A History of Modern Europe, 1792-1878 Part 49

With the liberation of the Princ.i.p.alities the avowed ground of war pa.s.sed away; but the Western Powers had no intention of making peace without further concessions on the part of Russia. As soon as the siege of Silistria was raised instructions were sent to the commanders of the allied armies at Varna, pressing, if not absolutely commanding, them to attack Sebastopol, the headquarters of Russian maritime power in the Euxine. The capture of Sebastopol had been indicated some months before by Napoleon III. as the most effective blow that could be dealt to Russia. It was from Sebastopol that the fleet had issued which destroyed the Turks at Sinope: until this a.r.s.enal had fallen, the growing naval might which pressed even more directly upon Constantinople than the neighbourhood of the Czar's armies by land could not be permanently laid low. The objects sought by England and France were now gradually brought into sufficient clearness to be communicated to the other Powers, though the more precise interpretation of the conditions laid down remained open for future discussion. It was announced that the Protectorate of Russia over the Danubian Princ.i.p.alities and Servia must be abolished; that the navigation of the Danube at its mouths must be freed from all obstacles; that the Treaty of July, 1841, relating to the Black Sea and the Dardanelles, must be revised in the interest of the balance of power in Europe; and that the claim to any official Protectorate over Christian subjects of the Porte, of whatever rite, must be abandoned by the Czar. Though these conditions, known as the Four Points, were not approved by Prussia, they were accepted by Austria in August, 1854, and were laid before Russia as the basis of any negotiation for peace. The Czar declared in answer that Russia would only negotiate on such a basis when at the last extremity. The Allied Governments, measuring their enemy's weakness by his failure before Silistria, were determined to accept nothing less; and the attack upon Sebastopol, ordered before the evacuation of the Princ.i.p.alities, was consequently allowed to take its course. [471]

[Sebastopol.]

[The Allies land in the Crimea, Sept. 14.]

[Battle of the Alma, Sept. 20.]

The Roadstead, or Great Harbour, of Sebastopol runs due eastwards inland from a point not far from the south-western extremity of the Crimea. One mile from the open sea its waters divide, the larger arm still running eastwards till it meets the River Tchernaya, the smaller arm, known as the Man-of-War Harbour, bending sharply to the south. On both sides of this smaller harbour Sebastopol is built. To the seaward, that is from the smaller harbour westwards, Sebastopol and its approaches were thoroughly fortified. On its landward, southern, side the town had been open till 1853, and it was still but imperfectly protected, most weakly on the south-eastern side. On the north of the Great Harbour Fort Constantine at the head of a line of strong defences guarded the entrance from the sea; while on the high ground immediately opposite Sebastopol and commanding the town there stood the Star Fort with other military constructions. The general features of Sebastopol were known to the Allied commanders; they had, however, no precise information as to the force by which it was held, nor as to the armament of its fortifications. It was determined that the landing should be made in the Bay of Eupatoria, thirty miles north of the fortress. Here, on the 14th of September, the Allied forces, numbering about thirty thousand French, twenty-seven thousand English, and seven thousand Turks, effected their disembarkation without meeting any resistance. The Russians, commanded by Prince Menschikoff, lately envoy at Constantinople, had taken post ten miles further south on high ground behind the River Alma. On the 20th of September they were attacked in front by the English, while the French attempted a turning movement from the sea.

The battle was a scene of confusion, and for a moment the a.s.sault of the English seemed to be rolled back. But it was renewed with ever increasing vigour, and before the French had made any impression on the Russian left Lord Raglan's troops had driven the enemy from their positions. Struck on the flank when their front was already broken, outnumbered and badly led, the Russians gave up all for lost. The form of an orderly retreat was maintained only long enough to disguise from the conquerors the completeness of their victory. When night fell the Russian army abandoned itself to total disorder, and had the pursuit been made at once it could scarcely have escaped destruction. But St. Arnaud, who was in the last stage of mortal illness, refused, in spite of the appeal of Lord Raglan, to press on his wearied troops. Menschikoff, abandoning the hope of checking the advance of the Allies in a second battle, and anxious only to prevent the capture of Sebastopol by an enemy supposed to be following at his heels, retired into the fortress, and there sank seven of his war-ships as a barrier across the mouth of the Great Harbour, mooring the rest within.

The crews were brought on sh.o.r.e to serve in the defence by land; the guns were dragged from the ships to the bastions and redoubts. Then, when it appeared that the Allies lingered, the Russian commander altered his plan.

Leaving Korniloff, the Vice-Admiral, and Todleben, an officer of engineers, to man the existing works and to throw up new ones where the town was undefended, Menschikoff determined to lead off the bulk of his army into the interior of the Crimea, in order to keep open his communications with Russia, to await in freedom the arrival of reinforcements, and, if Sebastopol should not at once fall, to attack the Allies at his own time and opportunity. (September 24th.)

[Flank march to south of Sebastopol.]

[Ineffectual Bombardment, Sept. 17-25.]

The English had lost in the battle of the Alma about two thousand men, the French probably less than half that number. On the morning after the engagement Lord Raglan proposed that the two armies should march straight against the fortifications lying on the north of the Great Harbour, and carry these by storm, so winning a position where their guns would command Sebastopol itself. The French, supported by Burgoyne, the chief of the English engineers, shrank from the risk of a front attack on works supposed to be more formidable than they really were, and induced Lord Raglan to consent to a long circuitous march which would bring the armies right round Sebastopol to its more open southern side, from which, it was thought, an a.s.sault might be successfully made. This flank-march, which was one of extreme risk, was carried out safely, Menschikoff himself having left Sebastopol, and having pa.s.sed along the same road in his retreat into the interior a little before the appearance of the Allies. Pushing southward, the English reached the sea at Balaclava, and took possession of the harbour there, accepting the exposed eastward line between the fortress and the Russia is outside; the French, now commanded by Canrobert, continued their march westwards round the back of Sebastopol, and touched the sea at Kasatch Bay. The two armies were thus masters of the broken plateau which, rising westwards from the plain of Balaclava and the valley of the Tchernaya, overlooks Sebastopol on its southern side. That the garrison, which now consisted chiefly of sailors, could at this moment have resisted the onslaught of the fifty thousand troops who had won the battle of the Alma, the Russians themselves did not believe; [472] but once more the French staff, with Burgoyne, urged caution, and it was determined to wait for the siege-guns, which were still at sea. The decision was a fatal one.

While the Allies chose positions for their heavy artillery and slowly landed and placed their guns, Korniloff and Todleben made the fortifications on the southern side of Sebastopol an effective barrier before an enemy. The sacrifice of the Russian fleet had not been in vain.

The sailors were learning all the duties of a garrison: the cannon from the ships proved far more valuable on land. Three weeks of priceless time were given to leaders who knew how to turn every moment to account. When, on the 17th of October, the bombardment which was to precede the a.s.sault on Sebastopol began, the French artillery, operating on the south-west, was overpowered by that of the defenders. The fleets in vain thundered against the solid sea-front of the fortress. At the end of eight days' cannonade, during which the besiegers' batteries poured such a storm of shot and sh.e.l.l upon Sebastopol as no fortress had yet withstood, the defences were still unbroken.

[Battle of Balaclava, Oct. 25.]

Menschikoff in the meantime had received the reinforcements which he expected, and was now ready to fall upon the besiegers from the east. His point of attack was the English port of Balaclava and the fortified road lying somewhat east of this, which formed the outer line held by the English and their Turkish supports. The plain of Balaclava is divided by a low ridge into a northern and a southern valley. Along this ridge runs the causeway, which had been protected by redoubts committed to a weak Turkish guard. On the morning of the 25th the Russians appeared in the northern valley. They occupied the heights rising from it on the north and east, attacked the causeway, captured three of the redoubts, and drove off the Turks, left to meet their onset alone. Lord Raglan, who watched these operations from the edge of the western plateau, ordered up infantry from a distance, but the only English troops on the spot were a light and a heavy brigade of cavalry, each numbering about six hundred men. The Heavy Brigade, under General Scarlett, was directed to move towards Balaclava itself, which was now threatened. While they were on the march, a dense column of Russian cavalry, about three thousand strong, appeared above the crest of the low ridge, ready, as it seemed, to overwhelm the weak troops before them. But in their descent from the ridge the Russians halted, and Scarlett with admirable courage and judgment formed his men for attack, and charged full into the enemy with the handful who were nearest to him. They cut their way into the very heart of the column; and before the Russians could crush them with mere weight the other regiments of the same brigade hurled themselves on the right and on the left against the huge inert ma.s.s.

The Russians broke and retreated in disorder before a quarter of their number, leaving to Scarlett and his men the glory of an action which ranks with the Prussian attack at Mars-la-Tour in 1870 as the most brilliant cavalry operation in modern warfare. The squadrons of the Light Brigade, during the peril and the victory of their comrades, stood motionless, paralysed by the same defect of temper or intelligence in command which was soon to devote them to a fruitless but ever-memorable act of self-sacrifice. Russian infantry were carrying off the cannon from the conquered redoubts on the causeway, when an aide-de-camp from the general-in-chief brought to the Earl of Lucan, commander of the cavalry, an order to advance rapidly to the front, and save these guns. Lucan, who from his position could see neither the enemy nor the guns, believed himself ordered to attack the Russian artillery at the extremity of the northern valley, and he directed the Light Brigade to charge in this direction. It was in vain that the leader of the Light Brigade, Lord Cardigan, warned his chief, in words which were indeed but too weak, that there was a battery in front, a battery on each flank, and that the ground was covered with Russian riflemen. The order was repeated as that of the head of the army, and it was obeyed. Thus

"Into the valley of Death Rode the Six Hundred."

How they died there, the remnant not turning till they had hewn their way past the guns and routed the enemy's cavalry behind them, the English people will never forget. [473]

[Battle of Inkermann, Nov. 5.]

The day of Balaclava brought to each side something of victory and something of failure. The Russians remained masters of the road that they had captured, and carried off seven English guns; the English, where they had met the enemy, proved that they could defeat overwhelming numbers. Not many days pa.s.sed before our infantry were put to the test which the cavalry had so victoriously undergone. The siege-approaches of the French had been rapidly advanced, and it was determined that on the 5th of November the long-deferred a.s.sault on Sebastopol should be made. On that very morning, under cover of a thick mist, the English right was a.s.sailed by ma.s.sive columns of the enemy. Menschikoff's army had now risen to a hundred thousand men; he had thrown troops into Sebastopol, and had planned the capture of the English positions by a combined attack from Sebastopol itself, and by troops advancing from the lower valley of the Tchernaya across the bridge of Inkermann. The battle of the 5th of November, on the part of the English, was a soldier's battle, without generalship, without order, without design. The men, standing to their ground whatever their own number and whatever that of the foe, fought, after their ammunition was exhausted, with bayonets, with the b.u.t.t ends of their muskets, with their fists and with stones. For hours the ever-surging Russian ma.s.s rolled in upon them; but they maintained the unequal struggle until the arrival of French regiments saved them from their deadly peril and the enemy were driven in confusion from the field. The Russian columns, marching right up to the guns, had been torn in pieces by artillery-fire. Their loss in killed and wounded was enormous, their defeat one which no ingenuity could disguise. Yet the battle of Inkermann had made the capture of Sebastopol, as it had been planned by the Allies, impossible. Their own loss was too great, the force which the enemy had displayed was too vast, to leave any hope that the fortress could be mastered by a sudden a.s.sault. The terrible truth soon became plain that the enterprise on which the armies had been sent had in fact failed, and that another enterprise of a quite different character, a winter siege in the presence of a superior enemy, a campaign for which no preparations had been made, and for which all that was most necessary was wanting, formed the only alternative to an evacuation of the Crimea.

[Storm of Nov. 14.]

[Winter in the Crimea.]

On the 14th of November the Euxine winter began with a storm which swept away the tents on the exposed plateau, and wrecked twenty-one vessels bearing stores of ammunition and clothing. From this time rain and snow turned the tract between the camp and Balaclava into a mora.s.s. The loss of the paved road which had been captured by the Russians three weeks before now told with fatal effect on the British army. The only communication with the port of Balaclava was by a hillside track, which soon became impa.s.sable by carts. It was necessary to bring up supplies on the backs of horses; but the horses perished from famine and from excessive labour. The men were too few, too weak, too dest.i.tute of the helpful ways of English sailors, to a.s.sist in providing for themselves. Thus penned up on the bleak promontory, cholera-stricken, mocked rather than sustained during their benumbing toil with rations of uncooked meat and green coffee-berries, the British soldiery wasted away. Their effective force sank at midwinter to eleven thousand men. In the hospitals, which even at Scutari were more deadly to those who pa.s.sed within them than the fiercest fire of the enemy, nine thousand men perished before the end of February. The time indeed came when the very Spirit of Mercy seemed to enter these abodes of woe, and in the presence of Florence Nightingale nature at last regained its healing power, pestilence no longer hung in the atmosphere which the sufferers breathed, and death itself grew mild. But before this new influence had vanquished routine the grave had closed over whole regiments of men whom it had no right to claim. The sufferings of other armies have been on a greater scale, but seldom has any body of troops furnished a heavier tale of loss and death in proportion to its numbers than the British army during the winter of the Crimean War. The unsparing exposure in the Press of the mismanagement under which our soldiers were perishing excited an outburst of indignation which overthrew Lord Aberdeen's Ministry and placed Palmerston in power. It also gave to Europe at large an impression that Great Britain no longer knew how to conduct a war, and unduly raised the reputation of the French military administration, whose shortcomings, great as they were, no French journalist dared to describe. In spite of Alma and Inkermann, the military prestige of England was injured, not raised, by the Crimean campaign; nor was it until the suppression of the Indian Mutiny that the true capacity of the nation in war was again vindicated before the world.

[Death of Nicholas, March 2, 1855.]

[Conference of Vienna, March-May, 1855.]

[Austria.]

"I have two generals who will not fail me," the Czar is reported to have said when he heard of Menschikoff's last defeat, "Generals January and February." General February fulfilled his task, but he smote the Czar too.

In the first days of March a new monarch inherited the Russian crown. [474]

Alexander II. ascended the throne, announcing that he would adhere to the policy of Peter the Great, of Catherine, and of Nicholas. But the proud tone was meant rather for the ear of Russia than of Europe, since Nicholas had already expressed his willingness to treat for peace on the basis laid down by the Western Powers in August, 1854. This change was not produced wholly by the battles of Alma and Inkermann. Prussia, finding itself isolated in Germany, had after some months of hesitation given a diplomatic sanction to the Four Points approved by Austria as indispensable conditions of peace. Russia thus stood forsaken, as it seemed, by its only friend, and Nicholas could no longer hope to escape with the mere abandonment of those claims which had been the occasion of the war. He consented to treat with his enemies on their own terms. Austria now approached still more closely to the Western Powers, and bound itself by treaty, in the event of peace not being concluded by the end of the year on the stated basis, to deliberate with France and England upon effectual means for obtaining the object of the Alliance. [475] Preparations were made for a Conference at Vienna, from which Prussia, still declining to pledge itself to warlike action in case of the failure of the negotiations, was excluded. The sittings of the Conference began a few days after the accession of Alexander II. Russia was represented by its amba.s.sador, Prince Alexander Gortschakoff, who, as Minister of later years, was to play so conspicuous a part in undoing the work of the Crimean epoch. On the first two Articles forming the subject of negotiation, namely the abolition of the Russian Protectorate over Servia and the Princ.i.p.alities, and the removal of all impediments to the free navigation of the Danube, agreement was reached.

On the third Article, the revision of the Treaty of July, 1841, relating to the Black Sea and the Dardanelles, the Russian envoy and the representatives of the Western Powers found themselves completely at variance. Gortschakoff had admitted that the Treaty of 1841 must be so revised as to put an end to the preponderance of Russia in the Black Sea; [476] but while the Western Governments insisted upon the exclusion of Russian war-vessels from these waters, Gortschakoff would consent only to the abolition of Russia's preponderance by the free admission of the war-vessels of all nations, or by some similar method of counterpoise.

The negotiations accordingly came to an end, but not before Austria, disputing the contention of the Allies that the object of the third Article could be attained only by the specific means proposed by them, had brought forward a third scheme based partly upon the limitation of the Russian navy in the Euxine, partly upon the admission of war-ships of other nations. This scheme was rejected by the Western Powers, whereupon Austria declared that its obligations under the Treaty of December 2nd, 1854, had now been fulfilled, and that it returned in consequence to the position of a neutral.

Great indignation was felt and was expressed at London and Paris at this so-called act of desertion, and at the subsequent withdrawal of Austrian regiments from the positions which they had occupied in antic.i.p.ation of war. It was alleged that in the first two conditions of peace Austria had seen its own special interests effectually secured; and that as soon as the Court of St. Petersburg had given the necessary a.s.surances on these heads the Cabinet of Vienna was willing to sacrifice the other objects of the Alliance and to abandon the cause of the Maritime Powers, in order to regain, with whatever loss of honour, the friendship of the Czar. Though it was answered with perfect truth that Austria had never accepted the principle of the exclusion of Russia from the Black Sea, and was still ready to take up arms in defence of that system by which it considered that Russia's preponderance in the Black Sea might be most suitably prevented, this argument sounded hollow to combatants convinced of the futility of all methods for holding Russia in check except their own. Austria had grievously injured its own position and credit with the Western Powers. On the other hand it had wounded Russia too deeply to win from the Czar the forgiveness which it expected. Its policy of balance, whether best described as too subtle or as too impartial, had miscarried. It had forfeited its old, without acquiring new friendships. It remained isolated in Europe, and destined to meet without support and without an ally the blows which were soon to fall upon it.

[Progress of the siege, January-May, 1855.]

[Canrobert succeeded by Pelissier, May.]

[Unsuccessful a.s.sault, June 18.]

[Battle of the Tchernaya, Aug. 16.]

[Capture of the Malakoff, Sept. 8.]

[Fall of Sebastopol, Sept. 9.]

The prospects of the besieging armies before Sebastopol were in some respects better towards the close of January, 1855, than they were when the Conference of Vienna commenced its sittings six weeks later. Sardinia, under the guidance of Cavour, had joined the Western Alliance, and was about to send fifteen thousand soldiers to the Crimea. A new plan of operations, which promised excellent results, had been adopted at headquarters. Up to the end of 1854 the French had directed their main attack against the Flagstaff bastion, a little to the west of the head of the Man-of-War Harbour. They were now, however, convinced by Lord Raglan that the true keystone to the defences of Sebastopol was the Malakoff, on the eastern side, and they undertook the reduction of this formidable work, while the British directed their efforts against the neighbouring Redan.

[477] The heaviest fire of the besiegers being thus concentrated on a narrow line, it seemed as if Sebastopol must soon fall. But at the beginning of February a sinister change came over the French camp. General Niel arrived from Paris vested with powers which really placed him in control of the general-in-chief; and though Canrobert was but partially made acquainted with the Emperor's designs, he was forced to sacrifice to them much of his own honour and that of the army. Napoleon had determined to come to the Crimea himself, and at the fitting moment to end by one grand stroke the war which had dragged so heavily in the hands of others.

He believed that Sebastopol could only be taken by a complete investment; and it was his design to land with a fresh army on the south-eastern coast of the Crimea, to march across the interior of the peninsula, to sweep Menschikoff's forces from their position above the Tchernaya, and to complete the investment of Sebastopol from the north. With this scheme of operations in view, all labour expended in the attack on Sebastopol from the south was effort thrown away. Canrobert, who had promised his most vigorous co-operation to Lord Raglan, was fettered and paralysed by the Emperor's emissary at headquarters. For three successive months the Russians not only held their own, but by means of counter-approaches won back from the French some of the ground that they had taken. The very existence of the Alliance was threatened when, after Canrobert and Lord Raglan had despatched a force to seize the Russian posts on the Sea of Azof, the French portion of this force was peremptorily recalled by the Emperor, in order that it might be employed in the march northwards across the Crimea. At length, unable to endure the miseries of the position, Canrobert asked to be relieved of his command. He was succeeded by General Pelissier. Pelissier, a resolute, energetic soldier, one moreover who did not owe his promotion to complicity in the _coup d'etat_, flatly refused to obey the Emperor's orders. Sweeping aside the flimsy schemes evolved at the Tuileries, he returned with all his heart to the plan agreed upon by the Allied commanders at the beginning of the year; and from this time, though disasters were still in store, they were not the result of faltering or disloyalty at the headquarters of the French army. The general a.s.sault on the Malakoff and the Redan was fixed for the 18th of June. It was bravely met by the Russians; the Allies were driven back with heavy loss, and three months more were added to the duration of the siege. Lord Raglan did not live to witness the last stage of the war. Exhausted by his labours, heartsick at the failure of the great attack, he died on the 28th of June, leaving the command to General Simpson, an officer far his inferior. As the lines of the besiegers approached nearer and nearer to the Russian fortifications, the army which had been defeated at Inkermann advanced for one last effort. Crossing the Tchernaya, it gave battle on the 16th of August. The French and the Sardinians, with little a.s.sistance from the British army, won a decisive victory. Sebastopol could hope no longer for a.s.sistance from without, and on the 8th of September the blow which had failed in June was dealt once more. The French, throwing themselves in great strength upon the Malakoff, carried this fortress by storm, and frustrated every effort made for its recovery; the British, attacking the Redan with a miserably weak force, were beaten and overpowered. But the fall of the Malakoff was in itself equivalent to the capture of Sebastopol.

A few more hours pa.s.sed, and a series of tremendous explosions made known to the Allies that the Russian commander was blowing up his magazines and withdrawing to the north of the Great Harbour. The prize was at length won, and at the end of a siege of three hundred and fifty days what remained of the Czar's great fortress pa.s.sed into the hands of his enemies.

[Exhaustion of Russia.]

[Fall of Kars, Nov. 28.]

[Negotiations for peace.]

The Allies had lost since their landing in the Crimea not less than a hundred thousand men. An enterprise undertaken in the belief that it would be accomplished in the course of a few weeks, and with no greater sacrifice of life than attends every attack upon a fortified place, had proved arduous and terrible almost beyond example. Yet if the Crimean campaign was the result of error and blindness on the part of the invaders, it was perhaps even more disastrous to Russia than any warfare in which an enemy would have been likely to engage with fuller knowledge of the conditions to be met. The vast distances that separated Sebastopol from the military depots in the interior of Russia made its defence a drain of the most fearful character on the levies and the resources of the country. What tens of thousands sank in the endless, unsheltered march without ever nearing the sea, what provinces were swept of their beasts of burden, when every larger sh.e.l.l fired against the enemy had to be borne hundreds of miles by oxen, the records of the war but vaguely make known. The total loss of the Russians should perhaps be reckoned at three times that of the Allies. Yet the fall of Sebastopol was not immediately followed by peace. The hesitation of the Allies in cutting off the retreat of the Russian army had enabled its commander to retain his hold upon the Crimea; in Asia, the delays of a Turkish relieving army gave to the Czar one last gleam of success in the capture of Kars, which, after a strenuous resistance, succ.u.mbed to famine on the 28th of November. But before Kars had fallen negotiations for peace had commenced. France was weary of the war.

Napoleon, himself unwilling to continue it except at the price of French aggrandis.e.m.e.nt on the Continent, was surrounded by a band of palace stock-jobbers who had staked everything on the rise of the funds that would result from peace. It was known at every Court of Europe that the Allies were completely at variance with one another; that while the English nation, stung by the failure of its military administration during the winter, by the nullity of its naval operations in the Baltic, and by the final disaster at the Redan, was eager to prove its real power in a new campaign, the ruler of France, satisfied with the crowning glory of the Malakoff, was anxious to conclude peace on any tolerable terms. Secret communications from St. Petersburg were made at Paris by Baron Seebach, envoy of Saxony, a son-in-law of the Russian Chancellor: the Austrian Cabinet, still bent on acting the part of arbiter, but hopeless of the results of a new Conference, addressed itself to the Emperor Napoleon singly, and persuaded him to enter into a negotiation which was concealed for a while from Great Britain. The two intrigues were simultaneously pursued by our ally, but Seebach's proposals were such that even the warmest friends of Russia at the Tuileries could scarcely support them, and the Viennese diplomatists won the day. It was agreed that a note containing Preliminaries of Peace should be presented by Austria at St. Petersburg as its own ultimatum, after the Emperor Napoleon should have won from the British Government its a.s.sent to these terms without any alteration. The Austrian project embodied indeed the Four Points which Britain had in previous months fixed as the conditions of peace, and in substance it differed little from what, even after the fall of Sebastopol, British statesmen were still prepared to accept; but it was impossible that a scheme completed without the partic.i.p.ation of Britain and laid down for its pa.s.sive acceptance should be thus uncomplainingly adopted by its Government. Lord Palmerston required that the Four Articles enumerated should be understood to cover points not immediately apparent on their surface, and that a fifth Article should be added reserving to the Powers the right of demanding certain further special conditions, it being understood that Great Britain would require under this clause only that Russia should bind itself to leave the land Islands in the Baltic Sea unfortified. Modified in accordance with the demand of the British Government, the Austrian draft was presented to the Czar at the end of December, with the notification that if it as not accepted by the 16th of January the Austrian amba.s.sador would quit St. Petersburg. On the 15th a Council was held in the presence of the Czar. Nesselrode, who first gave his opinion, urged that the continuance of the war would plunge Russia into hostilities with all Europe, and advised submission to a compact which would last only until Russia had recovered its strength or new relations had arisen among the Powers. One Minister after another declared that Poland, Finland, the Crimea, and the Caucasus would be endangered if peace were not now made; the Chief of the Finances stated that Russia could not go through another campaign without bankruptcy. [478] At the end of the discussion the Council declared unanimously in favour of accepting the Austrian propositions; and although the national feeling was still in favour of resistance, there appears to have been one Russian statesman alone, Prince Gortschakoff, amba.s.sador at Vienna, who sought to dissuade the Czar from making peace. His advice was not taken. The vote of the Council was followed by the despatch of plenipotentiaries to Paris, and here, on the 25th of February, 1856, the envoys of all the Powers, with the exception of Prussia, a.s.sembled in Conference, in order to frame the definitive Treaty of Peace. [479]

[Conference of Paris, Feb. 25, 1856.]

[Treaty of Paris, March 30, 1856.]

In the debates which now followed, and which occupied more than a month, Lord Clarendon, who represented Great Britain, discovered that in each contested point he had to fight against the Russian and the French envoys combined, so completely was the Court of the Tuileries now identified with a policy of conciliation and friendliness towards Russia. [480] Great firmness, great plainness of speech was needed on the part of the British Government, in order to prevent the recognised objects of the war from being surrendered by its ally, not from a conviction that they were visionary or unattainable, but from unsteadiness of purpose and from the desire to convert a defeated enemy into a friend. The end, however, was at length reached, and on the 30th of March the Treaty of Paris was signed.

The Black Sea was neutralised; its waters and ports, thrown open to the mercantile marine of every nation, were formally and in perpetuity interdicted to the war-ships both of the Powers possessing its coasts and of all other Powers. The Czar and the Sultan undertook not to establish or maintain upon its coasts any military or maritime a.r.s.enal. Russia ceded a portion of Bessarabia, accepting a frontier which excluded it from the Danube. The free navigation of this river, henceforth to be effectively maintained by an international Commission, was declared part of the public law of Europe. The Powers declared the Sublime Porte admitted to partic.i.p.ate in the advantages of the public law and concert of Europe, each engaging to respect the independence and integrity of the Ottoman Empire, and all guaranteeing in common the strict observance of this engagement, and promising to consider any act tending to its violation as a question of general interest. The Sultan "having, in his constant solicitude for the welfare of his subjects, issued a firman recording his generous intentions towards the Christian population of his empire, [481] and having communicated it to the Powers," the Powers "recognised the high value of this communication," declaring at the same time "that it could not, in any case, give to them the right to interfere, either collectively or separately, in the relations of the Sultan to his subjects, or in the internal administration of his empire." The Danubian Princ.i.p.alities, augmented by the strip of Bessarabia taken from Russia, were to continue to enjoy, under the suzerainty of the Porte and under the guarantee of the Powers, all the privileges and immunities of which they were in possession, no exclusive protection being exercised by any of the guaranteeing Powers. [482]

[Agreement of the Conference on rights of neutrals.]

Pa.s.sing beyond the immediate subjects of negotiation, the Conference availed itself of its international character to gain the consent of Great Britain to a change in the laws of maritime war. England had always claimed, and had always exercised, the right to seize an enemy's goods on the high sea though conveyed in a neutral vessel, and to search the merchant-ships of neutrals for this purpose. The exercise of this right had stirred up against England the Maritime League of 1800, and was condemned by nearly the whole civilised world. Nothing short of an absolute command of the seas made it safe or possible for a single Power to maintain a practice which threatened at moments of danger to turn the whole body of neutral States into its enemies. Moreover, if the seizure of belligerents'

goods in neutral ships profited England when it was itself at war, it injured England at all times when it remained at peace during the struggles of other States. Similarly by the issue of privateers England inflicted great injury on its enemies; but its own commerce, exceeding that of every other State, offered to the privateers of its foes a still richer booty.

The advantages of the existing laws of maritime war were not altogether on the side of England, though mistress of the seas; and in return for the abolition of privateering, the British Government consented to surrender its sharpest, but most dangerous, weapon of offence, and to permit the products of a hostile State to find a market in time of war. The rule was laid down that the goods of an enemy other than contraband of war should henceforth be safe under a neutral flag. Neutrals' goods discovered on an enemy's ship were similarly made exempt from capture.

[Fictions of the Treaty of Paris as to Turkey.]

The enactments of the Conference of Paris relating to commerce in time of hostilities have not yet been subjected to the strain of a war between England and any European State; its conclusions on all other subjects were but too soon put to the test, and have one after another been found wanting. If the Power which calls man into his moment of life could smile at the efforts and the a.s.sumptions of its creature, such smile might have been moved by the a.s.sembly of statesmen who, at the close of the Crimean War, affected to shape the future of Eastern Europe. They persuaded themselves that by dint of the iteration of certain phrases they could convert the Sultan and his hungry troop of Pashas into the chiefs of a European State. They imagined that the House of Osman, which in the stages of a continuous decline had successively lost its sway over Hungary, over Servia, over Southern Greece and the Danubian Provinces, and which would twice within the last twenty-five years have seen its Empire dashed to pieces by an Egyptian va.s.sal but for the intervention of Europe, might be arrested in its decadence by an incantation, and be made strong enough and enlightened enough to govern to all time the Slavic and Greek populations which had still the misfortune to be included within its dominions.

Recognising--so ran the words which read like bitter irony, but which were meant for nothing of the kind--the value of the Sultan's promises of reform, the authors of the Treaty of Paris proceeded, as if of set purpose, to extinguish any vestige of responsibility which might have been felt at Constantinople, and any spark of confidence that might still linger among the Christian populations, by declaring that, whether the Sultan observed or broke his promises, in no case could any right of intervention by Europe arise. The helmsman was given his course; the hatches were battened down.

If words bore any meaning, if the Treaty of Paris was not an elaborate piece of imposture, the Christian subjects of the Sultan had for the future, whatever might be their wrongs, no redress to look for but in the exertion of their own power. The terms of the Treaty were in fact such as might have been imposed if the Western Powers had gone to war with Russia for some object of their own, and had been rescued, when defeated and overthrown, by the victorious interposition of the Porte. All was hollow, all based on fiction and convention. The illusions of nations in time of revolutionary excitement, the shallow, sentimental commonplaces of liberty and fraternity have afforded just matter for satire; but no democratic plat.i.tudes were ever more palpably devoid of connection with fact, more flagrantly in contradiction to the experience of the past, or more ignominiously to be refuted by each succeeding act of history, than the deliberate consecration of the idol of an Ottoman Empire as the crowning act of European wisdom in 1856.

[The Danubian Princ.i.p.alities.]