In no country perhaps are women more cruelly used than among General Haynau. the poorer classes of England, while in no country under the sun is greater sympathy expressed for the weaker sex; a paradox which was strikingly exemplified in 1850. The Austrian General Haynau in that year paid a visit to this country. Some time before he had earned unenviable notoriety by his treatment of the wives and daughters of Hungarian insurgents who fell into his hands, and it was reported, probably with much exaggeration, that regardless of sex and condition he had subjected these hapless fugitives to the indignity of corporal punishment. The rising had been however some time repressed, and there was every reason to believe that in this country at least the rumour had been forgotten. Among the sights the General had been recommended to visit in London was the celebrated brewery of Messrs. Barclay & Perkins, and no sooner was his presence discovered, than he was simultaneously attacked by the draymen, and narrowly escaped with his life. He got small sympathy from Punch, who, in vol. xix., presented Leech’s Sketch of a Most Remarkable Flea found in General Haynau’s Ear. “Who’s Dat Knocking at de Door?” is a question put by Johnny Russell to old Joe (Hume), who once in every session in those days stood knocking at the door with his banjo labelled, “Extension of the Suffrage.”
Macaulay, writing in 1840,[141] referred to the progress of what he The “Papal Aggression.” happily termed “The Catholic Revival of the Nineteenth Century.” This revival was never more clearly exemplified than at the very time the temporal power was most seriously endangered. Such of the temporal power, indeed, as was left to it has gone, probably for ever; while the spiritual power of the Papacy, at least in Protestant England, as must be patent to any one who has given the subject the smallest attention, has unostentatiously but enormously increased, especially within the last twenty years. The year 1850 was remarkable for what was then known among us as the “Papal Aggression,” and Punch and his “right-hand man” were exceedingly angry. Among the cartoons which they fulminated on the occasion were the following: The Guy Fawkes of 1850 [i.e. the Pope] Preparing to Blow up all England; The Thin End of the Wedge [the Pope trying with his jemmy, labelled “Roman Archbishopric of Westminster,” to force the doors of the English Church]. It is both a singular and significant circumstance, that at this time the Ritualists, or rather Puseyites, were helping on the work of Rome by promoting, if not schism, at least dissension in the Church of England by advocating the strictest attention to the letter instead of the spirit of the rubric and liturgy. We find, in special reference to the assistance thus, in some cases we believe unconsciously, rendered to the Romish Church, The Puseyite Moth flying into the Roman Catholic candle; and Fashion in 1850, or a Page for the Puseyites, in which we see the Bishops of Lincoln, Oxford, and Exeter dropping the hot poker of Puseyism, and the Pope, as monkey, making a catspaw of poor Pus(s)ey [the Doctor lately deceased]; again, in vol. xx., Punch (a boy) inquires of an episcopal showman, who holds the model of a church on his stand, “Please, Mr. Bishop, which is Popery and which is Puseyism?” To which the episcopal showman replies, “Whichever you like, my little dear”; another cartoon represents a Puseyite parson who has received “warning” from his cook. Inquiring the reason of her dissatisfaction, he receives the following reply: “Well, sir, the fact is I aint equal to them Fast days; for what with a hegg here, and a hegg there, and little bits of fish for breakfastes, and little bits of fish for dinners, and the sweet omelicks, and the fried and stewed hoysters, and the Bashawed lobsterses, and one think and the hother, there’s so much cooking that I aint even time to make up a cap!” Another influential person besides Mr. Punch was terribly indignant at this aggressive movement on the part of the Papacy, and loudly avowed his determination to go any length to put a stop to it. This was my Lord John Russell, who, after vapouring like “ancient Pistol,” quietly sneaked off after his usual fashion, and did nothing. He got, however, a well-merited dressing from Leech, who showed him up in his true character in a contemporary number as The Boy who Chalked up “No Popery,” and then Ran Away. It was these Papal satires (as we shall afterwards see) which led to the secession from Punch, and the consequent loss to satiric art, of one of its most genial and capable professors, the late Richard Doyle;[142] a loss followed (if we may so term it) by a compensating gain. Richard Doyle’s place was almost immediately taken by an artist of great and exceptional power, for more than twelve years the friend and coadjutor of John Leech—Mr. Tenniel, who makes his first appearance in Punch’s twentieth volume.
The long peace which followed the national and European struggle with Napoleon had produced a curious effect upon ourselves. While Russia took advantage of the lull to recruit her colossal forces, and Prussia to perfect the military system which took us so much by surprise half a century afterwards, we, on the other hand, wearied with our long and arduous struggle, had fallen asleep, and dreamed pleasantly that the “Millennium” was at hand. With this idea apparently in our minds, we inscribed on the walls of the Great Exhibition of 1851, the Scriptural text which tells us that “swords shall be beaten into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks, neither shall they learn war any more.” A significant commentary on the text was found in the fact that many of the exhibits at the “World’s Fair” consisted of cannon, rifles, and other lethal instruments of improved method and construction, intended for the wholesale destruction of the human race. We read the Scriptural text, and viewed these exhibits as relics of a barbarism which had existed six and thirty years before, oblivious of the circumstance that an incompetent general had “wiped out” a British army in Afghanistan, and that we had crushed the empire of Runjeet Singh on the banks of the Sutlej not so many years before. The closing of the Exhibition is commemorated by a cartoon, in which Leech shows us the famous Amazon putting on her bonnet and shawl, chatting the while with Hiram Power’s Greek Slave, who, habited in “bloomer” costume, prepares likewise to take her departure. Allusion to the bribery and corruption prevalent at a notorious borough of that day is made in a sketch which depicts the Horror of that Respectable Saint, St. Alban’s, at Hearing the Confession of a St. Alban’s Elector.
Remarkable results were destined to follow the year of unrest—1848. The Coup D’état. Louis Philippe had been replaced in France by Louis Napoleon, who seems to have been elevated to the Presidency of the Republic because he was considered to be so absolutely harmless, the principle followed being analogous to that observed at the election of a Pope, which has resulted more than once in an unpleasant surprise for the cardinal electors. Those who had formed a low estimate of his abilities, found that Louis was no longer the “half-saved” youth of Boulogne and Strasburg; that he had learnt some stern lessons in the hard school of adversity; that he had developed, moreover, a firm and decided will of his own. We thought it a hazardous experiment on the part of French Republicans, for Louis held a craze on the subject of his uncle’s “ideas,” and the craze had sufficient “method” to induce us to believe that he was the last man who would have been selected to fill the presidential chair. As a refugee in England, we had given him small credit for sagacity; and as an emperor and a man, history has already said of him that he was cunning, unreliable, and thoroughly unscrupulous. Although a comparison between the two men is impossible, there was at least this similarity between the two Napoleons, that both were indebted for their elevation to the imperial purple to a revolution; here, however, all resemblance ceased. The first Napoleon relied upon himself alone, while Louis was advised by counsellors and adventurers wiser and more unscrupulous than himself, and who were prepared to back his fortunes with a view of advancing their own. At the close of 1851, Europe was electrified by the unexpected and dastardly blow delivered by these men, and by means of a “great crime,” the history of which has been so graphically related by Victor Hugo, Louis Napoleon, Prince President of the Republic, found himself master of the destinies of France. The event is referred to by John Leech in the cartoon of France is Tranquil!!! which she cannot well fail to be, seeing that we find her bound hand and foot; a chain-shot fastened to her foot, and a sentry menacing her with his bayonet. The next volume shows us the Prince President in the act of being measured by his military tailor, while he offers money to his cast-off mistress Liberté, her mother (France) looking indignantly on. Immediately behind, a priest (in allusion to the support which the Papal party were receiving from this “eldest son of the Church”) helps himself from a plate of money which stands by the President’s side; the floor is littered with miscellaneous articles,—bayonets, knapsacks, imperial and other crowns, crosses of the legion of honour, the code Napoleon,—and, in reference to Louis’s craze on the subject of his uncle and his “ideas,” one of Napoleon’s old boots. On a stool stands a bust of the first Napoleon, and on a chair to the right a roll of “Imperial purple.”
By the year 1853, the only persons who steadily shut their eyes to the signs of the times, and continued steadfastly to believe in the immediate advent of the “Millennium,” were the peace-at-any-price party (represented by Messrs Bright and Cobden), the members of the Peace Society, and the very strange people who obstinately opposed any attempt on the part of England to provide for her national safety by putting her defences in order. To the Peace Society, Leech especially addressed his cartoon of No Danger, which represents a donkey braying in front of a loaded cannon; while to the mischievous lunatics who opposed any scheme of national defence, he dedicated an appropriate gift in the shape of A Strait Waistcoat Worked by the Women of England.[143] By this time John Bull had awoke from his dreams, and tacitly admitting that the time for conversion of his swords into ploughshares and his spears into pruning hooks had scarcely arrived, adopted the far more sensible method of sending his troops to the camp at Chobham by way of getting them acclimatized to the trials and vicissitudes of wind and weather. This step leads of course to a number of little pleasantries. In one cartoon we see an officer of household cavalry parting his hair in front of his cuirass, whilst a soldier servant brings him his shaving water in a bucket; another, entitled A Cold in the Head, represents an officer in this melancholy condition, who requests his servant to bring him his bucket of gruel as “sool as he has tallowed his loze.” John, in fact, had been aroused from his slumbers by the Emperor Nicholas, who, thinking it a good time to appropriate Turkey, was suspected of having offered a slice to Austria. The rumour is referred to in the cartoon of The Old ‘Un and the Young ’Un, in which we see the Russian and Austrian Emperors at table with a bottle of port between them, “Now then, Austria,” says Nicholas, “just help me to finish the Port(e).” In another cartoon, John Bull nails the Russian eagle to his barn door, remarking to his French friend the while, that he “wouldn’t worry the Turkeys any more.” Lord Aberdeen, who, notwithstanding the signs of the times, refused like Nicholas to believe in a war with England, is represented placidly smoking the Pipe of Peace over a barrel of gunpowder.
Thanks to Messrs Bright and Cobden, who obstinately persisted in opposing the popular feeling which had set in steadily in the direction of war,—thanks to the exertions of the Peace Society, who were not restrained from sending certain zealous members of their body to the Emperor Nicholas, who not unnaturally supposed that these broad-brimmed gentlemen represented the sentiments of the great English people,—but thanks above all to the French Emperor and his astute advisers, who were enabled to take advantage of the state of English feeling to hoodwink the “great nation” by the prospect of an alliance with a great and respectable power, the year 1854 found us in actual conflict with Russia, starting off after our usual fashion with a handful of men to attack the strongest fortress in Europe, provided with an unlimited supply of men and metal and inexhaustible stores of warlike materiel of all kinds. In vol. xxvi. we see Her Majesty Throwing the Old Shoe after her Guards, who, for the first time since 1815, are seen setting out on foreign service. Another cartoon, which has reference to our Bombardment of Odessa, is divided into two parts, in one of which we see Lord Aberdeen (whose dream of peace had been so rudely dissipated), and in the other Nicholas of Russia, both reading the newspaper. Says Aberdeen, “Bombardment of Odessa! Dear me, this will be very disagreeable to my imperial friend!” Says the Emperor, “Bombardment of Odessa! Confound it! this will be very annoying to dear old Aberdeen!” In November, 1854, occurred our disastrous victory of Inkermann, in which scarcely four thousand English troops found themselves opposed by forty thousand Russians and drove them into flight. No thanks, however, to our allies, who—with the exception of sixty brave Zouaves and their lieutenant, who played truant from their regiment to give us timely assistance—either looked on or absolutely ran away.[144] Spectators of this battle were two of the Imperial family, a circumstance alluded to in vol. xxvii. by Leech’s cartoon of The Russian Bear’s Licked Cubs, Nicholas and Michael.
Picton remarked of our officers, when en route to Waterloo, that The Purchase System. with fifty thousand of his own men, and French officers at their head, he would march from one end of Europe to the other. But both the quality of French officers and soldiers had deteriorated at the time of the Crimean War, and was destined still further to deteriorate until the utter unsoundness of their military discipline was laid bare years afterwards by Prussia. The French had no generals, while we had one general and an excellent body of soldiers. Unquestionably the Russian war did us the service of thoroughly exposing the rottenness of our military system so far as concerned the officering of the army. The principle followed was precisely that complained of by Sir Thomas Picton forty years before; there was no actual test of fitness until it came to be subjected to the practical test of emergency; money invariably had the advantage of merit, not only in the appropriation of first commissions, but in the purchase of subsequent regimental grades, which were given in exchange for pecuniary value, and not as a reward for military efficiency. The material thus obtained was splendid as regards manliness and bravery, but something more than these were wanted in the absence of a leader like the great Duke; and although the type selected is an extreme one, the result may be indicated by my Lord Cardigan, who, though equal to any amount of endurance and heroism, proved himself incapable of the exercise of the smallest particle of common sense. The scandal of the then existing system of purchase was aptly exposed by the artist in vol. xxviii., where we find a rich titled old lady in a shop served by military counter-jumpers, one of whom, wrapping up a lieutenant-colonelcy for her boy, inquires, in the well-known jargon of the trade, “What is the next article?” in answer to which she expresses a wish to have “a nice majority for his little brother”; a wounded officer with his arm in a sling timidly inquires the price of a captain’s commission, and turns wearily away on finding the preposterous price (£3,694) is wholly beyond his means. Fortunately for us (for events proved that in trusting to French assistance we were leaning on a broken reed indeed!) the Russian rank and file, besides being badly led, were as inferior to our own in endurance and pluck as they were superior to us in the mere matter of numbers. Justly wondering why forty thousand men, supported by twenty thousand reserves, had failed to hold their own against a mere handful of British infantry, Nicholas nevertheless treated the result apparently in a philosophical spirit, and calmly asked his people to wait for “Generals Janvier and Fevrier.” But the brave man’s heart was broken, and when February came it found the Imperial prophet a corpse.[145] The death of this great and disappointed man is forcibly commemorated by Leech’s memorable cartoon of General Fevrier Turned Traitor. Lord John Russell, true to his character of “Lord Meddle and Muddle,” had done nothing for us at the Congress, and in The Return from Vienna, Her Majesty catches the frightened little statesman by the collar and angrily asks him, “Now, sir, what a time you have been! What’s the answer?” To her Lord John—“Please ’M—there is—is—is—is—isn’t any answer.”
An English general in those days was so scarce a commodity that in Lord Raglan we seemed absolutely to have exhausted the supply: one old incapable was replaced by another, until the dearth of English military ability became at length nothing less than an absolute scandal. In What we must Come to, reference is made to this lamentable state of things, wherein an old woman in bonnet and shawl, with a capacious umbrella, applies for a post to Lord Panmure (the Minister of War), “Oh, if you please, sir, did you want a sperity old woman to see after things in the Crimea? No objection to being made a Field Marshal, and glory not so much an object as a good salary”; in another (A Grand Military Spectacle) we find the heroes of the campaign engaged in inspecting the Field Marshals, a pair of decrepid, purblind, old men seated in arm chairs; in the third we recognise the amiable Prince Consort, who was most unjustly suspected in those days of a desire to interfere in the administration of our military matters—it would be moonshine to term it military system, as we had none. The New Game of Follow my Leader is a palpable hit at a practice common enough too in those days. Applications were frequently made by officers for leave to return home on the plea of “urgent private affairs,” and you were astonished to see gentlemen walking about whose duty it was to be with their regiments in the Crimea. In the cartoon referred to, a long line of soldiers is drawn up in front of the general’s tent; a little drummer boy steps out of the ranks, and making the usual salute inquires, “Please, general, may me and these other chaps have leave to go home on urgent private affairs?”
A more unsatisfactory state of things for the belligerents all round than this miserable Crimean conflict can scarcely well be imagined. Lord Raglan, who had learned war by practical experience under the eye of the great Duke himself, speedily realized the fact that he had been made the victim of French military jealousy and imbecility, the leaders having been selected not on account of their military efficiency, but solely for attachment to the cause of the Emperor. The battle of the Alma had been won without the assistance of the French, who for all practical purposes might just as well have been away.[146] Marshal St. Arnaud, who, to do him simple justice, was at this time dying literally by inches, had refused to follow up the defeated Russians,[147] whose retreat a competent French general must have converted into an absolute rout; whilst, had he followed the advice and wishes of Lord Raglan, we should probably have entered Sebastopol in a fortnight, instead of having to wait three years for an event which was afterwards accomplished at a ruinous waste of time, men, materiel, and money.[148] We had defeated the Russians at Inkerman without French assistance,[149] whilst the timidity and professional jealousy on that occasion of Marshal Canrobert had again failed to turn our success into a crushing disaster for the enemy.[150] If England was dissatisfied, Russia was still more discontented, and her strength moreover at this time well-nigh exhausted. Efforts in the direction of peace were being made by Austria, which are referred to in the cartoon, Staying Proceedings (vol. xxx.), wherein plaintiff John Bull instructs his solicitor Clarendon (who is setting off for Paris bag in hand), “Tell Russia,” says angry John, “tell Russia if he doesn’t settle at once I shall go on with the action;” but so unprofitable to us in the end was the arrangement effected by the solicitor, that the action was settled after all on the terms of each party having to pay their own costs. This preposterous result is referred to in the admirable sketch entitled Swindling the Clarendon, wherein landlord Bull angrily expostulates with his two waiters (Louis Napoleon and Palmerston), “What!” says John, “quite the gentleman! Why he has left nothing but a portmantel of bricks and stones, and gone off without paying the bill.”[151]