Pacific modes of obtaining redress were not invariably preferred by Earl Russell. When an act of vigour could be performed that did not risk involving the country in war, he was ready to perform it. Thus he justified the conduct of the British Envoy at Rio Janeiro, Mr. Christie, who had instructed (January 2, 1863) the British naval commander on the station to seize several Brazilian merchant vessels in reprisal for the pillage of the Prince of Wales, an English merchant ship. Much angry correspondence ensued; the Brazilian Government dismissed two of its officials for want of promptitude in the matter and prosecuted to conviction eleven other offenders; but the British Government still considered that more vigorous measures should have been taken, in order to prevent such outrages for the future, not less than to punish the actual offenders. A claim for compensation on account of the pillage of the cargo was advanced by the British Government; this claim seems to have been regarded in Brazil as excessive. Mr. Christie was then instructed to propose arbitration, but accompanied with conditions which the Brazilian Government thought it inconsistent with their honour to accept. Reprisals were then authorised to be made and were carried out as above mentioned. The Brazilian Government then paid the sum demanded under protest and a rupture of diplomatic relations between the two countries ensued. Another matter that had caused ill feeling—the unwarrantable arrest of three officers belonging to a British frigate, the Forte, by a guard of Brazilian police—had been referred to the arbitration of the King of the Belgians, who pronounced his opinion (June 18, 1863), that in the mode in which the laws of Brazil had been applied towards the English officers, there was neither premeditation of offence nor offence given to the British navy.
The British squadron in Japan, under Admiral Kuper, was under the necessity, this year, of resorting to measures of coercion against one of the Daimios, or half independent princes, of Japan, which involved the loss of many lives. The Prince of Satsuma was the ruler of a large and fertile territory in Kiusiu, the southernmost of the islands of Japan, and it was at a place within his jurisdiction that an Englishman, Mr Richardson, was murdered, and a murderous assault committed on an English lady and two gentlemen who were riding with him, in September, 1862. The British Government, when the news of this outrage was received, directed Colonel Neale, the British chargé d'affaires in Japan, to demand ample compensation for the murder, from the Tycoon, the temporal sovereign of Japan, and from the Prince of Satsuma. The former was required to pay £100,000 as an indemnity, the latter £25,000. After much parleying, the Tycoon agreed to pay the sum demanded, which was accordingly brought to Yokohama, in June, 1863, and counted out in the presence of Colonel Neale. But the Prince of Satsuma could in no way be brought to reason, for which contumacy his ships were taken, his town was burnt, and his palace destroyed by the British squadron from Yokohama. The Prince had certainly suffered reprisals to an extent exceeding many times the amount of the indemnity demanded. Yet these very injuries—so strange is the working of the Asiatic mind—appear to have induced him to make overtures for peace. These were signs of overwhelming power, and power is almost the only thing that the Asiatic truly reverences. As a matter of fact, before the close of the year the Prince offered to pay, and actually paid, to the British chargé d'affaires at Yokohama, the £25,000 which had been originally demanded from him as compensation money for the murder of Mr. Richardson!
The civil war continued, meanwhile, to rage in America, where at the beginning of the year General Lee found himself confronted by Hooker at the head of a powerful force. The latter's attempt to force the position of Fredericksburg was a complete failure, though the victory of Chancellorsville was dearly purchased by the death of "Stonewall" Jackson, most daring of the Confederate soldiers. Lee thereupon advanced upon Gettysburg, where a series of battles resulted in his decisive defeat and he was again forced to retire into Virginia. Elsewhere the cause of the Confederates was gravely affected by the constant successes of General Grant in Mississippi. They were forced to retire from Jackson and on the 3rd of July the important fortress of Vicksburg surrendered. Bragg held his own in Tennessee until Grant, fresh from his victories, was sent to supersede Rosecrans. Ably seconded by Hooker, he forced Bragg into Georgia; and the fortunes of the Federals were obviously in the ascendant, when Meade followed Lee into Virginia and harassed him during another campaign. Upon the coast-line the naval superiority of the Northerners caused itself to be powerfully felt; and after a preliminary attempt on Fort Wagner had failed, the siege of Charleston began on August the 21st and continued until the end of the year. Fort Wagner was abandoned by the Southerners on the 7th of September, but then the operations declined into a languid bombardment. Nevertheless the inevitable end of the struggle could now be foreseen.
While the United States were thus distracted by civil war, and not in a position to assert, much less to enforce, what is called the Monroe doctrine, that is, the claim of the United States to prevent European States from intervening in the internal affairs of American States, the French Emperor was playing a singular game in Mexico. The enterprise had sprung out of the unpretending joint expedition agreed to by Britain, France, and Spain at the close of 1861. Mexico had so vexatiously and so long evaded its pecuniary obligations to its British and Spanish creditors, and had left so many outrages on individual Britons and Spaniards unredressed, that the Governments of the two countries were at last compelled to resort to coercive measures. France also desired to be a party to the convention, nor was it at first understood that the aims of the French Emperor differed materially from those of his confederates. The expedition sailed in December, 1861, having on board 6,000 Spanish soldiers; the British military contingent was only a force of 700 marines; the French contingent was at first weaker than that of Spain, but it was soon increased. A landing was effected, without resistance, at Vera Cruz. On the 10th of January, 1862, the allied Commissioners published a manifesto, addressed to the Mexican people, couched in somewhat ambiguous language, yet declaring that neither conquest nor political dictation was the object of the allied Powers, which had long beheld with grief a noble people "wasting their forces and extinguishing their vitality through the violent power of civil war and perpetual convulsions," and had now landed on their shores to give them an opportunity of constituting themselves in a permanent and stable manner. Yet all this time the views of the French Emperor were extended to ulterior aims of which his allies never dreamed. A pamphlet, well known to be "inspired," from the facile pen of M. de la Guerronière, appeared in Paris, clearly pointing to the regeneration of Mexico by Cæsarism—to an Emperor and a plebiscite.
When, then, after the issuing of the manifesto, the commissioners of the allied Powers began to exchange ideas, the divergence of view between the French and the other two commissioners soon became apparent. The object of Britain and Spain was simply, by occupying a portion of the Mexican seaboard, to obtain a material guarantee for the redress of the wrongs of which their subjects had to complain. Whether this was done by the Government of Juarez (who was then President) or by any other Government, was a matter of perfect indifference to Britain and Spain. But the French Commissioner—with an eye to the eventual introduction of an imperial régime—refused, on the plea of perverseness, renewed outrages, and general impracticability, to hold any communication with the Juarez Government. However, the British and Spanish Commissioners, Sir Charles Wyke and General Prim, opened negotiations with the Government of Juarez. But there was a certain General Almonte in the French camp, who was well known as a promoter of the scheme for substituting imperial for republican institutions. The Mexican Government required that Almonte should be sent away; but to this the French Commissioner refused to consent. A conference between the commissioners of the allied Powers and others to be deputed by the Mexican Government, to meet at Orizaba, in April, 1862, was agreed to by Prim and Sir Charles Wyke, but rejected by the French Commissioner, who insisted that, instead of negotiating with Juarez, the proper course for the Allies was to march at once upon Mexico. Hereupon Prim and Sir Charles Wyke, finding that their views and those of their colleague were irreconcilable, withdrew on the part of their respective Governments from the expedition. Nevertheless the French forces, increased by 2,500 troops under the command of General Forey, appeared entirely successful. Puebla was captured in May, 1862; Mexico, the capital, occupied in June, and Juarez, though breathing defiance, was forced to retire into the interior. An assembly of notables resolved that Mexico should adopt monarchical institutions and the Crown was offered in 1863 to the Archduke Maximilian of Austria.
From the mysterious central lands of Africa information of the most interesting character came this year to England, being communicated by the enterprising travellers Captain Speke and Captain Grant, who landed at Southampton on the 17th of June, and five days afterwards received a public welcome at a special meeting of the Royal Geographical Society. Starting from Zanzibar, and penetrating the country in a north-westerly direction, Captain Speke had, though with incredible difficulty, and through the exertion of wonderful patience and adroitness in bribing, coaxing, mystifying, or browbeating the native rulers whose kingdoms he traversed, reached the shores of a vast lake, to which he gave the name of Victoria Nyanza, and seen the White Nile flowing out, at its northern end, in the direction of Gondokoro. Captain Speke too hastily assumed that he had found the true source of the Nile in the Victoria Nyanza, just as, nearly a hundred years earlier, Bruce was convinced that he stood at the fountain head of the great river when he had merely traced up the lesser current of the Blue Nile. The brave explorer's career came to a premature and tragic end. A day had been fixed, in the autumn of 1864, for a discussion between him and Captain Burton on the question of the Nile sources, before a meeting of the British Association at Bath, when a sudden and lamentable accident put a period to Speke's life. He was shooting in Neston Park, in Wiltshire; and from the posture in which the body was found, he appeared to have been getting over a low stone wall, when by some mischance his gun exploded while the muzzle was pointed at his breast. Death ensued in a few minutes.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (continued).