses of Parliament. “I am very glad,” writes Lord Campbell, in
his Journal, “that the Divorce Bill finally passed the Commons framed
almost exactly according to the recommendations of the commission over
which I had the honour to preside, preserving the law as it has
practically subsisted for two hundred years: that a husband who has
conducted himself properly may obtain a dissolution of the marriage for
the adultery of the wife, and that a wife may obtain a dissolution of
the marriage for the adultery of the husband, attended by incest, or any
aggravation which renders it impossible for the connubial union to
continue; the

[Illustration: PLAN OF WINDSOR CASTLE.]

law being now to be administered by a regular judicial tribunal, instead
of the injured parties being obliged to petition the Legislature for
private Acts of Parliament to dissolve the marriage. We are assailed on
the one hand by those who hold that, according to divine law, marriage
cannot be dissolved even for adultery, and on the other by those who
think that for this purpose no distinction should be made between the
sexes,[319] and that in all cases the wife should be entitled to a
divorce on proof of any breach of the marriage vow by the husband. But I
think the true principle is, that the marriage ought only to be
dissolved when it is impossible for the injured party to _condone_, and
that Divine Providence has constituted an essential difference in this
respect between the adultery of the husband and the adultery of the
wife. I would rather run the risk of cases of great hardship occurring,
when it would seem desirable that women should be released from the
tyranny of profligate and brutal husbands, than give too great a
facility to divorce, which has a tendency most demoralising.”[320]

Another measure of sound reform, with which Lord Campbell honourably
associated his name, gave rise to a curious incident, towards the end of
the Session, in the House of Commons. “Since I returned from circuit,”
says Lord Campbell, in his Diary, “my chief business has been to watch
the progress through the House of Commons of my Bill for checking the
trade in obscene publications by allowing them to be seized in the
_depôts_ of the dealers. Brougham had hardly ventured to oppose the Bill
as it passed through the Lords, but afterwards he wrote a violent
article against it in the _Law Magazine_, and he put up Roebuck to
assail it in the House of Commons. The Bill, being in Committee
yesterday (July 12th), I showed myself in the Peers’ Gallery to watch
its fate, and that I might be consulted, if necessary, during the
debate. Roebuck contented himself with reading a letter which he had
received from Brougham, pointing out the danger of country justices
perverting the Bill for the punishment of poachers; and it went through
the Committee with the amendments which I had suggested and assented to.
The Speaker then sent me a message by the Chancellor of the Exchequer
complaining that I had appeared in the House _to overawe their
deliberations_, like Cardinal Wolsey and Charles I., and that it would
become his duty to protest against such an unconstitutional
proceeding.”[321]

Brief mention must also be made of the Fraudulent Trusts Bill, as one
of the Ministerial achievements during the Session of 1857. Several
glaring cases of embezzlement on the part of trustees had recently
occurred, and yet it was found that the existing criminal law could not
reach the guilty parties. Sir Alexander Cockburn, before his elevation
to the Bench, had promised to deal with this scandal, and now his
successor, Sir Richard Bethell, afterwards Lord Westbury, fulfilled that
promise. The object of his Bill was simply to make trustees of
settlements, directors of companies, and other persons invested with a
fiduciary character, criminally responsible for frauds, or for the
misappropriation of the funds entrusted to their care. The Bill passed
both Houses. The only serious opposition it met with was from Lord St.
Leonards, who dreaded lest its severity might deter honest and
substantial men from serving as trustees.

These were among the chief results of the brief but useful Session of
1857, which was prorogued on the 28th of August. Up to midsummer the
House of Commons dozed through halcyon days, only too well pleased to do
the bidding of its master. Lord John Russell was meek, Mr. Gladstone was
an absentee, the Tories were discouraged, and the Radicals were docile.
To go to a division at this time on any question was to rush to
ignominious defeat. But about the middle of July the House began to show
signs of a quickened life. The debates on the Persian War roused the
combatant spirit of the Opposition; Mr. Gladstone reappeared, as
Ministers knew to their cost when the Divorce Bill was obstructed; and
it was remarked that even Palmerston’s most subservient followers no
longer hesitated to cheer Mr. Roebuck or Mr. Disraeli, when they made an
exceptionally clever attack on the Ministry. In August the shadow of the
Indian Mutiny darkened the prospects of the Government, and when
Parliament was prorogued there was some ill-concealed grumbling among
the captious critics of the Court, because the Queen went to Scotland at
a time when the British Empire in India was in dire peril. But on the
whole, Palmerston’s _prestige_ was not materially impaired. His domestic
programme, modest as it was, had been successfully carried out.
Moreover, for the first time in his career, his relations with the Court
had been put on a satisfactory footing. On this point Mr. Greville
records an interesting conversation with Lord Clarendon, who told him
that the Queen had treated Palmerston during the Session with unreserved
confidence. Palmerston, on the other hand, found it expedient to treat
the Queen with a deference and attention which had produced a favourable
change in her sentiments towards him. Mr. Greville says, “Clarendon told
me that Palmerston had lately been ailing in a way to cause some
uneasiness.... Clarendon talked one day to the Queen about Palmerston’s
health, concerning which she expressed her anxiety, when Clarendon said
she might indeed be anxious, for it was of the greatest importance to
her, and if anything happened to him he did not know where she could
look for a successor to him, that she had often expressed her great
desire to have a _strong_ Government, and that she had now got one,
Palmerston being a strong Minister. She admitted the truth of it.
Clarendon said he was always very earnest with her to bestow her whole
confidence on Palmerston, and not even to talk to others on any subjects
which properly belonged to him, and he had more than once (when,
according to her custom, she began to talk to him on certain things),
said to her, ‘Madam, that concerns Lord Palmerston, and I think your
Majesty had better reserve it for your communications with him.’ He
referred to the wonderful change in his own relations to Palmerston,
that seven or eight years ago Palmerston was full of hatred and
suspicion of him, and now they were the best of friends, with mutual
confidence and goodwill, and lately, when he was talking to Palmerston
of the satisfactory state of his relations to the Queen, and of the
utility it was to his government that it should be so, Palmerston said,
‘And it is likewise a very good thing that she has such boundless
confidence in her Secretary for Foreign Affairs, when after all there is
nothing she cares about so much.’”[322]

And yet it cannot be said that in foreign affairs Lord Palmerston had
won any conspicuous triumph for British diplomacy. The dispute with
Persia did not end gloriously for England. It is true that the
controversy over Neufchâtel, in which the Queen, owing to her close
relations with the Royal Family of Prussia, was deeply interested,
terminated happily.[323] But on the other hand, the vexed question of
the Danubian Principalities was still open, and it was almost certain
that it would lead to the diplomatic humiliation of England.

The future government of the two Principalities was left by the Congress
of Paris to be settled by the Treaty Powers. Russia desired their union
under a Native prince. France and Sardinia desired their union under a
foreign prince, fearing that a Native ruler would soon become a mere
satrap of the Czar. Turkey and Austria desired to keep the
Principalities separate, and this view was warmly supported by Lord
Palmerston and Lord Clarendon. At the Congress of Paris, France had
insidiously suggested to Austria that she should take the
Principalities, the object being to justify new territorial arrangements
on the Rhine in French interests. After that proposal was rejected, the
French Emperor drew closer and closer to Russia; but when the General
Election gave Palmerston a solid majority, Russia became effusively
civil to England. When, however, England persisted in acting with
Austria and the Porte, thereby resisting territorial changes, which
could only be made

[Illustration: THE DUKE OF CAMBRIDGE.

(_From a Photograph by Bassano._)]

at the expense of Austrian and Turkish interests,[324] the French
Emperor took umbrage at our diplomacy. But Persigny’s influence was
successfully exerted to hold him true to the Anglo-French alliance,
Persigny’s chief argument being that a war with England would so
convulse France that, in the general confusion, the Bonapartist dynasty
might disappear. Napoleon III., therefore, determined to pay the Queen a
private visit, and, though her Majesty was not anxious to receive him,
she consented to do so, in the hope and belief that personal
communications between the two sovereigns might serve some useful
purpose.

When this visit was paid, in August, the controversy over the
Principalities had become very serious. The Moldavian elections had
returned a majority of Separatists, and the French complained that this
result was due to the influence of English agents over the
constituencies. France, Russia, and Sardinia, in fact, threatened to
suspend diplomatic relations with Turkey unless the elections were
annulled. The Eastern Question, in short, had once more been re-opened,
and Europe was thus brought to the brink of war. The French Emperor, the
Queen, and Prince Albert freely interchanged their ideas on the question
at Osborne, whilst at the same time the French and English
Ministers--namely, Persigny, Walewski, Palmerston, and
Clarendon--carried on a series of conferences. The grievance of the
Emperor was that, though Turkey had promised France to annul the
elections, at the last moment she had, at the instigation of Lord
Stratford de Redcliffe, broken her promise. The Porte had admitted that
they were thus in the wrong, but had excused their conduct by saying
that they acted under pressure from England and the English Ambassador.
The annulment of the elections was now with France a point of honour;
and as Persigny had failed to bring Palmerston and Clarendon to reason
on the point, his Majesty had resolved to appeal to the Queen. The Queen
and her husband seem to have met the Emperor’s arguments with Lord
Stratford’s counter-statement, but in vain. The end of their conference
was a victory for France on the main point at issue. Lord Stratford was
to be ordered to reverse his course, and to call on the Porte to annul
the elections. “Lord Palmerston,” writes Lord Malmesbury on the 14th of
August, “has given way on the question of the Principalities, so the
Emperor has gained his point by his visit to Osborne. The dispute arose
on the question of the union of the Principalities, which France,
Russia, Prussia, and Sardinia supported. England, Austria, and Turkey
opposed the union; and the elections in Moldavia having been in favour
of England, the French, Russians, &c., accused the English Government of
having influenced them unfairly, and demanded that they should be
annulled. The Porte refused this, upon which the Ambassadors of France,
Prussia, and Sardinia struck their flags. The Emperor Napoleon, instead
of wasting time in useless correspondence, came over himself, and the
question was settled at once. I do not pretend to judge whether
Palmerston was right or wrong, but his defeat must have cost him a
bitter pang. Louis Napoleon’s Ministers have been completely won over by
the Russians, especially Walewski.”[325] The Queen was certainly of a
different opinion. She thought that Palmerston had succeeded in
effecting a compromise, and not a capitulation. Prince Albert was also
distinctly under the impression that whilst England surrendered on the
question of the elections, France had surrendered on the question of
uniting the Principalities. A Memorandum was drawn up on 9th of August,
embodying some arrangement of this sort, but Walewski refused to sign
it, upon the ground, says Sir T. Martin, “that the Emperor’s Government
desired to keep the satisfaction to be obtained from the Porte and the
arrangement subsequently to be made respecting the Principalities
distinct from each other, and, also because, were he to sign the
Memorandum, it would appear that France had made a concession on the
latter point for the purpose of inducing the Sultan to agree on the
former.” He also appears to have stated that it was not necessary to
sign the document, because “amongst men of honour writing was
unnecessary.” In May, 1858, at the second Congress of Paris, it was
discovered that writing in this case was extremely necessary. When the
British Plenipotentiaries contended that the French Emperor had yielded
on the point of the union of the Principalities, His Majesty denied that
he had done anything of the sort. The only concession he ever made,
according to his account, was that he would not insist on their being
ruled over by a foreign prince--a detail of secondary consequence. It
seems also to have been admitted on our side that we had agreed to
recognise the administrative union of the provinces, so that the
misunderstanding may have arisen out of a quibble over the terms
“administrative” and “political” union.

During this visit, Lord Malmesbury tells us that extraordinary
precautions were taken by the Queen for the Emperor’s protection.
“Eighty detectives were sent down from London, besides French police.
The strictest guard was kept round the Palace and over the island.
Besides this, a number of men-of-war’s boats guarded the shore, and did
not allow a single boat to approach.”[326] From a memorandum of their
conversations which Prince Albert drew up, it is obvious that the
settlement of the question of the Principalities was not the sole object
of Napoleon’s journey to Osborne. He broached a great many insidious
proposals for a redistribution of European territory, also for a
revision of the Treaties of 1815, but they were all coldly and
sceptically received. He even suggested a wild scheme for converting the
Mediterranean into an European lake. “Spain might have Morocco, Sardinia
a part of Tripoli, England Egypt, Austria a part of Syria--_et que sais
je_,” writes Prince Albert, in describing this suggestion;[327] the
first step being a friendly understanding with England on the subject.
As his Majesty had told the Prince he was soon to have an interview with
the Russian Czar, it need hardly be said that no encouragement was given
by the Queen to these extraordinary projects. In truth, neither the
Queen nor her Ministers were at this moment in a mood for entering on an
adventurous foreign policy. The Indian Empire had been shaken to its
centre by the revolt of the Bengal Army, a revolt known in history as
the great Indian Mutiny, and the causes of which must now be traced.




CHAPTER XXXVI.

THE INDIAN MUTINY.

     The Centenary of Plassey--Rumours of Rebellion--Causes of the
     Mutiny--The Annexation of Oudh--Lord Dalhousie’s Indian Policy--Its
     Disturbing Effect on the Minds of the Natives--The Royal Family of
     Delhi--The Hindoo “Sumbut”--The Discontent of the Bengal Army--The
     Grievances of the Sepoy--The Greased Cartridges--The Mystery of the
     “Chupatties”--Mutiny of the Garrison at Meerut--The March to
     Delhi--Sir Henry Lawrence at Lucknow--The Tragedy of
     Cawnpore--Death of the Commander-in-Chief--Who took Delhi?--Sir
     John Lawrence in the Punjab--The Saviour of India--Lord Canning at
     Calcutta--First Relief of Lucknow--Despatch of Sir Colin
     Campbell--Second Relief of Lucknow--Savage Fighting at the
     Secunder-baugh--The Queen’s Letter to Sir Colin Campbell--His
     Retreat to Cawnpore--His Management of the Campaign--Windham’s
     Defeat at the Pandoo River--Sir Colin Campbell’s Victory over the
     Gwalior Army.


With the exception of the Sicilian Vespers, no revolt ever smote a great
Empire so unexpectedly as the Indian Mutiny. Gaily was the centenary of
Plassey celebrated at a banquet in London on the 23rd of June, though
the sultry air of India was even then laden with rumours of a
wide-spreading rebellion. A few casual allusions to these reports were
made in both Houses of Parliament, but July brought with it the rush of
rising waters in the dull ears of the nation, when news of the
atrocities of Meerut and the rebel march on Delhi startled the country
from its apathy.

To the end of time historians will probably differ as to what it was
that caused the Indian Mutiny. Some have laid stress on considerations
of general policy. Others have attributed the catastrophe to special
acts of administration. The acts of administration were, however, but
the sparks that exploded the forces of revolution, which had been slowly
accumulating in the country. To understand the origin of the Indian
Mutiny one must understand the administration of Lord Dalhousie, and
fairly estimate the last acts of his viceregal career. Of these none had
a more serious effect on the minds of the Native Courts than the
annexation of Oudh. Inasmuch as Dalhousie was personally a strong
opponent of annexation, the presumption is that the step, objectionable
as it seems, was inevitable. Oudh was misgoverned by a vicious but
feeble-minded Prince, and the people were tortured not only by his
besotted tyranny, but by the exactions of a corrupt aristocracy. At the
same time, the Kings of Oudh had long been trusty allies of the East
India Company, who had borrowed money from them, protected them against
their mutinous subjects, and used their territory as a recruiting ground
for the Sepoy army. One-half of Oudh had been given to the Company, by
the Treaty of 1801, on condition that a British army should be
maintained in the country for the support of the reigning dynasty.
Attempts had been made--notably by Lord

[Illustration: THE BARRACKS AT MEERUT.]

Auckland--to evade this obligation, but they were made in vain. After
the first Sikh war, Lord Hardinge had warned the King of Oudh that the
Company could no longer tolerate misrule in his territory, and
Dalhousie, in 1848, had sent Colonel Sleeman to reconstruct, if
possible, its internal administration. The task was a hopeless one, and
in 1851 Sleeman reported[328] that there was no choice but to assume the
whole government of the kingdom. Dalhousie shrank from taking this step,
and in 1854, when Sleeman resigned, Sir James Outram was appointed as
his successor, and asked to report on the whole case. Outram, though a
firm anti-annexationist, confirmed Sleeman’s statements. He admitted
that the duty imposed on the Indian Government by the Treaty of 1801
rendered it necessary to have recourse to extreme measures. As a warm
advocate for maintaining Native States so long as they had any vitality,
it was, said Outram, painful and distressing to him to confess that in
continuing to uphold the sovereign power of an effete and incapable
dynasty we were inflicting infinite misery on 5,000,000 of people.[329]
Unfortunately, the Treaty of 1801 had stipulated that all improvements
in the administration of Oudh must be carried out by Native officers
under British advice. It was impossible, therefore, to transfer the
administration of Oudh to the servants of the Company, and equally
impossible to expect reforms from the servants of the King. Lord
Dalhousie’s notion was that the Treaty of 1801 should be
“denounced”--that the King should be told he must either sign a fresh
one, handing over the administration of his country to the Indian
Government, or forego the protection of the British force, which stood
between him and a revolution. Dalhousie ignored the fact that the
withdrawal of our troops from Oudh logically involved the retrocession
of that half of the kingdom which was given to us as payment for their
services, and yet there can be little doubt that had his demand been
pressed, the King of Oudh would have yielded. Dalhousie’s advisers
differed in their views, and in the end the Court of Directors settled
the matter by ordering the Governor-General to annex the country,
depriving the King of revenues, rank, power, and authority, and
allotting a suitable pension to him and his successors.[330] Dalhousie’s
plan, on the other hand, was to assume the administration, but not to
extinguish the dynasty of Oudh, and it was with reluctance that he
carried out the policy of his masters. The country was annexed by Sir
James Outram on the 7th of February, 1856, the King’s private property
being confiscated and sold. These are the essential facts of the case,
and it is easy to pass judgment on them. No Treaty conferred on the
Company the shadow of a right to do more than secure for the people of
Oudh good government. As it was quite possible to do that without
destroying and degrading the dynasty, the seizure of Oudh was simply an
act of rapine.[331] As the Kings of Oudh had been noted all over India
for their staunch loyalty to the English in India, every Native prince
regarded the annexation of Oudh as a menace to his throne. At every
Native Court it was whispered that to be loyal to England was simply to
invite ruin. Thus the last act of Dalhousie’s viceregal reign sowed the
seeds of suspicion, distrust, and even hatred in the hearts of the
Native dynasties.

But the whole policy of this great and vigorous ruler, by a curious
irony of fate, had steadily prepared the minds of the Indian races for a
revolution. Dalhousie had covered India with railways, canals, roads,
and telegraphs. He had introduced a cheap postal system by which a
letter from Peshawur to Cape Comorin, or from Assam to Kurrachee, was
carried for three farthings--one-sixteenth of the old charge. He had
reformed the Civil Service, he had improved education and prison
discipline, he had passed laws that went to the root of family life,
such as those permitting Hindoo widows to marry again, and relieving
persons who changed their religion from forfeiture. As for his wars and
his annexations, he had the “tyrant plea, necessity.” When leaving
Calcutta he said mournfully, and with a trace of misgiving, as he looked
back on his brilliant achievements, “I have played out my part, and
while I feel that in my case the principal act in the drama of my life
is ended, I shall be content if the curtain should now drop on my public
career.” But the great work done by Dalhousie had not been done without
friction between the paramount power and its subjects and vassals. It
was, indeed, thought in England that Dalhousie handed India over to Lord
Canning in a state of profound tranquillity. Yet, looking deeper than
the surface, says an able writer on Indian history, “there were latent
causes of uneasiness which largely pervaded the minds of the Native
classes of all ranks and creeds.”[332] Dalhousie’s system of progressive
education was detested by Hindoo and Moslem alike, because it undermined
the whole fabric of their faith. The Moslem youth, it is true, did not
frequent the English schools. But young Hindoos flocked to them with an
eager thirst for knowledge, and they went to the missionary seminaries,
where Christianity was taught, quite as freely as to State schools,
where its teaching was prohibited. In their homes, they spoke of what
they were taught to their parents, who regarded the whole system of
English education as a diabolical device for corrupting the faith and
morals of their children. This suspicion was strengthened and confirmed
by the aggressive proselytism of the missionaries, to whose zeal one of
the soundest and best informed of Native civilians has directly traced
the origin of the Mutiny. The entire scheme of Dalhousie’s policy was
based on the assumption that the Natives would greet with loyalty and
gratitude the new era of progress that he ushered in. On the contrary,
as Colonel Meadows Taylor says, “the material progress of India was
unintelligible to the Natives in general. A few intelligent and educated
persons might understand the use and scope of railways, telegraphs,
steam-vessels, and recognise in them the direction of a great Government
for the benefit of the people; but the ancient listless conservativism
of the population at large was disturbed by them. ‘The English,’ it was
said, ‘never did such things before, why do they do so now? These are
but new devices for the domination of their will, and are aimed at the
destruction of our national faith, caste, and customs. What was it all
to come to? Was India to be like England? The earlier Company’s servants
were simple but wise men, and we respected them; we understood them and
they us; but the present men are not like them; we do not know them, nor
they us.’ No one cared, perhaps, very much for such sentiments, and
few--very few--English heard them; but they will not have been forgotten
by those who did.”[333] The Directors of the East India Company had,
prior to Dalhousie’s time, rigidly enforced on their servants a policy
of benevolent neutrality to the religious beliefs and social prejudices
of India. The government of the Company in its best days might have been
bad. But it was successful because it was, on the whole, popular, and it
was popular because it was intensely conservative. Ardent progressive
officials were repressed, whereas under Dalhousie their passion for
innovation had free scope and disastrous encouragement.

Nor was Oudh the only centre of Court intrigues against the British
_raj_. The question of settling the position of the Royal Family of
Delhi, the last representatives of the old Emperors of India, had been
much debated in Dalhousie’s reign. When Lord Canning went to India, in
1856, it was again taken up, and a final decision given on the points
raised. The heir-apparent, Prince Fukhr-ood-deen, who had agreed to
evacuate the Palace, died on the 10th of July, 1856, and it was supposed
he had been poisoned. The Queen, Zeenut Mahál, immediately began to
intrigue for the purpose of procuring the recognition of her son as
heir-apparent, and the King of Delhi petitioned the Government of India
to this effect. But the petition could not have been granted without a
breach of the Mohammedan law, and so Mirza Korash, the next in legal
succession to Fukhr-ood-deen, was recognised as heir to the throne. But
whereas, in the case of Fukhr-ood-deen, the recognition of the
Government was the result of a compact or bargain between independent
authorities, in the case of Mirza Korash it took the form of an Imperial
decree, conferring rank and dignity on a vassal prince. The Royal Family
of Delhi resented the whole arrangement. “Remembering the old relations
between the Company and the Empire, the immense benefits originally
conferred on them, and the admitted position of the Company as servants
of the State, it was,” writes Colonel Taylor, “only natural they should
now be accused of perfidy. The efforts and intrigues of the spirited
Queen and several of the princes were now redoubled, locally as well as
in foreign quarters; and India, especially the North-West Provinces,
became filled with the most alarming rumours.”[334]

Along with these there spread extraordinary tales of the decaying power
of England--tales which fawning courtiers poured into the willing ears
of Native princes, and with which embittered malcontents regaled the
Native servants of the Company. The sudden collapse of Palmerston’s
militant policy in the Crimea and in Persia convinced every enemy of
England in India that the omens were propitious for a revolt against
English rule. It was also an untoward coincidence that the year 1857-58
was the Hindoo “Sumbut” 1914, and the centenary of Plassey. But when
that crowning victory was won, the astrologers had declared that the
_raj_, or rule, of the Company would last only for a century. Astrology
so dominates Indian life, that the people have a trick of fulfilling, by
their unconscious action, the prophecies of their soothsayers; and he
who predicts a successful insurrection on a given date has himself
furnished one of the strongest encouragements for its organisation. The
Sumbut 1914, therefore, could not arrive without suggesting to the
Indian mind that an opportunity for throwing off the yoke of England had
come. One of the stereotyped ceremonies of New Year’s Day is the public
recital of the almanack for the year in every Indian village. Hence, in
1857, every Hindoo villager was solemnly warned that wise men, who, a
century ago, held infallible commune with the stars, foretold that in
this fateful year the British _raj_ must end.

[Illustration: SIR JAMES OUTRAM.]

Unfortunately, the base on which the empire of the Company had rested
for a century was at this critical period extremely insecure. India was
won and India was held, not by English, but by Native soldiers. The
British Empire was, therefore, built up on the fidelity of the Sepoy,
and the Sepoy had become dissatisfied with his masters, especially in
Bengal.[335] The army of Bengal had not only been prone to mutiny, but
Napier had denounced its lack of discipline, and there were fewer
Europeans in it in proportion to Natives, than in the armies of Bombay
or Madras.[336] The Crimean War had drained the life-blood from the
British battalions in Bengal; and whereas six English regiments were
usually stationed between Calcutta and Allahabad, when Lord Dalhousie
left the country there were only two. Obviously, if the Sepoy was not to
be trusted, the whole fabric of empire in India was in such
circumstances resting on a rotten foundation, and although officers of
experience refused to doubt the loyalty of their men, the spirit of
mutiny was most certainly abroad in the Bengal army. The Sepoy had
grievances, and the Government had not sense enough to redress them.
These grievances were two in number. (1), When a Sepoy in the old days
marched to the conquest of a province he got increased pay and
allowances; but in recent times, when the province was annexed, it was
considered British territory, and the pay and allowances of the
Company’s mercenary forces were reduced to the scale of home service.
Conquests, therefore, while they imposed more work on the army,
practically reduced its pay. (2), Another cause of discontent was the
“General Service Order” of 1856. The Sepoy was originally enlisted for
service in India only. He could not be sent across the sea; in fact,
only low caste men dared cross “the black water.” During the first
Burmese War the Sepoys had to be marched round the Indian frontier to
the enemy’s territory; and when the second Burmese War broke out, the
38th Native Infantry refused to embark for Rangoon. Of course, though
they should not have been asked to go without having been previously
“sounded” on the subject, refusal in their case was tantamount to
mutiny. Dalhousie could not, however, legally punish them, so he sent
them to Dacca, where they were decimated, not by courtmartials, but by
cholera. Thus the Sepoy argued that he must in future choose between his
caste or a pestilential station, if he refused to serve across the sea.
But while the Sepoys were brooding over this dilemma in 1856, the
Governor-General promulgated the “General Service Order” to the effect
that no more Sepoys should be enlisted who would not take an oath to
cross the sea if called on to do so, and veteran officers, who had grown
grey in the Company’s service predicted that this Order would make
mischief in the army. And so it did. To the Sepoy, his service under the
Company was a source of pride, profit, and even of valuable civil
privileges.[337] To him it was as great a grievance to issue an Order of
this sort, as it would be to the English aristocracy to attach
conditions to military service, which should render it impossible for a
gentleman to hold the Queen’s Commission. The individual Sepoy, no
doubt, was not touched by the Order. But then his sons and grandsons,
whom he expected to become Sepoys, were. The army was thus closed to
every Native, unless they were prepared to submit to loss of caste. In
fact, a lucrative profession was, by Lord Canning’s Order, made the
monopoly of low-caste natives. Unfortunately, too, most of the recruits
were drawn from Oudh, the annexation of which had been a scandal, and
which was swarming with disbanded soldiers, who had been in the personal
service of the deposed King.

Thus we had, in 1857, the following conditions prevailing in India: (1),
A popular belief was current in every village that the last year of the
British _raj_ had come; (2), The Native Courts were suspicious that the
annexation of Oudh was an indication of the fate that was in store for
them; (3), The high-caste Natives, whether in the army or in civil life,
were suspicious that the Government desired to defile their caste, and
sap the foundations of their religion.[338] The country was therefore in
such an inflammable condition that the first spark that fell on it would
produce an explosion. By an extraordinary act of stupidity the
Government not only struck this spark, but fanned it into flame.

The Crimean War caused the British Army to substitute the rifle for the
old smooth-bore musket popularly called “Brown Bess.” In 1856 it was
determined to serve out Enfield rifles to the Indian Army, and in doing
this no heed was paid to Sepoy prejudices. The cartridge of the new
weapon could not be rammed home unless it were previously greased. But,
then, no Hindoo can touch the fat of ox or cow without loss of caste,
which is worse than loss of life, and no Moslem can touch pigs’ fat
without moral defilement. Yet no steps were taken to exclude these
substances from the grease for the Indian cartridges! A rumour
accordingly flew round the bazaars that in order to attack Hindoo and
Moslem alike the two objectionable fats had been mixed in the grease.
This story was traced to a curious source. One day a low-caste man at
Dumdum, near Calcutta, asked a Sepoy to give him a draught of water from
his _lotah_. The Sepoy refused, loftily observing that the vessel would
be polluted if a low-caste man touched it with his lips. The Lascar
replied, with a sneer, that the Sepoy would soon lose his own caste, for
the Government were making cartridges greased with defiling fats, which
he would have to bite in loading his rifle. The Sepoy, horror-stricken
at this tale, told it to his comrades. It flew from mouth to mouth, and
soon the Native Army of Bengal lay under the blight of a hideous
panic--every man going about his duty haunted by a dread of
soul-destroying defilement.[339] The men, half-crazy with fear, met of
nights to concert measures for their protection, and at Barrackpore
incendiary fires broke out. General Hearsey, who was in command, warned
the Government of what was going on, and orders were given that
ungreased cartridges should be issued--the men lubricating them with
whatever substance they chose to apply.[340] But no sooner had one
suspicion been banished from the Sepoy mind than another took its place.
A glazed paper was used for the ungreased cartridges, whereupon a new
rumour flew round to the effect that the glaze was produced by fat.
General Hearsey harangued his men, assuring them on his honour that
their suspicions were wrong, and they seemed satisfied; though, as
events showed, they were by no means satisfied.

A detachment of the 34th was sent from Barrackpore to Berhampore. They
carried the tale about the glazed paper with them, and communicated the
fresh panic to the 19th Native Infantry at that station. The day after
the men of the 34th arrived the 19th Regiment had blank cartridges
served to them, which by some mistake had been made out of two different
kinds of paper. The men at once suspected that the new defiling
cartridges had been mixed with the old ones, so that their caste might
be destroyed, and they refused to take their percussion caps. Colonel
Mitchell, instead of reasoning with his Sepoys as Hearsey had done, flew
into a paroxysm of passion--which simply confirmed their suspicions.
Mitchell, in fact, mistook fear for mutiny, and it was in vain that the
Native officers, who of course knew the real state of the case, implored
him to keep his temper with his men. That night the 19th mutinied.
Mitchell had no European troops, but he closed round the mutineers with
two other Native regiments--cavalry and artillery--and then, sending for
the Native officers of the 19th, stormed at them in impotent fury. They
assured him that their men were only in a panic, and that if the cavalry
and artillery were withdrawn they would return to duty. The cavalry and
artillery were withdrawn, and the 19th went back to its quarters loyally
enough.

Though Mitchell’s indiscretion drove the 19th into revolt, it had
unquestionably revolted. Lord Canning, therefore, was bound to punish
it, and he decided that the regiment must be disarmed and disbanded. But
he had no British troops to spare for this purpose. He accordingly had
to wait from the end of February till the end of March for the arrival
of an English regiment from Burmah to disarm the 19th, who were marched
down to Barrackpore to be broken up. On the 29th of March, two days
before the disbandment of the 19th Native Infantry, Private Mungul Pandy
of the 34th, in a fit of drunken fanaticism, attempted to get up a
mutiny among his comrades. He shot the horse of the Adjutant, Lieutenant
Baugh, who was cut down in trying to seize him. Only one man of the
quarter-guard responded to the order to arrest the mutineer, who was
finally captured, tried, and hanged on the 22nd of April. Evil
communications had passed between the 19th and the 34th, and it was
found that, though the Sikhs and Moslems in the regiment were loyal, the
Hindoos were mutinous to a man. Yet nothing was done to punish the 34th.
The discharged men of the 19th, however, carried the story of their
wrongs to their homes in Oudh and Bundelkund, and soon it came to be
believed that not only were the cartridges greased, but, in order to
produce a general pollution of the Natives, which would destroy all
caste, “that the public wells, and the flour, and ghee (a clarified
butter sold in the bazaars), had been defiled by ground bone-dust and
the fat of cows and pigs, while the salt had been sprinkled with cows’
and hogs’ blood.”[341] Viceregal proclamations were issued to
contradict these rumours and reassure the people, but in vain. The
North-West Provinces had now become smitten with the terror which
hovered over India, and the Commander-in-Chief suggested that the
_depôt_ at Umballa might be broken up before the rifle practice began at
the annual training. Lord Canning, believing that his proclamations had
lulled the rising storm, refused to sanction this step. Fires next broke
out at Umballa, as at Barrackpore--the officers alleging that Sepoys,
who were as yet “undefiled,” set fire to the huts of those who had
accepted the defiling cartridges, and that the latter retaliated. Oudh
soon became affected, and in May Sir Henry Lawrence had to disarm the
7th Irregular Native Infantry at Lucknow.

[Illustration: CAWNPORE.]

In the North-West Provinces the famous “chupatties” began to make their
appearance. They consisted of small baked cakes, and they were passed on
from hand to hand, from hamlet to hamlet, spreading a strange
excitement wherever they went. The circulation of the “chupatties” was
evidently a signal of some sort, and yet, though Native society was
shaking with revolutionary tremors, nothing happened. At last an event
occurred which precipitated a general catastrophe. At Meerut eighty-five
men of the 3rd Native Cavalry had been tried and doomed to ten years’
hard labour on the roads for refusing to bite their cartridges. They
were paraded and punished before the other Native regiments, who seem to
have been irritated, rather than overawed. Next day (10th May), the 3rd
Cavalry forced the gates of the gaol and released their comrades. The
men of the 20th and 11th Regiments flew to arms, shot every European
they met, set fire to their huts, and marched on to Delhi. Why, it will
be asked, was this revolt not quelled, seeing that a strong English
force was stationed at Meerut? The outbreak, it is true, occurred during
church hours on a Sunday; but even this hardly explains why General
Hewitt, who was in command, permitted the mutineers to pursue their
march to the city of the Mogul Emperors. There they proceeded, as if by
concert, to the King, who espoused their cause. The people of the city
rose and massacred the Europeans. The Native regiments in Delhi--the
38th, 54th, and 74th--joined the mutineers one by one, and though the
arsenal was held for a time by Lieutenant Willoughby, with Lieutenants
Raynor and Forrest, and six other Englishmen, they blew it up when it
was no longer tenable. The Mutiny was now a war of liberation. It had a
King for a rallying-point, and an Imperial city for a capital.

The North-West had by this time fallen from the feeble hands of Colvin
into the grasp of the rebels. In Gwalior the British Resident, by his
personal ascendency, held Scindia to his loyalty, though Scindia’s army
revolted. But for George Lawrence, Rajpootana would have been lost. As
for Oudh, there the struggle was becoming tragic. On the eve of the
insurrection this province, seething with sedition, was put under the
rule of Sir Henry Lawrence. Lucknow, with 700,000 inhabitants, was a
hotbed of treason, and the success of the mutineers at Meerut agitated
them profoundly. At the end of May the Sepoys in Lucknow rose and
marched away to Delhi, leaving Lawrence with a handful of Europeans to
hold a rebellious city. Cawnpore is forty miles south of Lucknow, and
there General Wheeler and another devoted band were similarly situated.
On the night of the 21st of May, Wheeler and the English
population--about a thousand souls--withdrew into a kind of temporary
fortress which he had created, and which he defended by some 210 men. At
Cawnpore, in May, 1857, there was residing a young Mahratta noble, Nana
Sahib by name, whose popular manners had rendered him a favourite in the
English community. He had been the adopted heir of the last Peishwa of
Berari, and his grievance against the Government was that Dalhousie
refused to let him enjoy the pension guaranteed to the Peishwa and his
successors. Nana Sahib had spent a season in London to press his claims,
and had been most hospitably received. His agent, Azin Oolla Khan, had
returned to India after visiting the Crimea, and bearing to his master
tales which were partially true, of the defeats and humiliations which
England had suffered during her war with Russia. Nana Sahib had been
busy with plots against the English _raj_ for many years, and his agents
were ubiquitous. In Oudh they had been especially active, for they had
taken every advantage of the mistakes of an over-zealous
Commissioner--Mr. Coverley Jackson--to fan the flame of discontent in
that province. Yet Wheeler trusted the Nana Sahib so implicitly that he
put the treasury of Cawnpore in the charge of his personal retinue lest
his own Native troops might fail him. On the 4th of June General
Wheeler’s Sepoys revolted, joined Nana Sahib’s retinue in plundering the
treasury, and then, laden with spoil, set out for Delhi. But the Nana’s
idea was to win empire for himself rather than for a degenerate
descendant of the Mogul dynasty. He therefore persuaded the rebels to
return, and besiege the English garrison at Cawnpore. On the twentieth
day of the siege he sent one of his prisoners, an old lady named
Greenway, to General Wheeler, offering the beleaguered English a safe
conduct to Allahabad if they would surrender. The offer was accepted. On
the 27th of June the survivors--men, women, and children, about 450 in
all--marched to the boats which had been prepared for them. As soon as
they had embarked Nana Sahib treacherously opened fire on them, and
converted an exodus into a massacre. One hundred and twenty-two captives
were taken, and imprisoned in a house till the 15th of July, when they
were butchered. Next morning their bodies, some still quivering with
life, were thrown into a well. When tidings of this ghastly crime
reached Europe, the nation was for a moment horror-stricken, but only
for a moment. A cry of rage broke forth from the British people, and the
Government hastened to send avenging reinforcements to the East. They
could not, however, arrive in time to save Cawnpore, and when it fell,
the rebels closed round Henry Lawrence at Lucknow. Two days after the
siege began a stray shot mortally wounded him, and, after thirty-six
hours of intense agony, one of the noblest hearts in India had ceased to
beat for ever.

“It is evident,” said the Queen, in a letter to Lord Palmerston,
commenting on these events, “from a comparison of the news with the map,
that whereas hitherto the seat of the mutiny was Oudh, Delhi, and the
Upper Ganges, to which localities all troops have been despatched, it
has now broken out in their rear, cutting them off from the base of
operations, viz., Calcutta, and that it has reached the gates of the
seat of Government itself.” The North-West and Oudh were, in fact, lost.
In the former province, a Mogul King held sway at Delhi, whilst Colvin
was clinging to Agra with feeble hands. In Oudh, Nana Sahib, the viper
of the insurrection, was installed at Cawnpore; whilst a small band of
Englishmen, bewailing the loss of their heroic leader, stood desperately
at bay at Lucknow. In six months, the Empire which had been created in a
century, was shattered and in ruins. Yet the English clung to these
ruins with the tenacity of despair, and what they had lost they were
determined to re-conquer. Fortunately, they had in India what they
lacked in the Crimea, two leaders who were alike competent to translate
a high resolve into prompt action. These were Lawrence at Lahore, and
Canning at Calcutta.

When the Mutiny first broke out General Anson was Commander-in-Chief of
the Forces in India. It was said that he was a mere amateur soldier, and
that in Simla he had accordingly found a congenial Capua. Family
interest had sent him at one bound from the Turf some years before to
the command of one of the Presidency armies. When the
Commandership-in-Chief of the Indian Armies fell vacant, family interest
had again secured the post for him. Had he been a man of capacity and
energy the Mutiny would have been stamped out when it was feebly
sporadic. After it became what Canning called “epidemic,” the task of
repression was harder. Whether Anson would have risen to the level of
his responsibilities the world will never know now, because he died in a
fortnight after he began to grapple with the crisis.[342] His slender
force was then taken in hand by Sir H. Barnard, who pressed on to the
South, and who reached Alipore on the 5th of June, where he effected a
junction with Sir Archdale Wilson, who had marched from Meerut. On the
8th Barnard drove the rebels from their entrenchments at Budlee Serái,
four miles north of Delhi, where he repeated Raglan’s experiment in the
Crimea--that of besieging a fortress, whose garrison was really
besieging him. On the 5th of July Barnard died, to be succeeded by Reed,
who in turn was succeeded by Wilson on the 17th of July. All four were
sluggish generals, and it was well that John Lawrence, at Lahore, acted
on them like a goad. Englishmen will not readily forget his famous
telegram to Anson in May when he heard that the General was about to
entrench himself at Umballa--“Clubs are trumps--not spades?” A vain
controversy has arisen as to who can claim credit for the capture of
Delhi; whether it was due to Wilson’s slow but cautious tactics, or to
the engineering skill of Taylor, or the demoniac energy of Nicholson, or
the dashing enterprise of Chamberlain, who brought succours from the
Punjab. The man who really took the rebel stronghold was not a soldier
but a civilian, for it was John Lawrence, at Lahore, and not any of the
generals before Delhi, who was the bulwark of the war.[343]

When the Mutiny broke out the Punjab was--by the prompt action of
Lawrence’s subordinates who disarmed sulking troops, and stamped out the
germs of mutiny whenever and wherever they were visible--saved and
secured.

[Illustration: LORD LAWRENCE.]

After this Delhi seemed to him to be the very keystone of the
insurrection. To take it there was no risk too great to run--no hazard
too perilous to undergo.[344] Though his own position at Lahore was
dangerous enough, he threw himself on the people, and staked everything
on the fidelity of the Sikhs. He summoned the old gunners of the Khálsa
from their fields. The low-caste “Muzbis” he converted into sappers. The
fierce chieftains, who had fought against us in ’48 and ’49, together
with their followers, he hurried on to the rebel city, thereby stripping
his province of local leaders who might have organised a rising. “From,
the Punjab arsenals,” says one of Lawrence’s critics, “the siege-trains
were equipped; from the Punjab districts vast amounts of carriage were
gathered and despatched systematically with their loads to Delhi; from
the Punjab treasuries the sinews of war were furnished. Men were raised
by tens of thousands to replace the Sepoys--raised, indeed, in such
numbers that--as constantly comes out in Lawrence’s correspondence--the
dread was for a long time never absent from his mind lest this might be
overdone, and new danger might arise from the Punjabis becoming
conscious of their strength.”[345] What wonder, then, that in England as
in India, where it was admitted that the fall of Delhi broke the neck of
the insurrection, all men who knew the circumstances of the case, who
knew how he had to stimulate laggards,[346] strengthen faint hearts,
overcome jealousies, sweep away obstructions--“all greeted Sir John
Lawrence by acclamation as the man who had done more than any single man
to save the Indian Empire”?[347] And justly. For had the great and
warlike Sikh nation, in the midst of which Lawrence stood like a lion at
bay, risen against the British _raj_, “all would have been lost save
honour.” He saw, in fact, that the Khálsa banner must be carried into
our own lines, otherwise it would be swept into the lines of the enemy;
and it was this inspiration of genius that really saved India. Delhi
fell before the attacks of the reinforced army, after six days’
fighting, on the 20th of September, and on the 21st the Mogul king was
captured by Captain Hodson (“Hodson of Hodson’s Horse”), who next day
shot, with his own hand, his two sons, and hung up their bodies in the
most public place in the city.[348]

The fall of Delhi was not the end, but the beginning of the end, of the
Mutiny. Oudh had to be recovered, and if it be said that Lawrence
captured Delhi, it is but right to say that Canning wrested Oudh from
the grasp of the insurgents. His position in Calcutta was an
embarrassing one. A terrible panic had paralysed those round him. Though
they seemed able to do nothing but clamour for vengeance and for
blood;[349] yet in the whirlwind of their passion Canning stood
“steadfast as a pillar in a storm.” He was one of those who at such a
moment “attain the wise indifference of the wise” to everything save the
paramount demands of practical duty. He sent to Bombay, Madras, and
Ceylon for reinforcements. He intercepted at Singapore the force that
was on its way to China to support Lord Elgin, who had been sent to
supersede Sir John Bowring,[350] and he armed Henry and John Lawrence
with absolute power in Oudh and the Punjab. On the 23rd of May, Neill
brought to Calcutta the first of the reinforcements from Madras.
Havelock followed with two regiments from Persia, superseding Neill; and
after him came Outram, who was to supersede Havelock and succeed Henry
Lawrence as Chief Commissioner in Oudh. Outram, however, refused to
deprive Havelock of the honour of relieving Lucknow, and accompanied him
merely in his civil capacity. On the 17th, Havelock forced his way to
the scene of the massacre at Cawnpore, where the sickening relics of
Nana Sahib’s crime were still visible. Onwards his Army of Vengeance
swept with hungry hearts to Lucknow, which they entered on the 25th of
September, after a great variety of perilous adventure. When the
imprisoned garrison, who had long been listening with strained ears for
the beat of the English drums, met their rescuers, the scene was
inexpressibly touching. The Highlanders, usually the most stolid and
least emotional of our troops, had become dangerously excited after they
entered Cawnpore; and, in the engagements on the march to Lucknow, they
had fought, contrary to their wont, more like savages than civilised
men. But when they marched into Lucknow their hearts softened. Oblivious
of discipline and decorum, they rushed from their ranks, shaking hands
with the ladies, lifting up the little children in their brawny arms,
and passing them along from hand to hand, to be pressed to rough and
bearded lips. Outram now took over the supreme command; but, finding
himself again surrounded by the enemy in overwhelming numbers, he
decided not to withdraw from the city. Lucknow had therefore to be
relieved again.

The death of Anson, and the startling development of the insurrection in
midsummer, together with the pressing appeals of the Queen, roused the
Cabinet to action. They sent out reinforcements, and on the 11th of July
decided to appoint Sir Colin Campbell as Anson’s successor. When asked
by Lord Panmure when he could start, Campbell answered, laconically,
“To-morrow;” and, as a matter of fact, with little more than the kit of
a common soldier, the veteran did start next night.[351] On the 17th of
August he arrived at Calcutta, and toiled without ceasing to organise an
army. The greatest military historian of our time has said that Campbell
had a genuine and natural love for war, and he was one of those whose
hearts beat stronger in the hour of battle than at any other moment of
their lives. But he loved victory better than combat; and when he
fought, he fought to win. Hence the extraordinary pains he took with his
preparations, and the time he spent, or, as some of his panic-stricken
critics in Calcutta said, wasted, in making arrangements which would
virtually guarantee success. It was not till the 27th of

[Illustration: SCENE AT THE FIRST RELIEF OF LUCKNOW.]

October that he left Calcutta. On the 9th of November he got to
Cawnpore; and then by a brilliant forced march on the 12th he reached
the Alumbaugh--a summer palace of the kings of Oudh--from which he was
able to signal his arrival to Outram. A gallant civilian--Mr.
Kavanagh--contrived, in disguise, to make his way from Lucknow through
the enemy’s lines to the relieving force, and told the story of Outram’s
defence, an achievement, as Lord Canning said, without a parallel in
history, save Numantia and Saragossa. On the 14th Sir Colin Campbell
moved on the city. On the 16th he attacked the chief stronghold of the
rebels--the Secunder-baugh. The 93rd Highlanders and a regiment of Sikhs
forced their way in through a narrow breach, and then, finding that the
Sepoy garrison could not escape, they massacred them. The Highlanders
here fought with uncontrollable ferocity, neither asking nor giving
quarter. “_Cawnpore_, you----!” was the cry of rage with which each man
drove his bayonet home into the heart of his foe; and, excited by their
example, the Sikhs strove only too successfully to emulate the barbarity
of their Scottish comrades. For three terrible hours did the men of the
93rd satiate their passion for vengeance; and when they emerged from the
place with tartans soaked in blood, they left it packed high and close
with corpses--hardly a single rebel escaping to tell the tale. On the
17th of November Campbell had fought his way to the Residency, and
Lucknow was rescued a second time.

The victory was hailed in England with pride and delight. The Queen sent
a letter to Sir Colin Campbell, congratulating him. “The Queen,” she
writes, “has had many proofs already of Sir Colin Campbell’s devotion to
his Sovereign and his country, and he has now greatly added to that debt
of gratitude which both owe him. But Sir Colin must bear one reproof
from his Queen, and that is, that he exposes himself too much. His life
is most precious, and she entreats that he will neither put himself
where his noble spirit would urge him to be--foremost in danger--nor
fatigue himself so as to injure his health.”[352] Her Majesty’s caution
was hardly needed. Sir Colin Campbell was a general who never exposed
himself or his troops to unnecessary danger. But when necessary, he
would spend his own and their blood as recklessly as if it were water.
It has been noticed that his brilliant victories in India were all won
with little loss of life.[353] The explanation is that his plans were
just the opposite of those pursued in the Crimea--that is to say, he
never wasted his men in futile assaults, or hurled them against
fortifications bristling with cannon, till his own artillery--an arm in
which he was always strong--had demoralised the enemy.

Having removed the women, children, sick, and wounded, Campbell retraced
his steps to attack the rebel army concentrated at Cawnpore--his heart
saddened, and the lustre of his triumph dimmed by the death of the
heroic Havelock. At Cawnpore, General Windham, who commanded the rear
guard, had foolishly allowed himself to be outflanked by Tantia Topee, a
commander of great skill and courage. Windham’s blunder not only gave
the enemy possession of Cawnpore, but put the whole English force, whose
communications were thus threatened, in the greatest peril. Campbell, by
forced marches, came to the rescue on the 29th of November. Having sent
on his convoy to Calcutta, he attacked the rebels, under Nana Sahib and
Tantia Topee, on the 5th of December; and, on the 7th, there was not a
vestige of the 25,000 insurgents composing the Gwalior army to be seen
for miles round Cawnpore.[354] As the year 1857 closed, it was felt that
the worst of the crisis in India was over.




CHAPTER XXXVII.

THE ROYAL MARRIAGE.

     Birth of Princess Beatrice--Death of the Duchess of Gloucester--A
     Royal Romance--Franco-Russian Intrigues--The Art Treasures
     Exhibition at Manchester--Announcement of the Marriage of the
     Princess Royal--Prince Albert’s Views on Royal Grants--The
     Controversy on the Grant to the Princess Royal--Visit of the Grand
     Duke Constantine--The Christening of Princess Beatrice--Prince
     Albert’s Title as Prince Consort Legalised--The First Distribution
     of the Victoria Cross--Opposition to the Order--The Queen’s Visit
     to Manchester--Departure of the Prince of Wales to Germany--The
     Queen and the Indian Mutiny--Her Controversy with Lord
     Palmerston--Sudden Death of the Duchess of Nemours--The Marriage of
     the Princess Royal--The Scene in the Chapel--On the Balcony of
     Buckingham Palace--The Illuminations in London--The Bride and
     Bridegroom at Windsor--The Last Adieus--The Departure of the Bride
     and Bridegroom to Germany.


It was when the country was passing through the crisis of Palmerston’s
“penal dissolution” that a Princess was added to the Royal circle--soon
to be diminished by the migration of her eldest sister to a home of her
own in a foreign land. The little Princess was born on the 14th of
April, and in a letter to King Leopold the Queen says: “She is to be
called Beatrice, a fine old name borne by three of the Plantagenet
Princesses, and her other names will be Mary (after poor Aunt Mary),
Victoria (after Mama and Vicky, who, with Fritz Wilhelm, are to be the
sponsors) and Feodore.”[355] On the 19th Prince Albert tells his
stepmother that the Queen was already able to leave her room, and her
recovery, therefore, could not have been retarded by the political
excitement and agitation of the times.

As the month ended, however, sorrow fell on the Royal household. On the
30th of April the Duchess of Gloucester died--the “Aunt Gloucester” to
whom the Queen and her husband in their letters make so many
affectionate references. This Princess was the last child of George
III., and of all his family the best beloved. The story of her life was
in itself a romance, the pathos of which accounts for the Queen’s
frequent allusions to her nobility and unselfishness of character.
During her girlhood at Windsor the Princess Mary, as she was called, won
the hearts of the people by her quiet, unobtrusive philanthropic work
among the poor. She and her cousin, the Duke of Gloucester, fell in love
with each other, but when he attained the age of twenty-one their
romance was cruelly and abruptly ended. The Princess Charlotte was born,
and it was decreed that the Duke of Gloucester must remain single, so
that he might marry her if no eligible foreign prince claimed her hand.
The Princess Mary and the Duke of Gloucester waited in suspense for
twenty weary years--for she refused to encourage any other suitor. In
1814 a rift appeared in this cloud that overhung their lives. The Prince
of Orange, it was said, was about to wed the Princess Charlotte, and
the ladies of the Court noticed how the pining Princess Mary suddenly
began to look bright and happy. But the projected alliance with the
Prince of Orange was abandoned, and the Princess Mary began to droop
again. A few months, however, put an end to the long probation of the
Royal lovers. Leopold of Coburg married the Princess Charlotte, and
Court gossips chronicle the fact that when she came down the steps of
Carlton House after the ceremony, the Princess Mary rushed forward and
fell weeping into her arms. She was married to the Duke of Gloucester in
1816, and it may be noticed that they refused to ask Parliament for any
increase of income. During their lives they had devoted themselves to
benevolent work, and had not only learned the value of money, but how to
make their means serve their wants. Their married life was so arranged
that they not only lived on their private incomes, but won a great and
well-merited reputation for their wide and generous charity. The sweet
and gentle nature of the Duchess, to which the strange story of her life
imparted an additional charm, had ever a strong fascination for the
Queen.

The triumph of Palmerston at the General Election had an immediate
effect upon those Franco-Russian intrigues for the settlement of the
Danubian Principalities which had given the Queen some uneasiness. The
approaching visit of the Grand Duke Constantine to Paris had been
commented on severely by the English press, and the Emperor of the
French, in writing to the Queen to congratulate her on the birth of the
Princess Beatrice, attempted to explain away the significance of the
visit. Lord Clarendon suggested that Prince Albert should reply to this
letter, telling the Emperor quite frankly why England was jealous of the
advances of Russia to France. An alliance between France and England,
said the Prince in his letter, could have no basis save the mutual
desire to develop as much as possible Art, Science, Letters,
Commerce--in a word, everything that is meant by Civilisation. But as
for an alliance with Russia, on what basis could that be raised? What
interest had Russia in Progress? What was there in common between modern
France and modern Russia? A Franco-Russian alliance, therefore, could
have no foundation but that of political interest--and hence the
prospect of it alarmed the free States of Europe.

Prince Albert’s reception at Manchester, where he opened the great Art
Treasures Exhibition on the 5th of May, delighted the Queen. But of all
the incidents of his tour, perhaps none pleased her more than the manner
in which his speech at the unveiling of her statue in the Peel Park of
that city was criticised by the public. In his address he alluded to the
devotion of the people to their Queen, and spoke of it as the outcome of
their attachment to the Sovereign “as the representative of the
institutions of the country.” The phrase struck the popular fancy, and
to the Queen it seemed the formula of her position and her life. Two
days later the Court removed to Osborne, where the Queen gradually
recovered from the depression of spirits under which she had sunk after
the death of the Duchess of Gloucester.

On the 16th of May the Prussian _Official Gazette_ announced the
forthcoming marriage of the Princess Royal and Prince Frederick William,
and on the 19th the same announcement was made to Parliament by a Royal
Message. In this Message the Queen expressed her confidence that the
nation would make a suitable provision for her eldest daughter, and it
is worth recording that at the outset the Cabinet were a little
uncertain as to the reception which such a Message would meet with.
Perhaps that was why Lord Palmerston, in moving the Address in reply to
it, took pains to tell Parliament that, quite apart from the personal
interest which Englishmen felt in this affair, it held out political
prospects “not undeserving the attention of the House.” Family alliances
tended, he argued, to mitigate the asperities which from time to time
spring from diversities of national interests. “Therefore,” he added, “I
trust that this marriage may also be considered as holding out an
increased prospect of goodwill and of cordiality among the Great Powers
of Europe.”

But in those days the Representatives of the people, were more jealous
guardians of the public purse than they are now, and on both sides of
the House there was a strong feeling against increasing public
expenditure. The competition then was in economy--not as now in profuse
extravagance. There were three views current on the subject. One was
that of Prince Albert, who thought that the time had come when
Parliament should settle finally what provision ought to be made for
members of the Royal Family on their marriage, so as to avoid the
necessity of frequent eleemosynary appeals to Parliament. He held, and
as it now seems rightly, that the feeling of the country at the time ran
in favour of treating the Queen’s children generously. In one of his
letters to Baron Stockmar he says, “Seeing how marked was the desire to
keep questions relating to the Royal Family aloof from the pressure of
party conflict, and to have them settled, I believe it would have been
an easy matter to have carried through the future endowments of them
all, according to the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s and Palmerston’s
original plan, which was subsequently dropped by the Cabinet.”[356] Then
there was the Ministerial view, which was that the Princess should be
voted a dowry and an annuity; and the Radical view, which was that the
nation should not be burdened with an annuity, but that whatever was
voted to the lady should be a lump sum, so that when the vote was passed
the Princess would cease to be a yearly charge on the country she was
leaving. Mr. Roebuck gave expression to this last view, even before the
Chancellor of the Exchequer laid his proposal before the House--which
was that the annuity should be £8,000, and the marriage portion £40,000.
The majority of the House, however, desired to come to a unanimous vote
on the subject, and they laughed at Sir George Lewis’s grave citations
from Blackstone and his precedents from the reign of George II. Still
more

[Illustration: THE HASTINGS CHANTRY, ST. GEORGE’S CHAPEL, WINDSOR.]

heartily did they laugh when he explained how the Queen had recently
been forced to bear very large expenses of a public nature, alluding
particularly to the visit to the Emperor Napoleon--“a visit,” said Sir
George, solemnly, “which was purely for public and State purposes, and
not for her individual pleasure.”[357] No doubt the visits of George IV.
to Hanover, Ireland, and Scotland were paid for by the State. But it was
as ridiculous to cite such a bad precedent as that, as to go back for
others to the reign of George III., when Parliament at different times
voted a total sum of £3,297,000 to pay the debts of the Royal Family.
The truth is, that the Sovereign cannot be held exempt from the ordinary
liabilities of exalted rank and station. Every person who accepts a high
public office is in the habit, now and then, of drawing on his private
income to enable him to discharge his public duties with greater
efficiency--in fact, this liability is simply one of the incidents of
great estate in every aristocratic country. But, unfortunately, the
Queen had on her accession surrendered her Crown revenues to Parliament
for a fixed annuity, on the more or less formal understanding that
Parliament would provide for her children when they settled in life. So
that the House of Commons felt there was really no choice in the matter,
save to vote the grant, and if possible, out of respect for the Queen,
vote it unanimously. Mr. Roebuck withdrew his opposition, but on the
report of the vote in Supply, Mr. Coningham, Member for Brighton,
entered a protest against the principle of voting annuities to the Royal
Family, and moved the reduction of the vote in this instance from £8,000
to £6,000 a year. The motion was lost by 328 to 14. Mr. Maguire and Sir
J. Trelawny, supported by Mr. Coningham, then argued that the annuity
was enough, and moved that there be no dowry granted. They were beaten
by a vote of 361 to 18, and here the matter ended. “We have,” writes
Prince Albert to Stockmar, “established a good precedent, not merely for
the grant itself, but for the way and manner in which such grants should
be dealt with.”[358] This opinion he would perhaps have recast had he
lived to see the painful position in which the Royal Family have again
and again been placed by repeated applications of the precedent.

Just before the Court left Osborne, the Grand Duke Constantine paid the
Queen his long expected visit. He arrived on the 30th and left next
night, after going with her Majesty to see the fleet at Spithead. His
visit was not quite a pleasant one for the Queen and Lord Palmerston.
The Grand Duke, to their surprise, spoke with almost cynical candour of
the Crimean War; indeed, it was not till his visit that the Queen had
brought home to her effectually the murderous mistakes of that campaign.
He told her about Menschikoff’s blundering, and showed her how
Sebastopol was at the mercy of the Allies after the Battle of the Alma,
because there were only two battalions in the city; and further indulged
in many cheering reminiscences of a similar sort, especially in
reference to the attacks on the Redan. But as he had just come from
Paris, one wonders if he told his English hosts how it was that the
Emperor discovered that the Malakoff was the weak point in the defences
of the town.[359] On the 3rd of June the Court returned to Windsor, and
the Queen went to Ascot Races, and admired the beautiful mare, Blink
Bonny, which was brought out for her inspection.[360] The first Handel
Festival at the Crystal Palace, however, provided a stronger attraction
than Ascot for the Queen and her husband, and her visit to it is
described in glowing terms by contemporary chroniclers. It was the
precursor of these great festivals which have since become world-famous,
and on the 17th, when the Queen was present, _Judas Maccabæus_ was given
by 2,500 performers.

The christening of the Princess Beatrice took place in the private
chapel of Buckingham Palace on the 16th of June, and among the visitors
and guests the Archduke Maximilian of Austria was one of the most
prominent. He had become betrothed to the Princess Charlotte of Belgium,
a young and beautiful princess, to whom the Queen was deeply attached.
It was a love match, but the lives of the young people, radiant at the
outset with sunshine, were darkened at the end by the gloom of an awful
tragedy. In an evil moment the Archduke permitted the French Emperor to
lure him into his wild project for establishing a Transatlantic-Latin
Empire as a counterpoise to the Anglo-Saxon Republic of the West. He was
crowned Emperor of Mexico in 1863, and deposed and shot by order of the
President of the Mexican Republic in 1867. His unhappy consort passed
the rest of her existence in the living death of insanity.

On the 25th of June the Queen conferred on her husband, by Royal Letters
Patent, the title of Prince Consort, which, however, had already been
given to him by the people, who never called him anything else. Still it
had been a popular, not a legal title, and Prince Albert could claim no
other precedence than what was accorded to him by courtesy. Moreover,
when he went abroad, although he held a kingly position in England, he
ranked merely as a younger Prince of Saxe-Coburg Gotha, and foreigners
raised difficulties about the precedence that should be given to him. “I
should have preferred its being done by Act of Parliament,” wrote the
Queen to King Leopold, in reference to the legalising of the new title,
“and so it may still be at some future period; but it was thought better
on the whole to do it now in this simple way”--namely, by Letters
Patent.

On the 26th, her Majesty presided over one of the most interesting
functions of her reign--the first distribution of the Victoria Cross, or
Cross of Valour, to the men who had earned it by personal prowess in
war. It is a curious fact that till this period no English sovereign
ever decorated an Englishman for being brave. Courage in England is so
common and cheap, said Mr. Bright once, that it can be bought easily for
less than a shilling a day. Nay, there were some generals, like Colin
Campbell, who objected strongly to decorations being conferred for
valour--because, as Campbell said, you might as well decorate a woman
for being chaste as an English soldier for being brave.[361] But contact
with the French Army had altered the old-fashioned English ideas on the
subject,

[Illustration: THE VICTORIA CROSS.]

and the spectacle of private soldiers in the Crimea wearing the Legion
of Honour on their breasts had created a feeling in favour of some kind
of decoration which would be open to all ranks of the army. The Order of
the Bath could not be granted for mere bravery--it was granted for
bravery combined with exceptional skill and talent. But then, as the
private soldier had no chance of displaying any quality in war save
courage, it was obvious that the new Order must seek a basis in
individual heroism alone. The Queen, struck by the episodical incidents
of the Crimean War, was strongly of opinion in 1856 that exceptional
deeds of personal valour should have more distinctive recognition than
the war medal which every man received, however slight might have been
his share in the campaign. In that year, therefore, she instituted, by
the Royal Warrant of January 29th, 1856, the Order of the Victoria
Cross. The decoration was to be given to soldiers or sailors who had
performed some signal act of valour or devotion to their country in face
of the enemy--and a small pension of £10 a year was to be attached to
the Cross. It was not until late in 1857 that a list of persons
qualified for admission to the Order could be drawn up, and when it was
submitted to the Queen she resolved to decorate them with her own hands.
Public interest in the ceremony on the 26th of June was intense. At an
early hour crowds of well-dressed sightseers swarmed into Hyde Park,
where a vast amphitheatre of seats, capable of accommodating 12,000
persons had been erected. In the centre stood a simple table, on which
were laid the bronze Maltese crosses--their red and blue ribbons being
the only patches of colour that caught the eye. In front, a body of
4,000 troops, consisting of the _corps d’élite_ of the army--Guards,
Highlanders, Royal Marines, the Rifle Brigade, Enniskillens, and
Hussars, Artillery and Engineers--was drawn up. Between them and the
Royal Pavilion stood the small group of heroes--sixty-two in number--who
were to be decorated. At 10 a.m. the Queen, the Prince Consort, Prince
Frederick William of Prussia, and a brilliant train, rode into the Park.
The Queen, mounted on a gallant and spirited roan, and wearing a scarlet
jacket, black skirt, and plumed hat, rode up to the table, but did not
dismount. One by one each hero was summoned to her presence, and bending
from her saddle, her Majesty

[Illustration: THE QUEEN DISTRIBUTING THE VICTORIA CROSSES IN HYDE
PARK.]

pinned the Cross on his breast with her own hands, whilst the Prince
Consort saluted him with grave and respectful courtesy. As each soldier
or sailor was decorated, the vast concourse of spectators cheered and
clapped their hands--whether he were an officer whose breast was already
glittering with stars and orders, or a humble private or Jack Tar whose
rough tunic carried no more resplendent embellishment than the ordinary
war medal. But of all the cheers none were heartier than those which
were given for a man who, when called out, stepped forward arrayed in
what was then the grotesque and pacific garb of an ordinary policeman.

The Art Treasures Exhibition at Manchester, which had been opened in May
by the Prince Consort, had become amazingly popular. It was the first of
its kind seen in England, and the great difficulty which its organisers
had to overcome was the reluctance of private collectors to lend works
of art for exhibition. But for the Queen and Prince Albert it is
probable this obstacle would never have been surmounted,[362] and hence
it was but natural that her Majesty should desire to visit the
collection. Her reception at Manchester, on the 30th of June, was
enthusiastic, a crowd of a million people welcoming her, as she said
herself, with “kind and friendly faces.” The display of Prussian flags,
and the complimentary allusions to her husband and to her eldest
daughter’s approaching marriage, appear to have touched her deeply. At
the Exhibition, her Majesty knighted the Mayor, as she observes, “with
Sir Harry Smith’s sword, which had been in four general actions,” and on
the 2nd of July she left for Buckingham Palace, where she gave a great
musical party in the evening. The next event of importance in the
home-life of the Queen was the departure of the Prince of Wales to
Königswinter, where it had been arranged he was to carry on his studies.
He left in high spirits, and with the Queen’s anxious adieus, on the
26th of July, accompanied by young Mr. Frederick Stanley--now Lord
Stanley of Preston--General Grey, Sir H. Ponsonby, and his tutors. Mr.
Gladstone’s son, Mr. C. Wood, son of Lord Halifax, and the present Lord
Cadogan, were also selected by the Queen and Prince Consort to join him
as companions in his studies.

From this time till the tide of war in India turned in our favour, the
Queen’s attention seems to have been absorbed by the crisis in our
Eastern Empire. Her political work was apparently concentrated in a
persistent effort to induce the Cabinet not only to hurry out
reinforcements, but to replace them by increasing the establishment at
home up to the full limit voted by Parliament, and for which estimates
had been taken. Lord Palmerston, on the other hand, in his light and
airy way, refused to regard the Mutiny as serious, and persisted in
sending out reinforcements in driblets, and then replacing them by
driblets of recruits. The Queen very sensibly contended that the force
absorbed by the Indian demand should “be replaced to its full extent and
in the same kind,” whereas the Cabinet was replacing whole battalions by
“handfuls of recruits added to the remaining ones.” It was in vain that
the Minister met her with the usual stock platitudes--that neither the
money nor the men could be got. The Queen replied that her project would
actually be more economical than the confused and unmethodical devices
of Palmerston and Panmure. The East India Company would find the money
for the reinforcements, which could be applied to the creation of new
battalions. But these could in turn absorb the old half-pay officers
reduced from the War Establishment, who would then cease to be a burden
on the Exchequer. As to the argument that the men could not be got, the
Queen wrote to Lord Palmerston, “This is an hypothesis, and not an
argument. Try, and you will see. If you do not succeed, and the measure
is necessary, you will have to adopt means to make it succeed. If you
conjure up the difficulties yourself you cannot, of course, succeed.”
One fact may be mentioned as curiously illustrating the shallowness of
understanding and feebleness of grasp with which Palmerston approached
any great question of State to which Foreign Office _formulæ_ could not
be applied. He, or some one at his instigation, seems to have tried to
frighten the Queen by warning her that the East India Company would
object to keep up such a large addition to her army in India. The Queen,
however, saw what Palmerston could not see--that the first shot fired in
the rebellion had virtually eliminated the Company as a dominating
factor in the Indian problem. “The Queen,” she writes to Palmerston,
“thinks it next to impossible that the European force could again be
decreased in India. After the present fearful experience the Company
could only send back (home) Queen’s regiments, in order to raise new
European ones of their own. This they cannot do without the Queen’s
sanction, and she must at once make her most solemn protest against such
a measure. It would be dangerous and unconstitutional to allow private
individuals to raise an army of Queen’s subjects larger than her own in
any part of the British dominions.” And at the close of the Memorandum,
which she haughtily desires Palmerston to communicate to his colleagues,
the tone becomes sharper as she sums up the net result of the bungling
military policy of the Cabinet. “The present situation of the Queen’s
army,” she writes, “is a pitiable one. The Queen has just seen, in the
camp at Aldershot, regiments which, after eighteen years’ foreign
service in most trying climates, had come back to England to be sent
out, after seven months, to the Crimea. Having passed through this
destructive campaign, they had not been home for a year before they are
to go to India for perhaps twenty years! This is most cruel and unfair
to the gallant men who devote their services to the country, and the
Government is in duty and humanity bound to alleviate their
position.”[363]

In August a flying visit to Cherbourg in her yacht convinced the Queen
that the growing strength of this port as a place of arms was dangerous
to England, and on her return she called the attention of the Cabinet to
what she had seen, and demanded reports as to the precise state of the
defences on the South coast of England. As usual, nobody could find the
required information, and when it was obtained Lord Clarendon told the
Prince Consort that nobody could read such an account of our
shortcomings without immediately desiring to remedy them. September saw
the Court at Balmoral, where the Queen’s holiday was sadly overcast by
the Indian reports which came pouring in. As the Prince Consort said, in
one of his letters to Stockmar, they were “tortured by the events in
India, which are truly frightful!” The French Emperor’s courteous offer
to pass our reinforcements through France brought some cheerfulness to
the anxious Sovereign, not diminished by the friendly offer of two
regiments from Belgium--which was, however, rejected by Lord Palmerston,
who had sense enough to see that if England was to win at all she must,
as he said, “win off her own bat.”

On the 16th of October the Court returned to Windsor, the Queen having
spent a night at Haddo House, where she went to visit her venerable
friend, Lord Aberdeen. The sudden death of the Duchess of Nemours, first
cousin of the Queen and Prince Consort, and wife of the second son of
Louis Philippe, now threw the Court into mourning. “We were like
sisters,” wrote Her Majesty to King Leopold, “bore the same name,
married the same year, our children are the same age; there was, in
short, a similarity between us, which, since 1839, united us closely and
tenderly. Now one of us is gone--passed as a rose, full-blown and
faded--from this earth to eternity, there to rest in peace and
joy.”[364] The commercial crisis of November caused Parliament to be
summoned before the year closed, and December was spent in making
preparations for the marriage of the Princess Royal.

When the 19th of January, 1858, came round Buckingham Palace was full of
guests--the King of the Belgians and his sons, the Prince and Princess
of Prussia and their suites, being among the number. It was a brilliant
scene of bustle and excitement, covers for eighty or ninety guests being
laid daily at dinner. Four dramatic representations were given by
command at Her Majesty’s Theatre, where, writes the Queen, “We made a
wonderful row of royalties, I sitting between dear uncle and the Prince
of Prussia,” and where the audience cheered the young couple who were to
be so soon united with a cordiality that brought tears to their parents’
eyes. Balls, dinners, musical parties, celebrated the coming event at
the Palace, till the 24th, which is recorded in the Queen’s Diary as
“poor dear Vicky’s last unmarried day ... an eventful one, reminding me
of my own.” Charming in its simplicity is the Queen’s description of the
family delight over the wedding gifts; and the tearful “Good-night” of
the 24th between the Princess and her parents is too sacred a subject
for more than passing allusion. On the 25th, the eventful day of the
wedding, the Queen writes, “I felt as if I were being married over again
myself, only much more nervous, for I had not that blessed feeling which
I had then, which raises and supports one, of giving myself up for life
to him whom I loved and worshipped--then and for ever.” But the sun
shone with happy omen as the morning advanced, and the wedding party,
amidst cheering crowds, proceeded to the Chapel Royal at St. James’s
Palace.

[Illustration: THE CRIMSON DRAWING-ROOM, WINDSOR CASTLE.]

This interesting building had been put to strange uses in its time. It
had been in turn a Roman Catholic chapel, a Protestant chapel, a
guard-room, and a store-room, before it ended as a chapel reserved for
Royal nuptials. Within its walls Queen Anne had married good-natured
George of Denmark, and George III. the shrew of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. It
was the scene of the wedding of the ill-fated Caroline of Brunswick and
the “First Gentleman of Europe,” who, it may be remembered, had to be
fortified with brandy ere he could undergo the ceremony. Here, also,
William IV. wedded the amiable and gentle Queen Adelaide, and his
successor plighted her troth to the husband of her heart. But not even
on that occasion was the chapel the scene of a more brilliant pageant
than when it witnessed the nuptials of the Princess Royal of England and
the son of the Prince of Prussia. The dingy edifice, which Holbein’s
admirers revere as a triumph of his genius, was now no longer dingy.
Hangings of crimson silk, gleaming with gold fringe and tassels, gilded
columns and scroll work, gold headings, and emblazoned shields and
ciphers, dispelled the customary gloom from the building. The altar,
too, was sumptuously equipped with quaint “services” of gold plate,
illustrative of the Augustan age of English Art.

The marriage procession was formed at Buckingham Palace. It consisted of
more than twenty carriages, the first detachment of which conveyed the
Princes and magnates of the House of Prussia. At a short interval the
bridegroom and his suite followed; then the Queen and her family. When
it arrived at St. James’s Palace the procession was received by the
great officers of State, who conducted it to the chapel through the
splendid apartments, rich in sombre decorations of Queen Anne’s reign.

The Prince Consort and King Leopold were radiant in the bravery of Field
Marshals’ uniforms, “the three girls,” writes the Queen, with quick
feminine memory for the details of such an occasion, “in pink satin
trimmed with Newport lace, Alice with a wreath, and the two others only
with bouquets in their hair of cornflowers and marguerites; next the
four boys in Highland dress.” As for the eight bridesmaids, they “looked
charming in white tulle, with wreaths and bouquets of pink roses and
white heather;” and “Mama” (the Duchess of Kent) “looking so handsome,”
says the Queen, “in violet velvet trimmed with ermine and white silk and
violet,” with “the Cambridges” and all the foreign Princes and
Princesses, made up a brilliant party. The wedding procession was, in
fact, formed in the Closet--the room in the Chapel which on Court days
is reserved for the Royal Family and the families of Peers, “just as at
_my_ marriage,” writes the Queen, “only how small the _old_ Royal Family
has become!” Lord Palmerston carried the Sword of State “with easy grace
and dignity,” says the _Morning Post_,[365] “with a ponderous
solemnity,” says the _Times_, in their respective accounts of the scene,
and the Queen, with the “two little boys” on each side, and followed by
her three daughters, walked after Lord Palmerston and the two elder
Princes. Amidst

[Illustration: MARRIAGE OF THE PRINCESS ROYAL. (_See p. 751._)]

beating drums and blaring trumpets, the procession entered the Chapel,
the appearance of the Queen crowned with a glittering diadem, being
greeted with a profound and reverential obeisance by the wedding guests
as she swept on to her chair of State on the left of the altar. The
entrance of the bride with her father and King Leopold sent a flutter of
excitement through the throng. When the Princess appeared her face
seemed pale, even in contrast with her snowy robe of rich moire antique.
She passed the Queen with a deep bow, and as her eyes met those of the
bridegroom, her cheeks suddenly flushed to deepest crimson. “My last
fear of being overcome,” writes the Queen, “vanished on seeing Vicky’s
quiet, calm, and composed manner.” The whole scene indeed recalled her
own marriage, and her eyes glistened with tears as the sweet memories of
her happy and busy life flitted through her mind. The ceremony was
performed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishops of London,
Oxford, and Chester. The Archbishop was “very nervous,” however--much
more so than either bride or bridegroom, and the Queen records that he
omitted some of the passages in the Service. When the ceremony was over,
tender and affectionate congratulations passed between the married pair
and their relations. The bride and her mother fell weeping into each
other’s arms, and for a minute or so their agitation was manifestly
beyond their control. The bridegroom then kissed the bride, who,
escaping from his embrace, threw herself into the arms of her father,
whom she kissed again and again. The Princess of Prussia embraced her
son and kissed the Queen most affectionately; but the most touching
greeting of all was that which passed between the bridegroom and his
father, who seemed quite unnerved with emotion. The Prince clasped his
father passionately to his heart, and then, as if recovering
self-control, suddenly knelt down and reverently kissed his hand. These
congratulations were repeated when the register was signed by all the
Princesses and Princes present, including the Maharajah Duleep Sing.
Through cheering crowds bride and bridegroom and the splendid train of
wedding guests proceeded to Buckingham Palace, where the wedded pair and
their parents appeared on the balcony and bowed their thanks to the
kindly people who stood huzzaing outside. Then came the breakfast and
the parting, which is “such sweet sorrow” to mother and daughter on such
occasions. The married couple drove to Windsor, and at the railway
station were met by the Eton boys, who dragged their carriage all the
way to the Castle. London was one blaze of illuminations that night, and
the rejoicings at the Palace closed with a State concert. Nothing
pleased the Queen more than the demeanour of the populace. Their
demonstrations of loyalty were purely spontaneous and utterly
unaffected. So much was this the case that the foreign guests were
amazed to find that the Government offices were the only buildings which
were not illuminated; in fact, their gloomy darkness alone rendered the
general illumination of London a little less brilliant than that which
celebrated the Proclamation of Peace with Russia.

On the 27th of January the Court removed to Windsor, where Prince
Frederick William was invested with the Order of the Garter, and a
dinner-party followed, at which the Duke of Buccleuch gratified the
Princess with his reports of the enthusiastic loyalty of the crowds in
London, among whom he had moved about _incognito_ on the night of the
wedding ceremony. Next day the whole family returned to London, and in
the evening went to see Sheridan’s _Rivals_ and the _Spitalfields
Weaver_ at Her Majesty’s Theatre, the Queen being greatly amused, as she
herself records, by the drolleries of Wright, the low comedian, in the
latter piece. On the 30th loyal addresses from the City of London and
all the great towns came pouring in, and what the Prince Consort calls
“a monster Drawing-Room” was held. On Monday the 1st of February the
Queen writes in her Diary, “The last day of our dear child being with
us, which is incredible, and makes me at times feel sick at heart,”[366]
and when the next day came round the Queen’s fortitude failed her.
Mother and daughter sat weeping in each other’s arms, and when the
“dreadful time,” as the Queen calls it, arrived, and they had to go down
into the Hall, filled with weeping friends and sad-eyed servants, the
scene was touching in the extreme. “Poor dear child,” writes the Queen,
“I clasped her in my arms and blessed her, and knew not what to say. I
kissed good Fritz, and pressed his hand again and again. He was unable
to speak, and the tears were in his eyes.” But the final parting could
be postponed no longer, and the Queen returned to her room in sorrow.
Instead of driving from Buckingham Palace to the Bricklayers’ Arms
Station by the shortest route, the Prince and Princess drove along the
Strand, Fleet Street, Cheapside, and London Bridge. The houses and shops
were profusely decked with flags, though the decorations were got ready
in a hurry. The day was bitterly cold, and snow fell fast. Yet the
inclement weather did not deter vast crowds from turning out to bid the
newly-married pair “Good speed.” When the Prince Consort, who had
accompanied his daughter and son-in-law part of the way, returned home,
the Queen’s grief broke out again. Even the sight of “the darling baby”
(Princess Beatrice) saddened her, for, as she writes, “Dear Vicky loved
her so much, and only yesterday played with her.” As for the Prince
Consort, he told the Princess, in one of his letters, that the void she
had left was not in his heart only, but in his daily life. In fact,
nothing save the cordial and brilliant reception which welcomed her in
Germany could have consoled him for the loss of a daughter whom he
proudly described to her husband as one who “had a man’s head and a
child’s heart.”


FOOTNOTES:

[1] Morley’s Life of Cobden.

[2] Greville’s Journal, Vol. III. p. 290.

[3] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. I. p. 243.

[4] Letter from the Queen to Lord Melbourne, cited by Sir T. Martin in
the Life of the Prince Consort.

[5] This is not quite accurate. The details were arranged by Lord
Clarendon; the plan, or original idea, of the visit was the Queen’s.

[6] Greville’s Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria, Vol. III., p.
295.

[7] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort.

[8] “This faithful and trusty valet nursed his dear master most
devotedly through his sad illness in December, 1861, and is now always
with me as my personal groom of the chambers or valet. I gave him a
house near Windsor Castle, where he resides when the Court are there.
He is a native of Coburg. His father has been for fifty years Förster
at Fülbach, close to Coburg.”--_Footnote by the Queen._

[9] “Who was very active and efficient. He is now a page.”--_Footnote
by the Queen._

[10] Greville’s Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria, Vol. III., pp.
296, 297.

[11] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort.

[12] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XXXVIII.

[13] Greville’s Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria, Vol. III. p.
335.

[14] Memorials of an Ex-Minister, by Lord Malmesbury, Vol. I. p. 261.

[15] This, of course, applies only to States within the European comity
of nations. Semi-barbaric Asiatic or African States--_e.g._, Turkey
and Tunis--by special treaties or “capitulations,” surrendered to
England extra-territorial jurisdiction over cases in which her subjects
resident in their territories were concerned.

[16] The details of this intrigue, it is understood, were recorded by
Mr. Greville, but the publication of them was withheld by the editor of
his “Journal,” for reasons which may easily be guessed. The whole story
will probably not be told during the lifetime of the Queen.

[17] Had the Bill passed, Lord Clarendon would have been Irish
Secretary.

[18] See a curious letter of Croker’s in the third volume of “The
Croker Papers.”

[19] He was beaten only by a majority of 3.

[20] See the Queen’s letter to King Leopold, cited in Martin’s Life of
the Prince Consort, Ch. XXXIX.

[21] It is commonly called “the Queen’s Reading Lamp,” but it may be
said that Sir Theodore Martin is not quite correct in assuming that
this type of lamp was introduced into England by Prince Albert. A
similar lamp was in use in Cambridge long before the Prince came to
this country, and was known as the “Cambridge Reading Lamp.”

[22] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XXXI.

[23] _Punch_, Vol. XVIII., p. 229.

[24] Mr. Cobden always said that such a protest would have deterred
Russia from stamping out Hungarian liberty.

[25] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort.

[26] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort.

[27] “One of our keepers since 1851. An excellent, intelligent man,
much liked by the Prince. He, like many others, spit blood after
running the race up that steep hill in the short space of time, and he
has never been so strong since. The running up-hill has in consequence
been discontinued. He lives in a cottage at the back of Craig Gowan
(commanding a beautiful view) called Robrech, which the Prince built
for him.”--_Note by the Queen in “Leaves from a Journal.”_

[28] The allusion here is to the Ritualists or Puseyites, or
Tractarians, as they were called then.

[29] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort.

[30] Morley’s Life of Cobden.

[31] Morley’s Life of Cobden.

[32] It is but right to say that Mr. Herries was now over seventy years
of age, and had been virtually shelved for twenty years.

[33] According to Mr. Greville, it was Mr. Thomas Baring.

[34] Letters of the Right Hon. Sir George Cornewall Lewis, Bart., to
various friends, edited by the Rev. Sir Gilbert Frankland Lewis, Bart.,
p. 240.

[35] Mr. Disraeli did not support the Tory opposition to the Jews.

[36] Greville’s Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria, Vol. III., p.
407.

[37] The Editor of the _Times_.

[38] Greville’s Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria, Vol. III., p.
415.

[39] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XLII.

[40] Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught.

[41] Quoted by Sir Theodore Martin in his Life of the Prince Consort,
Chap. XLII.

[42] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. I. pp. 284 and 288.

[43] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XLIII.

[44] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XLIV.

[45] _See_ p. 479.

[46] These were Morny (a natural son of the Prince-President’s mother,
the Queen Hortense, by Count Flahault), Persigny, Fleury, Maupas,
Marshal Mangan, and probably Rouher.

[47] Correspondence and Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with
Nassau William Senior, edited by W. C. M. Simpson, Vol. II., p. 5.

[48] De Tocqueville’s Conversations and Correspondence with Nassau W.
Senior, Vol. II., p. 6.

[49] Greville’s Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria, Vol. III., p.
447.

[50] Lord Malmesbury’s Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. I., p. 309.

[51] The corresponding office in our day is Secretary of State for
India.

[52] Letters of the Right Hon. Sir George Cornewall Lewis, Bart., to
various persons, edited by the Rev. Sir Gilbert Frankland Lewis, Bart.,
p. 251.

[53] Mr. Greville’s Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria, Vol. III.,
p. 448.

[54] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. I., p. 332.

[55] On coming into office, Lord Derby announced that it was the
mission of his Government to “oppose some barrier against the
democratic influence that is continually encroaching, which would throw
power nominally into the hands of the masses, but practically into the
hands of the demagogues who lead them.”

[56] This was the occasion, not the cause. The Americans and the French
were beginning to show themselves in the Eastern seas. According to Mr.
Arnold, it was because they were casting covetous eyes on the Delta
of the Irawaddy that Lord Dalhousie determined to forestall them by
annexing that region. _See_ Arnold’s Administration of Lord Dalhousie,
Vol. II., p. 14; Papers of the House of Lords, 1856, No. 161.

[57] Lord Derby and Mr. Herries admitted that Lambert acted without
instructions. Hansard, Vol. CXX., p. 656; Memoirs of Herries, Vol.
II., p. 250; Parl. Papers relating to Burmah, 1852. Cobden also
accused Fishbourne of provoking the Governor. _See_ Cobden’s Political
Writings, Vol. II., p. 57.

[58] Life and Correspondence of Lord Palmerston, by the Right Hon.
Evelyn Ashley, Vol. II., p. 247.

[59] Morley’s Life of Cobden, Chap. XX.

[60] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XLVI.

[61] Morley’s Life of Cobden, Chap. XXI.

[62] Spencer Walpole’s History of England. London: Longmans, Green, and
Co. 1886. Vol. V., p. 43.

[63] Reminiscences and Opinions of Sir Francis Hastings Doyle, Bart.
London: Longmans, Green, and Co. 1886. Pages 321-330.

[64] Hansard, Vol. CXXIII., p. 351.

[65] _Ibid._, p. 411.

[66] Letters of the Right Hon. Sir George Cornewall Lewis, Bart., to
Various Persons, p. 259.

[67] T. P. O’Connor’s Life of Lord Beaconsfield, p. 441; Hickman’s
Beaconsfield, p. 183.

[68] Hansard, Vol. CXXIII., p. 1693.

[69] It is worth while to recall this fact. After the resignation
of Mr. Gladstone in 1886, when the Tory Party attempted to form a
Coalition Ministry under Lord Hartington as Premier, and Lord Salisbury
as Foreign Secretary, the project was defended on the plea, that
just as the Whigs in 1852 bought up a small but powerful faction of
Peelites, by giving their leader the Premiership, so should the Tories
in 1886 buy up the small but powerful section of Liberal “Unionists” by
putting Lord Hartington at the head of affairs. The argument, it will
be seen, was based on a complete ignorance of party history and of the
ideas and policy of the Court in 1852, because it was for other reasons
altogether that Lord Aberdeen was elevated to the Premiership.

[70] It was partly by Macaulay’s persuasion that Lord John permitted
himself to be embalmed in history as the fourth Prime Minister of the
century who, after serving as Premier, accepted an inferior rank.
The other three were Sidmouth, Goderich, and Wellington. “Russell’s
example,” says Mr. Spencer Walpole, “indicates that a man who has once
served in the highest place had better refuse all subordinate offices.”
Cf. Walpole’s History of England, Vol. V., p. 61; and Trevelyan’s Life
of Macaulay, Vol. II., Chap. XIII.

[71] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXVII.

[72] Letters of the late Sir G. C. Lewis, Bart., p. 260.

[73] Lord Malmesbury, who was at Balmoral at the time, is the authority
for this statement. _Vide_ Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. I., p. 377.

[74] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XLVI.

[75] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. I, p. 347.

[76] “Persigny,” writes Lord Malmesbury, “whose real name was Fialin,
was one of those adventurers who looked forward with confidence to the
success of Louis Napoleon’s fatalism and dreams of ambition, and proved
it by the most absolute devotion, and, I must add, personal affection
for his master, whom he always accompanied through his failures and
imprisonments. Faithful to the Emperor, the Emperor was faithful to
him, and loaded him with honours. He was a courageous and impetuous
man, and his hot temper was against him as ambassador.”--Memoirs of an
Ex-Minister, Vol. I., p. 300.

[77] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. I., p. 310.

[78] Morley’s Life of Cobden, Chap. XXI.

[79] On hearing of the _coup d’état_, the Queen, _without waiting
for Ministerial advice_, personally directed the Cabinet to follow a
policy of strict neutrality. Lord John Russell replied: “Your Majesty’s
directions respecting the state of affairs in Paris shall be followed.”
Note that the relations of the Crown and the Minister were identical in
this case with those which obtained under the Tudor Sovereigns. It is a
curious instance of a policy being _initiated_ by specific “directions”
from the Queen in an age when, according to constitutional practice,
the functions of the Crown are supposed to be limited to suggestion,
criticism, and sanction.

[80] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XLVII.

[81] English Ambassador at Paris.

[82] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. I., p. 379.

[83] This person wielded an influence that few people suspected at the
time. For example, in September, 1852, Lord Malmesbury, then Foreign
Secretary, set a gang of police spies to watch the outraged victims of
the _coup d’état_ in London. Having put together all the information
he could get, he illustrated the spirited foreign policy of the day
by sending his private secretary and relative, Mr. George Harris,
to convey this information secretly to Charles Louis Bonaparte. But
that potentate did not deign to give Mr. Harris an interview. For
three days he was kept dancing attendance, and at last by a private
letter of introduction to an aide-de-camp of the President’s, he got
access to Canrobert, Tascher, and Roquet, who loftily told him that
in a week’s time perhaps he might have an audience. “Then,” writes
Mr. Harris to Lord Malmesbury, “I returned to Paris, and called on
Mrs. Howard, toadied and flattered her, stating that I was in a great
hurry to get back to London, and only wanted to see his Highness the
President for two minutes. She sent off an orderly at once, and before
night, I received an invitation from Louis Napoleon to accompany him
out shooting to say my say, at 5.30, and dine afterwards.”--Memoirs
of an Ex-Minister, Vol. I., p. 346. That the Foreign Minister of
England should act the part of a Bonapartist spy, is curious. That his
relative and private secretary should have accepted the mission of a
subordinate _mouchard_, and, in carrying it out, should have “toadied
and flattered” a Parisian _cocotte_ to get an audience from the
Prince-President, gives one a quaint glimpse of diplomatic manners and
customs in 1852.

[84] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. I., p. 379.

[85] The Imperial marriage took place--the civil ceremony on the 29th,
and the religious ceremony on the 30th of January, 1853.

[86] Compare with such comments a passage in a letter written by
Mr. Nassau Senior, to M. de Tocqueville. “Mrs. Grote tells me that
you rather complain that the English papers approve the marriage,
a marriage which you all disapprove. The fact is that we like the
marriage because you dislike it. We are, above all things, desirous
that the present tyranny should end as quickly as possible. It can
end only by the general alienation of the French people from the
tyrant; and every fault that he commits delights us, because it is a
step towards his fall.”--Correspondence and Conversations of Alexis
de Tocqueville, Vol. II., p. 34. Cf. also Palmerston’s opinion from
another point of view. Ashley’s Life of Lord Palmerston, Vol. II., p. 7.

[87] Mr. Disraeli reckoned the revenue of 1852 at £51,625,000.
It actually reached £53,089,000. He set down the expenditure at
£51,164,000, whereas it came only to £50,782,000.

[88] Dowell’s History of Taxation, Vol. II., p. 322; Smith’s Wealth of
Nations, Vol. III., p. 337.

[89] These bore interest at £1 10s. per cent., but were in future to
bear interest at £2 15s. up to 1864, and £2 10s. up to 1891.

[90] Walpole’s History of England, Vol. V., p. 68.

[91] Students of financial history may be referred to Hansard, Vol.
CXXL, p. 11, for Mr. Disraeli’s first Budget, and to Hansard, Vol.
CXXV., pp. 818, 1355, 1399, and 1423, for Mr. Gladstone’s. Cf, also
Report of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue, 1870.

[92] This was the principle which Mr. Fox and the “old Whigs” advocated.

[93] Walpole’s History of England, Vol. V., p. 45.

[94] Walpole’s History of England, Vol. V., p. 49.

[95] For facts bearing on this point, see Fawcett’s Manual of Political
Economy, p. 490.

[96] In 1847 the Mint coined £5,000,000, in 1850 £11,000,000, and in
1858 only £1,200,000.

[97] Wheat which in June, 1853, stood at 45s. a quarter, on the 25th of
November went up to 72s. 9d. The 4-lb. loaf rose from 10½d. to 1s.
Annual Register, Vol. XCV., p. 165.

[98] “You know,” said the Emperor on the 14th of January, to Sir
Hamilton Seymour, “the dreams and plans in which the Empress Catherine
was in the habit of indulging: these were handed down to our time; but,
while I inherited immense territorial possessions, I did not inherit
those visions--those intentions if you like to call them so.” And again
on the 22nd of February, “I will not tolerate the permanent occupation
of Constantinople by the Russians; having said this, I will say that
it never shall be held by the English, or French, or any other great
nation.” Secret Correspondence between Sir G. H. Seymour, British
Chargé d’Affaires at St. Petersburg, and Her Majesty’s Government.
Eastern Papers, Part V.

[99] Secret Correspondence, Eastern Papers, Part V., p. 204.

[100] Diplomatic Study of the Crimean War, from Russian Official
Sources, Vol. I., p. 115.

[101] Consult on this subject Mr. Nassau Senior’s article in _North
British Quarterly Review_ for February, 1851, on “The State of the
Continent.”

[102] Louis Philippe, it must be stated in justice to Napoleon III.,
also claimed for the Latin Church the right of repairing the dome of
the Holy Sepulchre in the Latin instead of the Byzantine form, a claim
which was indescribably offensive to the Greek priests.--_North British
Quarterly Review_, February, 1851.

[103] Dip. Stud. Crimean War, Vol. I., p. 134.

[104] Spencer Walpole’s History of England, Vol. V., p. 79.

[105] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XI.

[106] Russian Ambassador in London.

[107] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. I., pp. 402, 403.

[108] Mr. Disraeli’s Speech at Manchester, April 3, 1872.

[109] See Count Nesselrode’s Memorandum embodying the views which,
according to the Czar, were agreed on in the conversations he held
with the Tory Ministers in 1844.--Eastern Papers, 1854, Part VI.
This document, probably the one referred to by Lord Malmesbury, was
transmitted to England on the Czar’s return to St. Petersburg, and
deposited unchallenged in the secret archives of the Foreign Office.

[110] Eastern Papers, 1852, Part VI. pp. 10, 11.

[111] Afterwards Lord Strathnairn.

[112] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. I., pp. 387-389. It is right to
state the fact as communicated to Lord Malmesbury by the French Emperor
in conversation, because Mr. Walpole rather unfairly asserts that the
Emperor of the French saw in Rose’s fear “a fresh excuse for embroiling
France.”--Walpole’s History of England, Vol. V., p. 84.

[113] Russia argued that she might fairly exercise the same kind of
protectorate that France had always asserted over Roman Catholics and
England over Protestants in Turkey. Against this it was urged that
there was a difference in degree between the two cases which amounted
to a difference in kind, for, whereas the Catholic and Protestant
subjects of the Sultan were only a few thousands, his Greek subjects
were 12,000,000.

[114] Official Note of the Porte to the Powers, 28th of May.

[115] On the 1st of June Menschikoff’s Note of the 18th of May,
intimating his withdrawal from Constantinople and threatening Turkey
with coercion, arrived in London.

[116] It would have been also more candid at this juncture to have
warned Russia that England would object to any actual invasion of
the Principalities, before the resources of European diplomacy were
exhausted.

[117] When these events had passed into history, Earl Russell, in his
Recollections and Suggestions, said that, if he had been Premier in
1853, he would have insisted on Turkey accepting the Vienna Note. He
was not Premier, but he was one of the leaders of the War Party in the
Cabinet which supported Turkey in rejecting it. Lord Russell was, in
fact, not the only statesman of the period who grew “wise after the
event.”

[118] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XLVIII.

[119] Prince Bismarck: an Historical Biography by Charles Lowe, M.A.,
Vol. I., p. 205.

[120] Eastern Papers, Part I., p. 169.

[121] In the 7th Article of the Treaty of Kainardji it is provided
that “_The Sublime Porte promises to protect constantly the Christian
religion and its Churches_, and also it allows the Ministers of the
Imperial Court of Russia to make on all occasions representations as
well in favour of the new Church at Constantinople, of which mention
will be made in the 14th Article, as in favour of those who officiate
therein.” The 14th Article provides that “it is permitted to the High
Court of Russia, in addition to the chapel built in the house of the
Minister, to construct in the Galata quarter, in the street called Bey
Oglu, a public church of the Greek rite, which shall be always under
the protection of the Ministers of that Empire, and shielded from all
obstruction and all damage.” The first words in italics appear to give
Russia the same general kind of pledge to protect the Greek Christians
in Turkey, the insertion of which in the Vienna Note was supposed to
vitiate it. The issue, however, was so close that diplomacy ought to
have prevented the disputants from coming to blows.

[122] Ashley’s Life of Palmerston, Vol. II., p. 276.

[123] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XLIX. Compare this
with Lord Salisbury’s statement at the Guildhall banquet on the 9th of
November, 1886, that England’s Eastern policy is to pledge herself to
fight on the side of Austria, when Austria thinks fit to go to war. By
substituting “Austria” for “Turkey” in the first two sentences of this
important State Paper of the Queen’s, very interesting deductions might
be drawn by students of Constitutional history.

[124] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XLIX.

[125] Walpole’s History of England, Vol. V., p. 99.

[126] Lord Malmesbury says that it was Mr. Gladstone and Lord Aberdeen
who begged Palmerston to come back.--Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol.
I., p. 418. But Prince Albert’s statement is the truer one, though
it is not so palatable to those writers who have for a quarter of a
century devoted themselves to the heroic idealisation of Palmerston’s
character and career, and who at one time tried to persuade themselves
that, as a condition of his return, he forced the Ministry to send
a fleet to avenge Sinope. In the middle of September, however,
Palmerston and Russell had already persuaded the Cabinet to warn
Russia that any attack on the Turkish fleet would be met by the fleets
of England and France. Palmerston resigned, however, on the 15th of
December. Moreover, it has not been noticed by Palmerstonian partisans
that Prince Albert’s statement is curiously confirmed by Sir George
Cornewall Lewis. Writing to Sir E. Head on the 4th of January, 1854,
he says:--“Since I last wrote to you there has been the strange
escapade of Palmerston. He disliked the Reform Bill, partly as being
too extensive to suit his taste. He therefore resigned solely upon this
measure; but he probably expected that a threat of resignation would
bring his colleagues to terms, and was surprised at being taken at his
word. When he went out he found that the country took his resignation
very coolly, and that he was so much courted by the Derbyites that he
could not avoid becoming their leader in the House of Commons in the
next Session. He could not hope to occupy a neutral place, and so,
finding that his position was a bad one--that it was too late in life
for him to set about forming a new party--he changed his mind, and
intimated to the Government that he wished to return.”--Letters of the
Right Hon. Sir George Cornewall Lewis, Bart., p. 275.

[127] Letter of Prince Albert to the Dowager-Duchess of Coburg, in
Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XLVII.

[128] Medical men may be interested to know that the Duke and Duchess
transmitted it unconsciously “to the Duke of Brabant and Count of
Flanders, whom they met on their way back to Coburg, and before they
were aware they had taken the seeds of the illness from England with
them.”--Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort.

[129] Contrast this with the habits of the House in the time of Charles
I., when it met at eight in the morning and rose at noon; and in Sir
Robert Walpole’s time, when the mere suggestion of a Member that
“candles be brought in” was regarded as phenomenal.

[130] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort. See also a reference to
the Grand Duchess Olga’s “Mission” in Lord Malmesbury’s Memoirs of an
Ex-Minister, Vol. I., p. 404.

[131] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XLVIII.

[132] _Annual Register_ for 1853.

[133] Ashley’s Life of Lord Palmerston, Vol. II., p. 13. For Lord
Aberdeen’s answer to Palmerston’s bellicose special pleading, see
Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XLVIII.

[134] This letter, dated the 14th of November, was not sent till it had
been submitted to Lord Aberdeen and Lord Clarendon for their approval.
The precedent should be noted, because, as Sir Hamilton Seymour told
Count Nesselrode at the time, “these correspondences between sovereigns
are not regular, according to our Constitutional notions.” At the same
time, when personally addressed by a foreign sovereign, the Crown
cannot, as a matter of courtesy, reply through a Minister of State. The
course taken by the Queen in this instance is obviously the prudent one.

[135] Cobden’s Collected Writings, Vol. II., p. 269.

[136] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. L.

[137] Letters of Sir G. C. Lewis, p. 276.

[138] It is only just to the memory of Mr. Cobden to state that towards
the end of his career some suspicion of the truth crept into his
mind. Speaking on the American Civil War, he said:--“From the moment
the first shot is fired or the first blow struck in a dispute, then
farewell to all reason and argument; you might as well reason with mad
dogs as with men when they have begun to spill each other’s blood in
mortal combat. I was so convinced of the fact during the Crimean War;
I was so convinced of the utter uselessness of raising one’s voice
in opposition to War when it has once begun, that I made up my mind
that so long as I was in political life, should a war again break out
between England and a great Power, I would never open my mouth upon
the subject from the time the first gun was fired till the peace was
made.”--Cobden’s Speeches, Vol. II., p. 314. See also Mr. John Morley’s
masterly defence of the Cobdenites in 1854, in his Life of Cobden,
Chap. XXII.

[139] Count Nesselrode’s Despatch to the Russian Ambassador in England,
dated the 16th of January, 1854.

[140] See Sir H. Seymour’s Despatch to Lord Clarendon, dated the 30th
of January, 1854.

[141] Amongst other things, she demanded that some fresh arrangement
should be made as to the right of asylum granted to political refugees
in Turkey. This obviously pointed at Turkey’s refusal to surrender the
Hungarian patriots after the Revolution of 1848 was suppressed; and,
knowing the opinion of England on the subject, it was absurd to add
such stipulations to new preliminaries of peace.

[142] Nesselrode, Orloff, and Kisseleff.

[143] “Russia, as I can guarantee, will prove herself in 1854 _what she
was in 1812_.... My conditions are known at Vienna.”

[144] Observe _not_ “a day,” as Kinglake has it.

[145] “L’Empereur ne juge pas convenable de donner aucune réponse à la
lettre de Lord Clarendon.”--Eastern Papers. Consul Michele’s Despatch
to Lord Clarendon, dated St. Petersburg, 19th March, 1854.

[146] Mr. Kinglake blames the London Press, especially the _Times_,
for manufacturing this passion. Mr. Cobden took much the same view.
Educated people who were rich, but ignorant of geography and military
history, however, all clamoured for war. “I have had the satisfaction
of seeing the rascally Czar defeated by the unassisted Turks, and
obliged to cross the Pruth. Now for Sebastopol!” Thus wrote Lord
Campbell in his Journal on the 14th of August.--See Mrs. Hardcastle’s
Life of John, Lord Campbell, Vol. II., p. 326.

[147] “In proposing success to the guest of the evening, he
(Palmerston) made a speech in that vein of forced jocularity with
which elderly gentlemen give the toast of the bridegroom at a wedding
breakfast.”--Morley’s Life of Cobden, Chap. XXII.

[148] Compare this with almost the identical expression in Mr. Bright’s
speech in the House of Commons of the 13th of March, for delivering
which Lord Palmerston jeered at him as “the honourable and _reverend_
gentleman.”

[149] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LII.

[150] “For if the hostilities continue, if the Powers, released from
all apprehension in Turkey, should be free either to pursue us on
the evacuated territory, or to employ all their disposable forces in
invading our European or Asiatic dominions, with a view to impose on
us conditions which could not be accepted, it is evident that the
demand made by Austria was that we should weaken ourselves morally and
materially by a sacrifice wholly useless.”--Count Nesselrode’s Despatch
to Count Buol Schauenstein of 29th of July, 1854.

[151] See Lord Clarendon’s Despatch to the Earl of Westmoreland, dated
the 22nd of July, 1854.

[152] France explained this by demanding in the official _Moniteur_
that the fleet of Russia in the Black Sea should be reduced in strength.

[153] Diplomatic Study of the Crimean War, Vol. II., p. 18.

[154] Orloff was sent by the Czar to extract from Austria a pledge
of absolute neutrality. The Austrian Emperor asked if the Czar would
promise not to cross the Danube or seize territory, and if he would
evacuate the Principalities when war was over. Orloff said “No.” The
Emperor then replied that Austria would preserve perfect freedom of
action. Baron de Bulberg failed at Berlin to extract a similar pledge
from Prussia.--Despatch of Lord Westmoreland to Lord Clarendon, dated
8th February, 1854. Eastern Papers.

[155] “Ministers are preparing for war; the quarrel has now become
an European quarrel and must have an European settlement. We ask for
20,000 more men for the army and navy; we propose to add £21,000,000 to
our expenditure, and is _this_ an occasion on which you should potter
over Blue-books?”--Sir James Graham’s speech, in reply to Mr. Layard,
in the House of Commons on the 17th of February, 1854.

[156] Writing to Mrs. Cobden about this speech, Cobden says, “No
enthusiasm of course; that I did not expect; but there was a feeling
of interest throughout the House which is not bumptious or warlike to
the extent I expected, and not disposed to be insolent to the ‘peace
party.’ In fact, I find many men in the Tory Party agreeing with me.
After I spoke, Molesworth took me aside and said he and Gladstone
thought I never spoke better.”--Morley’s Life of Cobden, Chap. XXII. If
the men who agreed with him privately had been bold enough to say so in
public, there would have been no invasion of the Crimea.

[157] Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G., by
Edwin Hodder, Vol. II., p. 465. Cassell and Co. (Limited). Palmerston
was chief of the War Party in the Cabinet. Lady Palmerston was Lord
Shaftesbury’s mother-in-law.

[158] Morley’s Life of Cobden, Chap. XXII.

[159] The history of its publication is as follows: On the 13th of
March Lord Derby drew the attention of the Peers (1) to “An Official
Answer of the Emperor of Russia to a speech of Lord John Russell in
the House of Commons,” published in the _St. Petersburg Journal_,
wherein it was alleged that the English Cabinet had been frankly told
at the outset what course the Czar desired to pursue in Turkey; (2)
to statements in the _Times_ to the effect that though an indignant
refusal had been Lord John’s answer, yet the Czar had in 1844 attempted
to gain over the Government of the day to his designs. Lord Derby
called for the production of this Secret Correspondence, and as
Russia, by her official reference to it, had virtually challenged its
publication, it was in due course laid before both Houses of Parliament.

[160] The English case against Russia was that the Czar persisted in
asserting an exceptional right of protecting the Greek Christians in
Turkey under existing treaties. In Lord John Russell’s despatch of 9th
of February, 1853, in which he expressed a disapproval of the Czar’s
overtures to Sir Hamilton Seymour, he counselled forbearance, and then
said: “To these cautions Her Majesty’s Government wish to add that, in
their view, it is essential that the Sultan should be advised to treat
his Christian subjects in conformity with the principles of equity
and religious freedom, which prevail generally among the enlightened
nations of Europe. The more the Turkish Government adopts the rules of
impartial law and equal administration, the less will the Emperor of
Russia 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_.”

[161] See _ante_, p. 582.

[162] Eastern Papers, Part VII., contain proofs of the deception
perpetrated by the Coalition Government on Parliament as to the extent
to which England might depend on the German States for support.

[163] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LIII.

[164] An appeal to fear rarely influences German statesmen. In 1868,
during the debate in the Customs Parliament at Berlin, the Separatist
Party objected to the discussion of national politics, lest, as one of
them said, they might provoke an attack from France. Bismarck’s retort
was that “an appeal to fear had never yet found an echo in German
hearts.”--Lowe’s Life of Bismarck, Vol. I., p. 458.

[165] Lowe’s Life of Bismarck, Vol. I., p. 206 (Cassell and Co.).

[166] It is due to Lord Clarendon to say that in a letter to Prince
Albert (26th March) he expresses a shrewd suspicion of this danger.
But the Prince, whose authority on the secret diplomacy of Germany
no Cabinet Minister, except, perhaps, Palmerston, ever dared to
question, promptly silenced his suspicions. On the 27th the Prince
wrote to Clarendon, saying, “I don’t think that Austria has anything
to fear from Prussia or Germany if she were to take an active part in
the war against us.” That the Queen and her husband were mistaken or
misinformed is proved by Mr. Lowe in his Life of Prince Bismarck, Vol.
I., pp. 200, 202, and 203.

[167] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LIII.

[168] He allowed for a force of 25,000 men at £50 a head, or a total of
£1,250,000.

[169] Other estimates besides those for 25,000 men had to be provided
for, _e.g._, extraordinary expenditure on the Navy, Ordnance, and
Commissariat Departments. In fact, the mere prospect of war had thus
added, not £1,250,000, but £4,307,000 to the estimates of the coming
year in the ordinary Budget _before_ war was declared.

[170] Their real objection was that the conversion scheme caused Mr.
Gladstone to take £8,000,000 from his Exchequer balances, which,
however, had been kept perniciously high. Had this money been in hand,
of course there would have been less need to levy a war tax. The
conversion scheme had resulted in a small loss from changes in the
Money Market, due to rumours of war and a bad harvest.

[171] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LIII.

[172] Pitt was first called “the Heaven-born Minister” by the
loan-mongers of the City, because he tried to make war on loans instead
of taxes. In 1792 he had a war deficit of £4,500,000 to meet. He raised
a 4 per cent. loan in the City, for which they made him pay £4 3s. 4d.
per cent.; in 1794 he borrowed £11,000,000 at £4 10s. 9d.; in 1795,
£18,000,000 at £4 15s. 8d.; in 1796, £25,000,000 at £4 13s. 5d.; in
1797, £32,500,000 at £5 14s. 10d.; in 1798, £17,000,000 at £6 4s. 9d.,
and he had to give the usurers bonuses, commissions, and inducements
to subscribe, which compelled him to add £34,000,000 of capital to the
National Debt to get this £17,000,000. His system added £250,000,000
to our National Debt, for which the nation never really got a penny.
In 1797 Pitt, however, saw that the country must soon be drained of
its resources by the loan-mongers, and he made convulsive efforts to
escape from their clutches. He began to raise taxes to meet his war
expenditure and pay the principal and interest of his debts. He first
tried to raise £7,000,000, and only got £4,000,000 by assessed taxes.
In 1798 he returned to the charge, and increased the Income Tax by 40
per cent. That year the revenue was £23,100,000. In 1806, when he died,
he had raised it by successive turns of the screw to £50,900,000. In
1807 an addition of 10 per cent. to the Income Tax raised the revenue
to £59,300,000. Up to 1816 it fluctuated between £60,000,000 and
£70,000,000, but between 1806 and 1816 the war charges and the interest
on the Debt were all paid out of current revenue. In fact, after 1797
it is clear Pitt and his successors resolved to exact any sacrifices
from the people, rather than float war loans in the City.

[173] Lord Shaftesbury, in a letter to Lord Aberdeen, dated 22nd of
February, says that a conversation he held with the Prime Minister
on the subject had “terrified” him. “It implied,” writes Lord
Shaftesbury, “that the country had entered on a war which you could
so little justify to your own conscience as to be unwilling, nay,
almost unable, to advise the ordinance of public prayer for success
on the undertaking. Why, then, have we begun it? You asked whether
‘the English nation would be brought to pray for the Turks?’ Surely,
if they are brought to fight for them, they would be induced to pray
for them in a just quarrel.”--Life and Work of Lord Shaftesbury, by
Edwin Hodder, Vol. II., p. 466 (Cassell and Co.). See also Greville
Memoirs--Third Part (Longmans), 1887.

[174] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LIV.

[175] Russia held the Sulina mouth of the Danube by the Treaty of
Adrianople, and, though she took toll of passing ships, had neglected
the channel, greatly to the hindrance of navigation.

[176] Dundonald would have been appointed instead of Napier, had it not
been that he insisted on destroying Cronstadt by an “infernal” machine
which he had invented. Greville Memoirs--Third Part, p. 136 (Longmans),
1887.

[177] Kinglake’s History of the Invasion of the Crimea, Vol. II., p.
249 and p. 407.

[178] “His (Mr. Kinglake’s) attempt to throw all the credit or blame of
the expedition to Sebastopol upon the Duke of Newcastle is a complete
delusion. His story about the sleepy Cabinet may be partially true,
but the plan of the expedition had been discussed by the Cabinet
at repeated sittings, and the despatch in question only embodied a
foregone conclusion.”--Letters of Sir George Cornewall Lewis, p. 426.
Sir George Lewis was Lord Clarendon’s brother-in-law, and Editor of the
_Edinburgh Review_. His letters, and the articles in the _Edinburgh_
on public affairs at this time, are of high authority. See also a very
conclusive answer to Mr. Kinglake by Sir Theodore Martin in a Note in
his Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LIV.

[179] In a letter to Sir Edmund Head (29th December, 1854), the
common-sense view of the case is pithily put by Sir George Cornewall
Lewis as follows: “The fact is that the Government were urged into
the Sebastopol adventure by popular clamour; that they undertook it
with an imperfect knowledge of the difficulties of the enterprise;
and that the military men anticipated that if the army could once be
landed the place would speedily fall. This delusion was shared by all
the world in September, and even October last; but now events have
dispelled the illusion, the people forget their own mistake, and visit
its consequences on the head of the War Minister.”--Sir G. C. Lewis’
Letters, p. 288.

[180] Mr. Kinglake gives an entertaining description of a conversation
between General Sir George Brown and Lord Raglan over the Ministerial
order. Brown told his chief that they were all so ignorant about the
Crimea that it was foolish to invade it; but that he had better obey,
for refusal would only lead to his dismissal.

[181] But for Mr. Roberts the expedition must have been abandoned till
the following spring. His services were contemptuously ignored, and he
died heart-broken by the bitter ingratitude of the Government. He was
an able officer--but without “interest.”

[182] The attack on the central redoubt by Sir G. Brown’s Light
Division was a confused rush by an armed mob. It failed because the
Duke of Cambridge, who led the First Division, did not bring up his
supports. But for the remonstrance of Sir Colin Campbell, one of his
Brigadiers, he would even have made his Guards ignominiously retire and
re-form at a critical moment in the advance, which would have spread
panic, and lost the battle. De Lacy Evans and Campbell were the only
commanders in this fight who seemed capable of handling troops in a
workmanlike manner. Colonels Hood of the Grenadiers, and Ainslie of the
93rd Highlanders, also displayed skill.

[183] It is a melancholy satisfaction that the French Prince Napoleon
proved himself to be as incapable as the English Royal Duke. He lost
a regiment of his Zouaves who, getting tired of him, went away into
the fray on their own account. One of Brown’s Brigadiers (Buller) also
lost himself, and spent most of the day with his men in hollow square,
waiting to receive imaginary cavalry.

[184] It is an amusing fact that Raglan’s van actually came on
Menschikoff’s rear, as the lines of march intersected, and that neither
General had the faintest idea of what the other was about.

[185] It may be pointed out that the works on the north side of the
town, where the citadel was, commanded those on the south side.
Raglan’s vaunted flank march had left the Russian garrison in the North
Town open and safe communication with their base, and their army of
observation in the field. He had given them ample time to make affluent
use of this advantage. It was, therefore, a moral certainty that if we
had taken the South Town after the bombardment of the 17th our position
would not have been tenable. Though Cathcart and Campbell would have
walked into it easily had they been allowed on the 25th of September,
the failure of the bombardment of the 17th of October was thus probably
a fortunate occurrence.

[186] The ships were also dreadfully _underhanded_--4,000 of their
fighting force being on shore with the army.

[187] It may not be quite fair to blame Lord Raglan too much for
this ridiculous manœuvre. At one time his partizans claimed for him
the honour of planning it. But Prince Albert ascribed it to Sir John
Burgoyne, and so did many others. Burgoyne’s own correspondence seems
to show that the Prince was right. (Lieutenant-Colonel Wrottesley’s
“Life and Correspondence of Sir John Burgoyne,” Vol. II., pp. 95-164.)

[188] Receiving heavy masses of cavalry in this fashion was but a
development of another piece of tactics which Campbell always used
“contrary to the regulations.” That was advancing in line--as at the
Alma--firing on dense masses of infantry all the time. This he learnt
from Sir J. Cameron, colonel of the 6th Regiment, in the Peninsula.
Oddly enough Cameron’s son commanded the Black Watch under Campbell in
the Crimea, and he, too, had, “contrary to regulations,” taught his
father’s tactics to his men. Colonel Hood, of the Grenadiers, had a
glimmering of this idea at the Alma. But he did not venture to advance
in line firing until the enemy’s column was demoralised. The Scottish
Regiments used the manœuvre for the purpose of demoralising the enemy.
But it should never be used except by troops of coarse nerve-fibre, in
perfect training, and whom their leader can hold in hand as in a vice.

[189] The responsibility for this fearful butchery has been cast on
Lord Lucan. He certainly lacked moral courage in obeying an order
which nobody but a maniac would, in the circumstances, have issued.
But Nolan’s insinuation that Lucan was afraid to attack forced the
general’s hand. Nolan was a brave man, with a crazy fad as to the
capacity of English cavalry to go anywhere and do anything. He
had written a book to show that they could--and he was bitterly
disappointed because the campaign had not been conducted so as to
illustrate by practical experiments the soundness of his views. He took
it on himself to ride in advance of the Brigade, with which he had
nothing to do, and excite the men by voice and gesture, as if their own
officers, who were personally responsible for their lives, were not fit
to lead them. This would indicate that he was one of those meddlesome
_aides-de-camp_, whose interference with operations in the field
renders them the pest of British armies.

[190] The success of the Heavy Brigade was due to Scarlett attacking
in line, when, to his surprise, he found he was riding with a slender
force against enormous masses of Russian cavalry, and to the Russians
perpetrating the atrocious blunder of halting to receive the fierce
onset of the Scottish and Irish horsemen. Only a third of the Light
Brigade were rescued from the “valley of death,” and they owe their
lives to a brilliant and impetuous charge which a fiery squadron of
French _Chasseurs d’Afrique_ made on a Russian battery, that was
cutting our troopers to pieces during their retreat.

[191] History of England, Vol. V., p. 125.

[192] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. I., p. 424.

[193] Stratford de Redcliffe was now for peace, because he found the
war substituting French for Russian influence at Constantinople, and
of the two he preferred the latter.--Greville Memoirs, Third Part
(Longmans), 1887.

[194] The Croker Papers, Vol. III., p. 320. Lyndhurst, long after
delivering his ferocious speech demanding that Sebastopol should be
razed to the ground, had written to Croker for advice. “The political
world is in a most complicated state,” says Lyndhurst in this letter,
“and I feel quite at sea.”

[195] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LVII.

[196] One of the most appalling cases was the death of Lord Jocelyn in
Lady Palmerston’s drawing-room.

[197] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LVIII.

[198] Mr. Herbert’s policy was amply vindicated. The experiment
succeeded so well that Miss Stanley, sister of the late Dean Stanley,
was sent out afterwards with forty-seven nurses to reinforce Miss
Nightingale’s staff.

[199] See a lively correspondence between Sir J. Graham and John Wilson
Croker on this subject. Graham showed that the Admiralty was not to
blame, but urged in excuse of “the poor idiot,” as Croker called him,
who blundered at Balaclava, that “this was the first time coffee had
ever been issued to a British army on foreign service.”--Croker Papers,
Vol. III., p. 328.

[200] Financial Secretary to the War Office is now the name of this
post.

[201] This change was brought about by Russell rudely turning out Lord
Granville to make room for himself, and dismissing Mr. Strutt from
the Duchy of Lancaster to make room for Lord Granville. Strutt got a
Peerage as Lord Belper. Russell threatened to break up the Ministry if
he did not get the Presidency of the Council, although there was no
precedent--except a doubtful one in Henry VIII.’s reign--for appointing
a commoner to the office. The Duke of Bedford told Mr. Greville that
Lord John, being poor, was now determined to get an office carrying
a high salary. The Duke had met his expenses, but was growing more
miserly every day his colossal fortune was accumulating, and, says Mr.
Greville, “he falls in very readily with his brother’s notion of taking
an office for the sake of its emoluments.”--Greville Memoirs--Third
Part, Vol. I., p. 148 (Longmans), 1887.

[202] “Whatever may be the qualities of different Ministers, I am
the bond by which they are united together. That once destroyed, the
whole fabric falls.”--Letter of Lord Aberdeen to John Wilson Croker,
explaining why the factions concentrated their hostility on him
personally.--The Croker Papers, Vol. III., p. 348.

[203] Evelyn Ashley’s Life of Palmerston, Vol. II., p. 80.

[204] Palmerston wanted Lord Shaftesbury to be Chancellor of the
Duchy. He had to withdraw his offer of the post, and in this letter
Lady Palmerston explains why.--Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of
Shaftesbury, K.G., by Edwin Hodder, Vol. II., p. 493 (Cassell and Co.).

[205] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 8.

[206] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXI.

[207] The opposition of the Peelites to the Committee on grounds of
high policy and constitutional legality was soon justified. “Lord
Stanley,” says Lord Malmesbury on the 3rd of March, “writes that Louis
Napoleon objects strongly to the Committee of Inquiry into the War, and
says if it takes place, though his army will still act on the same side
as ours, it can no longer do so along with it. He is evidently alarmed
at the laches of his own Ministers and generals being shown up to
Europe and endangering his position.”--Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol.
II., p. 11. Little wonder that the investigation was “incomplete” and
“inconclusive.”

[208] Mr. Sidney Herbert succeeded Sir George Grey in this office when
Palmerston reorganised the Coalition. Mr. Herbert went out with the
Peelites a fortnight after the new Ministry was formed.

[209] Hansard, Vol. CXXXVIII., 1075.

[210] This was, of course, discussing and coming to a unanimous
agreement with Russia at the very outset on the Second Point--the
navigation of the Danube. This was the point in which Austria had had
a vital interest. If it had been kept open to the last, she might have
been more zealous in overcoming the difficulties as to the Third Point
which wrecked the Conference.

[211] The proof of this is as follows: (1) The Turks would have taken
the Austrian compromise, which, by the way, was the development of
a suggestion made by the French Envoy, as the basis of a feasible
plan for giving effect to the Third Point. (2) Lord John Russell--the
most violent and bellicose of the anti-Russian Ministers--was in
favour of it. (3) The position of Russia in the matter was officially
misrepresented to the English people. Russia said her defeats were not
such as to justify her as a Great Power in letting the Allies _force_
on her a reduction of her Black Sea fleet. But she had no objection
to any plan limiting her preponderance if it sprang from mutual
negotiation between her and Turkey--acting as principals on an _equal
footing_--to establish, by _mutual consent_ a naval equilibrium in the
Black Sea. (4) She did not absolutely exclude the idea of reducing her
fleet as was falsely stated, not only in the English press, but in
Parliament. Article 2 of Count Buol’s compromise provided that Turkey
and Russia should “propose by common agreement to the Conference the
effective _equality_ of the naval forces which the two coast Powers
will keep up in the Black Sea, and which shall _not exceed the actual
number of Russian ships afloat in that Sea_.” (See Annual Register,
Vol. XCVII., pp. 214-217.) The use of the word “exceed” shows that
the Article provided a _maximum_ limit--not a minimum. It was simply
foolish to argue, as representatives of the Government did, that
negotiations for peace had to be abandoned because Russia refused to
accept a practical and reasonable plan for preventing her from having
more ships than Turkey in the Black Sea. The statement of facts on this
subject by Sir T. Martin in Chap. LXIII. of his Life of the Prince
Consort is as misleading as Mr. Spencer Walpole’s account of the
Austrian Compromise (History of England, Vol. V., p. 135). Mr. Walpole
says that Count Buol’s proposal was one “under which any addition to
the Russian Fleet might be followed by the admission of a corresponding
number of war vessels of the Allies into the Euxine.” This is not a
correct summary of Article 2 of the Compromise.

[212] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXIII.

[213] “If,” writes Prince Albert in a Memorandum dated 3rd of May,
1855, “Austria, Prussia, and Germany will give the diplomatic guarantee
for the future which I have here detailed, we shall consider this an
equivalent for the material guarantee sought for in the limitation
of the Russian Fleet.”--Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap.
LXIII. But the odd thing to note is, that the Prince was one of those
responsible, not perhaps for suspending, but for finally breaking
up the Conference of Vienna, that had already adopted the principle
of his plan. He and the Queen ignored the fact that it was already
embodied in the Memorandum agreed to by the Conference, for giving
effect to Ali Pasha’s project for more completely connecting Turkey
with “the European equilibrium.” The Queen first coerced--for her
note to Clarendon was a coercive instrument--Palmerston to abandon
negotiations in Conference, because Russia would not submit to a
humiliating material guarantee. Then Prince Albert suggests as a
substitute for that a diplomatic guarantee, which Russia had already
accepted, and which was a far less effective protection to Turkey than
the Austrian compromise which the Queen imperiously condemned. The only
original point in the Prince’s plan is the inclusion of Prussia. She
had been excluded from the Conference in deference to the prejudices
of those who hated peace negotiations, and who declared that she was a
mendacious slave of the Czar.

[214] And yet on the day before the Prince wrote to Aberdeen he
says, in a letter to Stockmar:--“The Vienna Conferences, which it
would have been better to have left open, must now be closed, if
only to _get the Ministry rest in Parliament_. Oh, Oxenstiern! Oh,
Oxenstiern!”--Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXIV.

[215] Mr. Sidney Herbert was another Peelite who resisted Prince
Albert’s intimidation.

[216] Canrobert’s neglect to seize the Mamelon Hill before the Russians
crept into it on the 9th of March and fortified it, was one of the
fatal blunders that protracted the siege.

[217] Lord Malmesbury records a conversation in his Diary with Persigny
on this point. “Persigny strongly for peace, and says France is all for
it.... He says, if the Emperor is to go to the Crimea, there must be
peace at any price to prevent it. If not, the war ought to go on; but
if the French army is lost then there will be a revolution.”--Memoirs
of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 16.

[218] The War, by W. H. Russell, p. 498. London: Routledge and Co.,
1855.

[219] Napoleon III. was abjectly ignorant of military geography. At
the council of 1854, said Persigny to Lord Malmesbury, his Majesty
“announced the attack on Baltic.” Persigny asked if he meant Cronstadt.
“No, of course not, it would require 100,000 men, _cavalry_ included,”
said the Emperor, loftily. “But,” replied Persigny, “Cronstadt is an
island.” “No, it is not,” said the Emperor, as he went for a map.
Everything, said Persigny, was done with the same ignorance and
carelessness. Yet it was a campaign--devised by this charlatan against
the opinion of his best officers, that Lord Raglan, according to Sir T.
Martin, approved! See Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 15.

[220] Reminiscences and opinions of Sir F. H. Doyle (Longmans, 1886),
p. 414. There was a terrible snow storm in Devonshire this year. It was
made memorable by the footmarks of some creature which nobody could
identify. These created a sort of panic in the West of England, for the
people thought that the devil was abroad among them.

[221] Letters of Sir George Cornewall Lewis, p. 295. His additional
taxes were, (1), 3s. per cwt. on sugar; (2), 1d. per pound on coffee,
raising the duty from 3d. to 4d.; (3), 3d. per pound on tea, raising
the duty from 1s. 6d. to 1s 9d.; (4), equalisation of duty on Scotch
and English spirits, bringing the former from 6s. to 7s. 10d. per
gallon; (5), increase of duty on Irish spirits from 4s. to 6s; (6),
increase of 2d. on Income Tax, raising it from 1s. 2d. to 1s. 4d. in
the £.

[222] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXI. It was this
letter that ultimately led to the founding of Netley Hospital.

[223] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXIII.

[224] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 24.

[225] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 12. Martin’s Life of the
Prince Consort, Chap. LXII.

[226] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 18. See also _Times_,
17th of April, 1855.

[227] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXII.

[228] Ducos was personally hostile to England, though he pretended to
be in favour of the alliance. Lord Malmesbury says that he and General
Changarnier were the authors of a plan in 1851 for a piratical descent
on the Isle of Wight, and for seizing the Queen’s person at Osborne.
See Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. I., pp. 360 and 396. General
Cavaignac also thought at the time such a plan to be feasible in the
event of a war with England.

[229] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXII.

[230] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 19.

[231] It was said to be composed by his mother, Queen Hortense.

[232] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXII.

[233] Vast numbers had been unable to find seats--in fact, as much
as £100 was given for a box. When the curtain rose, crowds of ladies
and gentlemen in evening dress were seen packed closely together
at the back of the stage behind the artists--a curious revival of
the old practice, in virtue of which persons of quality and rank
frequented this part of the house in preference to any other. Jenny Ney
played “Leonora.” It was her first performance on the English stage.
Tamberlik, Formes, Tagliafico, and Luchesi took the male parts.

[234] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXII.

[235] No account of the Memorandum is given by Sir T. Martin, and
probably it was a ceremonial rather than a serious document.

[236] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 20.

[237] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXII.

[238] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXV.

[239] This resort to the dreaded instruments of “personal Government”
and “Court intrigue” by Palmerston was adopted after diplomatic means
had failed. Mr. Greville, in the Third Part of his “Journal,” gives an
amusing description of how we touted for a Portuguese alliance in these
days.

[240] It is not generally known that “Old Jérôme” really caused
the Emperor to abandon his intention of going to the Crimea. Every
argument pressed by his Ministers and the Queen failed to shake his
determination. Part of his plan was to make Jérôme not Regent, but
Chief of the Council of Ministers in his absence. The Ministers
artfully persuaded Jérôme, who was a vain man, to refuse this office
unless he were vested with the same despotic power as the Emperor.
This frightened the Emperor, and he immediately gave up his Crimean
expedition. See a conversation between Lord Cowley and Mr. Greville in
the Greville Memoirs, Third Part, Vol. I., p. 263 (Longmans), 1887.

[241] Greville Memoirs, Third Part, Vol. I, pp. 283-286.

[242] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXVII.

[243] They crossed over from France on the 28th of August. Mr. Greville
says, “While they were in the yacht crossing over, Prince Albert
had told him (Clarendon) that there was not a word of truth in the
prevailing report and belief that the young Prince of Prussia and the
Princess Royal are _fiancés_, that nothing had ever passed between
the parents on the subject, and that the union never would take place
unless the children should become attached to each other.”--Greville
Memoirs, Third Part, Vol. I., p. 287. On the 13th of September,
however, Prince Albert writes to Stockmar, saying, “I have received a
very friendly letter from the Princess of Prussia.” In this letter the
Princess (now Empress of Germany) intimated the fact that her son came
with the consent of his parents and the King of Prussia to sue for the
hand of the Princess Royal.

[244] The Crown Prince of Germany--A Diary. London (Sampson Low), 1886.

[245] “The Officer in command is directed to arrange times so that
the Prince may have ample opportunities of becoming acquainted with
such various matters as horseshoeing, fencing, vaulting, limbering
and unlimbering guns, and stable work, as well as the routine of
lessons and singing in the schools.”--Extract from Von Griesheim’s
Instructions. The Crown Prince of Germany--A Diary, p. 24.

[246] The Crown Prince of Germany--A Diary, p. 28.

[247] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXVIII.

[248] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 37.

[249] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 38.

[250] It is now known that Cavour suggested that Austria might be asked
to retire from that part of Papal territory which she occupied.

[251] Greville Memoirs, Third Part, p. 303.

[252] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol II., p. 38.

[253] “Exclusive of officers who have come back by reason of wounds,
sickness, or promotion to the depôt battalions, only thirty-three out
of an army of 52,000 men have come home on private affairs.”--Letter
of Prince Albert to the Prince of Prussia. Martin’s Life of the Prince
Consort, Chap. LXIX.

[254] See a curious letter on this subject from Colonel Hope, V.C., in
the _Daily Chronicle_ of 14th September, 1886, and a note appended to
it from the pen of the Editor of that newspaper.

[255] Simpson was bitterly blamed for not asking Campbell’s Division
of Guards and Highlanders, who were picked and seasoned soldiers, to
assault in the first instance. Campbell, however, though he often
exacted cruel sacrifices from his men, was parsimonious of blood, and
it was said in the camp that he refused to attack till he had time to
make the necessary preparations. Then he observed, grimly, he would
not “attack, but ‘tak’ he Redan.” Codrington seems to have imagined
that there was no need for all this caution. He attacked, but did
not take, the fortress; in fact, to take it on his plan was an utter
impossibility.

[256] That was partly due to the fact that our trenches were 200 yards
from the Redan. This space was enfiladed by a murderous fire when
crossed by the stormers. The French, 20,000 strong, were only 20 yards
from the Malakoff. Simpson’s excuse for hastening the attack instead of
pushing the trenches closer was that every day the French were losing
200 and we 60 men in the trenches.

[257] The Duke of Newcastle, who had gone to the seat of war to examine
affairs on the spot, in a letter to Clarendon, says that Simpson seemed
“never to be doing but always mooning. He has no plan, no opinion, no
hope but from the chapter of accidents.” He thought Pélissier just
as incompetent. “I believe,” he adds, “Pélissier’s officers have no
confidence in him, and I know his soldiers dislike him.” Martin’s Life
of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXVII. The Sardinian De La Marmora was the
only one of the Allied Commanders-in-Chief who had any marked ability.

[258] So the Russians afterwards said. This plan was proposed by Sir E.
Lyons, but Pélissier laughed scornfully in his face when he suggested
it, and poor Simpson, as usual, concurred with Pélissier.

[259] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXVIII.

[260] Evelyn Ashley’s Life of Lord Palmerston, Vol. II., p. 322.

[261] The excuse for the Franco-Austrian intrigue was that the
rejection of the terms by Russia bound Austria to join France and
England in going on with the war. But of course Austria had taken
pains to find out what terms Russia would accept before she gave her
pledge, so that she never had the remotest intention of fighting on
our side. As for the terms they were, as Mr. Greville puts it, but a
second edition of the proposals which we had rejected at the Vienna
Conference. There was, says Mr. Greville, this difference: “while on
the last occasion the Emperor knocked under to us and reluctantly
agreed to go on with the war, he is now determined to go on with it no
longer, and requires that we should defer to his wishes.”--Greville
Memoirs, Third Part, Vol. I., p. 297.

[262] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXVIII.

[263] Greville Memoirs, Third Part, Vol. I., p. 310.

[264] Greville Memoirs, Third Part, Vol. I., p. 315.

[265] Sir G. C. Lewis’s Letters, p. 309.

[266] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 37.

[267] Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXX. Sir Theodore, when he
penned this, had not seen Mr. Disraeli’s cynical letter to Lord
Malmesbury, otherwise he would probably not have added “such generosity
among statesmen may always be counted on as a matter of course.”

[268] This was a nickname which Serjeant Hayes had stuck to Parke
on account of his prejudice in favour of fossilised forms and
precedents.--Life of Lord Campbell, Vol. II., p. 388.

[269] Life of Lord Campbell, Vol. II., p. 340.

[270] Mr. Babbage, Dr. Lyon Playfair, and Sir R. Murchison, it was
said, were to be the first batch of life scientific peers.

[271] Greville Memoirs, Third Part, Vol. II., p. 51.

[272] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 43.

[273] Mr. Greville, writing on March 9, says, “Called on Achille Fould,
who introduced me to Magne, Minister of Finance, said to be a great
rogue. Everything here is intrigue and jobbery, and I am told there is
a sort of gang, of which Morny is the chief, who all combine for their
own purpose and advantage: Morny, Fould, Magne, and Rouher, Minister of
Commerce. They now want to get out Billault, Minister of the Interior,
whom they cannot entirely manage, and that minister is necessary to
them on account of the railways, which are under his management.”
Greville Memoirs, Third Part, Vol. II., p. 31. At a party at Lord
Holland’s house in Paris, where a great many aristocratic ladies were
present, Mr. Greville says that when MM. de Flahault and Morny were
announced, “the women all jumped up like a covey of partridges and
walked out of the room, without taking any notice of the men.”

[274] The Treaty of Paris was signed on Sunday, March 30. Each of the
fourteen plenipotentiaries originally intended to keep the pen with
which he signed it as a _memento_ of the occasion. They, however,
yielded to the request of the Empress Eugenie, who begged that only one
pen should be used, which should be retained by her as a souvenir. Only
one was accordingly used. It was a quill plucked from an eagle’s wing,
and richly mounted with gold and jewels.

[275] In 1870 the neutrality of the Black Sea was abandoned--Russia
having declared she would no longer respect the Treaty on that point.
After the last Russo-Turkish war, Russia took back Bessarabia. The
“Declarations,” in fact, are the only portions of the Treaty that
remain in force.

[276] History of England, Vol. V., p. 143.

[277] Correspondence of A. de Tocqueville with Mr. Nassau Senior, Vol.
II., pp. 99, 101.

[278] This refers to Lord Malmesbury’s attack in the House of Lords on
the Treaty of Peace.

[279] Continuing a year after this, Lord Malmesbury records his
impressions of a conversation with Lady Ely on the famous “happy
family” dinner of 1856. He says, “It looks as if her Majesty made up
the dinner of these discordant materials for fun, and, from the same
_malice_, made me take Lady Clarendon to dinner, as it was only two
days after I had attacked Lord Clarendon in the House of Lords, and
Lady Clarendon would not speak to me at first, but I ended by making
her laugh. The Queen, who was opposite, was highly amused, and could
hardly help laughing when Lady Clarendon at first would not answer
me.”--Memoirs of an ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 67.

[280] Nobody regretted this, for they created a host of highly-paid
place-holders. Mr. Disraeli declared that these measures were at first
supposed to be an ingenious means of compensating Ireland for the
failure of the Tipperary Bank.

[281] Greville Memoirs, Third Part. Vol. II., pp. 42-45.

[282] A few days before this event, on the 10th inst., the Royal
Nursery was robbed. The Royal Household is, of course, under the
control of the Lord Steward. One of his sub-departments is called “The
Silver Pantry,” which has three yeomen, one groom, and six assistants
attached to it. Yet, when the nursery plate had to be sent to Windsor,
these gorgeous functionaries, with their staff of porters, horses,
grooms, and carts, could not condescend to convey it. It was trusted
to a common carrier, who unhappily, when on his way, stopped at a
public-house for refreshments. He and his men were “only absent for
five minutes,” but in that time a light spring cart had driven up to
the carrier’s waggon, and when it drove away, the box containing the
Royal nursery plate had vanished. The plate chest was found in Bonner’s
Fields containing everything but the bullion. The knife-blades and
packing, which latter consisted of women’s dresses, were found, but the
plate was never traced.

[283] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXXII.

[284] De Lacy Evans’ proposal was referred to a mixed Commission of
civilians and military men.

[285] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXXII.

[286] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 49.

[287] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXXII.

[288] When the frontier was drawn, Count Orloff said to Lord Clarendon
that he should take it as a favour if he would draw it a little
farther south so as to include Bolgrad, which was the capital of some
Russian military colonies in which the Czar was greatly interested.
This was done as a matter of courtesy to the Czar, Orloff pointing to
the position of Bolgrad on the map--a French map--and showing that
it was such a long way from Lake Jalpuk, that the concession did not
give Russia access to a Moldavian lake on which she might, perchance,
one day build a threatening flotilla. After the Treaty was signed,
it turned out that the place marked as Bolgrad on the French map was
really Tabak, and that Bolgrad was actually far to the south of it, on
the northern shore of Lake Jalpuk. The Russians therefore, insisting
on the letter of the Treaty, claimed Bolgrad, on the left shore of the
lake, leaving the right shore to Moldavia.

[289] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 50.

[290] Lowe’s Bismarck, Vol. I., p. 218.

[291] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXXIII.

[292] The French Emperor was pledged to support Russia against us. But
after his return from Biarritz, he found political parties were using
his disagreement with England to weaken the Anglo-French alliance, and
discredit his foreign policy. The secret history of the transaction,
however, was not creditable to Palmerstonian diplomacy. Lord Malmesbury
writes on the 21st of November, “Persigny told me Walewski is in
disgrace. The difficulty about Bolgrad and the Isle of Serpents arises
from the Emperor having been entrapped into a promise by the Russians;
but Persigny has suggested a solution, which has been accepted by the
Emperor and our Government, namely, a Congress, which is to assemble,
into which Sardinia is to be admitted, _on condition of voting against
Russia_. Austria goes with England, and Prussia is of course excluded.
This gives England a majority, and the Emperor an excuse for giving
way.”--Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II, p. 53. Lord Clarendon, had,
up till the beginning of December, refused to submit the dispute to a
Congress, for the point which Russia raised about Bolgrad was simply
a point of obvious chicanery which it was beneath the dignity of
England to debate. Lord Palmerston and he yielded, however, and, as Mr.
Greville says scornfully, by “this dodge saved us.”--Greville Memoirs,
Third Part, Vol. II., p. 68.

[293] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 55.

[294] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 58. See also Greville
Memoirs, Third Part, Vol. II., p. 69.

[295] The Duke of Beaufort and eighty Members of the Lower House,
however, threatened to leave the Party if places in a Tory Government
were given to the Peelites.--Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 57.

[296] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXXV.

[297] On the estimate of expenditure and revenue for 1856-1857 there
was a deficit of £10,000,000. To meet this Sir George Lewis had
borrowed £7,499,000, and he had raised £1,000,000 in Exchequer Bills.
The total receipts from all sources, said Sir George Lewis in his
Statement (_Annual Register_, Vol. XCIX., p. 29), would, when the
financial year closed, be £79,384,000, and the expenditure £78,000,000,
leaving a surplus of £1,384,000. This was a wrong calculation. The net
income of the year was £75,569,575, or, after deductions, £72,963,151,
showing a deficit on the expenditure of the year of £3,254,604. For
the coming year, 1857-1858, Sir George estimated his expenditure at
£63,224,000, to which £2,000,000 had to be added for the service of war
loans. The revenue he estimated at £66,365,000; so that he expected a
surplus of £891,000.

[298] Quite apart from the cost of the Crimean War, Mr. Gladstone
showed that £6,000,000 had been added to the _ordinary_ expenditure of
the country during the four years ending 1856-1857.

[299] Of course, Lord Beaconsfield before he died educated the Foreign
Office up to the truth, which is, that “the key of India” is held
in London--and that the defensible gates of India are those on our
frontier which we can protect by our arms. But the amazing thing is
that when the Foreign Office _did_ believe that Herat was the “key of
India,” they never would let it be held by a Power which, like Persia,
was strong enough to keep it safe with British help. Persia was the
natural ally of England against Russia. But every effort of the Indian
Government to conciliate Persia has been thwarted by the Foreign
Office. Since we abandoned her for the sake of the Russian alliance
against Napoleon I., the English Foreign Office has exhausted the
resources of its diplomacy in betraying, browbeating, and irritating
her. And yet it is a fact, that without the goodwill of Persia,
which enabled Russia to draw supplies from “the golden province of
Khorassan,” Russia could never have marched from the Caspian to the
gates of Merv.

[300] Correspondence respecting relations with Persia, Parliamentary
Papers, 1857, pp. 21-39.

[301] This story of diplomatic blundering is told in the speeches of
Mr. Layard and Lord Palmerston. Hansard, Vol. CXL., pp. 1717-1722.

[302] Papers respecting Persia, p. 211.

[303] India under Lord Canning, by the Duke of Argyll, p. 72. See also
21 and 22 Vict., c. 106, Section 55. Lord Beaconsfield made another
attempt to evade this section by bringing Indian troops to Malta during
the Russo-Turkish War in 1877.

[304] Greville Memoirs, Third Part, Vol. II., p. 93.

[305] Life of Cobden, Chap. XXIV.

[306] The vote was 247 for, and 263 against, the Ministry. See Cobden’s
Speeches, Vol. II., pp. 121-156, for his indictment.

[307] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 63. Mr. Greville declares
that Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli had “made up their minds to coalesce
with Gladstone and the Peelites on the first opportunity.”--Greville
Memoirs, Third Part. Vol. II., p. 93. Lord Malmesbury says that at
a private meeting of the Tory Party on the 4th of March, Lord Derby
denied that he had coalesced with Mr. Gladstone, but refused to be
dictated to by any member of the party as to “the course he should
pursue with regard to any political personages whatever,” a declaration
which was loudly cheered. The general opinion was that such a
coalition, though the Tory leaders favoured it, would have split up the
Tory Party.

[308] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 64. Note that the
attitude of the Peelites to the Tory Party curiously resembled that of
the Liberal Unionists in 1887.

[309] Correspondence of Abraham Hayward, Q.C., from 1814 to 1844.
Edited by Henry E. Carlisle. 2 Vols. London, Murray, 1886.

[310] Life of Cobden, Chap. XXIV.

[311] Annual Summary of the _Times_ for 1857. On the 24th of February,
1858, the Tories formed, Lord Derby’s second Government.

[312] Greville Memoirs, Third Part, Vol. II., p. 99.

[313] Lord Derby had shrunk from carrying on the Crimean War when Lord
Aberdeen resigned.

[314] Even new Tory candidates, when they saw how the current of public
opinion was setting, began to beg support by saying that if they had
been in the House when the China vote was taken, they would have voted
for Lord Palmerston.--See Greville Memoirs, Vol. II., p. 100.

[315] Correspondence of Abraham Hayward, Q.C., Vol. I., pp. 312, 313.

[316] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXXV. On the 5th of
March, 1858, he writes to Stockmar:--“Lord Palmerston’s sudden decline
in popularity was a remarkable phenomenon.”--Martin’s Life of the
Prince Consort, Chap. LXXXIV.

[317] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 70.

[318] This was one of the first recorded cases of “obstruction” in the
modern sense of the word. Mr. Parnell used, at one time, to justify
his tactics by citing as a precedent Mr. Gladstone’s opposition to the
Divorce Bill.

[319] That no such distinction should be made is the view which seems
to be gaining ground now. The French Chamber adopted it in their
Divorce Bill of 1886, and it has been adopted in the law of Scotland,
where, as in France, paramours are not permitted to marry after divorce
is granted. In England the marriage of paramours, outside the forbidden
degrees of affinity and consanguinity, strongly condemned by Bishop
Wilberforce in the debates on the Divorce Bill, is permissible. Though,
as a concession to Wilberforce and his followers, it was enacted that a
clergyman might refuse to perform the ceremony, the concession did not
satisfy anybody.--See Life of Wilberforce, Vol. II., pp. 343-347.

[320] Life of Lord Campbell, Vol. II., p. 351.

[321] Life of Lord Campbell, Vol. II., p. 353.

[322] Greville Memoirs, Third Part, Vol. II., p. 3.

[323] This dispute was settled by a Conference which met at Paris
on 5th March, 1857, France, Austria, England, and Russia being
represented, Prussia and Switzerland being occasionally admitted with
a consultative voice. Frederick William IV. resigned all his rights
to Neufchâtel for a pecuniary indemnity, which he generously refused
afterwards to take, and the royalist prisoners were set free. The
severance of this province was as great an advantage to Prussia, as the
separation of Hanover was to England.

[324] France and Sardinia would have made an Austrian occupation of
the Principalities ground for demanding, by way of compensation, the
retirement of Austria from Northern Italy.

[325] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., pp. 78, 79.

[326] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 78.

[327] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXXIX.

[328] Sleeman’s Tour in Oudh, Vol. II., p. 353.

[329] Oudh Blue Book, p. 46.

[330] Oudh Blue Book, p. 235.

[331] If we go behind the facts and pretexts of the official case we
can easily discern better though unstated reasons for the annexation of
Oudh. After the annexation of Scinde and the conquest of the Punjab,
Oudh was left protruding into British territory, so as to cut it into
two parts. Oudh was in our way, and it was therefore taken.

[332] The History of India, by Meadows Taylor, p. 710.

[333] Curiously Mr. Cobden was among the few Englishmen who both
knew and cared. In a letter to Mr. Bright, dated the 24th of August,
1857, he says, “From the moment that I had satisfied myself that a
feeling of alienation was constantly increasing with both Natives and
the English--we had some striking evidence to this effect before our
Committee in 1853--I made up my mind that it must end in trouble sooner
or later.”--Morley’s Life of Cobden, Chap. XXV.

[334] Meadows Taylor’s History of India, p. 713.

[335] India under Lord Dalhousie, by the Duke of Argyll, pp. 57-60.
Sir J. Kaye says that the Indian army consisted, in round numbers, of
300,000 men, of whom 40,000 were Europeans.--Kaye’s Sepoy War, Vol. I.,
p. 341. When Lord Canning reached India the Native army, as a matter of
fact, consisted of 233,000, the Europeans of 45,000 men.

[336] Now we maintain in India one English to every two Native
soldiers. Dalhousie maintained one English to every five Native
soldiers.

[337] See on this curious subject Kaye’s Sepoy War, Vol. I., and
Appendix, p. 619.

[338] “The Mutiny would perhaps never have occurred if British
officers, turning themselves into missionaries, had not fostered
the notion that the Company was anxious to convert its subjects to
Christianity.”--Walpole’s History of England, Vol. V., p. 430.

[339] Holmes’ Indian Mutiny, p. 82. India under Lord Canning, by the
Duke of Argyll, p. 77.

[340] Parliamentary Papers. Mutinies in the East Indies, p. 1 _et seq._

[341] Meadows Taylor’s History of India, p. 720.

[342] Anson first heard of the outbreak at Simla, on the 12th of May.
He was at Umballa on the 15th. On the 27th he died of cholera at
Kurnaul.

[343] Lawrence himself says modestly, in a letter to Lord Dalhousie
(June 14th, 1858): “To Nicholson, Alec Taylor, of the Engineers, and
Neville Chamberlain, the real merit of our success is due.” But this
does some injustice to Colonel Baird Smith, who was Taylor’s chief, and
who deserves credit for forcing Wilson on to attack the city.

[344] Life of Lord Lawrence, by R. Bosworth Smith, M.A., Vol. II., p.
30.

[345] _Quarterly Review_ for April, 1883.

[346] “Whilst the siege was in progress, Wilson had, “more than
once,” says Nicholson, in one of his letters to Lawrence, spoken of
withdrawing the guns. Nicholson, who was the Roland and Hotspur of
the war, and Lawrence’s trustiest lieutenant, says of Wilson, “Had
he carried out his threat I was quite prepared to have appealed to
the army to set him aside and elect a successor.” Three days after
penning that letter this fiery Bersekir fell mortally wounded, leading
the stormers of the Cashmere Bastion. Wilson, feeling it difficult to
maintain the occupation of the city, wanted to withdraw. When this was
communicated to Nicholson, he turned on his death-bed, convulsed with
passion, and exclaimed, “Thank God, I have yet strength enough to shoot
that man!”

[347] Life of Lord Lawrence, by R. Bosworth Smith, M.A., Vol. II., p.
225.

[348] The king died in prison three months afterwards. Hodson’s defence
was that he feared a rescue.

[349] Lord Canning himself has described their conduct--especially
that of the terror-stricken officers, “with swords by their sides”--as
“disgraceful.”--Life of Sir H. Lawrence, p. 575.

[350] Elgin’s patriotism and generosity in surrendering these
troops were justly extolled by Sir William Peel, the leader of the
Naval Brigade, who said that the Chinese Expedition really relieved
Lucknow.--Walrond’s Letters and Journals of Lord Elgin, p. 188.

[351] Shadwell’s Life of Lord Clyde, Vol. I., p. 405.

[352] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXXXII.

[353] At Lucknow, after four days’ hard fighting, he had only 122
killed and 414 wounded.

[354] Campbell’s retreat from Lucknow to Cawnpore was managed
with consummate address. But it was censured. The defence of it
is this:--(1), He had to relieve himself from the encumbrance of
the women, children, sick, and wounded; (2), He had to save his
communications, which Windham’s defeat at the Pandoo River had put at
Tantia Topee’s mercy; (3), He could easily come back and take Lucknow;
and (4), he was anxious to make an immediate impression on Rohilkund.

[355] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXXV. Feodore was the
name of the Queen’s half-sister.

[356] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXXVI.

[357] As to precedents, the eldest daughter of George II. received
a dowry of £80,000, and an annuity of £5,000. But when the Princess
Royal, daughter of George III., married, she was voted a dowry of
£80,000 without any annuity. The Irish Parliament had to vote her an
annuity of £5,000.

[358] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXXVI.

[359] In the “Journal de Goncourt: Mémoires des la Vie Littéraire,”
published in 1877, the secret history of the Emperor’s instructions
to Pélissier is told. The Prussian Military Attaché at St. Petersburg
sent to the King of Prussia, through MM. de Gerlach and Niebuhr, the
secret details of the campaign. Manteufel, the King’s Foreign Minister,
desirous of possessing this information which the King kept to himself,
bribed certain persons who had access to these letters to copy them.
Then the French hearing of the matter bribed Manteufel’s agents to let
them have copies also. In this way Napoleon III. discovered that the
Malakoff was the one vulnerable point in the defences, although the
repulse of the 18th of June made most people think it was invulnerable.

[360] This year the great race at Ascot--that for the Gold Cup, which,
by the way, was of silver--was won by Lord Zetland’s “Skirmisher.”

[361] A story used to be told of one Scottish regiment that got into
sad disgrace because of the contempt with which they treated the Cross
of Valour. A goodly number of Crosses were allotted to it, for it had
won exceptional distinction. The superior officers, on being asked to
nominate recipients, said, “Oh, hand the thing over to the subalterns.”
The subalterns said, “The sergeants would probably like to have the
decorations at their disposal.” The sergeants said, “Oh, it would be
best to let the men get them,” and the men, with grim humour, selected
as bravest of the brave, two pioneers, whose duty it had been to go
round with the “greybeards” when the regiment was in action, and serve
out the regulation ration of whisky or rum, as the case might be. Was
this the reason why no member of the Scottish Brigade figures in the
_Annual Register’s_ list of Victoria Crosses given in 1857?

[362] The Queen promptly ordered the Royal Collections to be put at the
disposal of the Exhibition. The Prince Consort suggested a plan for
appealing to private collectors which had the desired effect. He said
that collectors of rank would not shrink from refusing to lend works of
Art when it was widely known that their refusal might mar a national
purpose; and he advised the appeal to be based on the fact that though
England invested more money in Art than any other country, she had done
less than any other for Art education, which such an exhibition might
easily be made to promote. He even sent them a practical proposal for
drawing up a catalogue that would powerfully appeal to the sympathies
of collectors, and to his suggestions the success of the undertaking
was largely due.

[363] It may not be amiss to say that this stinging Memorandum was the
Queen’s reply to a frivolous communication from Lord Palmerston. In it
he met her growing remonstrances by saying that “measures are sometimes
best calculated to succeed which follow each other step by step.” He
further added, rather impudently, that “Viscount Palmerston may perhaps
be permitted to take the liberty of saying that it is fortunate for
those from whose opinions your Majesty differs, that your Majesty is
not in the House of Commons, for they would have had to encounter
a formidable antagonist in argument.”--Martin’s Life of the Prince
Consort, Chap. LXXVIII.

[364] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXXXI.

[365] The _Post_ was “inspired” by Lady Palmerston at this period.

[366] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXXXII.