Chapter 23

In 1854 came the outbreak of public feeling against Prince Albert and Stockmar, as his friend and adviser, to which we have referred at the beginning of this article. The Prince's lamented death caused such a reaction of feeling in his favor that it is difficult now to recall to recollection the degree of unpopularity under which he at one time laboured. Some of the causes of this unpopularity are correctly stated by the author of the present memoir. The Prince was a foreigner, his ways were not those of Englishmen, he did not dress like an Englishman, shake hands like an Englishman. He was suspected of "Germanizing" tendencies, very offensive to high churchmen, especially in philosophy and religion. He displeased the Conservatives by his Liberalism, the coarser Radicals by his pietism and culture. He displeased the fast set by his strict morality; they called him slow, because he did not bet, gamble, use bad language, keep an opera dancer. With more reason he displeased the army by meddling, under the name of a too courtly Commander-in-Chief, with professional matters which he could not understand. But there was a cause of his unpopularity scarcely appreciable by the German author of this memoir. He had brought with him the condescending manner of a German Prince. The English prefer a frank manner; they will bear a high manner in persons of sufficient rank, but a condescending manner they will not endure; nor will any man or woman but those who live in a German Court. So it was, however, that the Prince, during his life, though respected by the people for his virtues, and by men of intellect for his culture, was disliked and disparaged by "Society," and especially by the great ladies who are at the head of it. The Conservatives, male and female, had a further grudge against him as the reputed friend of Peel, who was the object of their almost demoniac hatred.

The part of a Prince Consort is a very difficult one to play. In the case of Queen Anne's husband, Prince George of Denmark, nature solved the difficulty by not encumbering his Royal Highness with any brains. But Prince Albert had brains, and it was morally impossible that he should not exercise a power not contemplated by the Constitution. He did so almost from the first, with the full knowledge and approbation of the Ministers, who had no doubt the sense to see what could not be avoided had better be recognised and kept under control. But in 1851 the Court quarrelled with Palmerston, who was dismissed from office, very properly, for having, in direct violation of a recent order of the Queen, communicated to the French Ambassador his approval of the coup d'etat, without the knowledge of Her Majesty or the Cabinet. In 1854 came the rupture with Russia, which led to the Crimean war. Palmerston, in correspondence with his friend the French Emperor, was working for a war, with a separate French alliance. Prince Albert, in conjunction with Aberdeen, was trying to keep the Four Powers together, and by their combined action to avert a war. Palmerston and his partizans appealed through the press to the people, among whom the war feeling was growing strong, against the unconstitutional influence of the Prince Consort and his foreign advisers. Thereupon arose a storm of insane suspicion and fury which almost recalled the fever of the Popish Plot. Thousands of Londoners collected round the Tower to see the Prince's entry into the State Prison, and dispersed only upon being told that the Queen had said that if her husband was sent to prison she would go with him. Reports were circulated of a pamphlet drawn up under Palmerston's eye, and containing the most damning proofs of the Prince's guilt, the publication of which it was said the Prince had managed to prevent, but of which six copies were still in existence. The pamphlet was at last printed _in extenso_ in the _Times_, and the bottled lightning proved to be ditchwater. Of course Stockmar, the "spy," the "agent of Leopold," did not escape denunciation, and though it was proved he had been at Coburg all the time, people persisted in believing he was concealed about the Court, coming out only at night. The outcry was led by the _Morning Post_, Lord Palmerston's personal organ, and the _Morning Advertiser_, the bellicose and truly British journal of the Licensed Victuallers; but these were supported by the Conservative press, and by some Radical papers. A debate in Parliament broke the waterspout as quickly as it had been formed. The people had complained with transports of rage that the Prince Consort exercised an influence unrecognised by the Constitution in affairs of State. They were officially assured that he _did_; and they at once declared themselves perfectly satisfied.

Our readers would not thank us for taking them again through the question of the Spanish marriages, a transaction which Stockmar viewed in the only way in which the most criminal and the filthiest of intrigues could be viewed by an honest man and a gentleman; or through the question of German unity, on which his opinions have been at once ratified and deprived of their practical interest by events. The last part of his life he passed in Germany, managing German Royalties, especially the Prince and Princess Frederick William of Prussia, for whom he had conceived a profound affection. His presence, we are told, was regarded by German statesmen and magnates as "uncanny," and Count K., on being told that it was Stockmar with whom an acquaintance had just crossed a bridge, asked the acquaintance why he had not pitched the Baron into the river. That Stockmar did not deserve such a fate, the testimony cited at the beginning of this paper is sufficient to prove. He was the unrecognised Minister of Constitutional Sovereigns who wanted, besides their regular Parliamentary advisers, a personal adviser to attend to the special interests of royalty. It was a part somewhat clandestine, rather equivocal, and not exactly such as a very proud man would choose. But Stockmar was called to it by circumstances, he was admirably adapted for it, and if it sometimes led him further than he was entitled or qualified to go, he played it on the whole very well.

THE EARLY YEARS OF THE CONQUEROR OF QUEBEC

A discussion which was raised some time ago by a very pleasant article of Professor Wilson in the _Canadian Monthly_ disclosed the fact that Wright's "Life of Wolfe," though it had been published some years, was still very little known. It is not only the best but the only complete life of the soldier, so memorable in Canadian annals, whom Chatham's hand launched on our coast, a thunderbolt of war, and whose victory decided that the destiny of this land of great possibilities should be shaped not by French but by British hands. Almost all that is known about Wolfe is here, and it is well told. Perhaps the biographer might have enhanced the interest of the figure by a more vivid presentation of its historic surroundings. It is when viewed in comparison with an age which was generally one of unbelief, of low aims, of hearts hardened by vice, of blunted affections, of coarse excesses, and in the military sphere one of excesses more than usually coarse, of professional ignorance and neglect of duty among the officers, while the habits of the rank and file were those depicted in Hogarth's _March to Finckley_ that the life of this aspiring, gentle, affectionate, pure and conscientious soldier shines forth against the dark background like a star.

Squerryes Court, near Westerham, in Kent, is an ample and pleasant mansion in the Queen Anne style, which has long been in the possession of the Warde family--they are very particular about the _e_. In later times it was the abode of a memorable character in his way--old John Warde, the "Father of Fox-hunting." There it was that the greatest of all fox-hunters, Asheton Smithe, when on a visit to John Warde, rode Warde's horse _Blue Ruin_ over a frozen country through a fast run of twenty-five minutes and killed his fox. On the terrace stands a monument. It marks the spot where in 1741, James Wolfe, the son of Lieut-Col. Wolfe, of Westerham, then barely fourteen years of age, was playing with two young Wardes, when the father of the playmates approached and handed him a large letter "On His Majesty's Service" which, on being opened, was found to contain his commission in the army. We may be sure that the young face flushed with undisguised emotion. There cannot be a greater contrast than that which the frank, impulsive features, sanguine complexion, and blue eyes of Wolfe present to the power expressed in the commanding brow, the settled look, and the evil eye [Footnote: The late Lord Russell, who had seen Napoleon at Elba, used to say that there was something very evil in his eye.] of Napoleon.

James Wolfe was a delicate child, and though he grew energetic and fearless, never grew strong, or ceased to merit the interest which attaches to a gallant spirit in a weak frame. He escaped a public school, and without any forfeiture of the manliness which public schools are supposed exclusively to produce, retained his home affections and his tenderness of heart. He received the chief part of his literary education in a school at Greenwich, where his parents resided, and he at all events learned enough Latin to get himself a dinner, in his first campaign on the Continent, by asking for it in that language. He is grateful to his schoolmaster, Mr. Stebbings, and speaks of him with affection in afterlife. But no doubt his military intelligence, as well as his military tastes, was gained by intercourse with his father, a real soldier, who had pushed his way by merit in an age of corrupt patronage, and was Adjutant-General to Lord Cathcart's forces in 1740. Bred in a home of military duty, the young soldier saw before him a worthy example of conscientious attention to all the details of the profession--not only to the fighting of battles, but to the making of the soldiers with whom battles are to be fought.

Walpole's reign of peace was over, the "Patriots" had driven the nation into war, and the trade of Colonel Wolfe and his son was again in request. Before he got his commission, and when he was only thirteen years-and a-half old, the boy's ardent spirit led him to embark with his father as a volunteer in the ill-fated expedition to Carthagena. Happily, though he assured his mother that he was "in a very good state of health," his health was so far from being good that they were obliged to put him on shore at Portsmouth. Thus he escaped that masterpiece of the military and naval administration of the aristocracy, to the horrors of which his frail frame would undoubtedly have succumbed. His father saw the unspeakable things depicted with ghastly accuracy by Smollett, and warned his son never, if he could help it, to go on joint expeditions of the two services--a precept which the soldier of an island power would have found it difficult to observe.

Wolfe's mother had struggled to prevent her boy from going, and appealed to his love of her. It was a strong appeal, for he was the most dutiful of sons. The first in the series of his letters is one written to her on this occasion, assuring her of his affection and promising to write to her by every ship he meets. She kept all his letters from this one to the last written from the banks of the St. Lawrence. They are in the stiff old style, beginning "Dear Madam," and signed "dutiful;" but they are full of warm feeling, scarcely interrupted by a little jealousy of temper which there appears to have been on the mother's side.

Wolfe's first commission was in his father's regiment of marines, but he never served as a marine. He could scarcely have done so, for to the end of his life, he suffered tortures from sea-sickness. He is now an Ensign in Duroure's regiment of foot. We see him a tall slender boy of fifteen, in scarlet coat, folded back from the breast after the old fashion in broad lapels to display its white or yellow lining, breeches and gaiters, with his young face surmounted by a wig and a cocked hat edged with gold lace, setting off, colours in hand, with his regiment for the war in the Low Countries. If he missed seeing aristocratic management at Carthagena, he shall see aristocratic and royal strategy at Dettingen. His brother Ned, a boy still more frail than himself, but emulous of his military ardour, goes in another regiment on the same expedition.

The regiment was accidentally preceded by a large body of troops of the other sex, who landing unexpectedly by themselves at Ostend caused some perplexity to the Quartermaster. The home affections must have been strong which could keep a soldier pure in those days.

The regiment was at first quartered at Ghent, where, amidst the din of garrison riot and murderous brawls, we hear the gentle sound of Wolfe's flute, and where he studies the fortifications, already anxious to prepare himself for the higher walks of his profession. From Ghent the army moved to the actual scene of war in Germany, suffering of course on the march from the badness of the commissariat. Wolfe's body feels the fatigue and hardship. He "never comes into quarters without aching hips and thighs." But he is "in the greatest spirits in the world." "Don't tell me of a constitution" he said afterwards, when a remark was made on the weakness of a brother officer, "he has good spirits, and good spirits will carry a man through everything."

All the world knows into what a position His Martial Majesty King George II., with the help of sundry persons of quality, styling themselves generals, got the British army at Dettingen, and how the British soldier fought his way out of the scrape. Wolfe was in the thick of it, and his horse was shot under him. His first letter is to his mother--"I take the very first opportunity I can to acquaint you that my brother and self escaped in the engagement we had with the French, the 16th June last, and, thank God, are as well as ever we were in our lives, after not only being canonnaded two hours and three quarters, and fighting with small arms two hours and one quarter, but lay the two following nights upon our arms, whilst it rained for about twenty hours in the same time; yet are ready and as capable to do the same again." But this letter is followed by one to his father, which seems to us to rank among the wonders of literature. It is full of fire and yet as calm as a dispatch, giving a complete, detailed, and masterly account of the battle, and showing that the boy kept his head, and played the part of a good officer as well as of a brave soldier in his first field. The cavalry did indifferently, and there is a sharp soldiery criticism on the cause of its failure. But the infantry did better.

"The third and last attack was made by the foot on both sides. We advanced towards one another; our men in high spirits, and very impatient for fighting, being elated with beating the French Horse, part of which advanced towards us, while the rest attacked our Horse, but were soon driven back by the great fire we gave them. The Major and I (for we had neither Colonel nor Lieutenant-Colonel), before they came near, were employed in begging and ordering the men not to fire at too great a distance, but to keep it till the enemy should come near us; but to little purpose. The whole fired when they thought they could reach them, which had like to have ruined us. We did very little execution with it. As soon as the French saw we presented they all fell down, and when we had fired they got up and marched close to us in tolerable good order, and gave us a brisk fire, which put us into some disorder and made us give way a little, particularly ours and two or three more regiments who were in the hottest of it. However, we soon rallied again, and attacked them again with great fury, which gained us a complete victory, and forced the enemy to retire in great haste."

Edward distinguished himself, too. "I sometimes thought I had lost poor Ned, when I saw arms and legs and heads beat off close by him. He is called 'The old Soldier,' and very deservedly." Poor "Old Soldier," his career was as brief as that of a shooting star. Next year he dies, not by sword or bullet, but of consumption hastened by hardships--dies alone in a foreign land, "often calling on those who were dear to him;" his brother, though within reach, being kept away by the calls of duty and by ignorance of the danger. The only comfort was that he had a faithful servant, and that as he shared with his brother the gift of winning hearts, brother officers were likely to be kind. James, writing to their mother, some time after, shed tears over the letter.

Though only sixteen, Wolfe had acted as Adjutant to his regiment at Dettingen. He was regularly appointed Adjutant a few days after. His father, as we have seen, had been an Adjutant-General. Even under the reign of Patronage there was one chance for merit. Patronage could not do without adjutants. From this time, Wolfe, following in his father's footsteps, seems to have given his steady attention to the administrative and, so far as his very scanty opportunities permitted, to the scientific part of his profession.

Happily for him, he was not at Fontenoy. But he was at Laffeldt, and saw what must have been a grand sight for a soldier--the French infantry coming down from the heights in one vast column, ten battalions in front and as many deep, to attack the British position in the village. After all, it was not by the British, but by the Austrians and Dutch, that Laffeldt was lost. We have no account of the battle from Wolfe's pen. But he was wounded, and it is stated, on what authority his biographer does not tell us, that he was thanked by the Commander-in-Chief. Four years afterwards he said of his old servant, Roland: "He came to me at the hazard of his life, in the last action, with offers of his service, took off my cloak, and brought a fresh horse, and would have continued close by me had I not ordered him to retire. I believe he was slightly wounded just at that time, and the horse he held was shot likewise. Many a time has he pitched my tent and made the bed ready to receive me, half dead with fatigue, and this I owe to his diligence."

But between Dettingen and Laffeldt, Wolfe had been called to serve on a different scene. The Patriots, in bringing on a European war, had renewed the Civil War at home. Attached to the army sent against the Pretender, Wolfe (now major), fought under "Hangman Hawley," in the blundering and disastrous hustle at Falkirk, and, on a happier day, under Cumberland at Culloden. Some years afterwards he revisited the field of Culloden, and he has recorded his opinion that there also "somebody blundered," though he refrains from saying who. The mass of the rebel army, he seems to think, ought not to have been allowed to escape. These campaigns were a military curiosity. The Roman order of battle, evidently intended to repair a broken front, was perhaps a lesson taught the Roman tacticians on the day when their front was broken by the rush of the Celtic clans at Allia. That rush produced the same effect on troops unaccustomed to it and unprepared for it at Killiecrankie, and again at Preston Pans and Falkirk. At Culloden the Duke of Cumberland formed so as to repair a broken front, and when the rush came, but few of the Highlanders got beyond the second line. Killiecrankie and Preston Pans tell us nothing against Discipline.

There is an apocryphal anecdote of the Duke's cruelty and of Wolfe's humanity towards the wounded after the battle,--"Wolfe, shoot me that Highland scoundrel who thus dares to look on us with such contempt and insolence." "My commission is at your Royal Highness's disposal, but I never can consent to become an executioner." The anecdotist adds that from that day Wolfe declined in the favour and confidence of the Commander-in-Chief. But it happens that Wolfe did nothing of the kind. On the other hand, Mr. Wright does not doubt, nor is there any ground for doubting, the identity of the Major Wolfe who, under orders, relieves a Jacobite lady, named Gordon, of a considerable amount of stores and miscellaneous property accumulated in her house, but according to her own account belonging partly to other people; among other things, of a collection of pictures to make room for which, as she said, she had been obliged to send away her son, who was missing at that critical juncture. The duty was a harsh one, but seems, by Mrs. Gordon's own account, not to have been harshly performed. If any property that ought to have been restored was kept, it was kept not by Wolfe but by "Hangman Hawley." Still one could wish to see Wolfe fighting on a brighter field than Culloden, and engaged in a work more befitting a soldier than the ruthless extirpation of rebellion which ensued.

The young soldier is now thoroughly in love with his profession. "A battle gained," he says, "is, I believe the highest joy mankind is capable of receiving to him who commands; and his merit must be equal to his success if it works no change to his disadvantage." He dilates on the value of war as a school of character. "We have all our passions and affections roused and exercised, many of which must have wanted their proper employment had not suitable occasions obliged us to exert them. Few men are acquainted with the degrees of their own courage till danger prove them, and are seldom justly informed how far the love of honour and dread of shame are superior to the love of life." But now peace comes, the sword is consigned to rust, and in promotion Patronage resumes its sway. "In these cooler times the parliamentary interest and weight of particular families annihilate all other pretensions." The consequence was, of course, that when the hotter times returned they found the army officered by fine gentlemen, and its path, as Napier says, was like that of Satan in "Paradise Lost" through chaos to death.