Something, however, had to be done for the Porte, after it had, at the bidding of England and France, refrained from defending the Principalities, which were in its dominions. A Conference of the Powers was therefore assembled at Vienna, on the 24th of June, to arrive at a pacific solution of the difficulty, and on the 31st they adopted the Vienna Note, which has become famous in European history. It was sent to Russia and Turkey for acceptance as a settlement which, in the opinion of Europe, would be equally honourable and fair to both. The Czar accepted it promptly on the 10th of August. Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, in his official capacity, advised Turkey to accept it; but he played his Government false, by plainly indicating his personal objections to it. The Porte acted on his private advice, and refused to accept the Note unless it were modified. Turkey thus dashed all hopes of peace by repudiating the advice of the Powers, and, by thus putting herself in the wrong, she put Russia in the right.

Here Lord Aberdeen and his colleagues committed another blunder. On balancing the gain against the loss to Turkey which was likely to accrue from concessions that would prevent war, they might fairly enough have told the Porte that, if it rejected the Vienna Note, it would be left to struggle with Russia single-handed. Austria, however, followed by France, England, and Prussia, asked the Czar to accept the modifications of Turkey. The Czar refused to do this, and instructed Count Nesselrode to give his reasons for refusing, whereupon Austria and Prussia veered round, and again recommended the Porte to accept the original Note. England and France, on the contrary, alleging that Count Nesselrode’s despatches proved that the Czar attached a different meaning to the Note from that which they attributed to it, declined to join Austria and Prussia in pressing Turkey to accept it. The European concert was destroyed, and it was the European concert which alone rendered war impossible.[117] Unfortunately, on this occasion, the Queen, wary and ingenious as she has shown herself during other crises in checking the “drift” of Cabinets towards war, fell too easily under the influence of Lord Aberdeen, for whom personally she ever entertained the warmest regard. He sent Nesselrode’s despatch to her, but he prepossessed her mind by pointing out to her first, that Nesselrode’s reasons for refusing to accept the Turkish modifications of the Vienna Note, showed that Russia put a different interpretation on it from that which its framers meant it to bear; and secondly, that it would be dishonourable to ask the Porte to accept it in the face of this fact. Her Majesty, easily touched by such an appeal, wrote from Balmoral a strong letter to Lord Aberdeen supporting his view with much ability. “It is evident,” she said, “that Russia has hitherto attempted to deceive us, in pretending that she did not aim at the acquisition of any new right, but required only a satisfaction of honour, and an acknowledgment of the rights she already possessed by treaty—and that she does intend, and for the first time lays bare that intention, to acquire new rights of interference.” The Queen then made a suggestion which was carried out. It was that England should lay the whole case before Europe, declaring that the Russian demands were inadmissible, and “that the continuance of the occupation of the Principalities, in order to extort these demands, constitutes an unwarrantable aggression upon Turkey, and infraction of the public law of Europe.”[118] As matters stood, such an intimation to the fiery Czar was virtually a challenge to mortal combat.

Those who hold the destinies of great nations in their hands are now chary of committing themselves to war for the sake of honour or the public law of Europe. The subterfuges by which Russia disorganised Bulgaria in 1886, and got rid of Prince Alexander, whose anti-Russian proclivities had been encouraged by England, touched British honour more closely than the “explicative Note” of Count Nesselrode. Yet England, guided solely by her interests, did not make Russian interference with Bulgaria in 1886, a casus belli. A greater statesman than Aberdeen in 1853, also eliminated all considerations of “honour” from his policy, and looked solely to the material interest of his country. Prussia was scoffed at by Prince Albert as “a reed shaken by the wind.” But Prussia not only refused to join the Western Powers against Russia, but deterred Austria from joining them. And why? Because Herr von Bismarck had enough influence with the King to convince him that the interest of Prussia did not lie in strengthening the Western Powers, or in offending Russia, whose benevolent neutrality might one day be valuable to his country. Why, he argued, should Prussia waste her strength in helping France and Austria to weaken Russia, without the prospect of winning for Prussia “a prize worthy of us”? He was “appalled” by the notion that “we may plunge into a sea of trouble and danger on behalf of Austria, for whose sins the King displays as much tolerance as I only hope God in Heaven will one day show to mine.” The “interest of Prussia,” he said, after the Crimean war was over, “is my only rule of action, and had there ever been any prospect of our promoting this interest by taking part in the war, I should certainly never have been one of its opponents.”[119] Lord Salisbury, on the 9th of November, 1886, speaking at the Guildhall, has in our time said that England has no interest to resist Russian aggression in European Turkey, where Austria has none. Tested by that principle the policy of the Cabinet and the Crown in 1853 was chivalrous, but indefensible. Yet if the Sovereign and her Ministers erred, what is to be said of the Nation? It was simply mad for war with Russia, and the section of the Cabinet headed by Palmerston and Russell vied with the Tories in inflaming the war-fever of the hour. Aberdeen was vilified as a Russian agent—because he was desirous of maintaining peace. Prince Albert was attacked with equal scurrility as a tool of the Czar, because he was not a Russophobe, and because he did not conceal his opinion that the Turkish Government was brutal, fanatical, and ignorant.

Had Turkey accepted the Vienna Note, had the Powers not asked Russia to accept the Turkish amendments to it, had Nesselrode in refusing to accept these refrained from giving reasons for his refusal, peace would have been preserved. It is, therefore, necessary to examine the points that were at issue when the Vienna Note was rejected by Turkey. This is to be done by comparing together Menschikoff’s original Note with the Vienna Note, and the Turkish modification of it. Menschikoff started by assuming that Russia and Turkey “being mutually desirous of maintaining the stability of the orthodox Greco-Russian religion, professed by the majority of their Christian subjects, and of guaranteeing that religion against all molestation for the future,” should agree (1) that “no change shall be made as regards the rights, privileges, and immunities which have been enjoyed or are possessed ab antiquo by the Orthodox Greek Churches, pious institutions, and clergy, in the dominions of the Sublime Ottoman Porte, which is pleased to secure the same to them in perpetuity on the strict basis of the status quo now existing. (2) The rights and advantages conceded by the Ottoman Government, or which shall hereafter be conceded, to the other Christian rites by treaties, conventions, or special arrangements, shall be considered as belonging also to the Orthodox Church.”[120] The Vienna Note differed but slightly from this—and it may be well to put it side by side with the Turkish modifications—reproducing only the controversial passages.

Were the points of difference between the Vienna Note and that Note as modified by the Porte worth fighting for?

It is inconceivable that any English Minister or diplomatist having even a cursory acquaintance with Turkish history could agree with the Porte in affirming that the Ottoman Sultans had “never ceased to provide for” the maintenance of the privileges of their Christian subjects. “Never honestly attempted to provide for” would have been the truer statement of the fact. So the first modification of the Porte may be summarily dismissed. As to the second, the Turks averred that it was necessary (1) because the Vienna Note extended the scope of the Treaties of Kainardji and Adrianople, and (2) because it gave the Czar new powers of interfering between the Sultan and his subjects. The 7th and 14th Articles of these Treaties, when studied, show that the Porte[121]

was clearly wrong on one point. The Sultan, said the Porte, will in future recognise the stipulations relative to protection given by the Porte alone; but the Treaty had also stipulations relative to protection which was to be given by Russia. The Czar was therefore not unreasonable in suspecting that the Turks were trying, by their amendment of the Vienna Note, to cancel some of his rights under the Treaty of Kainardji. The other point at issue must be decided with reference to history. It is plain that Menschikoff’s Note, from its terms and from the tone of the Envoy who presented it as an ultimatum, might fairly be considered offensive to Turkey, and that she, therefore, had plausible reasons for rejecting it. It might be so construed as to extend to the whole Empire the Russian right of special protection, which the Treaty of Kainardji limited to a single Christian temple, and that of Adrianople restricted to two Principalities. On the other hand, the Porte, by saying that the Sultan would in future “remain faithful to the stipulations of the Treaty of Kainardji, confirmed by that of Adrianople,” was justly suspected of wriggling out of other stipulations in the latter Treaty, which were not in the former, and which made the Czar the special guardian of Christian rights in the Principalities. But holding in view the history of Turkish misrule and oppression, together with Lord Stratford de Redcliffe’s denunciations of the bad faith of the Turkish Government in keeping its promises of reform, it is impossible to blame the Czar for rejecting the Turkish amendment. That amendment consisted simply in cutting out of the Vienna Note the all-important words, “letter and spirit.” The Czar denied that Turkey had been faithful to the letter of existing treaties guaranteeing Christian privileges. All Europe admitted that she had not been faithful to the spirit of them, and that if, under Russian pressure, she ever kept the word of promise to the ear, she usually broke it to the hope. Turkey, when asked to pledge herself to be true to the spirit as well as the letter of her obligations, was, therefore, trifling with Europe in refusing to commit herself to a pledge that would have bound her by both the letter and spirit of her engagements. Here again, it seems, judgment must go against Turkey. The object of her third amendment was quite clear. The stipulation of the Vienna Note that privileges given to any Christian Church should be also enjoyed by all Greek Christians in Turkey, was a sort of “most favoured nation clause.” It made the contract keep all sects automatically on the same level. The Porte, however, by its amendment, promised Russia to give Greek Christians, not the privileges it gave to all other Christians, but only to other Christians who were Turkish subjects. No doubt the Vienna Note would have given Russia a right of complaint against Turkey in the case of Greek Christians, who were refused privileges granted to (1) Greek Christians, (2) Roman Catholics, (3) Protestants, and (4) Armenians who were not Turkish subjects. But these were few in number, and the affair of the Holy Places showed that this right of complaint could be pressed by Russia to some purpose, whether conferred by treaty or not. It almost seemed as if the third amendment of the Porte were designed to bar Russia from similar acts of intervention; in other words, to put her in a worse position than that which she held without any fresh compact whatever. Strangely enough, the one strong objection which Turkey had a right to make to the Vienna Note—namely, that it did not make the evacuation of the Principalities a condition precedent of the settlement—was not strongly pressed by Europe.

One argument, and one only, was urged with even the shadow of plausibility by England. It was that the Czar might claim, under the Vienna Note, a protectorate over the Greek Christians in Turkey, which would transfer to him the allegiance of nearly all the Sultan’s European subjects. As the Vienna Note gave the Czar nothing but what he could claim according to “the letter and to the spirit” of two existing treaties, it is difficult to understand how the English Government could advance such an argument, unless, indeed, they meant to affirm that it was futile to ask Turkey to abide by “the spirit” of any of her pledges. But if the contention of the English Cabinet is to be taken as true, what must we say of the wisdom with which the world is governed? The four Ambassadors, the four Cabinets, and the four Sovereigns of the European Powers who had the clearest interest in preserving the independence of Turkey drew up, studied, debated, and revised again and again every word and phrase of a Joint Note which they declared could be honourably and justly accepted by the Sublime Porte. When Turkey rejected it, these very same Ambassadors, Cabinets, and Sovereigns suddenly turned round and said that they had unwittingly so worded their Note that it threatened with ruin the empire which they meant it to save! And of these Powers two—England and France—entered on a profitless and calamitous war, because their Ambassadors, Ministers of State, and Sovereigns did not understand the meaning of their own words in a solemn diplomatic instrument! It is upon this hypothesis—at once so grotesque and incredible—that Lord Aberdeen’s Government justified itself in advising Turkey to reject the Vienna Note, and in making war on Russia because the Czar adhered to it after he had accepted it at the request of Europe.

England, it has been said, following the lead of Austria, encouraged the Porte to resist, and pressed Russia to accept the Turkish modification of the Note. It has been shown how, when Russia refused to do this, Austria, with whom Prussia acted, suddenly wheeled round and pressed the original Note on Turkey. England, however, had made herself sufficiently ridiculous in first recommending Turkey to accept the Note, and in then supporting her in rejecting it. Lord Aberdeen’s Government accordingly refused to recommend the Note again to Turkey, and the Government of France took the same course. The concert of the Powers which thus alone rendered peace possible was broken, and neither England nor France seemed to have made any serious effort to repair it. On the contrary, they not only approved of Lord Stratford’s conduct in summoning two ships of war from Besika Bay to Constantinople, but in September, yielding to Palmerston,[122] they put the whole fleet at his disposal. It was contrary to the Treaty of 1841 for the Porte to admit war-ships to the Bosphorus in time of peace. To send the English fleet to Constantinople was therefore a declaration on the part of England that Turkey was at war with Russia. Turkey formally declared war on Russia on the 5th, and the British Fleet entered the Bosphorus on the 30th of October. To order our Fleet to defend the Turks in the Euxine if they were attacked by Russia was a perilous step to take. Yet it is curious to observe that the Queen was the only high personage engaged in this transaction who, in the midst of the popular war frenzy, foresaw the peril of it. Even her habit of deference to Lord Aberdeen, which unfortunately led her to sanction without demur the blunders which have now been recorded, could not induce her to approve of this last and, as will be seen, most fatal error. Her trenchant criticism of it, unanswered and unanswerable to this day, is to be found in a letter which she wrote to the Prime Minister, in which she said:—“It appears to the Queen that we have taken on ourselves, in conjunction with

France, all the risks of an European war, without having bound Turkey to any conditions with respect to provoking it. The 120 fanatical Turks constituting the Divan at Constantinople are left sole judges of the line of policy to be pursued, and made cognisant at the same time of the fact that England and France have bound themselves to defend the Turkish territory. This is entrusting them with a power which Parliament would be jealous of confiding even to the hands of the British Crown. It may be a question whether England ought to go to war for the so-called Turkish independence, but there can be none that, if she does so, she ought to be the sole judge of what constitutes a breach of that independence, and have the fullest power to prevent by negotiation the breaking out of the war.”[123] Had the Queen subjected

every act of the Cabinet from the day on which Menschikoff arrived at Constantinople, to the same kind of pitiless logical analysis, even the Coalition Cabinet would have found it difficult to blunder into war. There was also another calm but acute observer of events who could not be diverted from his devotion to tangible British interests by passionate outbursts of popular chauvinism, and who saw at a glance the risks the Government were running. In a letter to Baron Stockmar, dated the 27th of November, Prince Albert says:—

“Six weeks ago Palmerston and Lord John carried a resolution that we should give notice that an attack on the Turkish fleet by that of Russia would be met by the fleets of England and France. Now the Turkish steam-ships are to cross over from the Asiatic coast to the Crimea, and to pass before Sebastopol! This can only be meant to insult the Russian fleet and entice it to come out, in order to make it possible for Lord Stratford to bring our fleet into collision with that of Russia, according to his former instructions, and so make an European war certain.”[124]

Just before the allied fleets were sent to defend Turkey in the Black Sea the Porte ordered Omar Pasha to demand the evacuation of Moldavia within fifteen days, and, failing compliance, to attack the Russians at once. The Russians held their ground, standing on the defensive, and the Turks crossed the Danube, inflicting on them defeats that, of course, deeply wounded the pride of the Czar. He therefore ordered the Russian squadron at Sebastopol to retaliate in the Euxine. On the 30th of November it discovered a Turkish fleet at Sinope, which, the Turks declared, was bound for Batoum. The Russian admiral, however, believed it was on its way to the Circassian coast, for the purpose of stirring up an insurrection against Russia in the Caucasus. Instead of watching it or blockading it, as he might have done, he attacked and destroyed it.

This catastrophe, of course, brought England nearer to war. A fierce cry of wrath went up from the English people. Their fleet had been sent to defend Turkey against Russia, yet it had tamely allowed Russia to perpetrate “the massacre of Sinope.” Russia knew that England stood pledged to protect Turkey from attack in the Euxine. Sinope was, therefore, a direct challenge to England, and it must be promptly taken up. The foresight of Prince Albert was thus amply justified. The Government had stupidly sent to the Black Sea a fleet strong enough to provoke Russia, but not strong enough to protect Turkey, and insinuations of treason were freely made. “The defeat of Sinope,” wrote the Prince, “upon our own element—the sea—has made the people furious; it is ascribed to Aberdeen having been bought over by Russia.” Nor was Aberdeen the only one who suffered. Prince Albert was scurrilously attacked by Tories and Radicals of the baser sort, and, almost in as many words, accused of being a Russian spy, whose influence with the Queen was paralysing her Government. But if the English Government blundered foolishly in sending the British fleet to the Black Sea with orders to protect Turkey, without first making sure that Turkey would not provoke attack, or that our fleet was strong enough to defend her, Russia blundered, not foolishly, but criminally, in attacking the Turks at Sinope. Mr. Spencer Walpole says:—“Though the attack on Sinope may be justified, its imprudence cannot be excused.”[125] But surely if it cannot be excused it is idle to “justify” it. The Czar was warned that England and France would defend Turkey if the latter was assailed in the Euxine. An attack on Turkey at Sinope, in spite of that warning, he must have known would be taken by the English and French people as a defiance, which would so madden them, that the war party in France and England must forthwith control the situation. Therefore, to say it was an “imprudence” is to say that, in the circumstances, it was a crime against civilisation. As will be seen later on, it provoked France and England to order their fleets to patrol the Black Sea, and require every Russian ship they met to put back into Sebastopol, so that a second Sinope might be prevented.

During most of this anxious time it is hardly necessary to say that the domestic life of the Queen was one of wearing excitement. At the outset of the diplomatic disputes in which her Government entangled the country it seems that she paid rather less attention than usual to foreign affairs. Palmerston was no longer at the Foreign Office, and in Lord Aberdeen, who was at the head of the Government, the Queen put the most implicit confidence. She had formed a habit of regarding him as the beau idéal of a “safe” Minister, and thus, when she sat down every morning to read her official correspondence, her Majesty approached all the projects of her Government, if not with a decided bias in favour of them, at any rate without that wholesome prepossession of suspicion, that rendered her a keen and searching critic of the Foreign Policy of the country when it was under the direction of Lord Palmerston. It was not till late in the autumn that the Queen’s correspondence, so far as it has been made public, shows a disposition on her part to resume the tone of independent, outspoken, but confidential criticism, that so often checked the vagaries of Lord John Russell’s Cabinet. The Queen, in fact, put too much confidence in the sagacity of the Coalition Government. The Coalition Government, conscious that, so long as Aberdeen could be persuaded to endorse their doings, they would not be very jealously scrutinised by the Crown, entered with a light heart on the most dangerous course of diplomacy. The Queen, the Prime Minister, the Cabinet, and the Czar all set out with the most sincere and unbounded confidence in each other. In little more than twelve months they were accordingly in almost irreconcilable controversy.

After the Coalition Ministry was formed, what the Queen dreaded most was that it might break up over the question of Parliamentary Reform, or over some dispute as to the Premiership, in the event of Lord Aberdeen resigning office. Aberdeen was old and somewhat infirm, and there can be little doubt that he would have resigned soon after the Coalition was organised had not the Eastern Question risen to tie him to his post. Lord John Russell had some notion that he would be Aberdeen’s successor, and it was his fixed idea that his scheme for reforming Parliament would not have a fair chance, unless it were launched by him with all the prestige of the Premier’s advocacy in its favour. Some members of the Cabinet did not desire that this scheme should be launched at all; others, like Palmerston, were determined that it should not be launched, and that Lord John should not be Premier. A few weeks after the Ministry was constituted Lord John resigned the seals of the Foreign Office to Lord Clarendon, becoming a Minister without an office, but retaining the leadership of the House of Commons. The Queen warned him that he would grow discontented with

this position, but her warning was unheeded; and yet Lord John soon had reason to regret that he did not lay it to heart. After the Session ended he began to give Aberdeen broad hints that it would be well for him to retire, and to indicate that he himself might have to secede, if these hints were not acted on. His secession would have broken up the Coalition, which, Aberdeen knew, the Sovereign had set her heart on keeping together. Hence, every effort was made to conciliate Lord John Russell, and, as he soon became, next to Palmerston, the most zealous member of the War Party in the Cabinet, he was therefore able to exert a baneful influence on the Foreign Policy of the Ministry. This was, indeed, one reason why that policy perpetually alternated between energy and apathy. Still, the Cabinet kept together till Russell’s Reform scheme was thrust upon it. Then, on the 15th of December, the world was startled to find that Palmerston had resigned. This event, occurring as it did immediately after the massacre of Sinope, created a dreadful sensation in the country. The Press declared that Palmerston had been turned out because of the Eastern Question. He was the victim of a Court intrigue. It was whispered that Prince Albert, as a spy of Russia, had persuaded the Queen to get rid of a high-spirited Minister because he was eager to avenge against Russia the insult offered to England at Sinope. The Prince, it was said, had been detected betraying the secrets of the Government to foreign Courts. One day it was actually reported that he had been committed to the Tower on a charge of high treason, and a gaping crowd collected to see him locked up as a traitor. This clamour was raised by the Palmerstonian clique, and it gave infinite pain to the Queen. She knew as well as Lord Palmerston and his friends that these attacks were based on a tissue of falsehoods, for, as a matter of fact, Lord Palmerston had resigned simply on the question of Reform. His idea was that Lord Lansdowne, who also disliked Reform, would resign along with him, and that the public outcry would be so great that the Ministry must be shattered. The outcry was great, but it was too obviously that of a personal claque; and Palmerston, astounded to find that the nation did not regard his retirement as an irreparable calamity, immediately begged the Cabinet to let him come back again. This they did, having, however, forced him to swallow ignominiously his objections to Lord John Russell’s Reform Bill. Then the Palmerstonian newspapers suddenly dropped their attacks on the Queen and Prince Albert, though the Tory organs kept them up in the true old crusted Protectionist style. “The best of the joke,” writes the Prince to Stockmar, “is that because he [Palmerston] went out the Opposition journals extolled him to the skies in order to damage the Ministry, and now the Ministerial journals have to do so in order to justify the reconciliation.” According to Prince Albert, it was the Duke of Newcastle and the Peelites who induced the Cabinet to let the black sheep that had gone astray, return to the fold of the Coalition.[126]

Till the Eastern Question assumed a grave aspect towards the end of the year, the Court seems to have busied itself chiefly about non-political affairs. The Queen, who shared her husband’s artistic tastes, encouraged him in early spring to form a splendid collection of copies of all Raphael’s known works, a fine series of original drawings by that master in Windsor being the nucleus of this interesting collection. It was alas! left to her Majesty to complete it, after the death of her husband made her the sole sad heir of that and many other cherished projects which they had planned together.

Curiously enough, about this time the art treasures of Windsor were very nearly destroyed. A disastrous fire broke out in the Castle on the 19th of March in one of the apartments on the floor over the dining-room on its north side. It burnt outwards, but limited itself to the upper portions of the Prince of Wales’s Tower. It would have destroyed the plate-rooms and the priceless collection known as the Jewelled Armoury, which contained, by the way, the jewelled peacock of Tippoo Sahib among its trophies, adjoining the Octagon-room. The Queen and Prince Albert were not in the Castle when the fire was discovered, but they, with the officials of the household, were soon on the spot. The scene was one of excitement, without confusion. The firemen worked with a will, but the bustle was greatest among the servants and others, who undertook to dismantle the rooms whose costly treasures were in danger. The fire began at ten on Saturday night, and was put out at four o’clock on Sunday morning. The Queen, it seems, was much agitated at first, but she and her ladies soon regained their composure, and watched the conflagration from the drawing-room all through the night.[127]

On the 7th of April another Prince was born to the Royal pair, and on the 18th the Queen was able to write to her uncle, the King of the Belgians, informing him of the event, and of her intention of naming her child after him. “It” [Leopold], she says, “is a name which is the dearest to me after Albert, and one which recalls the almost only happy days of my sad childhood.” The Prince’s other names were to be George, Duncan, and Albert—George after the King of Hanover, and Duncan, so the Queen said, as “a compliment to dear Scotland.” The compliment paid to that country in subsequently conferring on this Prince the title of Duke of Albany was a fateful one for him. It is an unlucky title, and Prince Leopold was not exempt from the evil fortune of most of those who have worn it. On the 23rd of April the Court removed to Osborne, and on the 27th of May the Queen reluctantly returned to London for the season, greatly reinvigorated by her holiday.

One of the events of the London season of 1853 was the establishment of an experimental military camp at Chobham for the purpose of practising sham-fighting. The camp took the place in the season of ’53, that had been held by the Great Exhibition in ’51, and young men of rank who were braving the perils of mimic warfare on the Sussex ridges were the idols of the hour. On

the 21st of June serious operations began in the presence of the Queen. She rode to the ground on a superb black charger, accompanied by Prince Albert, the King of Hanover, and the Duke of Coburg, the scene as she passed along the lines being most impressive. The moving incidents of the field, the noise of the firing, the shifting panorama of colour, delighted the fashionable crowds who followed her Majesty to what Mr. Disraeli would have called an arena “bright with flashing valour.” On the 14th of July the camp was broken up, and other contingents took the places of the regiments which had formed it. They, however, attempted a movement of real difficulty in endeavouring to effect the passage of the Thames at Runnymede, where the river is deep and the current rapid. Artillery on Cooper’s Hill played on the pontoon bridge murderously, in spite of which, however, it is stated in newspaper records of the day, that several regiments contrived to pass over safely. But the horses that dragged the second gun taken across, took fright, and one of them pulled the rest, with gun and gunners, into the water. The men were saved. The four leading horses, however, met with a strange death. They rose to the surface, and, with eyes and nostrils dilated with terror, beat the water in vain, for the gun, of course, held them

with the wheelers in the river. Yet such was the strength which terror imparted to them, that they dragged not only the gun but the wheelers also, close to the bank before they succumbed.

On the 28th of June Prince Albert, who had been “roughing it” with the Guards in camp, returned to town complaining of a slight cold. The Prince of Wales had measles at the time, and, to the surprise of everybody, Prince Albert, the Queen, all the Royal children except the two youngest, the Crown Prince of Hanover, the Duke and Duchess of Coburg, were smitten,[128] Prince Albert suffering more severely than any of the others. This illness prevented the Queen and her husband from visiting the camp till the 6th of August. On the 28th it broke up.

Two of the Czar’s daughters had come over on a visit to the Queen, with an autograph letter from their father recommending them to her Majesty’s protection. Care was of course taken to make them acquainted with the intense anti-Russian feeling which pervaded England, and they seem to have been utterly amazed to find that hardly any body put the slightest faith in their father’s word. They were invited to accompany the Queen to see the great naval review at Spithead, which took place on the 11th of August—a superb demonstration of the strength of England on the high seas. Twenty-five stately ships of war—six steam-ships of the line, three sailing-ships, and sixteen steam-frigates and sloops—composed the squadron that took part in this magnificent spectacle. The fleet carried 1,076 guns, 10,000 men, and was moved by steam equivalent to the power nominally of 9,680 horses, but really of double that amount—in other words, by more horse-power than the cavalry of the British army could muster at the time. The smallest of its guns was as large as the largest carried by Nelson’s ships at Trafalgar, whilst the largest threw a solid shot of 104 lbs. The review was an event that stirred to its inmost depths the pride of England, because, for the first time, a mighty fleet propelled by steam was manœuvred under the eye of the Sovereign, as if it were engaged in actual battle. The occasion was rendered unique by the presence at the review of the House of Commons—in fact, the House, on the day of the review, could not form a quorum till half-past eleven o’clock at night.[129]

About 10 o’clock in the morning, the Queen, her husband, her family, and her Russian and German guests, bore down in the Royal yacht on Admiral Cochrane’s flagship, the Duke of Wellington. Having remained on board her for some little time, they returned to the yacht, and then, led by the Queen in the Victoria and Albert, this invincible Armada put out to sea in two divisions. The weather was exceptionally fine, and most majestic was the progress of the fleet as it steamed, at the rate of eleven miles an hour, down to the Nab, where it formed line with an ease and precision of movement that astonished all beholders. Then “the enemy,” under Admiral Fanshawe, were sighted, and a memorable sham fight began amidst cyclopean thunders of artillery. When it was over, each ship made for port at racing speed, the winner being the Agamemnon. The effect of it all, not only on the Queen’s guests but on the country, was duly reported by Prince Albert to Stockmar, who replied, “I am well pleased that the ladies (the Russian princesses) should have been present at the manœuvres of the fleet. For what the eyes see that does the heart believe, and with what that is full of the mouth will overflow in letters to St. Petersburg.”[130] At this time the political barometer at Court was pointing to “fair,” and the Queen and Prince Albert were congratulating each other that the acceptance of the Vienna Note by Russia, would settle honourably the Russo-Turkish dispute. Though the evacuation of the Principalities was not insisted on in that Note as it ought to have been, the Queen and her husband alike regarded it as a sine quâ non, and never doubted that Russia would withdraw her army of occupation.[131]

At the end of August the Queen determined to visit Dublin on her way to Balmoral; and on the 29th she and her family landed at Kingstown Harbour.[132] Thence they proceeded to the Irish capital, where in their progress to the Vice-regal Lodge they met with an enthusiastic reception that recalled pleasant memories of their last tour. In the evening the city was illuminated in honour of its Royal guests. On the 30th they visited the Exhibition of Irish Industry, which had been organised at the sole expense of Mr. Dargan, a public-spirited citizen, whose simple, manly bearing so charmed the Queen that she says in one of her letters, “I would have made him a baronet but he was anxious it should not be done.” Nor was she less delighted with the products of native industry, which she inspected most carefully, and which she says convinced her that the display would be of vast use in encouraging the spirit of the people, by showing them what excellent work they could turn out by their own efforts. Though the Queen met with wretched weather, yet she records her delight with her visit—“a pleasant, gay, interesting time” she calls it—and speaks gratefully of the extreme kindness shown to her by all classes of the people. On the 3rd of September she left Kingstown, and on the 6th was enjoying the bracing air of Balmoral once more.

It was here, on the evening of the 12th, that she heard that the Vienna Note was rejected by the Turks, and that the Eastern question was again simmering in the fatal cauldron of diplomatic incapacity. From that day her Majesty’s great aim was to work, like Lord Aberdeen, for peace; but there was an end to holiday repose at Balmoral. Foreign affairs became more and more unsettled, and on the 6th of October Stockmar was implored to come over and give the Queen and her husband the benefit of his advice. Sir James Graham was staying with them at the time, and his depressed spirits reacted on the Royal family. To refuse to protect the Sultan the Queen saw would so rouse public opinion that the Coalition Ministry, which she was so anxious to support, must fall. To declare war on Russia, Prince Albert assured her, would with equal certainty ultimately destroy that Ministry. One thing only was clear to them. Aberdeen must abandon all idea of resigning in favour of Lord John Russell, and, despite age and infirmity, must remain at the head of affairs till the war-cloud passed away. On the 14th of October the Queen accordingly returned to Osborne, painfully anxious lest the concessions which Lord Aberdeen had made to Palmerston and Russell as leaders of the War Party, and on which she commented caustically in her letter of the 11th of October to the Prime Minister, would bring the country still nearer to war. What were we to go to war for? That was the question which troubled the Queen. She could understand that in some dire extremity it might be right to exact the most terrible of sacrifices from her people, to keep the Russians out of Constantinople, and prevent the balance of power from being upset to the detriment of England. That was an intelligible war

for the tangible interest of England and the civilised Powers. But such a war was a very different affair from the kind of war for which Palmerston clamoured—a war for the maintenance of the complete integrity of the Ottoman Empire. If waged, it must surely not be so waged that it would end by putting the oppressed Christians in Turkey once again in the absolute power of such a cruel dominion as that of the Porte. To this conclusion her Majesty had been forced by her close study of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe’s own despatches, describing the brutal treatment to which the Christians in Turkey were even at that time subjected. But then, of what use was it to suggest these ideas to the Cabinet, even though Lord Aberdeen supported them? When Prince Albert, at the Queen’s request, put them into the form of a Memorandum, Palmerston wrote a flippant reply to it only too closely in harmony with the popular frenzy of the time, the gist of the answer being that it was the duty of England to make war for Turkey and for Turkey alone, quite irrespective of any considerations affecting her treatment of her Christian subjects. To ask Turkey for concessions to civilisation, he argued, somewhat inconclusively, meant that we must connive at her expulsion from Europe. As for all the stories of Turkish fanaticism that had frightened the Queen, Lord Palmerston scoffingly described them as “fables invented at Vienna and St. Petersburg.”[133]