SCENE DURING THE PRESTON STRIKE. (See p. [162].)
Another incident worth notice occurred at this Congress, and chiefly because it relates to the adoption of a principle for which marked success cannot yet be claimed. Much moved by the Peace party, Government permitted Lord Clarendon to propose a sort of arbitration clause. He observed that the treaty embodied the principle as applied to differences between the contracting Powers and Turkey. He proposed that the happy innovation should receive a more general application without prejudice to the independence of Governments. Count Walewski and Baron Manteuffel concurred, but Count Buol and Count Orloff gave it merely their personal assent. "Whereupon," so runs the protocol, "the plenipotentiaries do not hesitate to express in the name of their Governments the wish that States between which any serious misunderstanding may arise should, before appealing to arms, have recourse, as well as circumstances might allow, to the good offices of a friendly Power. The plenipotentiaries hope that the Governments not represented at the Congress will unite in the sentiment which has inspired the wish recorded in the present protocol." The principle of international arbitration, though generally accepted in theory, is still far from being reduced to practice.
On the very day when the peace documents were laid before the British Parliament, April 28th, the Opposition determined to censure the Government for the loss of Kars. To this end it was necessary to treat the fate of Kars as a matter entirely under the control of the Government; to forget that Britain was engaged with Allies, and to assume that the British Government had shown a deficiency of "foresight and energy." On that ground Mr. Whiteside, acting for his party, based a motion of censure. Lord Malmesbury, in the House of Peers, had also given notice of a similar motion, but found it expedient to withdraw his notice, and accept battle in the House of Commons. This debate unhappily, like so many others, was a mere party encounter. The Opposition did not believe that Kars could have been saved by the British Government in the circumstances; but they found in the facts of the campaign admirable material for a party attack. The real causes of the loss of Kars were twofold—the indolence and corruption of the Turkish Pashas, whose conduct deprived Kars of the provisions actually collected to victual the place; and the indisposition of the French Emperor to permit the diversion to Asia of any effective troops, who might have operated in time to relieve the garrison. Britain, as happened in all cases where it acted in combination with Imperial France, played a secondary, one might almost say a subordinate, part. That is the price it paid for an active alliance with France. Consequently no effective measures were taken to defend the Turkish frontier in Asia. The House, not being prepared to censure the Government for deference to an ally—a deference which could not be avoided without risk to the alliance—rejected Mr. Whiteside's motion of censure by a majority of 303 to 176.
As a matter of course the peace treaty, when communicated to Parliament, became a subject of high debate. The Address to her Majesty, agreed to by both Houses, thanked the Queen for communicating the treaty to Parliament, and assured her that, while they would have cheerfully supported her had the war gone on, yet that they had learned with "joy and satisfaction" that a peace had been concluded on conditions which so fully accomplished the objects for which the war was undertaken. The Address took note of the aid given by Powers not belligerents towards the restoration of peace, and expressed a hope that it would be lasting. The debates in both Houses were really without life or novelty, and do not concern posterity. The Opposition only pretended to be dissatisfied. One called it a "base" peace, yet would not divide against it; and another proposed to omit the word "joy," yet leave in the word "satisfaction." In fact, the division on the Kars resolution took the sting out of the Opposition speeches; and the Address, unaltered, was agreed to without a dissentient. On the 8th of May thanks were voted to the army and navy; and the Queen sent down a message to state that she had raised General Williams to the dignity of a baronet, with the style and title of Sir Fenwick Williams of Kars, and had resolved to grant him a pension of one thousand pounds a year. This gave great satisfaction, and met with ready support. On the 29th of May the Queen's birthday was kept, and London illuminated in celebration of the peace. Prince Albert inspected the Guards; the Queen held a Drawing Room; and in the evening—her Majesty and her family witnessing the spectacle from the balcony of Buckingham Palace—there were four grand and continuous outbursts of fireworks, from the Green Park, from Hyde Park, from Primrose Hill, and from Victoria Park. So London rejoiced, and the towns in the country rejoiced also, that the war was at an end.
We have seen how the war arose, how it was waged, and how the objects sought were accomplished. It is right that the cost in life and money should also be recorded. According to Lord Panmure, our total loss up to the 31st of March, 1856, of killed, dead of wounds and disease, and discharged, was 22,467 men. The Russian loss was upwards of 500,000. The cost in money, as estimated by Sir George Lewis, was fifty-three millions. We increased the funded and unfunded debt by £33,604,263, and we raised by increased taxation above £17,000,000. But the war left us with very largely increased establishments; and the peace of Europe has since been so often threatened that our Chancellors of the Exchequer have not been able to reduce the expenditure to the comparatively low level of the years immediately preceding the revival of the French Empire. The navy was greatly augmented, having been raised from a force of 212 to a force of 590 effective ships of war. The organisation of the army and navy was much improved; and in 1856 Great Britain stood in a better position as regards offensive and defensive operations than it had done at any previous period since the peace of 1815.
The execution of the conditions of the treaty of peace went on for many months after its conclusion; but ultimately the Danubian Principalities received a definite organisation, and succeeded, even in spite of the temporary opposition of Britain, Austria, and the Porte, in obtaining a united Government by the junction of Wallachia and Moldavia under the name of Roumania. The new frontier also was traced; but not without involving Europe in the danger of war. First of all Russia claimed the Isle of Serpents, off the mouth of the Danube, and occupied it. Admiral Lyons at once placed it under the watch and ward of a man-of-war. The object of tracing a new frontier in Bessarabia was to remove Russia from the Danube. In deciding the line roughly on maps produced by the French at Paris, it was agreed that the Russian frontier should run to the south of a place called Bolgrad, it being understood that this Bolgrad was not on the banks of a lake—Lake Jalpukh—which ran into the Danube. But the frontier commission found that Bolgrad was actually on the lake. The maps exhibited were delusive. The place called Bolgrad on these maps was Bolgrad-Tabak. There had either been a deception practised, or a misunderstanding on all sides. The Russians, however, insisted on the letter of the treaty; and strangely enough, the French Government showed a disposition to support them. But Britain, Austria, and Turkey stood out. At one moment, in consequence of the lurch of the Imperial mind towards Russia, war was possible. Better counsels prevailed, and it was arranged that a conference should sit to decide this knotty point. The conference sat on the 31st of December, 1856, and the 6th of January, 1857. The result of its secret deliberations was that Russia had to give up the Isle of Serpents and both Bolgrads; but she gained a considerable slice of Moldavia, though not on the Danube, as "compensation." The delta of the Danube reverted to Turkey; the remainder of the ceded territory to Roumania. The French Emperor supported the Russian demands. It was owing to the firmness of Lord Palmerston that Russia, in spite of the aid of the Emperor Napoleon, was restrained from then becoming one of the river-bordering Powers on the Danube.
By way of a pleasant epilogue to the Crimean War came the first distribution of the Victoria Cross, a ceremony which took place in Hyde Park on the 26th of June, 1857. It had long been felt that a distinctive token was wanted to meet the individual acts of heroism in the army and navy, and this impression was strengthened by the numerous deeds of valour by which the struggle for Sebastopol had been rendered illustrious. Accordingly the Queen had issued a royal warrant in the previous year by which a new naval and military decoration was instituted, to be styled "The Victoria Cross," and inscribed "For Valour," which was only to be issued to men who had especially distinguished themselves in the presence of the enemy. The destined recipients paraded at an early hour on the appointed day, and were found to be sixty-two in all, twelve from the Royal Navy, two from the marines, five from the cavalry, five from the artillery, four from the engineers, and the remainder from the line. The popular favourite was Lieutenant John Knox, who after greatly distinguishing himself in the Fusilier Guards, lost his arm in the attack on the Redan. Already more than 100,000 people were assembled in the Park, where a vast semicircle of seats to hold 12,000 had been erected for the favoured few. It was a glorious morning, when at 10 a.m. the Queen—accompanied by the Prince Consort, Prince Frederick William of Prussia, and a brilliant military suite—rode into the Park on a favourite roan horse. The actual ceremony was of the briefest; the Queen, without dismounting, pinned the cross upon the breast of each of the men as they were brought up to her one by one, and in ten minutes the honours had been bestowed. But the assembled multitude was highly delighted by the march past of the 4,000 soldiers who had been brought on the ground to give brilliancy to the occasion, and taken as a whole the brief record in the Prince Consort's diary—"a superb spectacle"—was amply merited.