Drummer Hodge Analysis

They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest
Uncoffined -- just as found:
His landmark is a kopje-crest
That breaks the veldt around:
And foreign constellations west
Each night above his mound.

Young Hodge the drummer never knew --
Fresh from his Wessex home --
The meaning of the broad Karoo,
The Bush, the dusty loam,
And why uprose to nightly view
Strange stars amid the gloam.

Yet portion of that unknown plain
Will Hodge for ever be;
His homely Northern breast and brain
Grow to some Southern tree,
And strange-eyed constellations reign
His stars eternally.

.: poem :.

Build-up to war
[edit] Conflict over the Holy Land
The chain of events leading to Britain and France declaring war on Russia on 28 March 1854 can be traced to the 1851 coup d'état in France. Napoleon III had his ambassador to the Ottoman Empire force the Ottomans to recognize France as the "sovereign authority" in the Holy Land.[14]
Quickly, the Russians made counterclaims to this newest change in "authority" in the Holy Land. Pointing to two more treaties, one in 1757 and the other in 1774, the Ottomans reversed their earlier decision, renouncing the French treaty and insisting that Russia was the protector of the Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire. Napoleon III responded with a show of force, sending the ship of the line Charlemagne to the Black Sea, a violation of the London Straits Convention.[14] France's show of force, combined with aggressive diplomacy and money, induced Sultan Abdülmecid I to accept a new treaty, confirming France and the Roman Catholic Church as the supreme Christian authority in the Holy Land with control over the Christian holy places and possession of the keys to the Church of the Nativity, previously held by the Greek Orthodox Church.[15]
Tsar Nicholas I then deployed his 4th and 5th Army Corps along the River Danube, and had Count Karl Nesselrode, his foreign minister, undertake talks with the Ottomans. Nesselrode confided to the British ambassador in St Petersburg, Sir Hamilton Seymour:
[The dispute over the holy places] had assumed a new character - that the acts of injustice towards the Greek church which it had been desired to prevent had been perpetrated and consequently that now the object must be to find a remedy for these wrongs. The success of French negotiations at Constantinople was to be ascribed solely to intrigue and violence - violence which had been supposed to be the ultima ratio of kings, being, it had been seen, the means which the present ruler of France was in the habit of employing in the first instance.[16]
As conflict loomed over the question of the holy places, Nicholas I and Nesselrode began a diplomatic offensive which they hoped would prevent either Britain or France from interfering in any conflict between Russia and the Ottomans, as well as to prevent them from allying together.

Cornet Henry Wilkin, 11th Hussars, British Army. Photo by Roger FentonNicholas began courting Britain through Seymour. Nicholas insisted that he no longer wished to expand Imperial Russia further, but that he had an obligation to Christian communities in the Ottoman Empire.
The Tsar next dispatched a diplomat, Prince Menshikov, on a special mission to the Porte. By previous treaties, the Sultan was committed "to protect the Christian religion and its churches", but Menshikov attempted to negotiate a new treaty, under which Russia would be allowed to interfere whenever it deemed the Sultan's protection inadequate. Further, this new synod, a religious convention, would allow Russia to control the Orthodox Church's hierarchy in the Ottoman Empire. Menshikov arrived at Constantinople on 16 February on the steam-powered warship Gromovnik. Menshikov broke protocol at the Porte when, at his first meeting with the Sultan, he condemned the Ottoman's concessions to the French. Menshikov also began demanding the replacement of highly-placed Ottoman civil servants.
The British embassy at Constantinople at the time was being run by Hugh Rose, chargé d'affaires for the British. Usi

| Posted on 2008-03-17 | by a guest