They are not at all satisfied with Lord Raglan, whom they think oldfashioned and pedantic, and not suited to the purpose of carrying on active operations. They wanted him to make use of the Turkish light cavalry, Bashi-Bazouks, who under good management might be made very serviceable, but he would have nothing to say to them; and still more they are disgusted with his discouragement of the Indian officers who have repaired to the army, and who are, in fact, the most efficient men there are. They look on General Brown as the best man there, and have great expectations of Cathcart. It is very curious that neither the Government nor the commanders have the slightest information as to the Russian force in the Crimea or the strength of Sebastopol. Some prisoners they took affirmed that there were 150,000 men in the peninsula, but nobody believes that, except Dundas who gives credit to it. They are impatient for the termination of Dundas's period of service, which will be in December, when Lyons will command the fleet.
September 11th.—I went to The Grove on Friday, but was brought up on Saturday by gout, and detained in London ever since. We had much talk about a variety of things. The Prince is exceedingly well satisfied with his visit to the Emperor. The invitation to Windsor appears to have been publicly given in an after dinner speech. Clarendon said a great deal about the Government, its prospects and its difficulties, and of the conduct and dispositions of different men in it, that the Peelites had all behaved admirably, and he has a very high opinion of Newcastle, who is able, laborious, and fair. He does not see so much of Aberdeen as he did last year while the question of peace or war was still pending. He and Aberdeen do not very well agree, and therefore Aberdeen does not come to the Foreign Office as he used to do. I asked him in what they differed, and what it was Aberdeen now wanted or expected. He said that Aberdeen was quite of opinion that a vigorous prosecution of the war afforded the best chance of restoring peace, and that he was as eager as anybody for the expedition of Sebastopol, but he was out of humour with the whole thing, took no interest in anything that was done, and instead of looking into all the departments and animating each as a Prime Minister should do, he kept aloof and did nothing, and constantly raised objections to various matters of detail. In the Cabinet he takes hardly any part, and when differences of opinion arise he makes no effort to reconcile them, as it is his business to do. In short, though a very good and honourable man, he is eminently unfitted for his post, and in fact he feels this himself, has no wish to retain it, but the contrary, and only does so because he knows the whole machine would fall to pieces if he were to resign. John Russell Clarendon thinks a necessity as leader of the House of Commons, but he is disgusted with his perpetual discontent and the bad influence exercised over him by his confidants, and he thinks he has not acted a generous part towards Aberdeen in suffering him to be attacked and vilified as he has been by his (John's) followers and adherents, who endeavour to make a distinction between him and Aberdeen, which is equally unconstitutional on principle and false in fact. The same thing applies to Palmerston, and they have neither of them stood forward as they ought to have done in Aberdeen's defence, and claimed a joint responsibility with him in every act of the Government. We talked over what could possibly be done if Aberdeen did retire, and I suggested that he (Clarendon) might take his place, and that the rest would be more willing to accept him for the head of the Government than any other man. He expressed the greatest disinclination to this idea, to which he never could consent, but owned his present office was extremely agreeable to him and deeply interesting. Nevertheless, I do not think, if the case occurred and the place was offered to him consensu omnium, that his scruples would be insurmountable.
So certain are they of taking Sebastopol that they have already begun to discuss what they shall do with it when they have got it. Palmerston wrote Clarendon a long letter setting forth the various alternatives, and expressing his own opinion that the Crimea should be restored to the Turks. Clarendon is dead against this, and so, he told me, is Stratford. At Boulogne the Emperor and Newcastle agreed that the best course will be to occupy the Crimea and garrison Sebastopol with a large force of English and French, and hold it en d?p?t till they can settle something definitive; and Clarendon leans to this arrangement, which will at least be a gain of time.
VISIT OF PRINCE ALBERT TO FRANCE.
London, September 19th.—At The Grove again last week, where as usual I heard a great deal of miscellaneous matters from Clarendon and read a great many despatches from different people. I asked him what the Prince had told him of his visit to Boulogne, and what his opinion was of the Emperor. He said the Prince had talked to him a great deal about it all at Osborne, and this is the substance of what he said as far as I recollect it: The Prince was very well satisfied with his reception; the Emperor took him in his carriage t?te ? t?te to the great review, so that they conversed together long and without interruption or witnesses. The Emperor seems to have talked to the Prince with more abandon and unreserve than is usual to him. The Prince was exceedingly struck with his extreme apathy and languor (which corresponds with what Thiers told me of him) and with his ignorance of a variety of matters which it peculiarly behoved him to know. He asked the Prince a great many questions about the English Constitution and its working, relating to which the Prince gave him ample and detailed explanation, and Clarendon said that all that he repeated as being said to the Emperor was as good, sound, and correct as it possibly could be. The Emperor said that he felt all the difficulties of his own position, and enlarged upon them with great freedom, particularly adverting, as one of them, to the absence of any aristocracy in France. The Prince, in reply to this, seems to have given him very judicious advice; for he told him that any attempt to create an aristocracy in France resembling that of England must be a failure, the conditions and antecedents of the two countries being so totally dissimilar; that he might confer titles and distinctions to any amount, and so surround himself with adherents whom he had obliged, but that he had better confine himself to that and not attempt to do more. When they parted, the Emperor said he hoped it would not be the last time he should have the pleasure of seeing His Royal Highness, to which the Prince replied that he hoped not, and that he was charged by the Queen to express her hope that he would pay her a visit at Windsor, and give her an opportunity of making the Empress's acquaintance, to which the Emperor responded 'he should be very glad to see the Queen at Paris.' This insouciant reception of an invitation which a few months before he would have jumped at is very unaccountable, but it meant something, for it was evidently a mot d'ordre, because when the Prince took leave of Marshal Vaillant, he said he hoped he would accompany the Emperor to Windsor, where, though they could show no such military spectacle as the Emperor had shown him, they would do what they could, to which Vaillant replied, 'We hope to see Her Majesty the Queen and Your Royal Highness at Paris.' There seems no disposition at present to give him the Garter which is supposed to be the object of his ambition, and which Walewski is always suggesting.
Clarendon is extremely disgusted at the conduct of Austria and her declaration of neutrality, and he said that the complaints of the doings of the Austrians in the Principalities were not without foundation. Drouyn de Lhuys spoke very openly to H?bner on the subject, and pitched into the Austrian Government without stint or reserve, and Cowley sent a despatch in which all he said was detailed, with the addition that it was Drouyn de Lhuys' intention to embody it in a formal despatch to Bourqueney to be communicated to the Austrian Government.
LANDING IN THE CRIMEA.
September 22nd.—The army has landed in the Crimea without opposition. It is difficult to conceive that the Russians should have been so utterly wanting in spirit, and so afraid to risk anything, as to let the landing take place without an attempt either by land or sea to obstruct it. They have a great fleet lying idle at Sebastopol, and though, if it had come out, its defeat and perhaps destruction would have been certain, it would have been better to perish thus, vitam in vulnere ponens, and inflicting damage on its enemy as it certainly might have done, than to remain ingloriously in harbour and wait to be taken or destroyed, as it infallibly will be when the town itself shall fall. Great indignation is expressed at the prospect of Napier's returning from the Baltic without making any attempt on Cronstadt, or to perform any exploit beyond the Bomarsund affair. He is detested by his officers, and they one and all complain that he has been so little adventurous, and maintain that more might have been done. The justness and correctness of this, time will show.
October 2nd.—At The Grove on Saturday, where I generally pick up some scraps of information from Clarendon on one subject or another. On Saturday came the news that Sebastopol had been taken, which we did not believe a word of, but after dinner the same evening we got the telegraphic account of the victory gained on the 20th on the heights above the Alma, and yesterday Raglan's telegraphic despatch was published. It is nervous work for those who have relations and friends in the army to hear of a 'desperate battle' and severe loss, and to have to wait so many days for the details and casualties. The affair does not seem, so far as we can conjecture, to have been very decisive, when only two guns and a few prisoners were taken. If it had depended on St. Arnaud, the expedition would have put back even after it had sailed; while actually at sea, St. Arnaud, who stated himself to be ill and unable to move, summoned a council of war on board the 'Ville de Paris.' The weather was so rough that it was determined that it would not be safe for Raglan to go, as with his one arm he could not get on board; so Dundas went, and General Brown, and some other officers deputed by Raglan to represent himself, together with the French Admiral. A discussion took place which lasted several hours. St. Arnaud strongly urged that the expedition should be put off till the spring, and he objected to all that was proposed as to the place of landing—in short, threw every obstacle he could in the way of the whole thing. Dundas and all the English officers vehemently protested against any delay and change of plan, and represented the intolerable shame and disgrace of putting back after having actually embarked, and their opposition to the French general's proposal was so vehement that he ended by giving way, rose from his sick bed, and consented to go on. He declared that he only agreed to the place proposed for landing in consequence of the urgent representations of his allies, and this he wrote home to his own Government. He is a very incapable, unfit man, and Clarendon told me that his own army recognised the great superiority of Raglan to him, and that the French were all delighted with the latter.