Pictures from the battle fields

Front matter

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PICTURES

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Preface

The author explaius the plan of the present work of fiction. He commences with a general apology. He abases himself, and eats dirt after a national custom of the BritoDS. He discreetly declares his belief in family governments, and expresses much affectionate and proper feeling for the noble families of Grey and Elliott. The author judiciously calls attention to his prudent veneration for hereditary legislation, and some other equally admirable institutions of this great and enlightened country. With wise obtrusiveness he continues to evince his highly connected admiration for modern Bedfords and Lauderdales. He contemptuously refers to the late Mr. E. Burke. The author ingenuously asks pardon for any reprehensible and vulgar matter which may have unavoidably crept into these reverential pages, and after the most approved fashion of the Crimean witnesses, indignantly casts all blame upon some person or persons unknown. The author expresses the most highly connected and handsome regret for having spoken the truth even as a Shadow. He acknowledges this glaring impropriety with contrition and trouble of mind. He speculates for a moment on the fearful chance which the most cautious writer must always run of incurring the vengeance of "the family," but finally hopes to take refuge in the utter nothingness of book writers, and to vanish in the eternal outer darkness of literary men. The author cursorily mentions Mr. Smith, also Pythagoras, but politely and very properly conclude^ with enthusiastic praise of the aristocracy, and the hereditary wisdom of the British nation.

Anything like a connected and satisfactory history of the war up to the present time is altogether impossible. It would be eyen repulsive : for the language of rejoicing oyer Alma and Inkerman would read like cruel irony to those who have been bereaved by thousands ; to the relatives of those who have been starved to death, or who have rotted amidst horrible impurities uncared viii

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for; who were murdered by medical mistakes or official apathy ; and who were buried alive in anger. A mere melancholy catalogue of our disasters might, indeed, be written, but it would be only harshly humbling to our national pride, and ungenerous towards the deserving.

I have rather striven, therefore, to treat only the elements of the war, so to say, and collect a few stray pages of history which may convey to the reader a clearer and more vivid idea of the state of our affairs in the East than the dry details of battles and sieges, as bloody as useless, or the terrible story of a campaign which can only sully our annals and sadden our hearts.

If this object should not appear to the cursory reader to have been always kept steadily in view, as in the case of the chapters written at Bucarest, I venture to hope that others who may accord me more attention will appreciate the strong and peculiar local colouring which I have endeavoured to throw into them, and give me credit for having at least tried to convey matter which seemed to me important, and to shed light on much that was obscure in the national character and manners of our allies, after a fashion as little wearisome as possible.

Such is the plan of the present volume ; and to those who may be disposed to carp at it, let me plead in extenuation of its many faults and deficiencies, how shameful to us all is the tale of the war, and how hard and painful a task it is to tell it.

So let me receive that indulgence which any of us are

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ix entitled to claim who have endeavoured to perform a most unwelcome duty, and whose best efforts have not been crowned with success.

It appears, indeed, tolerably clear now, alike to the most opiniated official and to the most orthodox believer in him, that we know nothing as it ought to be known, either about the causes which led to this most unhappy w r ar ; why we are engaged in it ; or how we are conducting the struggle. It is only charitable to assume this, for any other supposition would involve too hideous an imputation against all parties who have been hitherto concerned in it, holding authority.

Our right hand hath not known the doings of our left. Secrecy, mystery, and consequent error have paralysed our councils, and disgraced the ancient honour of our arms on sea and land. We appear to have forgotten that nothing great was ever done by a petty system of trumpery and trick, and we are paying the penalty thereof.

Yet we have not gone astray for want of warning. For years past the whole country has been crying out against the criminal absurdity of a system which, on one pretence or another, has contrived to get the whole of our Foreign Policy into such a hopeless muddle by confiding it to the puzzled wits of a few miserable old men, who have nothing but the ludicrous claim of their peerages to recommend them ; and who, because their vagaries were too gross to bear the light, have decreed that we should all remain in darkness.

In truth, the British people at large has cared little for Foreign Policy. And the doings of our agents

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abroad have usually passed unquestioned because we have seldom witnessed any immediate ill effects from them, however ill-judged or reprehensible. When we consider, however, that the present war, with all its attendant evils and wretched prospects, is absolutely and entirely the result of our having entrusted the serious interests at stake in our Foreign Policy to improper persons ; when we reflect on the conduct pursued by Austria, Prussia, and the Northern Courts; when we think of the unblushing insult which has been just offered to us even by the petty Court of Hanover; and when we consider how untrustworthy is usually the official information we receive from Foreign countries ; how studied and elaborate appear to be the attempts made to deceive us into irreparable mischief j we shall realise at last the stupendous national injuries which have been inflicted on us by our diplomacy, and let us hope that our diplomatists, warned by the past, may consent to serve us better for the future.

It must be acknowledged that useful reform is difficult, even in so plain and fearful a case as this. Nothing but a firm alliance of public men, and that supported by the hearty aid of the press and the people, can possibly do anything worth doing in this matter.

Hereditary legislation, with the laws of primogeniture and entail, are the real roots of an evil which has weakened all the force of the executive government, and rendered us abroad contemptible, and factious at home. These extraordinary institutions have given to certain gentlemen of particular families a power they have not been able to wield with prudence or success,

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xi simply because no laws can make a race of demigods out of a race of men. The peers themselves have been often a monstrous encumbrance on the land. Their crippling debts have deprived labour of its market, and local improvements of a hope. They have been allowed to possess an influence which has not been conceded to acknowledged intellect, and their sons have been compelled by a silly pride of caste and custom to abstain from useful and honourable avocations, that they might fasten like a tribe of locusts on the employments of the kingdom.

The true sense and feeling of the country have never yet been fairly represented. The peers have notoriously packed the parliament. One of their number, who was certainly no statesman, was made the constant depository of forty of their proxies, because every action of his life had been opposed to reform as long as it was practicable to resist it. An ignorant lord, whose time might be divided between the theatre and the gaming-table, might yet dispose absolutely of eight or ten votes in the House of Commons, to support his narrow views and inveterate prejudices. Suppose an influence so extensive to have been acquired by the founder of a noble family, or any of his successors, no disgust and abhorrence would enable us to withdraw it from the most infamous possessor.

Our system would be well if virtue and wisdom could be transmitted with heraldic honours; it is inconceivably false and dangerous if they cannot. Agricultural hamlets of a few houses, all belonging to

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some great hereditary landholder as completely as his kitchen garden-, have been allowed to return as many members of parliament as the most intelligent constituencies in the kingdom; as those great commercial cities which eclipse in importance and outnumber in population several of the capitals of other countries. The liberal professions have been unrepresented. The great literary thinkers have been unrepresented. Many of the most important classes of the country have been unrepresented ; and the Press — with the solitary exception of the Times — has been too much influenced by political parties always to speak out.

No person sees more clearly, or is more ready to acknowledge the necessity of a House of Peers properly constituted, than the writer of these lines. There have been occasions when the House of Peers has saved us from great national follies ; and it is always a valuable check on the hasty adoption of mere popular measures, forced by external pressure, or the intrigues of a cabal, through the House of Commons. But an hereditary House of Peers is a most notable absurdity. It is hard to perceive one single valid reason for its existence. Many of us may have faith in the great national benefit which is conferred on a country by vast and solid fortunes ; by a number of persons placed in such superiority to circumstances that the whole of their lives may be passed in the study of the great questions of government, and that they may be altogether removed from the vulgar cares of meaner men. In a wealthy country, how-

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ever, there will always be a sufficiently numerous class of such men without our providing for its existence by special and unjust laws ; by laws which do violence to the best dictates of our nature, and set envy, hatred, and division at the hearth of every lord in the land.

But even if we admit the law of entail to be good in certain cases (a question which need not here be argued), there is surely no reason why we should make the heir a legislator. His fortune will always give him sufficient advantages over poorer competitors, should he feel a natural disposition for political life. But it is utterly incomprehensible that a grave, sensible nation like ourselves should set him up at once, nolens volens, with crude mind and immature thoughts, to rule over us. The most promising youth is apt to think more of the stable than the study at twenty-one (the age which we fix for the commencement of a peer's reign) ; and perhaps not one lad in a hundred who takes his seat in the House of Lords at that age possesses any opinions of the duties required of him, and the immense responsibilities of his office, save those acquired from his guardian, or perhaps his grandmother; with some silly prejudices of rank, and a ridiculous idea of his personal importance. No sane man can seriously assert or maintain the contrary. No national respect for ancient tradition, no adulation of rank, however sincere, and it may surely be added, no education, however careful, can fit an unripe boy to take efficient part in the councils of a great nation. If we admit then, as we do most heartily, the immense value of a peerage composed of a class of men possessxiv

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ing a large stake in the country, and therefore entitled to exercise a continued and steady influence over her affairs, who cannot be removed by the downfall of ephemeral governments or the mere fickleness of popular opinion, we maintain that each member of a body so important should be invested with his functions only for life, and after having shown himself capable of duly understanding and performing them; that it should be recruited entirely from the most able and prominent of our public men; that we may cease to blush for our honour of it, and listen to its councils with a more devout and implicit belief in their wisdom. As long as it is composed as it now is, we must often feel disgraced to see an abandoned youth take his place among our elders ; while we deprive earnest and experienced men of that legitimate influence which should be our prudent reward of a life of toil and experience : while we exalt the dull and the worthless, or at least employ mediocrity when we might command excellence.

The hereditary legislators, however, good or bad, have hitherto dictated our laws ; made and unmade our governments; and disposed of every office in the state as seemed good to them. They have been able to create a system of terrorism which has distracted every cabinet with jealousies and disunion, and which has made the wisest and most necessary appointments impossible. It has rendered the most clear-sighted minister powerless to place the right men in the right places, because they have been looked upon absolutely as private fortunes too large to be given away out of the family.

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The question between the aristocracy and the wisdom of the country is still the same as that which Burke pointed out so pungently to the Duke of Bedford. The one party have been swaddled, rocked, and dandled into legislators, though it would be uncivil irony to say they have often had any merit of their own to create respect for them. The other have been obliged to show their passports at every step, because at every step they have been traversed and opposed. Even when they have proved again and again their sole title for being useful to their country, still neither rank nor toleration has been accorded them. The governing Families have sneered at the best established claims, and haughtily torn the helm of affairs from the hand of a Burke to give it to a Bedford or a Lauderdale.

The governing Families have gone farther than this. If any man has been found even among the Bedfords and Lauderdales to rest his claim for public employment or promotion on the fact of his being qualified for it, that man has at once been considered an alien and an outcast from the Family. The Greys and Elliotts (the Bedfords and Lauderdales of our time), have resolutely insisted on complete inefficiency and nothingness as the only title to their favour or family affection, and none have been thought fit priests in the temple of our government, but those who were compelled to fly to it for sanctuary.

Has any young man among them written a book or made a speech, evidencing some signs of ability, he has been at once thrust contemptuously aside, and marked xvi

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with a kind of civil proscription; so that public virtue has been panic-stricken, and no man has dared to serve his country honestly and ably. It has pleased the Bedfords and Lauderdales to brand all capacity as dangerous to the eternity of the Family government; and even those most sternly and righteously indignant against them cannot but acknowledge that they have conducted themselves wisely according to their lights. If efficiency were once made the condition of public employment and promotion, their golden inheritance would indeed pass away. Yet surely, if hope and patience, and toiling long; if the rarest fruits of hard study and thorny experience are to avail nothing for a man who is so unfortunate as to find himself in some subordinate post of the public service when it is too late to choose a more grateful and fair career, official life is a lie and a deception too sad to contemplate, and the Family government have contrived to change those wise and just provisions in human affairs which have hitherto been considered among the immutable laws of God.

It would be well reasoned, however, even for the Family to concede something at such an awful crisis as the present. For it hath already happened, as all may know who care to listen to the burning words echoing daily round them, that many are changing into those earnest and uncompromising reformers who have wrought permanent and extensive changes in the world's affairs. The judgment of heaven has seemed heavy on the Family for their heartless and selfish apathy to the agonised cry of the nation. They have

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xvii been so stubborn in wrong, their blind pride has been so sure a precursor of ultimate and shameful disaster to them, that thoughtful men have almost hoped in their speedy humiliation, that a long-suffering people might be roused at once to a state of sublime anger, and arising like a whirlwind in its wrath, sweep this pitiful crowd of triflers away before they have accomplished our irretrievable ruin.

Ill does the Family judge of the mournful but determined spirit of the times, or they would quail before the strong clear intellects of those good and great men who are now so calmly and resolutely hostile to their corrupt and ignorant misrule. The writing which dismayed Belshazzar at his banquet is on their walls, but they will not read it.

They are the rash Radicals, whose abject rapacity, whose selfish support of the base iniquity by which they are yet allowed to reap an ignoble profit, goads the people at length beyond endurance, so that there arise popular tumults and grievous civil troubles ; while violence snatches scornfully with the strong hand far more than was wickedly denied to temperate remonstrance.

Those only are the true and thoughtful Conservatives, the wise friends of the commonwealth, who are now pleading to the Family so passionately for moderate reforms while it is yet time; and the gathering wrath of the nation may be stilled without their utter confusion.

It is idle for a cunning and interested family clique to strive to brand such men with the dark charge of

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sedition. God forbid, they say in all sincerity of heart, that civil strife should ever be again seen in healthyhearted England. God forbid, that the might and the right of the land should ever stand arrayed in arms, even against foolish and criminal oppression. The determined enemies of the Family may feel an ardent attachment to the throne, a deep respect for much in our constitution that is sound in principle, and most excellent in practice ; but they may have yet to learn that the warmth of their loyalty to the Queen, or their reasoning admiration for the British constitution, can be fairly made a pretext to require their tacit toleration of the eternal jobbery and insolent dictatorship of these modern Bedfords and Lauderdales. The jobbers call themselves, indeed, friends of the constitution; but it will be very hard for them to show how the furtherance of their private interests has become necessary to its safety.

The men who are now advocating reforms of such notable necessity may yield to none in devoted patriotism, and a rooted aversion to violent measures. We may hearken with generous trust to their indignant protestation against the clap-trap charges which the Family have so often dared, in the face of all evidence and common sense, to hurl at them. For there is surely a wide distinction between political fanaticism and a righteous opposition to the dangerous misguidance and incompetency of Greys and Elliotts. A complete esteem for many of the public men of England is perfectly compatible with a stern contempt for those whose official rank is only a mask for folly, and a charter for corruption.

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And so before any among us cavil at the honest outspeaking of such reformers, let us ask ourselves if the charges against the Family are not fairly proved. If they are, would it have been wiser that such startling truths should have been hidden, so that we might have rambled on over flowery falsehoods, till the hidden abyss devoured us, and counsel would have been useless, help impossible ? Surely it is by the rejection of moderate advice that the true Radicals of a country are at last unveiled; and the judicious men who have been trying so long to convince them of the evil of their ways, stand aghast at the terrible end of their wilful imprudence, a

Let us away then for ever with those haughty class follies and prejudices which have so domineered over us, and made us set wisdom and energy at nought for titled nonsense. Let us make at last a civil but determined stand for our rights as a nation, and our rights as individuals. Let all be free to labour in the public service, who can show cause. If our government was carried on openly and fairly, our places would not be so advantageous or highly paid, that we need fear too great a crowd of applicants. When the condition of obtaining every post became absolutely that of special fitness, no man who was not perfectly aware of his aptitude and capacity would venture to enter the list of the aspirants.

The want of able special men has caused most of our late miseries in the East. Our curse has been our ignorance. At the outbreak of the present war we knew next to nothing about the vast empire of the Turks.

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We were curiously ignorant of its strength or its weakness. Asia Minor, except the immediate neighbourhood of Smyrna and the Seven Churches, was as unknown to us as Mongolia ; and Roumelia as completely a terra incognita as Kochan, or the territory of the Oosbegs, beyond the Hindoo Coosh.

We were absolutely unacquainted with the nature of the climate, the produce, and the resources of Turkey. We knew nothing of the state of the roads there, or the perils of the seas. We had no reliable information respecting the social state, or the local custom and government of its extensive provinces. f

Hence the sufferings of our armies at Gallipoli and Varna. Hence the fearful wrecks in the Black Sea, which might have been predicted with positive certainty by any observant inhabitant of the coasts which witnessed the destruction of the Prince, and the loss of the winter clothing of our troops; which might have been foretold to us or averted by any Greek pilot, had we dared to employ him after the results of our culpable and self-willed folly had made him such a determined enemy. Hence the mishaps which have been felt so heavily by our devoted legions before Sebastopol. Had we deigned to use the information, accessible as it was, which we required, we might have been saved from this deep national humiliation and disgrace — from the needless shedding of our best blood — from the wanton sacrifice of our youth and veterans by unforeseen disease, and from the idle waste of such mountains of treasure. It is said that our last two wars only cost

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xxi one thousand millions — but who shall say what may be the price of this one ?

This state of things, however, deplorable as it is, may be easily explained. It was scarcely possible to travel with safety or advantage in Turkey, unless clothed with high official rank, and then the dearly-bought experience of the traveller was left to moulder amid the dusty records of the Foreign Office, after having merely become part of the opposition capital of the minister who resigned office last week, and the Under Secretary who was superannuated yesterday. The few adventurous spirits who, like Sir Lawrence Jones, were rash enough to underrate the difficulties in the way of enterprise in this direction, fell victims to their necessarily imperfect knowledge of the state of these countries, and perished by the felon shot of some Zebeck or Albanian bandit.

Even our consuls, who should have possessed among their archives, and the living stores of their own experience, all the information which we so imperatively required, failed us most notably. They failed us, because they had not been chosen for their attainments and knowledge of Eastern affairs, or from men who had given proofs in other careers of the intellect and observation necessary to fit them for their posts ; but from among the wild sons of noblemen's stewards, or tradesmen, who had mismanaged their affairs, and had thus succeeded in interesting powerful and compassionate patrons in their behalf. Our consular service, and our diplomatic service, in the East and elsewhere, proved alike useless in the day of our need. It was a useless xxii

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pageant, or a deliberate imposition, and the result might have been foreseen. It is melancholy at such a time as this to cast a glimpse at the Foreign Office List, and observe the names of the gentlemen who are occupying the most important of our appointments abroad (especially those who are conducting our negotiations in the war countries) , and choking up, as it were, every road by which a peaceful and honourable end of the Turco- Russian dispute might have been attained. Of the shocking intemperance of Sir Hector Stubble, at Dahomey — of his indecent lecturing the helpless Sultan — his gala-day visits to the hospitals — his costive ill-temper and curious unfitness for his post — enough has been said. In the important neighbouring state of Timbuctoo is our vivacious, elderly acquaintance, Lord Fiddle-de-dee — and that frolicsome nobleman has been allowed chiefly to mismanage the incomprehensible negotiations which are always failing there so deplorably.

When the press ventured to suggest that his lordship was not precisely the proper person to be employed on a business of such moment, the governing Family were up in arms. The press, they said, were not fairly treating a public evil — honestly exposing a great national danger, that we might remedy it in time — but waspishly carping at a private wrong. It was also an enemy to the polite science of music in his lordship's person, and vulgarly illiberal, and unjust generally. (i Whence/' they cried, " this morbid hatred of Fiddle-de-dee ? n but, as said that pleasant parson, Sidney Smith, their question appeared to be stolen from Pil-

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xxiii pay's fables : " A fox/' says Pilpay, " caught by the leg in a trap, near the farm-yard, uttered the most piercing cries of distress : forthwith all the birds of the yard gathered round him, and seemed to delight in his misfortune ; hens chuckled, geese hissed, ducks quacked, and chanticleer, with shrill cock-a-doodles, rent the air. ' Whence/ cried the fox, limping forward, with infinite gravity, ' whence this morbid hatred of the fox ? "What have I done? — whom have I injured? I am overwhelmed with astonishment at these symptoms of aversion ? * ' Oh, you old villain/ the poultry exclaimed, i where are our ducklings ? — where are our goslings ? Did I not see you running away yesterday with my mother in your mouth ? Did you not eat up my relations last week ? You ought to die the worst of deaths, to be pecked into a thousand pieces/" The public opinion about Lord Fiddle-de-dee coincided so completely with that of the farm-yard with respect to the fox, that the governing Family would have given him up at once had they been wise. It was idle to seek excuses for the misdemeanours of his lordship, and mere rashness to defend him, since it can only shorten the term still left them for the enjoyment of their inheritance, if they trample too heavily on human patience.

The press did not quarrel with their ill-chosen representative on account of his indiscreet rage for music. It may fairly be assumed that a busy people would have preferred to consign him to complete oblivion. It remained, however, for the apathy of the Family government at last to suffer him to incur anything xxiv

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so grave as reproof and anger ; and to become the creator of the great Timbuctoo difficulty, which is now confusing our national councils. When the Family government so far rallied from its homage of this great diplomatist, as to comprehend some of the dreadful mischief he was creating, we were compelled, even in this time of our trouble, to send away one of the greatest of our statesmen to the rescue. But the evil had already grown too gigantic to be hastily struck down — so that he was sent in vain.

In the name of our hearths and altars, let us put the axe to this upas-tree at once, and strike at the root of the evil we must all deplore.

Let us away with those disgraceful idols of flunkeyism, the shameful absurdities of hereditary legislation. It is the very key-stone of the rotten edifice, beneath whose cold shadow no good thing can ripen. It is utterly revolting to calm reason and common sense ; it is peculiarly opposed to the existence of that ability among the governing classes which we have the right of self-preservation to require. It is fatal to the permanent safety of our best institutions. Until it is changed, the most ignorant lord who has waxed fat on the spoil of generations of his kindred and their creditors, will always find means of coercing the government, and making its offices a mere appanage for his relations and minions. He will never have more inducement than he now has to acquire the proper qualifications for office, if he is always unaccountably to be allowed to seize on it without ; to neglect its burthen and to reap