| <Saturday Review 17 January 1868: Hayward>
| <Kinglake’s Invasion of the Crimea>
| Long expected and desired, Mr. Kinglake’s history comes at 
| last. And it comes entirely worthy of the genius of its author. 
| It will be read with admiration and delight by all but those 
| who will find in it the judgment of history ~~ of a history that 
| will not die ~~ upon their own misdeeds. A great and 
| immortal addition has been made to the historical literature 
| of England.
| Nearly nine years have now passed since the events which 
| this great work records, so that it has fulfilled the edict of that 
| great master of polished composition who prescribed that a 
| book should be kept in the hands of the writer for nine years. 
| In that time, Mr. Kingslake, besides elaborating his work to a 
| pitch of exquisite finish which equals <hi> Eothen, </hi> has 
| been able thoroughly to mature his judgments, and to drink 
| in the truth, not only from documentary sources, but from 
| constant intercourse with the actors in the events which he 
| describes. The lapse of time has also given him, to some 
| extent, the advantage of combining with the later times. He 
| has still to undertake, in several cases, the task, in which 
| even the most judicial mind can scarcely succeed, of 
| portraying the characters of living men. But some of the chief 
| actors are removed from life into the calm court of history. 
| Lord Aberdeen and Lord Lyons have passed away, as well 
| as the Emperor Nicholas, Lord Raglan, and St. Arnaud. The 
| difference in point of clearness and firmness, is plainly 
| visible between the portraits which Mr. Kinglake draw of his 
| living characters and those which he draws of the dead. It is 
| impossible that even the calmest and most scientific 
| anatomist should not resemble in dissecting a living subject, 
| which winces and palpitates under his hand.
| The materials at the writer’s disposal have been of the most 
| complete and authentic kind. The whole of Lord Raglan’s 
| papers were placed in Mr. Kinglake’s hands by Lady Raglan, 
| who added to that mark of her confidence a proof of her 
| strong good sense and generosity in resisting all solicitations 
| to disturb the deliberate labours of the historian by any 
| expression of impatience, though often urged to do so by 
| those who were anxious for the dispersion of what they 
| believed to be falsehoods affecting her husband’s fame. The 
| Raglan papers include not only military documents and 
| correspondence, but correspondence with the sovereigns, 
| ambassadors, and ministers of the different nations, and 
| private correspondence with friends: ~~ <q> </q>
| Besides the papers, directly it was known that Mr. Kingslake 
| was writing his history, knowledge almost embarrassing in its 
| abundance was poured upon him from all quarters. In 
| collecting it, he mad a remarkable observation: ~~ <q> </q>
| Were the French equally ready and open in imparting 
| information? Mr. Kinglake <q> </q> An officer of eminence 
| was even sent over here to impart ample statements 
| respecting some of the operations of the French army. But 
| the authorities of the French War Office were not so 
| communicative; they declined to submit their papers to 
| inspection. The obscurity caused by this concealment, 
| however, has, in Mr. Kinglake’s opinion, been dispersed by 
| the information which has been imparted to him, with wise 
| and honourable freedom, from Russian sources. Among the 
| most valuable of his materials for the account of the battle of 
| the Alma, he reckons the narratives of the three generals of 
| division who there held command under Mentachikoff. The 
| character of the Russian army rises, as might have bee 
| expected, by the frank publication of the truth.
| The two volumes now published carry us down to the end of 
| the battle of the Alma. The first of the two is occupied with an 
| account of the transactions which brought on the war, of 
| which Mr. Kinglake gives a penetrating analysis, in chapters 
| which are pregnant with practical lessons for statesmen, as 
| well as with instruction and interest to the student of history.
| The causes of the war, as set forth by Mr. Kinglake, were ~~ 
| (1.) the personal character of the Emperor Nicholas, his 
| absolute command over the great standing armies of Russia, 
| and the spirit of crusading fanaticism which he shared with 
| the Russian nation. (2.) The personal character of the 
| Emperor of Austria, whose youth and gratitude rendered him 
| subservient to Nicholas, while the great shock caused by the 
| events of 1848 had to a great extent broken the controlling 
| power of tradition and custom over Austrian policy, and 
| rendered the personal influence of the Emperor more 
| dominant for the moment than in that government ~~ 
| nominally a despotism, but really an aristocratic bureaucracy 
| ~~ it has commonly been. (3.) The personal character of the 
| King of Prussia, who, at the critical moment, imparted 
| something of his own weak and wavering temper to the 
| policy of his nation. (4.) The personal exigencies of the 
| Emperor of the French and the accomplices of his 
| usurpation, who were under the necessity of indemnifying 
| the French people for the suppression of its liberties at home 
| by some signal achievement abroad ~~ of obtaining a moral 
| sanction, such as that of the Queen of England, for their 
| questionable acts and tainted characters ~~ and of placing 
| some events of absorbing interest as a screen between 
| themselves and the memory of the civil blood which they had 
| shed. (5.) Certain weaknesses in the English Cabinet, and 
| especially the imprudent openness with which its chief, Lord 
| Aberdeen, declared his invincible repugnance to war, 
| thereby confirming the Emperor of Russia in the false belief 
| that a war with England was impossible. (6.) The 
| extravagances of the Peace party and its leaders, which 
| tended to mislead the Emperor in the same direction. (7.) 
| The desire for war, among the people of this country, which 
| lurked beneath general professions of a love of peace, and 
| which had been intensified by a natural reaction from the 
| extreme doctrines of the Peace party. The instruments at 
| once, and the incentives of war, stood ready in the vast 
| standing armies with which Europe was covered, and which 
| were wielded for the most part by arbitrary power.
| These several causes, however, contributed to the result in 
| very different degrees. On the selfish fears and intrigues of 
| the Emperor of the French rests, according to Mr. Kinglake, 
| the main blame. Austria and Prussia, though they, and still 
| more their representatives, were guilty of some errors and 
| derelictions, were at bottom and in the main ready to stand 
| by the cause of international right, and to do their duty in 
| repressing the encroachments of the Czar. Austria especially, 
| in Mr. Kinglake’s judgment, was perfectly prepared and 
| determined to do the duty which peculiarly fell to her by 
| ejecting the intruder from Wallachia and Moldavaia, when he 
| had seized them as a material guarantee. There was, in 
| short, no real backwardness on the part of any one of the 
| four great Powers; and no reason why the four should not 
| have acted together in enforcing on the Czar an observance 
| of national rights, which, when acting together, they would 
| unquestionably have been able to enforce without resorting 
| to the extremity of war. This being the case, the secession of 
| England from the councils of the four Powers, her separate 
| alliance with France, and the hostile action which she took in 
| conjunction with the French Emperor, were mistakes 
| committed by our Government; and the war, whether justly 
| provoked by the conduct of the Russian Emperor or not, was, 
| on our part, an unnecessary war. And this is a conclusion 
| from which, however unwelcome it may be to the English 
| statesmen on whom the responsibility rests, a candid and 
| attentive reader of Mr. Kinglake’s narrative will find it difficult 
| to escape.
| Of the Emperor of Russia, the immediate author, though not 
| the deep contriver, of these events, Mr. Kinglake gives a 
| character which is too long to quote, but which shows, as the 
| other characters in these volumes show, discriminating 
| insight and an almost Tacitean power. he admits that the 
| Emperor had, on the whole, in the course of his long 
| administration, fairly won even from his enemies the name of 
| a man of honour, that he had the love of truth, and that he 
| endeavoured to conform to the standard which he had set 
| before himself of the English “Gentleman.” His ideal of 
| human grandeur was the character of the Duke of Wellington, 
| and, as Mr. Kinglake justly says, no man could have made 
| that choice without having truth in him. But there was also 
| another element in his moral composition: ~~ <q> </q> 
| In tracing the different phases of the Czar’s conduct, and the 
| changes of his temper through these intricate and almost 
| inscrutable transactions, Mr. Kinglake by no means spares 
| the condemnation which is due; and upon the mission and 
| proceedings of his emissary, Mentachikoff, the sentence falls 
| with equal severity and justice. But the impression left on our 
| minds upon the whole is, that had Nicholas been managed 
| throughout at once with temperance and firmness, and with 
| a sincere determination on all hands to combine, if possible, 
| the assertion of international right with the maintenance of 
| peace, there was nothing in his formed designs which would 
| inevitably have led to war.
| To the overbearing temper and impatience of rightful control 
| produced in the Czar by the possession of despotic power, 
| and his religious excitement as the Caliph of the Eastern 
| Church, was added on this occasion, as a motive fatally 
| impelling him towards war, the intense personal rivalry which 
| had long existed between him and the English ambassador 
| at Constantinople, Sir Stratford Canning. Of this memorable 
| personage, Mr. Kinglake gives a portrait which, on the whole, 
| will be very gratifying to its subject: ~~ <q> </q>
| Subsequently, in reference to the disaster at Sinope, Mr. 
| Kinglake finds it necessary to admit that <q> </q>.
| And that ~~ <q> </q>.
| It appears that he had full notice from the Turkish 
| commander at Sinope, and from other sources, that the 
| Russian squadron was hovering over that place, and that an 
| attack was imminent. He was authorized by his Government 
| to bring up the English and French fleets, in case the 
| Russian fleet should come out of Sebastopol; yet he did 
| nothing until actual intelligence of the disaster arrived. His 
| own apology for the omission seems quite inadequate: ~~ 
| <q> </q>
| Mr. Kinglake with justice remarks that, if there were reasons 
| against sending the squadrons to sea at that time, some 
| humbler means of obtaining information ought to have been 
| resorted to; and, with equal justice, asks why nothing was 
| done upon the alarming despatch which Lord Stratford 
| received by express from Samsoom four days before the 
| catastrophe, or upon the still more alarming appeal which 
| came from the Turkish commander at Sinope. The state of 
| the weather, if it did not prevent the Russian fleet from 
| hovering about in the Black Sea, can hardly have been such 
| as to prevent the English fleet from entering the same waters. 
| It is difficult to avoid the suspicion that we have scarcely got 
| to the bottom of this part of the business. And yet there is no 
| part of it to the bottom of which it is more necessary to get, if 
| we are thoroughly to understand the causes of the disasters 
| which followed; for, as Lord Stratford must well have known, 
| the destruction of the Turkish squadron at Sinope was war. 
| From that moment all hope of accommodation was gone. 
| The intricate knot of the negotiations was cut by that decisive 
| blow. The spirit of this country was wound up to a pitch of 
| fury which no Government could withstand, and from that 
| moment Lord Palmerston was master of the English Cabinet, 
| and could and would have instantly turned out his colleagues 
| if they had attempted to cling to peace.
| <reg orig= “No one”> No-one </reg> can dispute Lord 
| Stratford’s extraordinary abilities as a diplomatist. They are 
| placed by the present narrative in a still clearer light than 
| before. But those who concur with Mr. Kinglake in thinking 
| that the war might have been avoided, will infallibly ask, 
| whenever they discuss these events, whether the personal 
| rivalry notoriously existing between Lord Stratford and the 
| Emperor Nicholas ~~ and which, in fact, amounted, on one 
| part at least, to a personal hostility of the most rancorous 
| kind ~~ ought not to have been taken into consideration by 
| our Government when they were sending an ambassador to 
| Constantinople to control Turkish fanaticism and keep the 
| peace of Europe? <q> </q> Lord Stratford may, as Mr. 
| Kinglake suggests, have been unconscious of the extent of 
| his power over the mind of Nicholas; but the Ministry cannot 
| have been unconscious of the general state of the case. 
| Granting that the antipathy was absurd, at all events in its 
| intensity, still, under the circumstances, it formed a practical 
| danger of the gravest kind, such as no Minister with his eyes 
| open could fail to see; and in point of fact, it turned out to be 
| the weight in the balance which inclined the agitated and 
| fluctuating mind of the Emperor to the side of war. Lord 
| Stratford would, of course, have been too magnanimous to 
| put his claims to the embassy at Constantinople for a 
| moment in competition with the interests of the country and 
| of the world, when a question involving the lives of hundreds 
| of thousands hung in the scale. The very fact that his claims 
| were so transcendent as to admit of no question rendered it 
| easy for him to retire at that moment, not only without loss of 
| dignity, but with a great accession of real honour. Did any 
| want of courage mingle with the motives which governed 
| Lord Aberdeen and his colleagues in this matter? if so, this is 
| not the least melancholy page in English history.
| We will pass to the conduct of the Emperor of the French, 
| and the rest of the causes of war which occupy this volume 
| in our next notice. But in the meantime justice requires us to 
| complete Mr. Kinglake’s enumeration of those causes by the 
| addition of two, which, although he does not pass them over, 
| he fails, we venture to think, to bring into due prominence. 
| We mention them, without wishing to speak for or against 
| any particular policy, simply as necessary to the integrity of 
| history.
| The first of these causes was, the condition of the Turkish 
| empire. Had Turkey been an independent nation, 
| self-subsisting, and in the enjoyment of national rights, these 
| complications and calamities never could have happened. 
| But Turkey had ceased to be an independent nation, or to be 
| treated as an independent nation by any of the Powers who 
| professed to respect her integrity and to uphold her interests. 
| She had fallen under a mixed protectorate of different foreign 
| Governments, who were always carrying on a contest for 
| their respective share of influence, which was certain at last 
| to plunge the world in war. Lord Stratford, if anybody, was 
| the sovereign, and the Emperor Nicholas was his rival. Mr. 
| Kinglake describes Lord Stratford’s arrival at Constantinople 
| as the angry return of a king whose realm had been suffered 
| top fall into danger. And in another place he says that when 
| Nicholas found that <q> </q>. Candour must admit that if the 
| Turkish Government had practically abdicated its dominion 
| over large classes of its own subjects, the Czar had at least 
| as good a right as the English Ambassador to the 
| protectorate, at all events, of the Greek churches; and that it 
| is not wonderful that he should have tried to assert his right. 
| From a state of things under which an empire in the throes of 
| dissolution was ostensibly the ward and really the prey, of 
| five other Governments, interminable bickering, and at last a 
| general quarrel was sure to result; and due allowance must 
| be made on this score for those who might otherwise be 
| condemned by history as personally responsible for the war.
| The second of the two causes to be added to the list 
| expressly mentioned by Mr. Kinglake is the presence in the 
| English Cabinet of an eminent and powerful statesman, 
| strong in diplomatic experience, and in his command of all 
| the arts and sources of popularity, who was, from the 
| beginning, bent on a separate alliance with the Emperor of 
| the French, and eager, with him as an ally, to deal a blow 
| against Russia. Mr. Aberdeen’s Cabinet would probably, if 
| he had now the opportunity, undo what was then done, Lord 
| Palmerston alone would do it again. It was, in fact, his doing, 
| in conjunction with the Emperor of the French. He it was who, 
| immediately after the elevation of Louis Napoleon to the 
| Empire, hastened, drawn by strong affinities of tendency and 
| sentiment, to make him a personal confederate and ally; and 
| who, for the moment, sacrificed office to that object. He is 
| was who, when these negotiations began, drew England 
| away from co-operation with Austria and Prussia, placed her 
| in separate connexion with France, and made himself the 
| medium through which the pressure of the French Emperor 
| was put upon the Premier and those members of the English 
| Cabinet who were desirous of peace. When the Cabinet 
| hesitated, even after the disaster of Sinope, to cast the fatal 
| die, he resigned; and when, after a secession of ten days, he 
| withdrew his resignation, the fatal die was cast. There were 
| among the opposite party in the Cabinet good and able men, 
| but there was no man strong enough to stand in a storm 
| against those who could wield its fury, even when the price 
| of constancy was the honour of what Lord Aberdeen and 
| those who thought with him would have deemed the greatest 
| service that man can render for his kind. These are the facts 
| of history, let men interpret and judge them as they may.