Volume 93 / Part 1 — KINGLAKE’S INVASION OF THE CRIMEA.[10]

KINGLAKE’S INVASION OF THE CRIMEA.^[10]

Seven years ago, when the war with Russia was about to end—was, in fact, already virtually ended—and when the war-fever of the English had been abated by copious blood-letting, and by the absence of further stimulant to hostility since Sebastopol had ceased to resist, people were already talking about the future history of the strife. It seemed to be agreed that the public, which had so eagerly swallowed all the information it could get, and snapped at all the opinions which floated so thickly on the stream of current history, was for the present glutted with the subject, and that to offer it any more Crimean information, however cunningly dressed, would be like fishing with a May-fly for a July trout. On the other hand, the subject seemed to be essentially one of contemporary importance. It had not the elements which gave lasting interest to the Peninsular war. It had developed no great reputations in which the nation could for the future undoubtingly confide. It had left us victorious over no great conqueror. Its memorials were not such as we should choose to dwell on; for though the nation was very proud of the early triumphs of the Alma and Inkermann, still the later course of the struggle had been, though successful in its end, yet disastrous and gloomy in its progress, and had left, partly through the more brilliant share which our allies took in the final action, but principally through the forebodings of our own press, a sense of comparative failure. Mr Kinglake comes upon the stage at a fortunate time. The weariness of the subject, once felt, has disappeared, while the strong contemporary interest in the actors remains. That interest is national in the sense of being fixed, not on a few great objects, but on a great number of inferior objects connected with the war. It is not so much patriotic as domestic. The graves of Cathcart’s Hill, the trenches filled with dead, the burial-grounds of Scutari, have a strong though softened hold on innumerable hearts. Everywhere in England—in remote parishes, in small communities, in humble households—remembrance of the great features of the struggle is kept alive by the presence of those who survived it. A strong conviction that French manœuvring was not entirely directed against the enemy, and that a fair scrutiny would leave us more reason for self-satisfaction than at first appeared, has long been afloat. And a succession of great conflicts in which we have been strongly interested has schooled us in military doctrines, and has rendered us better able to appreciate the operations of armies than we were either at the beginning or the end of the Crimean war.

If the time for the history is happily chosen, so is the historian. Few men who have written so little have so established their reputation as Mr Kinglake. His ‘Eothen,’ immensely popular at first, has settled into an English classic. It is full of interest, full of remarkably vivid descriptions, full of original writing; and though the style does not reject effects which a very pure taste would condemn, yet it possesses the eminent merits of vigour, condensation, and richness. In the fulness of the fame thus earned, Mr Kinglake accompanied the army to the Crimea. The scenes of the war consequently possessed for him a reality which no reading, no imagination, no second-hand description can impart. He had seen the Euxine covered with the vast flotilla of the Allies. He had set foot on the hostile coast at the same time as the combined armies. He had accompanied them in their compact advance, when their columns seemed but spots and patches in the vast circle of sea and plain. His own eyes had beheld the battle of the Alma, and the signs of death and suffering that remained next day to mark the phases of the struggle. And when afterwards he came to record the incidents of the war, though no individual observation could embrace all the details, there was always present with him the invaluable power which personal knowledge confers, to define, to affirm, or to reject. And as it was soon understood that he intended to write the history of the war, he, in his double capacity of approved author and actual spectator, became almost, as a matter of course, the depositary of a vast amount of information connected with the subject, oral and documentary, private and official. He had a large acquaintance with the political as well as the military actors in the drama. Few men, then, could have had so free access as he to the materials of which the history must be wrought.

Moreover, he had shown in his former work that he possessed another qualification for his task. History cannot be written at a heat. Patient inquiry, long meditation, the fortitude necessary for the abandonment of convenient conclusions too hastily come to, are all indispensable to success. But with this pursuit of the necessary details, unity of effect, as numberless failures have shown, is almost incompatible. Now, Mr Kinglake had given remarkable proof that he could bestow a microscopic attention on particulars without sacrifice of breadth. It is generally believed that he spent nine years in bringing the single volume of ‘Eothen’ up to the standard of his own fastidious taste. The sarcastic advice of Pope to an aspiring author—“Keep your piece nine years”—had been literally accepted, but with a result very different from that which the adviser anticipated. Instead of becoming dissatisfied with a work looked at after a long interval and with changed feelings, Mr Kinglake proved that he could not only “strike the second heat”—the process which Ben Jonson says is so necessary for the forging of ideas into happy forms of expression—but that he could bring his thoughts again and again to the intellectual smithy to be recast and shaped without finding the fire extinct. Here, then, was evidence of a quality most valuable to one who must long and patiently grope amid masses of evidence and details, sometimes conflicting, often worthless, and yet retain freshly the power of throwing the selected results into a form clear, harmonious, and striking.

We have thus broadly stated some of Mr Kinglake’s eminent qualifications for his task, and a detailed notice of his work will necessarily include others. And it is easy to believe that he might have selected a variety of subjects, his execution of which would have insured unqualified praise. But for the present task, as might have been seen before he commenced it, his fitness was marred by one circumstance. His political course had proved that his animosity towards the French Emperor amounted to a passion, or, as those who did not care to pick their words might say, a mania. It might be guessed beforehand, therefore, that the Emperor would scarcely meet with fair play at his hands. And considering the share taken by that personage in the events which Mr Kinglake had undertaken to record, to misrepresent his policy or his doings would be to distort the history. Any one who entertained such a misgiving must have found it strengthened when, on glancing over the table of contents, he perceived that nearly a quarter of the first volume, amidst what purports to be a record of the “transactions that brought on the war,” is occupied with an account of the coup d’état which substituted an empire for a republic in France. On reading the volume his suspicions would inevitably be converted into certainty. More than that, indeed, for he would find that his anticipations were far exceeded by a satire so studied, so polished, so remorseless, and withal so diabolically entertaining, that we know not where in modern literature to seek such another philippic. Had Mr Kinglake contrived in this chapter to have completely relieved his feelings and have been contented with flaying the Emperor and thus have done with him, leaving him to get through the rest of the book as naturally and comfortably as he could be expected to do without his skin, we might consider it as an episode which we should have been at liberty to set apart from the main purpose of the work. But like King Charles I., whom David Copperfield’s friend, Mr Dick, never could keep out of his memorial, this diabolical caricature of despotism haunts the narrative at every turn. The canvass is spread, the palette is laid, the artist is at his easel full of his subject—all the great personages of the time are to figure there, and great incidents are to form the background. The spectator is at first charmed with the progress of the design; but presently, amidst the nobly-drawn portraits, there is a sketch of a monarch with cloven feet appearing beneath his robes, and a tail curling under his throne; and whereas the rest of the picture is in true perspective, all that relates to this figure has a separate horizon and point of sight. The result is as if Gilray in his bitterest mood had got into Sir Joshua’s studio and persuaded him to let their fancies mingle in one incongruous work.

We have thus stated our one point of difference with the author of these fascinating volumes. With this exception we have little to do but to praise—and indeed, as a piece of writing, we have nothing to do but to praise the work from beginning to end. How materials in many respects so unpromising could be made so interesting, is marvellous. Many a reader who remembers what a tangled skein of politics it was that led to the war—many a soldier who has a confused recollection of a jumble of Holy Places, and the Four Powers, and Vienna Conferences, and who would be glad to know what it was he was fighting about, now that it is all over—will take up these volumes as a duty, and will be surprised to find that the narrative approached in so resolute a frame of mind, is more easy to read and more difficult to lay down than the most popular of the popular novels.

The dispute about the Holy Places, though not in itself in any appreciable degree the cause of the war, was the introduction to the events that led to hostilities. There is something almost ludicrous, something more befitting the times of Philip Augustus and of Cœur de Lion than those of Louis Napoleon and Lord Palmerston, in the idea of great European potentates appearing as the backers of two denominations of monks, who were quarrelling about the key of a church-door in Palestine. Nevertheless, the Czar, as the chief of a people whose passions were strongly aroused by the dispute, had a real and legitimate interest in the matter. To suppose that the President of the French Republic, or any section of the people over whom he presided, really cared whether the Greek or the Latin Church had the custody of this important key, would be absurd. But the President it was who opened the question by advocating the claims of the Latins. His object in doing so is by no means clear. Mr Kinglake accounts for it by saying, “The French President, in cold blood, and under no new motive for action, took up the forgotten cause of the Latin Church of Jerusalem, and began to apply it as a wedge for sundering the peace of the world.” Now, that Louis Napoleon was desirous of disturbing the peace of the world, is Mr Kinglake’s argument throughout. It is to his book what the wrath of Achilles is to the ‘Iliad;’ and he tells us that the reason for this truculent desire was to prop up the French Empire. But that reason, though it may plausibly explain the acts of the French Emperor, does not account in the least for the acts of the French President. We presume Mr Kinglake hardly wishes us to infer that Louis Napoleon sowed the seeds of war during his Presidency, as provision for the possible necessities of a possible Empire. Yet the historian’s theory would seem to demand the inference.

The poor Sultan, meanwhile, who might well exclaim ‘A plague o’ both your Churches!’ was the unwilling arbiter of this dispute between his Christian subjects, and was urged by the great champion on each side to decide in favour of his protégé. Who might have the key, or whether there was any key at all, or any sanctuary at all, or any Greek or Latin Church, was to this hapless potentate a matter of profound indifference. The French envoy put on the strongest pressure, and the Sultan inclined to the side of the Latins; the Russian minister thereupon squeezed from him a concession to their adversaries; and between the two he managed, as might be expected, to disgust both sects, and to anger the Czar without satisfying the Emperor. The displeasure of Nicholas was extreme, and he prepared to support his further arguments by marching a large army towards the Turkish frontier. And the first use of this force was to give momentum to the mission of Prince Mentschikoff, who was sent to Constantinople as the organ of his Imperial master’s displeasure. The selection of the envoy showed that the Czar wished to take the most direct and violent course to the fulfilment of his aim; for the Prince’s diplomacy was of that simple kind—the only kind he seemed capable of employing—which regards threats as the best means of persuasion.

These strong measures were the first indications that war was possibly impending. And as they appeared to spring from the religious fervour of the Czar, which had been roused to this pitch by the gratuitous intermeddling of Napoleon in the question of the Holy Places, it would at first seem as if it were indeed the French ruler who had first blown the coal which presently caused such a conflagration. But in the interval between the decision of the Sultan about the churches, and the appearance of Mentschikoff at Constantinople, Nicholas had held with Sir Hamilton Seymour the remarkable conversations which explain the real designs cloaked by the religious question. In these interviews he uttered his famous parable of “the sick man,” representing that the Turkish Empire was dying, and might fall to pieces any day, and proposing that the event should be provided for by an immediate arrangement for dividing the fragments. Provided he had the concurrence of England, the Czar would not, he said, care what any other Powers might do or say in the matter.

Here then was a foregone conclusion plainly revealed. The religious ire of the Czar, the movement of his troops, the mission of Mentschikoff, were all to be instruments for hastening the dissolution of the sick man, and appropriating his domains. It was no new idea; for Nicholas was but following the traditionary policy of his house. And if it could be believed that his expectations of the speedy collapse of the Turkish Empire were real, it would be unjust to blame him for wishing to profit by the event. We are too apt to judge of the policy of other Governments by the interests of England, and to condemn as unprincipled what is opposed to our advantage. Nevertheless, to a ruler of Russia, no object can appear more legitimate than the possession of that free outlet to the world, which alone is wanting to remove the spell that paralyses her gigantic energies. Looking from the shores of the Euxine, she is but mocked by the vision of naval glories and of commercial prosperity; but let her extend her limits to the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, and no dreams of greatness can be too splendid for her to realise. But there is no proof that the Czar’s anticipations respecting Turkey were grounded on anything more solid than his strong desire to render them true. In fact, the forecast of the Czar is much the same as that of Mohammed Damoor, as described in ‘Eothen:’ who, having prophesied that the Jews of Damascus would be despoiled on a particular day, took steps to verify his prediction by first exciting and then heading the mob of plunderers.

The reply of England to his overtures satisfied him that he could not hope for her complicity in his design upon Turkey. Had it been otherwise, the sick man would, no doubt, have been so cared for that, sick or well, there would soon have been an end of him. But the Czar perceived he must for the present forego his desire for the vineyard of Naboth. Yet there were several reasons why he should still draw what profit he could from the present opportunity. He had a pretext—an indifferent one it is true, but still it was more convenient to use it than to look for another. He had been at the trouble of military preparations, and was naturally desirous that they should not be barren of result. And, in the matter of Montenegro, Turkey had just succumbed to him so readily on a threat of war, that it seemed very unlikely he should ever find her in a better frame of mind for his purpose. Therefore, though the sick man was reprieved, yet he was not to go scot-free; and Mentschikoff was charged, while ostensibly urging the Sultan to reconsider the question of the Holy Places, to keep in reserve a demand of much deeper significance.

Scornful in demeanour and imperious in language, Mentschikoff entered Constantinople more like the bearer of a gage of defiance than a messenger of peace. His deportment startled the Divan out of its habitual calm; and the British Chargé d’Affaires, at the instance of the Turkish Ministers, requested our Admiral at Malta to move his squadron into the Levant. This demand was not complied with; but the French fleet was ordered to Salamis. And this movement is condemned by Mr Kinglake as most impolitic; for it happened, he says, at a time when “the anger of the Emperor Nicholas had grown cool,” and it “gave deep umbrage to Russia.” From which he means us to infer that Louis Napoleon, following his deep design of fanning the flame of discord when it should seem to languish, was so timing the advance of his fleet as to neutralise the pacific influences which had begun to have their sway.

Now what are the circumstances of the case? The French Emperor knew nothing of the conversation with Sir Hamilton Seymour, which did not transpire till long afterwards. Neither he nor the British Government were aware of the Czar’s real demands. Ostensibly the matter of controversy was still the original question between him and the Czar concerning the Holy Places. And while one of the disputants, France, had urged her views in the ordinary way by the mouth of her ambassador, her opponent was preparing to coerce the arbiter by a menacing mission backed by an army and a fleet. The army already touched the frontier, the fleet was prepared to sail for the Bosphorus. Will anybody except Mr Kinglake blame the French Emperor for sending his fleet to Salamis? or say that he was bound, before taking such a step, to consider whether it might not give deep umbrage to Russia?

Mentschikoff then proceeded to urge his demands. These were, that, in addition to the concessions required respecting the Holy Places, the Sultan should, by treaty with the Czar, engage to confirm the Christian subjects of the Porte in certain privileges and immunities. Though the Sultan was very willing to confirm them in these privileges, he was by no means willing to bind himself by treaty with the Czar to do so; for by so doing he would give the Czar a right, as a party to the treaty, to see that it was fulfilled; and hence those who were to benefit by the privileges would naturally regard most, not him who granted them, but him who could compel their observance. In fact, it was virtually conferring on the Czar the protectorate of the Sultan’s Christian subjects.

It was while the Turkish Ministers were in the deepest embarrassment between the consequences of listening to such a proposition on the one hand, and the fear of offending the Czar by refusing to entertain it on the other, that Lord Stratford appeared on the scene. The coming of the British Ambassador, and the diplomatic duel that ensued between him and Mentschikoff, where predominant influence in the Sultan’s counsels was to be the prize of the victor, forms one of the most brilliant passages in this brilliant book. The mere presence of the Ambassador of England restores the Sultan and his Ministers to complete self-possession. When Mentschikoff blusters, they refresh themselves by a view of Lord Stratford’s commanding aspect; when the Russian menaces war, they are comforted by a hint from the Englishman respecting the English squadron. Of such dramatic excellence is this portion of the story, that the enthralled reader forgets to inquire how it was that in a dispute between France and Russia respecting the subjects of Turkey, the Ambassador of England should be the foremost champion. But we see him throughout as the power that moves the Mussulman puppets, and from whose calm opposition the menaces of Mentschikoff recoil harmless; and we see in distant St Petersburg the great Czar himself lashed to fury at feeling himself foiled by one whom he has long, we are told, considered as a personal foe. We cannot but feel proud in these circumstances of the position of our representative, though it would be difficult to say, perhaps, what advantage besides this feeling of pride we, as a nation, derived from it. But it is clear that, while the Czar was dreaming, as of something possible to be realised by a great display of power, of a protectorate over the Christian subjects of the Porte, here was a British protectorate of the most absolute character already established over the Porte and its subjects, Christian and Mussulman; and we might almost infer that nothing further was requisite on Lord Stratford’s part but to humour Mohammedan prejudices by submitting to a few insignificant religious rites, in order to qualify him for at once taking his place as Chief of the Ottoman Empire, and the true Commander of the Faithful.

In the diplomatic encounter, Mentschikoff had no more chance than the fiend in a moral tale of diablerie, who urges weak man to sign his soul away after the good angel has come to the rescue. Baffled at all points, he departs with all the diplomatic train, muttering vengeance. And here ends the first act of the drama, when the pretexts of the Czar have vanished, and he shows his true design. The next begins with the crossing of the Pruth by the Russian forces, in order to secure the material guarantee of the Danubian provinces. But the menacing position of Russia was not the only change in the situation. England, who in the earlier dispute had no more interest than the other Western Powers in opposing Russia, had in the progress of the controversy made herself so prominent that she was, in the judgment of Lord Clarendon, bound to defend the provinces of the Sultan against an unprovoked attack by Russia. That she had laid herself under this obligation was entirely owing to the lofty part which Lord Stratford had played in the drama. On the other hand, had Lord Stratford not been so ready and conspicuous in his championship, the Divan, feeling itself unsupported, might have yielded to the demands of Russia.

For a great part of the narrative, then, the principal positions have been occupied by England, Russia, and Turkey; and the interest imparted to scenes which, from an ordinary hand, would have been eminently tedious, is wonderful. But at this juncture, King Charles I., who has long been impending, can no longer be kept out of the memorial. The iniquitous machinations of the French Emperor are brought into the foreground. The occasion for enlarging on them is that which we shall presently state. But first we must say that it is from no wish to dilate on what we think the blemish of the book that we expatiate on this theme. It is because it is mixed up with all the main parts of a work which we are bound to treat as an authentic history. But it happens that, for a reason to be noted hereafter, we can, without injury to the texture, separate this portion from the rest; and we therefore propose to follow this thread of the narrative to its end, and so, having done with it, to be at liberty, for the rest of these volumes, to approve no less warmly than we admire.

Austria naturally felt considerable interest in the movements of a formidable neighbour, whose troops were now winding round her frontier, who, by overrunning Turkey, would enclose some of her provinces, and who, at the next step in advance, would control the Lower Danube. She therefore, in conjunction with Prussia, made common cause with the Western Powers, so far as to offer a strong remonstrance against the occupation of the Danubian provinces, and to join in their efforts to preserve peace. Mr Kinglake contends that this kind of pacific pressure would have secured its object, and that if it had not, Austria would have joined France and England in having recourse to sterner measures. But he says that, without waiting for the result of this joint coercion, England was persuaded to join France in a separate course of action, which, without necessity, involved us in a war desired only by the French Emperor. “In order to see how it came to be possible,” says the historian, “that the vast interests of Europe should be set aside in favour of mere personal objects, it will presently be necessary to contract the field of vision, and, going back to the winter of 1851, to glance at the operations of a small knot of middle-aged men who were pushing their fortunes in Paris.”

And here is interpolated—for as an interpolation we regard it—that curious episode which has for its subject the coup d’état and the establishment of the second French Empire. Standing apart from the purpose of the book, its isolation gives it peculiar distinctness. But its inherent character is such that it needs no art or accident to bring it into strongest relief. It is a singularly clever and singularly acrimonious attack upon the foremost statesman and most powerful potentate of these times. And it makes demands on our credulity which are too heavy for anything short of absolute proof to maintain. For we are asked to believe that a set of men with no more character or consideration than Falstaff and his associates, were able to call on the French nation to stand and deliver, and that the nation thereupon submitted to be knocked down, to have its throat cut, and to be plundered by these minions of the moon. Now, does anybody think that diadems, such as that of France, are to be stolen from a shelf by any cutpurse who wants to put them in his pocket? Or does anybody think that a mere cutpurse, having succeeded in the theft, could so have worn his stolen diadem as to enhance its splendour and renown? That which made the Empire possible, and that which maintains it now, was the conviction that the choice of the nation lay between it and Red Republicanism. And to establish, in any degree, his case, Mr Kinglake should have proved that no such conviction existed. But if it be true that France found in the Empire a refuge from anarchy, then reasonable men will not be ready to scrutinise, in too severe a spirit, the means taken to consolidate the throne. Granted that the army, the instrument employed by the President, disgraced itself by an indiscriminate and unprovoked slaughter—that the opposition of political adversaries was silenced in a very arbitrary fashion—that a foreign war would probably be necessary for the security of the new dynasty,—yet will it be said that a result which has tranquillised France, which has developed her resources and exalted her reputation, leaves in the establishment of the Empire nothing except what the world must regret and condemn? And looking at the portrait which Mr Kinglake has drawn, with so bold and incisive a touch, of this potentate of wooden face, base soul, and feeble resolve, who turns green in moments of danger—who, with the aid of swindlers and bravoes, has yoked France to his chariot, and drives it in a career of blood with the great Powers of Europe bound to its wheels—we ask, not only is it brilliant as a work of art, but is it like the original? We do not profess to believe that the Empire is the perfection of government. We do not maintain that Louis Napoleon is a model of virtue and disinterested policy. But if his place in Europe were suddenly vacant, will Mr Kinglake tell us how it would be better filled, or what precious things might not be thrown into the gulf before it could be closed? And if no answer can be given to the question, we may well doubt the expediency of contributing to bring so important a personage and so powerful an ally into contempt.

“After the 2d December in the year 1851,” says Mr Kinglake, in concluding the portion of his work relating to the coup d’état, “the foreign policy of France was used for a prop to prop the throne which Morny and his friends had built up.... Therefore, although I have dwelt awhile upon a singular passage in the domestic history of France, I have not digressed.” Now, even if he could prove the necessities of the French Empire to have been the main motive of the part England took in the war, we should still dispute this. No doubt it is the business of the historian of an important series of events to trace them to their sources, and the more clearly he can show the connection hidden from ordinary minds, the more sagacious and ingenious he will appear. But if there were no limit to this, the history of any event might spread to an extent altogether boundless; and therefore, to justify digression, it is necessary for the historian to show that the incidents which led to the result had a necessary and not an accidental influence in procuring it. For instance, in the case of a popular uprising against a despotism or a superstition, it would be expected that the historian should trace all the successive steps by which the national feelings were roused from suffering to resistance, because those steps led inevitably and naturally to that particular result, and not to any other. In such a case history is performing her proper function of explaining, for the guidance of posterity, the obscure process by which certain conditions produce certain effects. But where a war has been caused by the caprice and unreasoning anger of a potentate, it is beside the purpose to trace up to his very cradle the effect of early mismanagement or neglect in rendering him passionate or capricious, for no political lesson can be taught where results cannot be calculated. In such a case it will be sufficient to state the fact, that the war originated in the irascible temper and unaccountable impulse of one who had the power to give his anger such tremendous vent. It would be absurd to pause in the history, and to introduce his biography, merely to prove that it is a bad thing when great power is lodged in the hands of a person who is the slave of violent caprice. And in the present instance, if it had been stated in two sentences that the conditions under which the French Empire had started into existence were such as to render a foreign war, or a commanding position in Europe, necessary to its stability, the statement would have fully satisfied the requirements of history, and would have received general assent.

However, having considered it necessary to prove this proposition by a separate history of the transition which France underwent from a republic to an empire, Mr Kinglake undertakes to show how we were dragged into war by this necessitous Emperor. He asserts many times that the operations of the French and English fleets caused the war.

“The English Government,” he says, “consented to engage in naval movements which affected—nay governed—the war.” And again, “The French Emperor had no sooner engaged the English Government in a separate understanding, than he began to insist upon the necessity of using the naval power of France and England in the way which he proposed—a way bitterly offensive to Russia. Having at length succeeded in forcing this measure upon England, he after a while pressed upon her another movement of the fleets still more hostile than the first, and again he succeeded in bringing the English Government to yield to him. Again, and still once again, he did the like, always in the end bringing England to adopt his hostile measures; and he never desisted from this course of action, until at last it had effected a virtual rupture between the Czar and the Western Powers.”

And in this way throughout these transactions the Emperor plays a part much the same as that which Satan took in the scenes in Paradise; and at every turn we see him moving deviously, quite serpentine in craft and baseness, or squatting toad-like at the ear of the slumbering British Government, till now, at the Ithuriel touch of history, he starts up in his true form of malignant demon.

The various items of the present charge against him are collected by Mr Kinglake in a compendious form:—

“Not yet as part of this narrative, but by way of anticipation, and in order to gather into one page the grounds of the statement just made, the following instances are given of the way in which the English Government was, from time to time, driven to join with the French Emperor in making a quarrelsome use of the two fleets:—On the 13th of July 1853, the French Emperor, through his Minister of Foreign Affairs, declared to the English Government that if the occupation of the Principalities continued, the French fleet could not longer remain at Besica Bay. On the 19th of August he declared it to be absolutely necessary that the combined fleets should enter the Dardanelles, and he pressed the English Government to adopt a resolution to this effect. On the 21st of September he insisted that the English Government, at the same moment as the French, should immediately order up the combined squadrons to Constantinople. On the 15th of December he pressed the English Government to agree that the Allied fleets should enter the Euxine, take possession of it, and interdict the passage of every Russian vessel. It will be seen that, with more or less reluctance and after more or less delay, these demands were always acceded to by England: and the course thus taken by the maritime Powers was fatal to the pending negotiations; for, besides that in the way already shown the Czar’s wholesome fears were converted into bursts of rage, the Turks at the same time were deriving a dangerous encouragement from the sight of the French and English war-flags; and the result was, that the negotiators, with all their skill and all their patience, were never able to frame a Note in the exact words which would allay the anger of Nicholas, without encountering a steadfast resistance on the part of the Sultan.”

We have only, then, to take in their turn the items thus enumerated to ascertain the justice of the charge. The first of the naval movements was the advance of the fleets to Besica Bay. This made the Czar very angry. But it was in itself a perfectly lawful operation, and quite consistent with friendliness and desire for peace. It by no means balanced the aggressive advance of the Czar into the Principalities and the orders to the Sebastopol fleet. Moreover, however irritating to Nicholas, he condoned it, for we find him long afterwards accepting the Vienna Note framed by the four Powers, the acceptance of which by Turkey would have settled the dispute. That it was not accepted by Turkey was due entirely to Lord Stratford and the Turkish Ministers. “The French Emperor,” says Mr Kinglake, “did nothing whatever to thwart the restoration of tranquillity.” It is evident, then, that the movements of the fleets thus far had produced no effect which was not completely neutralised, and that the Emperor’s desire for war did not prevent him from contributing to the general effort for peace.

The next movement of the fleets was into the Dardanelles. The Sultan was engaged by treaty to forbid the entrance of the fleets of any Power so long as he should be at peace. What, then, were the reasons for entering the Straits? Were they purely provocative? Now, we find that the demand for war on the part of the Turkish people had at this time become so urgent, that the Ambassadors to the Porte regarded it as almost irresistible. The French Ambassador viewed it, Mr Kinglake says, “with sincere alarm.” He wrote a despatch to his Government, imparting to it what we must admit to have been also “sincere alarm,” for there is no evidence or insinuation of the contrary; and that alarm being shared by our Government, the fleets were ordered to enter the Dardanelles that they might be ready, if wanted, to support the Turkish Government against the belligerent wishes of its own subjects.

But another important circumstance had occurred before the entry of the fleets. In invading the Principalities, the Czar had announced that this was not meant as an act of war. And the Sultan’s hold on these provinces was of such an anomalous kind that his advisers held him to be at liberty to construe the invasion as an act of war, or not, at his own pleasure. He had now given notice to the Czar that unless the Russian troops should quit the Principalities in fifteen days he would declare war. Fourteen of the fifteen days had elapsed when the fleets entered. Except for observing the strict letter of the treaty, it was not of the least importance whether they entered a day sooner or later. Yet Mr Kinglake tells us the Czar was very indignant at the violation of the treaty, and he laments that another day was not suffered to elapse before the movement. Now, considering all the circumstances—that the fleets had already been for a long time at the disposal of the Ambassadors, who might summon them to Constantinople whenever they judged necessary, and that the Czar knew it—that war steamers had already been called up to the Bosphorus by both the Ambassadors, French and English, and the treaty thus broken as completely as by the passage of a hundred fleets—that the Czar had himself, by the invasion of the Principalities, deprived himself of the right to complain of the violation of the treaty—that fifteen days’ notice of a declaration of war had been given, and that the full term must have expired before the fleets could arrive at Constantinople—considering all this, the provocation is reduced to such an infinitesimal quantity, that it is barely worth a passing mention. There is no evidence whatever that the prospects of peace were in any way affected by the advance of the fleets. Yet a hasty reader of Mr Kinglake’s narrative might easily imagine that it produced the direst consequences. “When the tidings of this hostile measure,” he says, “reached St Petersburg, they put an end for the time to all prospect of peace.” And again—

“The Czar received tidings of the hostile decision of the maritime Powers in a spirit which, this time at least, was almost justified by the provocation given. In retaliation for what he would naturally look upon as a bitter affront, and even as a breach of treaty, he determined, it would seem, to have vengeance at sea whilst vengeance at sea was still possible; and it was under the spur of the anger thus kindled that orders for active operations were given to the fleet at Sebastopol. The vengeance he meditated he could only wreak upon the body of the Turks, for the great offenders of the West were beyond the bounds of his power.”

Would not the reader imagine from this that the attack of Sinope had been proved by full evidence to be the immediate result of the exasperation of the Czar at the advance of the combined fleets? But Mr Kinglake acquaints us in a note with the real grounds on which he makes this confident assertion:—

“This conclusion is drawn from dates. The hostile resolution of the Western Powers was known to the Czar a little before the 14th of October, and about the middle of the following month the Black Sea fleet was at sea. If allowance be made for distance and preparation, it will be seen that the sequence of one event upon the other is close enough to warrant the statement contained in the text. In the absence, however, of any knowledge to the contrary, it is fair to suppose that the Czar remembered his promise, and did not sanction any actual attack upon the enemy unless his commanders should be previously apprised that the Turks had commenced active warfare.”

We read this note with surprise. It proves that Mr Kinglake can, when in hot pursuit of the foe, step to a conclusion over grounds where few can follow. The fleets entered the Dardanelles on the 22d October. The attack of Sinope took place on the 30th November. The Turks and Russians had been at war for six weeks; and though the Russian Minister had announced in a circular some time before, that the Czar, in hopes still of a peaceful solution, would remain on the defensive as long as his dignity and interests would allow, yet, as Mr Kinglake himself says, “After the issue of the circular, the Government of St Petersburg had received intelligence not only that active warfare was going on in the valley of the Lower Danube, but that the Turks had seized the Russian fort of St Nicholas on the eastern coast of the Euxine, and were attacking Russia upon her Armenian frontier;” and he fully absolves the Czar from any breach of faith in this matter. Yet he would gravely have us believe that the attack of the ships of one Power upon those of another with which it is at open war requires explanation, and that the most natural explanation possible is to be found in attributing it to a slow retaliation for an imaginary injury inflicted by two other Powers. It is as if we should be told that, in the early rounds of a celebrated pugilistic encounter, Mr Sayers had hit Mr Heenan very hard in the eye, not because they were fighting, but because one of the bystanders had previously trodden on the champion’s coat.

As the reader will probably decline to follow Mr Kinglake over his slender bridge of inference, we must look beyond Sinope for the naval movement instigated by the French Emperor and turning the scale in favour of war; and, as only one remains to be accounted for, we have not far to look. The next orders sent to the fleets were intended to obviate another disaster and disgrace such as that of Sinope. They provided that Russian ships met with in the Euxine should be requested, and, if necessary, constrained, to return to Sebastopol. This, Mr Kinglake terms “a harsh and insulting course of action.” He says the English Cabinet during their deliberations “were made acquainted with the will of the French Emperor; ... the pressure of the French Emperor was the cogent motive which governed the result; ... the result was that now, for the second time, France dictated to England the use that she should make of her fleet, and by this time, perhaps, submission had become more easy than it was at first.” But Lord Clarendon has been quoted by Mr Kinglake as saying, months before, that it had become the duty of England to defend Turkey. According to Mr Kinglake, when independent Powers are acting together, to propose is to dictate, and to acquiesce is to submit. To make a suggestion is imperious, and to adopt it is ignominious. But what kind of an alliance would this be? or how would concert be possible under such circumstances? The proposal of the French Emperor was so offered as to show that he was thoroughly convinced of its expediency. If he was so convinced, he was right so to offer it. And why did the English Ministry adopt it? Because the English people more than kept pace with the wishes of the Emperor. “A huge obstacle,” says the historian, “to the maintenance of peace in Europe was raised up by the temper of the English people; ... the English desired war.” It is strange doctrine then, that an English Ministry which, by assenting to the proposition of an ally, expresses the temper of the English people, thereby submits to foreign dictation.

But the strangest part of the French part of the story is behind. We have seen how Mr Kinglake traces from the first the devious wiles of the French Emperor—how it was his craft that first made the question of the Holy Places important—how his “subtle and dangerous counsels” hurried England into war, and all because war was necessary to the stability of his throne. The complicated texture of his intrigue is followed and traced with immense patience and ingenuity; and yet, when the work is complete, and his imperial victim stands fully detected and exposed as the incendiary of Europe, the detective suddenly destroys his own finely-spun web at a blow. England was the tool of the French Emperor, but the French Emperor was the tool of a still more astute and potent personage. “When the Czar began to encroach upon the Sultan, there was nothing that could so completely meet Lord Palmerston’s every wish as an alliance between the two Western Powers, which should toss France headlong into the English policy of upholding the Ottoman Empire.... As he (Lord Palmerston) from the first had willed it, so moved the two great nations of the West.” The elaborated structure of French intrigue falls, and our gay perennial Premier is discovered smiling amid the ruins. Thus Punch murders his wife and infant, hangs the executioner, and shines as the dexterous and successful villain, till, at the close of the piece, Mr Codlin, the real wire-puller, draws aside the curtain and appears at the bottom of the show, while the great criminal and his victims revert to their proper condition of sawdust and tinsel.

The terms of the alliance between France and England are surely not difficult to understand. The policy of upholding the Ottoman Empire was, as Mr Kinglake says, “an English policy.” The object for which the Governments of France and England were actively united was an English object. Naturally we inquire what inducement the Emperor had then to form the alliance? Mr Kinglake furnishes us with the correct response. It seemed, he says, to the Emperor “that, by offering to thrust France into an English policy, he might purchase for himself an alliance with the Queen, and win for his new throne a sanction of more lasting worth than Morny’s well-warranted return of his eight millions of approving Frenchmen. Above all, if he could be united with England, he might be able to enter upon that conspicuous action in Europe which was needful for his safety at home, and might do this without bringing upon himself any war of a dangerous kind.” The advantages of the alliance were to be reciprocal. The Emperor was to gain in position and reputation, in return for aiding with his fleets and armies the attainment of an English object. Mutual interest and mutual compromise were the basis of this, as of most alliances. We had not to accuse the Emperor of any breach of faith in executing his part of the compact. Being already, as Lord Clarendon said, committed to the defence of Turkey, it made a vast difference to us whether we should enter on a war with Russia alone, or should be aided by the immense power of France. And it was only fair that the Emperor should be allowed to occupy, in the transactions which ensued, that position, the attainment of which was his grand object in seeking the alliance. Yet Mr Kinglake blames this necessitous potentate because he did not sacrifice his position and himself to our interests—because he did not chivalrously place his army and navy at our service for the promotion of English policy, and remain quietly in the background, with his generous feelings for his reward; and he blames our own Government for making those compromises which alone could render the alliance possible.

And here, we rejoice to say, our serious differences with Mr Kinglake end. After so much entertainment and instruction as we have derived from his book, it seems almost ungrateful to make to it so many exceptions. But if we have occupied much of our space thus, he must remember that it takes longer to argue than to acquiesce. Moreover, it is partly owing to his own excellences that we have been able to find matter for dispute. Many a writer would have so muddled his facts and his prejudices that we should have found it hard to do more than suspect the presence of error in the cloudy medium. But his style is so clear, so precise, that the reasoning everywhere shines through, and a fallacy or an inconsistency has no more chance of escaping detection than a gold fish in a crystal aquarium. And besides, Mr Kinglake himself most honestly and liberally furnishes us with the facts, and even the inferences, necessary to rectify his theory. Thus the effect, in his history, of his hostility to the Emperor is not that of a false proportion in a rule of three, which extends and vitiates the whole process. It is only like a series of erroneous items introduced in a sum in addition, which may be separated and deducted, leaving the total right.

The course of the transactions that led to the war may then be traced as clearly as diplomacy, dealing with many great interests and many unseen motives, generally permits. The squabble about the Holy Places was not the origin but only the pretext of the dispute with Turkey. The conversations with Sir Hamilton Seymour and the mission of Mentschikoff prove that the Czar was already seeking to dislocate the fabric of the Turkish Empire, and only took that lever because it lay readiest to his hand. “A crowd of monks,” says Mr Kinglake, in his picturesque way, “with bare foreheads, stood quarrelling for a key at the sunny gates of a church in Palestine, but beyond and above, towering high in the misty North, men saw the ambition of the Czars.” But the real design could not long be hidden by the pretext. And the execution of that design would be subversive of that balance which it was the duty and interest of the other Powers to maintain. It was for the Czar, then, to choose a time for his project when he might find each of the other Powers restrained by some counteracting motive from opposing his ambition. Looking over Europe, he thought that he perceived the favourable moment. Austria, the Power most interested from her contiguity, and from the importance to her of free use of the great waterway of Southern Germany, if she had much reason to resist, had also much reason to acquiesce. She still felt too keenly, financially and politically, the effects of the heavy blows dealt her in 1848–9 to be ready or willing for war. She was under a huge debt of gratitude to Nicholas, who, in the hour of her direst necessity, had advanced to save her, without condition and without reward. He possessed, too, a great personal ascendancy over the young Emperor of Austria. And, lastly, at this time Austria had a hostile altercation with Turkey, which would render it more than ever difficult for her to take part with the Sultan.

It might be calculated that Prussia would follow the lead of Austria. Her interests were the same in kind, but far less in degree. Once satisfied that full guarantees for the freedom of the Danube would be given, she would no longer have special interest in the subject.

As to France, there seemed to be no special reason why she should interfere. And if she should interfere, the Czar’s sentiments towards the new Empire were such as would rather lead him to disdainful defiance than conciliation.

At first he anticipated no difficulty in persuading the English Government to join in his designs. Finding, however, by the rejection of his overtures, that he could not hope for the support of England, he probably postponed the extreme measures of aggression. But, for the reasons we have stated in a former paragraph, he was unwilling to let the opportunity pass totally unimproved; and hence the demands of Mentschikoff for granting the protectorate of the Greek Church in Turkey to the Czar.

It was Lord Stratford’s share in the diplomatic contest that ensued, which first gave England prominence in the dispute. And whether the part he took was in accordance with instructions from his Government, or was due to the influence of his personal character, the result was to assure England that the predominance of her Ambassador in the councils of the Porte, whatever advantage it might confer, carried with it grave responsibility. When Mentschikoff withdrew in anger from the scene, England was, in the opinion of her own Ministers, committed to the defence of Turkey.

We have seen that the Czar’s original design was made dependent on the concurrence of England. When he found that this was unattainable, the design was modified. He now found that even in this modified form England would not only not concur, but would oppose it. Why then did he persist? It was because he did not believe that the opposition of England would go the length of war.

Lord Aberdeen, the English Premier, besides being the personal friend of Nicholas, and therefore disposed to view Russian policy with comparative indulgence, was the open and professed friend of peace at any price. He had that horror of war which in a statesman is an unpardonable and fatal weakness. And in this particular he was believed only to represent the feeling of the English people. The Czar, in common with most of the world, was convinced that they were entirely absorbed in the pursuit of commerce. He took the Exhibition of 1851 for the national confession of faith. He believed that England had no god but gold, and that Mr Cobden was her prophet.

This fallacy Mr Kinglake exposes in his happiest style:—

“All England had been brought to the opinion that it was a wickedness to incur war without necessity or justice; but when the leading spirits of the Peace Party had the happiness of beholding this wholesome result, they were far from stopping short. They went on to make light of the very principles by which peace is best maintained, and although they were conscientious men, meaning to say and do what was right, yet, being unacquainted with the causes which bring about the fall of empires, they deliberately inculcated that habit of setting comfort against honour which historians call ‘corruption.’ They made it plain, as they imagined, that no war which was not engaged in for the actual defence of the country could ever be right; but even there they took no rest, for they went on and on, and still on, until their foremost thinker reached the conclusion that, in the event of an attack upon our shores, the invaders ought to be received with such an effusion of hospitality and brotherly love as could not fail to disarm them of their enmity, and convert the once dangerous Zouave into the valued friend of the family. Then, with great merriment, the whole English people turned round, and although they might still be willing to go to the brink of other precipices, they refused to go further towards that one. The doctrine had struck no root. It was ill suited to the race to whom it was addressed. The male cheered it, and forgot it until there came a time for testing it, and then discarded it; and the woman, from the very first, with her true and simple instinct, was quick to understand its value. She would subscribe, if her husband required it, to have the doctrine taught to charity children, but she would not suffer it to be taught to her own boy. So it proved barren.”

Caustic as this is, it is only too indulgent to the Peace Party. Not that it is of special importance now to crush what is already so depressed and abased as to have lost its power of mischief. The course of the leaders of the party has been such that they could not continue to enjoy any large measure of popularity, except upon the anomalous condition that a great number of Englishmen should join in hating England. For years past no petulant despotism, no drunken republic, could shake its coarse fist in the face of this country, without finding its warmest supporters in those men of the olive branch, who were never weary of urging us to offer both cheeks to the smiter. Their mode of interference in a quarrel is like that of the affectionate friends, who, if a man were attacked, would cling round him and hamper him, reviling him for his pugnacity, while his adversary ran him through the body. Long fallen from their position as oracles, they lie at the base of their tall pedestals, and “none so poor as do them reverence.” But, in granting them honesty of purpose, Mr Kinglake falls, we think, into the now common error of pushing candour to excess. A man’s mistakes are honest when he is led into them by motives irrespective of his interests. The fanatic who sacrifices his own advantage along with that of other people cannot be accused of baseness. But these men had a direct interest in preaching the doctrine of the necessity of national poltroonery. The substitution of a purely commercial policy for that which the nation had hitherto followed, was intimately blended with their own personal advantage. The motive, therefore, that inspired the error renders it inexcusable.

Blind, then, to consequences, the Czar continued his course of aggression. He marched his troops into the Principalities. Thereupon, no longer opposed only by England, he finds himself met by the concerted action of the four great Powers. And the question of interest at this particular stage is, Whether the primary object of defending Turkey was to be best attained by the action of the four Powers, or by the increased decision in action of England and France. Now it is to be observed, that the Czar knew long before he occupied the Principalities that Austria would resist the step. Yet the united remonstrance of the four Powers had failed to induce him to abandon it. And it also failed afterwards to induce him to retract it. Through remonstrance, opposition, and the earlier stages of the war, he continued to hold the provinces. It becomes then a question, when we are considering the statement that the peaceful pressure of the four Powers would have attained our object in the most desirable way, whether a course of action so slow was consistent with our engagement to defend Turkey. It is a matter at least open to doubt.

But granting that either the slow action of Austria, or the more decisive policy of France, would have equally availed, if adopted by common consent, was that unanimity possible? Austria had many reasons for limiting her interference to diplomatic pressure. Moreover, her ground of complaint against Russia was the occupation of the Principalities, not the threatening of Turkey. Should Russia adopt some other method of coercing Turkey, such as sending her fleet into the Bosphorus, and withdrawing her troops from the provinces, the interest of Austria in the dispute would almost vanish, while that of the Western Powers would increase. And how would it suit France to adopt the course of Austria, and to aim at a settlement by united action? The French Emperor’s great inducement in joining in the dispute at all was the prospect of increased reputation. And when the figure representing the credit to be gained by joint diplomatic coercion came to be divided by four, would the quotient satisfy his expectations? It is not too much to say that England was compelled to choose between France and Austria, since it was unlikely they would long continue in a common course. And as the action of England in a war with Russia must be principally through her fleet, it became of immense importance that the French navy should act with us rather than be neutral or hostile. In such circumstances, then, it is by no means clear that we did wrong in holding with France.

From this period, then, it becomes apparent that, if Russia should persist in aggression, war was inevitable. And Russia did persist in aggression. And if it be considered as established that the Czar was led so to persist by a conviction that England would not resort to war—which is the general and probably correct opinion—we do not see how it can be denied that a course of action which must undeceive him would be the most likely to cause him to desist; and that the naval movements that ensued were only such as would convince him of our intention without driving him to extremity. It is plain that the two theories—one of which is that the pacific disposition of our Government allowed us to drift into war, and the other that our menacing action irritated the Czar beyond control, and therefore caused the war—are incompatible.

The fleets then moved to the entrance of the Dardanelles; and, while the Czar was recovering from the anger produced by that step, the representatives of the four Powers in conference at Vienna produced their Note, a mediatory document which would, it was hoped, settle all difficulties. It was readily accepted by Russia, the reason for which became apparent when it was offered to Turkey; for the Turkish Government at once rejected it, on the ground that it might be so interpreted as to secure to the Czar the protectorate he aimed at. They proposed alterations, with the concurrence of the mediatory Powers, which the Czar in his turn rejected; and the Sultan thereupon declared that, if the provinces were not evacuated in fifteen days, Turkey would be at war with Russia. The fleets moved through the Dardanelles. The next step was the attack on the Turkish squadron at Sinope by the Russian admiral. The English people were now thoroughly roused. They were indignant, not so much at the breach of faith imputed to the Czar in making the attack, as at the ruthless destruction and slaughter of the Turkish force by its far more powerful enemy. The attack, too, had taken place almost under the guns of the combined fleets, and it was evident that, if their presence at Constantinople meant anything, and if we really were engaged to defend Turkey, the repetition of such a disaster to our ally must be prevented. A measure to this effect, but by no means strong enough to express the feeling of England, was adopted; the combined fleets were ordered by their respective governments to keep the peace by force, if necessary, in the Euxine. But as there had been as yet no actual collision between their forces and those of the Czar, a door to peace was still left open. Of this he did not choose to avail himself, but declared war against France and England on the 11th April 1854.

Such is an outline of the successive events preceding the war which, unpromising as such a record of futile diplomacy may seem, Mr Kinglake has wrought into one of the most brilliant of historical pictures. ‘Eothen’ itself is not more entertaining, more rich in colour, more happy in quaint and humorous turns of expression; while, from the false effects that are sometimes seen in the earlier work, the present narrative is entirely free. The style is indeed a model of ease, strength, clearness, and simplicity. Nor has labour been spared; and the reader who has so often been expected by historians to be already familiar with political and diplomatic lore, and has been left to repair his deficiencies as he may, will be grateful to Mr Kinglake for some of the elementary instruction which he has conveyed in such a delightful form, as, for instance, the chapter on “the usage which forms the safeguard of Europe.” And remembering what animation and vigour personal feeling, even when so strongly biased, cannot fail to infuse, and seeing that, in the present case, it has not prevented the writer from fully stating the facts and deductions which most contradict his favourite theories, we cease to lament the absence of that judicial calmness which would have deprived his history of half its charm.

The first glowing scenes now shift to one still more splendid. Diplomacy has played out its part; its subtlest essays seem but mere babble to the ear that is listening for the impending clang of arms. Statesmen and ambassadors gather up their futile documents, and retire to the side scenes, to make way for the sterner disputants who throng the stage.

If Mr Kinglake was unsparing in his denunciations of French intrigue, he is no less bold and outspoken in criticising the military merits of our allies. But we no longer find the same reasons for dissenting from his conclusions. Many, no doubt, will say that it would have been politic to suppress some of those revelations which will jar most on the sensitive ears of our neighbours. But, if history is to be written at all, it must be written with all the truth attainable. History, which conceals and glosses, is but historical romance. Moreover, a plain English statement was wanting to redress the balance between us and the French. It must not be forgotten that the example of writing a narrative apportioning to both parties in the alliance the sum of glory gained was set in France, and that a share, ridiculously small, was awarded to the English. We remonstrated at the time, in these pages, against the unfairness and impolicy of allowing such a book as De Bazancourt’s to go forth to the world with the seeming sanction of the Emperor, at a time when the war was yet unfinished. A man of no reputation or ability to justify the selection had been accredited to the French generals in the Crimea. Furnished thus with information, which might be presumed to be reliable, he produced a narrative in which the entire credit for the planning and execution of the successful operations of the war was assigned to the French with impudent mendacity. As might naturally be expected from a nation that believes in Thiers, his account was accepted by the French as veritable history. In England it was but little read. Contemptible as a composition, its representations of facts were not such as to give it a claim to which nothing else entitled it. But, so far as it was read here, it gave just offence. That the Emperor did not disapprove is shown by the fact that the same valuable chronicler was taken to Italy as historiographer of the war in 1859, when another compound of bombastic glorification and misrepresentation was given to the world under imperial auspices. No Englishman or candid Frenchman who reads the account of the Crimean Campaign by the Baron De Bazancourt will deny that it was incumbent on us to tell our own tale; and we rejoice that it is told by one who, with such remarkable faculty for charming an audience and imparting to it his own impressions, trusts, nevertheless, to facts and proofs derived from the documents intrusted to him, for supporting his claim for justice.

The long European peace had left the armies of the Great Powers with little except a traditional knowledge of civilised war. It is true that part of the English army had seen service in India; a large portion of the French troops had made campaigns in Algeria; and the Russians had for years carried on a desultory warfare in Circassia. But none of these theatres of operations had been of a kind to serve as schools of training for encounters with a disciplined foe. Nor had they developed amidst the officers that high talent for superior commands to which either country could turn with confidence. Accordingly, the English fell back upon their traditions of the old wars of Wellington, as embodied in his friend Lord Raglan. Whether he was likely to make a great general or not, it was impossible for anybody to say, for his career had not been such as to offer any field for the display of the talents requisite in a commander. Sixty-six is not perhaps the most favourable age for a first essay in any walk in life. But it was known that he was accustomed to military business; that his conciliatory and courteous manners would be of great service in an allied army, and that his rank and dignity would ensure the respect necessary for the maintenance of our proper position in the alliance; while, if he had not commanded armies himself, he had been intimate with him whom we regarded as the commander without a peer. The French had no available relics of the wars of the First Empire; and if any such had existed, there were other claimants to be considered, namely, those soldiers of fortune to whom the Emperor was under obligations for their share in the coup d’état. The claims of St Arnaud surpassed all others. He was a frothy, vainglorious, gallant man, who had never shown capacity for any operation more considerable than a raid against the Arabs. His published letters breathe a high ambition and spirit of enterprise, but do not reveal any rare military quality. Lord Russell himself could not be more ready to take the lead in any description of onerous undertaking. But his self-confidence seems to have had no deeper root than vanity; for, whereas his letters to his relations are full of the great part he is playing, or means to play, neither his acts, nor the official records of his doings as Commander of the French army, corroborate the views of his own pre-eminence which he imparted to his family. Mr Kinglake drily accounts for the selection of this commander by saying that he was ambitious of leading the enterprise, and that “the French Emperor took him at his word, consenting, as was very natural, that his dangerous, insatiate friend, should have a command which would take him into the country of the Lower Danube.” If it is by this intended we should infer that the wily potentate expected the climate to disagree with him, the anticipation was fulfilled; for a frame already weakened by long disease broke up entirely under the assault of the fever of Varna. The Russians possessed a fine old remnant of antiquity in Prince Paskiewitch, which was furbished up, and did very well till, meeting with a mischance before Silistria, at the outset of the war, he vanished, and the effort to supply his place with a creditable general was not successful. As regards military talent, then, it would not seem that either belligerent possessed an advantage which would preclude Fortune from exercising her proverbial function of favouring the brave.

While the English and French troops were on the way to Turkey, the Russians had opened an offensive campaign. The method of doing this was prescribed to them by the features of the theatre of war. The Danube, flowing round Wallachia, turns northward and meets the Pruth, so as to include between the two rivers and the sea a narrow strip; the part of which, north of the Danube, is a Russian province, Bessarabia, and that south of the Danube a Turkish province, the Dobrudja. Should the Russians seek to pass into Turkey through Wallachia, they would lend a flank to an attack from Austria, if she were to carry her hostility to the point of war, and their troops would be very critically placed between Austrian and Turkish foes. But by advancing along the strip the Russians passed at once from Russian to Turkish territory; while the Danube covered their right flank from Austria. Still, in order to proceed beyond the Dobrudja in the direction of the Balkan, and thence towards Constantinople, as they had done with such signal success in 1829, it was indispensable that they should begin by taking Silistria—and more than ever indispensable now that the Allies had command of the Euxine. Accordingly, the opening of the campaign was marked by the siege of Silistria by the Russians.

Although it soon appeared that Silistria was bravely defended, it was not expected that the fortress could hold out long. And therefore, in anticipation of such decisive movements as those of 1829, the first intention of the Allies was to fortify Gallipoli, thus securing the Dardanelles as a channel of supply, and the Chersonese peninsula as a secure base from whence to operate in Turkey. But it soon appeared that Russia was stumbling at the first obstacle. Gallipoli, therefore, ceased to be of present importance; and the next idea was to transport the armies to that point from whence they could most speedily meet the enemy. And that point was evidently Varna.

Mr Kinglake chronicles two facts relating to this period, not hitherto published, and the knowledge of both of which he probably derived (certainly of one) from Lord Raglan’s papers. The first is the project of St Arnaud to obtain command of the Turkish forces. How this was defeated is recorded in one of Mr Kinglake’s most characteristic passages, where the lively, pushing, aspiring Marshal finds his confidence in his own scheme suddenly evaporating before the grave dignified courtesy of Lord Stratford, and the mildly implied disapproval of Lord Raglan. The other is, that, after the embarkation was agreed on, St Arnaud suddenly announced, that he should move his army by land to the south of the Balkan; and that, according to his plan, the English should take the left of the proposed strategical line, and therefore be farthest from their supplies coming from sea. This scheme, also, he relinquished; but the fact is notable, first, as showing the propensity to take what advantage he could at the expense of his ally; and secondly, as correcting the view of his own predominance and superior earnestness for action, conveyed in his private correspondence and in De Bazancourt’s narrative.

The armies landed at Varna, and a campaign in Bulgaria was expected. “My plan is,” quoth St Arnaud, “to save the fortress, and to push the Russians into the Danube.” He tells his brother in Paris, that the operation of moving to aid Silistria will be hazardous, for the Russians may come down on his right and rear, seize the road of Varna and Pravadi, and cut him off from the sea. “But, be easy,” he says consolingly, “I have taken my precautions against the manœuvre, and I will defeat it.” Not difficult to defeat, one might think, since the enemy who should attempt it must be commanded by a lunatic. However, while the Allies were still waiting in vain for the means of transport to take the field, their difficulties and projects were ended by an unlooked for incident. The Russians, finding the outermost barrier of Turkey impregnable, raised the siege, and withdrew across the Danube. The immense amount of military reputation which they thereby lost was placed with interest to the credit of the Turks. But the position in which the Allied Generals found themselves, thus hurrying to save a fortress which saved itself, and left without an enemy, was extremely bewildering. St Arnaud seems characteristically to have imagined that the Russians were frightened by his reputation into retreat. “They fly me,” he says, while lamenting the loss of a triumph for himself and his army, which he had contemplated as certain. Not only the Generals but their Governments were embarrassed and mortified at being thus baulked. The Emperor’s object could not be attained by mere success without glory. The British people, already impatient of delays, the causes of which, though inevitable, they could not understand, were clamorous for action. Nor did they content themselves with insisting that something should be done. They indicated the line of action. Urged, as Mr Kinglake contends, by the press, they shouted with one voice for an attack on Sebastopol, and this measure the Government enjoined Lord Raglan to execute. The French Government did not urge St Arnaud to propose the step; but, if the English were willing for it, he was not at liberty to withhold his consent. Two questions occur here: was the Government right in thus ordering the commander of the army to take a step to which his own judgment might be opposed? and was the step thus indicated a wise one?

Now, Mr Kinglake seems to think, that if the Government was justified in controlling its General, it was only because its army was acting in concert with that of another power, and was dependent on the aid of the fleets.

“In common circumstances, and especially where the whole of the troops to be engaged are under one commander, it cannot be right for any Sovereign or any Minister to address such instructions as these to a General on a distant shore; for the General who is to be intrusted with the sole command of a great expedition must be, of all mankind, the best able to judge of its military prudence, and to give him orders thus cogent is to dispense with his counsel.”

We, on the other hand, think that the selection of the territory which is to be the scene of operations, should always rest with the Government, and for this reason, that the selection must depend even more on political than on military considerations. Suppose, for instance, that the Allied generals had desired to follow the enemy over the Danube, it is evident that it would be of vast importance in the campaign that would follow, whether Austria should be friendly, or neutral, or hostile. But which she would be was a matter of which the Generals could only be informed through their Governments, who must possess the best information attainable on the subject. And again, the effect of the invasion of the Crimea on Austrian counsels, on Russian designs, and on English and French interests, were all political considerations, to be decided by the Governments, and not by the Generals. But, the territory fixed on, the manner of operating therein should be left to the Commander—and this the British Government did.

With regard to the other question, Mr Kinglake appears to think that, after the Russians had evacuated the Principalities (as they did immediately on re-crossing the Danube), there was no further ground for continuing the war, and that a naval blockade would have forced her to conclude peace. But to have forced her to make peace, returning to the statu quo, would by no means have answered our ends, for it would have left her to repeat the aggression on a more favourable opportunity, with the advantage of better understanding the conditions of success. That she would have consented at that time to give any pledge for the security of Turkey, is incredible, if we consider the course taken by her diplomatists at the conferences in the following year, when she had suffered so severely. But to capture Sebastopol and its fleet, would give us the security we wanted, and the pressure of the blockade might then be depended on for ending the war. The question then, in our judgment, resolves itself into this: Was there a reasonable hope of at once succeeding in the object of the invasion; and was common foresight exercised in providing for the possibility of failure?

Events have answered the last question. Due provision was not made for the possibility of a first failure. The country was aghast at the position in which the army found itself; and we think that, in making the statement we are about to quote, Mr Kinglake is recording a state of opinion, which, though perfectly just, and always maintained to be just in these pages, both during and after the war, had no existence at the time he speaks of.

“Those who thought more warily than the multitude foresaw that the enterprise might take time; but they also perceived that even this result would not be one of unmixed evil; for if Russia should commit herself to a lengthened conflict in the neighbourhood of Sebastopol, she would be put to a great trial, and would see her wealth and strength ruinously consumed by the mere stress of the distance between the military centre of the empire and the south-westernmost angle of the Crimea.”

All this is true; so true that Russia would have done well to leave Sebastopol to its fate, rather than make those efforts to maintain it which were so ruinous. Moreover the Crimea is, from its geographical circumstances, always the most favourable point of Russian territory for the operations of an enemy who commands the sea. Its form of an extended peninsula renders it vulnerable at many points; it does not afford the means of supplying the force necessary for its defence; and the supplies and reinforcements, having to pass through a region that is always a desert and sometimes a swamp, must be despatched with vast expense and loss. The conditions of the theatre of operations selected were then all in our favour; it only remained to provide adequately for the chances of war, to render the enterprise judicious.

But there was no thought except of speedy success. Beyond a triumphant landing, battle, and assault, no man looked. It was a piece of national gambling where an army was staked upon the turn of the cards; inexcusable, therefore, even had the chances been still more in our favour.

Still the chances in our favour were great. The Russian force in the Crimea was inferior in numbers. Sebastopol might have been captured with the co-operation of the fleets. That co-operation was a main element of success. We were deprived of it by Mentschikoff’s stroke of sinking his ships, so as to block the harbour and exclude the fleets. Was this a step, the possibility of which the Government of a great maritime nation ought to have omitted from its calculations? It was not difficult—it was even obvious—to anticipate that a fleet otherwise useless might thus be turned to account.

That the invasion was politically a fortunate step, we have no doubt. All the sufferings, all the losses, all the expense, and all the discontent at home, could not prevent the course of affairs from turning ultimately to our advantage, because the distresses of the enemy were far greater. Russia at the end of the war was absolutely prostrate, while England was only beginning to handle her vast and increasing resources. But this, as it was never contemplated, is beside the purpose of estimating the wisdom of the people and the Government who committed the armies to the enterprise. The Government is obnoxious to the charge of not providing for a contingency that ought to have been foreseen, by furnishing the means for sustained operations. And the Government might, in great measure, exonerate itself at the expense of the nation. For years before, no Member of Parliament could have proposed an increase on the estimates in order to render the army an efficient engine of war, without being covered with obloquy. At that time, what troops we had were barely tolerated by the people. Considering all things, we cannot think the step wise. But we are very strongly of opinion that, as a means of coercing Russia, it was fortunate.

Many conferences between the Allied Generals took place at Varna, and on the voyage. No pictures can differ more widely than those of the attitude of St Arnaud on these occasions, as drawn on the one hand by himself and De Bazancourt, on the other by Mr Kinglake. In his own letters, and in the veracious French Chronicle, he is the moving spirit of the enterprise—he “dominates the discussion”—he infuses life into everybody—nothing checks him except the slowness of the English. He is feared by the Russians, admired by the British, adored by the French. Mr Kinglake, on the contrary, represents him as being in council without decision and without weight; glad to solve his own difficulties by deferring to Lord Raglan; forming plans merely to abandon them; and painfully conscious that he has not the hold on the respect of his own army necessary to enforce his authority. He had become strongly impressed with the idea that a landing would be best effected at the mouth of the Katcha. It would be nearer Sebastopol. The position on the Alma would thus be avoided; and the march over plains, where it might be difficult to find water, would be unnecessary. On the other hand a reconnoissance made by Lord Raglan and Sir John Burgoyne, with the French Generals, showed that the mouth of the valley was narrow, that the troops as they landed would be exposed to a flanking fire from guns which would be, by their position, secure from the counter-fire of the ships, and that the enterprise might be opposed by the whole Russian army. These objections seemed to Lord Raglan so strong that he decided on landing at Old Fort. The result showed the correctness of the decision, for the landing was unopposed, and the single action of the Alma cleared the way to Sebastopol. Nevertheless, St Arnaud, writing to his brother after the landing, contends that he was right. “Observe, brother,” he says, “I have a military instinct which never deceives me, and the English have not made war since 1815.”

Mr Kinglake’s account of the disembarkation which he witnessed, of the delay caused by the mysterious shifting, by the French, of the buoy that was to mark the spot for the operation—of the different modes of treating the villagers practised by the English and by the French troops, and of the march towards the Alma, are described with the particularity and vivacity which might be expected from so keen an observer, and so skilful a narrator. He rightly describes the movement as being of the nature of that proper to movable columns. It was, in fact, like the march of a convoy, where the escort was vast, and the conditions favourable. The conditions were favourable, because the open nature of the country permitted the waggons, instead of straggling along a great extent of road, on any part of which they might be attacked, to move in compact order near the entire army. But we quite agree with him in thinking that the Russian leader showed great incapacity and culpable want of enterprise in suffering the march to proceed unmolested. The country was particularly favourable to cavalry, in which arm he was greatly superior. By incessantly threatening the left flank he would have compelled us to show front in that direction, and the whole army would have been obliged to halt, under penalty of witnessing the defeat of a separated portion. We could not have closed with the force thus menacing us, because the effort to do so would have withdrawn us from our proper direction, and from the sea, and because, also, the enemy could always retire under cover of his cavalry, to a new position on our flank. If Mentschikoff could have felt secure of being able to file into position behind the Alma, in time to oppose us there, he might have employed his whole army in this menacing movement. He made only one effort of the kind, that on the Bulganak, where a skirmish took place; but the demonstration was feeble, not supported, and of no avail as a check, because the army had always designed to halt there for the night. Nevertheless, the precautions taken by Lord Raglan, in throwing back the left flank, before bivouacking, to meet a possible attack of the kind, and the consequent delay in resuming the march next morning, show how much was to be apprehended from such a mode of harassing us as was open to a skilful leader.

The ground on which the battle of the Alma was fought is not difficult to understand. The plain over which the Allies advanced slopes gently downward for a mile. At the bottom of the slope is a bank, and below the bank a flat valley, three or four hundred yards wide, in which flows the Alma. If, then, a person turning his back to the sea, at the mouth of the river, moves up the Allies’ bank, he has on his right, across the valley, for the first mile, a steep cliff, as if part of the coast-line had turned back along the course of the river. The cliff then begins to resolve itself into broken heights, still steep, but not impracticable. These continue for nearly two more miles, when, the heights receding still farther, the slope to the river becomes more gentle, and undulates in knolls, the general character of the ground, however, being an upper and lower line of heights, with an intermediate plateau. The ground continues of this nature far up the stream. Everywhere the last summits formed the edge of a plain which could not be seen from the Allies’ side of the stream.

The Russian cavalry prevented reconnoissances which would have given some assurance of the manner in which Mentschikoff occupied the position. In the absence of these, maps and plans, and a distant view, coupled with a rough estimate of the enemy’s force, were all that could be relied on. With such data as these afforded, Marshal St Arnaud came to confer with Lord Raglan the night before the battle; and we must say that we think Mr Kinglake is rather hard upon the Marshal in his description of the interview. He seems to think there was something presumptuous in the fact of his coming with a prepared plan, bringing with him, too, a rough sketch of it drawn on paper. Now, that such a conference was highly necessary between two commanders about to fight a battle in concert, nobody will deny. And it is a very good thing, on such occasions, to have a plan constructed on the probabilities, because it serves as a basis for discussion. The Marshal’s plan was founded on the conjecture, that, as the plain at the top of the cliff could be swept by the guns of the ships, a space would be left near the sea unoccupied by the Russians. Into that space he proposed to push two divisions (Bosquet and the Turks), by two roads that led to it up the cliff. The remaining divisions were to advance against the Russian front; and he calculated that they would occupy so much of that front that the movement of the British, forming the left of the Allies, would be against the right flank of the enemy.

Such was the plan that the Marshal brought to discuss with Lord Raglan. But it seems that if he came with the hope of getting any suggestions or ideas in exchange, he was disappointed. “Without either combating or accepting the suggestion addressed to him, he simply assured the Marshal that he might rely upon the vigorous co-operation of the British army. The French plan seems to have made little impression on Lord Raglan’s mind. He foresaw, perhaps, that the ingenuity of the evening would be brought to nothingness by the teachings of the morrow.” And when they came next day into presence of the enemy, Mr Kinglake says: “If Lord Raglan had not already rejected the French plan of a flank attack by our forces, it would now have fallen to the ground. It had never made any impression on his mind.” In a note he says: “It became a plan simply preposterous as soon as it was apparent that St Arnaud would not confront any part of the Russian army except their left wing; for to make two flank movements, one against the enemy’s left, and the other against his right, and to do this without having any force wherewith to confront the enemy’s centre, would have been a plan requiring no comment to show its absurdity.”

Now Lord Raglan’s part in the interview is meant, as recorded, to show to his advantage. Yet we cannot think that this way of conducting conferences can be considered as displaying talent. Anybody can appear to conceal an opinion—even if he hasn’t got one. The Marshal might, according to this account, justly feel himself aggrieved—first, for having no notice taken of his plan; and, secondly, for having no grounds afforded for acting in concert with his ally in the coming battle. Nor do we think the plan absurd in principle, though it was erroneous in details. If to turn one flank of an enemy is an advantage, to turn both flanks will, in general, increase the advantage: whether it is practicable depends on the relative length of the opposing lines. Now the Russians had 39,000 men; the Allies had 63,000. And the English order of battle enables our line to cover more ground than equal numbers of the enemy. Therefore, after forming on an equal front, there would still be at least 12,000 men disposable for the turning of each flank; and 12,000 men on your flank is a serious matter. We say then that the plan, which was, of course, a suggestion, to be modified according to circumstances, was not in itself absurd in principle.

The Marshal, therefore, with Lord Raglan’s concurrence, as the French say—but, according to Mr Kinglake, with such expectations as he might have derived from the foregoing not very explicit interview—proceeded to execute his part of the plan by making his right column pass close to the sea. This was an error, for it was founded on a false assumption; he supposed the Russian left to be nearer the sea than it really was. He could not ascertain the truth, because, as is not uncommon in battles, he could not make a close reconnoissance, and the plain behind the cliff, being invisible from below, might contain an unknown number of Russians. A computation of the forces visible would not give certain means of judging of this point, because troops had been joining Mentschikoff from various parts—a large detachment had come in that morning.