From this period, then, it becomes apparent that, if Russia should persist in aggression, war was inevitable. And Russia did persist in aggression. And if it be considered as established that the Czar was led so to persist by a conviction that England would not resort to war—which is the general and probably correct opinion—we do not see how it can be denied that a course of action which must undeceive him would be the most likely to cause him to desist; and that the naval movements that ensued were only such as would convince him of our intention without driving him to extremity. It is plain that the two theories—one of which is that the pacific disposition of our Government allowed us to drift into war, and the other that our menacing action irritated the Czar beyond control, and therefore caused the war—are incompatible.
The fleets then moved to the entrance of the Dardanelles; and, while the Czar was recovering from the anger produced by that step, the representatives of the four Powers in conference at Vienna produced their Note, a mediatory document which would, it was hoped, settle all difficulties. It was readily accepted by Russia, the reason for which became apparent when it was offered to Turkey; for the Turkish Government at once rejected it, on the ground that it might be so interpreted as to secure to the Czar the protectorate he aimed at. They proposed alterations, with the concurrence of the mediatory Powers, which the Czar in his turn rejected; and the Sultan thereupon declared that, if the provinces were not evacuated in fifteen days, Turkey would be at war with Russia. The fleets moved through the Dardanelles. The next step was the attack on the Turkish squadron at Sinope by the Russian admiral. The English people were now thoroughly roused. They were indignant, not so much at the breach of faith imputed to the Czar in making the attack, as at the ruthless destruction and slaughter of the Turkish force by its far more powerful enemy. The attack, too, had taken place almost under the guns of the combined fleets, and it was evident that, if their presence at Constantinople meant anything, and if we really were engaged to defend Turkey, the repetition of such a disaster to our ally must be prevented. A measure to this effect, but by no means strong enough to express the feeling of England, was adopted; the combined fleets were ordered by their respective governments to keep the peace by force, if necessary, in the Euxine. But as there had been as yet no actual collision between their forces and those of the Czar, a door to peace was still left open. Of this he did not choose to avail himself, but declared war against France and England on the 11th April 1854.
Such is an outline of the successive events preceding the war which, unpromising as such a record of futile diplomacy may seem, Mr Kinglake has wrought into one of the most brilliant of historical pictures. ‘Eothen’ itself is not more entertaining, more rich in colour, more happy in quaint and humorous turns of expression; while, from the false effects that are sometimes seen in the earlier work, the present narrative is entirely free. The style is indeed a model of ease, strength, clearness, and simplicity. Nor has labour been spared; and the reader who has so often been expected by historians to be already familiar with political and diplomatic lore, and has been left to repair his deficiencies as he may, will be grateful to Mr Kinglake for some of the elementary instruction which he has conveyed in such a delightful form, as, for instance, the chapter on “the usage which forms the safeguard of Europe.” And remembering what animation and vigour personal feeling, even when so strongly biased, cannot fail to infuse, and seeing that, in the present case, it has not prevented the writer from fully stating the facts and deductions which most contradict his favourite theories, we cease to lament the absence of that judicial calmness which would have deprived his history of half its charm.
The first glowing scenes now shift to one still more splendid. Diplomacy has played out its part; its subtlest essays seem but mere babble to the ear that is listening for the impending clang of arms. Statesmen and ambassadors gather up their futile documents, and retire to the side scenes, to make way for the sterner disputants who throng the stage.
If Mr Kinglake was unsparing in his denunciations of French intrigue, he is no less bold and outspoken in criticising the military merits of our allies. But we no longer find the same reasons for dissenting from his conclusions. Many, no doubt, will say that it would have been politic to suppress some of those revelations which will jar most on the sensitive ears of our neighbours. But, if history is to be written at all, it must be written with all the truth attainable. History, which conceals and glosses, is but historical romance. Moreover, a plain English statement was wanting to redress the balance between us and the French. It must not be forgotten that the example of writing a narrative apportioning to both parties in the alliance the sum of glory gained was set in France, and that a share, ridiculously small, was awarded to the English. We remonstrated at the time, in these pages, against the unfairness and impolicy of allowing such a book as De Bazancourt’s to go forth to the world with the seeming sanction of the Emperor, at a time when the war was yet unfinished. A man of no reputation or ability to justify the selection had been accredited to the French generals in the Crimea. Furnished thus with information, which might be presumed to be reliable, he produced a narrative in which the entire credit for the planning and execution of the successful operations of the war was assigned to the French with impudent mendacity. As might naturally be expected from a nation that believes in Thiers, his account was accepted by the French as veritable history. In England it was but little read. Contemptible as a composition, its representations of facts were not such as to give it a claim to which nothing else entitled it. But, so far as it was read here, it gave just offence. That the Emperor did not disapprove is shown by the fact that the same valuable chronicler was taken to Italy as historiographer of the war in 1859, when another compound of bombastic glorification and misrepresentation was given to the world under imperial auspices. No Englishman or candid Frenchman who reads the account of the Crimean Campaign by the Baron De Bazancourt will deny that it was incumbent on us to tell our own tale; and we rejoice that it is told by one who, with such remarkable faculty for charming an audience and imparting to it his own impressions, trusts, nevertheless, to facts and proofs derived from the documents intrusted to him, for supporting his claim for justice.
The long European peace had left the armies of the Great Powers with little except a traditional knowledge of civilised war. It is true that part of the English army had seen service in India; a large portion of the French troops had made campaigns in Algeria; and the Russians had for years carried on a desultory warfare in Circassia. But none of these theatres of operations had been of a kind to serve as schools of training for encounters with a disciplined foe. Nor had they developed amidst the officers that high talent for superior commands to which either country could turn with confidence. Accordingly, the English fell back upon their traditions of the old wars of Wellington, as embodied in his friend Lord Raglan. Whether he was likely to make a great general or not, it was impossible for anybody to say, for his career had not been such as to offer any field for the display of the talents requisite in a commander. Sixty-six is not perhaps the most favourable age for a first essay in any walk in life. But it was known that he was accustomed to military business; that his conciliatory and courteous manners would be of great service in an allied army, and that his rank and dignity would ensure the respect necessary for the maintenance of our proper position in the alliance; while, if he had not commanded armies himself, he had been intimate with him whom we regarded as the commander without a peer. The French had no available relics of the wars of the First Empire; and if any such had existed, there were other claimants to be considered, namely, those soldiers of fortune to whom the Emperor was under obligations for their share in the coup d’état. The claims of St Arnaud surpassed all others. He was a frothy, vainglorious, gallant man, who had never shown capacity for any operation more considerable than a raid against the Arabs. His published letters breathe a high ambition and spirit of enterprise, but do not reveal any rare military quality. Lord Russell himself could not be more ready to take the lead in any description of onerous undertaking. But his self-confidence seems to have had no deeper root than vanity; for, whereas his letters to his relations are full of the great part he is playing, or means to play, neither his acts, nor the official records of his doings as Commander of the French army, corroborate the views of his own pre-eminence which he imparted to his family. Mr Kinglake drily accounts for the selection of this commander by saying that he was ambitious of leading the enterprise, and that “the French Emperor took him at his word, consenting, as was very natural, that his dangerous, insatiate friend, should have a command which would take him into the country of the Lower Danube.” If it is by this intended we should infer that the wily potentate expected the climate to disagree with him, the anticipation was fulfilled; for a frame already weakened by long disease broke up entirely under the assault of the fever of Varna. The Russians possessed a fine old remnant of antiquity in Prince Paskiewitch, which was furbished up, and did very well till, meeting with a mischance before Silistria, at the outset of the war, he vanished, and the effort to supply his place with a creditable general was not successful. As regards military talent, then, it would not seem that either belligerent possessed an advantage which would preclude Fortune from exercising her proverbial function of favouring the brave.
While the English and French troops were on the way to Turkey, the Russians had opened an offensive campaign. The method of doing this was prescribed to them by the features of the theatre of war. The Danube, flowing round Wallachia, turns northward and meets the Pruth, so as to include between the two rivers and the sea a narrow strip; the part of which, north of the Danube, is a Russian province, Bessarabia, and that south of the Danube a Turkish province, the Dobrudja. Should the Russians seek to pass into Turkey through Wallachia, they would lend a flank to an attack from Austria, if she were to carry her hostility to the point of war, and their troops would be very critically placed between Austrian and Turkish foes. But by advancing along the strip the Russians passed at once from Russian to Turkish territory; while the Danube covered their right flank from Austria. Still, in order to proceed beyond the Dobrudja in the direction of the Balkan, and thence towards Constantinople, as they had done with such signal success in 1829, it was indispensable that they should begin by taking Silistria—and more than ever indispensable now that the Allies had command of the Euxine. Accordingly, the opening of the campaign was marked by the siege of Silistria by the Russians.
Although it soon appeared that Silistria was bravely defended, it was not expected that the fortress could hold out long. And therefore, in anticipation of such decisive movements as those of 1829, the first intention of the Allies was to fortify Gallipoli, thus securing the Dardanelles as a channel of supply, and the Chersonese peninsula as a secure base from whence to operate in Turkey. But it soon appeared that Russia was stumbling at the first obstacle. Gallipoli, therefore, ceased to be of present importance; and the next idea was to transport the armies to that point from whence they could most speedily meet the enemy. And that point was evidently Varna.
Mr Kinglake chronicles two facts relating to this period, not hitherto published, and the knowledge of both of which he probably derived (certainly of one) from Lord Raglan’s papers. The first is the project of St Arnaud to obtain command of the Turkish forces. How this was defeated is recorded in one of Mr Kinglake’s most characteristic passages, where the lively, pushing, aspiring Marshal finds his confidence in his own scheme suddenly evaporating before the grave dignified courtesy of Lord Stratford, and the mildly implied disapproval of Lord Raglan. The other is, that, after the embarkation was agreed on, St Arnaud suddenly announced, that he should move his army by land to the south of the Balkan; and that, according to his plan, the English should take the left of the proposed strategical line, and therefore be farthest from their supplies coming from sea. This scheme, also, he relinquished; but the fact is notable, first, as showing the propensity to take what advantage he could at the expense of his ally; and secondly, as correcting the view of his own predominance and superior earnestness for action, conveyed in his private correspondence and in De Bazancourt’s narrative.
The armies landed at Varna, and a campaign in Bulgaria was expected. “My plan is,” quoth St Arnaud, “to save the fortress, and to push the Russians into the Danube.” He tells his brother in Paris, that the operation of moving to aid Silistria will be hazardous, for the Russians may come down on his right and rear, seize the road of Varna and Pravadi, and cut him off from the sea. “But, be easy,” he says consolingly, “I have taken my precautions against the manœuvre, and I will defeat it.” Not difficult to defeat, one might think, since the enemy who should attempt it must be commanded by a lunatic. However, while the Allies were still waiting in vain for the means of transport to take the field, their difficulties and projects were ended by an unlooked for incident. The Russians, finding the outermost barrier of Turkey impregnable, raised the siege, and withdrew across the Danube. The immense amount of military reputation which they thereby lost was placed with interest to the credit of the Turks. But the position in which the Allied Generals found themselves, thus hurrying to save a fortress which saved itself, and left without an enemy, was extremely bewildering. St Arnaud seems characteristically to have imagined that the Russians were frightened by his reputation into retreat. “They fly me,” he says, while lamenting the loss of a triumph for himself and his army, which he had contemplated as certain. Not only the Generals but their Governments were embarrassed and mortified at being thus baulked. The Emperor’s object could not be attained by mere success without glory. The British people, already impatient of delays, the causes of which, though inevitable, they could not understand, were clamorous for action. Nor did they content themselves with insisting that something should be done. They indicated the line of action. Urged, as Mr Kinglake contends, by the press, they shouted with one voice for an attack on Sebastopol, and this measure the Government enjoined Lord Raglan to execute. The French Government did not urge St Arnaud to propose the step; but, if the English were willing for it, he was not at liberty to withhold his consent. Two questions occur here: was the Government right in thus ordering the commander of the army to take a step to which his own judgment might be opposed? and was the step thus indicated a wise one?