Finally, there was the unspoken question of Poland. The idea of restoring Polish independence from Russia had first been advanced among the wartime allied diplomats by Walewski, the son of Napoleon I by the Polish Countess Marie Walewska. After the capture of Sevastopol, the French Emperor wanted to do something for Poland: an independent Polish kingdom fitted the Napoleonic ideal of a new Europe based on nation states to overthrow the 1815 settlement. At first Napoleon III supported Czartoryski’s programme for the restoration of Congress Poland, the autonomous kingdom established by the Vienna treaty, whose freedoms had been undermined by the Russians. Later on, as the pre-congress talks got under way and it became apparent that none of the other powers would come out in favour of the Poles, Napoleon gave his backing to Czartoryski’s pared-down list of conditions for Polish language rights and the defence of Poland against Russification. But Orlov would have none of this, insisting that Russia’s rights in Poland were based, not on the 1815 treaty, but on the Russian conquest of Poland during the suppression of the Polish insurrection of 1830–31. In the interests of improving his relations with Russia, whose support would be needed against the Austrians in Italy, Napoleon decided to give up on the Poles. Nothing more was said about the Polish question at the Paris congress. Even Palmerston, who rarely missed a chance to confront Russia, advised Clarendon not to make an issue of the Poles. ‘It would not be expedient,’ he explained, ‘to require Russia to restore the Kingdom of Poland.’
The advantage to the Poles would be very doubtful; if they could be made independent of Russia, that indeed would be a great advantage both for the Poles and for Europe, but the difference either for the Poles or for Europe between the present condition of the Kingdom of Poland and that which was established by the Treaty of Vienna would be hardly worth all the difficulties which we should have to encounter in endeavouring to carry such a change into effect. The Russian Govt would say as it said in former years that Poland had rebelled and was conquered, and that consequently it is held now by right of conquest and not by the Treaty of Vienna, and that therefore Russia is freed from the obligation of that Treaty. The Russians would moreover say that to make such a demand is to interfere in the internal affairs of Russia.
‘Poor Poland!’ remarked Stratford Canning to Lord Harrowby, one of Czartoryski’s supporters. ‘Her revival is a regular flying Dutchman. Never is – always to be.’6
With all the major issues resolved beforehand, the Paris congress proceeded smoothly without any major arguments. Just three sessions were required to draft the settlement. There was plenty of spare time for a full range of social engagements – banquets, dinners, concerts, balls and receptions, and a special celebration to mark the birth of the Prince Imperial, Louis-Napoleon, the only child of Napeolon III and the Empress Eugénie – before the diplomats finally assembled for the formal signing of the peace treaty at one o’clock on Sunday, 30 March.
Announcements of the peace were made throughout Paris. Telegraphs worked overtime to spread the news across the world. At two o’clock, the ending of the war was signalled by a thunderous cannonade fired by the guns at Les Invalides. Cheering crowds assembled in the streets, restaurants and cafés did a roaring trade, and in the evening the Paris sky was lit by fireworks. The next day, there was a parade on the Champ de Mars. French troops passed by the Emperor and Prince Napoleon, senior French commanders and foreign dignitaries, watched by tens of thousands of Parisians. ‘There was an electrical tremor of excitement in the crowd,’ claimed the official history of the congress, published the next year, ‘and from the people there was a deafening cheer of national pride and enthusiasm that filled the Champ de Mars better than a thousand cannon could.’7 Here was the glory and popular acclaim Napoleon had wanted when he went to war.
News of the peace arrived in the Crimea the next day – as long as it took for the telegram to be relayed from Paris to Varna and communicated by the underwater cable to Balaklava. On 2 April the allied guns in the Crimea were fired for the final time – in salute to mark the end of the war.
Six months were given to the allies to evacuate their armed forces. The British used the port of Sevastopol, where they oversaw the destruction of the magnificent docks by a series of explosions, while the French destroyed Fort Nicholas. There were enormous quantities of war matériel to be counted, loaded onto ships and taken home: captured guns and cannon, munitions, scrap metal and food supplies, including vast amounts of booty from the Russians. It was a complicated logistical operation to allocate it all to the various departments of the ministries of war, and many things were left behind, sold off to the Russians, or, like the English wooden huts and barracks, donated to them on condition that they were used ‘for the inhabitants of the Crimea who had been made homeless by the war’ (the Russians accepted the English offer but kept the huts and barracks for the army). ‘It is an enormous endeavour to carry off, in just a few months, everything that was brought here over a period of two years,’ wrote Captain Herbé to his family on 28 April. ‘A large number of the horses and mules will have to be abandoned or sold off cheaply to the population of the Crimea, and I don’t count on ever seeing mine again.’ The animals were not the only means of transport to be sold off privately. The Balaklava railway was purchased by a company established by Sir Culling Eardly and Moses Montefiore, who wanted to use the equipment to build a new railroad between Jaffa and Jerusalem, a communication that would ‘civilize and develop the resources of a district now wild and disorderly’, according to Palmerston, who authorized the sale. It would serve the growing traffic of religious pilgrims to the Holy Lands. The Jaffa railway was never built and in the end the Balaklava line was sold to the Turks as scrap.8
Considering how long it took to ship all these supplies to the Crimea, the evacuation was completed speedily. By 12 July Codrington was ready to hand over possession of Balaklava to the Russians before departing with the final British troops on HMS Algiers. A stickler for military etiquette, the commander-in-chief was offended by the low rank and appearance of the Russian delegation sent to meet him and receive control of Balaklava:
There were about 30 Cossacks of the Don mounted and about 50 infantry. But such a lot! I could not have conceived the Russians would have sent such a dirty specimen of their troops. Never were [there] such figures in grey coats – so badly armed too – disreputable looking – we were all surprised and amused. I hope they intended to insult us by such specimens: if so, it must have rather turned the tables if they heard the remarks. The Guard marched on board – the Russians posted their sentries – and the evacuation was completed.9
Left behind in the Crimea were the remains of many thousands of soldiers. During the last weeks before their departure, the allied troops laboured hard to build graveyards and erect memorials to those comrades they would leave behind. In one of his last reports from the Crimea, William Russell described the military cemeteries:
The Chersonese is covered with isolated graves, with longer burial grounds, and detached cemeteries from Balaklava to the verge of the roadstead of Sevastopol. Ravine and plain – hill and hollow – the road-side and secluded valley – for miles around, from the sea to the Chernaia, present those stark-white stones, singly or in groups, stuck upright in the arid soil, or just peering over the rank vegetation which springs from beneath them. The French have taken but little pains with their graves. One large cemetery has been formed with great care and good taste near the old Inkerman camp, but in general our allies have not enclosed their burial places … . The burial ground of the noncommissioned officers and men of the Brigade of Guards is enclosed by a substantial wall. It is entered by a handsome double gate, ingeniously constructed of wood, and iron hoops hammered out straight, and painted, which is hinged on two massive pillars of cut stone, with ornamental capitals, each surmounted by a cannon ball. There are six rows of graves, each row containing thirty or more bodies. Over each of these is either a tomb-stone or a mound, fenced in by rows of white stones, with the initials or sometimes the name of him who lies below, marked on the mound by means of pebbles. Facing the gate, and close to it stands a large stone cross … . There are but few monumental stones in this cemetery; one is a stone cross, with the inscription, ‘Sacred to the memory of Lieutenant A. Hill, 22nd Regiment, who died June 22, 1855. This stone was erected by his friends in the Crimea.’ Another is ‘In memory of Sergeant-Major Rennie, 93rd Highlanders. Erected by a friend.’ … [Another] is to ‘Quarter-master J. McDonald, 72nd Regiment, who died, on the 16th of September, from a wound received in the trenches before Sevastopol on the 8th of December, aged thirty-five years.’10