The Crimean War, fought from 1854-1856 between an
alliance of France, Great Britain, Piedmont and Turkey against Russia was the
result of a “churchwardens squabble” over who should control the keys to the
Holy Places in Jerusalem and Bethlehem. The French, on behalf of the Catholic
Church, had had control over them since the Crusades, but following the French
Revolution had rather lost their religiosity leaving a space for Russia on the
behalf of the Orthodox Church to step-in. Thus when Napoleon III re-asserted
his ancient right to protect the Holy Places and to place a silver star bearing
the French coat of arms over the supposed site of the Manger of Christ in
Bethlehem, an international incident was in the offing. In France and Russia,
therefore, the Crimean War was viewed as a Crusade to rescue the Holy Places
from heretics; to the Turks the Crimean War was a fight for survival: they had
recently suffered a crushing defeat to the Russians in the 1820s and the
Ottoman Empire was in the process of falling apart. Indeed Turkey had
reluctantly gone to war with Russia to avoid an Islamic revolution at home, so
great was the pressure from hard-line Moslem clerics and students and their
call for a Jihad (Holy War) against Russia.
In Britain, the Crimean War had all of the religious overtones it did to
her allies; Protestant Britain was standing up to the ‘bully’ of the Tsar and
the un-reformed Orthodox Church. The leitmotif of the war was ‘the Crusade of
civilisation against barbarism’ and religious liberty. Thus it is rather ironic
that in Britain the ‘crusade of civilisation’ and religious liberty resulted in
the persecution of religious minorities, such as Unitarians – a religious
position only legal in Britain since 1813.
The Unitarian belief has its origins in the ‘Arian
Heresy’ of the 2nd century CE, and until the mid-19th
century Unitarians were known as Arians or Socinians after the Polish
theologian Faustus Socinus (1539-1604) who declared that he could not find any
evidence for the doctrine of the Holy Trinity in the Bible. He had been joined
in this by Michael Servetus (1511-1553), who was executed for his ‘heresy’ by
John Calvin; Arianism or Socinianism became the principal religion of Poland
until it was extinguished by a Crusade implemented by the Pope in 1658 and also
the dominant religious group in Transylvania. Socinians, and later, Unitarians,
denied the divinity of Jesus as well as the doctrines of original sin and hell.
They stressed reason as being of the greatest importance in the understanding
and study of the Bible, the equality - ‘Universal brotherhood’ - of all people
and promoted the separation of Church from the State. They also asserted the
immorality and illegality of taking human life, either in war or through
capital punishment. In Britain, Unitarianism grew out of the Protestant
Reformation and increasingly from the Puritans who wanted to purify the church
from not only Roman Catholicism but from superstition and dogma associated with
both Papal authority and clericalism; the ability to read the Bible in English
and to interpret by the individual became the dominant theology. Human reason
was considered to be the final arbiter of religious truth. It is no surprise,
therefore, that Isaac Newton, Joseph Priestley, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas
Jefferson and Erasmus Darwin were all Arians or Socinians. Mid 19th
century Unitarians were characterised with an optimistic outlook, both social
and religious. For them ‘the truth’ was a real, tangible and a shining beacon
of hope. Truth meant freedom from the oppression of tyranny, corrupt political,
social and religious systems. They earnestly believed that they had been tasked
by God to bring reform and to see and bring out the best in all people.
Unitarian theology of the period suggested that God was all-loving and
benevolent, that ‘eternal damnation could not possibly exist’ because it went
contrary to God’s purpose of promoting human progress and therefore happiness.
People were not considered inherently evil but Sin was believed to arise from
when mankind fell into the ignorance of God’s supreme moral laws; heaven was
also a very real place – hell, of course, was not - which had to be built on
Earth and not waited for in any afterlife. Many of the great Victorian social
reformers and thinkers such as Charles Dickens, Harriet Martineau, Elizabeth
Gaskell, Charles Darwin and Florence Nightingale, were inspired by, but not
necessarily were, Unitarian values of freedom, tolerance and equality.
Unitarians and Islam
In order to ‘sell’ Britain’s new alliance with the
Turks, the Government and elements of the Radical Press went out of their way
to stress that the Turks were ‘not infidels’ but ‘in fact Unitarians’. Likening
the Turks to Unitarians in the Press gave the impression that they, like the
Unitarians, were reasoned, tolerant and enlightened. Radicals pointed to the
political and social reforms in Turkey as evidence of Turkish liberalism and
some Protestants went as far as to suggest that the Turks promoted Protestantism
in the Near East - an idea largely
based on the fact that the Moslem Turks were forbidden on the pain of death of
converting to another religion, so Christian missionaries had concentrated
instead on Catholic and Orthodox communities. Lord Shaftesbury concluded that
Turkish rule was relatively more beneficial to Protestants in the Near East
than Russian, as in his opinion the Orthodox Church would not allow any
dissent, whereas under the existing system there was a variety of Christian
expression. Anglican Protestants had, since 1850, been protected under Turkish
law something which would likely be lost under Russian rule. Many Anglicans
also drew a sympatric picture of the Turks compared to the Catholics or
Orthodox as their quiet, prayerful, and dignified worship seemed more in
keeping with their religious ideals than those of the Orthodox or Catholics.
Upon the declaration of War, the Vicar of Trinity Chapel, Conduit Street,
London preached a sermon in which he claimed the war with Russia was ‘promoting
the cause of Religious Liberty and the highest interests of Christ’s Kingdom’.
The Minister at Brunswick Chapel, Leeds described it as a ‘Godly war to drive
back the hordes of the modern Attila, who threatens [the] Liberty and
Christianity….of the Civilised World’ whilst the Vicar of St John’s Church,
Keswick, saw the war as a Crusade: ‘we area religious people, we are
Bible-reading, church-going people, we send soldier-missionaries to the end of
the earth’.
Not everyone was convinced by pro-Turkish press, of
course. One Evangelical Royal Navy Lieutenant wrote:
The result of our interference…will be…the
conversion (for such it will certainly be as Christians the poor people cannot
be) of all Russia. I have a strange feeling about this war…from its proximity
to Jerusalem…I have a very strong feeling that the Hand of God is visible in
this war more than in any other.
The
same officer regretted that the British had been ‘leagued with Infidels, I mean
the French and Turks. The French are but perverted Christians, and the Turk
knows no better.’ Sergeant Timothy
Gowring, 7th Royal Fusiliers, the son of a Baptist Minister, could
not understand why Britain was allied to the Turks either. One Evangelical from
Leicester wrote that ‘the Turk believes in the Divine Mission of our Lord Jesus
Christ more than Quakers or Unitarians’. Neither group could call themselves
Christians, and furthermore their pacifist stance ran contrary to the Bible.
The conservative Nottinghamshire Guardian agreed that the Turks were
like the Unitarians as neither believed in the ‘one true God, Jesus Christ’,
and stated that Unitarians had ‘like the German Rationalists … found a half-way
house to Infidelity’. A similar anti-Turkish and anti-Unitarian sentiment was
expressed through a series of public meetings organised by Evangelicals in
Sheffield in August 1854. The Rev. George Croly, Vicar of St Stephen’s
Walbrook, saw the war as nothing less than a crusade to convert the Turks to
Christianity. Queen Victoria and other conservative Anglicans like Lord
Aberdeen and Gladstone were suspicious of the Turks, and indeed the Queen hoped
that the Turks ‘would in time all become Christians’.
Napoleonic Sentiment
Britain’s ally, Napoleon III
was also attacked by the Evangelicals; George Stanley Faber had in 1852
published a lengthy discourse entitled The Revival of the French Emperorship
as Anticipated from Prophecy. Here
he used the Bible to prove that Napoleon III was destined to rule France and
bring ‘the end times’. To Faber Napoleon III was the ‘whore of Babylon’ who
would deceive ‘true Christians’ as to his real intentions. Napoleon III, and by
extension, the Catholic French were not to be trusted. Similar sentiments had
been expressed by some elements of the Church during the period 1800-1815 when
Napoleon I was attacked by the some Evangelicals as the anti-Christ, that the
world was ‘entering the End Times’. Other Evangelicals also interpreted him as
bringing a ‘punishment’ on Britain for her greed and ignoring the plight of the
industrial working classes. Unitarians, of course, had taken the opposite view:
they had welcomed the French Revolution of 1789 and Napoleon I was viewed not
as a war-monger but a liberal prophet spreading enlightenment, sometimes by
force, to the old European aristocracies. In 1801 the Unitarian clergymen Rev.
Robert Aspland and Rev. Dr. Joseph Toulmin had described Napoléon I as the ‘fount of
liberty’, for which they were arrested and one fellow minister was even
transported to Australia for his political sympathies with the French. During a lecture cycle in Britain during
1848, Ralph Waldo Emerson described Napoleon I as a ‘great man’. Emerson
defined him as being ‘the man of the nineteenth century’ and the
figurehead of all those who sought ‘liberty’.
Napoléon III was considered by British liberals to not
only be the ‘Napoleon of Peace’ but to be continuing his uncles’ work of social
reform.
Peace Initiatives
From 1850 to 1854 there had been a series of
international peace conferences organised by the ‘Manchester School’ of
politics (ostensibly Unitarian, pacifist, and free-trade), Quakers and allied
Churches and organisations across Europe ostensibly to promote disarmament and
European free-trade. Napoleon’s statement in 1852 that ‘The Empire is Peace’ (L’Empire c’est la Paix) was
cautiously welcomed, as were his suggestions that the map of Europe should be
re-drawn on lines of ethnicity instead of might. Unitarians supported Napoleon
III’s idea that Poland should be resurrected as an independent nation-state
following years of division under Russian and Prussian rule. The Unitarian
congregation in Glasgow, led by Rev. Mr Crosskey, their Minister, started a
mass-petition to be presented to the Government ‘For the Liberties of the
Continent and an Independent Poland’ in January 1855. Following the destruction
of the Turkish fleet by the Russians at Sinope in 1853 a Quaker Peace Mission
was sent to Russia in an attempt to avert a war that was obviously brewing. So
popular in Britain was the push for war with Russia in popular opinion that one
hysterical correspondent in The Times in February 1854 wrote that
pacifists, Quakers and Unitarians had no place in the House of Commons and were
more dangerous than one hundred Russian spies at the Horse Guards. The Russians
were at least preparing for war whilst pacifists were an enemy within. The Morning
Advertiser (the ‘red top’ of its day) accused pacifists and anyone who was
‘foreign’, including Prince Albert, of being traitors and pro-Russian. They
even called for the execution of the Prince!
The editor of the Huddersfield Chronicle agreed, openly attacked
Unitarians and their pacifist view, suggesting cynically that they were only
pacifist because war upset their ‘sacred notion’ of Free Trade. The most famous
members of the ‘Manchester School’ were Richard Cobden and John Bright. Both
men were ‘folk heroes’ through their support of the repeal of the Corn Laws,
and it was Cobden who having met Napoleon III, first coined the term ‘Entente
Cordiale’ to describe an ever closer relationship with France. They and
their particular school of politics were blamed during the Governmental crisis
December 1854-January 1855 when the government of Lord Aberdeen fell, to be
replaced by that of Lord Palmerstone, for the run-down state of the army.
‘National Humility and Prayer’
Early in 1854, Oldham Unitarian Chapel held a tea for
‘the Friends of Peace’, whilst other Unitarian congregations appear to have
ignored or not become involved in the ‘Eastern Question’. Cross Street Chapel, Manchester, was
debating the compulsory closure of its graveyard and the congregation of Upper
Chapel, Sheffield, under the Ministry of Rev. Thomas Hincks were more involved
with the issue of Abolition in the United States than war with Russia and in
Manchester the Rev. John Relly Beard and his congregation at Strangeways were
involved in a major public controversy with local Evangelicals over the nature
of the Holy Spirit. The Archbishop of
Canterbury declared April 26 1854 as a ‘National Day of Humiliation and
Prayer’. At Upper Brook Street Chapel, Manchester, ‘in compliance with the
express wish’ of the congregation they fasted for the day and Rev. J. H. Hutton
preached a special sermon. A collection was held for the families and wives of
soldiers sent to the Crimea. On the same day, the Rev. Hawkes of Portsmouth
preached two very lengthy sermons in the High Street Chapel. In the morning his
sermon was based on Isaiah 11, v. 17-18 and during the evening Matthew 5 v.
45-46. He described the Crimean War as being in the defence of Christian
sympathies, that protecting the Turks from aggressive Russia was ‘loving ones
enemies’ but overall war was ‘a dreadful thing’ and ‘evil’. He urged his congregation to pray not only
for British soldiers but those of the French, Turks and Russians. At Preston,
the Rev. J Ashton preached on Psalm 47 whilst in Belfast, the only Protestant
place of worship not to observe the ‘Day of National Humiliation’ was the
Unitarian Chapel for which they were much criticised. The Minister, Rev. John
Porter, defended himself and his congregation in the local press the following
week, on the grounds that in opening the Chapel for the ‘National Day’ would
have meant opening the Chapel and holding worship on six consecutive days and
that the Trustees felt they could not warrant this. He did not mean any
disrespect to the ‘Sovereign who had ordained’ the ‘National Day’ and pointed
out that the Chapel had been busy organising a sewing bee to make comforts for
the troops and held special collections to raise funds for the wives and
children of soldiers. Similarly, the Chapels in Liverpool were not open for the
‘National Day of Humiliation and Prayer’, a controversy which reached the
national press. Not all Unitarians were
opposed to the war: the Rev. John H Thom of Liverpool published a pamphlet to
coincide with the ‘National Day of Humiliation and Prayer’ which stated that
‘the Religious Spirit which pervades this Crisis is not the Spirit of
Humiliation; War with Russia being the Nation’s Highest Sacrifice to God and
Duty’ whilst another Unitarian pamphlet took the opposite line, saying that
‘war inflames the grosser passions, and tempts men what they may have begun
with the noblest of intentions to carry on something with the thirst for
vengeance or for gain’. The writer urged its readers to pray for peace and
concord.
Helping the Ordinary Soldier
Despite their disagreements over war, Unitarians
were united, however, in responding to the plight of the common soldier. They
quickly set about trying to improve the condition of the troops at the front;
in Chorley the Rev. Mr Clark at Park Road Chapel organised an ecumenical sewing
bee to raise funds for soldiers at the front and in Rotherham the children of
the Sunday School held a special collection for the same purpose. In Wakefield,
the congregation of Westgate Chapel were active in the ‘Wakefield Patriotic
Society’, which was part of the ‘Patriotic Fund’ that had been established in
London and then rapidly grew across the provinces to provide comforts for the
troops at the front and provide for their wives and children at home. The
‘Wakefield Patriotic Society’ was chaired by Rev. Thomas Kilby of St John’s
Church and by the end of September 1854 had raised some £150 through
subscription. Unitarian congregations in Manchester (Upper Brooke Street), Hyde
and Sheffield were also actively involved.
Power of the Press
The Times newspaper famously sent Thomas Chenery and William
Howard Russell to the front to report back to the eager masses at home the
progress of the war and indeed it was Russell’s despatches which did much to
change the public’s view of the British soldier as being a human being rather
than as the Duke of Wellington had said the ‘scum of the Earth’. But other
newspapers sent their own ‘Special Correspondents’, including the Daily News
who sent the Unitarian journalist Edwin Lawrence Godkin who’s despatches from
the front were far more damning of the establishment than those of Russell.
Godkin, unlike Russell, was also critical of Britain’s new allies the French
and the Turks; to Russell the French could do nothing wrong, despite the French
army suffering as badly from the freezing cold and misadministration during the
winter of 1854-1855 as the British. The Daily News had been founded in
1846 by the Unitarian journalist, Charles Dickens and amongst its regular
contributors were Harriet Martineau, G B Shaw and H G Wells. Godkin later
covered the American Civil War and founded the newspaper The Nation that
promoted the very Unitarian ideals of free trade, pacifism, liberal reform and
attacked
political
corruption. A Unitarian, John Lalor, edited the Morning Chronicle, the
only major rival to The Times. The Morning Chronicle been
described in the 1840s as ‘a Dissenter’s organ’. This is not surprising as
Lalor also edited The Inquirer, the major Unitarian newspaper. Criticism
of the conduct of the war also came from the provincial press, notably the
Unitarian owned and edited, Manchester Guardian.
Godkin and Russell were singularly unwelcome by the
British high command and their despatches considered ‘really deliberate lies’;
the response of the common soldier, was, not surprisingly, the reverse. Russell
et al became popular figures, someone to whom the ordinary soldier could air
their grievances and expect to get them heard. And heard they were.
Literary Criticism
On the back of the horrifying reports from the front
over the treatment of the British soldier, Harriet Martineau, the sister of
Rev. James Martineau exposed the deficiencies of the British Army in caring for
its men in a series of lectures across Britain. In this she gained much support
from Rev. William Gaskell of Manchester and his wife, Elizabeth. She later
wrote her damning attack on the establishment entitled England and her
Soldiers. Colonel George Bell of the British 1st Foot received a
copy whilst on service in the Crimea and stated that she ‘deserved the Legion
d’Honneur’ for exposing the ‘want of system, neglect and red-tapism’ in the
British army which was killing its soldiers quicker than the Russians.
Martineau analysed the effect of sanitary arrangements, hygiene and nutrition
on the ordinary soldier and claimed that the British army was starving its
soldiers to death. She concluded that Britain was losing her flower of youth and
that mothers, like Emperor Augustus of General Varus, be asking ‘Where are my
legions? Give me back my legions’.
Harriet Martineau was in regular correspondence with her like-minded
friends Charles Dickens and Florence Nightingale.
Charles Dickens, founder and editor of Household
Words led a literary campaign against the British government’s treatment of
the ordinary soldier before and during the two years of the Crimean War. He
condemned all wars other than those, which were fights for national survival –
and the Crimean War was definitely not one of those. To Dickens it was a rather
pointless and bloody conflict and showed the folly of government taking a
policy based on public will (the clamour for war 1853-1854) rather than
policies based on public good. The British army system was satirised in his
series of short stories entitled The modern “Officer’s” Progress
tracking the life of a young British subaltern, Ensign Spoonbill, exposing the
nepotism and lack of professionalism of the British army, especially compared
with that of her ally, France.
Enter Florence Nightingale
Despite being considered a
Unitarian by Unitarian-minded historians, Florence Nightingale was by the time
of the Crimean War a Communicant of the Church of England. Her family were of
impeccable Unitarian heritage but in order to advance socially the family had
converted to Anglicanism, and because nonconformists were still discriminated
against under English law. Nightingale was described as being highly
intelligent, but something of a spoiled, snobbish, selfish brat. She flirted
with lesbianism during her twenties and broke many men’s hearts, turning down
several suitors and offers of marriage, including that of Richard Monckton
Milnes, remaining a spinster all her life. She had a very advanced knowledge of
mathematics and statistics, and worked in 1853-1854 for the government
analysing the outbreaks of Cholera in London examining where it broke out, its
methods of treatment, their efficacy and mortality statistics. She and had been
sent to the Crimea by her friend Sidney Herbert whom she had met in Rome in
1848 during his Honeymoon. She was sent to assess British armies’ hospital
system based on the terrible reports sent back from the front by Godkin,
Russell et al. Florence was hailed by the Radical Press and by the common
soldier as an ‘angel of mercy’ whilst the powers-that-be saw her presence as an
unwelcome intrusion whose presence was unnecessary. Nightingale was openly attacked in the Protestant, non-conformist
press for being non-Trinitarian or for being a Roman Catholic. Together with
Sidney Herbert (the British Secretary at War) she was thought to be in league
with ‘Anglo-Catholics’ and ‘Romish Nuns’, and as a result put wounded British
soldiers in ‘danger’ of being converted to Roman Catholicism by the French
‘female ecclesiastics’ as the French nursing sisters (Sisters of Charity of
Saint Vincent de Saint Paul who had accompanied the French armies on the
battlefield for 300 years) were dubbed. Also dangerous were the British
‘Sisters of Mercy’ who were there to minister to the Catholic members of the
British army, much to the chagrin of the Evangelicals; at least one-third of
the British army was Roman Catholic, it being mostly recruited from Ireland. So vehement had become the debate
surrounding Florence and her religious leanings that Elizabeth Herbert (the
wife of Sidney) wrote a public letter which was published in all the major
London ‘papers defending her and stating that ‘she is a member of the
Established Church of England, and what is called rather low-Church’. Even this did not stop attacks from the
Evangelicals, who took the opportunity to attack the Herberts not only for
their high-Church faith but Sidney’s Russian relatives. To the Evangelicals,
that Florence, despite being an Anglican, could be described variously as
Unitarian, Roman Catholic or Anglican showed how ‘not very distinct’ her
doctrines were and that she and her nurses should be re-called in favour of
‘true’ Christians of the Evangelical persuasion. One correspondent to the Daily
News even claimed she was ‘an infidel’, a Muslim. Unitarians and Catholics
came to her defence; the former saying her family had historically been
Unitarian but no longer, and the latter respectfully saying Florence was quite
definitely not a Catholic. The Manchester Times urged Christians of all
persuasions to work together as their constant squabbling did little to enamour
them to their Turkish allies and was rapidly eroding their moral high ground.
But this did little to stem the fierce domestic criticism of Florence
Nightingale’s religious beliefs and being a woman at the seat of war. For her
part, Florence Nightingale did not trust the Catholics sisters nor members of
the ‘High’ Anglican Church for that matter. She thought the French Sisters of
Charity merely consolatrices, there to administer comforts to a wounded
soldier but primarily to exercise the Catholic duties of confession and
consolation at the bedside or on the battlefield rather than any real practical
nursing. British soldiers, however, didn’t care what religion the
Sisters were – they were just thankful for a welcome, comforting and above all,
female face. Rifleman William
Muggeridge (2nd Battalion, Rifle Brigade) described the Sister of
Charity who treated his wounded foot at Inkerman, as an ‘angel in human form’.
That Florence and Sidney Herbert were ‘in league’ with the Catholics was
confirmed to many Evangelicals as, after the death of Sidney, Elizabeth Herbert
did convert to Catholicism.
Sectarianism in the Hospitals
The hospitals became the scene of many religious
disputes: ultra-Protestants refused to
let their congregations send out gifts of food or warm clothing to the Crimea
lest, they be distributed in the hospitals by a Roman Catholic. The Bible Society
sent out food and clothing to the troops but only on the condition that they
accepted the [protestant] Bible sent with them. One senior Anglican clergyman,
Archdeacon Brooks of Liverpool, claimed that British [protestant] soldiers were
being
‘dangerously’ exposed to the ‘Catholic Douay Bible’
and also to the ‘Unitarian Bible’ (which supposedly removed any reference to
the divinity of Christ) as well as the ‘heretical’ writing of Unitarians such
as Thomas Belsham or Dr Lant Carpenter in the Hospital at Scutari. Revs. James
Martineau and John Robberds went on the defensive saying that the Bible used in
all Unitarian services was the ‘authorised version’ and that Unitarians were at
liberty to distribute tracts and books as much as any other church to the
wounded and suffering soldiers in the Crimea. One anonymous Unitarian
correspondent to the Daily News suggested that if Archdeacon Brooks
wished to ban books by Unitarian authors in the hospitals, then they would have
to remove the works of Dickens, Milton, Locke and Newton. There were frequent
scuffles between the French Sisters of Mercy and the French Catholic Chaplains
and a group of low-church Evangelicals; the French tended to any wounded
soldier irrespective of their belief and the Evangelicals screamed with outrage
claiming that the French were trying to convert ‘Godly Protestant Soldiers’. On
one occasion different groups of British ‘nurses’ (actually Evangelicals who
openly admitted to trying to make converts) came to blows in the hospital wards
with the Catholics. To the low-Church and Evangelicals the British army was a
Christian army, part of the Church-Militant, and should be reformed on
Christian lines. The army should only be used in the defence of [Protestant]
Christianity and as such, fighting the Crimean War as allies of the Turks was
anathema; Fighting with French and Italian allies was acceptable as they were
at least of the same religion! One Baptist minister in Leeds urged his
congregation to oppose the war because it was the wrong war: Britain, France
and Italy should be allied with Christian Russia to fight ‘infidel’ Turkey. A similar view was taken
up strongly in the United States. One extreme Protestant pastor published at
his own expense various tracts and a somewhat incoherent book which claimed
that Sebastopol was the ‘great city’ mentioned in the Book of Revelation and
that the ‘End times were near’. Similarly, the appalling weather in the two
Crimean winters which killed so many British and French soldiers were thought
to be a punishment from God for either going to war or having the wrong war by
not fighting the Turks! This was a theme that was continued in letters home
from the front from soldiers who could not understand why Britain as a
Christian country was fighting fellow Christians instead of the Turks. The
French also shared this sentiment, with groups of French soldiers refusing to
fight the Russians and being shot for Mutiny, despite the treaties of their
Chaplains.
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