The Banner of Battle

by Alan Palmer

  An Englishman visiting Berlin in the 1860s declared that nowhere in Europe were so many uniforms to be seen in a street. Prussia was the supremely militaristic society of the post-Napoleonic era, and from earliest days the young prince was accustomed to the trappings of soldiery - dark blue service dress, white ceremonial tunics, epauletted shoulders, long leather boots, flat caps, spiked helmets, fur hats bearing the death's head emblem, iron crosses, the stars and pendants of military distinction, the ribbons and sashes of the great orders. He grew up to the sounds of an army at the ready: the rattle of scabbards and cavalry spurs down palace corridors; the sharp clicking of heels; hoof beats of carriage escorts; saluting cannon; fifes and drums; staccato commands on open squares; bugle calls and regimental bands. Each day at noon the prince could see from the palace windows an elaborate ceremony of changing the guard, sometimes with his grandfather taking the salute. There were garrison parades, church parades, and special parades for royal birthdays and national festivals. But it was not always mere masquerade. The impressionable years of William's boyhood coincided with the wars which enabled Bismarck to create his united Germany. He watched a regiment of Hungarian infantry march down the Linden in 1864 on its way to fight alongside the Prussians against the Danish army in Schleswig-Holstein and Jutland. Soon afterwards William saw his first victory parade, with captured flags borne in triumph past the Brandenburg Gate. Two years later there were even greater celebrations for the victory of his grandfather's armies over the Austrians and their allies among the smaller German states. It seemed in that autumn of 1866 as if Frederick the Great's mission was at last completed, with Habsburg Austria out of the reckoning as a Germanic power.

  In these campaigns the Crown Prince won a reputation as the most successful general in the Hohenzollern family for four generations. Without his arrival on the battlefield the decisive encounter at Königgrätz on 3 July 1866 would have been unresolved, or perhaps even a defeat for Prussia. William joyfully welcomed his father back from the war and on 20 September saw the King on horseback lead his armies through the centre of Berlin. The details of this occasion William remembered vividly throughout his life. (10) Princely cousins rode at the head of regiments they had taken into battle. Not all the relatives in the parade were Hohenzollerns: great-uncle Duke Ernest of Saxe-Coburg, brother of the Prince Consort, was there, commanding a battalion in the procession as he had done in the campaign itself. For William, however, there could be no question that the hero was Papa, the Crown Prince, gaunt and bearded at the head of the Second Army. Yet if the enthusiastic applause of the Berliners filled William's heart with pride, it also emphasized the bitterness of what his mother was already calling `the cross' he bore. In the previous year he had for the first time become acutely conscious of his afflictions: he could not keep his balance so as to run like other boys of seven, nor could he hope to climb, let alone mount a saddle. How, then, was he ever to ride beside his father and grandfather at the head of Prussia's victorious troops? To a royal child in Berlin in that autumn of military triumph it seemed as though sitting a horse was the first essential of popularity.

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  [1] Tatischev article, Ist. Vk., XXIII, no. 3. p. 603.

  [2] Bloomfield to Aberdeen, 18 May 1844, and Brunnow to Aberdeen, 27 May 1844, Add. MSS. 43144; Aberdeen to Queen Victoria 27 May 1844, and Queen Victoria to Aberdeen, 29 May 1844, Add. MSS. 43044.

  [3] For disembarkation and the encounter in the Mall, see The Times, 3 June 1844. For Nicholas at Ashburnham House, see Tatischev, loc. cit., and Brunnow to Aberdeen, 2 June 1844, Add. MSS. 43144.

  [4] A. Palmer, The Chancelleries of Europe, pp. 72-3.

  [5] Queen Victoria to King Leopold, and 11 June 1844, QVI, II, pp. 12-15.

  [6] C. Stockmar, Memoirs, II, p. 110.

  [7] The Times, 7 June 1844.

  [8] Bloomfield to Aberdeen, 10 July 1844, Add. MSS. 43144.

  [9] Aberdeen to Brunnow, 3 August 1844, Add. MSS. 43144.

  [10] Nesselrode’s visit and the subsequent exchanges are well documented: see Temp., pp. 254-6 and M. Chamberlain, Lord Aberdeen, p. 380. The Brunnow-Aberdeen correspondence, Nesselrode’s letter to Aberdeen of 28 December 1844 and Aberdeen’s reply of 21 January 1845 may be found in Add. MSS. 43144, together with a revised copy of Nesselrode’s memorandum on the Tsar’s impression of his June conversations. See also Zai., I, pp. 129-31.

  [11] ILN 8 June 1844, Vol. Iv, no. 166, p.369.

  [12] Nicholas I to Queen Victoria (in French), 3 April 1848, QVL, II, p. 166. For Nicholas’s reactions to the 1848 revolutions, see W. Bruce Lincoln’s biography, Nicholas I, pp. 278-90.

  [13] A. Palmer, The Chancelleries of Europe, pp. 88-9.

  [14] See Temp., pp. 261-5 and J. Ridley, Palmerston, pp. 378-9.

  [15] Asa Briggs, Victorian People, pp. 46-52. For a retrospective attack on Crystal Palace ‘pacifism’ see the powerful passage in A. W. Kinglake, The Invasion of the Crimea, I, pp. 79-81. On Kossuth’s visit, see Anon., Authentic Life of Louis Kossuth, with Copenhagen Fields speech, p. 80.

  [16] Temp., pp. 292-5. There is an interesting statement of the Russian position on the Holy Places in a contemporary memorandum (in French), Zai., I, pp. 333-4.

  [17] A. J. P. Taylor, The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, p. 47.

  [18] Temp., pp. 292-5; Zai.. I, p. 337.

  [19] Aberdeen to Palmerston, 10 January 1853, Add. MSS. 43049; M. Chamberlain, Lord Aberdeen, pp. 472-85.

  [20] Zai., I, pp. 356-7.

  [21] Seymour to Malmesbury, 4 December 1852, quoted in Schiemann, Geschichte Russlands, IV, p. 423; cf. Bruce Lincoln, op. cit., 332.

  [22] Seymour Journal, 9 January 1853, Add. MSS. 60306; Seymour to Russell, 11 January. 1853, FO 65/ 424, no. 16.

  [23] Seymour Journal, 14 January 1853, Add. MSS. 60306; Alexandra Feodorovna to Anna Pavlovna, 19 January 1853, S. Jackman, Romanov Relations, p. 336.

  [24] Seymour Journal, 26 January, 28 February, Add. MSS. 60306; Seymour to Russell, 21 and 22 February 1853, FO 65/424, nos 87 and 88.

  [25] The most comprehensive treatment of these talks is in G. H. Bolsover, ‘Nicholas I and the Partition of Turkey’, SEER, XXVII (1948-9), pp. 139-43; but it now needs to be supplemented by Seymour’s journal entries. For remarks on Candia, see Seymour to Russell, 22 February 1853, FO 65/424, no. 88.

  [26] Aberdeen to Queen Victoria, 8 February, 1853, QVL, II, p. 437.

  [27] Russell to Seymour, 9 February 1853, FO 65/429, no. 38. A version of this despatch, with the Tsar’s marginal comments, is printed in Zai., I, pp. 359-62; extracts Temp., pp. 274-5.

  [28] Bruce Lincoln, op. cit., p. 336.

  [29] Temp., pp. 306-8; full text, Zai., I, pp. 371-7.

  [30] Bruce Lincoln, op. cit., p. 336, citing Tarlé.

  [31] Rose to Dundas, 5 March 1853, on, 6 March, FO 78/930, no. 73; Temp. 311-12; Aberdeen to Queers Victoria, 20 March 1853, Add. MSS. 43047.

  [32] J. Curtiss, Russia’s Crimean War, p. 95.

  [33] Graham to Clarendon, 1 April 1853. Clar. MSS. Dep. C.

  [34] Aberdeen to Russell. 15 February 1853, Clar. MSS. Dep. C:4.

  [35] Clarendon to Rose, 23 March 1853, Curtiss, op. cit., p. 95.

  [36] Stratford to Clarendon, 11 April 1853, FO 78/931. no. 12.

  [37] Clarendon to Stratford, 18 April 1853, FO. 352/36.

  [38] Bosphorus landing project, Zai., I, p. 599; for ‘show of strength’ see the Tsar’s comments on Menshikov to Nesselrode, to April 1853, Ibid, I, p. 401.

  [39] Curtiss, op. cit. pp. 118-40; Palmer, op. cit., p. 100.

  [40] ’Shilly-shally’, Stratford to Lady Stratford, 29 May 1853, S. Lane-Poole, Life of Stratford Canning, I p. 274; 28 May cabinet and its consequences, Aberdeen to Queen Victoria, 29 May 1853, Add. MSS. 43047; Aberdeen to Clarendon 30 May and I June, Clar. MSS. Dep. C4; Brunnow to Aberdeen, 29 May, Add. MSS. 43044; Russell to Clarendon, 29 May and 31 May, Clar. MSS. Dep. C4; Clarendon to Aberdeen, 29 May 18
53, Add. MSS. 43188. See also Chamberlain, op. cit., pp. 480-1.

  [41] Aberdeen to Clarendon, 7 June 1853, Maxwell, Life...Clarendon, II, p. 15.

  [42] Aberdeen to Palmerston, 4 July 1853, Add. MSS. 43049.

  [43] The Press, 28 May 1853, cited by Kingsley Martin, The Triumph of Lord Palmerston, p. 116.

  [44] Robert Blake, Disraeli, pp. 343-53.

  [45] Aberdeen to Graham, 31 May 1853, Add. MSS. 43191.

  [46] Aberdeen to Queen Victoria, 6 August 1853, Add. MSS. 43047; Chamberlain, op. cit., pp. 483-4.

  [47] Lady Clarendon to Lady Theresa Lewis, 18 August 1853, Bod. Lib. MSS. Eng. hist. C 1034.

  [48] Aberdeen to Queen Victoria, 4 September 1833, Add. MSS. 43047.

  [49] Temp. 349-50, 354 and 475; J. L. Herkless, ‘Stratford, the Cabinet and the Outbreak of the Crimean War’, HJ, XVIII; 3 (1975), pp. 497-8 and 515-16; Aberdeen to Queen Victoria, 4 September 1853, Add. MSS. 43047.

  [50] Clarendon to G. Cornewall Lewis, 9 October 1853, Maxwell, op. cit., II, p. 26.

  [51] Nicholas I to Anna Pavlovna, October 1853, Jackman, op. cit., pp. 339-40.

  [52] The same to the same, 15 February 1854, Ibid, p. 341. See also A. Seaton, The Crimean War, p. 41.

  [53] Clarendon to Lady Clarendon, 3 October 1853, Maxwell, Life...Clarendon, II, p. 30.

  [54] Aberdeen to Prince Albert, 24 October 1853. Add. MSS. 43049, enclosing a copy of Russell to Clarendon of 4 October, of which the original is in Clar. MSS. Dep. C3.

  [55] Palmerston to Aberdeen, 2 October 1853 and Aberdeen to Palmerston, 5 October, Add. MSS. 43049.

  [56] Morley, Gladstone I, pp. 481-2; S. Herbert to Clarendon, 6 October 1853, Clar. MSS. Dep. C3.

  [57] Aberdeen to Graham (at Balmoral), 8 October 1853, submitted to Queen Victoria, and printed as a footnote in QVL, II, p. 454.

  [58] Graham to Aberdeen, 9 October 1853, Add. MSS. 43191.

  [59] C. Alison to Lady Stratford, 25 November 1853, S. Lane-Poole, Life of Stratford Canning, II, pp. 316-17.

  [60] Nesselrode to Meyendorff, 17 October 1853, quoted from the Vienna archives by J. Curtiss, Russia’s Crimean War, p. 197.

  [61] A. J. P. Taylor, The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, p. 58. The Foreign Secretary reported that when Sir John Burgoyne arrived in Paris in January 1854 he was surprised to find so little enthusiasm for war with Russia; Clarendon to Graham, 30 January 1854, Gr. Pap.

  [62] Curtiss, op. cit. pp. 186-8.

  [63] For the life and career of Prince Paskevich see the biography by A. P. Scherbatov, of which all except the last of the eight volumes were published in a French translation.

  [64] Albert Seaton, The Crimean War, pp. 29-33.

  [65] Paskevich Niemorandum of September 1853, Zai., III, pp. 102-4.

  [66] Adolphus Slade, Turkey and the Crimean War, pp. 148-55: E. V. Bogdanovich, Sinop, 18 Noiabria 1853 Goda.

  [67] The Times, 13 December 1853: Morning Chronicle, 20 December 1853.

  [68] Palmerston to Clarendon, 13 December 1853, Clar. MSS. Dep. C3.

  [69] Rothschild incident, Graham to Clarendon, 22 November 1853, Clar. MSS. Dep. C4; Aurora and Russian spies, Graham to Clarendon, 30 November 1853, Clar. MSS. Dep. C4; The Times, 6, 7 December 1853; Brunnow to Aberdeen, 7 December 1853, Add. MSS. 43144; Graham to Queen Victoria and Graham to Clarendon, 8 December 1853, Gr. Pap.

  [70] Aberdeen to Graham, 10 December 1853. Gr. Pap.

  [71] ‘Let him go’, Queen Victoria to Aberdeen, 7 December 1853, Add. MSS. 43048; The Times 15, 16 December; Morning Post 15, 16, 17 December 1853.

  [72] Lord Derby, House of Lords, 31 January 1854, Hansard, Vol. 130, p. 102; A. Palmer, Crowned Cousins, pp. 116-17; J. Ridley, Lord Palmerston, pp. 422-4.

  [73] Stratford to Clarendon, 18 December 1853, FO 78/941, no. 393.

  [74] J. B. Conacher, The Aberdeen Coalition, pp. 240-2; Morley, op. cit., I, pp. 490-1; Aberdeen to Graham, 19 December 1853, Gr. Pap.; Aberdeen to Queen Victoria, 20 December 1853, Add. MSS. 43048; Russell to Clarendon, 18 December 1853, Clar. MSS. Dep. C3. Temp., pp. 375-8.

  [75] Aberdeen to Clarendon, 27 September 1853, Clar. MSS. Dep. C4.

  [76] Graham to Clarendon, 15 January 1854, Gr. Pap.

  [77] G. P. Evelyn, A Diary of the Crimea, pp. 31-2; J. B. Conacher, The Aberdeen Coalition, p. 246.

  [78] C. S. Parker, Life...Graham, II, p. 226.

  [79] Granville to Clarendon, 25 December 1853, Clar. MSS. Dep. C4.

  [80] Queen Victoria to Aberdeen, 24 February 1854, QVI., III, p. 12; Aberdeen to Queen Victoria, 24 February 1854, Add. MSS. 43048.

  [81] Conacher, op. cit., p. 251.

  [82] Graham to Newcastle, 11 January 1854, Gr. Pap.

  [83] G. Wrottesley, The Military Opinions of General Sir John Fox Burgoyne, pp. 165-80; F. A. Wellesley, The Paris Embassy, pp. 40-1; B. D. Gooch, The New Bonapartist Generals, pp. 67-8.

  [84] J. Ridley, Napoleon III and Eugénie, pp. 363-4.

  [85] Nicholas I to Napoleon III, 8 February 1854, Zai., II, pp. 189-91. The Tsar’s reply was printed in The Times on 6 March 1854.

  [86] Graham circulated Burgoyne’s first memorandum, together with an assessment by a colonel of the Royal Artillery, to his principal cabinet colleagues, 19 January 1854, Gr. Pap. The second memorandum is preserved in the Graham Papers in the form of a letter to Graham from Burgoyne, 20 January 1854. These documents have been summarized by Conacher, op. cit., pp. 252 and 254. See also Hew Strachan, ‘Soldiers, Strategy and Sebastopol’, HJ, 21, pp. 311-12.

  [87] Palmerston to Graham, 19 January 1854, Gr. Pap.

  [88] Russell to Graham, 19 January, and Newcastle to Graham, 20 January, 1854, Gr. Pap.

  [89] Graham Memorandum, 22 January 1854, Gr. Pap.

  [90] Graham to Clarendon, 28 February 1854, Gr. Pap.

  [91] Aberdeen to Queen Victoria, 8 February 1854, Add. MSS. 43048; Aberdeen to Brunnow, 2 February 1854, Add. MSS. 43144; F. F. Martens Recueil des traités, XI I, pp. 338-41.

  [92] G. Dodd, Pictorial History of the Russian War, p. 76.

  [93] ILN, 11 February 1854, p. 118. For a historical assessment of the ILN at this time, see the excellent study by Mathew Paul Lalumia, Realism and Politics in Victorian Art of the Crimean War, especially p. 65. Lalumia prints (p. 42) a longer extract from the editorial of February, but incorrectly dates it as 1855.

  [94] Conacher, op. cit., pp. 294-311; J Prest, Lord John Russell, pp. 364-5.

  [95] The Times, 15 February 1854.

  [96] The Times, 17 February 1854.

  [97] Dodd, op. cit., p. 79; N. Bentley (ed.), Russell’s Despatches from the Crimea, p. 24.

  [98] Griselda Fox Mason, Sleigh Ride to Russia pp. 3-15. This book, written by a kinswoman of all three of the Quakers who went to St Petersburg, includes more family letters than earlier works on the Mission; but see also Richenda C. Scott’s Quakers in Russia.

  [99] Henry Pease to Edward Pease Jnr. 11 February 1854, Fox Mason, op. cit., p. 79.

  [100] Ibid, pp. 81-90.

  [101] The Times, 23 February, 28 February and 19 March 1854.

  [102] Clarendon to Nesselrode, 27 February 1854, Zai., II, pp. 221-2.

  [103] Conacher, op. cit., pp. 249-50; P. Schroeder, Austria, Great Britain and the Crimean War, pp. 130-42.

  [104] Queen Victoria to King Leopold, 28 February 1854, QVL, III, p. 14. Queen’s comment on 13 February, E. Longford, Victoria RI, p. 301.

  [105]

  [106] The famous last stanzas of Maud were apparently written earlier than the main body of the poem, traditionally ‘when the cannon was heard, booming from the battleships in the Solent before the Crimean War’. Presumably this was the royal salute fired on 11 March 1854. For Tennyson and the Crimean War see the biography by Sir Charles Tennyson, pp. 280-8.

  [107] K. Robbins, John Bright, p. 103; J. A. Froude, Carlyle in London, II, p. 151.

  [108] J. S. Curtiss, Russia’s Crimean War, p. 254.

  [109] Clarendon, H. of Lords, 31 March 1854, Hansard, 132, pp. 142-50; A. Palmer, The Chancelleries of Eu
rope, p. 104.

  [110] Schroeder, Austria...Crimean War, pp. 160-85.

  [111] Palmerston to Aberdeen and Aberdeen to Palmerston, 10 January 1853, Add. MSS. 43049.

  [112] Wellesley, The Paris Embassy, p. 43.

  [113] B. Gooch, The New Bonapartist Generals, pp. 20-6 and 42-4.

  [114] M. Quatrelles l’Epine, Le Maréchal de Saint-Arnaud, II, pp. 297-9.

  [115] S-A (23 April 1845) p. 418.

  [116] Evelyn, Diary of the Crimea, p. 61.

  [117] S-A (2 May 1845), p. 418.

  [118] N. Bentley (ed.), Russell’s Despatches from the Crimea, p. 28.

  [119] The Times, 4 and 8 May 1854; Dodd, Pictorial History of the Russian War, p. 86.

  [120] Evelyn, op. cit, p. 51.

  [121] Dodd, op. cit, pp. 91-2.

  [122] Curtiss, op. cit., pp. 245-6.

  [123] Anon., ‘Voina Rossii s Turtsiei , RS, XVI, no. 9, p. 89; Zai., II, pp 402-3.

  [124] Cal. Lett. I, p. 35; S-A (30 May 1854), p. 427.

  [125] Ibid.

  [126] Alex. Gordon to Aberdeen, 10 and 30 May 1854, Add. MSS. 43225.

  [127] C. Hibbert, The Destruction of Lord Raglan, pp. 45-7.

  [128] The Times, 28 April 1854; Dodd, op. cit., pp. 95-6; Rose Journal (earliest entry), 14 June 1854, Add. MSS. 28509; Bosquet, Lettres...à sa Mère, IV, pp. 162-73.

  [129] M. I. Bogdanovich, Vostochnaia Voina, II, 90-2; Zai., II, pp. 413-14.

  [130] Curtiss, op. cit., pp. 264-5; Zai. II, 409-12.

  [131] L. Tolstoy to T. A. Yergolskaya, 5 July 1854 (in French), V. Cherthoff (ed.), Tolstoy, Polnoe sobranie sochineniy, LIX, pp. 269-73; English version in R. F. Christian, Tolstoy Letters, I, pp. 39-42.

  [132] Tarlé, II, pp. 10-11; Curtiss, op. cit., pp. 264-5.