Origin of the Crimean War--Russia and “the Sick Man”--Coercing Turkey--The Dispute about the Holy Places--A Monkish Quarrel--Contradictory Concessions--The Czar and the Tory Ministry of 1844--The Secret Compact with Peel, Wellington, and Aberdeen--Nesselrode’s Secret Memorandum--The Czar and Sir Hamilton Seymour--Lord John Russell’s Admissions--The Czar’s Bewilderment--Lord Stratford de Redcliffe--The Marplot at Constantinople--A Hectoring Russian Envoy--The Allied Fleets at Besika Bay--The Conference of Vienna--The Vienna Note--The Turkish Modifications--The Case for England--The British Fleet in the Euxine--A Caustic Letter of the Queen to Lord Aberdeen--Prince Albert’s Warnings--The Massacre of Sinope--Internal Feuds in the Cabinet--Lord John Russell’s Intrigues--Palmerston’s Resignation and Return--The Fire at Windsor--Birth of Prince Leopold--The Camp at Chobham--The Czar’s Daughters--Naval Review at Spithead--Royal Visit to Ireland. When Parliament was prorogued on the 20th of August, 1853, the following passage was inserted in the Queen’s Speech. “It is with deep interest and concern that her Majesty has viewed the serious misunderstanding which has recently risen between Russia and the Ottoman Porte. The Emperor of the French has united with her Majesty in earnest endeavours to reconcile differences, the continuance of which might involve Europe in war.” The war to which these differences led has ever been regarded by the Queen as the one heart-breaking calamity of her reign--a calamity hardly equalled by the great Mutiny, which, though it nearly wrecked her Eastern Empire, ended in establishing her authority more firmly than ever in her Asiatic dominions. No such tangible result as that followed, however, from the war into which the country was now being rapidly hurried. The results of this war--the battles, the siege operations, “the moving accidents by flood and field”--are all well known; but its causes are to this day very imperfectly understood by Englishmen. The folly and weakness of the Aberdeen Ministry, the influence of Prince Albert, the aggressive designs of Russia, the obstinacy and brutality of the Turks, the determination of Napoleon III. to foment a disturbance from which he might emerge with the status of a Ruler who had linked the throne of a parvenu in an alliance with an ancient monarchy, the factious desire of the Tory Opposition to entangle the Coalition Ministry in Foreign troubles--to all these causes have different writers traced the Crimean war. Let us, then, examine carefully, and closely, the development of the dispute that broke the peace of Europe in connection with the attitude to it--sometimes, it must be frankly said, a wrong attitude--which the Queen and the Court of St. James’s held. [Illustration: BAZAAR IN CONSTANTINOPLE.]