Crimean texts
[1] A.W.Kinglake, The Invasion of the Crimea, vol. IV
(3rd edn.), p.12
[2] A.W.Kinglake, op. cit, p.15
[3] A.W.Kinglake, op. cit, Appendix IV
[5] Unless attributed otherwise, all quotations are from the
letters of Lord Cardigan to A.W.Kinglake.
[6] Described by Tony Lucking in Cardigan v
Calthorpe, The War Correspondent, XIV.iii.24, XIV.iv.22
[7] Cecil Woodham-Smith, The Reason Why, Penguin
Books, 1958
[8] Cockburn C.J, Reg. v. Calthorpe, reported in The Justice of the Peace (12th. September 1863), p.583
Kinglake’s history contains some curious descriptions of Lord Cardigan’s character. We read that he ‘had the valuable quality of persistency’ 1 and was ‘of the species which repeats a hundred times over in the same words the same version of the same facts.’ 2 Later in the work, there is a hint that Kinglake was speaking from personal experience. He included, as appendices to his book, statements from some of the principals of the Crimean campaign. Lord Cardigan’s statement opens:
Having been kindly promised by Mr Kinglake that he will make me acquainted with the nature of the observations he intends to make in . . . his history of the Crimean war . . . 3
Kinglake did not allow this assertion to pass without comment. In a footnote he observed:
The promise above mentioned by Lord Cardigan was made under these circumstances: Several years ago . . . I sought to allay in some measure Lord Cardigan’s extreme anxiety by saying that, with respect to those points on which my opinion might be unfavourable to him I would call his attention to them before the publication should take place, so that he might have an opportunity of submitting to me any considerations tending to change my view . . . During the years which followed, Lord Cardigan (in his anxiety to do himself justice) honoured me with visits so frequent and with a correspondence so ample (on his part) that I considered the subject as exhausted. Accordingly, when he adverted to my promise, I submitted to him that considering the great extent to which I had given up my time to him since the period when the promise was made, it would be well for him to release me from it. He showed an indisposition to do this; and the slight feeling of anger which his persistency gave me tended much to counteract the pain that I felt in fulfilling the promise. 4
A recent discovery puts us in a better position to understand the author’s vexation. Nearly fifty letters from Lord Cardigan to Kinglake were among the remnants of the Kinglake archive found in the museum of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers at Bury, Lancashire, in 1998. They show that for five years, between the publication of his first two volumes in 1863 and the next two volumes in 1868, Kinglake was plagued by a host of missives from Lord Cardigan, winging their way to him from all directions. The noble Earl, whether in residence at his town house in Portman Square or at his Northamptonshire country seat of Deene Park, whether taking the sea air at Brighton or the waters at Ems-Nassau, whether at Cowes for the Regatta or in London for the Prince of Wales’ Levee, unfailingly found time from the social round to pen yet another submission in a determined effort to ensure that Kinglake would cast no slur upon him: ‘even allusion to such a subject as the slanders against me will inflict more or less of injury on my professional character and military fame.’ 5
The burden of the letters varied little. Apart from some brief mentions of cavalry patrols after the landing, the affair at the Bulganak, and what he told Lord Raglan after the cavalry got lost on the flank march, Cardigan’s constant subject, not surprisingly, was his own conduct during the charge of the Light Brigade. His concern was not without cause. He had already taken proceedings for libel against Colonel Calthorpe6, and, as he complained in one letter, that libel and Kinglake’s ‘Historical Work’ were being ‘mixed up together’ by some of the Press. The allegation that he had retired before reaching the Russian guns had been thoroughly scotched, but Cardigan feared that Kinglake would still attribute to him ‘a hasty or irregular retreat’, and he sought to persuade him not to do so.
His answer to the suggestion that he was at fault in not rallying his men behind the Russian guns was twofold:- there were no men, and there was no time.
The correspondence became almost an extension of the libel action, and Kinglake yet another judge to be persuaded by the production of documentary evidence, as letter after letter attests:
The documents which Cardigan was supplying to Kinglake were for the most part originals, and he wanted them back:
For a particularly treasured letter, more direct action was taken:
It is interesting to note that Kinglake took and kept the porter’s own note of instructions. One can but hope that the poor fellow had memorised it, and did not forget to telegraph.
The frequency and speed of the Victorian postal service served Cardigan well. It could cope easily with appointments at short notice:
He was not sure that the Continentals were up to British standards. Writing from Germany he suggested: ‘As the Foreign Posts are not quite so much to be relied upon as those at home I should feel very much obliged by your letting me know that you have received my letters.’ The aspersion was unjustified; his letters from abroad show that he received Kinglake’s replies, despite having supplied no more than Ems-Nassau as his address!
Kinglake tried a number of tactics to stem the deluge of letters. He asked Cardigan to provide details of his military career, a career, as he well knew, liberally endowed with scandal and removal from command. He underestimated the thickness of the Brudenell skin:
Why, asked Kinglake, had Cardigan not prosecuted Calthorpe’s witnesses for perjury? In less than ten days, the Earl had obtained and forwarded counsel’s opinion on the matter:
Disciples of Woodham-Smith7 will find no support in these letters. Kinglake asked Cardigan whether he thought ‘the affair of the Light Cavalry charge at Balaklava was in any way influenced by temper on Lord Lucan’s part or hostility towards’ him. This offered a perfect opportunity for Cardigan to claim that he could have averted the disaster if only Lucan had treated him properly. He forbore to do so, saying, ‘I do not think however in reply again to your question of the other day that any differences between Lord Lucan & myself in any way influenced the conduct or the result of battle of Balaklava.’
Moreover, while criticising Paget for losing control of the second line, he did not accuse Lucan, as he might justifiably have done, of contributing to its disorder by his hasty realignment of the 11th Hussars. In another letter, he made the somewhat double-edged remark that Scarlett’s evidence was valuable because his ‘attention to what was going on was uninterrupted by any active duty of his own,’ but he expressed no blame of Lucan for the Heavy Brigade’s inactivity. Other than the simple statement that Lucan ‘lost his head,’ and an allegation that he made an uncharitable comment on Nolan’s death, Cardigan’s letters contain not a hint of criticism of Lucan as cavalry commander at the battle of Balaklava, only of Lucan as perjuring witness in Cardigan v Calthorpe.
Occasionally the letters reveal a less confident Cardigan:
His fears proved to be justified. When Kinglake came to describe the result of the libel action, he was unfair. The judge had said, ‘I rejoice that this opportunity has been afforded of setting the noble Earl right in the estimation not only of his own profession, but of his countrymen in general.’ 8 Kinglake’s version of the result was that ‘the charge of having prematurely retreated remained still upheld against him.’ 9
Of Cardigan’s behaviour in the charge, Kinglake wrote that after removing himself from the Cossacks
The combats next recorded, which Cardigan’s retreat is alleged to have prevented him from sharing, start with the entry of the 17th Lancers and 13th Light Dragoons into the Russian battery. To imply that this did not take place until after Cardigan had withdrawn is a distortion so perverse as to suggest that Kinglake was abusing his function as historian to exact a bitter revenge on his importunate correspondent. By the time that this was published, however, Cardigan was past caring; he had died a few months earlier, on 28th March 1868.