CHAP. anguish this people strove to know their General.
I. They had seen him in the hour of battle, and their

hearts had bounded with pride. They saw him now
commanding a small force of wan, feeble, dying men,
yet holding a strong enemy at bay, and comporting
himself as though he were the chief of a strong,
besieging army. They hardly knew at the time
that for forty days the fate of two armies and the
lasting fame and relative strength of great nations.
were hanging upon the quality of one man's mind.
Tormented with grief and anger for the cruel suffer-
ings of their countrymen, they turned upon the
Chief with questioning looks, and seeing him always
holding his ground and always composed, they strove
to break in upon the mystery of his calm. But there,
their power fell short. Except by withstanding the
enemy, he made them no sign; and when he was
reinforced and clothed once more with power, he still
seemed the same to them. At length they saw him
die. Thenceforth they had to look upon the void
which was left by his death. They grew more patient.
They did not become less resolute.
What they
hoped and what they feared in all these trials, what
they thought, what they felt, what they saw, what
they heard, nay, even what they were planning
against the enemy, they uttered aloud in the face of
the world; and thence it happened that one of the
chief features of the struggle was the demeanour of
a free and impetuous people in time of war.

Again, the invasion of the Crimea so tried the strength, so measured the enduring power of the

I.

nations engaged, that, when the conflict was over, CHAP. their relative stations in Europe were changed, and they had to be classed afresh.

Moreover, the strife yielded lessons in war and policy which are now of great worth.

for tracing

of the war.

But this war was deadly. It brought, they say, Ground to the grave full a million of workmen and soldiers. the causes It consumed a pitiless share of the wealth which man's labour had stored up as the means of life. More than this, it shattered the framework of the European system, and made it hard for any nation to be thenceforth safe except by its sheer strength. It seems right that the causes of a havoc which went to such proportions should be traced and remembered.

1859.

For thirty-five years there had been peace between Europe in the great Powers of Europe. The outbreaks of 1848 had been put down. The wars which they kindled had been kept within bounds, and had soon been brought to an end. Kings, emperors, and statesmen declared their love of peace. But always whilst they Standing spoke, they went on levying men. Russia, Germany, and France were laden with standing armies.

armies.

govern

son be

system and

This was one root of danger. There was another. Personal Between a sovereign who governs for himself, and one ment. who reigns through a council of statesmen, there are Comparipoints of difference which make it more likely that tween this war will result from the will of the one man than that of gofrom the blended judgments of several chosen adverning visers. In these days the exigencies of an army are vast and devouring. Also, modern society, growing more and more vulnerable by reason of the very beauty

through a

Council.

CHAP. and complexity of its arrangements, is made to tremble

I.

But

by the mere rumour of an appeal to arms; and, upon
the whole, the evils inflicted by war are so cruel, and
the benefit which a Power may hope to derive from
a scheme of aggression is commonly so obscure, so
remote, and so uncertain, that when the world is in
a state of equilibrium and repose it is generally very
hard to see how it can be really for the interest of
any one State to go and do a wrong, clearly tending
to provoke a rupture. Here, then, there is something
like a security for the maintaining of peace.
this security rests upon the supposition that a State
will faithfully pursue its own welfare, and therefore
it ceases to hold good in a country where the govern-
ment happens to be in such hands that the interests
of the nation at large fail to coincide with the
interests of its ruler. This history will not dissemble
-it will broadly lay open-the truth that a people
no less than a prince may be under the sway of a
warlike passion, and may wring obedience to its
fierce command from the gentlest ministers of state;
but upon the whole, the interests, the passions, and
foibles which lead to war are more likely to be found
in one man than in the band of public servants which
is called a ministry. A ministry, indeed, will share
in any sentiments of just national anger, and it may
even entertain a great scheme of state ambition, but
it can scarcely be under the sway of fanaticism, or
vanity, or petulance, or bodily fear; for though any
one member of the Government may have some of
these defects, the danger of them will always be

I.

neutralised in council. Then, again, a man rightly CHAP. called a minister of state is not a mere favourite of his sovereign, but the actual transactor of public business. He is in close intercourse with those labourers of high worth and ability who in all great States compose the permanent staff of the public office; and in this way, even though he be newly come to affairs, he is brought into acquaintance with the great traditions of the State, and comes to know and feel what the interests of his country are. Above all, a ministry really charged with affairs will be free from the personal and family motives which deflect the state policy of a prince who is his own minister, and will refuse to merge the interests of their country in the mere hopes and fears of one man.

On the other hand, a monarch governing for himself, and without responsible ministers, must always be under a set of motives which are laid upon him by his personal station as well as by his care for the people. Such a prince is either a hereditary sovereign or he is a man who has won the crown with his own hand. In the first case, the contingency of his turning out to be a man really qualified for the actual governance of an empire is almost, though not quite, excluded by the bare law of chances; and, on the other hand, it may be expected that a prince who has made his own way to the throne will not be wanting in such qualities of mind as fit a man for business of state. In some respects, perhaps, he will be abler than a council. He will be more daring, more resolute, more secret; but these are qualities

CHAP. conducive to war, and not to peace. Moreover, a

I.

prince who has won for himself a sovereignty claimed by others will almost always be under the pressure of motives very foreign to the real interests of the State. He knows that by many he is regarded as a mere usurper, and that his home enemies are carefully seeking the moment when they may depose him, and throw him into prison, and ill-use him, and take his life. He commands great armies, and has a crowd of hired courtiers at his side; but he knows that if his skill and his fortune should both chance to fail him in the same hour, he would become a prisoner or a corpse. He hears, from behind, the stealthy foot of the assassin; and before him he sees the dismal gates of a jail, and the slow, hateful forms of death by the hand of the law. Of course he must and he will use all the powers of the State as a defence against these dangers, and if it chance to seem likely—as in such circumstances it often does-that war may give him safety or respite, then to war he will surely go; and although he knows that this rough expedient is one which must be hurtful to the State, he will hardly be kept back by such a thought, for, being, as it were, a drowning man who sees a plank within his reach, he is forced by the law of nature to clutch it; and his country is then drawn into war, not because her interests require it, nor even because her interests are mistaken by her ruler, but because she has suffered herself to fall into the hands of a prince whose road to welfare is distinct from her own.

The power of All the Russias was centred in the