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the reverse. It has weakened the Mus- | moved by the fact that the Mussulsulman barrier against Russia, and man race is everywhere declining, the not created a Christian one. Such has Christian is everywhere increasing; been the consequence of doing things and that while the former is chiefly to by halves of not regarding, in pro- be found in the proud and lazy inhaspective arrangements, the obvious bitants of towns, the latter constitutes tendency of human affairs, and seek- the great bulk of the robust cultivators ing to prop up existing influences, of the country. Yet how is this anowithout seeing that the time has come malous and perilous state of things to when they must be swept away. The be terminated, when the Ottomans are alarm now so generally, and with so in possession of the government, and much reason, felt in Europe at Rus- form the war caste and military strength sian predominance in the East, would of the state, and it is with them that have been avoided, if the obvious step the Western powers are in alliance, of establishing Greece on a respec- and whose dominion their national table and efficient footing had been faith is bound to uphold? adopted, after the opportunity of en- 144. The Emperor Nicholas said to tirely restoring a Christian monar- Sir G. H. Seymour, the English amchy at Constantinople had been lost. bassador at St Petersburg, on FebruWhat is the circumstance which has ary 22, 1853: "There are several now rendered the Eastern question so things which I never will tolerate: I complicated, has caused the Western will not tolerate the permanent occupowers to make such vast efforts to pation of Constantinople by the Rusresist the encroachments of Russia, sians; and it shall never be held by and brought France and England for the English, French, or any other the first time in history into a sincere great nation. Again, I will never perand generous alliance? It is not mit any attempt at the reconstruction merely the strength of Russia, great of the Byzantine Empire, or such an as it undoubtedly is, and formidable extension of Greece as would render her in every respect to the liberties of a powerful state: still less will I perEurope. It is the weakness of Tur-mit the breaking-up of Turkey into key which is the real difficulty; and little republics, asylums for the Kosthat arises from the circumstance that, suths and Mazzinis, and other revoluin its European dominions, two mil- tionists of Europe. Rather than sublions and a half of indolent Mussulmit to any of these arrangements, I mans, with the sword in their hands, would go to war; and as long as I have have obtained by wielding it the do- a man or a musket, I would carry it minion over seven millions and a half on.' These memorable words at once of Christians, who hold the plough, accuse the past policy, and throw a the loom, and the sail in their grasp. steady light on the future course which All the military strength of the state should be pursued by the Western is vested in the brave, barbarous, and powers on the Turkish question. All tyrannical minority; all the civil re-admit that a barrier must be erected sources, nearly all the knowledge and against Russia; the only question is, industry of the community, in the un- How is that barrier to be constructed? armed and pacific, but querulous ma- The Czar has taught us how that is to jority. How is such a state of things be done, for he has told us what he to be long kept up in the finest por-will spend his last man and musket tion of Europe, and in which, from extending intercourse with the Western powers, the seeds of knowledge and civilisation are every day more widely spread, and their blessings more generally appreciated? The thing is evidently impossible; and if any doubt could exist upon it, it would be re

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to prevent. It is evident that what he would spend his last shilling and musket to prevent, the rest of Europe should spend their last shilling and musket to effect; and this can only be done by restoring the Byzantine Empire in Europe, under the rule of a Christian government, or a gov

ernment in which the rights of the | openly claim the command of the naChristians are effectually secured, vigation of the Danube; but they comwith the guarantee of England, France, pelled the cession of the islands at its and Austria. This, however, is the mouth, which effectually gave it them. remote and ultimate result: the one They made a great show of moderation thing needful in the mean time is to in consenting to relinquish the Prinrescue the Turkish dominions from cipalities which they had overrun; but the withering grasp of Russia: not they agreed to do so only on payment less inimical to real Christianity than of £5,000,000 public, and £750,000 of the oppressive rule of the Mussulman. private indemnities-a sum equal to 145. Much has been said of the re-five-sixths of the whole revenue of generation of the Turkish empire with- Turkey, and which it seemed imposin the last thirty years, since the period sible it could ever defray. In the to which the preceding history refers; mean time, they stipulated the deand great are the expectations formed struction of all the fortresses the by a certain class of politicians of the Turks held on the left bank of the social and political improvement of its river, including Giurgevo and Brahilov, inhabitants and institutions by the in- and the sale of all the Mussulman protermixture of European ideas. Expe-perty in the two provinces within eighrience has not yet enabled us to determine whether these anticipations are well founded, and it would be premature to give any decided opinion on the subject. It is doubtless possible to give to Asiatic troops and police the discipline and efficiency of European, and that is what has taken place in Hindostan, Egypt, and Russia; and by working out the resources of Asiatic wealth by the machinery of European civilisation, a great degree of temporary power and vigour may be given to a state. Whether it is feasible to unite with it, in like manner, the institutions and habits of a different race and quarter of the globe, and whether it is possible to erect the fabric of European freedom on the basis of Asiatic servitude, is a question not yet determined; but on which it can only be said, that, if it does take place, it will be contrary to the experience of six hundred millions of men during six thousand years.

teen months-steps obviously pointing to their transference to a Christian government. They professed to respect the independence of Turkey; but they compelled its Government to recognise a right of interference in behalf of its Christian subjects, especi ally in Servia, Wallachia, and Moldavia, inconsistent with anything like independence in a sovereign state, and the internal government of which provinces was made quite independent of Turkish rule. These clauses might at any time give them the means of renewing the war on plausible pretexts. Finally, by stipulating for an absolute and universal amnesty for all the subjects of the Porte who had been engaged in rebellion, they openly proclaimed to all the world that they were the protectors of the disaffected in the Sultan's dominions, and that! they were to look to St Petersburg for a shield against the violence or injustice of their own Government.

146. The treaty of Adrianople af- 147. The campaigns of 1828 and fords a striking instance of that as- 1829, though they terminated to the tute but ceaselessly encroaching policy disadvantage of Turkey, are yet emiwhich has so long characterised the nently calculated to modify the ideas court of St Petersburg. They dis- generally entertained as to the great claimed all idea of territorial aggran-power of Russia in aggressive warfare, disement at the commencement of the as well as to evince the means of dewar; but they closed it by requiring fence, in a military point of view, the cession of a valuable territory on which the Ottoman dominions possess. the Black Sea and in Georgia, includ- The Turks began the war under the ing the strongest frontier fortresses of greatest possible disadvantages. Their Turkey in Asia Minor. They did not land forces had been exhausted by

seven bloody campaigns with the reinforce them in the course of the Greeks; their marine ruined in the second. Yet, with all this, they could battle of Navarino; their enemies had only produce thirty-one thousand men the command of the Euxine and the at the decisive battle of Kouleftscha; Ægean, the interior lines of communi- and when their victorious march was cation in their empire; the janizaries, stopped, only fifteen thousand were the military strength of the state, had assembled at Adrianople! Above a been in part destroyed, in part alien- hundred thousand men had perished ated; and only twenty thousand of in the two campaigns; and that, acthe regular troops, intended to replace|cordingly, is the estimate formed by them, were as yet clustered round the the ablest military historian of the standards of the Prophet. On the war. A very small part of this imother hand, the Russians had been mense force died by the sword; famaking their preparations for six tigue, sickness, desertion, produced years; they had enjoyed fourteen the greatest proportion of the dreadyears of European peace; and a hun-ful chasm. The long march of twelve dred thousand armed men awaited on hundred miles from Moscow to Pothe Pruth the signal to march to Con- land, the pestilential plains of Walstantinople. Yet with all these dis- lachia, the hardships of two camadvantages, the scales hung all but paigns in the inhospitable hills or even between the contending parties. valleys of Bulgaria, did the rest. As Varna was only taken in the first cam- Turkey is the portion of Europe most paign in consequence of the Russians exposed to the incursions of the Asiahaving the command of the sea; the tics, so it is the one to which ProviBalkan passed in the second, from the dence has given the most ample means Grand Vizier having been outgeneraled of defence; for the plains of Wallaby the superior skill of Diebitch. chia and Moldavia present a perilous Even as it was, it was owing to treach-glacis, which must be passed before ery and disaffection that the daring the body of the fortress is reached; march to Adrianople did not termi- the Danube is a vast wet ditch, which nate in a disaster second only to the covers the interior defences; the BalMoscow retreat. Had the Pacha of kan a rampart impassable when deScodra come up three weeks earlier fended by gallant and faithful dewith his twenty-five thousand men, fenders. Sterility and desolation, the and united with the twenty thousand work of human tyranny, add to the who retired towards Constantinople, defences of nature. Of no country where would Diebitch with his twenty may it be so truly said, in Henry thousand have been? Had ten thou-IV.'s words, "If you make war with sand English auxiliaries been by their a small army, you are beaten; if with side, the Muscovite standards would a large one, starved." never have crossed the Balkan; had twenty thousand French also been there, they would have been hurled with disgrace beyond the Danube.

148. It is not to be supposed, however, that these startling results are to be ascribed to any weakness in military strength on the part of Russia, or any extraordinary warlike resources which the Turks possess, independent of their geographical position. The strength which Russia put forth in the war was immense. A hundred and two thousand men crossed the Danube in the course of the first campaign; fifty thousand were brought up to

149. The strength of Russia in a defensive is owing to the same cause as its weakness in offensive war. Its prodigious distances are the cause of both. A third of Napoleon's army disappeared before it reached Smolensko, or had been engaged in any serious battle; three-fourths had perished before a flake of snow fell. One-third of the troops which invaded Turkey in 1828 and 1829 sank under the fatigues of the march, another third under the diseases and hardships of the campaign which followed. It is the same with the English in India, and from the same cause. With the re

sources of a hundred millions of men | itself, which, though impregnable on

at their command, they underwent a catastrophe, which rivalled the fate of Varus's legions, at the hands of the mountaineers of Affghanistan; they were soon after outnumbered, and brought to the verge of ruin by the Sikhs, who had only the resources of six millions to rely on. One-third of the invaders of Russia perish before they reach the country they are to assail; one-third of the Russians perish before they get out of it to begin the career of conquest, from the simple effect of the distances. It is no exaggeration, but the simple truth, to affirm that fifty thousand English and French troops disembarked at Varna, and beginning their fatigues there, are equal to a hundred and fifty thousand Russians, who have commenced their march from St Petersburg, Moscow, and Warsaw. And so it proved to the very letter in the Crimean war.

150. The position of the Russians in Moldavia and Wallachia is singularly open to serious disaster. Spread out over an extent of three hundred miles in breadth, from the Euxine to the frontiers of Austria, it is accessible to attack, from a concentrated enemy, along the whole course of the Danube; and if defeated by a powerful army crossed over near Brahilov, a disaster as great as that at Marengo would await the Russian forces. A blow directed at Focksana, the vital point of their communications with Bessarabia, would compel them to fight their way back to the Pruth, with their faces to Moscow, and ruin, if worsted, in their rear. The Crimea, with the Russian naval establishment at Sevastopol, lies also open to attack by a power having command of the seafor thirty thousand men could hold the neck of the peninsula against any force which would in all probability be brought against it; while twenty thousand, with the aid of a fleet, would with ease reduce the fortress

the sea, is by no means equally defended on the land side. The real danger of Turkey arises, not from the strength of its enemies, but its internal weakness; and the proofs of it are to be found, not in the triumphant march of Diebitch across the Balkan, but in the annals of the Greek revolution.

151. Human thought can scarcely discern what is the probable issue of the contest now commencing in the East, in reference to the belligerent powers; but Providence is wiser than man, and can educe good out of the most apparently inextricable elements of confusion and discord. Whatever the result of the contest may be, the triumph of Christianity is secure, and the days of Ottoman dominion in Europe are numbered. If the Russians prevail, the ancient prophecy recorded in Gibbon will be realised, and the Cross will be replaced on the dome of St Sophia; if the Western Powers are successful, and wrench the protectorate of the Christians in Turkey from the Czar, the triumph of the religion they profess is equally secure, and the government at Constantinople must pass ultimately into the hands of the great majority of the inhabitants of European Turkey. Unable to defend itself, the Ottoman empire must fall under the rule of one or other of the potentates which have entered the lists for its defence or subjugation. Power in the end must centre in the portion of mankind which is advancing, and pass from that which is receding; and the fact attested by all travellers, that the Christians are rapidly increasing in Turkey, and the Osmanlis as rapidly diminishing, points to the future destiny of those realms as clearly as the handwriting on the wall did to the fate of the King of Babylon.*

* Written in July 1854, at the commencement of the Crimean war.

CHAPTER XVI.

FRANCE FROM THE DEATH OF LOUIS XVIII. TO THE ACCESSION OF THE POLIGNAC ADMINISTRATION.

1. NEVER did a monarch ascend a throne with fairer prospects and greater advantages than Charles X.; never was one precipitated from it under circumstances of greater disaster. Everything at first seemed to smile on the new sovereign, and to prognosticate a reign of concord, peace, and happiness. The great contests which had distracted the Government of his predecessor seemed to be over. The Spanish revolution had exhausted itself; it had shaken, without overturning, the monarchies of France and England, and led to a campaign glorious to the French, which on the Peninsula, so long the theatre of defeat and disaster, had restored the credit of their arms and the lustre of their influence. In Italy, the efforts of the revolutionists, for a brief season successful, had terminated in defeat and ignominy. After infinite difficulty, and no small danger, the composition of the Chamber of Deputies had been put on a practicable footing, and Government was assured of a majority sufficient for all purposes, in harmony with the great body of the peers, and the principles of a constitutional monarchy. Internal prosperity prevailed to an unprecedented degree; every branch of industry was flourishing, and ten years of peace had both healed the wounds of war, and enabled the nation to discharge, with honourable fidelity, the heavy burdens imposed on it at its termination. After an arduous reign and a long struggle, Louis had reaped the reward of his wisdom and perseverance; he had steered the vessel of the state through many dark storms and shoals of perilous intricacy; but he had at length got into harbour; by

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the success with which his measures, externally and internally, had been attended, he had both restored the lustre of the throne, and in a great degree dissipated the prejudices which, at the commencement of his reign, prevailed against the Bourbon family. He had bequeathed to his successor a throne to appearance firmly established, a realm undoubtedly prosperous, and an external influence which seemed adequate to the wishes of the most ardent patriots in the country.

2. The character and personal qualities of Charles X. were in many respects such as were well calculated to improve and cultivate to the utmost these advantages. Burke had said, at the very outset of the French Revolution, that if the deposed race was ever to be restored, it must be by a sovereign_who could sit eight hours a-day on horseback. No sovereign could be so far removed from this requisite as Louis XVIII., whose figure was so unwieldy, and his infirmities so great, that, for some years before his death, he had to be wheeled about his apartments in an arm-chair. But the case was very different with his successor. No captain in his guards managed his charger with more skill and address, or exhibited in greater perfection the noble art of horsemanship; no courtier in his saloons was more perfect in all the graces which dignify manners, and cause the inequalities of rank to be forgotten, in the courtesy with which their distinctions are thrown aside. He had little reflection, and had never in his life thought seriously on any subject save religion, with the truths of which he was deeply impressed. He was the

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