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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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?

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!”