The Siege of London (Posteritas)/Chapter 1

by Posteritas

 

THE SIEGE OF LONDON.

CHAPTER I.

England's political mistakes.—The Egyptian muddle.—Alarming signs in the foreign political sky.

T is not our purpose here to enter fully into the series of extraordinary events which led up to the gigantic disaster, whereby the English nation was crushed into the dust, and the power and might of England all but utterly destroyed. A brief recapitulation is, however, necessary, in order that the reader may be able to fully comprehend the nature of the stupendous changes that were wrought in an astonishingly brief period. The events with which we have to deal lie too near our own time for one to write dispassionately or altogether impartially. We shall, nevertheless, endeavour to confine ourselves to truthfully recording the circumstances, and to disassociate that record from any display of bias.

As is well known, the Conservatives had been swept from power by an outburst of popular feeling, due, in a very large measure, to the fervid declamation of the Opposition leader, Mr. Gladstone, during his Midlothian campaign,—a campaign that is now historically known as "a Pilgrimage of Passion." The marvellous powers of oratory possessed by Mr. Gladstone had often been used with telling effect against his opponents; but he excelled himself on this occasion, with the result that, utterly indifferent to the logic of facts and blind to sophistry, the country went with him, and he was returned to power with a large majority.

The Liberals came into office pledged to "Retrenchment and Reform." It was a false cry, as time has now proved, but it answered its purpose. Their very first acts were marked by a fatuity that seems difficult to understand, even at this distance of time. It is clear that much of it was due to party rancour, and to an unworthy jealousy of that remarkable statesman the Earl of Beaconsfield.

Events in Afghanistan had led to a war between the Ameer of that country and England; and, by a series of brilliant military exploits worthy of England's best days, the British power had not only been maintained, but the seizure of Candahar and other important strategical points ensured the safety of the Indian Empire so long as they were adequately held. The reversal of the Beaconsfield policy, however, had been a Radical trump card, and it had gone a long way towards giving them the political game. One of the first acts, therefore, of the new Government was to give up Candahar, and to retire from that "Scientific Frontier," which had cost so many gallant lives and so much blood to delimit. The fatal error made by the Liberals in this matter is now too well known, and needs no further comment here; but, as was subsequently proved, it was only the beginning of a series of startling mistakes which have hardly any parallel in history.

The affairs in South Africa now began to engage attention, and caused some anxiety. The Boers, no doubt deriving encouragement from remarks made during the "Pilgrimage of Passion," began to clamour for independence, although two-thirds of them at least had consented to annexation by the preceding English Government. Their daring and defiance increased to such an extent, and the outrages they committed became such a crying scandal, that the British Government was forced to send an expedition against them, which ultimately culminated in a crushing defeat of the British arms on Majuba Hill. After this defeat the English Government, to the astonishment of the world, entered into negotiations with the victorious Boers, and their independence was given back to them, under the suzerainty, however, of Great Britain. In a very short time, it became evident that the treaty entered into by the Boers was not likely to be long respected, and, chafing under the power, although nominal, which the new conditions imposed, a deputation was sent to London to confer with the Secretary for Colonial Affairs, who was then Lord Derby. His lordship had recently seceded from the Conservative ranks, and had taken office under the Liberal Government but his whole policy was marked by astonishing weakness, and an absence of that firmness and power to grasp the true situation which had hitherto been characteristic of English statesmen. The consequence was, the Boer delegates succeeded in obtaining a new Convention, which provided for their complete independence, on condition that they respected certain reserves in the Transvaal which were under British protection. Thoughtful and far-seeing men said at the time that this Convention would never be respected. The history of the Boers proved that their promises were not to be relied upon, and that their arrogant, domineering spirit would brook no authority that sought to restrain them from depredation or acquiring by force that which they had no right to possess. These views unhappily proved too true, and the Convention was torn up. But events in Egypt diverted public attention for a time from South Africa. A False Prophet, calling himself the Mahdi, had raised the Soudan in revolt, and Egypt was threatened. The extraordinary policy pursued by the British Government, who, having bombarded Alexandria, crushed the power of the arch-mutineer Arabi Pacha, in a brilliant feat of arms at Tel-el-Kebir, and propped the Khedive on his throne by means of British bayonets, talked of retiring, and practically leaving the country to govern itself. It was a "would and I would not" policy; a policy of letting "I would" wait upon "I dare not"; a policy, in short, of vacillation, procrastination, of weakness and stupidity, if not of absolute cowardice. Mr. Gladstone had never liked Egypt, and displayed a morbid nervousness to get out of the country. But Fate, like a Nemesis, said "No" to this. The "Mahdi's mission" was rallying a host to his standard, arid as long as that was so, Egypt could not be considered safe. But the most extraordinary thing is, that the English Government, who had come into office strongly pledged to peace, and "whose whole policy was tinged with Quakerism and "Peace at any price" went out of their way to shed the blood of the Soudanese like water. The burning sands of the desert were sodden with the blood of these wretched people, whose only crime was that, with fanatical enthusiasm, they were struggling for their freedom. But an Egyptian army of 10,000 men, under the command of a distinguished English commander, General Hicks, marching against the rebels by consent of the English Government, had been caught in ambuscade and slaughtered, and that deed had to be revenged, in spite of the fact that General Hicks and his army had no right to have been sent to the Soudan at all. All this slaughter, however, and the unspeakable suffering and misery that followed in its train, effected no purpose, beyond proving the magnificent valour of the Arabs and the splendid fighting powers of the British soldier. The Mahdi's power was not crushed; the British troops were ordered to retire, and garrison after garrison in the Soudan were given over to rapine and slaughter.

At length, in sheer despair, the Gladstone Cabinet sent a very notable and illustrious Englishman, whose name will live in history as long as the world shall last, into the Soudan, on a solitary mission, the success of which was, absolutely dependent on the unique genius and remarkable mental power of one man. General Gordon was a wonderful man, and the Liberals hoped that he would effect wonderful things. So he would have done, in all probability, had he been adequately supported, but the fatuous policy of the English Government was still pursued, and the voice of Birmingham was allowed to make itself heard above the Imperial voice of an Empire upon which the sun was said never to set.

General Gordon went into the desert on his grand and lonely mission, and then the silence and the mystery of the desert set its seal upon his movements for months. Then other and equally absorbing events attracted the attention of the country. In all parts of the world the Government were making grave blunders. The social fabric of the Indian Empire had been shaken to its foundations by the remarkably short-sighted and sentimental policy of the Governor-General, Lord Ripon, who had been sent out by the Gladstone Cabinet, to replace his predecessor Lord Lytton. The Boers in the Transvaal were laughing British power to scorn, and indulging their proclivities for rapine, fire, and slaughter. The hereditary hatred of France for England was showing itself in an alarming way. Russia was creeping nearer and nearer to the Afghan frontier; and Germany had been seized with a mania for colonising, which promised to be productive of serious complications for England.

The history of the world hardly, and the history of England certainly does not afford another example of a powerful Government of a mighty empire blindly and, it may almost be said now, wilfully endangering its diplomatic relations, and ravelling its policy into such intricate knots that even the most profound optimist was bound to admit the strong probability that they would have to be cut with the sword.

We of the present day, looking back to that eventful time, cannot but marvel that men could be found who were willing to trifle with the destinies of a great nation. The condition of British interests was such that they required to be watched and guarded by a bold, a vigorous, a decisive, and yet not aggressive policy. Further extension of the empire was neither desirable nor sought for; but the power of the British flag ought to have been maintained wherever it waved. There were those, however, who thought otherwise—men who could calmly witness the flag trodden under foot and trailed in the dust by insolent Boers, and yet raise no protesting voice. A strongly radical—nay, a democratic spirit had for some time been manifesting itself, and the pusillanimous doctrines as taught by John Bright, John Morley, and a few kindred spirits, were allowed to take the place of right coupled with might, which had hitherto been regarded as peculiarly an English creed. John Bright was a central figure of the era we are dealing with, but for no other reason than that he had been gifted with matchless powers of oratory. As a statesman he was an utter failure, and the cause of this might be epigrammatically expressed in the phrase that he was a Quaker first, a patriot after, and John Bright before everything. The only thing he had ever proved himself consistent in was his utter inconsistency, while his whole career had been marked by a violence of language and an aptitude for personal abuse which were tolerated only because they came from John Bright. But this very fact only serves to show how effectually he was able to gloze his fellow-men by the dangerous glamour of his rhetoric. He had preached the doctrine that "Force was no remedy" in reference to Irish affairs, and there is little doubt that that doctrine had been an incentive for Irish agitators to demand from England impossible conditions, and to seek to enforce that demand by dastardly outrage. Ireland, in fact, was a terrible thorn in the side of the Gladstone administration, which, in its endeavour to cope with the hydra-headed difficulties of that unhappy country, resorted to the most severe repressive measures; and, stooping from its high dignity, and in order to acquire still further political power, it entered into a compact with so-called Irish patriots—men who had been described as "being steeped to the lips in treason." But if that were so, then the British Government itself must have been guilty of treason in making a compact with traitors. That compact opened the doors of Kilmainham jail, into which many of the patriots had been cast; but, like the opening of Pandora's box, it was destined to only let loose evil. It is a remarkable fact, and one which, being read now by the light of history, seems incomprehensible, that this powerful Government had, after more than four years' rule, utterly failed to carry to a successful issue any policy it had initiated. It had, in fact, brought the country into a condition that caused grave uneasiness amongst those who were disposed to set a higher value on the honour and dignity of their flag than on the plums of office. In all parts of the world events were taking place that were well calculated to arouse alarm in the breasts of patriotic Englishmen. But the Gladstone Cabinet seems to have been actuated rather by the instincts of a vestry, than by the high dignity and conscious might of an Imperial Government.