From the seat of war we have reports that the
improved condi- toe -c the besiegers advances, while the besieged are supposed to show signs of being disheartened. The sorties continue, with more loss to the enemy than to the Allies: but Russian troops are cheap. The English and French reinforcements continue to come in, with guns, ammunition, huts, and winter clothing ; and if the complaints continue, they diminish in strength, while the hopes of an assault grow brighter. The landing of Omar Pasha with perhaps forty thousand Turks at Eupatoria, strengthened by a French contin- gent, rather confirms the calculation, that before the Allies venture to storm the fortress, they must drive back the Russian external army; and that army seems to be concentrating upon its own rear in-anticipation of such a strategy. It is a strategy, according to some authorities, which the Allies ought from the first to have adopted. We must suppose that larger operations are destined to relieve the weight of responsibility and labour now laid upon the besiegers ; otherwise the prospect of mastering worki so long un- reduced looks ugly enough to incite wishes in slow-going Cabi- net statesmen that peace might be concluded forthwith. Such a wish would be natural; but if it existed it might prompt the assent to terms that would virtually constitute us the defeated side, charged with all the future liabilities that a defeated side must accept. Unquestionably, we do not seem to have that hold of our position in the East, or that command of our instruments, which
England ought to have shown. But probably the movements to- wards more extended operations must be taken as the signs, that in lieu of a weak love of peace engendered by feeble campaigning, there is a healthier disposition to revise our plans, and to add the power of strategy to that of courage and augmented appliances.
The renewed and extended blockade of Russian ports in the Euzine and Sea of Azov seems to be in the same spirit ; while the• address of Napoleon to his Imperial Guard, assembled at the Tuile- ries on Tuesday, telling the men that they should plant the eagles of France on the walls of Sebastopol, shows that the enlarged operations by sea and land do not omit the reduction of the fort- ress; and that the military action in no place awaits the dilatory negotiations of conference or congress.
