| <Saturday Review 24 January 1863: Hayward>
| <Kinglake’s Invasion of the Crimea (Second Notice)>
| <q> </q>
| Austria was perfectly ready to perform her special part, as 
| the military Power nearest to the threatened point, in 
| repressing the aggression of the Czar. Prussia, in spite of 
| the weakness of her king’s character, was also ready to do 
| her duty to Europe. There can be no doubt that, in whatever 
| state of Imperial violence or religious exaltation Nicholas 
| may have been, the concert of the Four Powers, if sustained, 
| would have kept him within bounds, and vindicated 
| international right, without plunging the world in war. The 
| question then arises, how it came to pass that this 
| wholesome concert was suddenly dissolved; and that, in 
| place of it, there appeared a separate understanding 
| between two of the Powers, strong enough to wage a bloody 
| and successful war with Russia, but not strong enough to 
| enforce the claims of justice without resort to arms. The 
| answer to this question brings Mr. Kinglake to that which 
| was the deepest among the complicated causes of this war.
| <q> </q> 
| This seems as striking an instance as there could well be of 
| a terrible influence exercised by personal will on the 
| destinies of the world. Yet, as Mr. Kinglake justly remarks, 
| the word which went out of the mouth of the Czar was not 
| purely the expression of a personal will; it represented in 
| great measure the sentiments and aspirations of a nation, 
| embodied in the person of their religious and political chief. A 
| more striking instance of the operation of purely personal will 
| in human affairs, unalloyed by the action of any public 
| motives, and uncontrolled by any reasons of State, is to be 
| found in the source of the war now to be disclosed. To 
| investigate this source we are required to <q> </q>. This 
| knot of middle-aged men consisted of Prince ouis Bonaparte, 
| Morny, Maupas, or De Maupas, Persigny, properly Fialin, 
| and Achille St. Arnaud, formerly Jacques Le Roy. To pile up 
| events between these men and the bloody past, to shelter 
| them from the personal peril to which the public memory of 
| their crimes exposed them, to make the country which they 
| had outraged forget her shame, to gain such sanction as the 
| pure name of the Queen of England could give to acts and 
| characters which no pure heart could regard without 
| abhorrence, was the real object for which the concert of the 
| four Powers was broken up, and the fair prospect of peace 
| which that concert afforded was exchanged for the certainty 
| of a dreadful war.
| <p> “The Guards of the gorgeous Tuileries,” </p> said a 
| French poet, <p> “cannot keep out death.” </p> Neither can 
| they keep out the doom of history, which has passed through 
| them, and seized upon its yet living victims in almost as 
| terrible a form as that in which, by the hands of Tacitus, it 
| has seized upon Tiberius and Nero. We shall not attempt to 
| epitomize the character in which Mr. Kinglake recounts the 
| conspiracy of December, the treacheries through which it 
| was carried out, and the unspeakable atrocities with which it 
| was attended. This chapter will not merely create tragical 
| interest and excite tragical emotions. In France, if it should 
| be allowed to find its way there, it will produce a moral and 
| political effect, and it will wring the heart of England with 
| repentant shame. Over these men and their deeds we cast 
| as a cloak the robe of English honour; and could that robe 
| fail to receive a stain? <q> </q> Moral shelter is never asked 
| but when it is much needed; and rather than give it when it is 
| much needed, a nation whose honour is her strength would 
| do well to sink her best fleet in the sea. As Mr. Kinglake 
| says: ~~ <q> </q>
| The view taken by Mr. Kinglake of the character of Louis 
| Napoleon himself corresponds pretty closely with that which 
| has been frequently suggested in this Journal. We have 
| always questioned the formidable capacity for action and the 
| supernatural astuteness which are commonly ascribed to the 
| French Emperor, and which invest that personage with a 
| kind of Satanic majesty, even in the eyes of those who think 
| him most devoid of the qualities belonging to an angel of 
| light. We have always maintained that, although a restless 
| conspirator, he was essentially not a practical man, but a 
| dreamer, whose brain was teeming with schemes bred 
| during periods of forced inaction and solitary confinement, 
| which flitted after each other in endless succession, often 
| becoming crossed and entangled, while the schemer had not 
| corresponding power of carrying any of them vigorously into 
| execution, and was apt always to be diverted midway by the 
| appearance of difficulties not of a very overwhelming kind. 
| This is substantially the character given of the Emperor by 
| Mr. Kinglake, but wrought out by him in detail, and applied to 
| events with marvellous power. He admits, and we think with 
| perfect justice, that the election of the Prince as President of 
| the Republic, after his two attempts to seize the French 
| Crown, warranted him in concluding that the majority of the 
| nation were willing to use his ambition for the purpose of 
| getting rid of the Republic and restoring Monarchy in France: 
| ~~ <q> </q>
| He had <q> </q>. If his intellect had been underrated it was 
| partly owing to the repulsive nature or the science at which 
| he laboured: ~~ <q> </q>
| The common impression that the Emperor is an extremely 
| reserved man is thus qualified by Mr. Kinglake: ~~ <q> </q>
| The question of the Emperor’s personal courage is touched 
| in the same discriminating manner: ~~ <q> </q>
| These characteristics of Prince Louis Napoleon, including his 
| melodramatic propensities, were illustrated in his attempt at 
| Strasburg in 1836, which Mr. Kinglake pronounces to have 
| been a graver business than is commonly supposed. On that 
| occasion the men of the 46th Regiment were bidden to 
| recognise as their Emperor a person who was presented to 
| them by the conspirators in their barrack-yard; but what they 
| saw was <q> </q>. By and by the colonel of the regiment, 
| having heard what was going on, came up angry and 
| scornful: ~~ <q> </q>
| The same thing happened in the case of the attempt at 
| Boulogne. There again the dreaming Pretender <q> </q>. In 
| the case of the <hi> Coup d’Etat </hi> he behaved ~~ if Mr. 
| Kinglake’s account is correct ~~ much in the same manner, 
| remaining shut up in the Elysee, while more daring men, at 
| whose head was young Fleury, did the work for him; not 
| leading the soldiers himself as he had vowed he would, but, 
| like a peaceful citizen in grievous peril, sending them all his 
| gold, and having a large body of cavalry always ready, in 
| case of miscarriage, to escort him to a place of safety: ~~ 
| <q> </q>
| In a note on this passage in the appendix, Mr. Kinglake tells 
| us that the condition of the French Emperor on the day of 
| Magenta was publicly seen, and he proceeds, with a cruel 
| accuracy of historical criticism, to demolish the statements of 
| the <hi> Moniteur </hi> as to his brave self-exposure at 
| Solferino. If this picture of the Emperor’s bearing and 
| appearance in presence of physical danger finds admission 
| into France and obtains credence there, it will do more to 
| shake the throne than any disclosures of the atrocities 
| perpetrated on <p> “Thursday, the day of blood.” </p> and 
| all the moral thunderbolts of Victor Hugh. <reg orig=“Every one”>
| Everyone </reg> knows that in the eyes of Frenchmen 
| the guilt of blood is not necessarily fatal to greatness. Blood 
| shed in torrents and guilt on a colossal scale have, on the 
| contrary, a great fascination. But to be contemptible is death.
| Mr. Kinglake has too much reason to number among the 
| causes of the war the unguarded vehemence with which 
| Lord Aberdeen avowed his unalterable determination to 
| maintain peace, thereby keeping the Czar in a fatal error: ~~
| <q> </q>
| Not only so, but when Lord Clarendon had spoken some firm 
| words destructive of illusion to the Russian Ambassador, 
| and these words were flying to St. Petersburg, Lord 
| Aberdeen, having heard of them, insisted that they should be 
| cancelled. The revocation is justly designated as fatal. But it 
| should be remembered, on the other hand, that had Lord 
| Aberdeen been acting by himself, although his language 
| would not have corresponded to the aroused spirit of the 
| nation, he would almost certainly have preserved peace 
| without sacrificing the object of the negotiations. He would 
| have soothed the Czar, he would have adhered steadily to 
| the alliance and combined action of the four Powers, and by 
| that course he would, according to Mr. Kinglake’s own 
| judgment, have ultimately extorted the necessary 
| concession without recourse to war. The misfortune was, that 
| Lord Aberdeen was not acting by himself; he was acting with 
| colleagues who were hostile to him, who were not unwilling 
| to overthrow him, whose sympathies and whose policy were 
| opposed to his. Between the tow influences in the Cabinet 
| thwarting and crossing each other, the country drifted into 
| war.
| Lord Aberdeen’s unwise language was not the only source 
| of the Czar’s mistake. The Peace party, by their calamitous 
| exertions, had begotten a rooted belief in the mind of the 
| observant autocrat, that so far as England was concerned he 
| might work his will with impunity in the world: ~~ <q> </q>
| The leaders of the Peace party may lay to heart these words, 
| enforced as they are by memorable and terrible experience. 
| And they may lay to heart other remarks in the same pages, 
| which teach, with a force not to be excelled, how men who 
| begin by abjuring all war, become impotent in arguing 
| against any war in particular. In moral courage, the leaders 
| of the Peace party did not show themselves deficient. It is 
| due tot hem to say that they stood as manfully against the 
| storm of public hatred in England as our soldiers stood 
| against the storm of shot on the hill side at Alma. In this 
| respect they may, perhaps, be entitled to draw a flattering 
| comparison between themselves and politicians who thought 
| much as they did, but proved more pliant. But their courage 
| was annulled by their want of wisdom, and their conduct 
| afforded a signal instance of the manner in which men may 
| run towards that which they most vehemently avoid, through 
| the very vehemence through which they avoid it. 
| <to be continued.>