A Brief History of Life in Victorian Britain (41 page)

The Crimean was the first war in which the public were given a relatively clear idea of what the fighting was like. In the same way that, in the following century, television brought the Vietnam War into the living-rooms of America, the electric telegraph brought the Crimean conflict to the front parlours of Britain. It was made real for those at home by illustrated newspapers, published photographs and by the forcefully
written despatches of William Howard Russell, war correspondent for
The Times
. There had never before been so much written and visual information available. Because the British had embraced the war with such enthusiasm, and had been so appalled by its conduct, they followed its developments attentively. They sympathized with the plight of freezing, ill-clad soldiers, felt outrage at the conditions in which the wounded were left in the hospitals, and applauded the work of Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole to alleviate their suffering. This feeling of concern for the private soldier would evaporate once the war was over, but it marked something of a new departure for public opinion.

Mrs Seacole, a West Indian hotelier, travelled to the war at her own expense. She pioneered the concept of ‘comforts for the troops’ by providing them with refreshments and leisure facilities at the battlefront. She also took her considerable nursing skills into the trenches and treated the wounded within sight of the enemy. ‘Mother Seacole’ became so loved by the troops that she was cheered wherever she went.

Miss Nightingale became a national heroine. The condition of the wounded was the greatest scandal of the war, and she managed to rectify the situation almost single-handed. Though she was assisted by a band of nurses, it was she who organized their transport, brought the funds and equipment that created clean and pleasant wards, and dealt tactfully with the senior Army administration, while undertaking in person an exhaustive amount of nursing and cleaning. Because this work received a great deal of attention she gained, in the process, recognition for nursing as an honourable profession, and established principles of hygiene and patient care that were adopted thereafter. These women represented yet another Victorian revolution, the only useful legacy of a pointless and harrowing war.

The public was aware of the hardships faced by the troops, but they were, through the same channels, also aware of the bravery of many individuals. Medals were not yet commonplace in the British Army. The first generally available one had been awarded to those who fought at Waterloo. In 1847 a Military General Service Medal was authorized for those who had served in the Napoleonic Wars. A similar award was struck for naval personnel to cover actions up to the bombardment of Acre in 1840. A campaign medal was to be given for the Crimea, but in 1856 a new gallantry award was instituted. Conceived by Prince Albert but named after the Queen, the Victoria Cross was to be given to men of any rank who performed a single act of valour. The creation of this medal had been inspired by a particular deed. On 21 June 1854, HMS
Hecla
was attacking the Bomarsund fortresses in the Baltic. The ship was only 500 yards offshore when a live shell clattered onto the deck, its fuse hissing. Charles Davis Lucas, a twenty-year-old Irishman, picked up the red-hot projectile and threw it overboard seconds before it exploded. He received the first of the new medals almost exactly three years later, though he did not lack other rewards, for he had been promoted immediately from mate to lieutenant. He was ultimately to become a rear-admiral.

As the Queen stated, the medal was not an order like those that were in her gift. It brought with it no title and had no classes (unlike its French equivalent, the Legion of Honour). It could not be gained through position or privilege, and this was significant, given the aristocratic nature of the Army leadership. Not even the sovereign herself was entitled to it, and no member of the Royal Family has ever held it. Victoria Crosses were bestowed by the Queen in public ceremonies, in Hyde Park or at Horse Guards, and the actions for which they were given were extensively detailed in the press, a process which strengthened the bond between the armed forces and society.

The siege of Sebastopol was the largest event of the war. It lasted a year, from September 1854 to September 1855, before the Russians withdrew from the city. The whole enterprise had been pointless, wasting vast quantities of ammunition and causing needless death and misery among the troops encamped around its defences. It was somehow characteristic of this hopelessly muddled war that, though the fighting was over, it was a further six months before peace was signed.

Though the soldiery might still have merited Wellington’s dismissive comment, they did not compare badly with their counterparts in the mass armies of Europe, the French and Prussians. They were of noticeably higher quality than many of their opponents, as one Russian officer – the writer Leo Tolstoy – observed when he encountered wounded British and French prisoners while serving in the artillery at Sebastopol:

Every soldier among them is proud of his position and has a sense of his value, he feels he is a positive asset to his army. He has good weapons and he knows how to use them, he is young, he has ideas about politics and art and this gives him a feeling of dignity. On our side; senseless training, useless weapons, ill treatment, delay everywhere, ignorance and shocking hygiene and food stifle the last spark of pride.
⁹

They also showed the combination of aggressiveness and endurance that had typified them for generations. As so often before and since, it was Highland soldiers that made the greatest impression on the enemy. The sight of kilted soldiers, advancing to the slow and menacing tunes of bagpipes, with their tall feather bonnets and short ‘skirts’ was so outlandish that it caused panic among the Russians. (When ‘kilties’ again saw action in the Indian Mutiny their opponents, watching them advance in the distance, believed that the British had run
out of men and were sending women. This impression will not have lasted long, for Highlanders were as fierce as they looked.)

Though it has been commonplace since the end of the Crimean War to see it as a scarcely mitigated disaster, modern scholarship has offered a more positive view. So much was weighted against the British – the distance from home, the bad communications, the hostile terrain – that any success (they and their allies won, after all!) seemed an outstanding achievement. There were unquestionable, and serious, shortcomings in supply and medical care, but these were largely solved, for lessons were quickly learned. Though the British were not as successful in the war as the French, their army was brought to a state of – relative – efficiency and even excellence by its end. War, as always, is the quickest and most effective teacher of armies.

It was increasingly clear that efficiency was hampered by the purchase system through which commissions were obtained, for they were seen as creating an officer corps that was untested, aloof, arrogant and uneducated. Prices varied according to the social ‘smartness’ of the unit, but at the time of the Crimean War a captaincy cost about £3,500. A majority was in the region of £5,000 and the rank of lieutenant colonel might cost up to £9,000 if it were in the Guards. When the scale of Crimean ineptitude became apparent, there was talk of abolishing the sale of commissions, but it took an entire generation – until 1871 – before this was done. It must be said that purchase of rank by no means inevitably led to incompetence. Many members of old military families had imbibed enough from their backgrounds to make adequate officers. For those who did not enter a regiment directly by recommendation there was training provided at military schools – Woolwich and Sandhurst. The former, if not the latter, was adequate.

The Crimean conflict was followed by an even more distressing event farther from home. The sub-continent of India – like all other British territories in the East – was governed by the Honourable East India Company, a commercial enterprise that had first traded with, and then administered, these countries. Based in London, the Company had such power that it minted its own coinage, protected its merchant fleet with its own warships, and garrisoned its provinces with its own army. The soldiery – a private soldier was called a sepoy – was recruited from among the native peoples. The officers were British, trained at the Company’s military college in Addiscombe. They were despised by officers of the regular British Army (‘Royals’), who saw them as social inferiors, for there was no purchase of commissions in the Indian Army, but most were effective officers. Their troops were also largely loyal and efficient, though there were issues that caused discontent among the disparate castes and religions: they resented attempts to convert them to Christianity; they objected to a number of land reforms; they were annoyed by the discontinuation of certain allowances.

The final straw was the introduction of new cartridges that were alleged to be greased with cow or pig fat. One animal was sacred to Hindus, the other unacceptable to Moslems. All cartridges were paper-covered and the end had to be bitten off before use. For adherents of either religion this was unthinkable. The authorities realized this, and sought to ensure that the cartridges were issued only to British troops, but it was too late to change the perception. On 9 May 1857, Indian soldiers in Meerut refused to load their rifles and were jailed. The next day, the sepoys in the garrison mutinied and the first of several hideous massacres began.

The uprising spread from Meerut to Delhi and then Cawnpore, where two hundred women and children were murdered after British troops had surrendered. At Lucknow, both soldiers and civilians survived only because they succeeded in barricading themselves inside the Residency, where they sat out a lengthy siege until relieved by British forces. Delhi was recaptured only after bitter street fighting, and it was the summer of 1858 before order was restored.

The Mutiny had not drawn in all Indian troops. Indeed only the sepoys of Bengal were involved. The ferocity of these rebels, however, had persuaded opinion at home that the whole management of India would have to be reconsidered. The East India Company was liquidated, its military element transferred into the British Army and its administration given over to government civil servants answerable both to a Viceroy and to the India Office in Whitehall. The Queen issued a proclamation that treated the rebels with some clemency – guaranteeing, for instance, freedom of worship and respect for religious customs, and these things became enshrined in the India Act of 1858.

For those who had taken part in the Mutiny, however, there was a rougher kind of justice. Not only was British feeling understandably outraged by their atrocities, but it was thought necessary to stamp out any similar tendencies for the future. Rebels were executed with a savagery that matched their own, though the British pointed out, as evidence of their greater civilization, that they spared women and children while their opponents had not. The Lucknow Residency – ruined and pock-marked by shells but with the Union Flag flying above it – was preserved as a memorial until the British departed in 1947. A monument at Cawnpore, built on the site of a well into which the bodies of women and children had been thrown, also remained until Independence. No Indian was allowed to enter it.

The Indian Army was rebuilt, though many of the old officers, disgruntled at the pay and status they were offered, departed. It had much to do in the northern reaches of the sub-continent. In this mountainous terrain there were constant feuds, skirmishes and minor rebellions that necessitated the sending of punitive expeditions to restore order or simply show the flag (between 1858 and 1897 there were thirty-four of these). Had they not been deadly affairs – for the tribesmen were extremely warlike, as well as crack shots – there would have been something of a sense of fun about these expeditions. They were certainly regarded by ambitious young officers as a means of earning both medals and promotion. The most testing campaigns in the region were those against Afghan tribesmen.

This mountain kingdom was not a British possession, simply a neighbour that had to be kept under control. The country lay between British India and the Russian Empire which, expanding south-eastwards by the 1880s at a rate of twenty-five miles a day, posed a serious threat. Afghanistan was impossible to conquer or to police effectively, and even its borders were not defined. Britain wanted this buffer state between its own and Russian territory, and to ensure friendly relations insisted on sending an envoy to the court of the Amir. When this request was refused, the British sent an expedition to install him. He was murdered a few months later, and another expedition was then sent to invade the country. Commanded by Lieutenant-General Roberts, this force advanced on the capital, Kabul, in December 1879. They defeated an Afghan army and put in place a more sympathetic Amir. Hearing that another British force was besieged in Kandahar, in the south of the country, Roberts’ men set off at once on an epic speed-march through rough terrain and fierce extremes of temperature. Arriving exhausted, they nevertheless drove off the attackers and raised
the siege. Roberts – who had already won the VC in India – became a hero in Britain, and was made a baronet.

It must be remembered that, from the 1870s (by which time memory of the Crimea and the Mutiny had faded) until the rude shock of the Boer conflict, war came to be seen by many Britons as something of a lark. With no ‘civilized’ enemy to fight, for Russia – the obvious candidate for several reasons – was unwilling to pick a quarrel, the Queen’s soldiers devoted their energies to colonial conflicts. For the public at home these were distant, small-scale affairs which they expected their soldiers to win without difficulty. Casualties were light, because the enemy were always at a disadvantage. The British troops, after all, had not only discipline and valour on their side but modern weaponry – which by 1889 included the Maxim machine gun.

Colonial wars provided excitement, cheaply won victories, enhanced prestige and a sense that Britain’s mission in the world was being fulfilled. The exploits of generals and young officers were thrillingly told in fiction (
With Kitchener in the Sudan, With Buller in Natal
) and newspaper reports made celebrities of many commanders. Sir Garnet Wolseley, who defeated the armies of the Asanti king in West Africa and whose troops made yet another epic march in abominable conditions, was a textbook example. A dapper little man of distinguished appearance, he became highly popular, and was commemorated in contemporary slang with the expression ‘All Sir Garnet!’, meaning that all was well.