But the Emperor Nicholas of Russia had convinced himself that the “sick man” was at the point of death, and that it was essential to the peace of Europe that his heirs should divide the inheritance before his demise. |Projects of the Emperor Nicholas.| The sentence at the head of this chapter was spoken by the Czar when he revived proposals which he had made to the Duke of Wellington and Lord Aberdeen, then Foreign Secretary, on the occasion of his visit to England in 1844. These proposals had been embodied in a celebrated memorandum drawn up by Count Nesselrode, to the effect that the Turkish Empire should be maintained in its integrity as long as possible, but that as soon as its fall could be averted no longer, England, Austria, and Russia should act on a common understanding and divide the dominion among themselves. Nesselrode’s memorandum had been received and placed in the archives of the Foreign Office, and no disclaimer of assent to the propositions therein had ever been made on the part of Her Majesty’s Government. Silence is often assumed to indicate consent, so when Nicholas, believing in 1853 that the Porte was indeed on the point of dissolution, renewed his proposal for a partition of the Turkish Empire, it was at least excusable that he should reckon on the co-operation of Great Britain. Lord Aberdeen, who had been Foreign Secretary when the Czar was in England in 1844, was Prime Minister in 1853. Nicholas disclaimed any intention of a Russian occupation of Constantinople; he suggested that Bulgaria and Servia might be constituted independent States under Russian protection, and declared that he would acquiesce in the annexation of Egypt and Candia by Great Britain. All this, and much more, he explained to Sir Hamilton Seymour, assuring him that if Great Britain and Russia came to an understanding on the subject, it mattered nothing to him how the other Powers might view it.

At this juncture a fresh controversy was stirred in connection with Ottoman rule. |The Custody of the Holy Places.| In the sixteenth century a treaty was concluded between the Sultan and François I., King of France, whereby the custody of the Holy Places in Palestine had been committed to the monks of the Latin Church, who were placed under the protection of the Crown of France. Subsequently firmans had been granted to the Greek Church, conferring rights at variance with the exclusive guardianship claimed by the Latin Church. Incessant disputes arose on a ludicrously minute point, such as might have puzzled diplomatists in the era of the Crusades, but one which seemed strangely out of keeping with statesmanship of the nineteenth century, namely, “whether, for the purpose of passing through the building into their grotto, the Latin monks should have the key of the chief door of the Church of Bethlehem, and also one of the keys of each of the two doors of the Sacred Manger, and whether they should be at liberty to place in the Sanctuary of the Nativity a silver star adorned with the arms of France.” The French Republic, and afterwards the French Empire, as heirs of the Crown of France, championed the cause of the Latin monks, even threatening to occupy Jerusalem; until, in February 1853, the Porte issued a firman in order to reconcile in a reasonable way the conflicting claims of the two Churches. But reason was the last influence to prevail in an unreasonable quarrel. |Prince Menschikoff’s Demand.| Russian forces, before the issue of the firman, had already begun massing on the frontiers of Moldavia, and immediately after the issue of the firman, Prince Menschikoff arrived at Constantinople with a numerous military suite, endeavoured to force on the Porte an agreement establishing a Russian protectorate of Christians within Turkish Dominions, and threatened a rupture of diplomatic relations unless this was agreed to at once. Reschid Pasha asked for a delay of five or six days to consider such a momentous question; it was refused; whereupon the Ottoman Council promptly declined to become a party to the proposed convention. Menschikoff immediately left Constantinople; the Russian Government continued warlike preparations, which were met by similar measures on the part of the Porte, as a simple measure of self-defence.

On July 2 the Russian army under Prince Gortchakoff crossed the Pruth and occupied the Turkish territory of Moldavia and Wallachia. |Russian Invasion and The Vienna Note.| Of course this was an act of war, but no collision actually took place, and representatives of the four Great Powers—Austria, France, Great Britain, and Prussia—met at Vienna in July and agreed on a Note embodying terms for the peaceful settlement of the dispute. It were natural to expect that a document of such moment should have been framed in language of the utmost precision and incapable of bearing ambiguous interpretation. Nevertheless this short Note contained five passages so vague and ambiguous that they might have been construed into giving away the whole case of Turkey, though this was undoubtedly far from the intention of the authors. Russia, perceiving her advantage, accepted the Note at once; but the Ministers of the Sultan declined to do so, unless the five objectionable passages were modified. Nesselrode stated explicitly the reasons which prevented Russia from agreeing to any modification. These reasons enlightened the British Cabinet for the first time as to the construction put on the Note by Russia, which was directly contrary to that intended by the Four Powers.

England, therefore, was compelled to acquiesce in Turkey’s refusal to sign the Note, at the same time urging her not to regard the occupation of Moldavia and Wallachia as an act of war. The state of affairs towards the end of September is concisely described in a note written by Prince Albert to Baron Stockmar: “Meyendorff is in the Vienna Cabinet; Louis Napoleon wishes for peace, enjoyment, and cheap corn; the King of Prussia is a reed shaken by the wind; we are paralysed through not knowing what our agent in Constantinople is or is not doing; the Divan has become fanatically warlike and headstrong, and reminds one of Prussia in 1806; the public here is furiously Turkish and anti-Russian.”

On October 5 the Porte issued a formal declaration of war. On the 14th the combined fleets of England and France, which were lying in Besika Bay, moved into the Dardanelles on the invitation of the Sultan. Mediation was at an end.

A Turkish squadron of twelve sail in the Black Sea were attacked on the 30th while lying at anchor at Sinope and completely destroyed, with the loss of 4,000 men, leaving only about 400 alive. |Destruction of the Turkish Fleet.| The news of this massacre, enacted almost under the very guns of the allied fleet, spread like wildfire through France and Great Britain, and ignited every warlike spirit that still slumbered. It was alleged that the Turkish admiral had hauled down his flag before the overwhelming force which attacked him, and that the Russians had paid no attention to this signal of surrender.

The Cabinet was much more divided in opinion than the nation. Lord Palmerston, the Home Secretary, startled the nation by resigning office on December 16, not, however, as was generally assumed, on account of difference about the Eastern Question. |Resignation of Lord Palmerston.| “No one,” wrote Prince Albert, “will believe the true cause of his retirement—his dislike of Lord John’s plan of Reform, and treachery is everywhere the cry. It is the Eastern Question that has turned him out, and Court intrigues!” Everybody, in fact, believed that Palmerston had left the Cabinet rather than assent to abandoning Turkey to the tender mercies of Russia. Prince Albert was vehemently accused by a portion of the Press of being favourable to the designs of Russia: how far this was from the truth people afterwards came to learn from his own letters written while these events were in progress. The cry went forth that Palmerston was the only man who could save the honour of England; in a few days he withdrew his resignation and confidence was restored.

On February 7 the Russian Ministers left London and Paris; the English Minister left St. Petersburg on the same day. |Great Britain and France Declare War with Russia.| On the 27th the ultimatum of England was despatched to Count Nesselrode. On March 24 Her Majesty’s formal declaration of war against the Emperor of Russia was read from the steps of the Royal Exchange, and the reasons for this act were published at length in the London Gazette. England had been slow—culpably slow, declared Derby and Disraeli—in resorting to an appeal to arms, but, having made it, the spirit of her greatest poet pervaded the Councils of her Ministry:—

Before the actual declaration of war, large numbers of British troops had embarked for the East, and a powerful fleet had been assembled at Spithead for service in the Baltic under Admiral Sir Charles Napier. To Prince Albert’s watchful influence must be attributed the degree to which the nation now found itself prepared for the coming struggle. For the warlike habits of our people had been lulled by the peace which, uninterrupted for nearly forty years, had prevailed between England and other European powers. It would be difficult to realise at this day how far the nation had lapsed into unreadiness. Prince Albert incessantly strove to arouse it from this perilous lethargy. One result of his efforts had been the establishment during the summer of 1853 of a temporary camp of exercise at Chobham, a complete novelty to the generation of that time. Aldershot, as a place of arms, had no existence then, but the system initiated at Chobham has become part of our regular military organisation. Another result had been the establishment of a permanent Channel Fleet, which was reviewed by the Queen at Spithead on August 11, 1853, and described by Prince Albert as “the finest fleet, perhaps, which England ever fitted out; forty ships of war of all kinds, all moved by steam-power but three.... The gigantic ships of war, among them the Duke of Wellington with 131 guns (a greater number than was ever assembled before in one vessel), went, without sails and propelled only by the screw, eleven miles an hour, and this against wind and tide! |State of British Armaments.| This is the greatest revolution effected in the conduct of naval warfare which has yet been known ... and will render many fleets, like the present Russian one, useless.” Speaking of men-of-war fitted with the auxiliary screw, he went on: “We have already sixteen at sea and ten in an advanced state. France has no more than two, and the other Powers none.... I write all this, because last autumn we were bewailing our defenceless state, and because you know that, without wishing to be mouche de coche, I must rejoice to see that achieved which I had struggled so long and so hard to effect.”

Great Britain, then, at the outbreak of the Russian War, possessed a fleet stronger than the combined flotillas of any other three Great Powers. Her land forces were far less satisfactory, for though they were perfectly disciplined and well-equipped according to the existing state of military science, they were few in numbers and almost totally without reserves, for the new Militia could not count for much as yet.

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CHAPTER IX.
1854–1856.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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