The Tsar’s army advanced through the Balkans and by January 1878 stood in the suburbs of Constantinople. In England, apprehension gave way to hysteria. The Queen, passionately anti-Russian, raged at Gladstone for his condemnation of the Turks, referring to her former and future Prime Minister as “that half-madman.”19 (The Duke of Sutherland went further and declared that Gladstone was “a Russian agent.”
