Khartum in the effort to unravel the web of fate then closing in on the gallant Gordon.  The news of his doom reached England on February 5, 1885.  Then it was that Russia unmasked her designs.  They included the appropriation of the town and district of Panjdeh, which she herself had previously acknowledged to be in Afghan territory.  In vain did Lord Granville protest; in vain did he put forward proposals which conceded very much to the Czar, but less than his Ministers determined to have.  All that he could obtain was a promise that the Russians would not advance further during the negotiations.

On March 13, Mr. Gladstone officially announced that an agreement to this effect had been arrived at with Russia.  The Foreign Minister at St. Petersburg, M. de Giers, on March 16 assured our ambassador, Sir Edward Thornton, that that statement was correct.  On March 26, however, the light troops of General Komaroff advanced beyond the line of demarcation previously agreed on, and on the following day pushed past the Afghan force holding positions in front of Panjdeh.  The Afghans refused to be drawn into a fight, but held their ground; thereupon, on March 29, Komaroff sent them an ultimatum ordering them to withdraw beyond Panjdeh.  A British staff-officer requested him to reconsider and recall this demand, but he himself was waived aside.  Finally, on March 30, Komaroff attacked the Afghan position, and drove out the defenders with the loss of 900 men.  The survivors fell back on Herat, General Lumsden and his escort retired in the same direction, and Russia took possession of the coveted prize[341].

[Footnote 341:  See Parl.  Papers, Central Asia, No. 1 (1885), for General Lumsden’s refutation of Komaroff’s misstatements; also for the general accounts, ibid.  No. 5 (1885), pp. 1-7.]

The news of this outrage reached England on April 7, and sent a thrill of indignation through the breasts of the most peaceful.  Twenty days later Mr. Gladstone proposed to Parliament to vote the sum of L11,000,000 for war preparations.  Of this sum all but L4,500,000 (needed for the Sudan) was devoted to military and naval preparations against Russia; and we have the authority of Mr. John Morley for saying that this vote was supported by Liberals “with much more than a mechanical loyalty[342].”  Russia had achieved the impossible; she had united Liberals of all shades of thought against her, and the joke about “Mervousness” was heard no more.

[Footnote 342:  J. Morley, Life of Gladstone, vol. iii. p. 184.]

Nevertheless the firmness of the Government resembled that of Bob Acres:  it soon oozed away.  Ministers deferred to the Czar’s angry declaration that he would allow no inquiry into the action of General Komaroff.  This alone was a most mischievous precedent, as it tended to inflate Russian officers with the belief that they could safely set at defiance the rules of international law.  Still worse were the signs of favour showered on the violator of a truce by the sovereign who gained the reputation of being the upholder of peace.  From all that is known semi-officially with respect to the acute crisis of the spring of 1885, it would appear that peace was due solely to the tact of Sir Robert Morier, our ambassador at St. Petersburg, and to the complaisance of the Gladstone Cabinet.