Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/347

CHAP. IX.

I think it may be said to contain, and the evident good feeling that breaks out in its concluding sentences. (⁷⁸)

Eagerness of the Government, including Lord Panmure, to remove the Headquarter Staff. If the Government scarce acted in earnest when ostensibly attacking their general, there was no want of bitter reality m their determination to expiate the winter calamities by sacrificing to public anger Lord Raglans Headquarter Staff; and into this chase after 'victims ' the new Minister threw himself with unbecoming zeal. To his honour, indeed, he with others resisted the inclination of Lord Palmerston and some of his closer followers in the Cabinet, who would have liked to enforce a change of the officers surrounding Lord Raglan by a sheer exertion of power, without the assent of the Commander, and even in the teeth of his protest; but it must be added — our public men in those days were not at all brave against clamour — that the chief's earnestly declared approval of the services rendered him by his Staff at Head- quarters was by none of the Ministers held to be a sufficing ground for not trying — in one way or other — to cause the baneful change. Those who made it a condition that Lord Eaglan's assent should be obtained, were willing, nevertheless, to see his assent extorted from him by violent Government pressure.

The difficulty that stood in their way But in the way of this displacement of Lord Raglan's Headquarter Staff there happily stood one grave obstacle. The outcry had singled out the Quartermaster-General as the functionary to be offered in sacrifice, and it so happened that