XLI. THE DAYS OF PALMERSTON
1852-65.
[Sidenote: =Expectations of peace.--The Exhibition of 1851.=]
The time which followed the quieting down of England and Europe after the turbulent years 1848 and 1849, was perhaps the most peaceful which the century had known. The English people, overjoyed to find that Chartism was but a bugbear and Irish rebellion a farce, had settled down to enjoy what they trusted would prove a long spell of tranquil prosperity. There was no great political question pending at home, since the Corn Laws were gone, and the Whigs had refused to take up any Radical programme. The continent was quiet, though its stillness only resulted from the dying down for a space of the flames of rebellion in Italy, Germany, and Hungary, where embers still smouldered beneath the apparent deadness of the surface, and only needed a fresh stirring to make them break out again into a blaze. This fact was not appreciated in England, and the year 1851 saw the high-water mark of a vague and optimistic belief that the troubles of the world were over, and a reign of good-fellowship and brotherly affection among nations about to begin. When the Prince Consort opened the first great International Exhibition in Hyde Park in the May of that year, much wild and visionary talk was heard about the end of war, and the advent of an era when all disputes should be settled by arbitration. No expectation was ever more ill-founded. After forty years of comparative peace, since the fall of Napoleon, the continent was just about to see the commencement of a series of four great wars, and England--whose soldiers had not fired a shot in Europe since Waterloo--was not to be without her share in them.
[Sidenote: =Steam navigation.=]
The English people were far from guessing this. Nearly all their attention had been given to matters of domestic policy for the last forty years, and no one thought that other topics were now to engross them. But before passing on to the Crimean war and the struggles that followed it, a few words are needed to show how the England of 1852 differed from the England of the days before the Reform Bill. The first and most striking change visible was the enormous development of the means of internal communication in the land. In 1832 the application of steam to locomotive engines alike on water and on land was just beginning to grow common. The first steam-tug had been seen on the Clyde as far back as 1802, but no serious attempt to utilize the discovery on a large scale, and for long voyages, was made for many years. It was only after 1830 that the steamer began steadily to supersede the sailing-ship for ordinary commercial purposes. But within a few years after that date all passenger traffic was carried on the new paddle-steamer, and a large share of the goods traffic also. It was a sign of the indifference of the nation to things military during the years of the great peace, that ships of war remained unaltered long after the advantages of steam had been discovered. A few small vessels were fitted with paddle-wheels about 1840, and took part in the bombardment of Acre. But even in 1854 most of the line-of-battle ships of Great Britain were still of the old type that Nelson had loved, and depended on their sail power alone.
[Sidenote: =Growth of railways.=]
The utilization of steam for locomotion by land had started in the humble shape of the employment of small engines to drag trucks of coal and stone on local tramways at the slowest of paces. After lingering for some thirty years in this embryo stage, it was suddenly and rapidly developed by George Stephenson, a clever north-country engineer. The first railway on which passengers were conveyed, and merchandise of all kinds carried, was a short line between the two towns of Stockton and Darlington, built by Stephenson's advice in 1825. It was not till five years later that the success of the Stockton and Darlington railway led to the construction of a second and greater venture of the same kind, the Liverpool and Manchester railway, opened in 1830. This line achieved an unhappy notoriety owing to the fact that Huskisson, the Tory Free-Trade minister, was killed by the first train that ran upon it. Though the early railways were slow and inconvenient--their average pace was eight miles an hour, and their carriages were converted stage-coaches, strapped on to trucks--they soon conquered the public confidence, though old-fashioned persons refused for many years to trust themselves to the new-fangled and dangerous mode of locomotion. Between 1830 and 1840 the companies began to multiply rapidly, and in 1844-45 there was a perfect mania for railway construction, and schemes were formed to run lines through every corner of England, whether they were likely to pay or not. Many of these plans were never carried out, others were executed and ruined those who invested in them. But the temporary depression which followed this over-speculation had no long continuance, and the competition of the companies with each other was always increasing the rapidity and comfort of railway travelling. By 1852 it had taken its place among the commonplaces of life, and had profoundly modified the condition of England in several ways. The habit of travelling for pleasure which it begot and fostered, the safe, cheap, and quick transportation of goods which it rendered possible, and the easy transfer of labour from market to market which it favoured, have all had their share in the making of modern England.
[Sidenote: =The Penny Post and the Telegraph.=]
A part only second to that of the railway in modifying the character and habits of the English people was played by two other inventions of the forties. The Penny Post, introduced by the efforts of Rowland Hill in 1840 into every corner of the kingdom, and superseding the old rates which ranged up to many shillings, had a marvellous effect in facilitating communication. To supplement it by a yet more rapid process, the first public Telegraph offices were opened in 1843; but, for many years after, this invention was in the hands of private companies, and was too dear to suit the pocket of the ordinary citizen, who preferred to trust to his letter sent by the Penny Post.
[Sidenote: =The Factory Acts.=]
Meanwhile many other characteristic features of modern English social life were rapidly developing themselves. We have mentioned the misery of the operative classes in the great towns in an earlier chapter. The first efforts to amend their condition date from the years 1832-52. Philanthropists, of whom Lord Shaftesbury was the best known, strove unceasingly to put an end to the worst horrors of the new industrial system. In 1833 acts were passed to prevent mill-owners from working children in their factories for more than half-time. In 1844 Sir Robert Peel put women under the same protection, prohibited lads under eighteen from being given more than twelve hours' labour, and appointed inspectors to go round the factories and see that the law was carried out. The Mines Act of 1842 prohibited women and children from working underground, and a second Mines Act of 1850 put all subterranean labour under government inspection. This benevolent legislation was mainly due to the Tories, for the Liberals, wedded to the principles of strict political economy, were loth to interfere between employer and workman, and generally urged that matters ought to be allowed to right themselves by the laws of supply and demand.
[Sidenote: =Trades Unions.=]
A not less effective means of protection for the operative classes was devised by the workmen themselves. Trades Unions became possible after the laws prohibiting combination of labourers had been repealed in 1824, though governments, both Whig and Tory, still looked upon them with much suspicion and disapproval, and occasionally suppressed them under the plea that they were secret societies for coercing free labour. Strikes, then as now, were often accompanied with violence and rioting, and it had not yet been realized that they might often be justified. But in spite of the frowns of those in authority, the Unions were continually growing in number and in power all through the middle of the century, though they had not yet assumed the inquisitorial and dictatorial tone which they have adopted in our own day, and were still defensive rather than offensive in their character.
[Sidenote: =The state of the Church.=]
While social England was thus assuming its modern shape, the chief factors of the spiritual and intellectual life of the present day were also coming into being. To the period 1832-52 belongs the rise of both of the movements which have stirred the minds of men during the last fifty years. In the early years of the century the condition of the Church of England was very unsatisfactory. The only body within its pale who displayed any zeal or true spiritual life were the Evangelicals, the heirs of the men who had been stirred by the preaching of the contemporaries of Wesley.[63] But they were not a very numerous body, for their general acceptance of the harshest doctrines of Calvinism repelled the majority; moreover, they were destitute of organization, for they worked to increase the religious fervour of the individual soul, not to reform the Church. Yet the Church needed reforming; its higher ranks were still filled by "Greek-play bishops" and promoted royal chaplains; the bulk of the parish clergy, though genial honest men, were neither learned, zealous, nor spiritual-minded, differing often only by the colour of their coats from the squires with whom they associated. The worst part of the situation was that the new masses of the population in the great towns were slipping out of religious habits altogether, owing to the want of missionary zeal among their pastors, and the deplorable dearth of religious endowment in the new centres of life.
[Sidenote: =The "Broad-Church" movement.=]
The reaction against the deadness of the national Church took shape in two new forms. The first was the "Broad-Church" movement, started by men who wished to broaden and popularize the Church by bringing its teaching into accordance with the latest discoveries in science and in history, and by giving it a basis on philosophy rather than on dogma. The first great name in this school was Archbishop Whately (1787-1863); he and his contemporaries laid more stress on logic and philosophy than did the younger generation of Broad Churchmen, who devoted themselves more to reconciling science and religion, and to bringing to bear on the history of Christianity new historical and scientific lights. They only agreed in setting dogma aside, advocating the widest freedom of opinion, and preaching the application of the spirit of Christianity to the everyday acts and duties of life.
[Sidenote: =The Tractarian movement.=]
Very different were the views and aims of the other party in the Church which arose in the years between 1830 and 1840. The new High-Church school thought that the deadness of spiritual life in their day came from a neglect of dogma and a want of appreciation of the unity and historical continuity of the Church of England. Most men then held that the national Church only dated from the Reformation, and that the Bible was the only basis of its doctrines. Against these views the leaders of the new school--the Oxford movement, as it was called, because its three leaders, John Henry Newman, John Keble, and Edward Pusey, were all resident Fellows of Oxford colleges--entered an emphatic protest. They said that the Church of 1835 was the Church of Anselm and Augustine, and that those who wished to make it the Church of Henry VIII. and to cut it off from its place in the unity of Christendom, were guilty of national apostacy. They taught that it was still bound to hold all the dogmas and usages which could be traced back to the days of the early Fathers. Most especially they laid stress on two doctrines of which little had been heard since the days of the Stuarts--the Real Presence in the Sacrament, and the sacrificial priesthood of the clergy. Newman started a series of "Tracts for the Times," to which his friends and followers contributed; they urged that submission to authority in matters doctrinal, and a return to the ritual and practice of the early Church could alone revivify English spiritual life. Unfortunately, it was impossible to find any universally received authority to which to appeal, since Low Churchmen and Broad Churchmen alike denied the first postulates of the Tractarian creed, and fell back on the Thirty-nine Articles and the practice of the last two centuries as the only standard of faith and ceremony that they would recognize. They added that those who yearned after mediaeval doctrine and ritual were mere disguised Romanists, and would find what they wanted in Popery alone.
[Sidenote: =Newman's secession.=]
A storm of wrath was directed against the new High-Churchmen, who were denounced as Jesuits and false brethren. Most of all was the outcry loud when Newman in 1841 wrote a pamphlet to prove that by certain ingenious interpretations of loosely worded portions of the Thirty-nine Articles, a man might hold all the leading doctrines of Rome and yet stay inside the English Church. This curious production was a tour de force which, as he afterwards confessed, did not satisfy his own conscience. He retired from teaching for awhile, and then seceded to the Romanist communion, where alone he felt that he could realize his desire to belong to a Church undoubtedly orthodox and enjoying a right to speak with authority [1845]. Many of his more zealous adherents followed him, at intervals, in the next ten years.
[Sidenote: =The High-Church party.=]
But the bulk of the Tractarians felt sure that the Church of England was a true branch of the Catholic Church and remained within it, gradually conquering the tolerance of their contemporaries by their undoubted zeal and purity of motive. Ere long they acquired a strong position, as their doctrines were very acceptable to the clergy, while the admirable life and work of men like Keble gradually won over many of the laity to their views. To the new High-Church party we owe much good work in neglected parishes, and a restoration of decency and order in public worship, which was a great improvement on the careless and slovenly practice of the eighteenth century. Their efforts led to a revival of interest in Church history and ecclesiastical antiquities. Their influence made the clergy as a body more spiritual and more hard-working. But for a time the Tractarian controversy split England into two hostile camps, and the eccentric mediaevalism of the "Ritualists"--those of the party who strove to restore the forgotten minutiae of pre-Reformation ceremonies--drove Low and Broad Churchmen into extreme wrath. Even yet the breach is not healed, and the Church is divided, though the old bitterness has been forgotten to a great extent in the last ten years. But the net result of the movement has been to substitute zeal--if sometimes the zeal was without discretion--for deadness, and the Church of to-day is far stronger and more powerful than the Church of 1830.
[Sidenote: =The Nonconformists.=]
The most unhappy result of the movement has been to drive the Nonconformists, to whom High-Church doctrine was particularly repulsive, into a deeper antagonism to the Church than they ever felt before. Hence Dissent has become political, putting the disestablishment of the Church of England before it as one of the ends of its work, side by side with its spiritual aims.
[Sidenote: =The Ecclesiastical Titles Bill.=]
The fear that the Tractarian movement would lead to widespread conversions to Romanism turned out to be unjustified. Though a considerable number followed Newman in the forties, the stream soon slackened. Yet for some years the nation was nervously anxious about "Papal aggression," and in 1850, when the Pope issued a Bull which appointed a hierarchy of bishops and archbishops to preside over English sees, the government of Lord John Russell passed an "Ecclesiastical Titles Bill," imposing penalties on all who acknowledged the validity of the Bull. But the excitement died down, and nothing was done to enforce the act.
[Sidenote: =State of the political parties.=]
Meanwhile, if the social and intellectual history of England was interesting, its purely political history was for some years both dull and perplexing. On the fall of the Russell cabinet in the spring of 1852, owing to the quarrel between the prime minister and his masterful Foreign Secretary, Palmerston, English politics were left in a confused and unsatisfactory condition, for there was no party strong enough to command a majority in the country. The Tories were still split into two sections. Sir Robert Peel was dead, killed by a fall from his horse in St. James's Park on July 2, 1850, but his followers still clung together under Lord Aberdeen and Mr. Gladstone, and refused to hold any communication with that larger half of the Conservative party which since Lord George Bentinck's death was led by Disraeli and Lord Derby. The question of Protection still lay between them; but a far more real bar to union was their personal dislike for each other, dating back to the hard words used in 1846 over the Corn Laws. Now that the Liberal party had been for a moment broken up by the quarrel of Russell and Palmerston, there were four factions in the House, each of which was largely outnumbered by the junction of the other three.
[Sidenote: =Lord Derby's ministry.=]
It was difficult to see who should be Lord John Russell's successor, but after some doubting the Queen sent for Lord Derby, one of the chiefs of the Protectionist Tories, and asked him to form a cabinet. He complied, knowing that he could not hold office for long, unless a general election should change the balance of parties in Parliament. Hence followed the short Conservative ministry of March-December, 1852, whose tenure of office was marked by only two events of importance,--the death of the Duke of Wellington on September 14, which removed the last great figure that reminded men of the days of the old wars of George III., and the proclamation of Louis Napoleon as Emperor of the French on December 1. The policy of the Derby-Disraeli ministry was only notable as showing that even the Tory section of the Conservative party had learned something from the events of the last six years. They did not make any open attempt to reintroduce Protection, and Disraeli's budget as Chancellor of the Exchequer was only remarkable for an effort to substitute direct for indirect taxation, in opposition to the strict rules of Political Economy.
The general election, which presented the only chance of salvation for this weak Tory cabinet, disappointed them deeply. They gained a few seats, but not nearly enough to enable them to secure a majority in the new House of Commons, and had to resign shortly after meeting Parliament.
[Sidenote: =The Peelites and the Whigs.=]
To secure any permanent cabinet a coalition was obviously necessary, and on Lord Derby's resignation the natural result followed. The Peelite Conservatives consented to join the Whigs, and thereby a party with a clear majority was formed. There was nothing strange or at all unworthy in this coalition; the more advanced Conservatives were not separated by any great gulf from men like Palmerston, and those other Whigs who thought that reform and change had now gone far enough, and that the constitution needed no further alteration. Both alike believed in Free Trade; both were zealous for the safe-guarding of English interests abroad; both were opposed to the radical reforms which the more advanced wing of the Liberal party were advocating. The Peelites and the moderate Whigs were indeed more at home with each other than with the more extreme men of their own parties. Ere long they coalesced, and--as is always the case--the larger body absorbed the smaller, so that Aberdeen, Gladstone, and their followers became ranked as Liberals.
[Sidenote: =Lord Aberdeen's ministry.=]
In the new ministry Lord Aberdeen was chosen as prime minister; Gladstone, the great financier of the Peelite party, was made Chancellor of the Exchequer; Russell and Palmerston patched up their old quarrel for a space, and took office as Home and Foreign Secretaries; the other posts were equally divided between the two sections of the coalition. This cabinet, created by a compromise, and not viewed with any great enthusiasm by the nation, was destined to chance upon the gravest foreign complication that England had known for forty years.
[Sidenote: =Louis Napoleon.--Designs of the Czar Nicholas.=]
The disturbing elements in Europe at this moment were two in number. The first was the new Emperor of the French, who felt his throne unsteady, and thought that it could be best made firm by a war; for, as a Bonaparte, he felt that great deeds of arms were expected from him. He was at first undecided in his choice of a foe, but events in the East of Europe soon settled his resolve. Czar Nicholas of Russia had long been eyeing the decrepit Turkish empire with greed. He was not satisfied with his gains in the war of 1828, and thought that his vast army could overrun Turkey with ease, if he could be sure that no other European power would interfere. He knew that an attack on Turkey might be resented by England, France, and Austria; but he was prepared to buy them off with a share in the spoil. His point of view was well expressed in the phrases which he used to an English ambassador in 1853: "We have on our hands a sick man--a very sick man; it would be a great misfortune if, one of these days, he should slip away from us before the necessary arrangements have been made." Adding that Turkey must break up ere long, he offered England, as her share in the spoil, Crete and Egypt. Of course the offer was refused, and the indications of the Czar's state of mind on the subject were viewed with some dismay.
[Sidenote: =The Greek and Latin Churches.--Russia prepares for war.=]
The nominal casus belli in the East was a trivial quarrel between Greek and Latin monks in Palestine. There were some disputed rights in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, and the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem, to which both Roman Catholics and Greek Churchmen have access. "All the bloodshed came from a key and a star," as was said at the time, the former being the key of the Holy Sepulchre, of which the Greek and Latin patriarchs both claimed the custody, the latter a large emblem that hung over the altar at Bethlehem. When Russia used her power in favour of the Greeks, Louis Napoleon, eager to assert the influence of France in the East, replied by supporting the Latins. Both threatened the unfortunate Sultan with their displeasure, and when he decided in favour of the Romanists, the Czar proceeded to strong measures of coercion. He demanded that the Sultan should recognize him as the legal protector and guardian of all the Greek Christians within the Turkish empire, a preposterous request, for to grant it would have been equivalent to giving Russia control over the whole of European Turkey. Prince Mentchikoff, a stern and blustering old general, was sent to Constantinople to bring pressure to bear on the Sultan, and soon after, Czar Nicholas sent his armies over the Pruth and occupied Moldavia and Wallachia, two vassal states of Turkey (July, 1853).
[Sidenote: =Palmerston and Sir Stratford Canning.=]
Now, England had no interest in the foolish quarrel about the key and the star, but she was deeply concerned at the occupation of Turkish territory by Russian troops, which foreboded a dash at Constantinople, and an attempt to make an end of the Sultan's rule in Europe. The Aberdeen cabinet had no intention to go to war with Russia, but they could not suffer the Czar's aggression to pass unnoticed, and sent off Sir Stratford Canning, an able diplomatist, who knew the East better than any other living Englishman, to counteract the doings of Prince Mentchikoff on the Bosphorus. Stratford Canning was an old enemy of Russia, and much trusted by the Sultan, who put himself under his advice, and rejected all the demands of Russia. France at the same time bade the Sultan stand his ground, for the Emperor was set on gaining prestige by checking Russia, and quite ready to make war if the Czar would not yield. Palmerston strongly advised Stratford Canning to act vigorously on the same lines as the French ambassador at Constantinople, and thus England was gradually drawn into a hostile attitude towards Russia, before Lord Aberdeen and the rest of the ministry had realized the drift of the action of their energetic colleague at the Foreign Office.
[Sidenote: =Russia declares war on Turkey.=]
The Czar was obstinate, and determined not to yield an inch to the threats of Palmerston or Louis Napoleon; he thought England would not fight, and he despised the brand-new Emperor at Paris. On November 1, 1853, he declared war on Turkey, and a few days later his troops crossed the Danube, while his fleet destroyed a Turkish squadron at Sinope, and got complete control of the Black Sea.
[Sidenote: =England and France join the Turks.=]
This violent action put the Aberdeen cabinet in great perturbation of spirit; they did not want to declare war on Russia; yet they had gone so far in opposing the Czar, that they could not retire from their position without deep humiliation. Even yet they might have drawn back, if Lord Palmerston had not threatened to resign unless strong measures were taken. Yielding to him, the ministers consented to join the French Emperor in sending an ultimatum to St. Petersburg, menacing war unless the Russian troops were withdrawn from Turkish soil. Nicholas I. proved recalcitrant, and only ordered his armies to press the sieges of the fortresses of Bulgaria which they were beleaguering. Accordingly England and France declared war on him on March 27, 1854.
[Sidenote: =Want of military preparations in England.=]
Thus England had been drawn into a dangerous struggle with the most powerful monarch in Europe, before her ministers well realized what they were doing. She was utterly unprepared for war. The army was weak in numbers, and had been woefully neglected for the last forty years. It had seen no fighting with a European foe since Waterloo, and had quite lost the habit of taking the field. Accustomed to barrack life in England, the men found themselves entirely at a loss when landed on the shores of the Black Sea, and showed little power to shift for themselves. A great proportion of the officers were ignorant of all their duties, save that of facing the enemy with the old English courage. The commissariat service and the other branches of supply proved hopelessly incompetent to keep the army well fed or well clothed. To add to the other misfortunes of England, the leaders of the army were unwisely chosen. The command was given to Lord Raglan, an amiable but worn-out veteran of sixty-six, who had served as Wellington's aide-de-camp in Spain; many of the divisional commanders owed their place to influence or interest, rather than to proved competence in war. Sir Colin Campbell, who had won a great reputation in India, was one of the few among them who thoroughly deserved his place.
[Sidenote: =Sebastopol to be attacked.=]
With some difficulty, an expeditionary force of 28,000 men was collected and sent to the East; they landed at Varna, on the Black Sea, and joined a French army of about the same strength. But it was found that they were not needed on the Danube. The Turks had already thrust the Russians out of Bulgaria, and the Czar's forces were in retreat towards the Pruth. It thus became necessary to settle on some plan of offensive operations against Russia, which the English and French governments had not hitherto contemplated. Russia is only open to attack from the water on two points, the Baltic and the Black Sea, and the allies were almost committed to making their main attack on the latter field, as they had already sent their armies in that direction. It was resolved, therefore, to despatch a powerful fleet to the Baltic to threaten St. Petersburg, but to confine serious operations to the Black Sea. There the easiest point of attack was the great naval fortress of Sebastopol, in the Crimea, the stronghold and arsenal of the Russian fleet. Its destruction would inflict a great blow on the Czar, and its capture seemed easy owing to its remoteness from the centres of Russian strength.
Accordingly the allied armies, somewhat more than 50,000 strong, sailed from Varna on September 7, 1854, and landed on the western shore of the Crimea, thirty miles north of Sebastopol, a few days later. The expedition was very late in starting; it should have sailed in July, and would then have found the Russians unprepared. As it was, Prince Mentchikoff, now commanding in the Crimea, had got wind of the intention of the allies, and hastily taken measures to strengthen his position.
[Sidenote: =Battle of the Alma.=]
Advancing very slowly towards Sebastopol, the English and French armies found Mentchikoff with 40,000 men drawn up behind the river Alma, in a lofty position strengthened with entrenchments. The allied generals won the battle that ensued, but their victory was not the reward of their own good generalship. Raglan and the French general St. Arnaud did not get on well together, and the latter showed from the first a tendency to throw the heavier work of the campaign on the English. Half of the French army executed a long flank march by the sea-shore, and never fired a shot in the action. The remaining half allowed themselves to be checked for some time by the Russian left wing, a force of very inferior strength. Meanwhile the English advanced against the hostile centre and right; their front line outran its supports, crossed the river with a rush, and captured the chief redoubt on the opposite bank. But, assailed by the main body of the enemy, it was compelled to fall back, and the heights had to be stormed for a second time by the belated English reserves, which came up at last and swept all before them. Thus the fight was won, without any co-operation from the two commanders-in-chief: for St. Arnaud was too ill to follow the fortunes of the day; while Lord Raglan had blindly ridden forward, lost touch with his men, and blundered by mistake into the rear of the Russian position, where he might easily have been taken prisoner (September 20, 1854).
As the French, who had done hardly any fighting, refused to pursue, while the English were worn out, the Russian army got away without being completely destroyed, though the deadly musketry of the English infantry had fearfully thinned its ranks. The allies followed at a very slow pace; if they had hurried on they might have captured Sebastopol at once. But St. Arnaud was dying, and Lord Raglan could not goad the French into action. Even when they approached the fortress, an extraordinary caution and lack of enterprise was displayed. Mentchikoff had retired into the interior with his army, and left the town to an improvised garrison of sailors and militia, so that it could probably have been stormed offhand.
[Sidenote: =The siege of Sebastopol.=]
But the allies sat down before the place to besiege it in full form, and allowed the great engineer Todleben to cover its weak defences with a screen of improvised earthworks which daily grew more formidable. Mentchikoff came back with his army when he saw that Sebastopol could resist, and as Russian reinforcements kept pouring in, the defenders soon outnumbered the beleaguering force.
The position of the English and French grew daily more unsatisfactory. They were only blockading the southern half of the town, for they were not numerous enough to encircle the two sides of Sebastopol harbour. They had chosen to occupy the bleak peninsula of the Chersonese, where neither food nor fodder could be got, and had no power to make raids into the interior for supplies. The English had to bring their stores up from the small harbour of Balaclava, six miles from the trenches, and much exposed to the danger of an attack from the east.
[Sidenote: =Balaclava.--The Charge of the Six Hundred.=]
Finding that the bombardment by land and sea was doing no harm, and seeing that they were gradually beginning to outnumber the besiegers, the Russians resolved to make an attack against the English communications. The battle of Balaclava resulted from an attempt made by a large hostile force to seize Balaclava, which was only protected by two weak brigades of English cavalry, 1500 sabres in all, a single regiment of Highland infantry, and 3000 Turks. General Liprandi, with 20,000 men, came down towards the harbour, drove the Turkish auxiliaries from some weak redoubts, and pushed onward. His advance was stopped by the gallant charge of General Scarlett's brigade of dragoons, led by the Scots Greys and Inniskillens, who rode down a force of three times their own numbers, and gave the English commander time to hurry up reinforcements from his siege-lines. The Russians, staggered by the desperate attack of the "Heavy Brigade," halted, and began to draw back. Then occurred a dismal blunder: Lord Raglan sent orders for the remainder of the English cavalry, the "Light Brigade," to "advance and prevent the enemy from carrying off the guns," meaning the guns in the redoubts which the Turks had lost in the morning. Lord Lucan, the chief of the English cavalry, stupidly or wilfully misunderstood the order, and sent the Light Brigade to charge a battery in position which formed the centre of the Russian host. Accordingly the five weak regiments of light cavalry--only 670 sabres in all--which formed Lord Cardigan's brigade, deliberately and without supports attacked a whole army. They rode for a mile and a half through a tempest of shells and bullets, captured the Russian battery, routed the troops in support of it, and then--for want of help from the rear--were forced to retreat by the same way they had come, through a second hail of fire. Out of the famous "Six Hundred," 113 had been killed, and 134 wounded. The charge was absolutely useless, for Lord Raglan did not proceed to follow it up by an infantry attack, though the Russians had been greatly cowed by the frantic courage of the Light Brigade, and would certainly have made off if they had been threatened with more fighting. So the battle ended unsatisfactorily for both parties; for though Balaclava was saved, yet the Russians remained in a position which constantly threatened it with a new attack (October 25).
[Sidenote: =Battle of Inkerman.=]
Prince Mentchikoff was far from being discouraged by the result of the fight, and, when fresh reinforcements joined him, resolved to try another assault on the right flank of the English. This time it was their siege-lines which were to be attacked under cover of the night. Two great columns, mustering more than 40,000 men, secretly assembled opposite the extreme right of the English lines, one coming from Sebastopol, the other from the open country. A thick fog completely hid them from the English, and they were attacking the camp of the second division almost before their arrival was suspected. There followed the fight of Inkerman, "the soldiers' battle," as it was called, for the men, surprised in their tents, turned out without orders and almost without guidance, and flung themselves recklessly on the advancing enemy. Arriving in scattered companies and wings, each regiment attacked the first foe it met, and for six hours a desperate fight went on all over Mount Inkerman. In the fog no one knew where or with what numbers he was fighting, but the general result of the battle was all that could have been desired. Every time that the dark masses of the enemy surged up against the crest of the English position, they were dashed down the hillside by the desperate valour of the thin line of defenders. When towards midday some French reinforcements came up, the Russians withdrew, leaving the ground covered with their dead. It was only when the fight was over that the victors realized that 8000 English, aided late in the day by 6000 French, had defeated an army of more than 40,000 men, and slain or wounded more than 10,000 of them. The heavy English loss of 2300 men was not too great a price to pay for the self-confidence and feeling of superiority over their enemies which the victory of Inkerman gave to the conquerors (November 5, 1854).
[Sidenote: =Sufferings of the troops.=]
Sebastopol might perhaps have fallen if vigorously attacked the day after Inkerman, but the English and French commanders did not call on their wearied troops for another effort, and the siege dragged on into the winter with the most disastrous results. The army had only been equipped for a short campaign, and no account had been made of the bitter cold of the Crimea. All the commissariat horses and mules died, and the supplies had to be brought up from Balaclava for six miles on the backs of the wearied soldiery. Food ran short, the flimsy tents gave no shelter against the storms and snow, and the men were stricken down in hundreds by cold and disease. An unlucky storm sank the ships which were bringing warm clothing, and in January, 1855, Lord Raglan had to report to London that the army comprised 11,000 men under arms and 13,000 in hospital. The French suffered hardly less, but the Emperor continued sending out reinforcements, which kept up their numbers, while the English army had no reserves, and could not be quickly recruited.
[Sidenote: =Resignation of Lord Aberdeen.=]
When the miserable state of the army in the Crimea became known in England, owing mainly to the reports of newspaper correspondents, a howl of wrath was raised against the men who were responsible for the want and starvation which our troops were enduring. Part of the misery, it is true, was due merely to the inexperience of the English in war; but much more was owing to the inconsiderate slackness and folly of the home authorities, who were responsible for feeding and clothing the army. Almost incredible tales are told of the combination of parsimony and extravagance, red-tape and ignorance, which ruined our army. The nation called for scapegoats, and, in deference to its clamour, the prime minister, Lord Aberdeen, and the war minister, the Duke of Newcastle, resigned their offices. They were only guilty of being unable to control their inefficient and ignorant subordinates.
[Sidenote: =Lord Palmerston premier.=]
When Lord Aberdeen retired, he was succeeded by the brisk and vigorous Palmerston, the soul of the war-party, who managed to infuse a share of his own energy into the struggle. Supplies and recruits were poured into the Crimea; a railway was built from Balaclava to the front; and the hospitals, where the sick and wounded were dying by thousands, were reformed, and entrusted with success to Florence Nightingale and her volunteer nurses, who came out to supplement the inadequate staff that the government had provided.
[Sidenote: =Victor Emmanuel joins the allies.=]
Soon the English had nearly 40,000 men in the Crimea, while the French Emperor had raised his troops to 100,000. Further aid was given to the allies by Sardinia, whose king Victor Emmanuel, following the old tradition of the house of Savoy, was eager to take part on the stronger side in a great war. His object was partly to gain the gratitude of France, partly to display the strength of his warlike little kingdom in the councils of Europe.
[Sidenote: =Death of the Czar Nicholas.=]
The Russians were now feeling the war bear hardly upon them. Their supplies and reinforcements had to be brought from vast distances, and there were as yet no railways--or even good roads--over the steppes of Southern Russia. So toilsome was the winter march to the Crimea, that a quarter of the troops sent thither are said to have fallen by the way. The Czar Nicholas died on March 2, heart-broken by the utter failure of his armies; but his successor, Alexander II., was too proud to ask for peace on such terms as the allies offered--negotiations at Vienna for this purpose completely failed. The young Czar was induced to persevere only by the obstinate courage with which the garrison of Sebastopol held out, guided by the great engineer Todleben, who had so strengthened the defences of the place that nothing but a few outlying redoubts had yet fallen into the allies' hands.
[Sidenote: =Fall of Sebastopol.=]
On June 18, 1855, the allies tried a general assault on the fortress, which failed with heavy loss. Soon after Lord Raglan died, worn out by responsibility and by the knowledge that he was much criticized at home. He was replaced by General Simpson: the French commander Canrobert was at the same time superseded by Marshal Pélissier, a rough soldier who did not err from over-caution like his predecessor. On September 8, the new leaders ordered a general assault on the eastern front of Sebastopol, the French taking as their goal the Malakoff, and the English the Redan, two forts which formed the keys of the line of defence. The English assault was beaten off; though the stormers actually got inside the Redan, they were too few to hold their ground. But Pélissier launched more than 20,000 men against the Malakoff, and carried it by a bold rush. The loss of this all-important fort broke the Russians' line; in the following night they set fire to Sebastopol and retired across the harbour, abandoning the town to the allies.
[Sidenote: =The Treaty of Paris.=]
After this disaster the Czar was forced to bow to circumstances, and sued for peace. This the Emperor of the French was ready to grant on easy terms, for he was satisfied with the prestige that he had acquired by his victory, and did not wish to make Russia his enemy for ever. England was desirous of going on with the war, to make a thorough end of the aggressive and despotic empire of the Czars. But when her ally refused to continue the struggle, she was forced to join in the general pacification, though Palmerston declared that Russia was only scotched, and would be as powerful as ever in ten years--a true prophecy. By the treaty of Paris (March, 1856) the Czar engaged to cede to Turkey a small strip of territory at the mouth of the Danube, to keep no war-fleet in the Black Sea, and to leave Sebastopol dismantled. The Sultan undertook to grant new rights and liberties to his Christian subjects--a promise most inadequately fulfilled. The opportunity was taken, at the same time, to settle an old and long-disputed question of maritime law. England and the other powers agreed for the future that privateering in time of war should be abolished, and that the neutral flag should cover all goods from seizure, except military stores and other munitions of war.
The peace of Paris settled nothing. The late war had disabled Russia for ten or fifteen years, and the Eastern question did not begin to grow dangerous again till after 1870. But Turkey was no stronger for all the support that she had received; the Sultan's government was hopelessly effete, and when next Russia began to move, the doom of the Turkish power in Europe was near at hand.
[Sidenote: =Supremacy of Palmerston.=]
But few men in England understood that the Eastern question had only been shelved for a few years. Proud of the valour which the army had displayed, and fondly hoping that the weak points of our military system had now been discovered and remedied, the nation gave all its confidence to the minister who had brought the war to what was considered a successful conclusion. Palmerston stayed in power for the remaining ten years of his life, save for one short interval in 1858-59. He was, as we have already had occasion to remark, less fond of constitutional changes than any other man in the Whig party. He thought that little more remained to be done in matters of internal reform, and used his influence to check the more progressive members of his cabinet. As long as he held office, questions of domestic importance were entirely subordinated to matters of foreign policy.
Palmerston was right in thinking that our external relations were likely to be difficult and dangerous during the next few years. The selfish and unscrupulous designs of Louis Napoleon were a disturbing element in Europe so long as the Second Empire lasted, and a watchful eye was always needed to look after England's interests.
[Sidenote: =War with Persia.=]
Meanwhile there were other complications further afield which required attention. The Crimean war was hardly over before England found herself involved in two little wars in the East. One of them was a direct consequence of the great struggle with the Czar in 1854-55. While it was still in progress, the Shah of Persia had behaved with scant courtesy to the British minister at his court, thinking that England was too much engrossed in the strife in Europe to resent his conduct. Finally, he had invaded Afghanistan and taken Herat, though warned that such action meant war, for, as Persia was now under Russian influence, this advance toward India could not be tolerated. In the autumn of 1856 Lord Palmerston thought that England was at leisure to chastise the Persians. An army from India was landed at Bushire; it beat the Shah's troops at the battle of Kooshaub, and occupied most of the ports of Southern Persia. Thus brought to reason, Nasr-ud-din asked for peace, and obtained it on evacuating Herat (March, 1857). That he chose to sue for terms at this moment chanced to be most fortunate for England, for the army which returned from Persia was sorely needed in India, to take part in subduing the great mutiny in that country, which we shall have to notice in another chapter.
[Sidenote: =War with China.=]
The second little war in which the English were engaged in 1857 was with China. The mandarins of Canton had seized a small trading vessel, the Arrow, flying the British flag, and imprisoned the crew. Lord Palmerston never endured for a moment high-handed acts committed by a barbarous power. He declared war, sent an army and fleet against China, and seized first the forts which command Canton, and afterwards the more important Taku forts, which guard the way to Pekin up the Pei-Ho river. In the end the British troops, aided by a French force, compelled the Emperor of China to pay an indemnity of £4,000,000, and to open several ports to English commerce (1860). The length of the second Chinese war resulted from the distraction of the English arms to the great mutiny in India. If that struggle had not been raging, the forces of the effete Eastern power would have been crushed much sooner.
[Sidenote: =Attempted murder of Napoleon by Orsini.=]
Long before the end of this weary little war, the attention of the English government was called back to affairs in Europe. The disturbing element was Louis Napoleon, who was once more striving to win personal profit by fostering the old quarrels of other nations. He had half promised to do something to deliver the Italians from the bitter bondage to Austria which they had endured since 1848. But he was weak and vacillating, and dallied so long that some Italian exiles, headed by one Orsini, tried in revenge to murder him by throwing a bomb into his carriage.
[Sidenote: =The "Conspiracy to murder Bill."--Palmerston resigns.=]
This attempted assassination led, strange as it may appear, to the temporary displacement of Palmerston from power. Orsini had formed his plot and made his bombs in London, and the French government hotly pressed for the seizure and extradition of his accomplices, as would-be murderers. The prime minister, who wished to keep on good terms with the Emperor, replied by proposing to the English Parliament the "Conspiracy to Murder Bill," which placed political assassination-plots among the offences punishable by penal servitude for life, whether the crime took place in or out of England. But, unfortunately for Palmerston, the French press, and more especially the French army, were using at the time very threatening language, which was deeply resented on this side of the Channel. Special offence was given by an address to the Emperor by certain French colonels, which asked him to permit his army to "destroy the infamous haunt in which machinations so infernal are hatched." The opposition charged Palmerston with cringing to the angry clamour of France, though the Conspiracy Bill in itself was a rational measure enough. The unfounded charge shook for a moment the confidence which the nation and the House of Commons felt in the old minister. His bill was thrown out, and he resigned (February, 1858).
[Sidenote: =Lord Derby in office.--Disraeli's Reform Bill.=]
No Liberal ministry could be formed without Palmerston's aid; so the Queen sent for the Conservatives. Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli took office, as they had done in 1852, though they had not a majority in Parliament to back them. As on the previous occasion, their ministry was merely a stop-gap, doomed from the first to a speedy end. They clung to office till 1858 had passed by, and well into the following year. Disraeli, who was, as he said, trying hard to "educate his party," strove to win popular favour by showing that the Conservatives could be friends of domestic reform and progress as much as the Liberals. He brought in a Reform Bill, extending the household franchise both in town and country, but giving extra votes to persons of education and property. This very rational measure was greeted with derision by the Liberals, who called the new qualifications for voters which Disraeli wished to introduce "fancy franchises," and insisted on keeping to the old idea, which made householding alone the test of citizenship.
[Sidenote: =The Volunteer Movement.=]
The Reform Bill dropped, but the Conservatives, in their short term of power, conferred one great boon on the nation by encouraging and organizing the "Volunteer Movement." The angry language of the French army at the time of the Orsini plot had provoked both resentment and alarm in England. To guard against the peril of sudden invasion, it was felt that the small regular army and the militia were not numerous enough. Accordingly men of all classes came forward and formed themselves into volunteer corps, like the old levies of 1803. They undertook to arm and train themselves at their own expense, and to take the field for the defence of the realm, whenever peril of invasion should arise. The Derby government encouraged this patriotic scheme: 170,000 men were enrolled in the year 1859, and the Volunteer force, though at first it was hampered by the red tape of the War Office, and somewhat derided by the regulars, has taken a fixed and valuable place in the national line of defence.
[Sidenote: =Napoleon and the Italians.=]
Fortunately, the French scare had soon blown over. Louis Napoleon was scheming against Austria, not against England. The great Sardinian statesman Cavour had induced him to pledge himself to deliver Italy from its oppressors, and after much vacillation the Emperor declared war on Francis Joseph II., and sent his armies over the Alps. He beat the Austrians at Magenta and Solferino, and the Italians vainly hoped that he would aid them to set up a kingdom of United Italy. But he suddenly stopped short after rescuing Lombardy alone, and made peace with the Austrian enemy. Lombardy was united to Sardinia, but the selfish and greedy Emperor took Nice and Savoy from his own ally in return for his aid, and refused to free Central or Southern Italy. Abandoned by him, the Italians delivered themselves. Sudden insurrections drove out the foreign rulers of Tuscany, Parma, and Modena, and the hero Garibaldi expelled the Bourbons from Naples and Sicily. Thus a kingdom of Italy was created in spite of the French Emperor (1860-1). But he sent troops to Rome to guard the Pope, and would not permit Cavour and Garibaldi to complete their work by adding the ancient capital to the dominions of Victor Emmanuel.
[Sidenote: =Palmerston returns to power.=]
Long ere the Italian war was over, Lord Derby's Conservative government had been defeated, and had retired from office. Palmerston's doings of 1858 had quickly been forgiven and forgotten by the nation, and he returned to office, which he held till his death six years later.
[Sidenote: =The American civil war.=]
It was well that his strong and practised hand should be at the helm, for the years 1860-65 were full of delicate problems of foreign policy, which more than once brought England within measurable distance of war. A most formidable difficulty cropped up when the great civil war across the Atlantic broke out in 1861. The Southern States seceded from the Union, and proclaimed themselves independent under the name of the Confederate States of America. Their avowed reason for separating themselves from the North was that the Federal government, under Northern control, was infringing the rights of the individual States to self-government. But old sectional jealousies, and especially the fear of the Southern planters that the Northerners would interfere with their "great domestic institution," negro slavery, were really at the bottom of the quarrel.
[Sidenote: =Attitude of England.--Seizure of the "Trent."=]
English opinion was much divided on the subject of the American civil war. It was urged, on the one hand, that the North were fighting for the cause of liberty against slavery; and this idea affected many earnest-minded men to the exclusion of any other consideration. On the other side, it was urged that the Southern States were exercising an undoubted constitutional right in severing themselves from the Union, and this was true enough in itself. It was certain that the Southerners, who wished for Free Trade, were likely to be better friends of England than the protectionist North, which had always shown a bitter jealousy of English commerce. Many men were moved by the rather unworthy consideration that America was growing so strong and populous that she might one day become "the bully of the world," and welcomed a convulsion that threatened to split the Union into two hostile halves. Others illogically sympathized with the South merely because it was the weaker side, or because they thought the Southern planters better men than the hard and astute traders of the North. The Palmerston cabinet, with great wisdom, tried to steer a middle course and to avoid all interference. But when eleven powerful States joined in seceding, they thought themselves bound to recognize them as a belligerent power, and to treat them as a nation. This gave bitter offence to the North, and war nearly followed, for a United States cruiser in 1862 stopped the British steamer Trent, and took from her by force two envoys whom the Confederates were sending to Europe. This flagrant violation of the law of nations roused Lord Palmerston to vigorous action: he began sending troops to Canada, and demanded the restoration of the envoys Mason and Slidell under pain of war. President Lincoln and his advisers hesitated for a moment, but gave up their prisoners with a bad grace just as war seemed inevitable. Naturally this incident did not make the English people love the North any better.
[Sidenote: =The Alabama.=]
Another cause of friction was destined to give trouble long after the civil war had ended. The United States ambassador in London summoned the English government to prevent the sailing from Liverpool of a vessel called the Alabama, which, as he declared, had been bought by the Confederates, and was destined to be used by them as a war-ship. The cabinet were somewhat slow in ordering the detention of the Alabama, which hurriedly put to sea, and justified the fears of the American minister by seizing and burning many scores of Northern vessels. This damage to commerce was charged to the account of England by the government of President Lincoln, and probably they had some ground for accusing the English officials of slackness. The grudge was carefully nursed in America, and put to good use when the war was over.
[Sidenote: =The cotton famine.=]
But the most painful form in which the American quarrel affected England was the dreadful cotton famine in Lancashire, which set in as the year 1862 wore on. The English mills had always subsisted on the cotton of the Southern States, and when the strict blockade instituted by the Northerners sealed up New Orleans, Charleston, and the other cotton ports, England suffered terribly for the want of raw material to keep her mills going. The mill-hands bore the stoppage of their work and wages with great courage and resignation, but they lived for months on the verge of starvation. A disaster as great as the Irish potato famine of 1846 was only prevented by lavish private charity, which sent £2,000,000 to the distressed districts of Lancashire, supplemented by the wise measures of the Government, who worked so well that hardly a life was lost in spite of the pinching poverty of the times. Cotton was at last brought from Egypt and India in quantities sufficient to set the mills going again, and by 1863 the worst of the trouble was over. In 1865 the Southern States were conquered, and the American cotton once more came in.
[Sidenote: =Palmerston and the Danish duchies.=]
Wars nearer home were meanwhile beginning to distract the attention of the English from America. A quarrel between the King of Denmark and his German subjects in the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein led to the interference of Austria and Prussia. The inhabitants of the two duchies wished to cut themselves loose, and to join Germany. Bismarck, the iron-handed prime minister of Prussia, saw his way to make profit for his country out of the war, and induced the unwise Austrian government to join him in bringing force to bear against the Danes. The English looked upon the struggle as a mere case of bullying by the two German powers, and Palmerston used somewhat threatening language against them; but when he found that his usual ally, the Emperor of the French, was not prepared to help him, he drew back, and allowed the Austrians and Prussians to overrun the duchies. Beaten in the field, the Danish king had to consent to their cession.
[Sidenote: =Palmerston and the Polish insurrection.=]
To protest, and then to make no attempt to back up words with deeds, is somewhat humiliating. But this course was forced on Palmerston not only in the case of the Schleswig-Holstein war, but also in the case of Poland in the same year (1863). Treating the unfortunate Poles with even more than its usual rigour, the Russian government forced them to a fierce but hopeless insurrection. Palmerston sent a note to the Czar in favour of better treatment of Poland, but met with a rebuff, and was practically told to mind his own business. Not being ready to engage in a second Crimean war without Louis Napoleon's aid, he had to endure the affront. He was much censured for his useless interference, but it is hard to blame him either for his protest, or for his refusal to follow it up by plunging England into a dangerous war.
[Sidenote: =Prosperity at home.--Rise of Gladstone.=]
While these foreign affairs were engrossing most of the nation's attention, domestic matters caused little stir. After the cotton famine ended, the country entered into a cycle of very considerable growth and prosperity. Gladstone, once a Peelite, but now one of the most advanced of the progressive wing of the Liberal party, was now Chancellor of the Exchequer. Year after year he was able to announce a surplus, and to grant the remission of old taxes. His measures were judicious, but the constant growth of the revenue from increased prosperity, and the conclusion of a fortunate commercial treaty with France, were the real causes of his being able to produce his favourable budgets, and won him a financial reputation at a comparatively cheap expense of labour. But his name was rapidly growing greater, and it was beginning to be clear that he would be Palmerston's successor as leader of the Liberal party. The old premier did not view this prospect with much satisfaction. "Whenever he gets my place," he observed, "we shall have strange doings."
[Sidenote: =Death of Palmerston.=]
The succession was not long delayed. Lord Palmerston died on October 18, 1865, and, on the removal of his restraining hand, the Liberal party began to show new and rapid signs of change. For the first time it was about, under the guidance of its new leader, to frankly accept the principles of democracy, and to throw up its old alliance with the middle classes. Palmerston had been for so many years the leading figure in English politics, that his death, at the ripe age of eighty-one, seemed to end an epoch in domestic history. He was by far the most striking personage in the middle years of the century. Faults he had: somewhat over-hasty in action, somewhat flippant in language on occasion, too self-confident and too prone to self-laudation, he was yet so resourceful and so full of courage and patriotism that he won and merited the confidence of the nation more than any minister since the younger Pitt.
FOOTNOTE:
[63] See p. 516.
XLII. DEMOCRACY AND IMPERIALISM
1865-1885.
The death of Lord Palmerston forms a convenient point at which to draw the line between the earlier and the later history of the two great English political parties. Down to 1865, the Liberals and the Conservatives alike retained in a great measure the characteristics of their forefathers the Whigs and Tories. The Liberal host was still largely officered from the old aristocratic Whig houses; many of its members disliked and distrusted democracy, and thought that in all essential things the constitution had reached a point at which it needed no further reform. As long as Palmerston lived, there was no chance that the more militant and progressive wing of the Liberals would draw the whole party into the paths of Radicalism. In a similar way, the Conservative party still kept somewhat of the old Tory intolerance and inflexibility, though for the last twenty years the younger of its two chiefs, Benjamin Disraeli, had been striving hard to guide it into new lines of thought.
[Sidenote: =The New Liberalism.=]
After 1865 the new Liberalism and the new Conservatism came into direct opposition, personified in the two men who were soon to take up the leadership of the two parties--Gladstone and Disraeli. Liberalism when divested of its Whiggery was practically Radicalism. Its younger exponents took up as their official programme the ideas that had been afloat for the last forty years in the brains of the more extreme section of their party. Their main aim was the transference of political power from the middle classes to the masses, by means of a wide extension of the franchise; the new voters were to be made worthy of the trust by compulsory national education, while to guard them against influences from without, the secret ballot--one of the old Chartist panaceas--was to be introduced.
[Sidenote: =State interference and "laissez faire."=]
The party which proclaimed itself the friend of democracy was bound to promise tangible benefits to the working classes. But the Liberals were still divided on the question of the advisability of State interference in the private life of the citizen. The younger men were already dreaming of "paternal legislation" for the amelioration by law of the conditions of life among the poorer classes, hoping to secure them cheap food, healthy dwellings, shorter hours of labour, and opportunities of recreation and culture by means of State aid and public money. But in the sixties the "Manchester School," as the adherents of laissez faire and strict political economy were called, was still predominant, and social legislation and extensive State interference were not yet enrolled among the official doctrines of the Liberal party. Its war-cry at election time was "Peace, retrenchment, and reform." The first cry was one that had not been so much heard in Palmerston's day, but on his death his successors showed themselves very cautious in dealing with all foreign powers. Moreover, they wished to win popularity by cheap government, a thing incompatible with a spirited foreign policy. Their opponents accused them of allowing the army and navy to grow too weak, and of being compelled in consequence to assume a meek tone in dealing with the powers whom Palmerston had been wont to beard and threaten. Wrapped up in their schemes of domestic reform, they gave comparatively little attention to external affairs.
[Sidenote: =The New Conservatism.=]
The new Conservatism of which Disraeli was the exponent was a creed of a very different kind. It was the aim of that statesman to lay the foundations of his party on a combination of social reform and national patriotism. Since his first appearance in Parliament, he had striven to persuade the people that the Conservatives were truer friends of the masses than the Liberals. The latter, he maintained, offered them barren political privileges; the former were ready to aid them by benevolent legislation to secure a practical amelioration of the conditions of their life. They would govern for the people, if not by the people.
[Sidenote: =Disraeli and Reform.=]
Even in the direction of enlarging the franchise, Disraeli was prepared to go far, though at first he shrank from granting so much as his rivals, and wished to give an extra voting power to education and wealth.
[Sidenote: =Disraeli and Imperialism.=]
But the feature of the new Conservatism which was most attractive to the public was one of which Palmerston would have thoroughly approved. Disraeli had a great confidence in the imperial destiny of Great Britain, and a firm belief that she ought to take a bold and decided part in the councils of Europe. With this end in view, he was anxious to keep our armed strength high, and his expenditure on military and naval objects was one of the things most frequently thrown in his teeth by his opponents. The Liberals accused him of a tendency towards "Imperialism," meaning, apparently, to ascribe some discredit to him thereby. He himself never denied the charge, but made his boast of it, though in his mouth it had another shade of meaning. To the Liberals it meant presumption, a love of show and of sounding titles, a readiness to annex to the right hand and the left, a proneness to intervene in foreign quarrels, "a policy of bluster," in short. But in the mouth of its exponents Imperialism meant a desire to knit more closely together Great Britain and her colonies; to treat the empire as a whole, and to govern it without any slavish subservience to the "parochial politics" of England; to make the British name respected by civilized and feared by barbarous neighbours.
At the opening of the new period, therefore, the nation was about to be confronted by two rivals, one of whom offered it internal political reform, the other imperial greatness. But at first the issues were not clear; the two parties were still, to a certain extent, draped in the remnants of the old wardrobe of Whiggery and Toryism. Till these were torn away, the meaning of the new movements could not be distinctly seen.
[Sidenote: =Lord John Russell Premier.--The Reform Bill of 1866.=]
On Palmerston's death, the leadership of his cabinet fell to the aged Lord John--now Earl--Russell. His accession to power was followed by the bringing forward of the first of the Reform Bills which were to occupy the forefront of English politics for the next three years. It was proposed to reduce the qualification for the franchise to the possession of a £14 holding in the counties, and a £7 house in the boroughs. Lord Derby and his Conservative followers opposed it, though Disraeli had long ago pointed out that a Reform Bill of some sort was inevitable. But the Tories were strengthened by seceders from the ministerial camp, followers of the old Palmerstonian policy, who hated the idea of unrestrained democracy. By their aid the bill was thrown out, and Lord John Russell immediately resigned (June, 1866).
[Sidenote: =Ministry of Lord Derby.=]
For the third time, Lord Derby and Disraeli were charged with the thankless task of forming a ministry, though they had only a minority in the House of Commons to back them. On this occasion they were destined to stay in office for more than two years (June, 1866-December, 1868), a far longer period of power than they had enjoyed in 1852 and 1858-9. Apparently Disraeli, into whose hands the age and failing health of Lord Derby were throwing more and more of the real guidance of the party, had resolved to imitate the action of William Pitt in 1784--to display to the nation his readiness to take in hand all rational and moderate measures of reform, and then to appeal to the country at a general election.
[Sidenote: =Disraeli's Reform Bill.=]
Accordingly, in the spring of 1867 he introduced a series of resolutions, pledging his party to pass a Reform Bill, but announcing that he should stipulate for the "fancy franchises" on which the Conservatives had laid such stress during previous discussions of the question. Persons (1) owning £30 in the savings bank, or (2) £50 invested in Government funds, or (3) paying £1 year and over in direct taxes, or (4) possessed of a superior education, were to have a second vote. In spite of these safeguards, the more unbending Conservatives refused to follow Disraeli, and their chiefs, Lord Carnarvon and Lord Cranborne (the present Marquis of Salisbury) seceded from the cabinet. The bill was introduced, but the Liberal majority cut it about by all manner of amendments, and utterly refused to accept the "fancy franchises." Forced to choose between dropping the bill altogether and resigning, or passing the bill shorn of all its safeguards against the introduction of pure democracy, Disraeli chose the latter alternative, and "took the leap in the dark," as was said at the time. The bill so passed reduced the franchise in town to a rating of £5, thus granting what was practically household suffrage, and added to the householders all lodgers paying £10 a year. In the counties the franchise was lowered to £12. This still left the agricultural labourer without a vote, but made electors of well-nigh every other class in the kingdom. At the same time thirty-five seats were taken away, partly from corrupt boroughs, partly from places which had too many members in proportion to their size, and were distributed among London and the great northern shires, which had been still left much under-represented in the redistribution of 1832 (August 15, 1867).
[Sidenote: =The Fenian outbreaks.=]
While the Reform Bill was engrossing the attention of politicians, the United Kingdom had been passing through a dangerous crisis. Ireland, of which little had been heard since the Potato Famine and Smith O'Brien's rebellion, was once more giving trouble. The end of the American Civil War in 1865 had thrown on the world large numbers of exiled Irish and Irish-Americans, who had learnt the trade of war, and were anxious to let off their energies by an attack on England. It was they who organized the "Fenian Brotherhood," a secret association for promoting rebellion in Ireland. They planned simultaneous risings all over the country, which were to be aided by thousands of trained soldiers from America. To distract the attention of the government, an invasion of Canada was projected, and a number of outrages planned in England itself. The Fenians failed, partly from want of organization, partly from shirking at the moment of danger, partly from secret traitors in their own ranks. The horde which invaded Canada ran away from a few hundred militia. The national rising in Ireland was a fiasco: a few police-barracks were attacked, but the assailants fled when they heard of the approach of regular troops (February, 1867). A hare-brained scheme to surprise the store of arms in Chester castle failed, because the 1500 men who had secretly assembled in that quiet town saw that they were watched by special constables. In fact, the only notable achievements of the Fenians were two acts of murder. A band of desperadoes in Manchester stopped a police-van and rescued two of their comrades who were in custody, by killing one and wounding three of the four unarmed policemen who were in charge. A still more reckless party in London tried to release some friends confined in Clerkenwell prison by exploding a powder-barrel under its wall. This did not injure the prison, but killed or wounded more than a hundred peaceable dwellers in the neighbouring streets (December, 1867). For these murders several Fenians were executed.
[Sidenote: =Irish policy of the Liberals.=]
The abortive revolt of 1867 called English attention once more to Ireland. The Liberal party insisted that the Fenian disturbance was due not so much to national grudges as to certain practical grievances, such as the existence of the Protestant Established Church of Ireland, supported on the tithes of the country, and the unsatisfactory condition of the peasantry, still tenants-at-will at rack rents, and often in the hands of absentee landlords.
[Sidenote: =Defeat of the Government.=]
The experience of the last twenty years has shown that Irish discontent is far more deeply seated than the Liberals supposed. But in 1868 they seriously thought that it could be pacified by legislation on these two points. Mr. Gladstone selected the Church question as the first battle-ground, and carried against the ministry a resolution in the Commons, demanding the abolition of the establishment. Disraeli, now prime minister in name as well as in fact (for Lord Derby had retired from ill health in February, 1868), appealed to the country by dissolving Parliament. But the Conservatives suffered a decisive defeat at the polls, and were forced to resign (December, 1868).
[Sidenote: =The war between Prussia and Austria.=]
Abroad the Derby-Disraeli ministry had witnessed one very stirring episode of European history, but had not intervened in it. In 1866, Count Bismarck guided Prussia into war with Austria, crushed the great empire at the battle of Königgrätz, annexed Hanover and Hesse, and united all the lands north of the Main, under Prussian headship, into the "North German Confederation." The struggle did not directly affect England, and the Conservative ministry made no attempt to interfere, and watched with equanimity Prussia supplant Austria as the chief power in Central Europe.
[Sidenote: =The Abyssinian expedition.=]
The only warlike enterprise of the years 1866-8 was the costly but almost bloodless Abyssinian expedition, Disraeli's first attempt to vindicate British prestige in remote corners of the earth. Theodore, King of Abyssinia, a savage despot, had imprisoned some British subjects. To deliver them, Sir Robert Napier led an Indian army to Magdala, the Abyssinian capital; he stormed the place, and released the captives. Theodore blew out his brains when he saw his stronghold taken, and on his death the victors retired unmolested.
[Sidenote: =Gladstone Prime Minister.--The Irish Church disestablished.=]
Mr. Gladstone came into office in December, 1868, with a majority of 120 votes in the Commons, and at once proceeded to carry out his Irish policy. The position of the Irish Church was very open to attack, for a Protestant establishment in a country where seventy-five per cent. of the population were Romanists was too anomalous to be easily defended. This was felt by the Conservatives themselves, and, in spite of the protests of the Irish Protestants, a bill for disestablishing the Church passed both Houses (June, 1869). Its endowments were taken away at the same time, but the churches and buildings were retained by their old owners, and compensation was granted to all incumbents and curates. So far from being ruined by the blow, the Irish Church has remained a vigorous and increasing body.
[Sidenote: =The Land Act of 1870.=]
Having dealt with the Irish Church, Mr. Gladstone then turned to the second grievance, whose removal, as he then hoped, would do away with Ireland's grudge against England. By his Irish Land Act of 1870, he gave the tenants a right to be compensated for any improvements they might have made on their holdings, when they resigned them or were evicted from them. He also permitted the outgoing tenant to sell his good-will to his successor. To facilitate the creation of a peasant proprietary, the government undertook to lend money to any tenant who wished to buy his farm from his landlord, if the latter was willing to sell it.
[Sidenote: =Agrarian troubles continue.=]
But the Land Bill was far from contenting the Irish peasantry, who were seeking not merely a reasonable rent and a fair compensation for improvements, but complete possession of their holdings. Agrarian outrages, which had been widespread ever since the Fenian rising of 1867, remained as numerous as ever. So far was Ireland from being quieted, that the government had to pass a stringent Peace-Preservation Act, and to send additional troops across the Channel. The policy of conciliation had thus far proved a complete failure.
[Sidenote: =The Education Act.=]
Mr. Gladstone's tenure of office was signalised by a long series of domestic reforms, the most momentous of which was the Education Act, introduced in 1870 by Forster, the Vice-President of the Council of Education, for providing sufficient school-accommodation for the whole infant population of the country, and making the attendance of all children at school compulsory.
[Sidenote: =The Ballot.=]
Another important measure was the introduction of the secret ballot at parliamentary elections. This act tended to diminish bribery, by depriving the buyer of votes of the power of ascertaining whether the elector with whom he had trafficked had kept his word or no; but it was far from destroying it altogether, and actually enabled many corrupt voters to sell their promise to both sides. It was not till stringent penalties were imposed, both on the briber and the bribed, by laws passed ten years later, that English parliamentary elections attained their present high standard of purity.
[Sidenote: =The Franco-German war.=]
The leading event of this period in the sphere of foreign affairs was the great Franco-German war of 1870-71, in which England preserved a strict neutrality. The French Emperor had provoked the contest in the most wanton way, in the hope of making firm his tottering throne. His defeat and capture at Sedan (September 1, 1870) swept away a power which had, since its first creation in 1852, formed a public danger to Europe from its purely selfish and personal policy. When Bismarck substituted united Germany for imperial France as the chief state of the continent, the world was the gainer.
[Sidenote: =Russia and the Treaty of Paris.=]
But the fall of Napoleon III. affected English interests in the East in a less satisfactory fashion. The united power of France and Great Britain had hitherto compelled Russia to abide by the stipulations of the treaty of Paris,[64] but the moment that the fall of the Emperor was known, the Czar issued a declaration that he should no longer consider himself bound by its terms. He began to rebuild his Black Sea fleet, and to refortify Sebastopol, and the English government could not resent the affront.
[Sidenote: =The "Alabama" arbitration.=]
About the same time, England was involved in an awkward dispute with the United States, who, ever since the American civil war, had been clamouring for compensation for the ravages committed by the Alabama on Northern shipping.[65] Lord Derby's cabinet had staved off the question, but in 1870 the language of the Americans grew so threatening, that the Liberals had to choose between submission or the chance of a war. They took refuge in a middle course, preferring to refer the liability of England for the doings of the Alabama to a court of arbitration, composed of foreign lawyers. But in the principles laid down, on which the arbitrators were to give their decision, so much was conceded to the Americans, that the result, if not the amount, of the award was a foregone conclusion. The referees met at Geneva, and compelled England to pay £3,000,000, which sufficed not only to pay all the claims made against the Alabama, but to leave a handsome surplus in the American treasury (1872).
[Sidenote: =Cardwell's military reforms.=]
The knowledge that the people were growing alarmed and impatient at the military weakness of England, especially after the sudden collapse of France in 1870-71, induced the government to bring in a scheme for improving the national defences. Cardwell, the minister of war, introduced in 1872 a bill to reorganize the army on the short-service system, which had been found to work so well in Germany. For the future, instead of enlisting for the "long service" of twenty years, the soldier was to engage for seven years with the colours and five in the Reserve. The Reserve was only to be called out in time of danger; but when war was at hand it was to join the ranks. Thus the strength of the army could be raised by 60,000 trained and seasoned men on the outbreak of hostilities. It must be allowed that in peace-time the battalions are prone to be filled with very young men, all under seven years' service. But as the reserves, when they have been called out, have always appeared promptly and in full numbers, the change was undoubtedly wise and beneficial. An attempt made at the same time to localize all the regiments in particular districts, whence they were to draw all their recruits, has not been so successful, owing to the fact that some counties supply men in much greater proportion than others. One more military reform, the "Abolition of Purchase," formed part of Cardwell's scheme. It put an end to the system by which retiring officers sold their commissions to their successors--a practice that had often kept poor men of merit for many years unpromoted. The measure was obviously right, but Mr. Gladstone provoked much criticism by putting it forth in a Royal Warrant, instead of passing it through the two Houses in the usual form.
[Sidenote: =Fall of Gladstone's ministry.=]
After the rush of legislation in the period 1869-72, the last years of the Gladstone ministry seemed tame and uneventful. In the spring of 1873 they were beaten, on the comparatively small question of a bill to establish a secular university in Ireland. Next winter Mr. Gladstone dissolved Parliament, and, on appealing to the constituencies, suffered a crushing defeat (January, 1874).
[Sidenote: =Disraeli's ministry.--The Home Rule party.=]
For the first time since 1846, Parliament was in the hands of a solid Conservative majority in both Houses, and Disraeli, seated firmly in power, was able to display the characteristics of the "New Toryism." He announced that he took office to secure a space of rest from harassing legislation at home, and to defend the honour and interests of England abroad. His first two years of power (1875-76) were among the quietest which the century has known. They were only marked by some excellent measures of social and economic reform, such as the Artisans' Dwellings Act, which permitted corporations to build model houses for workmen; and the Agricultural Holdings Act, which granted to farmers compensation for unexhausted improvements on their land, when they gave up their farms to their landlord. But signs of coming trouble were soon apparent both at home and abroad. In the Commons the ministry was beginning to be harassed by the Irish members, who had latterly banded themselves together, under the leadership of Isaac Butt, to demand Home Rule.
[Sidenote: =Egypt and Ismail.=]
This trouble, however, was as yet but in its infancy. A more pressing cause of disquietude was arising in the East, on which England had always kept a watchful eye since the Crimean War. Two separate difficulties were beginning to arise in that quarter. The first was in Egypt, a land which had grown very important to England since the use of the overland route to India by Alexandria and the Red Sea had been discovered, and still more so since de Lesseps had constructed the Suez Canal in 1868. The thriftless and ostentatious Khedive Ismail, by his extravagance and oppression at home and his unwise conquests in the Soudan, had reduced Egypt to a state of misery, and seemed not far from bankruptcy. To get ready money, he proposed to sell his holding--nearly one-half--of the shares of the Suez Canal Company. Disraeli at once bought them by telegram for £4,000,000. The investment was wise and profitable; the shares are now worth five times the sum expended, and their possession gives England the authority that is her due in the conduct of this great international venture.
[Sidenote: =The Russo-Turkish war.=]
But a far more ominous storm-cloud was rising in the Balkan Peninsula. England had been very jealous of the action of the Czar in the East since the abrogation of the treaty of Paris in 1870. She had been greatly stirred by the activity of the Russians in Central Asia, where, by overrunning Turkestan and reducing Khiva and Bokhara to vassalage, they had made a long step forward in the direction of India. But now a new trouble arose nearer home, in the shape of sporadic insurrections, which broke out all over European Turkey. The misgovernment of the Porte was enough to account for them; but it was suspected, and with good cause, that they were being deliberately fomented by Russian intriguers with the tacit approval of the imperial government. The rising began in Bosnia in 1875; in the summer of 1876 the princes of Servia and Montenegro took arms to aid the Bosnians, and thousands of Russian volunteers flocked across the Danube to join the Servian army. Next, while the Turks were sending all their disposable troops against the two princes, a rising broke out in Bulgaria. This insurrection was put down by bands of Circassians and armed Mussulman villagers, with a ruthless cruelty which had a most marked effect on English public opinion. Hitherto the government had been showing some intention of resenting Russian interference in the Balkans. But the news of the Bulgarian atrocities so shocked the country that any such design had to be abandoned. Mr. Gladstone, who had given up the leadership of the opposition for the last two years, emerged from his retirement and made a series of speeches against the Turks which had a profound effect, and when in 1877 the Czar openly declared war on Turkey and sent his armies across the Danube, the English government stood aside in complete neutrality. The Turks held out with unexpected firmness; but in the early winter of 1877-78 their resistance broke down, and the Russians came pouring on towards Constantinople.
[Sidenote: =Attitude of England.=]
The English government, though prevented from interfering in behalf of the Sultan by public opinion, had been watching the advance of the Russians with much anxiety. When the victorious armies of Alexander II. approached the Bosphorus, Disraeli--who had now taken the title of Earl of Beaconsfield and retired to the Upper House--began to take measures which seemed to forebode war. He asked for a grant of £6,000,000 for military purposes, and ordered up the Mediterranean squadron into the Sea of Marmora, placing it within a few miles of Constantinople. If the Czar's troops had struck at the Turkish capital a collision must have occurred, and a general European war might have followed. But the Russian ranks were sorely thinned by the late winter campaign, and their generals shrank from provoking a new enemy. Instead of attacking Constantinople they offered the Sultan terms, which he accepted (March 3, 1878).
[Sidenote: =The Treaty of St. Stefano.=]
The treaty of St. Stefano gave Russia a large tract in Asia round Kars and Batoum, and advanced her frontier at the Danube-mouth to its old position in the days before the Crimean war. Servia, Roumania, and Montenegro received large slices of Turkish territory; but the great feature of the treaty was the creation of a new principality of Bulgaria, reaching from the Danube to the Aegean, and cutting European Turkey in two.
[Sidenote: =The Berlin Conference.=]
Persuaded that the treaty of San Stefano made all the states of the Balkan Peninsula vassals and dependents of Russia, Lord Beaconsfield refused to acquiesce in the arrangement. He called out the army reserves, hurried off more ships to the Mediterranean, and began to bring over Indian troops to Malta by way of the Suez Canal. In view of his menacing attitude, the Czar consented to a complete revision of the treaty of San Stefano. At the Berlin Conference (June-July, 1878) its terms were modified: the new Bulgaria was cut up into two states, and its frontier pushed back from the Aegean. The Sultan undertook to introduce reforms into his provinces, and England guaranteed the integrity of his remaining Asiatic dominions. In return for this, Abdul Hamid placed the island of Cyprus in British hands, though retaining his nominal suzerainty over it.
Lord Beaconsfield returned triumphant from Berlin in July, 1878, claiming that he had obtained "Peace with Honour" for England, and had added a valuable naval station to our possessions in the Mediterranean. But the advantages which he had secured were in some ways more apparent than real. He had checked and irritated Russia without setting up any sufficient barrier against her. He had pledged England to introduce reforms in Turkey, a promise which she was never able to induce the Sultan to perform. Cyprus turned out harbourless and barren--a source of expense rather than profit. Later events showed that the partition of Bulgaria was a mistake, and that the creation of a strong principality on both sides of the Balkans would have been the most effective bar to a Russian advance towards Constantinople.
[Sidenote: =Fall of Lord Beaconsfield's ministry.=]
The scarcely averted war between England and the Czar had a tiresome and costly sequel in the East, the Afghan war of 1878-80, which we describe in Chapter XLIV.--a struggle which was not without its disasters, and formed one of the chief reasons for the gradual loss of popularity by the Beaconsfield cabinet in the years that followed the treaty of Berlin. A similar result was produced by the mismanaged Zulu war and the disaster at Isandula (1879),[66] while at home the ministry was kept in perpetual difficulties by the obstructive tactics of the Irish party, who were now headed by the astute and unscrupulous Charles Stewart Parnell. They wasted time and provoked perpetual scenes. In June, 1880, Lord Beaconsfield dissolved Parliament, and a Liberal majority of 100 was returned to the House of Commons from Great Britain, while in Ireland the Home Rulers swept almost every constituency except those of Ulster.
[Sidenote: =Gladstone's second ministry.--The Boer war.=]
Mr. Gladstone now took office for the second time, pledged to pacify Ireland, and to carry out a policy of peace abroad, and of reform and Liberal measures at home. But the years 1880-84 were full of costly and unsatisfactory wars. Scarcely was the new cabinet installed when the Boers, the inhabitants of the recently annexed Transvaal, revolted. The small English force in South Africa suffered a crushing defeat at Majuba Hill, whereupon the government, ere reinforcements could arrive, made peace with the rebels, and granted them independence (1880-81).
[Sidenote: =Arabi's rebellion.=]
Soon after the Transvaal war had reached its disastrous conclusion, fresh troubles broke out in Egypt. Since Lord Beaconsfield first interfered in that country by buying for England the Suez Canal shares of the Khedive Ismail, Egyptian affairs had been going from bad to worse. After driving the country to the verge of bankruptcy, the old Khedive abdicated in 1879, in favour of his son Tewfik; but England and France joined to establish the "Dual Control" over the young sovereign, and appointed ministers to take charge of the finances of Egypt. Tewfik himself made little or no objection to this assertion of foreign domination, but some of his officers and ministers resented it, and in 1882, Arabi Pasha, an ambitious soldier, executed a coup d'êtat, drove away the foreign ministers, and raised the cry of "Egypt for the Egyptians." It was expected that the two powers who had established the Dual Control would unite to put down Arabi. But the French ministry, jealous of England, and hoping to draw its private profit out of the complication, refused to join in any action against him. It is probable that the Gladstone cabinet had no intention at first of provoking a war. But the English Mediterranean squadron was ordered to Alexandria, which Arabi was busily engaged in fortifying. On June 11, a great riot broke out in that city, and the mob massacred many hundreds of European residents. This made hostilities inevitable; when the Egyptian authorities refused to dismantle their new forts, Admiral Seymour bombarded the place (July 11), and drove out the garrison. Shortly after, English troops landed and seized the ruined city.
[Sidenote: =The Egyptian war.=]
The struggle which followed was brought to a prompt end by the quick and decisive action of Sir Garnet Wolseley, who seized the Suez Canal, and marched across the desert on Cairo, while the Egyptians were expecting him on the side of Alexandria. By a daring night-surprise, he carried the lines of Tel-el-Kebir (September 13), and routed Arabi's host. A day later, his cavalry seized Cairo by a wonderful march of fifty miles in twelve hours, and the rebellion was at an end. Arabi was exiled to Ceylon, and the Khedive was restored to his palace in Cairo; but for all intents and purposes the war left England supreme in Egypt--a very anomalous position, which Mr. Gladstone soon proceeded to make yet more so, by promising France and Turkey that the English troops should be withdrawn so soon as order and good government should be restored.
[Sidenote: =The war in the Soudan.--Gordon at Khartoum.=]
He might, perchance, have carried out his engagement but for the outbreak of the disastrous Soudan war of 1883. During Arabi's rebellion troubles had broken out in the Egyptian provinces on the Upper Nile, where the pashas had been subjecting the wild Arab tribes to cruel oppression. A fanatic named Mohamed Ahmed, of Dongola, put himself at the head of the rising, proclaiming that he was the Mahdi, the prophet whom Mussulmans expect to appear in the last days before the end of the world. When the English had put down Arabi, they found themselves forced to cope with the insurrection in the Soudan. Accordingly General Hicks was despatched with a raw native army to attack the Mahdi; but he and all his troops were cut to pieces (October 3, 1883). The government then resolved to send to the Soudan Charles Gordon, a brave and pious engineer officer, who had won much credit for his wise administration of the land in the days of the old Khedive Ismail. But he was given no troops to aid him, and was merely told to withdraw the Egyptian garrisons from the Upper Nile, as the cabinet did not wish to reconquer the lost provinces, and thought that the insurgents had been justified in their rebellion by the atrocious misgovernment of their Egyptian masters. Gordon reached Khartoum, the capital of the Soudan, but, immediately on his arrival there, was beleaguered by the hordes of the Mahdi (February, 1884). With two or three Europeans only to aid him, and no troops but the cowed and dispirited Egyptians, who had been driven into Khartoum from their other posts in the lost provinces, Gordon made a heroic defence. But as he could not withdraw his garrison without help from outside, he besought the cabinet for English troops, pointing out that the Soudanese enemy were not patriots struggling to be free, but ferocious fanatics, who massacred all who refused to acknowledge the Mahdi, and believed themselves destined to conquer the whole world.
[Sidenote: =The fall of Khartoum.=]
The English ministry ultimately sent a small force, under Lord Wolseley, the victor of Tel-el-Kebir, with orders to rescue Gordon and his garrison, and then to retire. But the expedition was despatched too late. After forcing their way in small boats up the Nile, and marching 180 miles across the waterless Bayuda desert, the main column of the relieving army beat the Mahdi's hordes at the hard-fought fight of Abu-Klea (January 22, 1885), and forced their way to within 100 miles of Khartoum, but there learnt that the place had been stormed, and Gordon, with the 11,000 men of his garrison, cut to pieces, four days after the battle of Abu-Klea (January 26, 1885).
[Sidenote: =Progress of the Mahdi.=]
The English then retired and abandoned the whole Soudan to the Mahdi's wild followers, who soon threatened Egypt itself. Two successive expeditions were sent to Suakim, on the Red Sea, to endeavour to attack the Mahdists from that side. Both had to withdraw after advancing a few miles inland, foiled by the waterless desert and the incessant harassing of the rebels. Somewhat later the fanatics twice endeavoured to force their way up the Nile from the south, and were only cast back after heavy fighting at Wady Halfa, on the very frontier of Egypt.
[Sidenote: =The Land Act of 1881.=]
The war in the Soudan dealt a heavy blow to the reputation of the Gladstone cabinet. In the mean time, it was beset by even greater difficulties arising out of the Irish question. In 1880 the government brought in a bill forbidding any landlord to evict a tenant without paying him "compensation for disturbance;" the bill was rejected by the House of Lords. In 1881 they brought forward and carried the second Irish Land Bill, appointing a commission or Land Court to fix all rents for fifteen years.
[Sidenote: =The Land League.--The Phoenix Park murders.=]
But the peasantry were far from being satisfied, and aimed at making an end of "landlordism" altogether. Their leaders had founded the celebrated "Land League," which organized a system of terrorism all over the country. Outrage grew more and more rampant, and at last the government, abandoning the idea of pacification, seized and imprisoned Parnell and forty other prominent chiefs of the Land League. In revenge for this, the "No-Rent Manifesto" was published by the surviving leaders of the League, and largely acted upon in the south and west of the country. Chaos seemed to have set in, and matters were made no better by the release of Parnell and his friends, under the so-called "Kilmainham Treaty," in which the premier consented to negociate with his prisoners for a cessation of hostilities. Forster, the Irish Secretary, and Lord Spencer, the Viceroy, resigned, to show their disapproval of the cabinet's policy. To replace Forster, Lord Frederic Cavendish was made Secretary for Ireland; but six days after his appointment he and his under-secretary, Mr. Burke, were murdered in broad day in Phoenix Park by some members of a Dublin secret society known as the "Invincibles" (June, 1882).
Universal horror was excited by this murder, but the country did not quiet down, and a stringent Crimes Bill passed in the same autumn did not suffice to stop the agrarian outrages which reigned throughout Ireland. All through the days of the Gladstone cabinet the island remained in the most deplorable condition, and the Irish parliamentary party continued to be a thorn in the side of the government.
[Sidenote: =The Reform Bill of 1884.=]
Unhappy both at home and abroad, and fearing the results of a general election, the prime minister reverted to the old Liberal cry of Parliamentary reform, and produced the Reform Bill of 1884, which conferred the franchise on the agricultural labourers, the last considerable class in the country who still lacked the vote. It was urged by the Conservative opposition that "redistribution"--the adjustment of seats to population in due proportion--ought to accompany this change. The House of Lords threw out the Reform Bill on this plea. Mr. Gladstone then consented to combine redistribution with enfranchisement, and the bill was passed in its new shape. The small boroughs with less than 15,000 inhabitants, which had escaped the bill of 1832, were deprived of their members, and the seats thus obtained were divided among the more populous districts and towns.
[Sidenote: =The Home Rulers and the balance of parties.=]
In June, 1885, a chance combination of Conservatives and Home Rulers beat the government on the budget. Mr. Gladstone resigned, and the opposition took office, though, like Lord Derby in 1852 and 1866, they had only a minority in the House. Beaconsfield had died in 1882, and the Conservatives were now led by Lord Salisbury, the foreign minister of the years 1878-80. When the session was over, Lord Salisbury dissolved Parliament, and a general election followed. The Liberals gained many of the new county seats, but the Conservatives did so well in the boroughs that the numbers of the two parties in the new Parliament were not far from equal. This put the balance of power into the hands of the Home Rulers, who could give the majority to the party with whom they choose to vote. The first use of their strength was to turn out the Conservative ministry (January, 1886).
[Sidenote: =The Home Rule Bill.=]
Mr. Gladstone then took office, though he too had a majority in the Commons only so long as it pleased the Irish members to vote with him. But soon it appeared that he was prepared to secure their allegiance by promising them Home Rule. Several members of his cabinet thereupon resigned. In April a bill for conceding practical legislative independence to Ireland was brought in. It was thrown out by the action of 97 English and Scotch Liberals, who voted against their party. The Gladstone cabinet at once resigned; a general election followed, and a large majority of "Unionists" was returned.
FOOTNOTES:
[64] See p. 691.
[65] See p. 697.
[66] See pp. 754, 755.
Chapter XLIII
THE LAST YEARS OF QUEEN VICTORIA, 1886-1901--THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR, 1899-1902.
In August, 1886, Lord Salisbury took office, with the most powerful majority at his back that any minister had enjoyed since the days of Lord Grey and the Reform Bill. He was supported by 316 Conservatives and aided by 78 Liberal Unionists, while the Gladstonian Liberals had shrunk to 191, so that the Parnellites with their 85 votes no longer had the balance of power in their hands.
Some political prophets had expected that the return of a majority pledged to resist Home Rule to the death would render the situation in Ireland more hopeless than ever, and lead to a general outburst of riot and assassination. The reverse was the case. A distinct improvement was perceptible after the fall of the Gladstone ministry, and in 1887-8 matters began to quiet down. The Parnellites indeed tried to embitter matters by a scheme called the "Plan of Campaign," by which the peasantry were to refuse to pay more rent than they thought proper. But it failed, and a stringent Coercion Bill, passed in July, 1887, did much to repress disorder. A Land Bill which accompanied the Coercion Act was less successful; it pleased neither landlords nor tenants, and had no appreciable result, good or bad. But on the whole, Mr. Arthur Balfour, the new Secretary for Ireland, had a far more prosperous career than any of his predecessors. He was one of the very few politicians who gained rather than lost credit while holding the unenviable post now assigned to him.
In 1887 the Irish question began at last to recede into the background, and ceased to monopolize public attention. In that year occurred the Queen's first Jubilee (June 21); the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of her accession was taken as the opportunity for a great imperial pageant, in which representatives drawn not only from the United Kingdom, but from India and all the colonies, did homage to their admirable sovereign. The display of respect and love for the Queen, reported from every corner of her dominions, showed that the crown, when placed on a worthy head, might be not the least of the links which bind the empire together.
Foreign politics during the first Salisbury administration sometimes looked threatening, but never reached any dangerous crisis. There was occasional friction with France concerning the question of Egypt; Mr. Gladstone had unwisely promised to evacuate that country when peace was restored, and the French Government repeatedly hinted that the time had arrived. Fortunately, the continued existence of the Mahdi's savage hordes on the Upper Nile, and their frequent attempts to penetrate down stream, supplied a sufficient reason for the continuation of the British protectorate, and the retention of the British garrison. But with Germany our relations were also sometimes very delicate. This was due to that wholesale annexation of unoccupied corners of the earth, which was the main feature of German colonial policy between 1885 and 1891. The regions (generally most uninviting in character) which Germany annexed were in close proximity to old British settlements both in Africa and Australasia, and lay in some cases in quarters where British influence had hitherto been paramount. Much friction ensued, and ultimately (as we shall see in our colonial chapter) complicated exchanges and delimitations of territory had to be carried out. This was the period in which we first discovered that Germany, no less than France, was for the future to be a rival in colonial expansion.
Meanwhile continental politics were suffering radical changes, which had to be carefully watched. With the death of the aged Emperor William of Germany in 1888, and the dismissal of Prince Bismarck from office in 1890, the old conditions of the balance of power in Europe were altered. The Czar Alexander III. was no friend to Germany, and the young Kaiser William II. did not share his grandfather's regard for Russia. For the "league of the three emperors" (Russia, Germany, Austria), which had been the predominant fact in the seventies and early eighties, there was substituted a new system of alliances. Germany and Austria took Italy into partnership, while Russia drew nearer to France, when it was seen that there was some stability in the republic--a fact that was not certain until the ridiculous fiasco of the theatrical adventurer General Boulanger in 1888. By 1891, in the later days of the first Salisbury ministry, this new arrangement of the powers of Europe was definitely established. It had for Great Britain the advantage that the two leagues balanced each other, and that it was unlikely that both at once would take a hostile attitude towards us. The wisdom of that policy of neutrality and of abstention from interference in purely continental affairs, which had long been our practice, became under the circumstances more obvious than ever. The danger for the future lay in colonial questions rather than in the internal politics of Europe.
The domestic policy of the Salisbury cabinet followed the lines that Lord Beaconsfield had laid down in 1874-80, the aim of the ministers being to show that the Conservative party could be as fruitful in measures of practical reform as their predecessors. To this period belong the Local Government Bill of 1888, creating the "County Councils," which have worked so well ever since, the Free Education Act of 1891, and the great conversion of the National Debt. By this latter measure Mr. Goschen, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, reduced the 3 per cent. interest on the National Debt to 2-3/4 per cent., paying off in ready money the few creditors of the nation who refused to accept the reduction. Thus £1,400,000 a year was saved, and the new stock, till the financial disturbance caused by the late South African war, was generally worth in the market more than the old 3 per cents.
[Sidenote: =Fall of Parnell.=]
The chief event in home politics during the later years of the Salisbury ministry, was the disappearance of Parnell, the dominating spirit of the Irish party for the last ten years. In 1889 he had triumphantly vindicated himself from a charge of having approved the Phoenix Park murders, and had obtained £5000 damages from the Times newspaper for having circulated the charge, on the authority of a forger named Piggott. But less than a year later he appeared as defendant, and not as plaintiff, in the law courts, in the unenviable capacity of co-respondent in a discreditable divorce case. The time has long gone by when a notorious evil liver can be accepted as the leader of a great party. Mr. Gladstone announced to the Irish members that they must depose their chief; the majority consented, but Parnell, supported by a few of his followers, refused to accept "British dictation," or to bow before the "Nonconformist conscience." The Irish party split up into the fiercely opposed factions of "Parnellites" and "Anti-Parnellites," whose abuse of each other did much to disgust their Liberal allies. Parnell himself died in 1891, but the schism continued and lasted for nearly ten years, destroying much of the power of the Home Rule movement and the Irish party.
Nine months after Parnell's death, Lord Salisbury dissolved Parliament (July, 1892). At the General Election which followed there was visible that "swing of the pendulum" which has usually been a feature of such times during the nineteenth century. An outgoing government has always offended some interests, and disappointed others. There are always a certain number of voters who think it fair "to give the other side a chance," and vote for the opposition, whoever may be the "ins" or the "outs." Though the Salisbury ministry had not been conspicuously unsuccessful at home or abroad, it found itself left in a minority when the elections were over.
The Queen therefore sent for Mr. Gladstone and bade him form a Liberal ministry. He had to face a difficult situation, for his majority was small, and composed entirely of the Irish, very exacting, untrustworthy, and reckless supporters. The new parliament showed 274 Gladstonians and 81 Irish Home Rulers, 269 Conservatives and 46 Liberal Unionists. Being compelled to rely on the Irish for his majority, Gladstone had to make Home Rule the main plank of his party platform. This was not at all to the taste of many of his British followers, who would have liked to give precedence to their own particular schemes--for the abolition of the House of Lords, the disestablishment of the Welsh and Scottish Churches, the introduction of Temperance Legislation, of Universal Suffrage, and of numberless other local and sectional projects.
[Sidenote: =The second Home Rule Bill.=]
In February, 1893, Mr. Gladstone produced his second Home Rule Bill, which differed from the first mainly in providing Ireland with two, instead of one, Houses of Parliament, and in leaving at Westminster eighty Irish members, who were to vote on imperial, but not on purely British, concerns. Essentially it was the same as its predecessor of 1885. The measure was debated with great fierceness, and at enormous length; it occupied the House of Commons from February to September, and was only carried finally when the discussion of many clauses had been stifled by the use of the "closure." The third reading passed on September 1 by a majority of 34--301 to 267 votes. The Bill then went up to the House of Lords, who made short work of it, casting it out on September 8 by a majority of ten to one (419 to 41).
The Conservative leaders had taken this bold step because they believed that the country at large was profoundly uninterested in the bill, and would view its rejection with equanimity. If it had been really a popular measure, the House of Lords would not have dared to deal with it in such a drastic fashion. By their abrupt action they challenged Mr. Gladstone to a second appeal to the nation; if he chose to dissolve parliament, held another general election, and was once more triumphant, the peers would have to bow to the general wish of the country. But Gladstone and his colleagues had no desire to try the experiment: while professing much righteous indignation, they proclaimed their determination to put Home Rule aside for the moment, and to proceed to the introduction of other measures of radical reform. This resolve incensed the Irish, on whom the Government's majority depended, while the English Radicals were so much split up into cliques with different ideals, that it was hard to keep them together. The Gladstone Government passed nothing but a "Parish Councils Bill," which extended to small communities that same power of governing themselves by elective boards which the late Conservative ministry had granted to the counties.
[Sidenote: =Lord Rosebery Premier.=]
In March, 1894, the premier announced that he was compelled to retire from office by his increasing physical infirmities. Even his splendid constitution was at last giving way, and with no immediate prospect of carrying out any great measure before him, he had resolved to retire from public life. He was succeeded by Lord Rosebery, his Foreign Secretary, who was rather a type of the Whig than of the Radical. He had ably managed the external relations of Great Britain, and had shown himself an exponent of colonial expansion rather than an "anti-imperialist." Like many a Whig statesman of the eighteenth century, he was a keen lover of sport, and alone among British premiers has run winners for the Derby. He had never professed any great belief in, or love for, Home Rule. His character and his views seemed little adapted to make him an appropriate leader for the Gladstonian party: but as its ablest man he was charged with the formation of the new ministry.
His tenure of power lasted for sixteen months (March, 1894-June, 1895). It was mainly filled by a record of Bills introduced, but never carried: a Welsh Disestablishment Act, an Irish Land Act, and a "Local Option" Act to please the Temperance party, were all brought forward, but none reached fruition. The votaries of each measure hindered the progress of the others, in disgust that their own was not given priority. The party was rent by feuds and intrigues, and in disgust at the situation Lord Rosebery took the opportunity of a casual vote on a small military matter, which had gone against the ministry, and dissolved parliament.
[Sidenote: =Lord Salisbury's Second Ministry.=]
The ensuing General Election resulted in the complete rout of the Liberal party; they had been in power for three years, but had accomplished nothing, owing to their internal divisions and the necessary dependence on the Irish vote, which hampered all their enterprises. Tired of their futile proceedings, the electors made a clean sweep of them, and gave Lord Salisbury a majority even larger than he had possessed in 1886. The new House of Commons of August, 1895, showed 340 Conservatives and 71 Liberal Unionists, but only 177 Liberals, with 70 Anti-Parnellite and 12 Parnellite Home Rulers. Lord Salisbury's second ministry was differentiated from his first by the fact that it opened its ranks to the Liberal Unionists. Mr. Chamberlain, representing the Radicals, and Lord Hartington, representing the Whig wings of that party, received cabinet office, and minor posts went to their followers.
This ministry was destined to see the century out, to survive the venerable Queen Victoria, and to face with success the ordeal of a general election, which no cabinet had done since Lord Palmerston's day. Its record has been a stormy one, mainly because it has carried out the mandate given to it in 1895, by taking in hand a strong imperial and colonial policy. In its first year it became involved in a noisy quarrel with the President of the United States, who had interfered with language of an unnecessarily brusque and provocative kind in a frontier dispute concerning boundaries in Guiana, which had been forced upon Britain by the republic of Venezuela. Fortunately the cabinet kept cool, American feeling calmed down, and the dispute ended in a satisfactory arbitration, which gave us practically all that we had ever claimed.
[Sidenote: =Jameson's Raid.=]
This dispute was in full career when a much more dangerous question was opened, by the mad and piratical "Jameson raid." Ever since Mr. Gladstone had granted independence to the Transvaal Boers, after the defeat of Majuba Hill,[67] the condition of affairs in South Africa had grown progressively worse. The two races of white settlers in that region nourished incompatible ambitions. To the British colonist it seemed natural and proper that all the southern end of the "Dark Continent" should some day federate itself under the Union Jack. The Dutch had another ideal, that of a Republican South Africa, in which their own nationality should be dominant. It was shared not only by the burghers of the Transvaal and the Orange River Free State, but by the larger part of the Dutch-born inhabitants of Cape Colony. These rival ideals were inevitably bound to lead to a collision. The Boers were much incensed at our annexations to the north of their homes, which in 1889 made Matabeleland and Mashonaland British, and cut off from them the power of expanding towards the interior. The main agent in this advance had been Mr. Cecil Rhodes, the founder of the "British South African Company" which first seized and exploited the coveted territories: this brought upon him much indignation from the Boers, and he was soon to merit more. Meanwhile the British section in South Africa also had its grievances. The discovery of rich gold-reefs in the Transvaal brought to that land a large mining population, mainly of British extraction, and led to the founding of the "golden city" of Johannesburg. Willing to profit from the discovery of the mines, but frightened and angered by the influx of aliens, the Transvaal Government refused the settlers any of the duties and privileges of citizenship. Their autocratic ruler, President Kruger, a clever but narrow-minded and unscrupulous old man, made it the keystone of his policy to keep down the miners and refuse them all political rights. His corrupt and retrograde government irritated the "Uitlanders," and in 1895 they formed a conspiracy to rise at Johannesburg and win their desire by armed rebellion. When the plot had come to a head, Dr. Jameson, a trusted lieutenant of Mr. Rhodes, crossed the British frontier with five hundred mounted police, and dashed for Johannesburg. He was surrounded, beaten, and captured with all his followers, whereupon the "Uitlander" malcontents also laid down their arms. On inquiry, it was found that Mr. Rhodes himself had a guilty knowledge of the plan, a thing utterly incompatible with his position as British premier of Cape Colony. President Kruger imprisoned his captives for some time, and then fined them and let them go. The British Government cashiered the officers concerned in the plot, but did nothing to Rhodes, though he soon lost his premiership at the Cape. An unwisely worded telegram of congratulation sent by the German Emperor to Mr. Kruger caused considerable indignation in England, and led to a temporary coolness between Berlin and London. But this was the smallest of the evil results of the "Jameson Raid," which embittered to an intolerable degree the already existing feud between the British and the Dutch inhabitants of South Africa. Yet it was to be nearly four years more before this deep-lying hatred led to open war.
Meanwhile there was a delusive interval of quiet, during which there took place the second "Jubilee" of Queen Victoria, who had now reached the sixtieth year of her reign and the seventy-eighth of her life. It was celebrated (June 20, 1897) with the deepest personal devotion to the aged sovereign, and with an even greater display of imperial sentiment all round the British world than had been seen in 1887. Ere three years had elapsed, it was to be proved that this display of loyalty to the crown and the empire from the British colonies was no vain show, but the manifestation of a very real solidarity of sentiment and interests.
[Sidenote: =Death of Mr. Gladstone.=]
Domestic politics meanwhile remained barren and uninteresting; the Government carried through nothing more than a few small measures of social reform, and an Irish Local Government Act (1898) of doubtful expediency. But their opponents showed no rallying power. Mr. Gladstone died on May 19, 1898, at the great age of eighty-eight: after his decease his late followers were more divided than ever, and seemed unable to formulate any common political programme, or to discover any means of appealing to popular sentiment. The Radical party changed its leader twice in three years, and could never make up its mind whether "Home Rule was dead," or whether it had to be resuscitated as a war-cry with which Irish allies might be lured back to the fold.
[Sidenote: =Reconquest of the Soudan.=]
[Sidenote: =The Fashoda incident.=]
Meanwhile foreign affairs once more grew threatening, and in 1898 we were to be upon the brink of a struggle with our nearest European neighbour. Ever since the Gladstone ministry in 1885 abandoned the Soudan to the fanatical followers of the Mahdi[68] the southern frontier of Egypt had been exposed to the raids of the wild Soudanese. To end this nuisance the Salisbury Government resolved to undertake the reconquest of Khartoum and the destruction of the Mahdist power. In 1896 the first step was taken, when Sir Herbert Kitchener subdued Dongola and the northern provinces which obeyed the "Khalifa" Abdullah, the successor of the Mahdi. In 1898 an Egyptian army, strengthened by a large British contingent, marched under the same commander to complete the work. In a great battle outside Omdurman the hordes of the Khalifa were routed, and he himself forced to fly into the desert, where he perished a year later in a small skirmish. But when Kitchener took over the administration of the reconquered lands, he was surprised to find a French force on the Upper Nile, at Fashoda, above Khartoum. A small expedition under a Major Marchand had pushed across from the Congo, and established itself in the middle of one of the old Egyptian provinces, where the tricolour had been hoisted, apparently with the intention of setting up a claim to territorial acquisitions in the Soudan. The French Government had been warned long before that an invasion of this region would be regarded as an unfriendly act. It was now summoned to withdraw Marchand or face the consequences. For a moment war seemed probable, but fortunately the ministers of the republic faltered and withdrew their claim. This was a happy chance, as Great Britain a year later was to be engaged in another struggle, which would have taken a very different turn if we had already been engaged in hostilities with a great European power.
In 1899 the South African problem, which had been growing more and more dangerous since the "Jameson Raid," came to a head. President Kruger had spent the time in accumulating enormous stores of arms and munitions of war from Europe, in concluding an offensive and defensive alliance with his neighbours of the Orange Free State, and in establishing relations with the discontented Dutch colonists of the Cape. This last was the most disquieting feature of the situation: an association called the "Africander Bond" organized the Colonial burghers into almost openly avowed hostility to the British connection, and manifested effusive sympathy with Kruger's policy. The old president's rule over the Uitlanders had become more oppressive than ever since the "Raid:" he very naturally regarded these aliens as enemies, refused them any concessions, and maddened them with monopolies, corrupt legislation, and insulting speeches. In April, 1899, a great petition signed by 21,000 British subjects in the Transvaal was sent to the Queen, setting forth their unhappy condition, and begging that an inquiry might be made into their wrongs.
[Sidenote: =The Bloemfontein Conference.=]
This appeal led to the "Bloemfontein Conference" of May, 1899, in which Sir Alfred Milner met President Kruger, and tried to induce him to grant the Uitlanders the power of obtaining civic rights after five years' residence in the Transvaal. The president not only refused this, but disputed the existence of the British suzerainty over the Republic established by the convention of 1882. The negotiators parted in a state of mutual exasperation, Milner reporting to London that the British suzerainty was in danger, and that he could only get the most vague and illusory promises of concession for the Uitlanders; while Kruger told his Raad that "though he did not desire war, he could not give way an inch."
From this moment armed strife was inevitable, though the British Government and nation do not seem to have realized the fact. Mr. Chamberlain kept making proposals for a resumption of negotiations during the summer, but, after long delays, received in September nothing but a formal notice that the President disowned any British suzerainty over the Transvaal. This looked ominous, and the cabinet resolved to reinforce the garrisons of the Cape and Natal, where in August there were in all only 6000 troops. By September this force was nearly tripled by battalions sent in from India and from the home stations.
[Sidenote: =Kruger declares war.=]
Then followed, to the intense surprise of all who had not been studying African politics very closely, an insulting ultimatum from Pretoria, to the effect that if the reinforcements were not at once withdrawn, a declaration of war would follow in twenty-four hours (October 9, 1899). Next day hostilities began, and the Boer army, which had been mobilizing for many days, crossed the frontier of Natal. The Orange River Free State declared war on the same day.
The strength of the two republics had been utterly miscalculated by the home authorities, even when they saw war impending. The Burghers could put 70,000 well-armed mounted riflemen into the field, and were supplied with superabundant stores of modern cannon and munitions. They were also relying on the support of a general rebellion of the Cape Dutch, who had been secretly armed and organized during the preceding months.
[Sidenote: =Siege of Ladysmith.=]
It was fortunate for Britain that the Boers' strategy was very bad: instead of entering Cape Colony, where they could have raised the whole countryside in their aid, they sent their main army into Natal, and most of their other forces to besiege the outlying garrisons of Mafeking and Kimberley. This misdirection of their energy saved the British domination in South Africa. After a few preliminary skirmishes, the burghers beat Sir George White, our commander in Natal, at the battle of Lombard's Kop (October 30). He retired into a fortified position at Ladysmith, trusting that the enemy would gather round him instead of pushing further into British territory. This expectation was correct: the burghers surrounded the 12,000 men concentrated at Ladysmith, built lines to shut them in, and worried them by a fruitless bombardment; but they did not attempt to close, or to destroy the army by a general assault. The same took place in the other centres of strife: both at Mafeking and Kimberley the enemy wasted their strength in tedious blockades, while the time of their predominance was passing away. During the first two months of the war, they had a threefold superiority of numbers, and only used it in shutting up the three garrisons.
The British military authorities, still gravely underrating their adversaries, had despatched in November an army corps of 40,000 men, which they thought sufficient to end the war. There was such a misconception of the numbers and fighting power of the Boers, that when the colonies began to offer aid, the War Office actually told them that "infantry would be preferred," for a campaign in which the enemy consisted entirely of lightly moving mounted riflemen! The command was given to Sir Redvers Buller, a veteran of the Zulu and Soudan wars, of whom much was expected.
[Sidenote: =The "Black Week."=]
Buller went to Natal himself with 18,000 men, sending the rest of his troops to Cape Colony, where one column under Lord Methuen marched to relieve Kimberley, while another under General Gatacre moved up to suppress the rebellion already springing up in the northern parts of Cape Colony. Then followed the "Black Week" of December 9-16, 1899. The force under Lord Methuen forced its way almost to Kimberley, after severe fighting, but on December 11 was beaten back with great loss from an attempt to storm by night the lines of Magersfontein. At the same time the column under Gatacre was routed by the rebels at Stormberg. But the worst disaster was suffered by Buller himself. He found the main Boer army still round Ladysmith, with a "covering force" arranged behind the Tugela in the lines of Colenso. In an attempt to break through, by a reckless and unskilful frontal attack, he suffered a complete defeat, losing ten guns and 1000 men. So entirely was his confidence destroyed, that he suggested to Sir George White that he might have to surrender Ladysmith, and reported that the Colenso position could not be forced.
Fortunately, the enemy did not take the offensive. Both at Magersfontein and at Colenso they remained passive in their lines, and allowed the British to rally and reform. The only wise move which they made was to begin to send considerable forces into Cape Colony, where many districts at once rose in rebellion to aid them. But their main strength still lay round in the beleaguered towns of Ladysmith, Mafeking, and Kimberley, where they accomplished nothing.
The disasters of December caused intense dismay in England. But the cabinet and the nation faced the situation with coolness and determination; there was no panic, but only a resolve that the full force of the empire should be turned upon South Africa. Not only were the few remaining regular battalions from the home stations sent out, and the militia mobilized for garrison duty, but a general appeal was made for volunteers both in Britain and in the colonies. It was at last realized that mounted men were required: the mother country gave 12,000 "yeomanry" at the first summons, but the colonies did even more, both Canada and Australia contributing men and horses with a liberality that was absolutely astounding. The Australian colonies and New Zealand sent to South Africa, in the space of two years, no less than 22,000 mounted rifles; the South African loyalists gave 12,000, Canada 6000, and other colonies smaller numbers.
[Sidenote: =Victories of Lord Roberts.=]
But a new commander was even more needed than new troops. Lord Roberts, the hero of the Cabul-Candahar march, was sent out to take charge of the war, with Lord Kitchener, the victor of Omdurman, as his chief of the staff. Even before the bulk of the reinforcements had arrived, the change in the direction of affairs was soon marked by a turn in the tide of success. Lord Roberts massed 35,000 men on the western line of advance, where Methuen was still standing at bay opposite the entrenchments of Magersfontein. By a sudden flank march he evicted the Boers from this position, relieved Kimberley, and captured General Cronje and 4000 of the late besiegers at Paardeberg (February 27). Then moving into the heart of the Orange Free State, he swept aside all opposition and occupied Bloemfontein, its capital (March 11, 1900).
Buller meanwhile, with the army of Natal, made two more ill-managed attempts to relieve Ladysmith. They failed, but a third assault was more successful, and the Boer lines were pierced after much hard fighting, ending in the battle of Pieter's Hill. The enemy withdrew to defend the Transvaal, and Sir George White's garrison was relieved when it had been reduced to starvation point, and was at the very end of its resources (February 29, 1900).
[Sidenote: =The march to Pretoria.=]
The second period of the war had now arrived, in which the British could take the offensive. They had by this time a vast superiority of force, having 200,000 men in South Africa, while the Cape rebels had mostly surrendered, and many even of the burghers of the two republics had retired to their homes in despair. Lord Roberts brought the regular fighting to an end in two campaigns: during the first (April-May, 1900) he fought his way to Johannesburg and Pretoria, and captured both places. After a short rest he marched against the main Boer army, which had rallied in the Eastern Transvaal, and forced it to disperse or to retire over the Portuguese frontier (August-September, 1900). President Kruger fled to Europe with the state-chest of the republic, and devoted himself to the task of stirring up public opinion on the Continent against Great Britain--a task in which he had only too much success.
[Sidenote: =Guerilla warfare.=]
It had been hoped that when the regular resistance of the Boers ceased, the war would come to a speedy end. After Lord Roberts returned to England, the impression was strengthened almost to certainty. But a bitter disappointment awaited the British cabinet and nation. Instead of surrendering, the enemy broke up into guerilla bands, which rode through the country cutting railways, capturing convoys, and destroying isolated detachments and small garrisons. There were still 40,000 of them in arms, and such a force ranging over a country as large as France and Germany put together, was most difficult to deal with. They maintained their desperate struggle for no less than nineteen months (October, 1900-April, 1902). Lord Kitchener finally had to subdue them by the "method of attrition." It was only by constant "drives," in which large numbers of mounted troops scoured the countryside to catch the bands, and by the building of lines of block-houses across their favourite spheres of action, that the burghers were finally worn down. They displayed an enterprise and a reckless courage in these last months of the war which they had been far from showing at its commencement. But at last even their stubborn spirits were humbled to the idea of surrender: after more than half of them had been captured or slain, and when all their families had been removed to "concentration camps," they opened negotiations (May, 1902), and finally laid down their arms to the number of 21,000 men.
Under a wise and conciliatory government there seems no reason to doubt that they may ultimately become useful and trustworthy citizens of the British empire. But it will try all the wisdom of the able administrator who now presides over all South Africa, from Cape Town to the Zambesi, to settle the multifarious problems which the war has left behind it. Meanwhile Britain is quit of the most dangerous war which she has waged since Waterloo, a war which brought to light many faults in her military system, and much incompetence among her generals, but which also revealed that the heart of her people was sound and the unity of her empire solid. It was a most reassuring sign that the nation paid no attention to the desperate attempts made to exploit the early disasters of the war for party purposes, and to get up an agitation against the Government. The movement fell flat, and at the General Election, which occurred in the middle of the war, the Salisbury cabinet was replaced in power with a very large majority. Still more notable was the splendid loyalty with which the colonies rallied round the mother-country in her day of need, and poured in their best fighting men for an imperial war, in which it might have been pleaded that they were not directly concerned. Not even the blindest observer can fail to see that it is futile to doubt any longer the existence of the "imperial sentiment."
[Sidenote: =Death of Queen Victoria.=]
It was a source of regret to every loyal inhabitant of the British dominions that the aged sovereign under whom the war began did not survive to see its victorious termination, and to close her eyes on a world at peace. But Queen Victoria, whose powers had been slowly failing for the last year of her life, only just lived to see the new century, and expired on the 22nd of January, 1901. She was followed to the grave by the regrets of a people who realized fully what they owed to one who had been the model of constitutional sovereigns, and had set so high the standard of public as well of domestic duty. Personally she had done more to secure the perpetuation of the British monarchy than even the most sanguine observer could have hoped, when she came to the throne, an unexperienced girl of eighteen, in the year 1837. Surveying her eventful reign of sixty-four years--the longest in English history--with all its progress and endeavour, we trust that our descendants may look upon the "Victorian Age" as not the least glorious period in our country's annals.
FOOTNOTES:
[67] See p. 713.
[68] See p. 715.