Charles Graves - Mr. Punch's History of Modern England. Volume 2 of 4.—1857-1874

"Whether splendidly isolated or dangerously isolated, I will not now debate; but for my part I think splendidly isolated, because this isolation of England comes from her superiority."

These words were used by Sir Wilfrid Laurier in 1896, but they were prompted by a retrospect of the Victorian age, and may serve as a motto for the policy which governed England in her relations with foreign countries in the period surveyed in this volume.

There was serious friction with France in the early days of the Empire owing to the distrust of the Emperor's warlike preparations and his manipulation of the opportunities presented by his assistance of Italy in 1859. In the war of North and South in America, England as a whole "backed the wrong horse," and English diplomacy mishandled the obligations of our neutrality. We were on the verge of war over the Trent case, and the slackness of the Government in failing to detain the Alabama burdened the country with a costly legacy of moral and intellectual damage – to say nothing of pecuniary loss.

Popular sentiment was strongly anti-Prussian in the war on Denmark in 1864; misgivings of Prussian aggression were heightened by the crushing defeat of Austria in 1866 and the French débâcle in 1870. Yet the old diplomacy, whatever its shortcomings, kept us out of European wars. The Court as well as the Government strove hard for peace in 1859; the Queen's influence was successfully exerted to prevent interference on behalf of Denmark in 1864, which had been foreshadowed in a menacing message to Austria from Lord Palmerston. After the defeat of the Austrians at Sadowa in 1866, Disraeli justified abstention from unnecessary interference in European politics, on the ground that England had outgrown the European Continent, and was really more of an Asiatic than a European power. With Gladstone the restraining motive was economic rather than anti-imperialist, though his distrust of a "spirited foreign policy" became more pronounced in later years. But under Liberals and Conservatives alike, non-intervention in European wars remained the unbroken rule, and the only serious military operations undertaken between 1857 and 1874 were those involved in the suppression of a great revolt within our own dominions. The Chinese quarrel was the only cloud on the horizon in the beginning of 1857. Parliament was dissolved as the result of the vote of censure passed in the Commons, but Palmerston was returned with a strong majority, and the pacificists under Cobden lost their seats, Punch expressing the hope that Cobden might be "master of himself though China fall."

The war with China was not a glorious page in our annals: it remained in abeyance during the Mutiny and was not concluded till 1860. Indirectly it was one of the means of saving India by the diversion of the troops intended for the Far East, and already at Singapore, to the relief of Bengal at the urgent summons of Lord Canning, the Governor-General of India. The first mention of the outbreak in Punch followed close on the tragedy of Meerut early in May. In his "Essence of Parliament" we read: —

Lord Ellenborough delivered an alarmist speech about the mutinies in our Indian Army. Among other terrors, he was hideously afraid that Lord Canning, the Governor-General, had been taking some step which showed that he thought Christianity a true religion, but this damaging accusation was happily explained away. Lord Lansdowne was almost sure that Lord Canning could not so far have misconducted himself.

The charge was capable of complete disproof, but unluckily, as with the greasing of the cartridges, the Sepoys were unconvinced. A fortnight later Punch realized that the time for levity was passed: —

An Indian debate followed, but it is no subject for light treatment, for while members were droning about cotton, and Mangles [the Chairman of the East India Company] was puffing the Company as having done miracles for India, news was hurrying over the sea that native regiments were in mutiny, had seized Delhi, and murdered all the Europeans there, without distinction of age or sex. It is a good time to be erecting a Shropshire memorial to Clive, if only to remind England that she once had a man who knew not only how to gain, but how to keep Oriental conquests.

Heroes of the Mutiny

The issue of July 25 is full of the bustle of preparation, the hurried dispatch of Sir Colin Campbell to take command, and the embodying of the militia. It should be noted that one of the very first of the Mutiny cartoons revealed a disposition on the part of Punch to recognize that the mischief was deep-seated and had its origin largely in the arbitrary methods of the East India Company. On August 15 there appeared the picture of "The Execution of 'John Company,'" with Punch blowing up the offices in Leadenhall Street, and fragments labelled "avarice," "blundering," "nepotism," "supineness," "misgovernment," etc., flying from the mouth of a gun. But there was no hesitation in Punch's support of the most drastic measures for stamping out the mutiny. The word of the moment was "Cry Havelock! and let slip the dogs of war." On August 22 appeared the cartoon "The British Lion's Vengeance" – on the Bengal Tiger seen crouching over the bodies of an English woman and child. On September 12 Britannia is shown smiting down the mutineers; in the same number, however, in the lines "A word to the Avenger," reprisals are deprecated: "Spare the Indian mother and her child." On October 10, under the title "O God of Battles, steel my soldiers' hearts," the Queen is shown kneeling with widows and orphans in mourning garb, while a week later Sir Colin Campbell is drawn in fetters of red tape – his greatest difficulty in India.

At home, while Punch welcomed the recruiting from drapers' shops, and the filling of their places by women, he noted the snobbery of certain tradesmen who thought they would lose caste by enlisting. He also recognized that the appeal for recruits was seriously prejudiced by the callous treatment of ex-service men in the past.

Throughout the Mutiny Punch was hostile to Canning, and his "Clemency," representing him as unduly tender to the mutineers and invariably interfering on their behalf. This criticism reaches its height of injustice to the statesman who uttered and acted on the noble maxim "I will not govern in anger," in the mock proclamation which appears in the issue of October 24. There was probably better ground for the imaginary conversation between the Duke of Cambridge, as Commander-in-Chief, and Lords Lucan and Cardigan, in which the two latter noblemen sneer at the services of Havelock. This disparagement, be it noted, was not confined to the Crimean cavalry commanders; Mr. Gladstone declined to vote for the grant of a pension, and was in consequence associated by Punch with the Manchester School, whose pacificist organ, the Star , had been savagely burlesqued in the issue of October 31. Meanwhile the tide had turned in the war by the capture of Delhi and the first relief of Lucknow. The toll of heroic lives among our leaders had been heavy – Henry Lawrence, Nicholson and Havelock at the end of the year – but Punch was true to his old democratic instincts in recording the exploits of all ranks. He was eloquent in his appeal for the assistance of Miss Salkeld, sister of Lieutenant Salkeld, who lost his life in the blowing in of the Kashmir gate at Delhi. But he does not forget Salkeld's humbler associates, who with him "rushed upon death to make way for the bayonets of England when the great stronghold of treason was stormed": —