44 THEIR'S NOT TO REASON WHY
Crimea. By C. E. Vulliamy. (Jonathan Cape. 15s.)
THE history of the Crimean War is a useful cautionary tale for statesmen and peoples. It was the product of blunder- ing diplomacy ; it was encouraged at the start by much deluded popular clamour, as in England, where the annihi- lation of the Turkish fleet at Sinope roused a storm of moral indignation as a massacre ; its course was marked by far more than normal incompetence in all departments ; and its results were a fitting end to a tale of futility. It was sufficiently modern to be " covered " by the Press and recorded by photography, as illustrations in this book testify, but it was also the last European war of an earlier military age than ours "before the scientific planning of the Prussian General Staff made the older leadership a museum piece.
From a wealth of authorities Mr. Vulliamy has constructed a striking picture of the War itself and adorned it with a lively manner, though he pours irony too persistently from Olympian heights and his adjectives are occasionally too self- conscious in their aptness. The descriptions of the Battle of Inkerman and the final assault on Sebastopol are admirably done. His account of the Royal exchange of visits between England and France, to which he devotes two chapters, is entertaining, but the political background described earlier is less well chosen and less sound in its judgements.
More relevant than accounts of Napoleon's coup d'eteit or the Great Exhibition would have been some explanation of the policies of the Powers which led to the War. Russian policy was merely the accentuation of the diplomatic pressure she had long exerted on Turkey, and which had been diverted by British diplomacy in 1841. Napoleon, for reasons of prestige, was reviving a French Near Eastern policy which had recurred since the eighteenth century and had also been baulked in 1841, while the British preoccupation with Turkish integrity had developed rapidly with the growing appreciation of the worth of our Indian dominions. Mr. Vulliamy might have dealt with the question of how far our Russophobia was rational, how vital were our interests in Turkey, and how urgent was the Russian menace. Although it is true that Nicholas I sug- gested partition, there is no convincing evidence that he meant to take his share alone, and Mr. Vulliamy mentions his restraint in the diplomatic moves before the War. Our exaggerated sensibility may make at least more intelligible the reactions of certain States today.
As it is, the impression given is that the War was engi- neered largely by Napoleon HI, assisted by Great Britain to a great extent for the sake of a French alliance, whose importance is greatly exaggerated, and by a vaguely sinister attitude on the part of Russia. In truth, the War was the result of drifting, and the failure of the Powers to define their aims. Napoleon was inexperienced and clumsy ; the British Government was divided ; the Russian Government was con- vinced that we would not act, and the spark was provided by the increased obstinacy of the Turkish Government which was equally convinced that we would act.
Mr. Vulliamy's portrait sketch of Napoleon is too con- sistently villainous ; he was rather a man betrayed into the insincerities of inconsistency by his belief in the reality of the myth of the Liberal Empire. The suggestion that Queen Victoria developed a romantic friendship for the Emperor is unconvincing ; as Mr. Vulliamy points out, she was in the habit of interpreting herself in excitable terms. Palmerston figures oddly as a " benevolent Radical," and the criticism of Russell, and later Raglan, tends towards persecution.
Mr. Vulliamy brings out dramatically the stupidity and ignorance of the commanders from Raglan and St. Arnaud down to the regimental officers (with a few exceptions like Pennefather), the absence of plans and an Intelligence Service, the failure to co-ordinate the two armies and the administrative chaos all the way from London to the quay of Balaclava.
Fortunately, with the exception of Todleben, the Russian com- manders were also inept. After an aimless landing in Bulgaria,
the armies were moved to the Crimea almost as an after- thought. After the Battle of the Alma Sebastopol would almost certainly have fallen to immediate attack, but the French refused, and Todleben had time to organise an active defensive.
From that time the allied commanders seesawed between an excess of caution and an ill-considered impulse to attack, and, unfortunately, their moods never synchronised. Mr. Vulliamy perhaps underestimates the difficulties that faced the Allies in the later stages.
The book makes clear not only the nature of the sufferings to which the British Army was condemned by this inaction before the winter came, but the deep-seated causes of them.
The vivid picture makes all the more remarkable the physical and moral courage of Florence Nightingale. The health of the Army was already undermined by heavy drinking, and the climate of the Crimea cannot be held responsible, as it is relatively mild—indeed, a health resort. The callous neglect shown by those in charge of supply, administration and health was simply part of the general refusal to accept responsibility for the sufferings of inferiors which had characterised the England of the Industrial Revolution, and which had survived longest in the Army with other relics like Purchase from the age of Waterloo. It is shown by contrast that the French were more adaptable and better organised, and so had better health ; as a result the main burden of the War during the next year fell on their shoulders. Even when improvements had been made, the subordinate British share in the final result, the capture of the Redan, was entrusted to raw recruits. This costly failure, coming at the end of such a tale of incompetence in contrast to the French success at the Malakov, led conti- nental opinion to underestimate British military worth till 1914, and emboldened Bismarck to disregard Palmerston's bluff in 1864.
The Peace Congress and its consequences are dealt with only in an epilogue ; the main concrete provisions, the settle- ment of the Straits question and the neutralisation of the Black Sea, which had lurked all the time behind talk of the Holy Places and Turkish integrity, were demolished by Russia in fifteen years. The Congress is just as important because it led incidentally to the creation of Rumania and marked a stage in the incubation of an Italian State.
The Crimean War was only an episode in a long, unfinished process in the Near East which was continued by diplomacy between the Great Powers for the next fifty years. But after it, new factors appeared. The neutrality of Austria during the war, once the close friend of Russia, led on to the align- ment of the two in hostile camps, and once Bismarck's restrain- ing hand was removed, the German Drang nach Osten, with its intimate alliance between economic penetration and military strength, added to Austrian fear of disintegration, quickened the pace to the outbreak of a wider war. Mr Vulliamy's book gives a lively impression of that particular military episode which was creditable, as he says, only to a Russian engineer and an English nurse—and, one may fairly add in the circum-
stances, to the common soldier. H. R. COLMAN.
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