LXXIII
In the summer of the fateful year of 1853, a city of canvas tents sprang up, like a growth of giant mushrooms, on Chobham Common, and the evolutions of the troops encampedthereon, converted that usually bare and arid expanse of heath into the semblance of a vast market-garden crammed with perambulatory beds of the gayest and most flaunting flowers. Ere long a Grand Military Display took place under the eyes of British Royalty and various Foreign Crowned Heads—not to mention a hundred thousand representatives of the British Public, whom coaches, carriages, brakes, vans, gigs, market-carts, shandrydans, nags, and the humble efforts of Shank’s Mare had brought to the scene of action.
Do you hear the trumpets crying and the bugles calling, and the batteries of the Royal Artillery thundering from the sandy heights overlooking the arena of mimic warfare? while withering volleys of blank cartridge from a line of white-duck trousered Infantry two miles long, shattered the glass of windows at Bagshot Hall (and, it is said, at Farnborough) and—to the profound relief of the Special Artists employed by the illustrated newspapers—caused the subsequent charge of the Cavalry Brigade commanded by H.R.H. the Duke of Bambridge, to be executed under cover of a dense and impenetrable cloud of smoke, jagged through with spurting jets of fire.
The same sort of thing—strange to record—was taking place on the other side of the Channel. Upon the extensive green billiard-table of the Bruyeres, sufficiently near the French Military barrack-camp of Helfaut, the training-maneuvers of some ten thousand representatives of every service branch of the French Army were duly succeeded by a Grand Inspection, carried out by Monsiegneur the Marshal deSt.Arnaud, Minister of War. A sham battle followed in the presence of the Emperor and Empress, fresh from a triumphal tour throughout the North of France.
You are to suppose the heavy brazen field-guns belching and bellowing, whole miles of Minié rifles blazing and cracking, the crowds of spectators scattering for their lives as the Chasseurs de Vincennes advanced in column at the gymnastic pace of one hundred and eighty steps a minute, and the mounted Chasseurs charged, thundering over the wet soggy ground. Decorations were distributed to distinguished commanders, and a few smart sous-officiers in brand-new uniforms. Louis David painted the beautiful Empress in the braided tunic of a Hussar, wearing abeaver with a military plume, and mounted on a handsome charger. What earthly brush, asked the Imperial Press organ in a gush of inky rapture, could do justice to the grace of the Emperor?
In sober truth, the little, big-headed man with the long body and the short legs, was a finished master of the equestrianhaute école. Few men in France could handle a horse better; and as he passed along the lines upon some splendid animal, he would turn its head towards the eagle-topped standard of each regiment, compelling his beast to bow and caracole as its rider did homage to the avuncular emblem. This circus-rider’s trick, no matter how often repeated—never failed to elicit a genuine shout of “Vive l’Empereur!”
And what of the Northern potentate, England’s old friend and ally, for whose warning and instruction these remarkable international demonstrations of military power had been devised and carried out? Physically the biggest man in his vast Empire, there was no moral littleness about Nicholas. He was wary and subtle and diplomatic, but he was not cunning or sly. He was a galloping terror to dishonest, peculating officials—it is on record what retribution followed his hawklike swoop upon the Imperial Dockyard at Cronstadt, where stores and materials of war—being conveyed in at one of the three gates, and duly registered by the clerks of the Receiving Department, were by a second gate,convanient—as Mrs. Geogehagan would have said—smuggled out again, and brought backpermedium of the third; once more to be debited against, and paid for by the Russian Government. Also, there was at this date—sweeping the streets of Sevastopol in company with other persons, distinctively attired, shaven in sections, and adorned as to the legs with irons—a convict who had—previously to the Tsar’s last visit to that important naval stronghold—shone glorious in bright green cloth, belaced cocked hat, and golden epaulets, as Governor of that place.
For—though this Tsar would have dearly liked to be sole master of Europe—though he would have gladly renamed the Bosphorus and built a newSt.Petersburg at the mouth of the Dardanelles—though it would have gratified him to add Afghanistan and India to his dominions—though he was often unscrupulous in the spreading of nets for the catching of able men—though he would sacrificesoldiers in hundreds of thousands, did he deem it necessary for the safety of his State and his religion—though he punished Treason—real or imaginary—with the knout and imprisonment, Siberian exile or death—one cannot deny him to have been a high-minded and honest-souled, if prejudiced and narrow gentleman; who strove, according to his lights, to be just towards men, and upright before God.
There was not a drop of coward’s blood in him—those who hated him most were ready to admit that. He would, in his grandson’s place, have gone out from the Winter Palace alone to meet the strikers who carried the ikons, on that 18th of January, 1905. He threw all Russia into mourning, but he would never have marked upon the Calendar that redSt.Vladimir’s Day. Nor, having converted a peaceable demonstration into a general massacre of children, nursemaids, discontented workmen, and harmless citizens—would he have sat shuddering and shaking in his guarded palace, and left his mother to play the man.
Though getting somewhat stout, stiff, and elderly by this time, Nicholas was still what Mrs. Geogehagan, seeing his portrait in the illustrated newspapers borrowed from the Mess by the Colonel’s lady—approvingly termed “a fine upstanding figure av a man.” After the Peace of 1815, being then a handsome young Colossus of twenty, he had cut a dashing figure at the various Courts of Europe.... English Society had adored andfêtedhim—adipose elderly dowagers who had at that date been famous dancing beauties, boasted of having been his partners in the then newly-imported waltz.
In theMemoirsof the late Dowager-Duchess of Strome—who as Lady Margaretta Bawne, was a Maid of Honor to Princess Victoria, and subsequently Lady of the Bed-chamber to the young Queen—you will find in the chapter headed “How We Danced when I was Young” a vivid description of a waltz experienced with the superb Grand Duke at one of Almack’s Balls.
“It was,” says the venerableraconteuse, “like dancing with a human cyclone. After the first glissade and twirl my sandals quitted the floor—seldom to revisit it until the stopping of the music put a termination to the furious revolutions of the dance. During the ordeal—witnessedby an admiring crowd comprising several Crowned Heads and half the notabilities of Europe—I lost my slippers—my coronet—my combs—and finally my consciousness—which returned to me—in a shock of alarmed modesty—with the resounding salute imprinted on my cheek by His Imperial Highness at the final arpeggio.”
Lord! how we had flattered and praised and quoted him—the huge hard man whom, for some occult reason, we now stigmatized as “The Northern Barbarian.” He had ceased to dance when he commenced to reign—unlike Sire my Friend, who gyrated for the admiration of his Court—as he made his charger caracole for the approval of his Army. The Emperor who, unarmed and unattended by even anaide-de-camp, had quelled an insurrection among his Guards by giving the order to pile arms in that bellowing Minotaur voice of his, would have ridden over—not before—those soldiers who did not cheer.
He had no reason to be pleased with the Ruler of the Ottoman Empire—whose tottering throne he had bolstered in 1833 and again—in alliance with England and the two leading Powers of Germany—in 1840. A Firman issued by the Sultan, according to the Latin Church the Key of the great door of the Church at Bethlehem, and a Key to each of the doors of the Altar of the Sacred Manger—and bestowing upon France the permission to inlay on the floor of the Grotto of the Divine Nativity an arrogant Silver Star,—doubtless emblazoned with the Imperial Eagle—had kindled the Autocrat of all the Russias—in his anointed character as Supreme Head of the Orthodox Church—to flaming indignation. Nor had the diplomatic representative of Great Britain at Constantinople—by terming the resulting dispute “a wordy war of denominational trivialities”—cast else but oil upon the roaring flame.
Later, when Moslem troops under Omar Pasha were dispatched by the Sublime Porte—acting under advice from a certain suspected quarter—to operate against the Greek Christian rayahs of Montenegro—a pretty euphemism for the plundering and burning of farms and villages—the torture of men—the violation of women and the cutting of children’s throats—the Barbarian of the North dispatched a small installment of fifty thousand troops into the Danubian Principalities—picketed the shaggy horses of his Cavalry with their noses against the frontiers ofMoldavia—ascertained that upon a certain date the foundries of Rostof and Taganrog would infallibly carry out their contract to deliver a mere trifle of nine hundred thousand iron projectiles of all sorts and sizes—and sat down to play the game.
With movings of Divisions and Brigades, and marchings and counter-marchings. With Imperial Inspections, Reviews, and sham fights on a scale as colossal as himself. With repetitions of that effect of the vast market-garden of perambulatory beds of the most brilliantly-hued flowers, when a hundred thousand troops of all arms were maneuvered at the Camp of Krasnoé Sélo. Replying to great Naval Demonstrations at Spithead and Queenstown, Havre, and Brest and Toulon, culminating in combined visits of the French and English fleets to Turkish waters, with ominous increase of activity at Cronstadt and Revel, and menacing, ominous movements of steam and sailing-squadrons in the Baltic and on the Black Sea.