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]

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]

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.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE END OF THE WAR.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXXIV.

PEACE AND PARLIAMENT.

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,

“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