they have fulfilled their onerous task, despite of fatigue, weather, and every possible inconvenience.' The whole enterprise was, indeed, admirably managed; for the administrators, by engaging mules, muleteers, and Croatian hamals or porters at Constantinople, were enabled to convey their welcome stores to the camp; 'they never had cause to ask for the services of a fatigue-party, or in any way to encroach upon the already overwrought strength of the troops.' It is probable that a sum of £24,000 was never better expended for the comfort of a body of men than by this association. The Sick and Wounded Fund,' founded by the Times, was a worthy companion to the Crimean Army Fund; it was commenced about the same time, ended its operations about the same time, and involved the expenditure of about an equal sum of money: the one fund was to supply extra articles of generous diet to the overworked and underfed officers and troops at the camp; the other was to furnish medical comforts to the hospitals at Scutari and elsewhere. The Central Association in Aid of the Wives and Families of Soldiers ordered on Active Service,' collected between the autumn of 1854 and the spring of 1856 the sum of £120,000; of which sum £80,000 had been administered in pecuniary relief, and a portion of the remainder in bedding, clothing, furniture, medical attendance, and other modes of assistance; of about 70 regiments engaged in the Crimea, the Association assisted on an average about 90 soldiers' wives and 130 soldiers' children per regiment, amounting to 16,000 in all; among the recipients were four widows, each with five sous engaged in the war.' The Patriotic Fund' reached a sum of £1,400,000; and at a time when the cessation of war (March 1856) defined a limit to the number of those who would be made widows or orphans by the effects of the war, the Commissioners raised the rate of allowance, and classified the payments in a clear form.* At that time there were on the books of the Fund 74 officers' widows, and 149 officers' children; 2850 non-commissioned officers' and privates'

Widows.

Weekly Allowance.

In addition for Children living with Mother,

or Dependent upon her.

One Two Child. Childr.

Class. 8. d. s. d. s. d. 5th

6th

6 02 03 0

7th

7 0 2 0 3 0 With an increase of Is. per week for each additional child.

8th 5 01 62 6

And to the widows and orphans of colonels, annually, £66, and for each child, £16; lieutenant-colonels, annually, £53, and for each child, £16; majors, annually, £46, and for each child, £14; captains, annually, £37, and for each child, £12; lieutenants, annually, £30, and for each child, £10; ensigns, annually, £27, and for each child, £10; with corresponding ranks in the Royal Navy. These allowances give to the widows and orphans of officers above the rank of major a sum equal to two-thirds of the ordinary pension, and to the whole of the ordinary compassionate allowance; and to the widows and orphans of officers below that rank, a sum equal to three-fourths of the ordinary pension, and to the whole of the ordinary compassionate allowance."

widows, and 3423 children-presenting a total of 6496 pensioners. The difference between the two Funds, financially considered, was mainly this : the Central Association' made its payments for temporary relief out of capital, and necessarily exhausted its means soon after the termination of the war; whereas the 'Patriotic Fund' made its grants and pensions out of interest, and thereby retained means of giving permanency to its operations.

The dietary operations of the army—a subject of no small importance-underwent great improvement in the interval between the two winters. The English officers readily admitted that M. Soyer, sent out by the government with a commission to this intent, wrought useful reforms in a department wherein the English army is less skilful than the French. Supposing a definite amount of provisions to be at hand, it is an important problem to determine how best to prepare from them nourishing rations, especially for the sick, at times and in places where few facilities are offered. It was in the hospitals at Scutari, during their time of wretchedness and misery, that M. Soyer first began his operations; he built new kitchens, or rearranged those already existing; invented stoves and ovens that would economise fuel; surrounded himself with culinary apparatus; brought his staff of assistants into a good system; and shewed that good food might be provided more cheaply than bad, under efficient arrangements. He wrote out exact instructions for the guidance of those whom he could not personally superintend; and as the Minister of War had sent out orders that the plans of M. Soyer should receive every aid from the various army departments, reforms were gradually introduced without collisions in authority. When, by the month of May 1855, M. Soyer had improved the cookery for invalids at Scutari and Kululi, he departed for Balaklava, to ascertain whether he might render similar service to the strong and healthy at the seat of war. Examining the usual rations issued by the commissariat; considering the kinds, qualities, and quantities of the food; looking round at the simple culinary apparatus available to the soldiers; and appreciating the smallness of the time and skill likely to be at their disposal-he sought to make the best of that which was at hand. He prepared recipes for campcookery, caused them to be printed at headquarters, and then distributed them throughout the regiments. Thus the officers and men became admitted into the mysteries of 'Mutton-soup,' 'Plain Pea-soup,' 'Stewed Salt Beef and Pork à la Omar Pacha,'' French Beef-soup or Camp Pot au Feu,'' Stewed Fresh Meat,' 'Cossacks' Plumpudding,' &c.-the principle of composition, in all cases, being, that no component should be named but such as the soldiers had a fair chance of obtaining practical utility was the first thing aimed at. The opening of the Guards' campkitchen, in the summer, was a grand affair, at

which the commanders of both armies were present; huge iron boilers were each devoted to its peculiar soup or stew, all prepared from the common rations of the troops. Shortly after this, M. Soyer gave a course of instruction to the cooks of the regiments, teaching them how to employ the stoves and ovens which he had contrived, how to economise fuel, how to use every atom of provisions without waste, and how to produce nourishing warm food at a less cost than the halfcooked ill-served rations of the previous winter. Colonel Daniel, of the Coldstream Guards, wrote to head-quarters in expression of his sense of the marked value of these improvements; shewing the singular way in which the prevention of waste led to real cheapness, and adding: 'I consider the arrangements relative to the small consumption of fuel, and the simplicity with which the cooking is conducted will, when fully carried out, tend much to the health, comfort, and wellbeing of the soldiers.' At a later period, when an armistice led to an interchange of hospitalities between the hostile commanders, and when Codrington entertained Lüders, Pelissier, Della Marmora, and a large number of other officers, at a grand banquet, M. Soyer prepared a pièce de resistance, which he designated 'Soyer's Culinary Emblem of Peace, the Macèdine Lüdersienne à la Alexander II. a monster compound prepared in a singular way from all the usual materials for officers' camp-dinners; and served up in the cover of a stove, default of a dish sufficiently large. Such dietetic curiosities, however, were of little account if the novelties had borne relation merely to delicacies obtainable by officers, they would have had little military importance; but the recipes and apparatus were made applicable to the regiments generally, in their daily routine of service, and to the daily rations; and M. Soyer did not relinquish his labours until he had obtained from England large supplies of boilers and culinary vessels constructed on his own plans, nor until he had made his systems of procedure familiarly known throughout the British army in the Crimea. All felt that camp-cookery-in relation to the saving of time, space, and material, and to the maintenance of health and strength among the men-deserved more attention than it had hitherto received in the British army.

In their hours of relaxation, during the later months of the war, the officers and men sought to bring back home-pleasures to remembrance by getting up theatrical performances. The French, at all times more disposed than their Allies to holiday and spectacle, began the system; but the English were not slow to follow. The very excitement attending the construction of a theatre, the painting of scenes, the provision of dresses, and the selection of music, added to the merriment of the attempt; and the commanders were too wise to check a tendency which kept the armies in good-humour. Sometimes the English visited the French performances, sometimes the French those

conducted by the English; the Sardinians and Turks were nothing loath to mingle among the spectators; and the vivandières of the French regiments occasionally graced the performances with their halfmilitary, half-feminine presence. Shakspeare and genteel comedy were hardly practicable; rattling farce and laughable burlesque came more easily within the means of the performers, were less | obnoxious to criticism, and led more directly to the merriment which was the chief object in view. The performers were in most cases officers from the rank of colonel downwards, including the surgeons; but a few of humbler grade were occa sionally intrusted with subordinate parts. In one of the divisions of the army, the sergeants and corporals of the Rifle Brigade gained high renown from a performance wholly by themselves, considered to rival the best histrionic displays of the commissioned officers: it constituted a mate rial part of the amusement to see how Corporal Stainer maintained the part of Ellen Courtly, or Sergeant Hill that of her maid Lucy; and in what manner the dealers' stores of Balaklava had been rendered available to the supply of feminine apparel. On other occasions, the officers would impart mystery to the playbills by spelling their names backwards, and announcing 'surprising athletic performances' by Professors Egatymra, Margiw, and Nrubpeh. Performers were fre quently called before the curtain to receive the meed of general applause; and if no bouquets were thrown at them, it was because there were no bouquets to throw. Some of the officers displayed considerable skill as scene-painters; and the regimental bands supplied excellent music. Although in most cases the spectators were assembled in a pit arranged with democratic equality, there were a few special occasions on which cushioned benches were supplied for the élite six generals, on one auspicious evening, honoured a camp-theatre with their august presence. The Light Brigade, at one performance, made a collection among the audience, and sent £70 to the humbler class of sufferers by the burning of Covent Garden Theatre in London; thus making amusement and kindness go hand in hand. About Christmas, the French gave a 'dress-ball' to the English at their camp-village of Little Kamiesch, on the Woronzow Road; and as the ladies, vivandières and shopkeepers, numbered only eight, the attempts to imitate the etiquette of a ball-room added not a little to the general hilarity. In the daytime, during dry bracing wintry weather, nearly a hundred mounted officers would some times join in a 'paper-hunt'-thus managed: a man, well mounted, started off at a high speed over the plateau, dropping pieces of paper at intervals and keeping as much as possible out of sight among the hollows; after a quarter of an hour's start, the huntsmen would ride off in pursuit of him, guided in their track only by the pieces of paper, the fox-trail;' and the hunt ended when any of the pursuers came up with the man-fox.

Trifling as these amusements, and any details concerning them, may appear, they have a historical value in this respect: they shew that-while in the winter 1854-5, the British troops in the Crimea were called upon to bear an almost unparalleled amount of undeserved sufferings-in the winter 1855-6 they were so free from care and privation, so removed from daily conflict with the enemy, so influenced by the negative or inactive policy of the commanders, that they were fain to appeal for amusement to familiar home-taught sports and pastimes.

Thus ended the second winter spent by the Allied troops in the Crimea-a winter almost wholly without sanguinary contests. And to the seamen it was a season still more barren of stirring incidents; there was no enemy's fleet to capture or conquer; and it did not come within the plans of the Allies to batter down Odessa or other commercial towns. How it arose that no renewal of hostilities occurred in the spring of 1856-notwithstanding vast preparations, especially naval, made by England and France to this intent-the next Chapter will shew.

T now becomes necessary to revert to the diplomatic negotiations, which had never ceased to be carried on during the war -the subtle battles with the pen having been fully as numerous as the deadly contests with the sword. The peculiar nature of the war has rendered desirable such a mode of narrating its history as would permit the two simultaneous streams of operations, political and belligerent, to be treated separately. Thus, irrespective of the warlike series, former Chapters of the volume have discussed, in succession, the political circumstances which led to the war *-the 'secret correspondence,' and the formation of an alliance between the Western Powers and Turkey + -and the course of European diplomacy, either to terminate the struggle or to strengthen the hands of the Allies, from the declaration of war in 1854 to the Vienna Conferences in 1855. Another twelve months of negotiation now await notice. By a curious coincidence, it happens that the events of the war, diplomatically considered, are separable into three intervals, each about a year in duration thus, the month of April, 1853, rendered manifest to all Europe that Prince Menchikoff's mission to Constantinople was of such a nature as would involve Russia and Turkey in war; April, 1854, placed the nations of the world in possession of the declaration of war by England and France against Russia, signed towards the end of March; April, 1855, witnessed the failure of the diplomatists to produce a satisfactory result from the conferences at Vienna; and April, 1856, was opened by the flashing across Europe, through the medium of the electric-wires, of the news that a TREATY OF PEACE had been signed at Paris a few hours before the month began. By what course of negotiation the terms of this Treaty were determined, the present Chapter will narrate.

:

RESULT OF THE VIENNA CONFERENCES.

The failure of the mission intrusted to Lord John Russell, as British representative at the Vienna Chapter I., pp. 1-29. + Chapter III, pp. 56-74. Chapter IX., pp. 345-375.

Conferences in 1855, was marked by several circumstances worthy of note. Diplomacy is, in its nature, of a secret character. The sovereigns of Europe, whether despotic or constitutional, claim and exercise the right of making war or of signing peace: whether the necessary funds, the sinews of war,' are willingly provided by the respective nations, is a question of detail in each particular case; as is likewise the safety of a sovereign or his ministers, in the event of a war being unpopular; but the right is inherent in the very nature of sovereignty. It follows that, in form if not in substance, kings make war rather than nations; and the political correspondence ending in war or in peace, as the case may be, is regal rather than national. England, as an example, has in many instances been left almost wholly in ignorance of diplomatic quarrels until brought to the verge of war, since the ministers of the crown claim the exercise of their own discre tion concerning the time and mode of divulging their political secrets. These characteristics of diplomacy, whether conducive or not to the wellbeing of the nation, were displayed during the late war in the ignorance of the British nation, during a long period, concerning the 'secret correspondence' with Russia; and in similar igno rance of the concluding scenes in the Russell mission to Vienna. It was felt to be necessary in a former section to trace the mode in which the 'secret correspondence' became known to the British public, through the discontent of a Russian diplomatist; and now it is equally necessary to mark the steps which led to the revelations concerning the Russell mission, induced as those revelations were by the discontent of an Austrian diplomatist. In this instance, if in no other, painful consequences, without corresponding benefits, attended the withholding of plain facts from a people anxious only for an honourable policy during a critical period.

When the plenipotentiaries assembled at Vienna in March 1855, Lord John Russell went armed with instructions from the Earl of Clarendon, touching the terms on which England would consent to terminate the war with Russia Referring for details to the Chapter just noted, it

will suffice here to call to memory, that on the 2d of December in the preceding year, England, France, and Austria had agreed concerning the minimum of concessions by Russia likely to form the basis for a satisfactory peace; and that on the 28th of the same month they signed a 'Memorandum' on this subject, embodying those conditions in the Four Points;' namely-the abandonment by Russia of all control over Moldavia, Wallachia, and Servia; the liberation of the mouths of the Danube from Russian interference; the abrogation of all treaties between Russia and Turkey, likely to give the former a preponderance of power in the Black Sea; and a renunciation by Russia of all special protective powers over Christians in the Ottoman states. When the diplomatists met, Lord John Russell was empowered to demand these four conditions, on the part of England; and Clarendon especially drew his attention to the Third Point as the most important of all; seeing that the others would possess little value 'unless effectual precautions were taken to render the Turkish Empire an integral part of the European system, and sufficient restraint be imposed upon the military and naval power heretofore exercised by Russia in the Black Sea, and the overbearing influence which by reason of that power she has acquired over the councils of the Porte.' The Earl of Clarendon considered that the object of the Third Point might best be obtained by a reduction of the Russian naval force in the Black Sea within such limits as might, in co-operation with an equal Turkish force, suffice to protect commerce, without offering temptation to aggressive warfare; but the British plenipotentiary was instructed to weigh any and every other mode that might be proposed for the attainment of the desired end. It will be remembered that, about the middle of March, Lord John Russell, the Earl of Westmoreland, Baron de Bourqueney, Count Buol, Baron Prokesch, Aali Pacha, Aariff Effendi, Prince Gortchakoff, and M. de Titoff, met at Vienna, as the representatives of England, France, Austria, Turkey, and Russia-Prussia taking no part in the conferences; that the First and Second Points were assented to without much difficulty; that on the 26th the Russian diplomatists announced their non-possession of instructions concerning the Third Point; that a delay of three weeks occurred, to enable Gortchakoff and Titoff to communicate with their government; that the Allies refused to consider the Fourth Point, or to give any validity to the First or Second, until the Third had been agreed upon; that England and France began to suspect the sincerity with which the czar had entered upon negotiations; that M. Drouyn de Lhuys was sent to Vienna to strengthen the advocacy of the Western Powers; that on the 17th of April, Russia announced a determination not to suggest any plan for embodying the Third Point; that on the 19th the Allies proposed a plan; that on the 21st Gortchakoff rejected this plan, and proposed

another; that thereupon Lord John Russell ceased to attend any more meetings, on the ground that he was not empowered to discuss any proposal departing widely from the plan marked out by the Earl of Clarendon; and that the remaining plenipotentiaries held one more meeting on the 26th. For the next phase of this history, we must look to the British parliament.

On the 23d of April, Lord Palmerston stated in the House of Commons, that as Prince Gortchakoff had rejected all the modes of settling the Third Point suggested by the Allies, and had proposed another quite inadmissible consistently with the objects of the war, the conferences at Vienna were virtually at an end. On the next day, the Earl of Clarendon made a similar announcement in the House of Lords. On the 30th Lord John Russell resumed his seat in the Commons as Secretary of State for the Colonies, and gave a brief sketch of the proceedings at Vienna; he adverted to the anxiety of Austria that some further mode of satisfactory agreement should be sought, and to the refusal by himself and Drouyn de Lhuys to discuss any such mode, on the ground that their instructions were exhausted. On the 4th of May the Earl of Clarendon spoke at some length in the House of Lords on the subject; he laid stress on the fact that the Allies, as a mode of shewing respect to the honour and dignity of Russia, had invited the czar's plenipotentiaries to take the initiative at Vienna, by proposing such measures as they thought would best carry out the principle of the Third Point; that this did not lead to the desired result; and that the British government saw no prospect of the renewal of negotiations-although Count Buol had announced that Austria would deem it her duty to seek further for terms acceptable to all. On the same day, and again on the 7th, inquiries were made in the House of Commons for the protocols, the official documents which would narrate in detail the proceedings at the Conference. The desire to know all that could be known on this important subject was strengthened by the fact that M. Drouyn de Lhuys, about this period, resigned the high office of Foreign Secretary of State in the French government; it became rumoured that this retirement arose in some way out of the negotiations at Vienna; but as no public announcements were made on this matter, the French and English nations were left to draw such inferences as might seem to them just.

In the parliamentary discussions concerning the conferences, the ultra war-party censured the government for yielding to Russia so much as Lord John Russell had been permitted to yield ; while the peace-party wished that the concessions had been still greater, in order to terminate the war more speedily. The government naturally took up a position between these two extremes. On the 11th of May Mr Milner Gibson, a peaceadvocate, gave notice in the House of Commons that, on some subsequent day, he would move an