besiegers were materially assisted by their fleet. At the end of October, the sieges of Silistria and Schumla were raised, and the Russians went into winter quarters. Thousands of men are said to have died of the plague in this campaign, and 30,000 horses were lost. The winter of 1828-9 was marked by a total inactivity on the part of the Turks, and, as has hitherto been their wont, by great numbers of them returning to their homes. The Russians, taught by the experience of the past year, made the most extensive preparations for the forthcoming campaign-the total inability to proceed without a full supply of provisions and stores laid up in a regular system of magazines, and forwarded to the fighting corps, by established and well-guarded lines of communication, having been fatally demonstrated.* At the commencement of the second campaign, the Russian army amounted in all to 150,000 men. The Turkish regular force was rather less than in the autumn of 1828. Forty-five thousand Russians proceeded to the siege of Silistria, which had been raised on the approach of winter. The remainder appear to have been placed in various positions menacing Schumla, and preparing for the passage of the Balkan should occasion offer. Pravadi, a small town situated between Varna and Schumla, and on the road leading from Bazarjik, through Aidos, to Constantinople, was recognised by the Grand Vizier as an important strategical point, which would enable the Russians to turn the position of Schumla, and lay open the plains of Adrianople. Here the Russians had assembled 10,000 men. The Grand Vizier attacked it with 35,000 men; and whilst he was occupied in besieging it, Diebitsch planned and executed the passage of the Balkan. 'General Diebitsch marched from Silistria, desiring Generals Roth and Rudiger to enclose the Turks in the defiles of Pravadi (with the garrison of that place closing them in its rear), until he himself could arrive with his army. Meantime, Ibrahim Pacha, who was left at Schumla, summoned the Grand Vizier to his relief. A battle ensued, in the afternoon of the 11th June, at Kouleftja, in which, after a sanguinary conflict, and hemmed in on all sides, the Turks at length fled. "The Russians had in the battle 40,000 men and 100 guns.' The garrison of Schumla had, during the battle, made a diversion in the rear of the Russians; but became, as it would appear, panicstruck, to which the Turks are peculiarly liable, retired with haste, and even abandoned the redoubts in front of Schumla. Had General Diebitsch followed up his victory, which, however, he may not have been in a position to do, he must have carried Schumla itself. Two days afterwards, the Grand Vizier regained that encampment with 30,000 men; having lost in the engagement at Pravadi 3000, and the Russians very few less. Silistria surrendered, on the 30th June, for want of ammunition-the Russians having effected two practicable breaches, and prepared five mines. The Turks, having expended their powder, could not risk an assault, or history might have recorded a second Rustchuk. General Diebitsch then made a feint of attacking Schumla, till the Grand Vizier had recalled his detachments In from all the passes. In order further to deceive the Turks, Diebitsch retreated on Jeni-Bazaar, six leagues on the road to Silistria. He then turned suddenly towards Devra and Keuprikioi. order to pass the Balkan, each soldier was supplied with four days' food, and the wagons brought sufficient for ten days more. Ten thousand men were left to watch Schumla, and to assault it if the Vizier moved. Vizier sent instantly 10,000 men to intercept Diebitsch at Keuprikioi; but the Russians had already passed through, and were on their way to Selimnia. The A curious indication, with many others, of the long matured designs of Russia for an attack upon Turkey, is offered by the fact, well known in the London trade, that the Russian medical department purchased, at the commencement of the present year, four times their usual amount of quinine, the chief medicine for the intermittent fever arising from malaria. It is customary with that government to purchase six months' consumption at a time. The order was this year for an amount equal to two years' consumption. The circumstance occasioned much surprise, until the mystery was solved by recent events. The Russians passed the Balkan with only forty thousand men, of whom, in ten days afterwards, ten thousand were in the hospitals. If the Turks had shown front from place to place, the Russians must have retreated towards the sea for provisions. Thus the famous Balkans, with the Great Gate of Constantinople, as we may fairly term Schumla, were effectually turned. The fall of Adrianople succeeded, and Turkey appeared for the first time prostrate under its conqueror. It is very doubtful how far this was really the The Russians at Adrianople could not bring forty thousand men into the field. Their line of communication was insecure, and their troops were dying off by thousands. case. Of six thousand sick at Adrianople, every one died in three months.' The total loss of the Russians in the two campaigns is calculated at the frightful number of one hundred and forty thousand men and fifty thousand horses.'* It is quite clear from the above narrative that the Balkans ought not to have been forced, and that the success of this daring passage of arms was due rather to the skill of the general than to the want of bravery or of ability in the defenders. It was an event which may or may not recur, but with strong chances against the repetition. The forces, moreover, were very unequally matched, and yet the Turks lost but little ground in the first campaign, and, but for their misfortune at Pravadi, would probably have lost but a few fortresses in the second. The Russians again had the entire command of the sea, on which their left flank rested, with Varna as their base, and their fleet was of incalculable service in the siege and capture of Sizepoli, a fortress on the coast commanding the harbour of Bourgas, in the early part of the campaign, which gave them a ready communication with the sea for provisions and ammunition after crossing the Balkan. We have in the above accounts gone somewhat into detail, in order to bring before our readers the real state of the matter, as it has been 725 laid open by past wars. We confess, at the same time, to having another and more immediately important object, to inspire a wholesome confidence in the public mind, not only in the justice of the cause on which this great country has (virtually) embarked, but also in its perfect ability to uphold the same, if necessary, by force of arms, as we now hope to show. Out of the five campaigns above sketched, the Russians gained a decisive success in but one. It by no means appears that they would have gained this but for two circumstances their command of the sea, which, with the possession of Varna and Sizepoli, ensured in some degree their communications and supplies, and, as we have before said, a very successful stroke of generalship. What, then, would have happened had there been forty thousand French and British troops covering Adrianople? What, if British and French fleets had maintained the line of the coast, and prevented any Russian squadrons or transports from accompanying or supplying their troops on the march? It is obvious the thing could not have been attempted at all. It is not, indeed, equally obvious that Varna would not have been captured; but it is not impossible that in Turkish hands, with the assistance of a friendly squadron, that most important place, with respect both to land and sea operations, would have proved a second Acre. Varna, as covering the right flank of the great positions on the Balkan, and as, conjointly with Constantinople, a basis of naval operations against Odessa and Sebastopol, should be defended, it is clear, to the last, in any war of defence undertaken by the western nations on behalf of Turkey. ADRIANOPLE, the second city in the empire, next claims our attention. Placed at the confluence of the Maritza, the Toundja and the Arda; being the point to which the roads from the various passes of the Balkan converge, with exception alone of that from Aidos; possessing water communication with the Levant for vessels of moderate tonnage, *It is only proper to observe that the account given in The Portfolio, from which the parts above quoted are drawn, appears essentially Turkish. rely, however, on the general facts here stated. We may by the Maritza and the Gulf of Enos; thus at once covering the approaches on Constantinople and supporting the positions of the Balkan— seems marked out by its position as the last bulwark of the empire. Marshal Marmont, who in the earlier part of his career had made Turkey his special study (having been ordered by Napoleon, after the treaty of Tilsit, to send officers into the country on various pretexts, to examine and report upon its military capabilities), and who in the latter part of his life, when an exile, revisited the scene of his former labours, has left us an instructive chapter on the relations of that empire to the various European Powers, and on the strategical advantages of Adrianople in particular. The picture, indeed, which he draws is the exact reverse of what is now the case-he presumes the Russians to have entered Turkey, and, with the consent of the Turks, to be holding it against Austria, France, and England. After providing for the security of the Dardanelles and of Constantinople, he proposes to place the 'remainder of the army, that is to say, forty thousand men at Adrianople, and to form there an entrenched camp, similar to the fortifications around Lintz, consisting of an extended system of towers, and with due advantage taken of the rivers which there flow into the Maritza. Eighteen or twenty towers would render that post unassailable; an army of thirty to forty thousand men could not be shut up within it, while it would hold one of eighty thousand in check, who could not venture to leave it in their rear.' *The accomplished author subsequently considers the opposite case, of the western nations becoming the defenders of Turkey, and candidly admits that the brilliant advantages he had depicted as accruing to the Russians from a presumed defensive position taken in Turkey with the consent of the Turks, belong in truth to the first occupant. The sentence which follows is so curiously illustrative of (in part at least) the present situation, that we cannot resist transcribing it verbatim, merely premising that the work was published in 1837: * En effet, si une flotte française et anglaise, passe le détroit des Dardanelles, et arrive à Constantinople; si en même temps un corps de cinquante mille hommes de l'alliance, autrichien ou français, vient prendre position à Andrinople, et y établir le camp retranché dont j'ai parlé, alors les Russes ont d'immenses difficultés à vaincre pour enlever ces positions à leurs ennemis; dès ce moment leur escadre rentre à Sébastopol, et n'en sort plus, &c. &c.t Put 'British' for 'Austrian,' in the category of troops which should be opposed, if the worst come to the worst, to Russian aggression, and the picture would seem not unlikely to be realized. We have purposely abstained from touching on the grave question, 'What is to be done with Turkey?' It is, indeed, a question the respon sibilities of which may well nake statesmen tremble. But we fail to perceive that the course of Providence has yet put it to us. What we do know is our present plain path of duty. No verbal sophisms, no diplomatic niceties, no risk even to our own beloved land, must keep us from that. A nation, like an indi vidual, has an end for which to live. Better to cease to live than give up that end for which it came into being. 'Death before dishonour.' Right is at this moment invaded by unjust power, and the strong arm of the brave must come if needs be to the rescue. A'wilful king' aims at interference with the manifest course of Providential government, to turn its righteous decrees to his own account. He invades under the name of peace. To justify his violence he pleads facts that never had being, and principles that have no place save in the mind that blinds itself to the real truth of things. Let the wise take warning. What will be the end we know not yet. But our hope is in Him who 'giveth not the race to the swift, nor the battle to the strong.' And with truth and justice, and that sympathy which was not withheld even from the outcast Samaritan-all these for us, we may surely quote against the northern invader his own biblical motto for the war, if to war we at last be driven-DOMINE IN TE SPERAVI, NE CONFUNDAR IN ETERNUM. Voyage du Maréchal Duc de Raguse, ii. 121. + Ibid. p. 126. INDEX ΤΟ VOLUME XLVIII. Adams's Spring at the Canterbury Alexander Smith and Alexander Pope, 452 Alose-Fish Papers, 479 Arès Moi, 363 Ashley's, Mrs., Evidence against Queen Babœuf's Memoirs, 429 Bankes's, Right Hon. G., Story of Corfe Barbel-Carpiana, 76 Barras, Vicomte de, Mémoires of, 428 Belgium-Leopold and the Duke of Belgium, a few Words from, 482 Belloy's, the Marquis of, Mal'aria, 264 Belone-Fish Papers, 470 Bertha's Love.-Part I., 45. Part II., Besika Bay, a Scene in, 208 Bones found in a Vault beneath Roth- Brabant, the Duke of, 125; his Mar- Bream-Carpiana, 79 Brunswick, Sketches of the Courts of Byron, Thoughts on Shelley and, 568 Callery and Yvan, History of the Insur- Carpiana, 71; Cyprinus Carpio, 71; Courts of the House of Brunswick, Crystal Palace at Sydenham, 607; Com- Darien Company, the, 133 Dartmoor Prison, as it was, and is, 577 Demon Chain, the, 170 Derbyite Party, the Break-up of, 365 Diplomacy, American, 299 Donaldson's, Dr., New Cratylus, 625 Dorking Fowls, 653 Dufaure's, M., Opinions on the Navy Dramatic Register for 1852, 342 Dupetit, Thomas, Admiral, Evidence Eccentricities of Genius, 575 Elizabeth, Queen, Morals of, First Enquête Parlementaire sur la Situation 205 Erskine's, Captain, Journal of a Cruise Esox, or Pike-Fish Papers, 467 New South Wales in 1853, 507; Want Feria, MS. Journal of the Duchess of, Few Words from Belgium, 482 Fisheries, the North American, 587 Flounders, 700 Forsyth's History of the Captivity of France, the Navy of, First Paper, 1; Franklin, Sir John, the Search for, 254 Frederick William, Great, Elector of Frederick William I. of Prussia, 67 Gadus, 689 Game Fowl, 652 Georgel's Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de la fin du 18eme siècle, 421 Gladstone's, Mr., Financial Measures, Haydon, R. B., Autobiography of 307 History of the Prussian Court and History of the War of the Sicilian Ves- History of Scotland from the Revolutn Holland and Belgium, Relations of, 117 Horne, R. H., Nero-a Picture, 219 Images and Conceits, difference be- Indian Question, what is the? 234 Internal Resources of Turkey, 670 Jacobite Insurrection, 139 Joinville's, Prince de, Essais sur la Journal of a Visit to New South Wales Kennedy's Narrative of the Second 254 Keys, how they are Turned, 29 Labrador Fisheries, 591 Lasusse's, Admiral, Evidence respecting Last words of a traveller lost in the snow, 677 Leicester, Earl of, Charges against, 489 |