As Britain moved onto a military footing in the early months of 1854, the idea of a limited campaign for the defence of Turkey became lost in the war fever that swept the country. Britain’s war aims escalated, not just from the bellicose chauvinism of the press but from the belief that the war’s immense potential costs demanded larger objectives, ‘worthy of Britain’s honour and greatness’. Palmerston was always returning to this theme. His war aims changed in detail but never in their anti-Russian character. In a memorandum to the cabinet on 19 March, he outlined an ambitious plan for the dismemberment of the Russian Empire and the redrawing of the European map: Finland and the Aaland Islands would be transferred from Russia to Sweden; the Tsar’s Baltic provinces would be given to Prussia; Poland would be enlarged as an independent kingdom and buffer state for Europe against Russia; Austria would gain the Danubian principalities and Bessarabia from the Russians (and be forced to give up northern Italy); the Crimea and Georgia would be given to Turkey; while Circassia would become independent under Turkish protection. The plan called for a major European war against Russia, one involving Austria and Prussia, and ideally Sweden, on the anti-Russian side. It was greeted with a good deal of scepticism in the cabinet. Aberdeen, who was hoping for a short campaign so that his government could ‘return zealously to the task of domestic reform’, objected that it would require another Thirty Years War. But Palmerston continued to promote his plans. Indeed, the longer the war went on, the more determined he became to advance it, on the grounds that anything less than ‘great territorial changes’ would not be enough to justify the war’s enormous loss of life.47
By the end of March, the idea of expanding the defence of Turkey into a broader European war against Russia had gained much support in the British political establishment. Prince Albert was doubtful whether Turkey could be saved, but confident that Russia’s influence in Europe could be curbed by a war to deprive her of her western territories. He thought that Prussia could be drawn into this war by promises of ‘territory to guard against Russia’s pouncing upon her’, and advocated measures to get the German states on side as well as to tame the Russian bear, ‘whose teeth must be drawn and claws pared’. He wrote to Leopold, the Belgian king: ‘All Europe, Belgium and Germany included, have the greatest interest in the integrity and independence of the Porte being secured for the future, but a still greater interest in Russia being defeated and chastised.’ Sir Henry Layard, the famous Assyriologist and MP, who served as Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, called for war until Russia had been ‘crippled’. Stratford Canning proposed a war to break up the Tsar’s empire ‘for the benefit of Poland and other spoliated neighbours to the lasting delivery of Europe from Russian dictation’. In a later letter to Clarendon, Stratford emphasized the need to curb the will of Russia, not just by checking its ‘present outbreak’ but ‘by bringing home to its inner sense a feeling of permanent restraint’. The aim of any war by the European powers should be to destroy the threat of Russia once and for all, argued Stratford, and they should go on fighting until Russia was surrounded by a buffer zone of independent states (the Danubian principalities, the Crimea, Circassia and Poland) to ensure that feeling of restraint. As the government prepared to declare war on Russia, Russell called on Clarendon not to include anything in the Queen’s message to Parliament that would commit the Western powers to the existing territorial boundaries of Europe.48
Even at this stage Aberdeen was reluctant to declare war. On 26 March, the eve of the British declaration, he told the Queen and Prince Albert that he had been ‘dragged into a war’ by Palmerston, who had the support of the press and public opinion. Three months earlier, the Queen had shared Aberdeen’s reluctance to commit British troops to the defence of the Turks. But now she saw the necessity of war, as she and Albert both explained to the Prime Minister:
We both repeated our conviction that it was necessary now, which he could not deny, and I observed that I thought we could not have avoided it, even if there had been mistakes and misfortunes, that the power and encroachments of Russia must be resisted. He could not see this, and thought it was a ‘bugbear’ – that the only Power to be feared was France! – that the 3 Northern Powers ought to keep together, though he could not say on what basis. Of course we were unable to agree with him, and spoke of the state Germany had been placed in by the Empr Nicholas & the impossibility of looking upon the present times as the former ones. Everything has changed. Ld Aberdeen did not like to agree in this, saying that no doubt in a short time this country would have changed its feelings regarding the war, and would be all for Peace.49
What she meant by ‘everything has changed’ is not entirely clear. Perhaps she was thinking of the fact that France had joined in Britain’s ultimatum to the Russians and that the first British and French troops had already set sail for Turkey. Or perhaps, like Albert, she thought the time had come to involve the German states in a European war against Russia, whose invasion of the principalities represented a new and present danger to the Continent. But it is also possible that she had in mind the xenophobic press campaign against the Prince Consort – a constant worry in her journal in these months – and had come to realize that a short victorious war would secure public support for the monarchy.
That evening the Queen gave a small family ball to celebrate the birthday of her cousin, the Duke of Cambridge, who was shortly to depart for Constantinople to take up the command of the British 1st Division. Count Vitzthum von Eckstadt, Saxon Minister to London, was invited to the balclass="underline"
The Queen took an active part in the dances, including a Scotch reel with the Duke of Hamilton and Lord Elgin, both of whom wore the national dress. As I had given up waltzing, the Queen danced a quadrille with me, and spoke to me with the most amiable unconstraint of the events of the day, telling me she would be compelled the next morning, to her great regret, to declare war against Russia.
The following morning – a day before the French made their own declaration of war on Russia – the Queen’s declaration was read out by Clarendon in Parliament. As the great historian of the Crimean War Alexander Kinglake wrote (and his words could be applied to any war):
The labour of putting into writing the grounds for a momentous course of action is a wholesome discipline for statesmen; and it would be well for mankind if, at a time when the question were really in suspense, the friends of a policy leading towards war were obliged to come out of the mist of oral intercourse and private notes, and to put their view into a firm piece of writing.
If such a document had been recorded by those responsible for the Crimean War, it would have disclosed that their real aim was to reduce the size and power of Russia for the benefit of ‘Europe’ and the Western powers in particular, but this could not be said in the Queen’s message, which spoke instead in the vaguest terms of defending Turkey, without any selfish interests, ‘for the cause of right against injustice’.50
As soon as the declaration became public, Church leaders seized upon the war as a righteous struggle and crusade. On Sunday, 2 April pro-war sermons were preached from pulpits up and down the land. Many of them were published in pamphlet form, some even selling tens of thousands of copies, for this was an age when preachers had the status of celebrities in both the Anglican and Nonconformist Church.51 In Trinity Chapel in Conduit Street, Mayfair, in London, the Reverend Henry Beamish told his congregation that it was a ‘Christian duty’ for England