Lord John Russell - Stuart J. Reid (recommended reading txt) 📗

Throughout the spring diplomacy was still busy, though it became every week more and more apparent that hostilities were inevitable. Lord Stratford achieved, what Lord Clarendon did not hesitate to term, a ‘great diplomatic triumph’ when he won consent from the Porte to fresh terms in the interests of peace, which met with the approval, not only of England and France, but also of Austria and Prussia. The Czar began at length to realise the gravity of the situation when Austria moved in February fifty thousand men to the frontier of the territory which Russia had seized. When the Russian troops, a few months later, evacuated the Principalities, Austria and Prussia, whose alliance had been formed in defence of the interests of Germany, were no longer directly concerned in the quarrel. Thus the war which England and France declared at the end of March against Russia was one which they were left to pursue, with the help of Turkey, alone. Lord John Russell urged that it should be short and sharp, and with characteristic promptitude sketched out, with Lord Panmure’s help, a plan of campaign. He urged that ten thousand men should at once be raised for the Army, five thousand for the Navy, and that the services of fifteen thousand more be added to the Militia. He laid stress on the importance of securing the active aid of Austria, for he thought that her co-operation might make the difference between a long and a short war. He proposed that Sweden should be drawn into the Alliance, with the view of striking a blow at Russia in the North as well as on her southern frontier. He also proposed that English and French troops should be massed at Constantinople, and submitted a plan of operations for the consideration of the Cabinet.

Lord John knew perfectly well that radical changes were imperative in the administration of the Army. The Secretary for War was, oddly enough, Secretary for the Colonies as well, and there was also a Secretary at War, who controlled the finances at the bidding of the Commander-in-Chief. The Ordnance Department was under one management, the Commissariat under another, whilst the Militia fell within the province of a third, in the shape of the Home Office. Lord John Russell had seen enough of the outcome of divided counsels in the Cabinet, and insisted, in emphatic terms, on the necessity of separating the duties of the War and Colonial Departments, and of giving the Minister who held the former post undisputed control over all branches of the executive.

It was perhaps an undesigned coincidence, but none the less unfortunate, that the statesmen in the Aberdeen Government who were directly concerned with the war were former colleagues of Sir Robert Peel. Lord Aberdeen’s repugnance to hostilities with Russia was so notorious that the other Peelites in the Cabinet fell under the suspicion of apathy; and the nation, exasperated at the Czar’s bombastic language and high-handed action, was not in the mood to make fine distinctions. The Duke of Newcastle and his friend, Mr. Sidney Herbert, were regarded, perhaps unjustly, as lukewarm about the approaching campaign; but it was upon the former that the brunt of public censure ultimately fell. The Duke was Secretary for War and the Colonies. It was an odd combination of offices which had existed for more than half a century. The tradition is that it had been brought about in order that the Secretary for the Colonies, who at the beginning of the century had comparatively little to do, but who possessed large patronage, might use that patronage on behalf of deserving military men.