plan into execution, without consulting his English CHAP. colleague. How France was saved from this humiliation, and how the great alliance was preserved, will now be seen. On the day following the interview with Marshal St Arnaud, Colonel Trochu came, as had been agreed, to Lord Raglan's quarters. After repeating what Marshal St Arnaud had stated the day before-namely, that Bosquet's Division was already in march for Adrianople the Colonel pressed the advantages of the position which Marshal St Arnaud had proposed to take up in rear of the Balkan. XXIX. lan refuses Lord Raglan heard all, and then simply requested Lord RagColonel Trochu to inform Marshal St Arnaud that to place he, Lord Raglan, objected to place any portion of of his army Her Majesty's army in Roumelia. Lord Raglan added, that the movement which seemed to him the best was an advance to the front with a view to join Omar Pasha in an effort to relieve Silistria; and he said that if the Marshal were not prepared for such a movement, he (Lord Raglan) would keep his divisions on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus, and hold them ready to embark at any moment for Varna. any part behind the Balkan. abandons Firmness conquered. On the morning of the 10th St Arnaud of June, Colonel Rose came to the English head-gives way, quarters and announced that Marshal St Arnaud his plan of now consented to abandon his plan of taking up a defensive position behind the Balkan, and that, re- and con a position behind the Balkan, CHAP. Verting to the original determination of the Allies, XXIX. he would assemble his army at Varna. sents to move his army to Varna. The armies moved ac Thus the danger passed. Secrecy, it would appear, had been well maintained; and the world did not know that, for all purposes of concerted military operations, the alliance of the Western Powers had lain in abeyance for five days. . up to Leaving small detachments at Gallipoli, the French and the English armies were now moved cordingly. Varna. General Bosquet's Division, however, was made to feel the consequences of the resolution adopted by the French strategists; for this division having actually commenced its march towards Adrianople, in furtherance of the then intended plan of taking up a position behind the Balkan, Marshal St Arnaud it seems, did not like to issue a countermand which would have disclosed to a sagacious soldiery his double change of counsels nay, perhaps might have given them a glimpse of the almost ridiculous destiny from which they had been saved by Lord Bosquet's Raglan. So, whilst all the rest of the allied forces march. were gliding up to Varna by water, Bosquet's Di overland vision continued to follow the direction first given it, and was brought into Bulgaria by long, painful marches. If the warlike Zouaves composing part of the division had known that their long, toilsome movement in the midst of the great summer-heats was the result of a plan for placing the French army in position at a distance of several hundreds of miles from the enemy, they would have solaced the labours XXIX. of the march by tearing the repute of the schemer CHAP. who contrived it, and making him the butt for their wit. in which naud's escaped publicity. It is obvious that the premature disclosure either The way of Marshal St Arnaud's ambitious schemes or of St Arhis faltering counsels would have been fraught schemes with danger to the alliance; and since it used to happen in those days that tidings freshly intrusted to the English Cabinet were often disclosed to the world, it seems useful to show how it was that Lord Raglan was able to screen these transactions of Marshal St Arnaud from the inquiring eye of the public. Apparently he did this by being careful in the choice of the time for making disclosures to the authorities at home. Except when there was a good reason for taking a contrary course, he liked to delay the communication of affairs involving danger until the danger was past. Thus, for instance, he would describe the beginning of an intrigue and also its final defeat at the same time; and the result was, that the end of the despatch not only made the disclosure of the earlier part of it comparatively harmless, but even destroyed its value as an article of "news;" for in proportion as people were greedy for fresh tidings, they were careless of things which ranged with the past, and the time was so stirring that the tale of an abandoned plan of campaign, or an intrigue already baffled and extinct, was hardly a rich enough gift for a Minister to carry to a newsman. Invasion of the Crimea. III, 4 CHAP. Thus were averted the early dangers which threatened the alliance; and thus, after resolving to take up a position some hundreds of miles distant from the nearest Russian outpost, the French Marshal gave way at last to Lord Raglan's ascendant, and was soon pushed forward to a camping-ground within hearing of the enemy's guns. CHAPTER XXX. XXX. which zeal for sion of the THE closing events of the summer campaign in CHAP. Bulgaria did so much to kindle that zeal which Tidings forced on the invasion of the Crimea, that it seems kindled in right to speak of them here, not with any notion of England a putting into the set form of "History" things which the invaall Europe knew at the time in the most authentic Crimea. way, but rather for the purpose of showing how the armies at Varna, and the statesmen and the people in England, were touched, were stirred, nay, were governed, by the tidings which came from the Danube. Prince Paskievitch stood charged to execute with his own hand the plan of campaign which his Sovereign had persuaded him to design;* and accordingly, in the summer of the year 1854, he found himself marching on the Danube at the head of the Russian army then engaged in attempting an invasion of the Ottoman Empire. He had insisted, as we have seen, that, as the needful condition of a prosperous campaign, Silistria must fall by the 1st Siege of of May.** It was not before the middle of the month *See vol. II. p. 140. **Ibid. p. 142. Silistria. |