In the meantime, both British and French were engaged in blowing up the forts, docks, basins, and barracks in Sebastopol. The work had been divided between the two. The French took the northern half of the docks, the English the southern. These works were so solidly constructed and so vast that their destruction required almost as much skill as their construction. The engineers of each nation, however, rivalled each other in expedients, and in the application of scientific principles to the end in view. The whole of the work on the docks was completed on the 1st of February. Fort Nicholas was blown up on the 4th, and Fort Alexander on the 11th of the same month; and similar processes afterwards laid low the aqueduct which brought the water of the Tchernaya into the docks and the great barracks and storehouses in the marine suburb. The Russian fire, though brisk at times, and often accurate, did not interrupt the labours of the French and British engineers. By these means the offensive character of Sebastopol was cut up by the roots, for it was as a great war-port and arsenal that it was a "standing menace," and at the end of February it had ceased to be.
On the 28th of February news reached the allied camps that the Governments sitting in Paris, London, and St. Petersburg had just agreed to a suspension of hostilities until March 31st. In the course of the day the French and British generals were officially informed of the fact by their Governments. The next day the chiefs of the staffs of the three armies—General Martimprey, General Windham, and Colonel Petikti—met General Timovief at the Bridge of Traktir on the Tchernaya, and there these officers debated the limits which it would be desirable to fix as military frontiers. Thus, just as the weather was becoming suitable for field operations, the diplomatists managed to chain up the armies, and having got the representatives of the belligerents round a table at Paris, they contrived to bring all parties to an agreement, and bring about a peace. How that was accomplished we have now to learn.
In the early part of the winter of 1855 there were two Powers—Austria and Russia—eager, and one—France—willing to conclude a peace as soon as possible. Austria was eager for peace, because another year of war must have brought her into the field as a belligerent. She could not hope that the theatre of operations would remain restricted to a corner of the Crimea, nor, indeed, to the whole of the Crimea; for she knew that if the war went on, the troops of the Allies would appear either in Southern or Western Russia. The contest could not go on without raising the question of Poland as well as Finland; and if the former question were raised, Austria must take one side or the other. Her engagements with the Allies, her political necessities, forbade her taking part with Russia. Yet she was barely prepared to act against her, and would have done so only with the greatest reluctance. Yet, as will be seen, under certain conditions and contingencies she did make up her mind to cast in her lot frankly with the Allies. But what she really wanted was peace, for war to her was not only full of political dangers, but threatened her with something like financial ruin. Russia was eager for peace, because she had lost so much by war. The drain of adult males was enormous. The drain upon the southern provinces for transport, for horses and cattle, for carts and waggons, was prodigious. The harvests of Southern Russia and the forage went the same road. Nor was it only men and transport and food which had been used up with astonishing prodigality, first by the Emperor Nicholas, and then by his son, to whom he bequeathed that fatal legacy, a devouring war. The Russian treasury was empty, and although the credit of Russia had always been good, still, capitalists were shy, and money was hard to obtain, could not be obtained, even on terms very unfavourable to the borrower. In these circumstances, and looking to the energetic preparations of Britain by land and sea, Russia saw that she could not gain anything, and probably would lose greatly on all sides, if she were exposed to another year of war.
On the other side, France was willing to make peace. The Emperor had gained all that he wanted out of the war. He had displayed the eagles of the Empire in the face of Europe. He had won glory. Sebastopol had given to France a military duke. The war had raised France, as Frenchmen phrased it at the time, to the foremost rank among nations. The Emperor had figured in war as an ally of Britain. He had visited the Queen at Windsor, and had taken his place in the chapel of St. George's as a Knight of the Garter. Moreover, and this was not the least gratifying fact, Britain had played a secondary part in the Crimea, and she had suffered a blow from the effects on Persia and Hindostan of the fall of Kars. The Emperor, it is true, was a faithful ally, and did not spare his army in the common cause. That must be put down to his credit, although nobody thinks of claiming credit for Britain because she also was a faithful, not to say a subservient ally. But, as no one can fail to see, at the close of 1855 the Emperor had gained all he could gain by the British alliance, and peace would conduce most to his interest, especially a peace signed at Paris. He did not like to see the development of the material power of Great Britain, which was fast outstripping him at sea. He did not wish to witness the destruction of the maritime fortresses of Russia, still less to hear that a British army had expelled Russia from Georgia. He thought that he could make friends with Russia. In the previous November he had taken the extreme course of concerting terms of peace with Austria without consulting Britain, and was only partially deterred from these tortuous courses by the vigorous remonstrance of Lord Palmerston, addressed to the French Ambassador, in which the Prime Minister declared that Britain would sooner continue the war alone than accept unsatisfactory conditions.
The British Government and the British people were not so ready or willing to make peace. The real strength of the British power was only just beginning to tell. Its armaments, by land and sea, were only just acquiring bulk and organisation. A strong feeling was very generally held that the task of curbing the aggressive ambition and checking the greed of Russia, which the Allies had undertaken, was only half completed. There was a desire to see Russia expelled from Asia Minor and from Finland, and to weaken if not overthrow her in Poland, as well as to expel her from the Crimea, and root up the mighty establishments with which she menaced Turkey. In this feeling there was some reason. But the statesmen charged with the conduct of the war could not forget that, although it would have been just to take that opportunity of diminishing the vast power of the Czar, yet that the primary object of the war was the safeguarding of European interests, so seriously menaced in the Black Sea and the Baltic, and that, providing Russia could be brought to agree to terms securing the safeguards required, it would be expedient to bring the war to an end. They felt the impossibility of securing the prolonged co-operation of France, and the folly of continuing the struggle without her. The British Government, therefore, was induced to consider terms of peace, and the people acquiesced with sullen reluctance. Neither wanted war for the sake of war, or glory for the sake of glory; nor did either want victories to augment or secure the moral influence of their country in the affairs in Europe. The reluctance to make peace was due solely to a gnawing sense that the ambition of Russia had been only partially restrained. In reality, the injury done to the enemy was greater than the British people believed it to be; but in the winter of 1855 they did not know how deeply the blows of the Allies had struck.
It must not, however, be supposed that either of the belligerents allowed any of the symptoms of their desire for peace to be seen. The lateness of the season accounted for the languid operations of the Allies after the fall of Sebastopol. The resolve of the Czar to cling to the north side of that fortress covered his weakness; and the success of Mouravieff in Armenia allowed him even to boast that his gains were equal to those of the Allies. On the surface there was every sign that the war would go on in the spring more extensively than ever; for not only had the British prepared hundreds of gun and mortar boats for service in the Baltic—not only had the British Government raised and drilled a German legion numbering 17,000 men, and a Turkish contingent under British officers, 20,000 strong, but Austria had increased her army, and the Allies held frequent councils of war in Paris, with the object of settling plans of campaigns for 1856. It is true that the Emperor of the French had made a remarkable speech, as early as the 15th of November, in which he gave some hints that peace would not be unacceptable. The occasion was the closing of the Paris Exposition of 1855, an imitation of the London Exhibition of 1851. Such a gathering in the midst of war the Emperor regarded as a great example, and as a sign that the war was held to be dangerous only to those who had been its cause, and by others as a pledge of independence and security. "Tell your countrymen," he continued—and this is the point of the speech—"that, if they wish for peace, they must at least openly express their wishes for or against us; for, in the midst of a great European conflict, indifference is a bad speculation, and silence is a mistake." These sentiments told upon Germany. In order to clinch the effect of these remarks, which were at once an overture and a threat, Count Walewski was directed to inform all the Courts by circular that the Emperor meant what he said; that he desired peace, and that the neutral Powers could help powerfully in bringing it about by openly expressing their opinions in the actual crisis. There was, therefore, a crisis; and the crisis involved peace or a continuance of the war.
The Allies had resolved not to make any overtures themselves—that is, any direct overtures. There was nothing in the public language of Lord Palmerston, at this time, at all like that which we have seen in the language of the French Emperor. The British Premier spoke of obtaining the objects of the war, and so did every public speaker not opposed to the war from the beginning. It was the French Emperor who hinted that it was time for some neutral to step in and suggest peace. In these circumstances Austria, who understood the situation, stepped in to propose peace. She set her diplomatists to work, and sounded both sides, but more especially sought to extract from the Allies the terms on which they would agree to a peace. As the French Emperor was so well disposed to come to terms, this was not difficult; but he still had to shape his course so as not to endanger the British alliance, from which he had not yet derived all the advantages it contained for him. The Emperor, however, had only to allow his inclination to be felt, and then to drift, or appear to drift, along the current of British views. Ostensibly the Western Powers were not engaged in any negotiations for peace; but in reality they did entertain the proposals of Austria, and gave a general assent to the terms which that Power undertook to send to St. Petersburg; and this for the sound reason that it would have been useless for Austria to press upon Russia the acceptance of terms to which the Western Powers would not agree.
THE CZAR REVIEWING HIS ARMY AT SEBASTOPOL. (See p. [146].)