This Day in World History
March 2, 1855
Alexander II Becomes Czar of Russia
Aleksandr II Imperator Vseross. Source: New York Public Library.
When his father, Nicholas I, died of pneumonia, Alexander Nikolayevich Romanov succeeded to the throne of emperor of Russia, becoming Czar Alexander II. While his 36-year rule was marked by substantial reforms, it was also dogged by unrest and several assassination attempts.
Two strong influences stamped Alexander’s character. One was the autocratic personality and rule of his father; the other was his education, tinged with the principles of liberalism and romanticism. He ascended to the throne with Russia in a crisis, fighting the Crimean War against the Ottoman Empire, which had the support of Britain and France. The fighting continued for nearly a year, but Alexander had to sign a treaty making concession.
Russia’s defeat convinced him that he had to modernize the nation and spurred a program of industrialization and liberal reform. New railway lines were built, universities and courts were reformed, and there was even some steps made to reduce censorship. The signal achievement of Alexander’s reign was the emancipation of the serfs, as tens of millions of peasants were released from centuries-old feudal bonds and even given land allotments. The reform failed to produce a viable class of small farmers, however.
Another liberalization, with Russia lightening its grip on Poland, led to nationalist revolts there and the growth of radicalism both there and in Russia. Alexander responded by strengthening the secret police, which produced more unrest, further suppression, and several assassination attempts against the emperor. In 1881, he leaned once more toward liberalization, signing a decree on March 1 that would create a new constitution. That very day, he was wounded fatally in a terrorist attack, dying one day short of the anniversary of the day he took the throne.
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Frances Duberly’s Journal kept during the Russian [Crimean] War was first published in London in 1855, creating a storm of interest. Here was a candid account of the campaign, written by a spirited, flirtatious, and brave woman, the only officer’s wife to witness the entire war (along with her horse, Bob). Below are her entries for April 21st and 24th 1855.
Mrs Duberly’s War: Journal and Letters from the Crimea is edited by Christine Kelly.
Saturday, 21st – Rode with Henry and Colonel Poulett Somerset to the headquarters of the Turkish force, as Omar Pasha had done us the honour to ask us to luncheon. We found him sitting in a small but very light and convenient tent, which opened to Sebastopol; and being on high ground, we had a very good bird’s-eye view of the position of the English and French armies. The band, a remarkably good one, was soon after sent for, and played for some time with a great deal of precision. They played, amongst other morceaux, Il Rigoletto, and some marches composed by Madame, the wife of Omar Pasha, for His Highness’s band.
Madame is, I believe, either German or Wallachian, and evidently possesses a knowledge both of the science and esprit de la musique. The pieces played by the band, and written by her, evinced both taste and power.
Luncheon, consisting of champagne and sweetmeats, was going on at the same time as the music; and when both were finished, His Highness ordered his horse, and we accompanied him to General Bosquet’s, and afterwards to the brow of a hill opposite the Russian camp, where one of the mountain guns used in the Turkish army was placed and fired, to show General Bosquet its enormous range.
These guns are small – made precisely like the barrel of a Minié rifle, about five feet in length, and firing a conical leaden ball of four and a half pounds’ weight. It is mounted on a very small carriage, and drawn by a single mule. Omar Pasha said it would carry 4000 yards. This fact, however, I am unable to vouch for from personal observation, as I never saw the ball after it was put in at the muzzle of the gun – I mean to say, my eyes were too much unaccustomed to follow the shot, nor did we see it strike. But, like true believers, we admitted that it struck wherever we were told it had done so; and, as far as I was concerned, I was quite satisfied. We then re-mounted, and returned to General Bosquet’s tent. Our order of march was somewhat as follows:
Omar Pasha, on a chestnut Arab, which he made go through every evolution that a horse’s brain was capable of remembering, or his legs of executing; a group of attendant pashas and effendis, amongst whom we were mixed up; Lieutenant-Colonel Simmonds, English engineer, attached to the Turkish staff; General Bosquet, and one or two French officers belonging to his staff; and an escort of Turkish lancers on small horses, very dirty, very slovenly, and diffusing a fragrance of onions which made one’s eyes fill with tears. We took leave of our host at General Bosquet’s camp, and rode slowly home in the dusk.
Omar Pasha impressed us as being shrewd, decided, energetic, as well as an amusing companion, and a man capable of appreciating more of the refinements of life than I should have thought he would have found amongst the Turks; though he tells me he hopes, after the war is over, to be made Minister of War at Constantinople, and, – very probably, be bowstrung!
April 24th – The luncheon with Omar P. was highly successful (you must forgive my bad writing but it is after dinner after innumerable goes of brandy & water so I can’t see very well being sleepy & half blinded with cigar smoke) … [we] arrived about 2 o’clock found him sitting up in a beautiful tent full of arm chairs & surrounded by Pashas. I was riding good Bob, the best bred & handsomest horse out here – so we alighted in front of the tent – & the Pashas salaamed & I salaamed and O.P. made me a deep bow & handed me in & put me in the biggest & softest chair. – A silence – ‘Madame – votre man doit être bien heureuse d’avoir un si joli femme’! – Well this was a stunner to begin upon so I took up my parts of French speech and began to talk ‘Altesse – vous me faite trop d’honneur &c &c’ then came the band – playing as if for their lives & playing very well. Then came – ‘Madame – puisje vous offrier un frot de champagne?’ I began to think things looked a little less fishy then – & more like a good business, so the champagne & the sweatmeats came. Zephir Pasha sitting X legged and Col. Simmonds the ADC looking after the distribution of the feast. After the wine our tongues got freer and OP & I had a long and most delightful talk, he spoke with dignity, sense, philosophy and the nonchalance of a man who has lived in danger & become accustomed to it. Then we rode – he & I first, then Zehir [sic] Pasha, Henry & Poulett, then the inferior Pashas – and a long escort of Turkish lancers. Full tilt we went over rocks and holes – up hill, down hill – a regular case of sitting back & hardening your heart. Finally we arrived all right at General Bosquet’s who we picked up with his staff and galloped on to the rocks overlooking the Tchernaya & the Russian camp – here we planted a small Turkish rifle mountain gun we had brought with us & amused ourselves by potting at the Russians at 4,000 yards, while I sat on a high stone & Omar sat at my feet – and we talked of all his wondrous warfare – of ‘great old houses & of deeds done so long ago’ mingled with so much pleasant wit, so much kindness of manner, so much chivalrous politeness that I quite mourned that I could not always be with a man so brave, so dignified, so calm I forgave him afterwards the feelings, which made him urge his horse into every imaginable shew of action & of temper – till it got ill temper – & the fine Arab horse became really farouche. Now, I said, I will shew the difference between a hot-headed Arab enragé and that most perfect of all gentlemen a thoroughbred English horse. Goodboy quiet as a forest pool in midsummer midnoon. One touch with spur & curb and springing on his hind legs he flung himself in air – and then with one powerful disdainful kick – settled down into his calm walk. No fretting, no fighting, no squabble, he received his insult – resented & forgave it.
When asked to think about heroic women of the Crimean War, many people will first think about Florence Nightingale and her tireless work as a nurse. However, there was another woman also doing incredible work looking after the troops: Mary Seacole (c.1805-1881). Aside from her work in the Crimean War, the Jamaican nurse was also a writer, hotelier, and entrepreneur. The below is an extract taken from The Oxford Companion to Black British History, explaining more about her amazing life.
She was born Mary Grant, but no official records of her birth or parentage exist; in her autobiography, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands (1857), she stated her father to be a soldier of Scottish descent (possibly James Grant of the 60th Regiment of Foot) and her Creole mother to be the keeper of a Kingston hotel, Blundell Hall, and a well respected ‘doctress’, skilled in the traditional African use of herbal remedies. Her mother’s guests and patients included British army officers garrisoned in Kingston, and Grant enjoyed a close relationship with the Army all her life. She had one sister, Louisa Grant (c.1815–1905), and a half-brother, Edward Ambleton, who died during the 1850s. Grant was educated by an elderly woman described in the autobiography as ‘my kind patroness’, and by her mother in cookery and medicine. During her teens, succumbing to what she called an irresistible and unladylike ‘inclination to rove’, she twice travelled to London, and in her twenties sailed to the Bahamas, Cuba, and Haiti, trading homecooked pickles and preserves for shells and fancy goods, for which she found a ready sale in Kingston. In 1836 Grant wed an Englishman, Edwin Horatio Hamilton Seacole (1803–44), in Kingston. She believed her husband to be a godson of Lord Nelson, but this cannot be confirmed. Together the Seacoles moved to the port of Black River, on Jamaica’s south-west coast, to open a general store. Like Edwin’s health, however, this venture failed to thrive and by 1843 both were back in Kingston.
Blundell Hall was consumed by the great fire of 29 August 1843; Edwin died in October 1844, and Seacole lost her mother around the same time. Temporarily cowed by this triple blow, she settled in Kingston to rebuild her livelihood. But by 1851 she was off again, choosing Panama—then the Republic of New Granada—for her next destination. Her brother Edward had already set up a hotel at Cruces, en route across the isthmus to the newly discovered California goldfields; Seacole opened her own hotel right opposite Edward’s.
Seacole struggled to make the hotel pay. American clients, she complained, preferred not to patronize any establishment fronted by a black woman, and there were not enough British visitors—whom she favoured—to go round. An alternative income came from an outbreak of cholera during her stay: using her experience of treating yellow fever in Jamaica, she nursed all comers, gladly accepting payment from those with the money. She carried out a pioneering autopsy one night on an infant, the better to understand the disease and help her patients. Seacole was back in Jamaica when she heard of the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1854. Her immediate response was to apply to British authorities as a nurse. She considered herself eminently qualified, being medically experienced, independent, strong, fiercely patriotic, and eager to do her duty. Expecting a grateful welcome, she sailed to London in the autumn of 1854. She applied to the War Office, the Quartermaster-General’s Department, the Crimean Fund, and to Florence Nightingale’s organization. Perhaps understandably, she was ubiquitously rejected. None had the courage to engage a stout ‘yellow’ woman (her word) dressed in vulgarly bright colours, at nearly 50 well past middle age, ‘unprotected’ (i.e. without male relations to take responsibility for her), loudly insistent, and obviously used to being in charge. Seacole was stunned: she had rarely met what she considered to be colour prejudice from the British before, and found it impossible to justify. But the setback only fuelled her desire to reach the Crimea for the sake of her ‘sons’, or British soldiers. Entering into a business partnership with Thomas Day, a relative of her late husband, she announced the imminent opening of a Crimean ‘British hotel’ and general stores, and sailed for Balaklava in February 1855.
The hotel, fondly known as Mother Seacole’s Hut, soon became a Crimean institution. It was built of scrap beside a stream on Spring Hill, between Balaklava and Sevastopol. Seacole is mentioned with affectionate admiration in first-hand accounts of the war, as famous for her fine roasted bustards or rice puddings as for tending the sick and wounded with warmth and good humour. But Florence Nightingale mistrusted her, and feared her nurses associating with this unorthodox exotic. Nightingale’s principal objection was that she served alcohol at her hotel, and prescribed it to her patients. Nightingale aimed to change the system; Seacole simply wanted to make her ‘sons’ feel better.
A hasty evacuation of troops followed the war’s end in April 1856, leaving Seacole with unsettled bills and unsaleable stock. On her return to London that summer she was declared bankrupt. But a philanthropic succession of benefit festivals and subscription funds, patronized by Queen Victoria and other members of the royal family, ensured relative comfort for the rest of her life. In 1857 her autobiography—the first by an African- Caribbean woman in Britain—was published to great acclaim. The next quarter-century was punctuated by visits to Kingston, where she owned two properties; she unsuccessfully volunteered to nurse victims of the Indian Mutiny in 1857 and the Franco-Prussian War in 1871; she enjoyed what appears to have been a remarkably close relationship with Princess Alexandra; and sometime between 1857 and 1860 she converted to Roman Catholicism.
Seacole died in London on 14 May 1881, and was buried at her own request in St Mary’s Catholic cemetery at Kensal Green. She was mourned as a British heroine, then promptly forgotten, surely in part because her colour and defiant self-possession forbade her from becoming a fashionable role model for Britain’s young ladies. Recently she has emerged again, thanks to a reprint of Wonderful Adventures edited by Ziggi Alexander and Audrey Dewjee in 1984, as a peerless model of self-belief, triumph over prejudice and preconception, and sheer strength of character.
