with England and France binding herself not to negotiate
separately with the Czar; to defend the principalities which she had
occupied in accordance with her compact with Turkey, after their evacuation
by the Russians; and to deliberate with the Powers as to the best course to
be pursued if the war were not ended by January 1, 1855. The treaty was
intended merely to thwart Piedmont.

1855

[Sidenote: Crimean war scandals]

[Sidenote: Parliamentary inquiry]

Complaints of neglect and maladministration in the Crimea waxed ever
louder. The reports of the war correspondents at the front aroused
indignation in London and Paris. Now the London "Times" came out with a
leading article which produced a profound sensation throughout England. The
burden of it was a bitter complaint that "the noblest army ever sent from
our shores has been sacrificed to the grossest mismanagement. Incompetency,
lethargy, aristocratic hauteur, official indifference, favor, routine,
perverseness and stupidity reign, revel, and riot in the camp before
Sebastopol, in the harbor of Balaklava, in the hospitals of Scutari, and
how much nearer home we do not venture to say. We say it with extremest
reluctance, no one sees or hears anything of the Commander-in-Chief.
Officers who landed on the 14th of September, and have incessantly been
engaged in all the operations of the siege, are not even acquainted with
the face of their commander." The exposures of the "Times" were taken up in
Parliament. Already Lord John Russell had urged upon the Earl of Aberdeen
the necessity of having the War Minister in the House of Commons, and
recommended that Lord Palmerston should be intrusted with the portfolio of
war. The Prime Minister refused to recommend the proposed change to the
Queen, on the ground that it would be unfair to the Duke of Newcastle,
against whom, he said, no positive defect had been proved. As soon as
Parliament assembled on January 25, the opposition moved for a commission
of inquiry "into the condition of our army before Sebastopol, and into the
conduct of those departments whose duty it has been to minister to the
wants of that army." Lord John Russell at once wrote to Lord Aberdeen that
since this motion could not be resisted, and was sure to involve a censure
of the War Department, he preferred to tender his resignation. The
retirement of the leaders of the House of Commons served to paralyze the
government's resistance. After a debat