down their tents and destroyed twenty-one vessels in Balaclava Bay laden with supplies. It rendered the valley from Balaclava to the camp-a distance of nine miles-almost impassable. Two-thirds of the transport horses died, and there was hardly any forage obtainable for the remainder. Cholera-the germs of which had been carried to the Crimea from Varna-raged in our lines, and those who escaped it fell victims to scurvy, dysentery, or fever. "Between the beginning of November," writes Mr. Spencer Walpole, "and

the end of February, 8,898 British troops perished in hospital. At the last of these dates 13,608 men were still in hospital."* The state of the hospitals was so bad that men died there more quickly than on the field. Part of the ghastly tale of mismanagement had been told by Mr. W. H. Russell, the special correspondent of the Times, when Parliament met on the 12th of December, and empowered the Queen to raise a foreign legion and utilise the Militia for foreign service-measures forced on the Ministry by Prince Albert. But soon after it separated the cry of distress from the Crimea grew too loud to be stifled. When it rang through England the people turned on the Government in furious anger, and called them to account for their gross mismanagement of the war. The Duke of Newcastle, being Secretary of State for War, was blamed because he was alleged to be incompetent.

1854.]

FALL OF THE CRIMEAN MINISTRY.

617

Aberdeen was blamed because it was said he was at heart a Russian. The scurrilous charges against Prince Albert were revived, and he was accused of impeding the operations of our army by his treacherous interference. As a matter of fact, these charges were all untrue. Prince Albert, Aberdeen, and Newcastle were the three men who alone had courage to face the situation, when they suddenly discovered that the military system of England had failed them, and that the military machine which they inherited from Wellington had broken down. They had toiled long and wearily to mend it when the

distinguished persons who afterwards attacked them were away enjoying their holidays. But when Parliament reassembled on the 23rd of January, 1855, the gathering storm broke on the head of the Government. Mr. Roebuck gave notice of a motion for the appointment of a committee to inquire into the mismanagement of the war; Lord John Russell deserted his colleagues and resigned. The Ministry, who resisted Mr. Roebuck's motion, were beaten, on a division, by 305 votes to 148, and the Coalition Government resigned on the 31st of January, 1855. The army was starving, with abundance of supplies within its reach, through the sheer stupidity of those whose duty it was to feed it. Its camp was a hospital, and its hospitals were pest-houses. The nation was utterly humiliated. As for the War Party, which was really responsible for the invasion of the Crimea, it naturally destroyed the Ministry which had stooped to be the instrument of its braggart passions and its ignorant policy.

618

CHAPTER XXXI.

PARTY GOVERNMENT AND WAR.

Stratford de Redcliffe Cooling Down-Tory Distrust of the French Alliance-The Queen's Kindness to Lord Aberdeen-The Emperor Napoleon and Prince Albert--The Prince Visits France-The Queen at Balmoral -Her Feelings towards the Prince of Prussia-The Queen holds a Council of War-She Demands Reinforcements for Lord Raglan-Napoleon's Alarm-Prince Albert's Plan for an Army of Reserve-The Queen on the Austrian Proposals-Her Anxiety about the Troops-Raglan's Meagre Despatches-The Queen and Miss Nightingale-At Work for the Soldiers-Extorting Information from Lord RaglanMinisterial Changes-Lord John Russell's Selfishness-A Miserly Whig Duke-The Queen's Disgust at Russell's Treachery-Resignation of Russell-Fall of the Coalition-The Queen and the Crisis-She holds out the Olive Branch to Palmerston-Palmerston's Cabinet-Quarrel between Mr. Disraeli and Lord Derby The Sebastopol Committee-Mr. Roebuck and Prince Albert-The Vienna Conference and the Death of Czar Nicholas-The Austrian Compromise-Parties and the War - Russell's Humiliation - He Resigns in Disgrace-The Queen quashes the Peace Negotiations--A Royal Blunder-The Queen tries to Gag the Peelites - Aberdeen Browbeaten by the Court-Canrobert's Resignation- Crimean SuccessesFailure of the Attack on the Redan-Death of Raglan.

DURING the Parliamentary Session of 1854, it was very plainly shown that Government by Party is not the best kind of Government for carrying on diplomacy or warfare. The Opposition in the House of Commons, instead of checking the drift of the Cabinet towards war, seemed ever bent on hounding them on. They hardly ever gave a vote save for the purpose of discrediting and weakening the Ministry. It is, therefore, not unfair to infer that they rejoiced in the prospect of war, because they foresaw that its hazards and its chances might lead to the destruction of the Government. The temper of the Tories at this time was admirably illustrated by Mr. Disraeli. When a motion was brought before the House of Commons by Mr. Chambers early in February, 1854, to investigate the claims of an English company at Madeira against Portugal, Lord Malmesbury writes of the Ministerial defeat as follows: "I fear Disraeli voted against the Government, as it is his policy to join with anybody to defeat them." With such a spirit of faction animating the Opposition, it was hardly possible for the Ministry to steer a steady course in the stormy sea of diplomatic intrigue on which it had embarked. Yet it is but right to say that there were some patriotic Tories who objected very strongly to the tactics and strategy of their Party. John Wilson Croker was so firmly opposed to the policy of the war, and the entangling alliance with the French Emperor,† that he severed his connection with the Quarterly Review on this account. Croker's belief was that France was an unsafe ally, that the French had manufactured the quarrel with Russia and inveigled us into it; that our Government knowing, from the Secret Memorandum of 1844, what the Czar's

* Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. I., p. 424.

Stratford de Redcliffe was now for peace, because he found the war substituting French for Russian influence at Constantinople, and of the two he preferred the latter.-Greville Memoirs. Third Part (Longmans), 1887.

1854.]

THE QUEEN AND LORD ABERDEEN.

619

views were, should have urged Turkey to resist the intimidation of France at the outset. We should have warned her of the peril she stood in from Russia. whilst at the same time we warned Russia that, though we had no objection to induce Turkey to do her justice, we could not sanction the partition of the Ottoman Empire. This course, says Mr. Croker, in a remarkable letter to Lord Lyndhurst, "would have placed the matter on its real grounds-that is, a struggle between France and Russia, in which we should have been spectators, and eventually mediators, but not parties, till some pretensions contrary to the permanent balance of power should be raised by any of the belligerents." Lyndhurst himself began towards the end of the year to doubt whether our alliance with the French was not as dangerous as Russian pretensions. Very few members of the House of Commons, however, shared these doubts. The House, in fact, rapidly became unmanageable, and, as Lord Malmesbury says in his "Memoirs," would support nothing but the war. Bill after Bill had to be withdrawn by Aberdeen's Government, so that its legislative achievements can be briefly recorded. During the first Session of the year the Oxford University Bill was passed. It substituted for an incompetent governing oligarchy a Council of eminent and talented men, and gave the Colleges great powers for self-improvement. Mercantile laws were consolidated into one Act. Usury laws were abolished. The principle of allowing traders to form Joint Stock Companies under limited liability of partnership was affirmed by the House of Commons, and the old system of granting such undertakings charters from the Board of Trade, finally condemned. Lord John Russell's Reform Bill was one of the measures which were introduced, debated, and withdrawn. It had produced a second crisis in the Cabinet in early spring, which was overcome by Lord Aberdeen's mediation between Lord John and Lord Palmerston.

This episode seriously disturbed the Queen's peace of mind, and in one of her letters she expresses her deep gratitude to the Prime Minister for his devotion to her. Nothing, indeed, is more touching than the references to the aged statesman with which the Queen's letters are filled at this period. She is found frequently devising plans for the purpose of lightening the burden of care that was crushing his spirits. On the 1st of May, Prince Arthur's birthday, she writes as follows:-" Though the Queen cannot send Lord Aberdeen a card for a child's ball, perhaps he may not disdain coming for a short time to see a number of happy little people, including some of his grandchildren, enjoying themselves." In September, again, she writes to him from Balmoral, peremptorily insisting on his leaving London and proceeding to Scotland at once to recruit his health. At Haddo, she says, he will be near her, and, she adds, "Lord Aberdeen knows that his health is not his own alone, but that

"The

*The Croker Papers, Vol. III., p. 320. Lyndhurst, long after delivering his ferocious speech demanding that Sebastopol should be razed to the ground, had written to Croker for advice. political world is in a most complicated state," says Lyndhurst in this letter, "and I feel quite at sea."

she (the Queen) and the country have as much interest in it as he and his own family." In midsummer she gave him her best support and sympathy when the Peelites and the Whigs almost openly quarrelled, and attacks on the Prime Minister were freely indulged in by his own supporters. "Aberdeen," writes Prince Albert in July to Stockmar, "is a standing reproach in their

it.

eyes, because he cannot share the enthusiasm while it is his part to lead Nevertheless he does his duty and keeps the whole thing together, and is the only guarantee that the war will not degenerate into crack-brained, fruitless absurdities "-such as the re-organisation of Poland, the seizure of Finland, a mad project of certain Tories like Lyndhurst, and the annexation of the Crimea. Before Parliament met in January, 1855, the Queen was indeed so keenly sensible of the injustice of the attacks on Lord Aberdeen, that she insisted on his accepting the Order of the Garter as a public testimony of her

* Martin's Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LVII.