XXXV. THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (continued)…

XXXV. THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (continued)

The Vatican Council--Unusualness of the Occasion--Dr. Newman's Letter--Jesuit Influence--Dr. Cumming--Symptoms of Opposition--Opening of the Council--Inequalities of Representation--Order of Business--Production of the Schemata--The Doctrine of Papal Infallibility--Opposition of France and Austria--Withdrawal of the French Troops--The Ecclesiastical Opposition--Withdrawal of the Anti-Protestant Preamble--Adoption of the Constitution De Fide--Discussion on the Constitution De Ecclesiâ--Application of the Closure--The Dogma defined--Secession of the Minority--Confirmation of the Constitution--Victor Emmanuel determines on the Occupation of Rome--The Popular Vote--The Papal Guarantees--The Spanish Throne--The Savoy Candidature--Death of Prim--Paris after the Revolution of September--Jules Favre's Circular--Bismarck's Reply--The Negotiations at Ferrières--The Fortifications of Paris--The Investment completed--Thiers and Gambetta--Fall of Strasburg--Bazaine in Metz--An abortive Sortie--Emperor or Country?--Regnier's Intrigue--The Empress declines to be a Party--A Council of War--Boyer's Mission--Its Failure--The Army of Metz capitulates--A Riot in Paris--Thiers negotiates in vain--Abortive Sorties--The Army of the Loire--D'Aurelle de Paladines reoccupies Orleans--Reasons for his Inaction--He is ordered to advance--Chanzy's Defeat and Recapture of Orleans--The Second Army of the Loire--Garibaldi in the East--The New Year in Paris--Dispositions of the German Armies--Battle of Amiens--Faídherbe's Campaign--Bapaume--St. Quentin--An Unpleasant Incident--Le Mans--The Bombardment of Paris--The Armistice--Termination of the Siege--Bourbaki's Attempt--Action at Villersexel--The Eastern Army crosses the Swiss Frontier--The National Assembly at Bordeaux--Prolongation of the Armistice--Resignation of Gambetta--Preliminaries of Peace--Occupation of Paris--Acceptance of the Preliminaries--The Definitive Treaty--German Unity.

The earlier portion of the year, of which the later months ushered in so much bloodshed and such dire calamities, was rendered memorable by the sessions of the Vatican Council at Rome, the first General Council of the Latin Church that Europe had witnessed since the Council of Trent. To England, indeed, as a Protestant country, the proceedings of a purely Roman Catholic council could not be of immediate and vital interest. Yet, besides the necessity and duty of watching keenly transactions tending to affect the faith and conduct of a large portion of that Christendom to which England also belonged, the closeness of her connection with Ireland, whose people zealously participated in the preparatory movements, brought the subject home to her in various ways; the questions themselves which it was understood were likely to come before the Council were of a remarkable nature; and a well-founded apprehension existed that the settlement of these questions in a particular way was likely to have large and wide-spreading political results. It will not therefore be out of place in this History, while keeping clear of anything like theological discussion, to insert a brief notice of the Vatican Council, showing in what circumstances and with what intentions it was called together, and describing how, after great and weighty opposition, a dogma issued from its deliberations that afterwards acted like a firebrand cast into the society of all Roman Catholic countries.

The (according to the Roman computation) twenty-second General Council was convened, by the Bull Æterni Patris dated the 29th of June, 1868, to meet at the Vatican on the 8th of December, 1869. The principal subjects for its deliberations were stated to be--the magisterium or supremacy of the Roman Pontiff, the relations between the State and the Church, and the deep-seated evils and corruptions of modern society, owing to the prevalence of revolutionary principles in religion, morals, and philosophy. Why the Council was summoned at this particular time, it was not easy to understand. Dissensions on questions of faith, threatening to terminate in schism, or which already had terminated in schism, appear to have been, in former ages of the Church, the invariable antecedents of the convocation of an Œcumenical Council. But in the present case there never had been a time in which greater unanimity in faith, or a more ardent spirit of loyal obedience to the Pope, had pervaded the Roman Catholic world. It had been indeed alleged that the rash speculations of some German professors at the universities of Munich and Vienna, the drift of which was to extend the authority of National Churches, and to set limits to the Papal sovereignty, supplied a natural occasion and a sufficient justification for the fuller and more exact definition of the Pontifical and Petrine privileges which the promoters of the Council desired to see recorded. Yet, at the time, little was heard of these speculations: they did not aim at popularity; they were not taken up as the watchwords of any important party in the Church. The non-necessity for, the inopportunity of, the Council--at any rate with reference to questions of dogma--was an opinion strongly entertained by many earnest and able Roman Catholics. "What have we done?" wrote Dr. Newman to Bishop Ullathorne, "to be treated as the faithful never were treated before? When has a definition de fide been a luxury of devotion, and not a stern, painful necessity? Why should an aggressive and insolent faction be allowed to 'make the heart of the just sad, whom the Lord hath not made sorrowful'? Why cannot we be let alone when we have pursued peace and thought no evil?... If it is God's will that the Pope's infallibility is defined, then is it God's will to throw back 'the times and the moments' of that triumph which He has destined for His kingdom, and I shall feel I have but to bow my head to His adorable, inscrutable Providence." Many were of opinion that the Society of Jesus--the members of which were numerous at Rome, were supposed to have great influence over the Pope, and were certainly very active in paving the way for the Council--saw in the extension and more precise definition of the Papal prerogatives, which the adoption of the dogma of infallibility would involve, an opportunity for strengthening that system of centralised and unquestioned power which they have done so much to establish in the Roman Church. "The dogma," it was said, "is intended to make the Pope the ruler of the world; but the Jesuits rule the Pope, therefore the master-influence for the future in that large section of mankind which is included in the Latin Church will be wielded by the Jesuits." Nor was this opinion as to the preponderating share assigned to the Order in the arrangements for the Council confined to Protestants. Soon after the commencement of the sessions, Bishop Strossmayer, a Croatian prelate, denounced the Jesuits before the assembled fathers as manipulating and directing the business of the Council in a manner liable to be disastrous to the interests of the Church.

Soon after the publication of the Bull convening the Council a Papal Brief appeared, addressed to all Protestants and non-Roman Catholics, informing them that a General Council was about to be held, entreating them not to rest contented with a position in which they could not be sure of their salvation, and urging them to reconciliation and submission. Dr. Cumming, of the Scottish Church, London, understood this appeal as tantamount to an invitation to the Council, and manifested an intention of attending at the Council at the time appointed and taking part in the discussion. The Pope, however, writing to Archbishop Manning, desired that "Dr. Cumming, of Scotland," should be informed that no opinions and practices that had been condemned by any previous Council could be again brought under discussion, and that the object of reminding Protestants of the Council was to induce them to reflect upon the instability of their religious position. In order that confusion might not characterise the proceedings of so numerous an assembly, composed of men of every nation, a large proportion of whom had never set eyes upon each other before, six commissions were appointed by the Pope, with orders to prepare and rough-hew the materials for deliberation in council on the several topics of Religious Dogma, Ecclesiastical Politics, Church Discipline, Monastic Orders, the East, and Rites and Ceremonies.

In Roman Catholic countries it was believed that the object for which the Council was convened was to declare the infallibility of the Pope; and for months before the Council opened great agitation prevailed. In France, Bishop Maret and Père Gratry, the Oratorian, published pamphlets impugning, not the opportuneness only, but the truth, of the doctrine in question. In Germany the celebrated Dr. Döllinger contributed to the Allgemeine Zeitung a short but weighty essay, "Against the Infallibility of the Pope." But of all writings of this class none attracted so much attention as an able work named "The Pope and the Council" that appeared under the pseudonym of "Janus." The object of the writer was to establish by reference to history the untenable nature of the claims now made on behalf of the Roman Pontiffs. The Governments of the Roman Catholic Powers became uneasy and sought information from Cardinal Antonelli as to the probable course that the deliberations would take; some of them also spoke of asserting a claim to send ambassadors to the Council, as in former times, for the protection of lay interests. But Cardinal Antonelli replied in smooth and conciliatory terms; he would not admit that the definition of the dogma of infallibility was probable; and with regard to the non-admission into the Council of ambassadors from Roman Catholic Powers, he justified it by the changed circumstances of modern times.

The Council assembled for the first time on the appointed day, the 8th of December, 1869. Out of 1,044 bishops, mitred abbots, or generals of orders, who were qualified to sit in the Council, 767 actually attended. The bishops of Poland alone, among European countries, were absent, having been forbidden to attend by the Czar. England and Scotland were represented by twelve or thirteen bishops, the most prominent of whom were Archbishop Manning and Dr. Ullathorne. Ireland sent twenty-three representatives, including Cardinal Cullen, Archbishop MacHale, and the learned and enlightened Bishop of Kerry, Dr. Moriarty. The French bishops were about eighty in number; those of North Germany only fourteen. The total number of bishops from all European countries--except Italy--amounted to 265. The Italian bishops, together with the hundred and nineteen bishops whose sees were in partibus infidelium, formed a total of 276. The missionary bishops--congregating to Rome from all parts of the known world, the expenses of their journey and residence in Rome being borne by the Papal treasury--formed nearly three hundred. It was objected that the representative character of the Council was impaired by the inequality of the relations existing between the bishops and the faithful who composed their flocks. The North German bishops, it was said, were only as one to 810,000 lay Catholics in North Germany; while the bishops from the Pontifical State numbered one for every 12,000 of the laity. Again, it was urged that, whereas in the primitive times one of the most distinctive characteristics of a bishop sitting in a council was that he bore testimony concerning the faith of his flock, this could not be the case with the numerous bishops in partibus now assembled at the Vatican, whose few and ignorant converts, for the most part just reclaimed from barbarism, had no traditional Christianity to put in plea. To all such objections it was replied, on the other side, that a bishop sat in council in virtue of his consecration only and that the doctrine of equal numerical representation had never been received in the Church.

For the regulation of the order of business the Bull Multiplices inter was prepared, and communicated to the Council at the commencement of its proceedings. It was said that under this Bull the liberty of the Council was abridged to an extent never known in former councils. It lodged in the hands of the Pope the nomination of the presidents of all congregations and commissions and enjoined that any proposition that a bishop desired to bring before the Council should first be laid before a special commission, which should decide on its admissibility and report accordingly to the Pope; without whose permission in the last resort it could not be brought forward. It need hardly be said that Latin was prescribed as the only language to be used in the public declarations.

The first public session (December 8th, 1869) was devoted to the formalities of opening. The proceedings of the Council being suddenly suspended in October, there were but four public sessions altogether. The second was held on the feast of the Epiphany, January 6th, 1870; when, no decree being at that time ready for discussion, every bishop attending the Council, with the Pope at their head, made the formal profession of his faith by publicly declaring his adhesion to the creed of Pope Pius IV., in which were summed up the principal dogmatic definitions and decrees of the Council of Trent. In the course of January several Schemata, or rough drafts of decrees, were introduced into the Council and referred to the several examining commissions. The first was the Schema De Fide: it was headed, in its original form, by a preamble containing language of a very disparaging nature respecting Protestantism, to the influence of which it ascribed Rationalism, Pantheism, Atheism, Socialism, etc., which it proceeded to condemn and anathematise. The second Schema related to Church discipline, and was brought in on the 14th of January; it dealt chiefly with the duties of bishops. The third Schema, De Ecclesiâ, on the Church and the Papal primacy, was brought in on the 21st of January; it originally contained three chapters, but a fourth was added in the circumstances presently to be related.

The repugnance to the doctrine of Papal Infallibility--or, at any rate, to the opportuneness of its definition at the present juncture--had been now so loudly expressed by a number of bishops (chiefly French and German, but with a sprinkling of English and Americans) that the majority in the Council began to fear that the advisers of the Pope would recommend the postponement of the subject to a future occasion. Wherefore a petition, or postulatum, was prepared, soon after the session of the 6th January, praying the Pope that the doctrine of the infallibility of the Chair of Peter might be defined; this was signed by five hundred bishops. The Governments of France and Austria, alarmed at this intelligence, thought that the time was come for exercising a pressure in a contrary direction on the Papal Court. Count Daru, then Minister for Foreign Affairs, instructed the Marquis de Banneville, the French Ambassador at Rome, to inform Cardinal Antonelli of the desire of the French Cabinet to be informed beforehand of all proceedings of a political nature that were taken by the Council, and of the decidedly adverse opinion of the said Cabinet against any definition of Papal infallibility. The Austrian Minister held similar language. Cardinal Antonelli replied to Count Daru in a long despatch written in March, when the prospect of the adoption of the dogma was increasingly favourable, denying that the Concordat existing between France and Rome gave the French Government any right to demand the special information required and claiming it as the privilege and the duty of the Council to proceed to the doctrinal definition deprecated by the French Cabinet, which he hoped would be greeted by the faithful everywhere as "the rainbow of peace and the dawn of a brighter future." It has been stated that the French Government replied to this letter from Cardinal Antonelli, stating that, as he determined to pursue a course that could only end in its ruin, France would for the future abstain from interference; but that on the day of the declaration of Papal Infallibility the Concordat would cease to be valid, the State would separate itself from the Church, and the French troops would be withdrawn from the Papal territory. It is certain that the resolution to withdraw the French troops, which was officially communicated by the Marquis de Banneville to the Holy See on the 27th July, was arrived at before France had sustained any military reverses, and may therefore have been prompted, or at least accelerated, by the proclamation of the dogma; but it does not appear that the menace of treating the Concordat as invalid was ever acted upon in the smallest degree; it seems probable therefore that the terms of the despatch were not in reality quite so stringent.

In reply to the petition of the five hundred bishops, a counter-petition was prepared by the opposition, and received a hundred and thirty-seven signatures, chiefly those of French, German, and Hungarian bishops. But the signers of this document--which was drawn up by Cardinal Rauscher--were careful not to commit themselves to an unconditional hostility to the dogma. They were content with pointing out the stumbling-blocks and dangers by which the question was surrounded--the thorny controversies, supposed to be long since buried, which it would disinter and quicken into a disastrous activity--and the as yet unresolved difficulties that passages in the history of the Papacy opposed to the belief in its infallibility.

The controversy, both in and out of the Council, waxed hotter and hotter, especially when the Infallibilists, emboldened it would seem by the hesitating and qualified character of the opposition, as expressed in the counter-petition--brought in in March, and annexed to the three chapters of the Schema De Ecclesiâ already submitted, the celebrated fourth chapter, containing the dogma itself fully formulated. But for the moment discussion ran upon the Constitution De Fide, which was rapidly approaching maturity. The opposition required, and finally with success, material alterations in that portion of the preamble which said so many hard things of Protestantism. In the end, the offensive preamble was withdrawn and a new one drawn up which the minority could agree to. The Constitution De Fide was adopted unanimously in the public session of the 24th of April, all the bishops present voting placet, but eighty-three adding the words "juxta modum," by which was meant that the signer adhered to the constitution in a particular sense attached by himself to its terms and not in any other sense. Strossmayer alone absented himself from the voting.

The Constitution De Fide being now out of the way, that of De Ecclesiâ, with its new fourth chapter, was pushed forward with the greatest ardour. The opposition resorted to the press and several remarkable pamphlets by men of note appeared. One of these was by the learned Hefele, lately appointed Bishop of Rottenburg. It was a discussion of the well-known case of Pope Honorius, condemned for heresy by Pope Agatho and a council in the year 680. Other brochures on the same side were written by Dupanloup, Bishop of Orleans, the Cardinals Rauscher and Schwarzenberg and Archbishop Kenrick of St. Louis. The first meeting for the discussion of the Constitution De Ecclesiâ was held on the 14th of May and the debate was continued during three weeks. The principal speakers in support of the dogma were Cardinal Patrizi, Cardinal Cullen, the Archbishop of Malines, and Moreno, the Cardinal Archbishop of Valladolid. One of the most able and effective speeches was that of Dr. Cullen, who endeavoured to convict Hefele of self-contradiction, by contrasting the conclusions of his late pamphlet with the account given of Pope Honorius in his Church History. Darboy, the Archbishop of Paris, made an earnest and powerful speech against the decree; and Simor, the Primate of Hungary, Jussuf, the Patriarch of Antioch, and Dr. MacHale, of Tuam, spoke on the same side. The discussion dragged on wearily. June arrived, and with it the burning heat and unwholesome air of a Roman summer; and still the names of forty-nine bishops were inscribed as desiring to take part in the discussion. At this point the majority exercised their right of closing the debate and the general discussion was brought abruptly to an end on the 3rd of June. Several weeks were then consumed in the consideration of the chapters, paragraph by paragraph. The voting on the fourth chapter, that enunciating the dogma, came on on the 13th of July. As finally settled, the definition was expressed in the following terms:--

"We teach and define that it is a dogma divinely revealed that the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedrâ, that is, when in discharge of the office of Pastor and Teacher of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine regarding faith or morals to be held by the universal Church, through the divine assistance promised to him in St. Peter, is strong [pollere] with that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed His Church to be furnished in defining doctrine concerning faith or morals, and that therefore such definitions of the Roman Pontiff are irreformable of themselves and not from the consent of the Church."

On this definition the Council voted in the general congregation of the 13th July, and with the following result: 400 placet, 88 non placet, and 61 placet juxta modum. About seventy others, though in Rome, abstained from voting. It was now a question with the minority what course they should take. Cardinal Rauscher proposed that they should all wait for the public session, which had been fixed for the 25th of July, and then vote non placet in the presence of the Pope. But more pacific counsels prevailed. A letter was prepared on the 17th inst., and signed by 110 bishops, in which, after adverting to the particulars of the voting on the 13th, they declared to the Pope that their hostility to the definition of the dogma remained unchanged, and that by the present writing they confirmed their previous suffrages, but that nevertheless, out of respect and affection for his Holiness, they had determined not to stay and vote openly, "in facie patris," on a question so nearly concerning the person of the Pope. The bishops of the minority accordingly took their departure from Rome.

The turmoil caused by the approach of war led to the anticipation of the date that had been fixed for the public session. On the 18th of July, the Pope himself presiding, the Constitution De Ecclesiâ, which included the definition of infallibility, was put to the vote and received 533 placets, and 2 non placets. The negative votes were given by Riccio, Bishop of Cajazzo, and Fitzgerald, Bishop of Little Rock, in the State of Arkansas in the United States. The Pope then read out the constitution to the assembled fathers, and confirmed it. During the reading a violent storm of thunder and lightning burst over St. Peter's, and the darkness became so great that the Pope was obliged to send for a candle. Little or no excitement was visible among the Romans; the Ambassadors of France, Prussia, and Austria pointedly stayed away. An analysis of the eighty-eight negative votes in the general congregation of the 13th of July, showed that thirty-two were given by German, Austrian, or Hungarian prelates, twenty-four by French, and seven by Oriental bishops. Two were Irish (Drs. MacHale and Moriarty, Bishop of Kerry); two English (Vaughan, Bishop of Plymouth, and Clifford, Bishop of Clifton); one Colonial (Conolly, Archbishop of Halifax), and five North Americans. Six Italian bishops, six bishops in partibus, and three whose names could not be ascertained, complete the list.

The importance of the definition of infallibility was considered by politicians and lay society in general to consist, not so much in the assertion and claim that the mere words of the decree contain, as in the retrospective force that it might be used to impart to Papal decisions dating from the Middle Ages, at a time when the power and pretensions of the Holy See were almost unbounded. If such a dogmatic utterance, for instance, as the Bull Unam sanctam of Boniface VIII., by which it was declared that, "if the temporal power errs, it is judged by the spiritual," and that "there are two swords--the spiritual and the temporal; ... both are in the power of the Church; ... the former that of priests, the latter that of kings and soldiers, to be wielded at the good pleasure and by the allowance of the priest,"--if such a Papal declaration, and others of a similar kind to be found in the Roman Bullarium, were held to be ex cathedrâ, and therefore infallibly true, what a prospect was opened for the non-Roman Catholic Sovereigns of Roman Catholic subjects, should the new definition come to be generally accepted by the human conscience throughout the Roman Catholic world. These fears proved, however, of an alarmist character, and the Roman Catholic populations were on the whole no less law-abiding than the Protestant.

So far as it was connected with temporal power, the supremacy asserted for the Pope by the Constitution De Ecclesiâ was about to receive a notable check and diminution. The declaration of war between France and Prussia had been speedily followed by an announcement (July 27th), on the part of the Ollivier Government, that France would withdraw all her troops from Rome, and this was soon afterwards effected. The Opposition in the Italian Parliament immediately began to attack the September Convention, and to urge the occupation of Rome; but Signor Lanzi replied that the Convention was still binding, and must be adhered to. But in September, after the fall of the Empire and the Regency, the Italian Government could not afford to overlook the opportunity which the prostration of France afforded of extending a kingdom which was itself in so large a measure the child of revolution. Already, on the 6th of September, the Chevalier Nigra sounded Jules Favre on the possibility of obtaining the approval and sanction of the new French Government to the King of Italy taking possession of Rome. M. Favre, though not personally opposed to the measure, was too well acquainted with the feeling that prevailed in France on the subject to give official countenance to the act. On the 8th of September the King addressed a letter to Pius IX., in which, grounding his determination on the critical condition of Italy, and also on the presence of foreigners among the troops composing the Papal army, he announced his intention to send Italian troops into the Roman territory, who should occupy those positions which should be "indispensable for the security of your Holiness," and for the maintenance of order. The Pope flatly declined to treat, and on the 20th of September the national army, after overcoming a brief show of resistance on the part of the Papal Zouaves, entered Rome. The Italian Government, desirous of covering the seizure of Rome under a show of legality, ordered an appeal to be made to the people of the Papal territory, who were invited to vote on the question whether or not they approved of the annexation of Rome to the kingdom of Italy, the spiritual rights of the Pope being preserved. The voting took place on the 2nd of October with the following result: Ayes, 133,681; Noes, 1,507. The Italian Parliament met in December and sanctioned the transfer of the capital from Florence to Rome. Victor Emmanuel made his public entry into Rome on the 31st of December.

The Pope having refused the terms offered through the Count Ponza di San Martino, the following arrangements were made by the Italian Government, with the sanction of the Parliament, without consulting him. He was confirmed in the possession of his sovereign rights, allowed to retain his guards, and provided with an income of 3,255,000 francs (which, however, Pius IX. never consented to accept). He was to keep the Vatican Palace (the Quirinal Palace being appropriated for the use of the King of Italy), the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore, his residence at Castel Gandolfo, and their dependencies. Various provisions were added for the purpose of securing the freedom and inviolability of the Papal correspondence. The seminaries and other Roman Catholic institutions were to derive their authority from the Holy See alone, without any interference from the Italian educational authorities, and the Pope was left an entire fulness of authority in the appointment of bishops and the general government of the Church. In fact, the Guarantees, had Pius IX. chosen to accept them, would have given him a power such as he possessed in no other European country.

Spain, the unlucky cause of the deadly war that had broken out between France and Germany, though striving after repose and a settled government, failed to obtain it. In May the names of Espartero and Montpensier were formally before the Cortes as candidates for the Throne. But Espartero soon afterwards retired on the ground of his advanced age; and Prim, whose influence was predominant in the Government, would not hear of the election of the Duke of Montpensier. In June Queen Isabella abdicated in favour of her son Alfonso, the Prince of Asturias. The next month witnessed Prim's unsuccessful attempt to secure the elevation to the Throne of Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern. Not daunted by so many failures, Prim now turned his eyes again to the House of Savoy, and prevailed on the King of Italy to consent to the acceptance of the Spanish Crown by his second son, the Duke of Aosta. In October this arrangement was given out as completed, subject to the approval of the Cortes. On the 16th of November a formal vote was taken in the Cortes, and there appeared--for the Duke of Aosta, 191 votes; for the Federal Republic, 60; for Montpensier, 27; for a Unitarian Republic, 3. Supported by this decisive majority, Prim proceeded to make the necessary preparations for the fitting reception of the new Sovereign. The Duke and Duchess of Aosta embarked at Leghorn and landed at Cartagena on the 30th of December. They were received by Admiral Topete, and informed by him of a terrible crime that had just occurred in Madrid. On the 28th of December, Marshal Prim, while going in his carriage from the Cortes to the Ministry of War, was fired at by some assassins (supposed to be Republican fanatics, to whom Prim was odious as the supporter of monarchy) and severely wounded in the arm and hand. The assassins made their escape. The wounds were at first not believed to be dangerous, but inflammation set in and Prim expired on the night of the 30th of December. If he had erred through ambition, the brave Prim was yet a true lover of his country and a wise, courageous, and sagacious ruler; at this critical juncture of her affairs, his death was to Spain an unspeakable and irreparable loss.

It will be remembered that the narrative of the Franco-German War has been brought down to the capitulation of Sedan and the Revolution of the 4th of September. Of the gallant struggle made by the French nation after the fall of the Empire, when the men who had installed themselves in the seats of power vainly tried to bring back to the standards of the raw Mobiles that victory which had deserted the eagles of the veterans of the Crimea, it does not fall within the scope of this work to speak at length.

M. Jules Favre, Gambetta, Crémieux, and the rest (always excepting Trochu), believing in democracy with an implicit and absolute faith, seem to have been honestly convinced that what the French, or rather the Parisian, populace were determined should be or should not be, would in some way or other be arranged to suit their wishes. How else could the foolish and presumptuous language--falsified so miserably by the event--of M. Favre's circular of the 6th of September have escaped from the pen of any man of common sense or common prudence? The Empire, he said, sought to divide the nation from the army, but misfortune and duty have brought them together again; "this alliance renders us invincible." He then proceeded to misrepresent what the King of Prussia had said in his proclamation upon entering French territory, as if he had declared that he made war, "not against France, but against the Imperial dynasty;" whereas the King merely announced that he was making war against the armies of France, not against the civil population--a very different thing. But if Prussia was so ill advised as to continue the war, the new Government would accept the challenge. "We will not cede either an inch of our territory or a stone of our fortresses."

Bismarck, upon receiving a copy of Jules Favre's circular, despatched a counter-manifesto to the Prussian diplomatic agents. "The demand," he remarked, "that we should conclude an armistice without any guarantee for our conditions of peace, could be founded only on the erroneous supposition that we lack military and political judgment, or are indifferent to the interests of Germany." Germany cared nothing about the dynasty; but whatever permanent Government might be established in France must be prepared to give to Germany solid guarantees for the maintenance of peace. "We are far from any inclination to mix in the internal affairs of France. It is immaterial to us what kind of government the French people shall formally establish for themselves. The Government of the Emperor Napoleon has hitherto been the only one recognised by us; but our conditions of peace with whatever Government, legitimate for the purpose, we may have to negotiate are wholly independent of the question how or by whom France is governed. They are prescribed to us by the nature of things, and by the law of self-defence against a violent and hostile neighbour. The unanimous voice of the German Governments and German people demands that Germany shall be protected by better boundaries than we have had hitherto against the dangers and violence that we have experienced from all French Governments for centuries. As long as France remains in possession of Strasburg and Metz, so long is its offensive strategically stronger than our defensive power, so far as all South Germany, and North Germany on the left bank of the Rhine, are concerned. Strasburg, in the possession of France, is a gate always wide open for attack on South Germany. In the hands of Germany, Strasburg and Metz obtain a defensive character." It is now known that Bismarck would have been content with the acquisition of Strasburg, but the military authorities insisted upon Metz as well.

With views so divergent, the inutility of a conference between the French Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Prussian Chancellor would seem to be obvious. Nevertheless, the pressure of circumstances brought about such a conference, and for this reason--the Government of the 4th of September, though it probably continued to regard itself as a "heaven-born Ministry," had become alive to the fact that its earthly title to legitimacy was but slender; it therefore desired to bring about the convocation of a National Constituent Assembly, which might, as it saw fit, either confirm them in their offices or choose another Government. On the other hand, it was to the Germans also a matter of prime importance that a regular Government should be established in France, in order that negotiations might be opened with it for peace. But in order that the elections from which such an Assembly was to result might be held, there must be a temporary cessation of hostilities; and this was a matter that could only be arranged by means of an interview. Through the exertions of Lord Lyons, the consent of the King of Prussia to a meeting between Bismarck and Jules Favre, to settle the terms of an armistice, was obtained. Several interviews between the two took place at Ferrières, near Meaux (September 19th and 20th), but no accommodation could be arrived at. As a military equivalent for the consent to a cessation of hostilities, Bismarck demanded the surrender of Toul, Phalsburg, and Strasburg; but to this Jules Favre would not listen, and became violently agitated at the suggestion that the garrison of Strasburg should give themselves up as prisoners of war. Again, the subject of an armistice was discussed in connection with the re-provisioning of Paris. During the three weeks that would be required for the election and first meeting of a National Assembly, if an armistice were to prevail, Paris would naturally seek to augment the stock of provisions within the walls; but, in that case, Bismarck said, Germany must have a military equivalent to compensate her for the long delay, and, as such an equivalent, he demanded the surrender of the fortress of Mont Valérien. Favre was again much excited; he said, and certainly with reason, that Bismarck might as well ask for Paris at once. The conferences were broken off without result and Jules Favre returned to Paris.

The remainder of the events of the war to the end of 1870 we propose to sketch briefly in the following order:--(1) The siege of Paris (noticing in connection therewith the sieges of Strasburg and Metz); (2) Other sieges and stormings of fortresses; (3) The operations on the Loire; (4) The operations in the east of France. Our object will be to keep the chief current of action before the reader in avoidance of details.

The main defence of Paris consisted in the outer ring of forts, heavily armed, by which the lines of investment of a besieging army were kept at such a distance that the bombardment and destruction of the city were rendered impossible until the forts themselves had been reduced. On the south side the forts were not sufficiently distant from the city to make it unattainable by shells, with the modern range of artillery, to an enemy who had seized the heights of Meudon and Clamart, and the plateau of Villejuif; secondly, the interval left between the fort of Issy and Mont Valérien was far too great; and, again, the interval between Mont Valérien and the forts of St. Denis was dangerously large. To remedy these defects a system of earthworks was planned and partly executed, after Trochu had charge of the defence. The disastrous issue of the sortie of the 19th of September, made by General Ducrot in the direction of Chatîllon, when the redoubt at that place fell into the hands of the Prussians, and the 14th Corps, yielding to a disgraceful panic, fled in disorder to the city gates, not only, in General Vinoy's opinion, exercised a baneful influence over all the subsequent defence, but led to the evacuation by the French of the whole of the redoubts above described. Two of them, however, one to the west, the other to the east of Villejuif, were re-taken by General Vinoy, with little loss, on the 23rd of September; and being immediately repaired and put in the best condition of defence, were held by the French during the remainder of the siege, throwing back the Prussian line of investment at this point considerably and making the bombardment of the city, on all the eastern half of the southern face, impossible. Had equal energy been shown in holding, or recovering, the redoubts of Meudon and Chatîllon, Paris could not have been bombarded to any purpose on this side. Of this there can be no question.

After the repulse of Ducrot on the 19th of September, the investment of Paris, which could not be considered final till the quality of the troops composing the active army had been ascertained, was regularly completed. Its salient points were Stains on the north, Chelles on the east, Sceaux on the south, and Garches on the west. On the 30th of September General Vinoy headed a grand sortie against the 6th Corps (Tümpling), which guarded that portion of the Prussian lines which lay south of Villejuif, with the intention of driving the Germans out of Choisy-le-Roi, and destroying the bridge over the Seine at that point, so as to make a break in the German communications. It was hoped that the enemy would have been surprised; but a delay of twenty-four hours required by Trochu, in order that a larger force might be got ready to share in the operation, and the vigilance of the German Intelligence Department, caused that expectation to fail; and the German troops at Choisy, being reinforced and prepared for the attack, could not be dislodged. The French loss was considerable, amounting to nearly 2,000 men; but the troops fought well and the retreat was effected in good order.

About this time, M. Thiers, at the request of the Government of the National Defence, visited all the principal Courts of Europe, everywhere eloquently pleading the cause of his country. Nowhere, not even in Russia, did his words fail to awaken interest and sympathy; but when M. Thiers hinted at active intervention, he was met by a general indisposition to interfere at the present stage of the struggle.

On the 7th of October Gambetta made his escape from Paris in a balloon, and landed safely in the neighbourhood of Rouen. He at once repaired to Tours, where a delegation from the Government of Paris had been for some time established, though it was entirely unequal to its task. He lost no time in issuing a proclamation, to be circulated through France, describing in highly coloured language the patriotic exertions which the Parisians were making, and urging the inhabitants of the unoccupied provinces to rise and hasten to their succour. He then superseded Crémieux in the Ministry of War, and appointed himself to the office, in addition to that of Minister of the Interior. Gambetta evidently thought himself another Carnot, about to "organise victory." The real nature and scope of his abilities, which were undoubtedly great, appear to have been seized by a keen-eyed newspaper correspondent, who said that Gambetta reminded him of an "energetic traffic-manager" on an English railway. But his activity and hopefulness were inexhaustible, and he certainly did contrive to conjure up, as it were out of the earth, armies of some sort or other, and to find arms and accoutrements for them; though the first were not uniform and the second miserably insufficient. Nevertheless he did the best he could with the materials at his hand. Of his military arrangements it is enough to say that he put an end to the disorders in the great cities that attempted to rival the central power.

Meanwhile the days crept on and the time came when famine forced the defenders of Metz to drop their arms. Already Strasburg had fallen (September 28th) after a gallant defence by General Uhrich, and the Germans had established a civil government in Alsace. When last we spoke of Bazaine, it was to mention that after the battle of Gravelotte he withdrew the Army of the Rhine under cover of the fortifications of Metz. Nothing of moment occurred for some days; Prince Frederick Charles was engaged in hutting the German army round Metz and entrenching his position; while Bazaine was busily preparing for another attempt. A messenger from MacMahon, passing safely through the German lines, brought word to Bazaine that the Army of Châlons had commenced its march to his relief on the 21st of August. In order to co-operate with it, Bazaine planned a great sortie for the 31st, about which day he calculated that MacMahon would have arrived in the neighbourhood of the fortress. But he delayed the attack till the afternoon, for reasons which, even upon his own showing, appear insufficient; and through the indecision of subordinate commanders, another delay supervened, so that the advance was not made till four o'clock. The Germans had time to concentrate a sufficient mass of troops in the rear of Noisseville and Servigny to repel the French attack, which was made with no great vigour. Bivouacking on the ground, the French resumed the action on the next day; but their efforts were ill planned and ill united; the Germans brought up an overpowering artillery to crush the French right; and between two and three o'clock, Bazaine, who had heard nothing of the approach of MacMahon's army, gave the order for retreat. For the next weeks he confined himself to foraging for provisions, and even in a sortie on the 7th of October only 40,000 of his troops were employed.

The Revolution of the 4th of September occurred and the news was received by Bazaine with unmitigated disgust. The master whom he had served long, and who had rewarded him well, was the Emperor; if the Emperor was a prisoner and could give him no orders, then his obedience was due to the Empress as Regent. He determined not to recognise and to hold no communications with the men who had supplanted a regular Government under favour of a street riot and the Republican cry. So far, if Bazaine's antecedents are considered, it is impossible to blame him; he did not become culpable till he made the interest of France--which had a more sacred claim on his allegiance than any form of government--subordinate to political aims and personal ambition. Count von Moltke, however, in his "History of the Franco-German War," maintained that he was not a traitor.

In the course of September a strange incident occurred. There was an individual of the name of Regnier, much attached to the Empire, who was said to have held some appointment in the household of the Empress. M. Regnier appears to have been a fanciful and vain personage; and the notion came into his head that he might become the humble but serviceable instrument of liberating the Emperor, re-establishing the Imperial system, and terminating the misfortunes of France. For this, it seemed to him, three things were necessary: the consent of the Imperial family; the negotiation of a treaty of peace between them and the Germans; and the liberation of Bazaine and his army in consequence of that treaty, who should act as an "Army of Order," put down the Republic and the men of the 4th of September, and replace the Emperor on the throne. Regnier first went to Chislehurst and propounded his views to the Empress, begging that she would furnish him with some kind of credentials. The Empress, it is plain, put little faith either in the man or in his project; however, after much importunity, she gave him the credentials he desired. Having obtained these, Regnier repaired to Ferrières, where the King and Bismarck were then quartered. He obtained an interview with the Chancellor and unfolded his plan. Bismarck was at first inclined to treat him as a dreamer and a meddler, but eventually thought the scheme of Regnier might be worth a trial. He accordingly gave him a general pass, which would allow of his passing through the lines of any German army that he might meet with, in order that he might go to Metz and sound Bazaine with reference to the project. Passing in this way through the lines of Prince Frederick Charles, Regnier entered Metz and sought an interview with Bazaine (September 23rd). The marshal, though he expressed himself cautiously, did not disguise the feelings of aversion and contempt with which he regarded the Government of the National Defence; and in consequence of Regnier's visit he sent Bourbaki, the commander of the Imperial Guard, that same evening out of Metz on a mission to Chislehurst. The emissary--Prince Frederick Charles being doubtless cognisant of the whole intrigue--found no difficulty in passing through the investing lines. Up to this point Regnier's little plan had apparently prospered, but now the bubble burst. The Empress was not a woman of that strength and sternness of character which, in the pursuit of an object of ambition, would lead her to brave obloquy and play high for a mighty stake. If she signed a treaty of peace as Regent, providing for the cession of Strasburg and Metz to Germany, the name of the Napoleonic dynasty, she thought, would be eternally execrated in France; and, after all, it was not certain that Bazaine could restore the Empire, or that his army, as a body, would support him in the attempt. She therefore absolutely declined to be a party to the scheme and it fell through. Bourbaki returned to France; but, instead of re-entering Metz, placed his sword at the disposal of the Government of Tours.

In October, the only description of food that remained abundant in Metz was horse-flesh and this was obtained at the cost of the efficiency of the cavalry and artillery. On the day after the sortie of the 7th Bazaine caused a meeting of divisional generals to be held, to consider the situation. However distasteful the thought of a capitulation might be, yet the fast diminishing supplies of food compelled the officers to face it; they were of opinion that a capitulation should be arranged on terms that would allow of the army retiring, without laying down its arms, to the south of France, under a pledge not to serve against Germany during the continuance of war. If, however, these conditions were not acceded to by the German leaders, it was the understanding of most of the divisional generals and of the mass of the officers under them, that a desperate effort must and would be made to cut a way, sword in hand, through the investing forces.

At a meeting of the corps commanders, called by Bazaine on the 10th of October, it was resolved that no new sorties should be attempted, but that efforts should be made to obtain a military convention by negotiation with the enemy. The use of the term "military convention" shows that something different from an ordinary capitulation--something political--was in view. At all events, General Boyer arrived at Versailles on the 13th of October to talk over the situation. The course of the negotiation that ensued was curiously similar to that which the Regnier incident had occasioned. "You ask," said Bismarck, "that the army in Metz may be allowed to retire to the south of France, pledged not to bear arms against Germany during the continuance of the war. But who is to guarantee the convention under which such an arrangement would be executed? Whom does Bazaine obey? What is the Government that he serves? If the Government of the National Defence,--that is an authority that we Germans do not recognise, at any rate until a Constituent Assembly shall have met and validated their powers. If the Emperor,--he is a helpless prisoner in Germany. If the Empress and the Regency,--that may perhaps be satisfactory, but her sanction must be obtained; she must sign a treaty that will give us what we want; and the Army of the Rhine, besides the pledge not to bear arms against Germany, must proclaim the Regency as the legitimate Government of France, and Bazaine must undertake to play the part of Monk in an Imperial restoration." Boyer returned to Metz with this answer on the 18th of October, and thence was sent to Chislehurst. The result was the same as before; the Empress, after much wavering, refused to sign any treaty of peace by which French territory would be ceded to the invader. General Boyer communicated to the King on the 23rd the ill-success of his mission, and Prince Frederick Charles was immediately instructed to inform Bazaine that all hope of arriving at any result by political negotiation was abandoned at the royal headquarters. On the 27th the capitulation was signed and the fortress with an army of 170,000 men passed into the hands of the Germans.

The confirmation of the news of the capitulation of Bazaine, and the rumour that an armistice was under consideration, caused a great ferment in the anarchical or communist element of the Parisian population. Bands of armed men marched (October 31st) from Belleville to the Hôtel de Ville, placed Trochu and other members of the Government under arrest, declared the independence of the Commune of Paris and undertook its government. The leaders were Flourens, Félix Pyat, Blanqui, etc. Fortunately, Ernest Picard, the Minister of Finance, contrived to escape, and before the day closed he brought a Breton battalion of the Gardes Mobiles to the Hôtel de Ville, who soon rescued their countryman Trochu and dispersed the revolutionists. The utmost forbearance was shown to the rioters by the partisans of order. Trochu and his colleagues, after this émeute, thought it desirable to submit the question of their remaining in power to the suffrages of the people of Paris. The votes were taken accordingly; nearly 558,000 were favourable to the Government, while 62,638 were dissentient.

M. Thiers, on his return from his unsuccessful journey to the foreign Courts, was requested by the Government to re-open negotiations with Count Bismarck, with a view to a cessation of hostilities and the election of a Constituent Assembly. But the project again foundered on the question of re-victualling Paris, to which the military authorities at the Prussian headquarters would not allow Bismarck to consent, unless on condition of the surrender of one, if not two, of the forts round Paris--a concession that Thiers could not make.

Sad and dull was life in Paris during the month of November, cheered only by one gleam of better fortune, when news came that the Army of the Loire had gained a victory at Coulmiers. At the end of the month a grand sortie was resolved upon, in order to facilitate the flanking operations of General d'Aurelle de Paladines' army, which Gambetta hoped to impel upon Paris at the same time. Great preparations were made and several demonstrations against various points of the German lines concerted, in order to deceive the enemy as to the object of the main attack, which was the peninsula of Champigny, beyond Charenton. Breaking through the Prussian lines at this point, Trochu hoped to push forward into the district of Brie, and march onwards till he fell in with the advancing army of De Paladines. Ducrot was appointed to the command of the troops destined for the operation, which numbered about 60,000 men. Bridges were thrown across the Marne, and on the morning of the 30th the Saxons and Würtembergers who guarded this part of the line were vigorously attacked and the villages of Brie and Champigny wrested from them. Still no great progress was made, and on the night of the 30th it became suddenly cold, and the French soldiers unused to the hardships of campaigning suffered terribly from exposure. The 1st of December was employed by Trochu and Ducrot in strengthening the line, Brie-Champigny, which they had seized. On the 2nd the Germans brought up fresh forces, and severe fighting took place, at the end of which the French retained all their positions, except the eastern end of the village of Champigny. On the 3rd Trochu resolved to retreat, moved to do so by the absence of any news of De Paladines and the increasing severity of the weather. The retreat was covered by the guns of the forts and was effected with little loss. Another great sortie was made on the 21st of December, with some vague hope of co-operating with a northern army, supposed to be at that time advancing towards Paris. The attack was directed against the Prussian Guard at Stains and the Saxons more to the east. It was repelled with little difficulty, the French losing considerably and showing in this sortie a lack of spirit and endurance, naturally to be accounted for by want of food, severe cold, and the depressing circumstances of the siege.

Besides Metz and Strasburg, eight other fortified places were compelled to surrender before the close of the year. In the case of Laon, the surrender on the 9th of September of a citadel and a position remarkably strong by nature, was rendered necessary by the weakness of the garrison. Toul, after a savage bombardment for several days, by which the town was set on fire in several places, surrendered to the Duke of Mecklenburg on the 23rd of September. Soissons, Verdun, La Fère, and Thionville were reduced in the course of October and November. Phalsburg (the fortress at which is laid the scene of Erckmann-Chatrian's famous novel, "Le Blocus"), after its brave commandant, General Talhouet, and its no less brave inhabitants, had endured a bombardment and blockade--the first intermittent, the second continuous--during four months, was compelled to surrender, by failure of provisions, on the 12th of December.

The narrative of the formation of the Army of the Loire, of its successes and its reverses, is one of the most striking and instructive chapters in the history of the war. All that will be here attempted is to give an outline of the course of events, as it may be clearly traced in the works of the two French generals who had most share in them, General d'Aurelle de Paladines and General Chanzy. Soon after the Revolution of the 4th of September, it being apparent that France must either raise fresh armies or submit to whatever terms the victors of Sedan might impose, the formation of a new army corps, the 15th, was commenced at Bourges, under the command of General Motterouge. By the beginning of October its organisation was nearly complete. Then came the advance of Von der Tann towards Orleans, the defeat of Motterouge at Artenay and the first German occupation of Orleans; the 15th Corps being driven over the Loire, and falling back as far as Ferte St. Aubin. On the 11th of October General d'Aurelle de Paladines, an officer on the retired list, who had offered his services and his experience to the new Government, was appointed to supersede General Motterouge. By the end of October came the disastrous news of the fall of Metz. Prince Frederick Charles was now free to march southward with 100,000 victorious troops and break up the nascent organisation of the Army of the Loire. Several weeks, however, must elapse before he could reach the Loire, and in that time the force which d'Aurelle's energy had rendered formidable might still be able to strike a blow. On the 25th of October the general concerted with the Minister of War, Gambetta, and his delegate, M. de Freycinet, the plan of an advance of the 15th and 16th Corps on Orleans. Crossing the Loire at Blois and other places, the 15th and 16th Corps, preceded by numerous bodies of Franc-tireurs, forming altogether an army of between 60,000 and 70,000 men, were ranged, at the end of October, on a line facing the north-east, and extending from the forest of Marchenoir to the Loire, near Beaugency. Von der Tann, who commanded in Orleans and whose force was considerably weaker in point of numbers, was alarmed at the movement and prepared to march out and attack the enemy, intending, should he be unsuccessful, to evacuate Orleans. D'Aurelle continued to press forward, handling his troops warily and deliberately, as well knowing how disastrous, with such inexperienced soldiers, the consequences of any mistake might easily be. The two armies met on the 9th of November, on the plain around the village of Coulmiers, ten miles west of Orleans, and for the first time in the war the Germans were defeated.

On the following day (November 10th) General d'Aurelle entered Orleans and was welcomed enthusiastically by the inhabitants. He fixed his headquarters at Villeneuve d'Ingre, about three miles outside the city. He has been repeatedly censured for not leading his army, after the victory of Coulmiers, directly upon Paris, so as to raise the siege. Had Prince Frederick Charles been still detained at Metz, this is what d'Aurelle undoubtedly ought to have done. But the Prince, in his southward march, was already almost as near Paris as the Army of the Loire; his headquarters on the 10th of November were at Troyes. D'Aurelle with good reason shrank from the enterprise of attacking the Duke of Mecklenburg (whose army, swelled by the remains of Von der Tann's corps, amounted to about 50,000 men and was posted near Chartres), with the certainty that Prince Frederick Charles, a man not likely to miss an opportunity, was, with 100,000 victorious Prussians, within striking distance of his right flank. D'Aurelle's plan, therefore, was this--to form a large entrenched camp in front of Orleans and fortify it with great care, mounting on the works a number of heavy marine guns of long range; behind these entrenchments to continue the organisation of the army and the instruction of the soldiers, in both of which respects much improvement was still to be desired; and to receive here, with his forces united and well in hand, the attack which Prince Frederick Charles was marching to deliver. Had that attack been successfully resisted, had the Prussian legions been beaten back from before the walls of Orleans, then, General D'Aurelle thought, there might be a chance of marching effectually to the relief of Paris. But Gambetta interfered with his plans, and the result was that a French advance was defeated on the 28th of November at Beaune la Rolande.

A council of war was held on the 30th of November, at St. Jean de la Ruelle, near Orleans, at which d'Aurelle, Chanzy, and Freycinet were present. Against the wishes and ideas of d'Aurelle, Freycinet communicated the formal order of Gambetta to advance with the whole army on Pithiviers, with a view to the relief of Paris. There was no choice but to obey. Next day, Chanzy, with the 16th and 17th Corps, forming the left of the army, advanced by Patay against the army of the Duke of Mecklenburg, and drove it back a considerable distance. But Prince Frederick Charles, observing the fatal error into which the French had fallen, through the interference of Gambetta and Freycinet, of dispersing their troops too widely, executed on the 2nd of December a masterly manœuvre, which in its results changed the whole aspect of the campaign. Concentrating the heavy masses of the German infantry on a narrow front, on each side of the great road which joins Artenay and Chevilly, he advanced, engaging Chanzy with his right, but directing the heaviest attack against the 15th Corps, which lay between him and Orleans. The strongest division of that corps (Paillères) had been sent away some days before, towards Pithiviers, by Gambetta's orders, and had not yet rejoined the main body. Pressing steadily forward, the Germans overpowered the resistance of the two remaining divisions of the 15th Corps, and drove them back beyond Chevilly. Chanzy's troops in this day's battle held their ground on most points, but the division Barry, of the 16th Corps, gave way, and Chanzy lost his hold of the road to Châteaudun. On the 3rd the fighting continued, the Germans slowly pressing onward, step by step. D'Aurelle, fearful of a block at Orleans, if the retreat of the whole French army should be directed thither, sent orders to Chanzy to retire on Beaugency. He was not prepared for the immense force which the enemy had developed in his front, and he seems to have abandoned the hope that his beaten troops, even behind the entrenchments he had prepared, could make an effectual stand. On the 4th, the arrival of Paillères with his division at headquarters inspired d'Aurelle with a momentary hope that the entrenchments might yet be held, and he telegraphed to Chanzy, directing him to march on Orleans. But it was now too late; the enemy held the Châteaudun road, and was interposed between Chanzy's army and Orleans. Moreover, the troops of Paillères' division, and of the 15th Corps generally, weary and dispirited, exhausted by want of sleep and food, could not be induced to man the entrenchments. They pressed on into Orleans, many even of the officers forgetting their duty, and repairing, without permission, to inns and private houses in the town. D'Aurelle entreated, expostulated, and threatened, but all in vain. Then he saw that Orleans must be evacuated and made arrangements accordingly. The immense supplies that had been accumulated there were removed, and on the night of the 4th of December the 15th Corps defiled over the Loire bridge, leaving about a thousand prisoners in the hands of the enemy. Thus was Orleans re-occupied by the Germans, and d'Aurelle de Paladines was promptly superseded by Chanzy.

The new Second Army of the Loire, under Chanzy, had an eventful history, which must here be summed up in a few words. Chanzy struggled gallantly; but so far from advancing nearer to Paris, he was ever driven farther away from it; he was continually fighting and falling back. He fought a battle at Villorceau, on the 8th of December, against the Duke of Mecklenburg, and maintained all his positions, except on the right, at Beaugency, which the Prussians obtained possession of in the night. This disaster was owing to another interference by Gambetta with the movements of the troops. Admiral Jauréguiberry had given positive orders to General Camo, who commanded the movable column of Tours, to hold firmly a strong position which he assigned to him in front of Beaugency. But during the day a direct order was received by Camo, from the Minister of War, to retire behind Beaugency; this order he obeyed and the result was tantamount to a defeat. After two more days' fighting, Chanzy fell back to the line of the Loire, hoping to protect Vendôme. Prince Frederick Charles followed, and a general engagement took place near Vendôme on the 15th of December, in which, as before, the French fought well; but at its conclusion, his line being forced back at one point, Chanzy resolved to evacuate Vendôme and fall back on Le Mans. He arrived at Le Mans on the 21st of December, and here for the present we will leave him.

In the east the military operations were not at first of such importance as to have much effect on the issue of the war. Since France had declared herself a Republic, the sympathies of Garibaldi were enlisted on her behalf; he came to Tours on the 9th of October. Garibaldi was warmly received by Gambetta and appointed to a special command in the east of France; a brigade of Franc-tireurs, of miscellaneous composition, being placed under his orders. Garibaldi's health was too infirm to allow of his exhibiting any great activity in the field. His headquarters were fixed at Autun, where he turned the fine old cathedral into a barrack for his Franc-tireurs. General Werder, who commanded the German troops employed in this part of France, was little hampered in his movements, either by the efforts of Garibaldi, or by those of his more regular opponent General Cambriels. On the 29th of October the important town of Dijon, the ancient capital of Burgundy, had fallen into the hands of Werder. The strong fortress of Besançon defied the German arms. It was of the highest importance for them to take Belfort, a fortress of the first class, situated in the southern corner of Alsace, in the gap between the Vosges mountains and the Jura. General Treskow appeared before the place on the 3rd of November, and commenced to invest it; but the investment was for a long time very incomplete, and communication with the country outside was scarcely interrupted. Garibaldi marched towards Dijon, on the 27th of November, at the head of a column of Mobiles and Franc-tireurs 10,000 strong. At a place called Pasques he fell in with Werder's outposts, who held his force in check till the arrival of a brigade from Dijon, by which the Garibaldians were easily routed, with the loss of many prisoners. On the whole, the employment of Garibaldi did more harm by causing disunion among the French, than it did good by any loss that it inflicted on the Germans.

The opening of 1871 found the besieged population of Paris enduring with exemplary patience the manifold hardships and gathering perils by which they were beset. An additional source of danger and distress was about to be disclosed, in the bombardment of the forts and city; but this also they sustained with the greatest fortitude and resignation. From the beginning of the year the bread distributed by the Government consisted of a detestable compound of flour mixed with all kinds of foreign ingredients. On the 3rd of January some Franc-tireurs brought some newspapers through the investing lines, which gave no cheering account of the state of affairs in the provinces. On that very day a battle was fought at Bapaume, the issue of which ought to have contributed to amend the state of things, but through some strange mismanagement it produced no good effect.

We will take this opportunity to give a brief sketch of the military operations in the northern district since the fall of Metz. When that event happened, the First and the Second German Armies, which had been united before Metz while the siege lasted, were again separated. The bulk of the Second Army marched with Prince Frederick Charles upon the Loire; the First Army, placed now under the command of General Manteuffel, was detached towards Amiens and Rouen, in order to disperse or press back any new French armies which might threaten to attain to such a consistence as to interfere with the secure prosecution of the siege of Paris. Manteuffel had the whole of the 8th Corps, one brigade of the 1st Corps, and a division of cavalry, under his immediate command, when he received intelligence that a considerable French force under General Farre had been concentrated in front of Amiens. The Prussians attacked on the morning of the 27th of November. On their left they were in overpowering strength, and quickly pushed back the French right for a considerable distance; on the right, however, they could make no progress, and even, on the appearance of a column advancing towards their right flank from Corbie, gave ground decidedly. But in the evening the cavalry division came into action on this wing and enabled the infantry again to advance. As the final result of the engagement, the French were defeated at all points and fell back to and behind Amiens. That important manufacturing city was immediately occupied by General Manteuffel. A far richer prize fell into his hands a few days later. The army defeated before Amiens retired towards Arras and Lille, and Rouen thus found itself open to attack while the military preparations for its defence were still very incomplete. General von Göben, at the head of the 8th Corps, encountering only trifling opposition, occupied Rouen on the 6th December, and immediately made a heavy requisition on the city for stores and clothing.

General Faidherbe, formerly the governor of the French colony of the Senegal, an officer of great talents and experience, reached Lille on the 4th of December, and took over the command of the Army of the North. After reorganising the troops as well as he could, he advanced in the direction of Amiens, and took up a strong position on the left bank of the little river Hallue, somewhat to the north-east of the site of the late battle on the south side of the city. Manteuffel resolved to attack Faidherbe, and falling upon him on the morning of the 23rd of December, he drove in the French outposts, and, in the course of the day, carried all the villages along the Hallue, as far as the foot of the hills rising from its left bank. This was the main French position, and it was held firmly against all attacks. It was clearly a drawn battle. On the next day the armies remained facing each other; it was a question which would browbeat the other into retiring first. Unfortunately for France, Faidherbe, on account of defects in his commissariat, found himself compelled to retreat on the night of the 24th of December, and fell back, first to Albert and ultimately beyond Bapaume.

On the 27th of December Manteuffel sent Von Göben to lay siege to Péronne. This little fortress on the Somme, the name of which is familiar to the readers of "Quentin Durward," it was a main object of German strategy to reduce, because the whole line of the Somme would then be in their power, and the passage of the river by a hostile force, especially considering the season of the year, would be attended with great difficulty. Of course, for the same reasons, it was important for the French to raise the siege. General von Göben posted a covering force of ten or twelve thousand men at Bapaume, while the siege, or rather bombardment, was being carried on with the greatest vigour. The covering force was attacked by Faidherbe on the 3rd of January, 1871, and driven, with heavy loss, into the town of Bapaume. The battle was over; already Von Göben had given orders for a retreat during the night, and his baggage trains had begun to move off, when the welcome news reached him that the French had fallen back. With a little more firmness General Faidherbe would have forced the Germans to retire, and Péronne would have been saved. Defective commissariat arrangements were again alleged by him, in a letter written shortly afterwards, and also a reluctance to destroy the town of Bapaume. Unrelieved, Péronne was obliged to surrender on the 10th of January, after many of its inhabitants had been killed by the bombardment, its ancient and beautiful church irreparably damaged, and great part of the town laid in ruins.

On the 19th of January, hearing that a strong French force was approaching, the Prussians occupying St. Quentin evacuated the town. Faidherbe then took possession of it, and concentrated its army outside the walls, on the west and south sides. Von Göben, who was now in command of the First Army, Manteuffel having been sent to assist Werder to defeat Bourbaki, at the head of what was called the Army of the South, resolved to strike a decisive blow. Calling in his detachments from all parts and skilfully combining their movements so as to result in a concentric attack on the French position, having also obtained the promise of Moltke to send him a reinforcement by rail from Paris, so as to arrive at what was likely to be the critical part of the battle, he advanced against Faidherbe at St. Quentin on the 19th of January. The result could not be doubtful; after a resistance bravely kept up by the 22nd, less tenaciously by the 23rd Corps, the French army was broken, and driven into and beyond St. Quentin. This was the last regular battle of the war. Von Göben advanced northwards and summoned Cambray to surrender, but the Governor refused. Nothing else of moment happened in this part of the country till the surrender of Paris brought about the cessation of hostilities.

An incident occurred on the Seine, towards the end of 1870, between Rouen and Havre, which caused some irritation in Britain until proper explanation and satisfaction had been made. The Prussians at Rouen, fearing that steam gunboats would be sent up the river to attack them, seized without ceremony six British colliers that were lying in the Seine off Duclair, and scuttled them in order that they might form an obstruction in the stream. Much stress was laid on this affair at the time, the tension of men's spirits on account of the continued misery of France being considerable, and the high-handed ways of Prussian officials not having been pleasant to put up with on the part of neutrals peaceably plying their vocations. But when Lord Granville wrote to Count Bismarck, nothing could be more frank, explicit, or satisfactory than the Chancellor's reply. He authorised Count Bernstorff to say to Lord Granville that the Prussian Government sincerely regretted that its troops, in order to avert immediate danger, had been obliged to seize ships that belonged to British subjects; that their claim to indemnification was admitted, and that the owners should receive the value of their ships, according to equitable estimation, without being kept waiting for the decision of the legal question, who was finally to indemnify them.

No gleam of hope came from the west after the beginning of the year. Chanzy, as we have seen, reached Le Mans with the Second Army of the Loire on the 21st of December, and being left in peace there for two or three weeks was able to do much towards the better organisation of his forces. A succession of small combats, between the line of the Sarthe and that of the Loire, took place between the 27th of December and the 10th of January, in some of which the French obtained the advantage; while others, particularly the later ones, marked a continual pressing back of the French outposts and small detachments by the army of Prince Frederick Charles, who had now made the necessary preparations to attack Chanzy, and drive him, if possible, still farther west. The decisive battle took place on the 11th of January. In numbers the French were probably much superior to the army that was about to attack them. But their moral was fearfully shaken by the continued ill success that had attended their arms. The battle raged all day along the whole line and at six o'clock in the evening the French still held their ground. But an hour or two after dark, a strange incident occurred. Shrewdly counting, it would seem, on the nervousness and unsteadiness of young troops at night, Prince Frederick Charles ordered a strong force of all arms to attack, about 8 P.M., the division of mobilised Bretons who were holding the strong position of La Tuilerie. The Bretons, hearing rather than seeing the enemy coming upon them, when the first shots fell in their ranks, broke and fled. Quickly the contagion ran through the rest of the army; by the morning it seemed hardly to have more cohesion than a rope of sand; thousands of prisoners fell into the hands of the Germans; and a retreat beyond the Sarthe became indispensable. Chanzy fell back to Laval on the Mayenne, fifty miles west of Le Mans, and began again his Sisyphean task.

Thus Chanzy, with a beaten and demoralised army, was driven back to a greater distance from Paris than ever; nor could any reasonable man now entertain the hope that whatever exertions he, or Gambetta on his behalf, might make, his army could again become formidable before the lapse of many weeks. But with the Parisians starvation was become an affair of a few days.

The bombardment began on the morning of the 5th of January. There were three attacks--that directed against St. Denis and its forts; that against Fort Rosny and other eastern forts; and, lastly, that against the three southern forts, Issy, Vanves, and Montrouge. Two hundred guns concentrated their fire against these southern forts. The unimportant attack on the east was maintained by sixty guns, while a hundred and fifty thundered on St. Denis from the north. Issy, on account of the too great distance between it and Mont Valérien, was the fort against which, more than any other, the Germans could bring to bear a concentric fire, and it was accordingly more knocked about than any of the rest. The most formidable of the German batteries, containing twenty-four pieces, was on the terrace of Meudon. From the whole of them an average shower of ten thousand projectiles per diem was rained during the continuance of the bombardment on the forts and on Paris. In the daytime the fire was chiefly directed at the forts, in the night it was turned against the city. The promise of Count Bismarck, expressed with brutal cynicism, that the Parisians should "stew in their own juice," was now fulfilled. Thanks to the distance, and to the number and extent of the open spaces within the enceinte, the mortality caused by the bombardment was far less than might have been expected; absolutely, however, its victims were not few. Ninety-seven persons (including thirty-one children and twenty-three women) not employed in the defence were killed by the bombardment and two hundred and seventy-eight (including thirty-six children and ninety women) were wounded. Among the public buildings and institutions injured by it were, the Jardin des Plantes, the Panthéon, the Val de Grâce, the Observatory, the Church of St. Sulpice, and the Hôtel des Invalides. Nothing, says General Vinoy, could be more admirable than the behaviour of the people while the bombardment was going on. The effect of it was to harden rather than to weaken the spirit of resistance; and Trochu, forced as it were by the enthusiasm of those by whom he was surrounded, declared (January 6th) that he would never capitulate. The effect of the fire upon the forts was far less than the Germans had expected. Even of Fort Issy the defences were far from being ruined; it could still have held out a long time after the capitulation was settled. On the other hand the last sortie from Paris on the 19th of January was a disastrous failure and it was followed by grave signs of disaffection among the National Guard.

Paris was at the end of her resources. She could not wait to know the result of the great combination--Gambetta's masterpiece--by which Bourbaki, at the head of 130,000 unhappy conscripts, had been impelled against Werder and the German communications. Of that expedition we shall speak presently; but whether it succeeded or not, not a day was to be lost in coming to any terms whereby a fresh supply of food might be obtained for the 1,800,000 persons cooped up in Paris. Jules Favre visited the German headquarters on the 24th of January, and on several days afterwards, to arrange for a capitulation and an armistice. At seven o'clock in the evening of the 26th General Vinoy received the order to cause all the forts and field works to cease firing by midnight on the same day. The order was obeyed, and the siege of Paris was at an end. The convention establishing both a capitulation and an armistice for the masses of the belligerent armies was signed by Bismarck and Favre, at Versailles, on the 28th of January. The armistice was to last twenty-one days, and was to be established wherever military operations were being actually carried on, except in the departments of Doubs, Jura, and Côte d'Or; the siege of Belfort also was to continue. Bismarck would have readily consented to extend the armistice to these departments also; but unfortunately Jules Favre fancied that Bourbaki had achieved, or was about to achieve, great things, of which the relief of Belfort was the least; he would not therefore include his army in the armistice. The object of the cessation of hostilities was declared to be the convocation by the Government of a freely elected National Assembly, which was to meet at Bordeaux to decide whether the war should be continued or not. The forts of Paris, with all guns and war material contained in them, were at once to be surrendered to the German army, which during the continuance of the armistice was not to enter the city. The guns forming the armament of the enceinte were also to be surrendered. The entire garrison of Paris were to become prisoners of war and to lay down their arms, except a division of 12,000 men, which the military authorities would retain for the maintenance of internal order. After the surrender of the forts, the reprovisioning of Paris would proceed without let or hindrance by all the ordinary channels of traffic, except that no supplies were to be drawn from the territory occupied by the German troops. A war contribution amounting to £8,000,000 sterling was imposed on the city. The terms of the armistice were punctually carried out, and on the 29th of January the German troops were put in possession of the forts.

All along the line, except in the three departments and before Belfort, the combatants dropped their arms. In that region a crowning disaster had already overtaken the last convulsive efforts of France. The three corps that had been placed under the command of Bourbaki, together with the 24th Corps (Bressolle), which was to be moved up from Lyons to co-operate in the movement, formed an army of about 130,000 men. With this force Bourbaki was expected to fall upon Werder and overpower him, raise the siege of Belfort, and, crossing the Rhine, carry the war into Germany; while Garibaldi and Cremer, after the defeat of Werder, were to fall on the German line of communications by the Strasburg-Paris railway. Entering Dijon on the 2nd of January, 1871, Bourbaki directed the main body of his army to concentrate round the fortress of Besançon, whence in two or three days he led it to the relief of Belfort. Werder, who had fallen back from Dijon on Vesoul, attacked Bourbaki's left flank on the 9th of January, at Villersexel, on the Oignon, his object being to gain time for the main body of his troops to fall back on the line of the Lisaine, in front of Belfort, and fortify a position there. The action at Villersexel was indecisive, but the march of the French was delayed by it, and Werder gained the time he so greatly needed. On the 15th, 16th, and 17th of January Bourbaki made successive attempts to force Werder's position behind the Lisaine, but always without success. With his immense preponderance in numbers, the boldest flank movements would have been permissible, and could hardly have failed to dislodge the Germans; but Bourbaki simply attacked them in front, and as they were strongly posted, and had a solidity which his own troops had not, his efforts failed. On the 18th Bourbaki resolved to retreat; and by the 22nd instant he had again concentrated his army in the neighbourhood of Besançon.

By the failure of the French to force Werder's position the fall of Belfort was made a certainty; but a greater disaster was behind. An Army of the South had been formed by Moltke, and placed under the command of Manteuffel, who took charge of it, on the 13th of January, at Châtillon-sur-Seine. Marching southwards to the assistance of Werder, Manteuffel seized Dôle, to the south-west of Besançon, and sent detachments to occupy various points near the Swiss frontier, so as to intercept the retreat of Bourbaki's army in that direction. After reaching Besançon, Bourbaki remained for some days irresolute what to do; the desperate situation of his army and the consciousness, perhaps, of his own incapacity to command, overset his reason; and on the 24th he attempted to commit suicide by shooting himself through the head. The want of supplies sufficient both for the fortress and for the support of so large an army was probably the cause why Clinchamp, upon whom the command devolved, instead of keeping the army under the shelter of the mountain forts and lofty citadel of Besançon, resolved on continuing the march southward, in order either to elude the Germans by escaping along roads close to the Swiss frontier, or, if the worst came to the worst, to cross the border and surrender to the Swiss authorities. Eventually the 24th Corps, under General Bressolle, succeeded in making its escape and reaching Lyons. The rest of the army, overtaken and attacked by Manteuffel in and around Pontarlier, after losing thousands of prisoners, was driven into Switzerland and there interned.

In pursuance of the terms of the armistice elections were held throughout France in order to the convocation of a National Assembly. By the 12th of February about three hundred members only, out of the seven hundred and fifty who were to compose the new Legislature, had arrived at Bordeaux; but so urgent was the case that the Assembly proceeded to constitute itself on that day. On the 16th of February M. Grévy was chosen President of the Assembly, and on the following day M. Thiers was appointed, by a large majority, Chief of the Executive Power. Some days before this, it being evident that the armistice which was only to last till the 19th of February, would expire before the Assembly could come to a decision upon the momentous question before it, Jules Favre hurried up to Versailles in order to obtain a prolongation of the time. It was granted, but at the same time the fate of Belfort, the governor of which had hitherto repelled all attacks, was sealed; the fortress was to be surrendered to the Germans, but the garrison, with their arms and stores, and the military archives, was to march out with the honours of war and be allowed to retire to the south of France. Accordingly the garrison, still 12,000 strong, marched out and proceeded to Grenoble; and the fortress was occupied by the Germans on the 18th of February. This may be regarded as the closing scene of the Franco-German War.

Gambetta fell from power as suddenly as he had risen to it. He appealed to the nation to use the interval for the collection of new forces, and caused the Delegation of the Government at Bordeaux to publish an electoral decree on the 31st of January, excluding from the possibility of being elected to the Assembly all persons who had stood in any official relation to the Second Empire. Against this outrageous decree Count Bismarck could not refrain from protesting, and fortunately he could appeal to the phrase in the article of the capitulation bearing on the question, which spoke of a "freely elected" National Assembly. It was a critical moment, for had M. Gambetta found a large body of Frenchmen unwise enough to back him in this course, great delays must inevitably have arisen, the legality and plenary authority of the Assembly might have been disputed, and perhaps the Germans might have been called in, or might themselves have stepped in, to arbitrate in a question of French internal politics. This consummation was happily avoided. The Government at Paris undertook to cancel the decree of the Delegation, and sent one of their number, Jules Simon, to Bordeaux, with instructions to publish and enforce their decision. Gambetta, finding his proceedings disavowed, resigned office on the 6th of February. In his stead Thiers was chosen to be Chief of the Executive. He appointed a Ministry, persuaded the Assembly to postpone all discussion as to the future Government of France, and proceeded to Versailles to agree with Count Bismarck upon the terms of peace.

On the 19th of February the National Assembly elected a diplomatic commission of fifteen members, who were to accompany MM. Thiers and Jules Favre to Paris, and assist them in negotiating a peace. No serious intention of continuing the war was entertained by any considerable party or faction in the Assembly. On the 21st of February the French negotiators met Count Bismarck at Versailles. Thiers knew that the Germans meant to have, substantially, the terms which they demanded, and he did not waste time by idle reclamations or counter-proposals. On two points, however, his efforts achieved a certain success. Count Bismarck desired to retain Belfort, a fortress which in German hands would make France as vulnerable to attack on the upper Rhine, as the loss of Metz left her weak and vulnerable on the lower. Thiers, however, succeeded in retaining Belfort for France, purchasing the concession by consenting to the march of the German army through Paris. Again, whereas Bismarck had originally demanded six milliards (£240,000,000) as the war indemnity, Thiers with infinite exertion succeeded in reducing it to five milliards. On this second point the assistance of British diplomacy was specially invoked by the French Government. Lord Granville, at the urgent request of the Duc de Broglie, the new French Ambassador, wrote to Berlin (February 24th) the mildest, faintest, weakest representation--remonstrance it was not--that could have been made, if any was made at all, on the subject of the excessive indemnity. Before, however, the duplicate of this despatch reached Mr. Odo Russell at Versailles, Count Bismarck had already given way. The preliminaries of peace were signed on the 26th of February. By them France agreed to cede Alsace and German Lorraine, including Metz, to Germany, and to pay a war indemnity of five milliards within three years, the German army to evacuate France as the instalments were paid.

In the preliminaries of peace a convention was inserted, authorising the occupation of a definite portion of Paris by a body of German troops not exceeding 30,000 men. Accordingly, on the morning of the 1st of March, portions of the 11th, 2nd Bavarian, and 6th Army Corps, crossing the Seine by the bridge of Neuilly, defiled along the avenue of the same name, passed under the Arc de Triomphe, and marched through the Champs Elysées into the Rue de Rivoli and other parts of the district assigned to them. But this occupation, deeply painful and humiliating as it must have been to the Parisians, was not of long duration. News came on the 2nd of March that the preliminaries of peace had been ratified at Bordeaux, and then Paris, in accordance with an express stipulation to that effect, was immediately evacuated. The preliminaries were submitted by M. Thiers to the National Assembly on the 28th of February. The terms of peace were oppressive and exorbitant; they were terms which Germany, having found France ill prepared for war, had been enabled by her admirable preparation, her profound study of the art and thorough elaboration of the means of war, to impose on the vanquished; nor is it to be supposed for an instant that the Assembly assented to them except under compulsion, and from the conviction that their refusal would bring still more terrible misfortunes upon France. In the course of the discussion that ensued, the Assembly solemnly voted the deposition of Louis Napoleon and his dynasty, by a resolution that declared him responsible for the invasion, dismemberment, and ruin of France. On the 1st of March the preliminaries of peace were accepted by a majority of 546 votes against 107, and after bitter controversies, chiefly connected with the payment of the indemnity, the definitive treaty was signed at Frankfort on the 10th of May.

Thus while France emerged from the war with a reduction of territory, the struggle brought to Germany a unification of the Empire. Various minds had been occupied with this project since the earliest German victories, among others that of the Crown Prince. He received, however, but cold encouragement from Count Bismarck, who was jealous of the Prince's interference in matters of State, chiefly on account of his English connections. Nevertheless, Bismarck was also occupied in shaping a plan and it gradually assumed the form of a German Empire with its chief at Berlin. After the battle of Sedan, negotiations were opened with each of the Southern States for its entry into the Northern Confederation, when it appeared that particularism was strong in Bavaria, which kingdom was not disposed to come into the agreement without favourable terms. Count Bismarck accordingly invited the various Governments to send representatives to Versailles for the arrangement of a settlement. At first the King of Würtemberg showed a disposition to act with Bavaria, but his Ministers resigned rather than refuse to sign the treaty, and the accession of Baden and Hesse-Darmstadt to the unionist side showed the two kings the peril of their situation. Accordingly, when Bavaria had been granted larger separate rights than any other State--for instance, an independent postal system, and an independent army--King Louis gave way and the treaties were signed. It was some time before Bavaria would consent to the assumption of the Imperial title by the King of Prussia. Under pressure from Bismarck, however, the king wrote a letter to his fellow-Sovereigns, proposing that William I. as President of the newly formed Federation should assume the title of German Emperor, and this request he renewed to William himself in a letter composed by Bismarck. A deputation from the North German Reichstag expressed the concurrence of the nation, but so strong was local patriotism in Bavaria that the ceremony was delayed from the end of one year to the beginning of the next and even then the approval of Munich had not been secured. Nevertheless on the 18th of January, surrounded by German princes and German warriors, King William assumed at Versailles the title of German Emperor. Thereby a fresh chapter in the history of Europe was begun, though it was some time before the effects of the new order were manifest.

* * * * *

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XXXVI. THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (continued)

Army Reform--Mr. Trevelyan's Agitation--The Abolition of Purchase--Mr. Cardwell's Bill--History of Purchase--Military Opposition in the Commons--Rejection of the Bill by the House of Lords--Abolition of Purchase by Royal Warrant--Indignation in Parliament--The cost of Compensation--Mr. Lowe's Budget--The Match-Tax--Its withdrawal--Mr. Goschen succeeds Mr. Childers--The Ballot Bill--The Epping Forest Bill--Rejected Measures--The Religious Tests Bill--Marriage of the Princess Louise--Sir Charles Dilke's Lecture--The real State of the Civil List--Illness of the Prince of Wales--Crises of the Disease--The Prayers of the Nation--The Thanksgiving Service--Unpopularity of the Government--The 25th Clause--Landing of the ex-Emperor of the French--Resignation of Speaker Denison--Riot in Dublin--The Home Rule Movement--Mr. Gladstone at Aberdeen--Assassination of Mr. Justice Norman--Australian Federation--Russia repudiates the Black Sea Clauses--Lord Granville's Despatch--Prince Gortschakoff's Reply--A Conference Suggested--Meeting of the Plenipotentiaries--Their Deliberations--Settlement of the Difficulty--Obituary of the Year--Sir John Burgoyne, Lord Ellenborough, Grote, Sir William Denison, and others.

At the opening of the year 1871 the German armies were still surrounding Paris, and the raw levies and beaten veterans of France were attempting a hopeless resistance in the Departments of the North, the East, and the West. In England every one saw that the end of the struggle was approaching; and the public mind began uneasily to ask the question, what next? It has often been said that the feeling of England with regard to her own condition alternates between irrational self-confidence and irrational fear. It was now the turn of the latter feeling. The deadly certainty of the German successes and the exhaustion of France drove the minds of Englishmen to consider what would be their state of preparation in the face of Moltke's tactics, supposing they had to face them on English soil. By some the supposition of war with Germany was not held to be unlikely; for, during the later months of 1870 there had been growing in certain quarters a sense of sympathy with France so intense as to give rise to a cry for war in her behalf. But this feeling, although those who entertained it were people who could make themselves heard, never spread widely enough to make the question of an armed alliance a serious one. Still, it was natural and inevitable that a demand for army reform should be loudly made on all sides, and it became apparent that army reform was to be the question of the Session. Moreover, the direction which the reform would take was unmistakable. The speeches that were made throughout the country before the meeting of Parliament and in the early months of the year--notably the speeches of Mr. George Otto Trevelyan, a young Cambridge man who had lately entered public life as member for the Border Boroughs--all struck one note, the note of the abolition of purchase. Up till the year 1871, as is well known, the British Army was officered by men who, with few exceptions, paid for their commissions. The effect of this was that the officers were mostly sons of rich men--for the pay of an officer was never remunerative enough to make poor men pay the price of the commission as an investment--and that the style of living was artificially raised so as to make it eminently undesirable for a poor man to enter the army as an officer, even if he were able to raise money enough to buy his commission. A second effect of the purchase system was that men were admitted to be officers without any special evidence of fitness for the service; if they could pay the price and pass an almost nominal examination, they were admitted without further question. This, then, was the state of things which many Liberals, such as Mr. Trevelyan, wished to alter. They wished to throw open all commissions in the army to competition; let the best-trained man, they said, be made an officer, without any consideration of the length of his purse. As will be seen, this demand prevailed in the end, but not without great difficulty. It was not the only point on which the army reformers touched; for it was not only the officering of the British Army, but its organisation, that began to be severely criticised. Many speakers and writers thought that in face of the enormous armies of the Continent, the principle of voluntary enlistment must be at length given up in favour of that of compulsory service. Many--less thorough-going than these--began to cry out for a more capable militia, and for more Government encouragement to the volunteers. And all agreed that the want of union between the different branches of the service was a fatal hindrance to the efficiency of any of them.

The promised Bill was introduced by Mr. Cardwell, the Secretary at War, very early in the Session; and it was seen that the increased outlay to which the Queen's Speech had referred was to be a reality. The total amount asked for in the estimates was £15,851,700, an increase of £2,886,700 over the vote of 1870; although Mr. Cardwell explained that a million of this would not be wanted in ordinary times. The gross addition to the numerical strength of the regular army was to be 19,980 men, of whom 5,000 were artillery, with a proportionate increase in the number of guns. Mr. Disraeli had on the opening night of the Session made mockery of the "attenuated armaments" to which, he said, the Liberal Government had reduced the forces of the country. But Mr. Cardwell pointed to his proposed figures, which showed a total of 497,000 men under arms: 135,000 regular troops, 139,000 Militia, 14,000 Yeomanry, 9,000 First Army Reserve, 30,000 Second Army Reserve, and 170,000 Volunteers; and guns appropriate to a force of 150,000 men. These forces, Mr. Cardwell said, it was his object to combine into one whole; and the question was, how to achieve that object. As far as men went, were they to be raised by compulsion or voluntarily? As far as officers went, were they to remain under a system of purchase or not? As far as the reserve forces went, were they to be still under the control of the Lords-Lieutenant of counties or not? To the first question, Mr. Cardwell answered that he was not prepared, as yet, to resort to "anything so distasteful as compulsory service." To the second and third he said that the Government had made up its mind that purchase must be abolished, and that the control of the militia and other auxiliary forces must be taken away from the Lords-Lieutenant and given to the Queen. In fact, the abolition of purchase and the increase of the efficiency of the reserve--together with certain provisions for giving a "local connection" to every regiment--were at once seen to be the principal features of the Bill. It is to the way in which these subjects were dealt with by Parliament and the Prime Minister that we may now turn.

The history of purchase in the army is the history of a practice of various degrees of illegality, and of innumerable Royal Commissions designed to solve the contradiction between practice and law. The beginning of it dates from the reign of James II., who in 1683 issued a warrant "ordering the payment of one shilling in the pound on the surrender of a commission to the person surrendering, and by him to whom the surrender is made." William III. made strenuous efforts to stop any traffic in commissions, and his successor forbade it, except with the royal approbation. But as early as 1702 the law courts had begun to declare the lawfulness of purchase, and the Court of Chancery enforced the payment of £600 from a lieutenant to his predecessor in a company. Twenty years later we find the distinction, so familiar in the nineteenth century, between "regulation prices" and "over-regulation prices" clearly marked; and in the middle of the eighteenth century we come to a commission definitely fixing the rate of payment to which officers should be subject--deciding that an ensigncy should cost £400, and a colonelcy £3,500. Royal Commissions continued to be issued at intervals, right up to 1856, and one and all seem to have reported in favour of purchase: partly and ostensibly on the ground that the system helped to quicken promotion and retirement, and partly, of course, that it secured that officers of the army should be persons of "social position." It is hardly too much to say that from the time of the Peace to the time of his death, the purchase system in the British Army was kept up by the influence of the Duke of Wellington, and notably by his celebrated memorandum of the year 1833. In 1856, at the end of the Russian War, when the Duke had been four years dead, and the overpowering weight of his name had a little decreased, the first note of a new policy was heard in the report of that year's commission, which had examined as a witness Sir Charles Trevelyan, the father of the young army reformer of the present year. This report advised that no commissions should be sold above the rank of lieutenant-colonel. About six more Royal Commissions were issued between 1856 and 1871 on army subjects; until finally the war in France brought matters to a point, and taught statesmen that the reform of the army was no longer to be trifled with.

When a Government once seriously took up the purchase system and pronounced for its abolition, it was felt that purchase must go. Yet no Government measure within the memory of man received such treatment as this did from the hands of a varied and irritated opposition. Every argument that self-interest could suggest or class feeling prompt was urged with incredible pertinacity by the military members of the House of Commons. It was insisted in vain that these military members did not fairly represent the army, but that by the very fact of their being in the House they showed themselves to be rich men, able to afford to resign active service and to contest elections; "the colonels" still carried on their opposition to every point of the Bill during four weary months. So temperate a Liberal as Sir Roundell Palmer said of the conduct of the military members, that a "course had been taken the like of which he never remembered. Other great measures affecting great interests had been opposed without the minority attempting to baffle the majority by mere consumption of time. The minority who resisted the Irish Church Bill and the Irish Land Bill had recognised the duty of respecting the principle of Parliamentary government, that the decision of the majority shall be binding. Conduct like that was neither in the interest of the country, of the army, nor of Conservative principle." Yet the colonels did their work. They drove Mr. Cardwell to cut down the Bill to the two divisions of the abolition of purchase and the transfer of the powers of Lords-Lieutenant over the militia and volunteer forces to the Crown. In this form the Bill passed the third reading, and went up to the Lords.

In the Lords it met with opposition at once more dignified and more effective. Nearly every eminent Conservative peer who had ever had anything to do with the army said something in favour of purchase: one supported it because it provided a cheap way of retirement, one because the officers liked it, one because abolition would cost so much by way of compensation, one because the old system had prevented the British officer from becoming a "professional man with professional politics." Lord Salisbury, whose tongue on this occasion was as rasping as usual, suggested a new name for the new method: "If purchase had been described as a system of seniority tempered by selection, the more correct formula for the new system was stagnation tempered by jobbery." Lord Derby, alone of the Tory peers, joined with the advocates of the Government in supporting the Bill. As to expense, he said, "the expense of abolishing purchase would be as oppressive years hence as now, and might be even increased. As to delay, is it dignified to delay an inevitable reform--inevitable because no institution is tenable in England unless it admits of defence by arguments intelligible to the partially-educated constituencies?" In the end the Duke of Richmond's motion, "that the House of Lords declined to read the Bill a second time, until it had before it a comprehensive plan," was carried by 150 to 125--a result not quite the same as the rejection of the Bill, but still a grave blow to the Ministry. The way in which Mr. Gladstone met it was original, and caused a throb of excitement unusual in the calm realm of English politics. With that suddenness for which his proceedings were at times famous, he abolished purchase by a coup d'état. It was known beforehand that purchase was only legal so far as the Queen's Regulations allowed it; and clearly therefore all that was technically required for its abolition was that the regulations should be altered so as to forbid it. But no one supposed that, after months of debate and after a hostile vote in the House of Lords, any Minister would have ventured to advise such a stretch of Prerogative. Mr. Gladstone, however, was equal to the situation. Two days after the division in the Lords, he announced to the astonished House of Commons that purchase was already abolished; her Majesty having been advised to cancel the old warrant that allowed it, and to issue a new warrant that forbade it. "Therefore," he said, "after the first of next November, purchase will cease to exist." His defence of this step was that it was necessary to put an end to a state of uncertainty which endangered the discipline of the army; and that, having secured the expression of the opinion of the Commons against purchase, he held himself justified in advising the Queen to exert her statutory right.

The anger of the Opposition at such a high-handed measure as this may be easily conceived. Mr. Disraeli talked of "a shameful conspiracy against the privileges of the other House": the Duke of Richmond moved and carried a vote of censure in the House of Lords, for, as Lord Salisbury said, if the Government Bill was a proper Bill, the abolition of purchase was a question for Parliament to decide and Parliament only; and if the act of the Queen's Ministers was constitutional, then their bringing forward the Bill at all was disrespectful to the House. Therefore Mr. Gladstone was in the dilemma of having either acted unconstitutionally or disrespectfully to the House of Lords. Lord Cairns charged the Government with having "strained and discredited the constitution of the country." And a majority of eighty assented to the Duke of Richmond's proposition, "that the interposition of the executive ... is calculated to depreciate and neutralise the independent action of the Legislature." And in the House of Commons, though no vote of censure was attempted, many Liberals, such as Mr. M'Cullagh Torrens and Mr. Fawcett, sided with Mr. Disraeli in protesting against this resort to prerogative; an act which, said Mr. Fawcett, "if it had been done by a Tory Minister, would have been denounced by Mr. Gladstone with the applause of the whole Liberal party." The cost of the reform was very considerable indeed. Government proposed to compensate the officers fully and liberally, paying them not just the legal "regulation prices" for their commissions, but the "over-regulation prices," which custom had legalised in the teeth of law. This compensation it was estimated would amount to, at the very least, six millions sterling--some said ten millions,--to be spread of course over a number of years: a large sum to take from the shoulders of the benefited class, and lay upon those of the general taxpayer.

The increased estimates for the year which the reform of the army made necessary were a sore perplexity to Mr. Lowe, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It is true he did not lament the high expenditure of the fighting departments; for, he said, he regarded an efficient army and navy as the best commercial investment in the world; but he had to face a large estimated deficit--no less than £2,713,000. This he proposed to cover, first, by charging the duties on wills and successions so as to make them three times as productive as before; a slightly increased income tax; and, above all, by a tax on matches. It was this last tax which attracted the most attention; and its ultimate fate is a good illustration of the danger of over-cleverness in matters of finance. Mr. Lowe had been afflicted by the thought of the waste going on in the use of matches, and of the perils attending such waste; and he thought that he might by one brilliant stroke lead people to economical habits and add a million to the revenue. For the number of matches annually made is almost inconceivably great; he announced that it was five hundred and sixty millions of boxes, without counting the forty or fifty millions of boxes of wax matches and fusees. He proposed therefore to put a halfpenny tax on every box of matches--a tax which, even if it had the effect of bringing down the manufacture by a third, would contribute nearly a million to the receipts of the year. But Mr. Lowe was either too much preoccupied to remember or too cynical to care that the match-making trade is in the hands of the very poorest of the London poor, and to tamper with it would be to turn many thousands of human beings, most of them children, either into paupers or into criminals. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had invented a motto for the labels that he proposed to affix to every match-box; and to withdraw the tax would be to nullify a good joke--an unanswerable argument against withdrawal. "Ex luce lucellum"--"Out of light a tiny gain"--such was the inscription that every box was to bear; a motto which was a keen delight to the quondam Oxford tutor who proposed the tax, but a sore puzzle to the respectable House of Commons who listened to him, and which would have probably been neither illuminating nor profitable to the housemaids that were to use the matches. As it was, neither tax nor motto ever came to anything. When the amusement at Mr. Lowe's pun had died away, people began to see the serious nature of the proposal and the strong objections to it. A procession of match-makers, squalid and miserable, and some thousands strong, marched from Bethnal Green to Westminster to protest against the tax, and it was withdrawn. The same fate befell Mr. Lowe's proposal to increase the succession duties--a proposal that struck a blow at one of the most cherished interests of the propertied class; nor was there any better destiny awaiting the plan of altering the mode of calculating the income-tax by a percentage, instead of so much in the pound.

Nor were many of the other events of the Session such as to raise the spirits of the Ministry. Mr. Childers, who, after a distinguished career in Australia, had been returned as member for Pontefract and been made First Lord of the Admiralty by Mr. Gladstone, was forced by ill-health to resign. About his work, which at all events had been very thoroughgoing in its way, the most different and extreme opinions prevailed; his friends maintaining that his reforms had been the making of the navy, his enemies that they had almost been its destruction. Mr. Goschen succeeded him; an appointment that was severely criticised by those who thought it--the Admiralty--the wrong place for a member for the City of London, but amply justified by the speed with which the new First Lord mastered the details of his new office, by the vigour of his administration, and by the breadth of his views of public duty.

Only a very few of the remaining measures of this Session of Parliament require notice. The Ballot Bill did not become law until the next year; for Purchase kept it back until towards the end of June; the Opposition carried on a furious warfare against it for five or six weeks; and when at last it was sent up to the Lords, it was rejected by them, by ninety-seven to forty-eight. The conduct of the Opposition was vexatious and could not fail to be damaging to the Government; for no man's endurance can face the loss of so many precious weeks without blaming his own side a little, as well as his opponents. As the Bill was sent to the House of Lords, it was a very different Bill from that which Mr. Forster had introduced; and some considerable alteration was due to the Liberal side. Mr. Henry James, for instance, helped by Mr. William Vernon-Harcourt--two gentlemen who afterwards were, strangely enough, colleagues in Mr. Gladstone's Government as Attorney- and Solicitor-General--threw out the very useful provision, that election expenses should be charged on the rates.

A second, but a fortunate, Ministerial failure was the Epping Forest Bill, in which Government proposed to appoint a commission for settling the respective rights of the Crown, the commoners, and the lords of the manor in Epping Forest. "The Forest" was the favourite holiday-ground of the dwellers in the eastern half of London. For many years a stealthy process of encroachment had been carried on by a few persons who possessed manorial rights over the great common land. Such was the state of the English law, that this kind of appropriation was quite possible and very frequent. The lord of the manor, regarding a common as so much waste land and grieved that so much land should be allowed to go to waste, set to work to "improve" it; and to improve it, he had to enclose it, until by the help of a few posts and rails, and a few years of undisturbed possession, he established a prescriptive right to the land and converted his shadowy manorial rights into absolute ownership. This is exactly what was happening in Epping Forest, where the beauty of the positions and their nearness to London promised immense rents to enterprising lords of the manor who should venture to cut the land up into building lots. Fortunately, however, the Crown has rights over the "Royal Forest of Waltham," as Epping Forest is properly called, and the encroaching lords of the manor had to deal with another body as well as the commoners--namely, the Commissioners of Works. These commissioners, however, had begun the bad practice of selling the rights of the Crown to the lords of the manor. It was against this unpatriotic tampering with encroachment that Mr. Fawcett protested; in the end, the personnel of the Government commission was strengthened by the addition of Mr. Locke, and, on the motion of Mr. Cowper-Temple, the House decided that the Forest ought to be preserved untouched as a recreation ground for the people. The land recovered from the river by means of the Thames Embankment was also preserved for the Londoners against the will of the Government.

The Bill for legalising marriage with a deceased wife's sister made no progress this year; carried by the House of Commons, it was thrown out as usual in the Lords. The Bill for extending the franchise to single women rated to the relief of the poor, though rejected, was rejected by a narrower majority than before; 151 voted for it, and 220 against it. The motion of Mr. Miall for disestablishing the Church of England was thought important enough to call out a strong debate. The Irish Church Act had made the motion not only a possible one, but a motion to be expected; and no fitter man could be found to bring it forward than the editor of the Nonconformist. But the Dissenters were not strong enough in the House to make their success at all probable; not even though, as Mr. Disraeli charged them with being, they were "allied for the moment with revolutionary philosophers." The debate was interesting, as bringing not only a declaration of strong confidence in the Establishment from the leader of the Conservative party, but also as calling out a similar declaration from Mr. Gladstone, whose churchmanship had been thought by friends and foes to be rapidly shifting from the point of view of State-churchmanship he had held so vigorously in his youth. That opinion had been rather encouraged this year by the success of the Government Bill for the Abolition of Religious Tests in the Universities. This subject had been agitated for many years, and it had become a recognised aim of the Liberal party to carry the Bill. The universities--that is, the resident teachers in Oxford and Cambridge--were singularly unanimous in favour of it; and many a meeting had declared how unwilling they were any longer to restrain the freedom of competition and study by retaining any tests whatever. Before the abolition, although any one might be admitted to a Bachelor's degree in Arts without subscribing to any declaration of belief, he could not hold a fellowship, nor qualify himself, by taking a Master's degree, for becoming a member of the governing body of the university, unless he subscribed his assent to the Thirty-nine Articles. It followed that a Dissenter could neither gain the great pecuniary prizes of a student's career, nor could he vote in the Parliamentary elections for the university, nor take any part in the government of the place. At last, mainly perhaps through the efforts of the Solicitor-General, Sir John Duke Coleridge (afterwards Lord Coleridge), the Bill became law, although some restrictions were still kept up. The test at the M.A. degree was abolished entirely, and no test was allowed to be applied in elections to fellowships. But the distinction between lay and clerical fellowships was still retained, in spite of Mr. Fawcett's proposal to merge them. Heads of houses, except in one or two cases, were still to be clergymen of the Establishment; and the test was to be kept up in Divinity degrees. The other Bill of importance that became law this Session was a Trades' Union Bill, designed as a compromise between the extreme views of masters and men. It may also be mentioned that this year saw also the final repeal of the Ecclesiastical Titles Act, passed at the initiative of Lord John Russell at the time of the "Papal Aggressions."

The marriage of her Majesty's fourth daughter, the Princess Louise, to the Marquis of Lorne, the eldest son of the Duke of Argyll, was celebrated with great state at Windsor Castle on the 21st of March, 1871. For the first time since the passing of the Royal Marriage Act in 1772, a descendant of George II. married a commoner with the full consent and approval of the reigning Sovereign. The Queen stood by her daughter's side during the ceremony, which was performed by the Bishop of London, assisted by the Bishop of Winchester, and gave the Princess away.

A lecture given at Newcastle in August by Sir Charles Dilke, one of the members for Chelsea, on the subject of "Representation and Royalty," excited much comment. Desiring to recommend to his hearers republican simplicity and cheapness, and forgetting that there are institutions, as there are public characters, which are dear at any price, Sir Charles Dilke enlarged on the terrible expensiveness of royalty to the nation. The positive and direct cost of the institution he estimated at about a million a year; he complained of the large sums spent on royal yachts, and of the "scandalous exemption" by which, as he said, her Majesty's income was not subject to the payment of income-tax. On all these points full and satisfactory answers were made to the allegations of the honourable baronet. The bulk of the expenditure incurred in the support of British royalty--namely, the Civil List--was really not one bit more an expense to the country than the rental of Woburn Abbey or Trentham Park, or the dividends received by Sir Charles Dilke himself on any India or railway stock he might have inherited from his father. The Queen received nearly £400,000 a year in respect of the Civil List from the general revenue; but she gave up to the general revenue rents that amounted pretty nearly to the same annual total. These were the rents of the Crown lands, which belonged to her Majesty by exactly the same title that Trentham belonged to the Duke of Sutherland; but which, by a fair and equitable bargain, she abandoned to the nation in exchange for the Civil List. With regard to the exemption from income-tax, it appeared on inquiry that there was nothing "scandalous" in the matter, except the assertion of Sir Charles Dilke, which turned out to be absolutely unfounded, the Queen having paid income-tax from the day of its first imposition. Strange to say, the lecture excited in the lower classes rather a disgust of Republicanism than the opposite feeling, as the riotous conduct of the mob at several subsequent gatherings of Sir Charles Dilke's disciples and adherents plainly evinced.

Before the close of the year testimony of the most direct and unimpeachable character was furnished to the popularity of the Queen and the royal family. Early in November the Prince of Wales paid a visit for a few days to Lord Londesborough's seat near Scarborough. It was supposed that there was some defect in the drainage of the house, which stands close to the sea, and that the seeds of typhoid fever were thus implanted in the Prince's frame. After his return to Sandringham he was taken ill, the fever being of a low and lingering type, and he continued in much the same condition for several weeks, during which her Majesty, accompanied by Prince Leopold and Princess Beatrice, visited Sandringham. On the 1st of December, the Prince appearing to be no worse, the Queen returned to Windsor. That some dangerous miasma lurked in the precincts of Londesborough Lodge seemed to be proved by the death, on this same day, of the Earl of Chesterfield, who had been one of the party invited to the house to meet the Prince, and was attacked by a fever of the same kind in so severe a form that he sank from collapse. A groom who had been in attendance on the Prince during the same visit was also attacked.

During November, and till the end of the first week of the following month, no serious symptoms appeared, and the attack was supposed to be passing away; but, on the 8th of December, a decided relapse declared itself, and for several days the life of the Prince of Wales was in the most imminent danger. The Queen, accompanied by some and followed by others of her children, hurried again to Sandringham.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, by the desire of the Queen, composed appropriate forms of prayer, which were used on and after the 10th of December, for several days, in every church and chapel of the Church of England throughout the realm. Archbishop Manning ordered prayers with the like intention to be offered up in all Roman Catholic places of worship; nor was the strain of supplication less fervent in the chapels of the Dissenters or the synagogues of the Jews. With wonderful "petitionary vehemence" was the safety of that life implored from heaven; and that life was spared. On the night of Wednesday, the 14th of December, a slight turn for the better took place in the worse symptoms, and the invalid enjoyed the long-desired boon of refreshing sleep. From that time he gradually, though slowly, rose to convalescence and ultimately to perfect health. The groom who had been attacked by the fever, after progressing favourably for some time, had a relapse, and died on the 18th of December.

After the health of the Prince was completely re-established, on the 27th of February in the following year a solemn service of Thanksgiving, attended both by the Queen and by the Prince himself, was held in St. Paul's Cathedral. The weather was all that could be desired; and although the line of the procession from Buckingham Palace to the Cathedral was thronged by immense multitudes of people, no accident and no mistake occurred. Her Majesty was received by the Lord Mayor at Temple Bar, and by the Bishop of London and the Dean and Chapter at the western gate of the Cathedral. The arrangements for the service were made with great precision of etiquette and pomp of ceremonial. A "Te Deum," composed for the occasion by Mr. (afterwards Sir John) Goss, was first sung by a choir of 250 voices, selected from the best cathedral and chapel choirs in England. Then the special form of Thanksgiving was read, and after a sermon from the Archbishop of Canterbury, the congregation was dismissed, care having been taken to reduce the whole service within such reasonable limits that the Prince's strength might be equal to it. In the evening, St Paul's and the principal streets were magnificently illuminated.

All through the year a growing dissatisfaction with the conduct of the Government exhibited itself in various ways. A portion of the electors of Greenwich, irritated, it would seem, at the continued slackness of the shipbuilding trade at Deptford (though it is difficult to see how the Premier could be made answerable for that), sent a requisition to Mr. Gladstone, their member, couched in most uncomplimentary terms, demanding of him the resignation of his seat. Several public meetings were held and largely attended, while the fate of Paris still hung in the balance, to protest against the Government's apathy and inaction, which had the effect of effacing Great Britain from European politics. In March and April several demonstrations of "Red Republicans" in London aimed at awakening sympathy for their friends who were fighting for the Commune in Paris. But neither their numbers nor the ability of their speakers were in the least formidable. On the other hand, the impartial lover of his country could not but acknowledge that much was due to a Government which had framed and carried a measure that now, for the first time since England was a nation, carried the healthful influences of primary instruction into every corner of the land. During the last half of 1870, and the first months of 1871, the Education Department was actively employed in gaining, through its inspectors and agents, the necessary statistical information required for the effectual working of the Act. Great progress had been made in this respect by the summer of 1871, and nearly three hundred school boards, elected under the provisions of the Education Act, were established in the course of the year. Unfortunately, a little rift of dissidence made its appearance about this time. This divergence of opinion related to the 25th Clause. By this clause it was provided that in districts where there was a school board, if there were any children whose parents pleaded poverty as an excuse for not sending them to school, and the board admitted the plea as a good one, such children should be placed at any Government school within the school-board district which the parent or guardian might prefer, their fees at such schools being paid by the board. On the face of it, there seemed nothing unequal or unfair in such a provision, since it applied equally to all sects and denominations. But the Dissenters considered that the clause would act to the exclusive benefit of the Church of England, to which destitute parents who have no connection with any other religious body naturally gravitate. The children of educational paupers, or nine out of ten of them, would thus be indubitably sent, they thought, to Church schools, where they would be taught the Church Catechism and whatever else is distinctive of Anglicanism at the expense of the rates, which would thus be indirectly drawn upon on behalf of a Church that was too rich and too independent of the laity already. As a matter of fact, the number of these educational paupers, the whole land over, was very small. Circumstances, however, might easily be imagined in which their numbers would greatly increase, and then the grievance resented by the Dissenters would immediately arise.

About the time that the newly-chosen German Emperor was making his triumphal entry into Berlin, another Emperor, exchanging his palace-prison for the land where he was to live as an exile, set foot, not for the first time, on the hospitable shores of England. The war being at an end, and the treaty of peace signed, the Emperor Napoleon was free to leave Wilhelmshöhe. He arrived at Dover by steamer from Ostend on the afternoon of the 20th of March. The day was fine and the Empress and her son, the Prince Imperial had come down from Chislehurst to welcome the exile. The Prince, following the kindly Continental custom, kissed his father on both cheeks. The crowd, though animated by the best and most generous feelings, was a trifle boisterous in its overflowing cordiality; the imperial party were sometimes nearly carried off their feet, so great was the pressure in the street, as they walked up to the Lord Warden Hotel, and the services of the police were called into active exercise. Napoleon was said to be much altered in appearance, his hair and moustache having become quite grey, but to look in good health. The ex-Emperor fixed his permanent residence with the Empress at Chislehurst.

Towards the end of the year, the Speaker of the House of Commons, Mr. Evelyn Denison, feeling the advance of age and the pressure of the arduous and trying duties inseparable from his office, resigned the Speakership, and was soon afterwards elevated to the peerage, taking the title of Lord Ossington. He was succeeded by Mr. Brand, the member for Cambridgeshire, long known as one of the most efficient of Liberal "Whips."

A visit paid this year by Prince Arthur to Ireland, though it elicited much friendly and loyal feeling, was not unattended by painful incidents. The Prince was accompanied by his sister, the Princess Louise, and the Marquis of Lorne. The royal party were received in all public places with the same respect and loyalty as usual, and the visit was nearly coming quietly to an end; but, on the day before the Prince departed, a riot of a serious character took place in the Phœnix Park. The "Irreconcilable" party in Ireland announced their intention of holding a public meeting in the Phœnix Park on the 6th of August, in order to adopt a petition for the liberation of the Irish military prisoners confined for Fenianism. The authorities forbade the meeting to be held; the promoters persisted in holding it; and when the police, in pursuance of their orders, endeavoured to disperse the crowd, and prohibit anything like concerted action or public speaking, a serious affray was the consequence. The police appear to have acted with great and hardly excusable violence; and when it is considered that at this very time the Government did not interfere with the meetings of Red Republicans in Hyde Park and Trafalgar Square, that is, in the heart of London, while the Phœnix Park, a piece of open ground of immense extent, lies at a distance from the busy part of Dublin, the indignation expressed by the Nationalists at the forcible suppression of the meeting cannot be wondered at.

Mr. Gladstone and the Liberal party in general having entered upon the policy of conciliation to Ireland, both in regard to the Irish Church and to the tenure of the land, from a conviction that these important measures were demanded by justice, did not repent of what they did; yet it must be confessed that the sanguine anticipations of seeing peace, union, contentment, and gratitude diffused over the sister island in consequence of this legislation were wofully disappointed. The marked warmth and heartiness with which a French deputation, headed by Count Flavigny, that came over to Ireland in the summer of 1871 to make a public acknowledgment of the services rendered during the war by the Irish ambulance, was received by the masses of the Irish population was understood to cover and indicate at least as much dislike of England as affection for France. Nor was this feeling now confined to the Celtic portion of the population. A section of Protestants, among whom the most prominent figure was a distinguished Fellow of Trinity College, resented so keenly the conduct of England in having sacrificed their Church to, as they deemed, a miserable political expediency, and the clap-trap plea of numbers, that they eagerly joined that large disaffected mass of the native and Roman Catholic population which, about this time (direct agitation for a repeal of the Union being discouraged by the experience of 1844), began to seek the same end under the newly invented name of "Home Rule." The leader of this movement, Mr. Isaac Butt, the member for Limerick, was one, and not the least gifted, of the brilliant band of counsel who rallied round O'Connell on the occasion of his trial for exciting to sedition in January, 1844. The movement for Home Rule which he now took up had this advantage, that while the very name implied a certain degree of separation from England, and therefore insured for it popularity, its vagueness made it more difficult for opponents to grapple with it. All that those who gave in their adhesion to the agitation need necessarily contemplate was the transfer to some legislative body established in Ireland of the management of the purely local concerns of the kingdom. It meant the practical self-government of Ireland, and the exclusion of English influence from the conduct of its affairs, with the exception of a few specified departments, such as the Army and Navy, foreign relations, and the Post Office. While Mr. Butt was leader, however, Home Rule never emerged from a purely academic stage.

Mr. Gladstone delivered an important speech on this question at Aberdeen towards the close of the year, in which he based his opposition to Home Rule, not on prospective or hypothetical dangers, but on consideration of the argument that the Irish, if they would combine together, and become as keenly alive to their own interests as the Scots or the Welsh are, could obtain whatever they might reasonably demand. "You would expect," he said, "when it is said that the Imperial Parliament is to be broken up, that at the very least a case should be made out showing there were great objects of policy, and great demands necessary for the welfare of Ireland, which representatives of Ireland had united to ask, and which the representatives of England, Scotland, and Wales had united to refuse. There is no such grievance. There is nothing which Ireland has asked, and which this country and this Parliament have refused." He proceeded to admit that Ireland had something like a grievance in regard to university education, but urged that a united demand from Ireland would lead immediately to its rectification; and continued: "What are the inequalities of England and Ireland? I declare that I know none, except that there are certain taxes still remaining which are levied over Englishmen and are not levied over Irishmen, and likewise that there are certain purposes for which public money is freely and largely given in Ireland, and for which it is not given in England or Scotland.... But if the doctrines of Home Rule are to be established in Ireland, I protest on your behalf that you will be just as well entitled to it in Scotland; and, moreover, I protest on behalf of Wales, in which I have lived a good deal, and where there are 800,000 people who this day, such is their sentiment of nationality, speak hardly anything but their own Celtic tongue--a larger number than speak the Celtic tongue, I apprehend, in Scotland, and a larger number than speak it, I apprehend, in Ireland--I protest on behalf of Wales that they are entitled to Home Rule there. Can any sensible man, can any rational man, suppose that at this time of day, in this condition of the world, we are going to disintegrate the great capital institutions of this country for the purpose of making ourselves ridiculous in the sight of all mankind, and crippling any power we possess for bestowing benefits through legislation on the country to which we belong?"

A tragic event, the prelude, as it proved, to one still more tragic, was announced in the autumn from Calcutta. Mr. Justice Norman, acting Lord Chief Justice, was assassinated by a fanatical Mussulman while ascending the steps leading to his own court. He had reached the summit of the flight of steps, when a man, who had been concealed in a doorway, sprang out and stabbed him in the back. Mr. Norman turned quickly round, and was stabbed again in front: either wound, being inflicted by one who was an adept in the art of murder, would have been fatal. The assassin was immediately seized. The evidence given on the trial left it doubtful whether pure fanatical hate towards a judge who had lately been enforcing the law against some Mohammedan conspirators at Patna was the cause of the murder, or whether some private grudge supplied a subsidiary motive.

What looked like an important step towards the co-ordination in one confederacy of the Australian colonies was taken in the autumn of this year. A new treaty between Great Britain and the Zollverein was being negotiated; and it would appear that Lord Kimberley, the Colonial Secretary, in a circular despatch to the Australian Governments, used certain expressions in relation thereto which seemed to the colonists to imply the recognition of a right on the part of the mother country to concede, and on the part of a foreign country to claim, certain tariff arrangements as between the different colonies which would be favourable to the interests of the treaty-making Power. Delegates from the Governments of New South Wales, Tasmania, South Australia, and Victoria met at Melbourne, in September, 1871, to consider the question; and having carefully examined Lord Kimberley's despatch, agreed unanimously to the following resolutions:--

1. "That the Australian colonies claim to enter into arrangements with each other, through their respective Legislatures, so as to provide for the reciprocal admission of their respective products and manufactures, either duty free or on such terms as may be mutually agreed upon.

2. "That no treaty entered into by the Imperial Government with any foreign Power should in any way limit or impede the exercise of such right.

3. "That Imperial interference with inter-colonial fiscal legislation should finally and absolutely cease.

4. "That so much of an Act or Acts of the Imperial Parliament as may be considered to prohibit the full exercise of such right should be repealed.

5. "That these resolutions, together with a memorandum from each Government, or a joint memorandum from such Governments as prefer to adopt that method, shall be transmitted to the Secretary of State through the Governors of our colonies respectively." The movement, however, proved premature, so far at least as it concerned inter-colonial (that is, Australian) Federation. Nor had the larger project of Imperial Federation come within the view of the statesmen of the day.

In September, 1870, a circumstance had occurred that gave us the disagreeable certainty that, although secured from the direct risks of war by what Mr. Gladstone called "the silver streak," we too might be injuriously affected by the disturbance of the European equilibrium caused by the prostration of France. A circular note, addressed by Prince Gortschakoff to the representatives of Russia at foreign Courts, and made public at the end of October, declared that it was the intention of his Majesty the Czar no longer to be bound by that clause of the Treaty of 1856, concluded after the Crimean War, which prohibited Russia from keeping up a naval force above a certain strength in the Black Sea. Lord Granville, in a despatch to Sir A. Buchanan dated the 10th of November, 1870, stated that the British Government could give no sanction to the course announced by Prince Gortschakoff.

The concilatory tone adopted by Prince Gortschakoff in his reply to Lord Granville went some way to neutralise the disagreeable impression which the circular had produced. He would not admit that Russia encouraged a laxity of principle in regard to the obligation of treaties; and in the case of this particular treaty he declared that in its main stipulations Russia considered it as binding as ever, although she declined to be bound any longer by the special convention with Turkey which it contained, regulating the number and size of the men-of-war which the two Powers might maintain in the Black Sea. With regard to the objection that Russia had not sought for a modification of the treaty through the medium of a conference, Prince Gortschakoff remarked that Lord Granville well knew that "all the efforts repeatedly made to unite the Powers in a common deliberation, in order to do away with the causes of complication which trouble the general peace, have constantly failed."

There was something deceptive in this way of stating the matter, because it did not follow, if difficulties had arisen in the way of the meeting of congresses to settle all the perplexing questions of Europe, that therefore a proposal by Russia for a conference of the signatory Powers to discuss the comparatively unimportant matter now on the tapis would have encountered any serious opposition. Lord Granville pointed out this distinction, admitting at the same time with satisfaction the moderation and courtesy of tone by which the Russian despatches were distinguished. Here, as between England and Russia, the matter rested. But a doubt remained whether the conduct of Russia had not been previously sanctioned, possibly even instigated, by the Court of Berlin. Mr. Odo Russell was sent to clear up this delicate point, and brought back the tranquillising assurance from Count Bismarck that the German Government had given no sanction to the step. At the same time a proposal was made by Prussia that a conference of the Powers should be summoned, and meet in London, in order to settle the question.

This conference accordingly met in London on the 17th of January. The presence of a French Plenipotentiary at the Conference had been earnestly desired, and M. Jules Favre had been requested to attend it by the Paris Government. But difficulties arose in connection with his obtaining permission to pass out of Paris through the Prussian lines; and when the permission was obtained--or, rather, when through the close of the siege the difficulty no longer existed--M. Favre had his hands so full of the work of negotiating the armistice with Bismarck that it was impossible for him to leave Paris. The plenipotentiaries of the other Powers--Britain, Germany, Austria, Italy, Russia, and Turkey--proceeded, though with reluctance, to the deliberation of the question.

At the first sitting the Conference adopted, unanimously, on the invitation of Lord Granville, the principle that no one of the two or more Powers that may be parties to a treaty can nullify the same, or any part of it, without the consent of the co-signatory Powers. At subsequent meetings, the reasons alleged by Russia for her desire to be liberated from the prohibitory stipulation respecting war-ships contained in the Black Sea Treaty were listened to and considered, as well as the reply of the Turkish Ambassador, who, while repudiating on behalf of Turkey all intention of separating her action from that approved by the majority of the friendly Powers, regretted that the question had ever been raised, and declared that the restrictive clause which Russia now felt to be unendurable still appeared to the Sublime Porte in the light of a prudent and desirable precaution. Upon minute inquiry, it was found that ten cases of infraction of the Convention of 1856, forbidding the navigation of the Black Sea by ships-of-war, had occurred in the intervening period. Most of these were unimportant; but there was one on which Russia laid much stress, having, indeed, protested against it at the time when it occurred. This was the admission into the Black Sea of H.M.S. Gannet, in which Sir Henry Bulwer was conveyed (1864) on a mission to Kustendji. General Ignatieff, the Russian Ambassador at Constantinople, told the British representative there, about the year 1870, that Russia considered the clauses neutralising the Black Sea to have been annulled in practice from the time when H.M.S. Gannet passed through the Bosphorus into the prohibited waters six years before.

The sense of the Conference was, on the whole, in favour of remitting the restriction which Russia complained of; and a new treaty was drawn up, and signed by all the Powers, by virtue of which the articles of the Treaty of 1856 limiting the number and size of the ships-of-war which Russia and Turkey might keep up in the Black Sea were abrogated, and a new provision was introduced, authorising the Sultan to open the straits of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus in time of peace to the fleets of the friendly and allied Powers, in the event of the execution of the stipulations of the Treaty of 1856 requiring it. The meaning of this stipulation, of course, was, that if Russia took advantage of the liberty which she now had of preparing a large fleet for the ultimate purpose of attacking Turkey, the latter would be entitled, without the breach of any treaty stipulation, to summon the Mediterranean fleet of France or England to her aid.

After the draft of the treaty had been settled, at the sitting of the 13th of March, Earl Granville introduced the Duc de Broglie to the Conference as the representative of France. In a few dignified sentences, the duke, after touching lightly but feelingly on the unhappy condition of France, which had prevented her from being represented at the earlier sittings, stated that, with regard to the principal object of the Conference, the French Government, sharing the feelings expressed by the Turkish Plenipotentiary, would have preferred that the original convention for neutralising the Black Sea should be maintained; but that at the stage at which the affair had now arrived, the new arrangement having been assented to by the Porte, France willingly entered into the feeling of conciliation that had dictated it, and gave its assent to all the decisions of the Conference.

The obituary of the year contains the names of many persons of eminence. Although the death of no statesman of the first rank has to be recorded, the army lost its patriarch, Sir John Burgoyne; the Church of England lost Dean Alford of Canterbury, Dean Mansel of St. Paul's, the once famous preacher, Canon Melvill, and the much-loved missionary bishop, John Coleridge Patteson; science lost Sir John Herschel, Sir Roderick Murchison, Mr. Charles Babbage, and Mr. De Morgan; literature and politics lost the veteran George Grote; and about the same time as the "Philosophical Radical" and historian of Greece there died the famous old Devonshire Tory, Sir Thomas Dyke Acland. Lord Ellenborough, once the much-admired and much-criticised Governor-General of India, Sir W. Denison, once Governor of Tasmania and Madras, Mr. Charles Buxton, an influential Member of Parliament and philanthropist, died in the same year. The death of George Hudson, the "Railway King," gave people an opportunity for moralising on the vicissitudes of life.

INDEX.

Aberdeen, Lord, Prime Minister, 11, 15; influence on Crimean war, 76; on position of Russia in Asia, 135.

Abyssinian war: the unanswered letter, 463, 479; crescent and cross, 476; Consul Plowden, 476, 477; Theodore, 477; Consul Cameron, 478, 479; German missionaries imprisoned, 479; Mr. Rassam, 480-483; war determined on, 483, 484; march to Magdala, 486-488; Theodore's army destroyed, 488; negotiations, 490; storming of Magdala, suicide of Theodore, 491; end of the war, 492.

Adullamites, The, 392.

Agra and Masterman's Bank fails, 410.

Agra, Surprise and fight at, 241.

Agricultural labourers' strike, 459.

Alabama, Building and escape of, 331-333; fight with Kearsarge, 361.

Albert, Prince, and the Great Exhibition of 1851, 4; illness and death, 328.

Alexander becomes Czar of Russia, 86; visits the Crimea, 145, 146.

Alexandra, Princess of Wales, 338.

Alford, Dean, Death of, 608.

Alfred, Prince, Attempt to assassinate, 474.

Allahabad, Outbreak of mutiny at, 211.

Alma, Battle of, 44-50.

Alsace and Lorraine ceded to Germany, 594.

Alumbagh, Battle at, 247.

America, United States of: causes that led to the Civil War, 319; States secede, 320, 322; capture of Fort Sumter, 321; Bull Run, 322; the Alabama, 330-333; progress of the war, 333, 334, 341, 361; fight between Alabama and Kearsarge, 361; Lincoln re-elected President, 362; Canada and the war, 362; the end approaching, 380; the Southern armies surrender, 382; losses during the war, 382; President Lincoln assassinated, 382; Atlantic Cable completed, 407; General Grant President, 517.

Aong, Battle of, 220.

Aosta, Duke of, accepts Spanish Crown, 578.

Anson, General, 187, 195; death, 196.

Arbitration, International, 157.

Armenia, Campaign in, 136.

Army, British, State of, before Crimean war, 75, 76; after Inkermann, 80; mortality, 82, 83; in winter quarters, 146.

Army, Indian native, State of, 182; disbanding regiments in, 187, 188, 193, 194, 197, 206, 228, 230; caste abolished in, 276; reorganised, 284-286, 314.

Army and navy estimates, etc., 364, 544.

Army reforms, 545; history of Purchase, and Bill to abolish, 595, 596; Purchase abolished by Royal warrant, 598.

Arrow, Affair of the, 169-174.

Arthur, Prince, visit to Ireland, 603.

Ashanti war, 350.

Atlantic cable, Laying the, 406-408.

Aurelles de Paladines, 585, 586.

Australian colonies and federation, 606, 607.

Austria, attitude on Eastern question, 15, 26, 27, 35; and the Crimean war, 91, 147, 148, 150; occupation of Italy, 166; and the Italian question, 295; prepares for war, 296, 298; defeated, 299; peace of Villafranca, 302; Schleswig-Holstein dispute, 354-361; dispute with Prussia, 418; convention of Gastein, 419; prepares for war, 420; offers Venetia to Italy, 422; war with Prussia, 424-428; conditions of peace, 429; settles affairs with Hungary, 462, 463; attitude in the Franco-German war, 558, 570.

Azoff, Sea of, Admiral Lyons in, 101.

Badlee Serai, Battle at, 204.

Baidar valley, French posts in, 119.

Baines, Mr., abortive Reform Bill, 365.

Balaclava, Battle of, 59-64; results of, 64; demonstrations and defences at, 120.

Ballot Bill rejected, 559.

Baltic, Departure of fleet for the, 34; Russian fleet in, 72; allied fleet in, 132-134.

Banda and Kirwee prize money settled, 411.

Bank failures, etc., 409-411.

Bareilly, Mutiny at, 200; battle of, 268.

Barnard, Sir Henry, 203; death of, 226.

Barrackpore, Outbreak of mutiny at, 187.

Bazaine, Marshal, 559, 561; sortie from Metz, 582; and Bismarck, 583.

Beales, Edmund, Hyde Park riots, 402-404.

Belfast, Riots in, 349, 350.

Belfort, Capitulation of, 592.

Belgium, French and Prussian designs on, 555; independence guaranteed, 556.

Benares, Outbreak of mutiny at, 211.

Benedetti and Franco-German war, 552.

Berhampore, Outbreak of mutiny at, 186.

Birmingham "No Popery" riots, 475.

Bismarck, Austro-Prussian war, 418-424; Franco-German war, 552, 555, 566, 579.

Bithoor, Battle of, 224.

Black Friday, 409-411.

Black Sea, Allied Fleet in the, 37; storms in, 74, 75; neutralisation of, 155; conference, 607; a new treaty, 608.

Blockades, Declaration of Paris, 156.

Bolgrad, Dispute concerning, 159.

Bomarsund, Expedition against, 73, 74.

Bombardment of Paris, 590, 591.

Borny, Battle of, 561.

Boroughs, Bill regulating boundaries of, 467.

Bothnia, Capt. Storey in Gulf of, 132.

Bourbaki, General, 583, 591, 592.

Bowring, Sir John, and Chinese war, 169.

Brazil, Outrage on British subjects in, 340.

Brigands, Greek, murder English tourists, 540-544.

Bright, John, agitates for Parliamentary reform, 289; speech on Disraeli's Bill, 291; on the death of Cobden, 378; defends the Queen, 408; on Disraeli's Reform Bill, 440, 447, 448; on the right of meeting in the parks, 454.

Broadhead, and Sheffield outrages, 458.

Brooke, Sir James (Rajah), Death of, 475.

Brougham, Lord, Death of, 475.

Brown, Sir George, Kertch expedition, 100.

Bruat, Admiral, Kertch expedition, 100.

Bruce, Mr., National Education Bill, 452.

Bull Run, Battle of, 322.

Burgoyne, Sir John, 84; death of, 608.

Burmese war, 160.

Busserutgunge, Battle of, 223, 224.

Butt, Mr. Isaac, and Home Rule, 606.

Cable, the Atlantic, Laying of, 406-408.

Cairns, Sir Hugh, on Parliamentary Reform, 291, 448, 450; Lord Chancellor, 466.

Calcutta, Opinions at, respecting the mutiny, 210; cyclone in, 352.

Calpee, Battle of, 274.

Cambridge, Duke of, at Inkermann, 68, 70.

Cameron, Consul, in Abyssinia, 479, 481.

Campbell, Sir Colin, in the Crimea, 58, 59; commands Indian army, 246; prepares to relieve Lucknow, 251; at Cawnpore, 256; Shumshabad, 262; Bareilly, 268.

Canada and the American Civil War, 362, 383; defences of Quebec and Montreal, 383; Fenian invasion, 416, 417.

Canning, Lord, Governor-General of India, 210; mutiny at Dinapore, 225; his proclamation, 267; viceroy, 279; reorganises the Government, 284; rewards loyal Rajahs, 286.

Canrobert, General, in Crimea, 52, 90, 113.

Canton, Bombardment of, 170.

Cardigan, Lord, at Balaclava, 62.

Cardwell, Mr., army estimates, 545, 596.

Cashmere gate blown up, 235.

Caste in the Indian army, 183; abolished, 276.

Cathcart, Sir George, death, 70.

Cattle Plague outbreak, 371, 372.

Cawnpore, Outbreak of mutiny at, 211; Nana Sahib's treachery, 213; sufferings of the garrison, 214; heroic defence, 215; massacre at the Ghaut, escape of survivors, 216; battle at, 220-222; the massacre at, 222, 223.

Central India, State of affairs in, 216, 259; Rose's campaign, 270-276; Sir R. Napier commands in, 276.

Chandaree, Storming of, 272.

Chanzy, General, 585, 586, 587, 590.

Charge of the Heavy Brigade at Balaclava, 60; of the Light Brigade, 62-64.

Charities, Proposal to tax, 369.

Chester Castle, Fenians threaten, 454, 455.

Childers, Mr., navy estimates, etc., 544, 599.

Children employed in agriculture, 452.

China, Troops for, intercepted for Indian mutiny, 251; expedition to enforce treaty of Tientsin, 316-319; war, 351.

Chinese war, affair of the Arrow, 169; discussion in Parliament, 169-174; Canton bombarded, 174.

Chinhut, British repulsed at, 218.

Cholera in England in 1866, 406.

Chronological order of Indian mutiny, 199.

Chupatties, Mystery of the, 186.

Church, Irish. (See Irish Church.)

Church Rates Abolition Bill, 466.

Christians, Abyssinian, 476.

Civil list of recent British monarchs, 176; of the Queen, 601.

Civil war in America. (See America.)

Clarendon, Lord, despatches to Russia, 19, 20; on Chinese war, 170; death, 547.

Clergymen Disabilities Bill, 546.

Clerkenwell Fenian outrage, 456-458.

Clyde, Lord, in Oude, 280-282.

Coalition Ministry, 11.

Cobden on Chinese war, 171; rejected for Huddersfield, 175; negotiates commercial treaty with France, 310; death, 376; Bright's eulogy, 378.

Codrington, Sir William, in Crimea, 131.

Coercion Act for Ireland, 523.

Colenso case, The, 348.

Columbia, Colony of British, 287.

Commercial disasters (Black Friday), 409.

Commercial treaty with France, 310.

Company's rule abolished in India, 278.

Compound householder, 438, 443.

Congress of European Powers, 151-157.

Conservatives and Education Bill, 539.

Conspiracy to Murder Bill, 180.

Convocation and "Essays and Reviews," 346.

Cooper quells rising at Meean Meer, 231.

Cost of Crimean war, 158.

Cotton famine in Lancashire, 322, 336.

Coup d'État, Louis Napoleon's, 6-8.

Cranborne, Lord, on Indian finance, 402; on Disraeli's Reform Bill, 447.

Cretan insurrection, 492.

Crimean war, the quarrel, 12-18; fleets ordered to Besika Bay, 19; Russia occupies the Principalities, 22; Vienna note, 22, 24, 27; allied fleets in the Dardanelles, 27; destruction of Turkish ships at Sinope, 28; allied fleets in the Black Sea, 30; ultimatum of the allies, 32; departure of Baltic fleet, war declared, 34; attitude of German Powers, 35; siege of Silistria, 36; Odessa bombarded, 38; the allies at Varna, 38; the Crimea to be invaded, 39; want of transport, 40; the allied forces, the march on Sebastopol, 41; the first skirmish, 42; battle of the Alma, 44-50; defences of Sebastopol, 51, 53, 55; march to Balaclava, 52; the siege of Sebastopol, 54; first day's bombardment, operations of the fleet, 56; camp at Balaclava, 58; battle of Balaclava, 59-64; of Inkermann, 66-72; British and Russian fleets in the Baltic, 72; destruction of Bomarsund, winter in the Crimea, 74; storms in the Black Sea, 74, 75; foreign legion for the Crimea, 77, 84; sufferings of the army, 80-83; Miss Nightingale, 83; arrival of stores, 84; Turkish success at Eupatoria, 86; death of the Czar Nicholas, 86; second bombardment of Sebastopol, 86, 87; expedition to Kertch, 88, 99-101; arrival of Sardinian troops, 90; peace proposals, 91, 92; Vienna conference, 92-96; reinforcements for the Crimea, 98; in the trenches, 99; Tchernaya occupied, 99; prosecution of the siege, 102; capture of the Mamelon, 103; of the Quarries, 104; preparing to attack the Malakoff, 105-108, 114; and the Redan, 106, 107, 110; losses of the allies, 111; death of Lord Raglan, 112; sapping towards the Malakoff and the Redan, 114, 119; Gortschakoff attempts to raise the siege, 114; allied camp in Tchernaya, 115; battle of Tchernaya, 116-118; assault and capture of the Malakoff, 121-125; failure of attack on the Redan, 126; fall of Sebastopol, 127; expedition to Eupatoria, 128-130; naval operations, 131; allied fleets in the Baltic, 132-134; Russian atrocities, 132; allied fleets in the Pacific, 134; campaign in Asia Minor, 136; Russian successes, 137; defence of Kars, 138-143; army in winter quarters, destruction of defences of Sebastopol, 146; armistice, 147; peace negotiations, 147-151; congress at Paris, 151-157; results of the war, 155; cost of the war, 158; the Victoria Cross distribution, 159.

Cronstadt, The fortress of, 72.

Crown Prince of Germany betrothed to Princess Royal, 175; in the Franco-German war, 558, 559, 563.

Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, 4-6; at Sydenham, 162.

Cumming, Dr., and Vatican council, 572.

Customs duties, reductions, 12.

Cyclone at Calcutta, 352.

Czar Nicholas, Death of, 86.

Dalhousie's Indian policy abandoned, 286.

Danube, Turkish campaign on, 36; freedom of the, 55.

Danubian Principalities, Re-organisation of, 155, 158.

Deceased Wife's Sister Bill, 546, 600.

Declaration of Paris on Maritime law, 156.

Delhi, Outbreak of mutiny at, 190-192; mutineers converge on, 199; British march on, 203; the siege, 205-209; sorties from, 226, 227; the assault, 235-239; capture of the king, execution of the princes, 239; effect on the natives, 240; the king banished, 276.

Democracy, Mr. Lowe's philippic, 365.

Denison, Evelyn, elected Speaker, 175; becomes Lord Ossington, 603.

Denmark and Schleswig-Holstein dispute, 353-361; Death of Frederick VII., 357; war with Prussia, 358-361.

Derby, Lord, Prime Minister, 10; Chinese war, 170; forms a cabinet, 181; dissolves on Reform Question, 292-294; forms a cabinet on Earl Russell's defeat, 400; retires, 466; opposes Irish Church Bill, 503; death, 514; character, 515.

Dhar, Annexation of, 266.

Dilke, Sir Charles, on royalty, 601.

Disraeli, Mr., 2; Chancellor of the Exchequer, 10, 11, 181, 400; eulogy on Wellington, 11; Roebuck's motion, 98; Italian affairs, 168; Conspiracy to Murder Bill, 181; Reform Bill, 290; debate, 291-294; on second reading of Gladstone's Reform Bill, 395; speech to his constituents, 401; passes a Reform Bill, 433-451; Prime Minister, 466; opposes Irish Church resolutions, 467-471; and Irish Church Bill, 500; on Irish Land Bill, 523-525; on Education Bill, 539; on abolition of Purchase, 598.

Dinapore, Outbreak of mutiny at, 225.

Divorce Bill debate, 176-179; new divorce court established, 178.

Dixon, Mr., and Education Bill, 538.

Doab, Seaton's campaign in, 257, 259.

Dockyard, Woolwich, closed, 544.

Dowry of Princess Royal, 176.

Druses and Syrian massacre, 315, 316.

Ducrot's sorties from Paris, 580, 584.

Eastern Question. (See Crimean war.)

Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, 2, 3; repealed, 601.

Edmunds scandal, 368.

Education. (See Elementary Education, Endowed Schools.)

Educational grants, 328.

Egypt, Viceroy of, visits London, 460.

Elementary Education Bill, Mr. Forster's, 529; state of education, 529, 530; provisions of the Bill, 531-536; religious teaching, 535; hostile criticism, 536; Dixon's amendment, debate, 537-539; passed, 540; the 25th clause, 603.

Elgin, Lord, embassy to China, 316-319.

Ellenborough, Lord, 268; death, 608.

Elphinstone, Lord, 210.

Endowed schools, State of, 508, 509; Mr. Forster's Bill for dealing with, 509, 510.

Epping Forest, Preservation of, 600.

"Essays and Reviews," 346, 348.

Eugenie, Empress of the French, 154, 163, 560; regent, 567; flight from Paris, 568; Regnier negotiations, 583, 584.

Eupatoria, Expedition to, 128-130.

Evans, Sir De Lacy, 64; in the Crimea, 72; death, 547.

Exhibition of 1851, 4-6; of 1862, 334-336.

Eyre, Governor, Jamaica riots, 387, 390, 391.

Factory Acts, Bill to extend, 452.

Faidherbe, General, 588, 589.

Fancy franchises, 438, 439.

Favre, Jules, 566, 567, 569, 570, 579, 580.

Fawcett, Mr., 600, 601.

Fenian conspiracy, Rise of, 372; constitution of, 373, 374; arrests in Cork and Dublin, 374; escape of Stephens, 375; trials of prisoners, 375, 376; outbreak in Ireland, 412-416; in Canada, 416; Chester Castle threatened, 454, 455; outrage at Manchester, 455; at Clerkenwell, 456-458; release of convicts, 514.

Ferozepore, Outbreak of mutiny at, 194.

Feroze Shah, defeat and disappearance, 283.

Fire insurance duty, debates, 363.

Forbach, Battle of, 560.

Foreign legion for the Crimea, 77.

Forster, Mr., Endowed Schools Bill, 509, 510; Elementary Education Bill, 529-540. (See Elementary Education.)

France acquires Nice and Savoy, 334; commercial Treaty with Britain, 310; joins in Chinese expedition, 316-319; visit of her fleet to Portsmouth, 380; quits Mexico, 431; experiment in constitutional government, 515, 516; France in 1870, 548-550; what led to war with Germany, 548-552. (See Crimean War, Franco-German War.)

Franchise, County, Locke-King's motion, 3.

Franchise, Mr. Gladstone's Bill, 391-399.

Francis Joseph crowned King of Hungary, 463.

Franco-German war, a Hohenzollern candidate for the Spanish throne, 549, 551-554; Bismarck's action, 552, 555; the alarmist telegram, 554; the secret treaty, 555; war declared, 556; attitude of the German states, 557; and Austria, 558; Napoleon's plan of campaign, Saarbrück, Weissenberg, 558; Wörth, 559; Forbach, Palikao's ministry, 560; Bazaine at Metz, 561, 562; aid for wounded from England, 562, 563; MacMahon at Châlons, marches to relieve Bazaine, 563; the disaster at Sedan, 564-566; Gambetta proclaims a republic, flight of the Empress, 568; Jules Favre and the neutral powers, 569, 570, 579; Jules Favre and Bismarck, 579, 580; defences of Paris, 580; beginning of the siege, 581; M. Thiers' mission, fall of Strasburg, 582; the Regnier plot, 583; capitulation of Metz, 584; the armies of the Loire, 585, 587, 590; Garibaldi's services, 578; Faidherbe defeated, 588, 589; bombardment of Paris, 590; Paris surrenders, 591; peace negotiations, 592; Alsace and Lorraine ceded to Germany, war indemnity, terms of peace, 594.

Franks, General, marching to Lucknow, 263.

Frederick Charles, Prince, 586, 587.

Frederick VII. of Denmark, death, 357.

Frossard, General, 558.

Futtehpore, Battle of, 219.

Fyzabad, Outbreak of mutiny at, 202.

Gambetta, 568, 582, 586.

Gamekeepers, Police as assistants to, 330.

Gang system (children's labour), 452.

Garibaldi, 299; popularity, 304; Sicilian expedition, 305-307; meets Victor Emmanuel, 309; visits London, 346, 347; in Franco-German war, 587.

Garotte robberies, 331.

Gastein, Convention of, 419.

George of Denmark King of Greece, 334.

German Powers, attitude on Eastern Question, 23, 26, 27, 35; Diet on peace proposals (Crimean war), 153; confederation, proposed reform, 422; States and Franco-German war, 557; Empire, unification of, 594, 595.

Gladstone, Mr., 2; Chancellor of the Exchequer, 12, 295; budgets, 12, 310, 338, 344, 364; on Chinese war, 172; opposes Divorce Bill, 178; on Conspiracy to Murder Bill, 180; on Disraeli's Reform Bill, 292; on American Civil War, 322; on Parliamentary Reform, 346; rejected for Oxford University, 370; returned for South Lancashire, 371; Reform Bill of 1866, 391-399; speech at Liverpool, 393, 394; introduces Redistribution of Seats Bill, 396; Cabinet resigns, 400; debate on Disraeli's Reform Bill, 438-440, 442, 443; Irish Church Resolutions, 467; elected for Greenwich, 472; Prime Minister, 474; disestablishment of Irish Church, 495-500; Irish Land Act, 518-528; Education, 539; Home Rule, 606.

Gordon, Mr., Jamaica riots, 385, 388-390.

Gortschakoff, Prince, commands Russian forces, 20, 28; at Inkermann, 66; Sebastopol, 114; Black Sea Treaty, 607.

Goschen, Mr., University Tests Bill, 367; First Lord of Admiralty, 599.

Gough, Lord, death and character, 515.

Graham, Sir James, 2; death, 324.

Grant, Sir Hope, at Delhi, 238; Oude, 278.

Grant, General, President, 517.

Granville, Earl, 10; on Chinese war, 171.

Gravelotte, Battle of, 562.

Greased cartridges, The, 185.

Great Eastern lays Atlantic Cable, 407.

Great Exhibition of 1851, 4-6; of 1862, 334-336.

Greathed's column, Exploits of, 240-242.

Greece, Revolution in, 334.

Greek brigands murder English tourists, 540-544.

Gungaree, Battle at, 258.

Gurrakoti, Capture of, 271.

Gwalior Contingent, The, 246, 255, 256; Tantia Topee at Gwalior, 275.

Habeas Corpus Act suspended in Ireland, 414-416, 451, 464.

Hango, Massacre at, 132.

Harcourt, Vernon, on Education Bill, 539.

Hardy, Gathorne, on Irish Church Bill, 500.

Havelock, General, 210; at Futtehpore, 219; Cawnpore, 220, 224; Busserutgunge, 223, 224; and Outram, 246; death, 254.

Helena, Princess, marriage, 411.

Herbert of Lea, Lord, death, 324.

Hindon, Battle on the, 203, 204.

Hodson and the Guide Corps, 205; captures King of Delhi, executes princes, 239; death, 266.

Hohenzollern prince proposed for Spanish throne, 549, 551, 554.

Home, Lieutenant, death, 241.

Home Rule, Mr. Gladstone on, 606.

Hudson, George, railway king, death, 608.

Hudson's Bay Company, 287.

Hungary, Francis Joseph king of, 463.

Hyde Park riots, 402-404; Reform meeting, 452-454.

Ice catastrophe in Regent's Park, 459.

Imperial, Prince, 154; at Saarbrück, 551.

India, state of native army, 182, 183; the mutiny, 182-284; Company's rule abolished, 278; government and finances reorganised, 284; changes in the army, 284-286, 314; Dalhousie's policy abandoned, 286; finances, James Wilson's scheme, 314; prosperity, 382, 383; over-speculation, 383; Lord Cranborne on finances of, 402; Russian advance towards, 492. (See Mutiny, Indian.)

Inkermann, 66-71; after the battle, 72.

Ionian Islands ceded to Greece, 334.

Ireland, Queen visits, 326; Belfast riots, 349, 350; Fenians, 372-376, 412; Habeas Corpus Act suspended, 413, 451, 464; arrests in Dublin, 414; disturbances, 451; Reform Bill, 467; Protestant Church disestablished, 493-506; Land Act, 518-528; Coercion Act, 528.

Irish Church, motion for disestablishment, 451, 466; Gladstone's resolutions, 467; the Bill, 493; Gladstone's speech, 495-500; debate, 500; in the Lords, 500, 502; Lord Derby's opposition, 503; the Lords' amendments, 504; Archbishop Tait's mediation, 505; negotiations, the Bill becomes law, 506.

Irish Land Act, 518; Bill introduced, 519, 520; in committee, 522-527; in the Lords, 527; becomes law, 528.

Irish Reform Bill, 397, 467.

Isabella, Queen of Spain, dethroned, 492; abdicates, 578.

Italy, Affairs of, at Congress of Paris, 156; debate on, 166; affairs in, 295; Austria prepares for war, 296, 297; Garibaldi's volunteers, 299; Magenta and Solferino, 300; peace of Villafranca, 302; Nice and Savoy ceded to France, 304; Papal States occupied, battle of Volturno, 308; alliance with Prussia, 420; obtains Venetia, 427; unification of, 577. (See Garibaldi, Sicily, Victor Emmanuel.)

Jallandhar stormed, 274; mutiny at, 206.

Jamaica, Negro insurrection in, 384-391; distress in the island, 385; Gordon, 385; the outbreak, 386; Governor Eyre's measures, Paul Bogle, 387; martial law, 388; Gordon's execution, 388-390; prosecution of Governor Eyre, 390-391.

Japan, Outrage on British subjects in, 340; war in, 352.

Jesuits suppressed in Spain, 492.

Jhansi, Mutiny and massacre at, 200-202; bombardment, 272; stormed, 274.

Jhelum, Battle at, 228.

Jung Bahadoor, 224; at Lucknow, 265.

Kaffir war, 160.

Kaiserbagh, Plundering the, 266, 267.

Kars, State of affairs in, 136; Williams fortifies it, 138, 139; proposals for relief of, 140; battle of, 141, 142; fall of, 143; debate in Parliament on, 153.

Keble, John, Death of, 418.

Kent, Duchess of, Death of, 326.

Kertch, Expedition to, 88, 89, 99, 101.

Kinburn, Fort, Attack on, 130.

Koonch, Battle of, 274.

Korniloff, Russian admiral, 51, 54; death, 56.

Kuruk-Dereh, Battle of, 137.

Lancashire cotton famine, 322; distress, 336.

Laon, Surrender of, 585.

Law Courts, New, Bill passed for, 366.

Lawrence, Sir Henry, in Indian Mutiny, 188; at Lucknow, 192, 199, 200, 217; saves the Punjab, 197; at Chinhut, death, 218.

Lawrence, Sir John, in Indian Mutiny, 196; and Lord Canning, 210; in the North-West, 228; in the Punjab, 276; chairman of London School Board, 540.

Lebœuf, Marshal, 548, 557.

Lee, General, surrenders to Grant, 382.

Le Mans, Battle of, 590.

Life peerages, Attempt to create, 513.

Limited Liability companies, 411.

Lincoln, Abraham, 320, 362; death, 382.

Loans to Turkey and Sardinia, 97.

Locke-King, Mr., 3, 287.

Loire, Armies of the, 585, 587, 590.

London, Loss of the, 412.

Louis Napoleon, President of French Republic, coup d'état, 6; street fighting, plébiscite, 8. (See Napoleon III.)

Louise, Princess, marriage, 601.

Lowe, Mr., and educational reports, 346; philippic against democracy, 365; on Gladstone's Reform Bill, 392, 393; on Disraeli's Reform Bill, 439, 440; budgets, 507, 545, 546, 599; on the Irish Land Bill, 525-527; Education Bill, 538; match tax, 599.

Lucan, Lord, at Balaclava, 59, 60, 62.

Lucknow, outbreak of mutiny, 188; Henry Lawrence at, 192, 199, 200, 217; Residency besieged, 218; Havelock's first attempt to relieve, 219-224; defending the Residency, 242-244; sufferings of the garrison, 245; the relieving forces, 246-250; Campbell's force, 251; fighting in the city, 252-254; Residency evacuated, 254; recapture, 265-267.

Luxembourg question, 460-462.

Lyons, Admiral, and Kertch expedition, 100.

Lyons, Captain, Death of, 107.

Lytton, Bulwer, on Chinese war, 171.

Mackonochie ritual case, 475.

MacMahon, Marshal, 556, 559, 563-566.

Magee, Dr., opposes Irish Church Bill, 502.

Magenta, Battle of, 300.

Malakoff, Preparations to attack, 105-107; Todleben's defences, 106; the attack, 108; description of, 124; capture, 125.

Malmesbury, Lord, 514.

Malt tax debates, 363.

Malwa, Campaign in, 259, 260.

Mamelon, Capture of, 103.

Manteuffel, General, 588, 589.

Maori war, 351, 383.

Maritime law, Paris Declaration on, 156.

Maronite Christians, Massacre of, 315, 316.

Marriage of Prince of Wales, 358.

Married Women's Property Act, 543.

Martial law legally defined, 390.

Mary of Cambridge, Princess, marriage, 411.

Match tax, 599.

Maximilian in Mexico, 342, 361, 460.

Maynooth Grant, Regium Donum, 470, 499.

Mazzini and his plots, 344, 345.

Meean Meer, Mutiny quelled at, 231.

Meerut, Outbreak of mutiny at, 189, 190.

Menschikoff, Prince, at Constantinople, 16; General, 58; at Inkermann, 66.

Merewether, Colonel, in Abyssinia, 483.

Metropolitan Parks, Right of meeting in, 452-454.

Metz, Battles at, 561, 562; capitulates, 584.

Mexico, French expedition to, 341; Maximilian emperor, 342, 361; France quits, 431; end of empire, 460.

Miall, Mr., and Disestablishment, 600.

Milan, Victor Emmanuel and Napoleon III. enter, 300.

Militia Bill, The, 10.

Milk trade, Development of, 372.

Mill, John Stuart, elected for Westminster, 370; on Gladstone's Reform Bill, 394.

Ministers' money abolished, 176.

Moldavia and Wallachia united to form Roumania, 158, 159.

Moltke, Field-Marshal, 566.

Montebello, Battle of, 299.

Mouravieff, General, at Kars, 139-143.

Murphy "no popery" riots, 475.

Mutiny, Indian, the Native army, 182-184; greased cartridges, 185; chupatties, 186; outbreaks, 186, 187; General Anson, 187, 196; disbanding regiments, 187, 188, 193, 194, 197, 228-230; Sir Henry Lawrence, outbreak at Lucknow, 188; at Meerut, 189; at Delhi, 190-192; Sir H. Lawrence at Lucknow, 192, 199, 200; he saves the Punjab, 197; loyalty of the Sikhs, 194, 198; Ferozepore, 194; the movable column, 195; aid from native rajahs, 194, 195, 196, 198; Nicholson, 195-198; Sir John Lawrence, 196; mutiny increases, 198; chronological order of mutiny, 199; outbreak in Oude, 200; massacre at Jhansi, 200-202; rebels in Oude, 202; battle on the Hindon, 203, 204; Badlee Serai, 204; siege of Delhi, 205-209; Hodson and Guide Corps, 205; outbreak at Jallandhar, 206; plan for taking Delhi, 207; Subzee Mundi, 209; Canning Governor-general, Havelock and Outram, 210; Neill at Benares and Allahabad, outbreak at Cawnpore, 211; Nana Sahib, 212, 213; sufferings of the garrison, 214-216; affairs in Central India, 216; Sir H. Lawrence at Lucknow, 217; death, 218; Residency besieged, Havelock fighting his way to Lucknow, 218-224; massacre at Cawnpore, 222, 223; battle of Bithoor, 224; loyalty of Jung Bahadoor, 224; outbreak at Dinapore and other places, 225, 226; operations before Delhi, 226, 227; Sir J. Lawrence in the North-West, 228; battle at Jhelum, 228; Nicholson at Amritsir, 230; wholesale executions, 231; Nicholson at Delhi, 232; capture of Delhi, 233-239; the king captured, the princes executed, 239; Greathed's column, 240-242; fight at Agra, 241; defending the Residency at Lucknow, 242-245; the relieving forces, 246-250; Lucknow relieved, 250; force for second relief, 251-254; Lucknow relieved, death of Havelock, 254; Windham at Cawnpore, 255; Sir Colin Campbell captures Cawnpore, 256, 257; Seaton's campaign in the Doab, 257-259; state of Central India, 259; annexation of Dhar, 260; campaign in Malwa, 259, 260; battle at Shumshabad, 262; plans for capture of Lucknow, 262, 263; the attack and capture, 265-267; Canning's proclamation, 267; conquest of Rohilcund, 268; battle of Bareilly, 268; Rose's campaign in Central India, 270; capture of Rutghur, etc., 270, 271; Rajah of Shahghur's territory annexed, 271; defeat of Tantia Topee, 273; storming of Jhansi, battles of Koonch and Calpee, 274; Tantia Topee, 275; caste abolished in the army, 276; loyal rajahs rewarded, Oude subjugated, 278; East India Company's rule abolished, 278; Queen's proclamation, 279; submission of rebels, 282; end of mutiny, 284.

Nana Sahib, 212, 213, 218; massacre at Cawnpore, 222; disappears, 282.

Napier, Sir Charles, in the Baltic, 72.

Napier, Sir Robert, in Central India, 276; in Abyssinia, 483, 484.

Naples, Affairs of, debate, 167.

Napoleon III., Emperor of the French, the Eastern Question, 12; letter to the Czar, 31; at Windsor, 90, 163, 164; his plan of Crimean campaign, 90; congress at Paris, 151-157; his views on the peace, 153; recognised by the Powers, marriage, 163; entertains the Queen, etc., 164-166; Orsini plot, 179; Italian Question, 296, 279; proposes congress on Italian affairs, 303; obtains Nice and Savoy, 304; Mexican expedition, 341; quits Mexico, Luxembourg Question, 460-462; opens Paris Exhibition, 460; Hohenzollern candidature, 549; plebicite, 550, 551; prisoner at Wilhelmshöhe, 566, 603; in England, 603. (See Louis Napoleon, France, Franco-German War.)

National Assembly elected, 592.

Naval officers, retirement scheme, 544, 545.

Naval operations, Crimean war, 131.

Negro insurrection in Jamaica, 384-391.

Neill, Colonel, 210, 211.

Nesselrode, Count, 15, 19; despatch to Clarendon, 20, 27; peace proposals, 150.

Newcastle, Duke of, 76, 78.

Newdegate, Mr., and Pope's encyclical, 379.

New Zealand native war, 351; Maoris and colonists, 383.

Nice and Savoy ceded to France, 304.

Nicholson, Col., 195-198, 230, 232; death, 266.

Nightingale, Miss, in the Crimea, 83.

Ninety-Third, The, at Balaclava, 59.

Nolan, Captain, Death of, 62.

Nonconformists and Education Bill, 538, 603.

Norman, Mr. Justice, assassinated, 606.

Nujuffghur, Battle at, 232.

Oaths and Offices Bill, 452.

Obituary, 339, 417, 547, 608.

Odessa, Bombardment of, 37, 38.

Olenitza, Turkish victory at, 28.

Ollivier, M., 549, 560.

Olmütz, Conference of emperors at, 26.

Omar Pasha commands Turkish forces, 20; begins the war, 27; at Eupatoria, 85.

Onao, Battle of, 223.

Oneida, Sinking of the, 546.

Orleans evacuated, 587.

Orsini's plot against Napoleon III., 179.

O'Sullivan Disability Bill, 512.

Oude, mutiny, 199, 202; annexed, 267, 278.

Outram, General, 210; advance on Lucknow, 246, 247; and Havelock, 246; at Alumbagh, 247; Lucknow, 248-250, 264.

Overend, Gurney, and Co. fail, 409, 410.

Pacific, Allied fleets in the, 134.

Paladines. (See Aurelles.)

Palikao, Count, 560, 567.

Palmerston, Lord, 2; his indiscretions, 8, 9; Queen's memorandum to, 9; forms a Ministry, 79; on the peace proposals, 152; on Italian affairs, 168; opposes Suez Canal, 169; on Chinese war, 172; his Government defeated, 173; success at the polls, 175; on Disraeli's Reform Bill, 292; Prime Minister, 295; Schleswig-Holstein dispute, 360; death, 376.

Papal aggression, 1-3; States occupied, 308; infallibility decreed, 574-577.

Paper duty abolished, 311, 312, 324.

Paris, Defences of, 580; siege begins, 581; bombardment, 590; fall of, 591.

Parkes, Consul, and Arrow dispute, 170.

Parks, Right of meeting in, 452, 454.

Parliamentary Reform. (See Reform.)

Paxton, Mr., and Great Exhibition, 4.

Peel, Sir William, Death of, 268.

Peelites and Crimean war, 96, 97.

Pegu, Annexation of, 160.

Pekin, French troops enter, 318.

Pélissier in the Crimea, 90; character, 98.

Péronne, Capture of, 588.

Persian war, 182.

Peshawur, Mutiny quelled at, 231.

Peto, Betts, and Co., Failure of, 410.

Phayre, Colonel, Abyssinian war, 488.

Phœnix Park, Riot in, 603, 604.

Pius IX., establishes Roman Catholic sees in Britain, 2; summons General Council, 571; refuses Victor Emmanuel's terms, 578. (See Papal Aggression.)

Plébiscites, Napoleon's two, 550, 551.

Plowden, Consul, 476; death, 478.

Plumridge, Admiral, in the Baltic, 72.

Poland, Revolution in, 339; debate on, 378.

Pollock, Sir Frederick, death, 547.

Pope's encyclical, The, 379.

Portsmouth, French fleet at, 380.

Prague, Treaty of, 429, 430.

Preston strike, 161, 162.

Prim, Marshal, 492, 552; assassinated, 578.

Princes of Delhi executed, 239.

Princess Royal, betrothal, 175; dowry, 176.

Probate, New Court of, 176.

Property Qualification Bill, 287.

Prussia summoned to Paris Congress, 154; Schleswig-Holstein dispute, 353-361; and Austria, 418; alliance with Italy, 419, 420; preparing for war, 420; Congress proposed, 423; war declared, 424; the campaign, 425-428; peace, 429; secret treaties, 431. (See Franco-German War.)

Prussia, King of, and Hohenzollern candidature, 549; interview with Napoleon, 566; becomes German Emperor, 594.

Punjab, Suppressing mutiny in, 196, 206.

Purchase, Army, Bill to abolish, 595, 596; abolished by Royal warrant, 598.

Puttiala, Battle at, 258.

Raglan, Lord, in the Crimean war, 34; Alma, 46; Inkermann, 68, 7.

Rajahs, Indian, loyalty during mutiny, 194-196, 198, 224; rewards, 278.

Rassam, Mr., in Abyssinia, 480, 482.

Ratghur, Capture of, 270, 271.

Rationalists in the Church, 346, 348, 349.

Redan, The, 106, 107; bombardment, 106; attack on, 110, 126; description of, 124.

Redistribution Bill, 396, 446, 447.

Reform, Parliamentary, Mr. Disraeli's motion, 290; debate, 291-294; Gladstone on, 346; Baines' abortive bill, 365; Gladstone's bill, 391-399; Redistribution of Seats Bill, 396; Scottish and Irish bills, 397; in committee, 398, 399; Lord Derby forms a cabinet, 400; Hyde Park riots, 402-404; popular meetings, 408; Disraeli's reform resolutions, 433; Lowe's criticism, 435; Ten Minutes Bill, 435; the bill introduced, 437; debate, 438-441; in committee, 442-447; Redistribution Bill, 446; passes the Commons, in the Lords, 448; Scottish Reform Bill, 464; Irish Reform Bill, 467.

Regent's Park, Ice catastrophe in, 459.

Registration of Voters Act, 472.

Regnier plot, The, 583.

Religious difficulty. (See Education.)

Religious Tests abolition, 367, 452, 510-512.

Residency at Lucknow, defence, 242-254.

Retirement scheme for navy, 544, 545.

Revised code (Education), 328.

Richards, Mr., and Education Bill, 539.

Richmond, Duke of, and Irish Land Bill, 527.

Rifle volunteers formed, 325.

Rinderpest, 371; Royal Commission on, 372.

Roebuck, Crimean inquiry, 78, 98; on Princess Royal's dowry, 176.

Rohilcund, Conquest of, 268, 269.

Roman Catholic Oaths Bill, 367.

Rome annexed to kingdom of Italy, 578.

Rose, Sir Hugh, in Central India, 270-276.

Rossa, O'Donovan, 514.

Roumania, Formation of, 158, 159.

Russell, Lord John, 2-4; fall of his administration, 8; resigns on Militia Bill, 10; Colonial secretary, 12, 92; at Vienna conference, 92; on Italian affairs, 167, 305, 307; on Disraeli's Reform Bill, 291; Foreign Secretary, 295; on peace of Villafranca, 302; his Reform Bill, 312-314; on Polish revolution, 339, 340; Schleswig-Holstein, 356-360; resigns on Reform Bill, 400; Life Peerages Bill, 514.

Russell, Mr. W. H., Times correspondent in Crimea, 77.

Russia and the Eastern Question, 12; the Czar's intentions, 16; ultimatum to Turkey, 18; position of, in Asia, 135, 137; reasons for desiring peace, 147; in Central Asia, 492; a check on Austria, 570; repudiates Black Sea Treaty, 607, 608. (See Crimean war.)

Russian atrocities, 132.

Saarbrück, Battle at, 558.

Salisbury, Lord, opposes Irish Church Bill, 504; on abolition of Purchase, 598.

Samarcand captured by Russia, 492.

Sardinian troops for Crimea, 84, 90.

Saugor, Relief of, 271.

Sawgrinders' union, outrages, 458.

Scarlett, General, at Balaclava, 60.

Schleswig-Holstein, 353-361, 418, 419.

School Boards, 534, 603.

Scottish Reform Bill, 397, 464-466.

Scutari, State of hospitals at, 83.

Sealkote, Outbreak of mutiny at, 230.

Seaton's campaign in the Doab, 257-259.

Sebastopol, 51, 53, 55; fall of, 127.

Seetapore, Outbreak of mutiny at, 200.

Sedan, Battle of, 564-566.

Serpents, Isle of, Russia's claim to, 159.

Serrano, Marshal, Spanish president 492.

Seymour, Sir Hamilton, 16, 18, 19.

Shahjehanpore, Outbreak of mutiny at, 200.

Shakespeare centenary celebration, 347, 348.

Shaw-Lefevre becomes Viscount Eversley, 174.

Shipping disaster in China sea, 546.

Short service in the army, 545.

Sicily, in, 305-309.

Sick and wounded, Aid for, 562, 563.

Sikhs, Loyalty of, during mutiny, 194, 198.

Simpson, General, in Crimea, 113, 131.

Sinope, Destruction of Turkish ships at, 28.

Solferino, Battle of, 300.

Spain, Revolution in, 492, 516; search for a king, 517; a Hohenzollern Prince, 551; Isabella abdicates, Duke of Aosta accepts the crown, Prim assassinated, 578.

Speke, Captain, Death of, 342.

Spicheren, Battle of, 560.

Stanley, Lord, 394, 396, 471.

Stansfeld and Mazzini, 344, 345.

St. Arnaud, Marshal, death, character, 52.

Star of India, Order of the, 327.

Staveley, Sir Charles, Abyssinian war, 485.

Steinmetz, German General, 561, 562.

Storm in Black Sea, Terrible, 74.

Strasburg, Siege of, 560; fall, 582.

Stratford de Redcliffe, 14, 16, 18, 20, 27.

Strikes, Preston, 161, 162; tailors', etc., 459.

Subzee Mundi, Capture of, 209.

Succession duty, The, 12.

Suez Canal, Palmerston opposes, 169.

Sultan of Turkey visits England, 460.

Summer palace at Pekin destroyed, 318.

Sumner, Archbishop, death, 475.

Sumter, Fort, Capture of, 321.

Sveaborg, fortress, 72; bombarded, 133, 134.

Syria, Massacres in, 315, 316.

Taganrog, Destruction of stores at, 202.

Tailors, Strike of, 459.

Tait, Archbishop, Irish Church Bill, 505.

Taku forts captured, 317.

Tantia Topee, at Jhansi, 272; defeated, 273; captured, 282-284.

Taxation, Remissions of, 507, 503.

Tchernaya, 99, 115, 116; battle of, 116-118.

Tea, Reduction of duty on, 338.

Tea Room Cabal, 442.

Telegraph Cable, Atlantic, 408.

Telegraphs purchased by the State, 471.

Ten Minutes Bill, The, 434.

Thames Embankment, 600.

Thanksgiving, The National, 602.

Theodore, King of Abyssinia, 463, 477-483, 486-491; death, 491.

Thiers, M., opposes Franco-German war, 554; his plan of government, 568; mission to Continental Powers, 582; chief of Executive, 592.

Todleben defends Sebastopol, 51, 54.

Tombs, Major, wins Victoria Cross, 227.

Toul, Surrender of, 585.

Trades Union (saw-grinders) outrages, 458.

Treaty of Paris, Stipulations of, 154-156.

Trent, Affair of the, 323-324.

Trevelyan, Mr., army reform agitation, 595.

Trochu, General, 556, 560, 567, 568, 584.

Turkey and Eastern Question, 12-19; rejects Vienna note, 26; campaign in Asia Minor, 136; peculation of the Pashas, 138; Sultan's firman on the peace, 153. (See Crimean War.)

Ulster glebes, 497.

Unification of Italy, 577; of Germany, 591.

Union Chargeability Bill, 366.

United States of America. (See America.)

University Tests Bill, 367, 510-512, 600.

Vancouver's Island added to British Columbia, 287.

Vatican Council, The, 571-578.

Venetia ceded to Italy, 427.

Vermont, Confederate raid into, 362.

Viceroy of Egypt visits England, 460.

Viceroy of India, Lord Canning first, 279.

Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy, 308, 578.

Victoria Cross, first distribution, 159.

Victoria, Queen, opens Great Exhibition, 6; memorandum to Palmerston, 9; receives patriotic address from Parliament on outbreak of Crimean war, 34; Napoleon III. at Windsor, 90, 163, 164; Victoria Cross instituted, first distribution, 159; opens Crystal Palace, 162; visits the French Emperor at Paris, 164-166; Palmerston's defeat and return to power, 173-175; betrothal of Princess Royal, 175; debate on her dowry, civil lists of recent monarchs, 176; the Indian mutiny, 182-284; proclaimed ruler of India, 279; outbreak of American Civil War, 319; Great Britain's neutrality proclaimed, 322; death of Duchess of Kent, visit to Ireland, the Queen's domestic life, 326; illness and death of the Prince Consort, 328; marriage of Prince of Wales, 338; Ashanti war, 350; Maori war, 357; Schleswig-Holstein question, 356-360; the Reform Bill of 1866, 391-399; Resignation of Earl Russell's Ministry, 400; message to United States President over Atlantic Cable, 407; John Bright defends the Queen, 408; visit of Viceroy of Egypt, and of the Sultan of Turkey, 460; Gladstone's Irish Church Resolutions, 467; dissolves Parliament, 472; disestablishment of the Irish Church, 493-506; civil list, 601.

Vienna conference, 92-96; treaty of, 360.

Villafranca, Peace of, 302.

Villiers, Mr., Union Chargeability Bill, 366.

Vinoy's sorties from Paris, 581.

Vinzaglio, Capture of, 299.

Volturno, Battle of, 308.

Volunteers, Rifle, formed, 325.

Wages movement, The, 160-162.

Wales, Prince of, marriage, 338; birth of a son, 343; illness, 602.

Walewski's despatch on Orsini plot, 179.

Wallachia and Moldavia united to form Roumania, 158, 159.

Walpole, General, in Rohilcund, 268.

Walpole, Home Secretary, Hyde Park riots, 402-404.

War department, Creation of a, 76.

Wars, Some little, 350, 351.

Weissenberg, Battle of, 558.

Wellington, Duke of, death, funeral, 11, 12.

Werder, General, 587, 591.

Westbury, Lord, 346; Edmunds and Wilde scandals, 368, 369; resigns, 370.

Wheeler, General, at Cawnpore, 211.

Whewell, William, Death of, 418.

Wilde scandal, The, 369.

Wilhelmshöhe, Napoleon III. at, 516.

Williams, Lieut.-Colonel, at Kars, 138.

Wilson, Colonel Archdale, 203, 226.

Wilson, Mr. James, Indian finance, 314.

Wimpffen, General, 565, 566.

Windham, General, at Cawnpore, 255.

Winterbotham, Mr., on Education Bill, 538.

Woolwich Dockyard closed, 544.

Wörth, Battle of, 559.

Yelverton, Captain, in the Baltic, 132.

Yeni-Keui, Expedition to, 140.

PRINTED BY CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED, LA BELLE SAUVAGE, LONDON, E.C.

* * * * *

+--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber Notes: | | | | P. 70. 'the Okhutsk" changed to 'the Okhotsk'. | | P. 80. Fixed missing letters in word 'continuously'. | | P. 85. 'while yet dark, General Bosquet', placed comma instead | | of full-stop (period). | | P. 386. 'heat o the struggle', changed 'o' to 'of'. | | P. 574. 'Cardinel' changed to 'Cardinal'. | | INDEX: | | P. 612. Sicily, in, 305-309, added "Sicily". | | P. 612. 'Prussia, King of, added page #594. | | P. 612. Between "Short' and 'Sicily', taken out missing information| | in Index. | | P. 612. Ragland, Lord in the Crimean war, added page '34'. | | Fixed various punctuation. | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us