THE BATTLE OF INKERMANN—FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE—THE DEATH OF THE EMPEROR NICHOLAS.
In the beginning of November England heard with mingled triumph and pain of the repulsed attack on the English at Balaclava on the 25th of October, and of the charge of the Light Brigade.
The number of the English soldiers in the field fell lower and lower. The Queen wrote to King Leopold, "We have but one thought, and so has the nation, and that is—Sebastopol. Such a time of suspense, anxiety, and excitement, I never expected to see, much less to feel."
On the 13th of November telegrams arrived with the news of the battle of Inkermann, fought against terrible odds on the 5th.
The Queen wrote herself to Lord Raglan to tell of her "pride and joy" at receiving the intelligence of "the glorious, but alas! bloody victory of the 5th." She conferred upon him the baton of a Field- Marshal. Her Majesty also addressed a kind and sympathising letter to the widow of Sir George Cathcart.
The Queen wrote with high indignation to the King of the Belgians after the battle of Inkermann: "They (the enemy) behaved with the greatest barbarity; many of our poor officers who were only slightly wounded were brutally butchered on the ground. Several lived long enough to say this. When poor Sir G. Cathcart fell mortally wounded, his faithful and devoted military secretary (Colonel Charles Seymour) … sprang from his horse, and with one arm—he was wounded in the other—supported his dying chief, when three wretches came and bayoneted him. This is monstrous, and requisitions have been sent by the two commanders-in-chief to Menschikoff to remonstrate…."
The winter of 1854-55 was a sorrowful and care-laden time. Little or no progress was made in the war, while in the meanwhile the sufferings of the soldiers from a defective commissariat, a rigorous climate, and the recurring ravages of cholera, were frightful. The very winds and waves seemed to fight against the allies and to side with "Holy Russia." Never had the Black Sea been visited by such storms and wrecks.
From the palace to the cottage, women's fingers worked eagerly and unweariedly knitting comforters and muffatees to protect the throats and wrists of the shivering men. We have heard that the greatest lady in the land deigned thus to serve her soldiers. We have been told of a cravat worked in crochet by a queen's fingers which fell to the share of a gallant young officer in the trenches—the same brave lad who had carried, unscathed, the colours of his regiment to the heights of the Alma.
The hospitals were in as disorganised a state as the commissariat, and Mr. Sydney Herbert, well-nigh in despair, had the bright inspiration of sending to the seat of war Florence Nightingale, the daughter and co-heiress of a Derbyshire squire, with a staff of nurses.
Such reformation of abuses was wrought by a capable devoted woman, such order brought out of disorder, such comfort and consolation carried to wounded and dying men, that the experiment became a triumphant success. Many were the stories told of the soldiers' boundless reverence for the woman who had left country and friends and all the good things that wealth and rank can command to relieve her fellow-creatures; how one of them was seen to kiss her shadow on the wall of his ward as she passed; how the convalescents engaged in strange and wonderful manufactures of gifts to offer to her.
A second large instalment of nurses was sent out after the first, the latter led by Mary Stanley, daughter of the Bishop of Norwich, and sister of the Dean of Westminster, who had already been a sister to the poor in her father's diocese.
The Queen wrote again to Lord Raglan, "The sad privations of the army, the bad weather, and the constant sickness, are causes of the deepest concern and anxiety to the Queen and the Prince. The braver her noble troops are, the more patiently and heroically they bear all their trials and sufferings, the more miserable we feel at their long continuance. The Queen trusts that Lord Raglan will be very strict in seeing that no unnecessary privations are incurred by any negligence of those whose duty it is to watch over their wants.
"The Queen heard that their coffee was given them green instead of roasted, and some other things of this kind, which have distressed her, as she feels so anxious that they should be as comfortable as circumstances can admit of. The Queen earnestly trusts that the large amount of warm clothing sent out has not only reached Balaclava, but has been distributed, and that Lord Raglan has been successful in procuring the means of hutting for the men. Lord Raglan cannot think how much we suffer for the army, and how painfully anxious we are to know that their privations are decreasing…. The Queen cannot conclude without wishing Lord Raglan and the whole of the army, in the Prince's name and her own, a happy and glorious new year."
No sooner had Parliament reassembled than Mr. Roebuck brought forward his famous motion for the appointment of a committee to inquire into the state of the army and the management of the War Department of the Government.
Lord John Russell resigned office, and there was a threatened resignation of the whole Ministry, an ill-timed step, which was only delayed till Mr. Roebuck's motion was carried, by a large majority, not amidst the cheers, but to the odd accompaniment of the derisive laughter of the Liberal members who had voted for the motion. Lord Aberdeen's Ministry immediately resigned office; and after an abortive attempt on the part of Lord Derby, at the request of the Queen, to form a new Ministry, Lord Lansdowne and Lord John Russell were in succession asked to take the leadership, but each in his turn had to own his inability to get the requisite men to act under him. In summoning Lord John Russell to become Premier, the Queen had expressed a wish that Lord Palmerston—the man to whom the country looked as the only proper war minister—should take office. The wish, especially flattering and acceptable to Lord Palmerston, because it indicated that old differences were forgotten, was in marked keeping with a certain magnanimity and candour—excellent qualities in a sovereign— which have been prominent features in her Majesty's character.
Lord John Russell having been as unsuccessful as his predecessors in forming a Ministry, Lord Palmerston was sent for by the Queen and offered the premiership, and the most popular minister of the day was soon able, to the jubilation of the country, to construct a Cabinet.
On the 10th of February, the anniversary of the Queen's marriage-day, there was this year, as usual, a home festival, with the nursery drama of "Little Red Riding Hood" performed by the younger members of the family, and appropriate verses spoken by Princess Alice, who seems to have been the chosen declaimer among the princes and princesses. But beneath the rejoicing there were in the elders anxiety, sympathetic suffering, and the endurance of undeserved suspicion. The committee carrying out the inquiry proposed by Mr. Roebuck's motion, conceived most unjustly that the Prince's hostile influence prevented them from obtaining the information they desired. The Queen's health was suffering from her distress on account of the hardships experienced by her soldiers, so that when Lord Cardigan returned to England, repaired to Windsor, and had the royal children upon his knee, they said, "You must hurry back to Sebastopol and take it, else it will kill mamma!"
On the 2nd of March the strange news burst upon Europe, exciting rather a sense of solemnity than any less seemly feeling, of the sudden death of the Emperor Nicholas, former guest and fervent friend of the Queen—for whom she seems to have retained a lingering, rueful regard—grasper at an increase of territory, disturber of the peace of Europe, dogged refuser of all mediation. He had an attack of influenza, but the real cause of his death is said to have been bitter disappointment and mortification at his failure to drive the allies out of the Crimea. The "Generals, January and February," on whom he had counted to work his will, laid him low.
CHAPTER XXVI.
INSPECTION OF THE HOSPITAL AT CHATHAM—VISIT OF THE EMPEROR AND EMPRESS OF THE FRENCH—DISTRIBUTION OF WAR MEDALS.
On the 3rd of March, the Queen and the Prince, with the Prince of Wales, Prince Alfred and the Duke of Cambridge, visited the hospital at Chatham, to which many of the wounded and sick soldiers had been brought home. The whole of the invalids who were in a condition to leave their beds "were drawn up on the lawn," each having a card containing his name and services, his wounds, and where received. Her Majesty passed along the line, saying a few kind words to those sufferers who particularly attracted her notice, or to those whose services were specially commended. It is easy to imagine how the haggard faces would brighten and the drooping figures straighten themselves in that royal and gentle presence.
In the course of the month, at an exhibition and sale of water-colour drawings and pictures by amateurs, in aid of a fund for the widows and orphans of officers in the Crimea, the artistic talent of which there have been many proofs in the Queen's and the Prince's children, was first publicly shown. A water-colour drawing by the Princess Royal, already a fine girl of fifteen—whose marriage was soon to be mooted, in which she had represented a woman weeping over a dead grenadier, displayed remarkable merit and was bought for a large price.
On the 16th of April the Emperor and Empress of the French arrived in England on a visit to the Queen. The splendid suite of rooms in Windsor Castle which includes the Rubens, Zuccarelli, and Vandyck rooms, were destined for the imperial guests. And we are told that, by the irony of fate, the Emperor's bedroom was the same that had been occupied on previous occasions by the late Emperor Nicholas and King Louis Philippe. Sir Theodore Martin refers to a still more pathetic contrast which struck the Queen. He quotes from her Majesty's journal a passage relating to a visit paid by the old Queen Amélie to Windsor two or three days before. "It made us both so sad to see her drive away in a plain coach with miserable post-horses, and to think that this was the Queen of the French, and that six years ago her husband was surrounded by the same pomp and grandeur which three days hence would surround his successor."
Prince Albert received the travellers at Dover in the middle of a thick mist which had delayed the corvette, hidden the English fleet, and somewhat marred what was intended to have been the splendour of the reception. After the train had reached London, the drive was through densely crowded streets, in which there was no lack of enthusiasm for the visitors.
The strangers did not reach Windsor till past seven. The Queen had been waiting for them some time in one of the tapestry rooms near the guard-room. "The expectation and agitation grew more intense," her Majesty wrote in her diary. "The evening was fine and bright. At length the crowd of anxious spectators lining the road seemed to move; then came a groom; then we heard a gun, and we moved towards the staircase. Another groom came. Then we saw the advanced guard of the escort; then the cheers of the crowd burst forth. The outriders appeared, the doors opened, I stepped out, the children and Princes close behind me; the band struck up "Partant pour la Syrie," the trumpets sounded, and the open carriage, with the Emperor and Empress, Albert sitting opposite to them, drove up, and they got out.
"I cannot say what indescribable emotions filled me, how much all seemed like a wonderful dream. These great meetings of sovereigns, surrounded by very exciting accompaniments, are always very agitating. I advanced and embraced the Emperor, who received two salutes on either cheek from me, having first kissed my hand. I next embraced the very gentle, graceful, and evidently very nervous Empress. We presented the Princes (the Duke of Cambridge and the Prince of Leiningen, the Queen's brother) and our children (Vicky, with very alarmed eyes, making very low curtsies); the Emperor embraced Bertie; and then we went upstairs, Albert leading the Empress, who in the most engaging manner refused to go first, but at length with graceful reluctance did so, the Emperor leading me, expressing his great gratification at being here and seeing me, and admiring Windsor." [Footnote: Life of the Prince Consort.]
Her Majesty was pleased with the Emperor; his low soft voice and quiet manner were very attractive. She was delighted with the Empress, of whom she repeatedly wrote with admiration and liking. "She is full courage and spirit," the Queen described her visitor, "yet so gentle, with such innocence and enjouement, that the ensemble is most charming. With all her great liveliness, she has the prettiest and most modest manner." There were morning walks during the visitors' stay, and long conversations about the war. A deputation from the Corporation of London came down to Windsor, and presented the Emperor with an address. There was a review of the Household troops in the Great Park, to which the Queen drove with the Empress. The Emperor, the Prince, and the Duke of Cambridge rode. There was a tremendous enthusiastic crowd in the Long Walk, and considerable pushing at the gates. The Queen was alarmed because of the spirited horse the Emperor rode.
The day ended with a ball in the Waterloo Room, when the Queen danced a quadrille with the Emperor, who, she wrote, "danced with great dignity and spirit. How strange" she added "to think that I, the grand-daughter of George III., should dance with the Emperor Napoleon, nephew of England's great enemy, now my nearest and most intimate ally, in the Waterloo Room, and this ally only sixteen years ago living in this country in exile, poor and unthought of."
A Council of War was held the day after the Emperor's arrival, at which the Queen was not present. It was attended by the Emperor, the Prince, Lords Palmerston, Panmure, Hardinge, Cowley (English ambassador in Paris), Count Walewski (French ambassador in London), Marshal Vaillant, &c., &c. It met at eleven, and had not separated at two, the hour of luncheon, after which a chapter of the Order of the Garter—for which special toilettes were indispensable, was to be held. The Empress went and told Lord Cowley how late it was, in vain. She advised the Queen to go to them. "I dare not go in, but your Majesty may; it is your affair." The Queen passed through the Emperor's bedroom, which was next to the council-room, knocked, and entered to ask what was to be done, perhaps a solitary instance of a queen having to go in search of her guests. Both the Emperor and the Prince rose and said they would come, but business was so enchaining that still they delayed, and the ladies had to take luncheon alone.
The Emperor was invested with the Order of the Garter in the Throne- room. The forms were the same as those followed in the investiture of Louis Philippe, and no doubt the one scene recalled the other vividly enough. Bishop Wilberforce was present and gives some particulars: "A very full chapter. The Duke of Buckingham (whose conduct had not been very knightly) came unsummoned, and was not asked to remain to dinner. The Emperor looked exulting and exceedingly pleased." After the chapter, the Emperor sent for the Bishop, that he might be presented. His lordship's opinion was that Louis Napoleon was "rather mean- looking, small, and a tendency to embonpoint; a remarkable way, as it were, of swimming up a room, with an uncertain gait; a small grey eye, looking cunning, but with an aspect of softness about it too. The Empress, a peculiar face from the arched eye-brows, blonde complexion; an air of sadness about her, but a person whose countenance at once interests you. The banquet was magnificent. At night," ends Bishop Wilberforce, "the Queen spoke to me. 'All went off very well, I think; I was afraid of making some mistake; you would not let me have in writing what I was to say to him. Then we put the riband on wrong, but I think it all went off well on the whole.'"
The Emperor and Empress were invited to a banquet at Guildhall. They went from Buckingham Palace, to which the Queen and Prince Albert had accompanied them. The Queen wrote in her journal that their departure from Windsor made her sad. The passing through the familiar rooms and descending the staircase to the mournful strains of "Partant pour la Syrie" (composed by the Emperor's mother, Queen Hortense, and heard by her Majesty fourteen different times that April day), the sense that the visit about which there had been so much excitement was nearly over, the natural doubt how and when the group would meet again, touched her as with a sense of foreboding.
The Emperor and Empress drove from Buckingham Palace to Guildhall in six of the Queen's State carriages, the first drawn by the famous cream-coloured horses. The whole route was packed with people, who gave the visitors a thorough ovation. The City hall was decorated with the flags of England, France, and Turkey; and the lion and the eagle conjointly supported devices which bore the names "Alma, Balaclava, and Inkermann." At the déjeuner sherry was served which had reached the venerable age of one hundred and nine years, was valued at £600 the butt, and had belonged to the great Napoleon. The same evening, the Queen and the Prince, with their guests, went in State to the Italian Opera, where Fidelio was performed. "We literally drove through a sea of human beings, cheering and pressing near the carriage." The illuminated streets bore many devices—of N.E. and V.A., which the Emperor remarked made the word "Neva"—a coincidence on which he appears to have dwelt with his share of the superstition of the Buonapartes. The Opera-house and the royal box were richly decorated for the occasion. On entering, her Majesty led the Emperor, and Prince Albert the Empress, to the front of the box, amidst great applause. The audience was immense, a dense mass of ladies and gentlemen in full dress being allowed to occupy a place behind the singers on the stage.
The next day, a beautiful April day, the Queen discovered was the forty-seventh birthday of the Emperor; and when she went to meet him in the corridor, she wished him joy and gave him a pencil-case. He smiled and kissed her hand, and accepted with empressment two violets— the Buonapartes' flower—brought to him by Prince Arthur. All along the thronged road to Sydenham, cries of "Vive l'Empereur!" and "Vive l'Impératrice!" alternated with cheers for the Queen. The public were not admitted while the royal party were in the palace, but they gathered twenty thousand strong on the terrace; and when her Majesty, with her guests, came out on the balcony to enjoy the beautiful view, such shouts of loyalty and welcome filled the spring air as struck even ears well accustomed to public greetings. After luncheon the Queen and her visitors returned to the Palace, having to pass through an avenue of people lining the nave, to reach the balcony from which the strangers were to see the fine spectacle of the fountains playing. The Queen owned afterwards she was anxious; yet, she added, "I felt as I leant on the emperor's arm, that I was possibly a protection for him. All thoughts of nervousness for myself were lost. I thought only of him; and so it is, Albert says, when one forgets oneself, one loses this great and foolish nervousness." A sentence worthy of him and of her.
Alas for fickle fortune and the changes which time brings! The present writer was accidentally present on the occasion of the Emperor and Empress's last visit to the Crystal Palace. They came from Chislehurst without any announcement, when they were not expected, on an ordinary shilling day in autumn, the company happening to be few. A slight stir and one or two policemen coming to the front, suggested that some theft had been committed, and that the offender was about to be taken into custody and removed from the building. Then an official walked bareheaded down the cleared nave, and behind him came a little yellow- skinned shrunken man in plain clothes, on whose arm a lady in a simple black silk walking-dress and country hat leant lightly, as if she were giving instead of receiving support. He made a slight attempt to acknowledge the faint greetings of the spectators, some of them ignorant of the identity of the visitors, all of them taken by surprise. She smiled and bowed from side to side, a little mechanically, as if anxious to overlook no courtesy and to act for both. It was not long after the battle of Sedan and the imprisonment at Wilhelmshohe, and the hand of death was already upon him. The couple hurried on, as if desirous of not being detained, and could not have tarried many minutes in the building when a few straggling cheers announced their departure.
In the afternoon of the 20th of April a second council relating to the war in the Crimea was held, at which the Queen was present. With her large interest in public affairs, her growing experience, and her healthy appetite for the work of her life, she enjoyed it exceedingly. "It was one of the most interesting scenes I was ever present at," she wrote in her journal. "I would not have missed it for the world."
On Saturday, the 21st of April, the visitors left, after the Emperor had written a graceful French sentence in the Queen's album, and an admonitory verse in German, which had originally been written for himself, in the Prince of Wales's autograph book. The Queen accompanied her visitors to the door, and parted from them with kindly regret. As they drove off she "ran up" to see the last of the travellers from the saloon they had just quitted. "The Emperor and Empress saw us at the window," she wrote, "turned round, got up, and bowed…. We watched them, with the glittering escort, till they could be seen no more…." The Prince escorted the Emperor and Empress to Dover. The Queen wrote in a short memorandum her view of the Emperor's character, and what she expected from the visit in a political light. Through the good sense of the paper one can see how the confiding friendly nature had survived the rough check given to it by Louis Philippe's manoeuvres and dissimulation.
On the 1st of May the Academy opened with Millais's "Rescue of children from a burning house," and with a remarkable picture by a young painter who has long since vindicated the reception it met with. It was Mr. F. Leighton's "Procession conveying Cimabue's Madonna through the streets of Florence."
On the 18th of May her Majesty distributed medals to some of the heroes of the war still raging. The scene was both picturesque and pathetic, since many of the recipients of the honour were barely recovered from their wounds. The presentation took place in the centre of the parade of the Horse Guards, where a dais was erected for the ceremony, while galleries had been fitted up in the neighbouring public offices for the accommodation of members of the royal family and nobility. Barriers shut off the actors in the scene, and a great gathering of officers, from the crowd which filled every inch of open space and flowed over into St. James's Park.
The Queen, the Prince, with many of the royal family, the Court, the Commander-in-Chief, the Secretary for War, and "a host of generals and admirals," arrived about eleven o'clock. The soldiers who kept the ground formed four deep, making three sides of a square, and the men to be decorated passed up the open space, until "the Queen stood face to face with a mass of men who had suffered and bled in her cause."
The Deputy-Adjutant-General read over the list of names, and each person, answering to the call, presented to an officer a card on which was inscribed his name, rank, wounds, and battles. As the soldiers passed in single file before the Queen, Lord Panmure handed to her Majesty the medal, which she gave in turn to the medal-holder. He saluted and passed to the rear, where friends and strangers gathered round him to inspect his trophy.
The first to receive the medal were the Queen's cousin and contemporary, the Duke of Cambridge, Lords Lucan, Cardigan, Major- General Scarlett, Sir John Burgoyne, Sir De Lacy Evans, and Major- General Torrens. It is needless to say how keenly the public were moved by the sight of their brave defenders, several of them scarred and mutilated, many tottering from weakness, some wearing on their sleeves bands of crape, tokens of mourning for kinsmen lying in Russian earth.
To every wounded man, officer or private, her Majesty spoke, some of those addressed blushing like girls under their bronze, and the tears coming into their eyes. The idea of personally presenting the medals to the soldiers was the Queen's own, and she must have been amply rewarded by the gratification she bestowed.
Three officers unable to walk were wheeled past her Majesty in bath- chairs. Among them was young Sir Thomas Troubridge, both of whose feet had been carried off by a round shot, while he had continued commanding his battery till the battle was over, refusing to be taken away, only desiring his shattered limbs to be raised in order to check the loss of blood. The Queen leant over Sir Thomas's chair and handed him his medal, while she announced to him his appointment as one of her aides-de-camp. He replied, "I am amply repaid for everything."