The Crimean War полностью

We both repeated our conviction that it was necessary now, which he could not deny, and I observed that I thought we could not have avoided it, even if there had been mistakes and misfortunes, that the power and encroachments of Russia must be resisted. He could not see this, and thought it was a ‘bugbear’ – that the only Power to be feared was France! – that the 3 Northern Powers ought to keep together, though he could not say on what basis. Of course we were unable to agree with him, and spoke of the state Germany had been placed in by the Empr Nicholas & the impossibility of looking upon the present times as the former ones. Everything has changed. Ld Aberdeen did not like to agree in this, saying that no doubt in a short time this country would have changed its feelings regarding the war, and would be all for Peace.⁴⁹

What she meant by ‘everything has changed’ is not entirely clear. Perhaps she was thinking of the fact that France had joined in Britain’s ultimatum to the Russians and that the first British and French troops had already set sail for Turkey. Or perhaps, like Albert, she thought the time had come to involve the German states in a European war against Russia, whose invasion of the principalities represented a new and present danger to the Continent. But it is also possible that she had in mind the xenophobic press campaign against the Prince Consort – a constant worry in her journal in these months – and had come to realize that a short victorious war would secure public support for the monarchy.

That evening the Queen gave a small family ball to celebrate the birthday of her cousin, the Duke of Cambridge, who was shortly to depart for Constantinople to take up the command of the British 1st Division. Count Vitzthum von Eckstadt, Saxon Minister to London, was invited to the ball:

The Queen took an active part in the dances, including a Scotch reel with the Duke of Hamilton and Lord Elgin, both of whom wore the national dress. As I had given up waltzing, the Queen danced a quadrille with me, and spoke to me with the most amiable unconstraint of the events of the day, telling me she would be compelled the next morning, to her great regret, to declare war against Russia.

The following morning – a day before the French made their own declaration of war on Russia – the Queen’s declaration was read out by Clarendon in Parliament. As the great historian of the Crimean War Alexander Kinglake wrote (and his words could be applied to any war):

The labour of putting into writing the grounds for a momentous course of action is a wholesome discipline for statesmen; and it would be well for mankind if, at a time when the question were really in suspense, the friends of a policy leading towards war were obliged to come out of the mist of oral intercourse and private notes, and to put their view into a firm piece of writing.

If such a document had been recorded by those responsible for the Crimean War, it would have disclosed that their real aim was to reduce the size and power of Russia for the benefit of ‘Europe’ and the Western powers in particular, but this could not be said in the Queen’s message, which spoke instead in the vaguest terms of defending Turkey, without any selfish interests, ‘for the cause of right against injustice’.⁵⁰

As soon as the declaration became public, Church leaders seized upon the war as a righteous struggle and crusade. On Sunday, 2 April pro-war sermons were preached from pulpits up and down the land. Many of them were published in pamphlet form, some even selling tens of thousands of copies, for this was an age when preachers had the status of celebrities in both the Anglican and Nonconformist Church.⁵¹ In Trinity Chapel in Conduit Street, Mayfair, in London, the Reverend Henry Beamish told his congregation that it was a ‘Christian duty’ for England

to interpose her power to maintain the independence of a weak ally against the unjustifiable aggression of an ambitious and perfidious despot, and to punish with the arm of her power an act of selfish and barbarous oppression – an oppression the more hateful and destructive, because it is attempted to be justified on the plea of promoting the cause of religious liberty and the highest interests of Christ’s kingdom.

On Wednesday, 26 April, a fast-day set aside for ‘national humiliation and prayer on the declaration of war’, the Reverend T. D. Harford Battersby preached a sermon in St John’s Church, Keswick, in which he declared that