NEWS OF THE WEEK.
Tim Turks have beaten the Russians, and are driving them back from the Danube : such is the news, accepted on all sides as au- thentic. It is not long since the wise in topographical knowledge were proving the impossibility of the Turks' crossing the Danube, still more of their making a stand against the Russians. This very week we have had a renewed report that the Sultan had sent forth a new order for an armistice, with renewed assertions that the Turks must have been beaten by the invaders. The accounts are very confused, and not yet strictly authenticated, but upon the whole it seems that the position of the Talcs is very strong. On the face of the several statements the particulars would appear to be these. The Turks have a chain of posts from Schum a to Widin, with videttes stationed along the whole line of the Danube ; they have crossed the river near Kalafat, Giurgevo, Oltenitza, and Kalarache ; their left wing being at Kalafat, their right at Kalarache, their centre at Oltenitza. Their left wing has en- countered, probably with a force of twelve thousand men, one three or four times the amount under General Dannenberg ; who has been driven back towards. Bucharest. The centre was as- saulted by an advanced force under General Perloff; who was also beaten back, it is said at the point of the bsiyonet, oii•Bucharest, still the head-quarters of Gortschakoff; - who thus finds his own forces concentrating upon him in a very involiklitary style.
Last week we had reports of the success obtained against the Russians in Asia Minor : there Selim Paeha has defeated a body of Russians under Prince Woronzoff, whose rear is attacked by Schamyl the Caucasian; and the latest versions represent the Russian army in Georgia'as being in a very preearious position. It is an untoward juncture for the Emperor of Russia to issue his declaration of war against Turkey ; but simultaneously with these accounts from the Danube and Georgia; comes such a mani- festo. The letter from St. Petersburg which we quoted in our Postscript last week showed us that the Emperor had been con- cealing the actual state of matters from his own subjects. No Russian journal had alluded to the real facts ; and he took.parti-
mit eular pains to alley the apprehensions of the British merchants, though without ple • himself to any corresponding security in their favour. Matters, owever, appear to have gone too far for him to keep up the game of peace ; and accordingly he has issued' a declaration of war, just as the Turks are performing it with so much vigour in the Principalities which he invaded. This docu- ment is characterized by the worst traits of Romanzoff composi- tion; its arrogance amounts to unfeeling insolence ; its perversion of truth—as in saying that Turkey has disregarded the exhorta- tions of the other Rowers with a " blind obstinacy "—is impudent beyond even Russian precedent. It finally establishes the bad faith not less than the savage pride of its author. No wide conclusions can be drawn from these early successes of the Turks, any more than they could from abstract calculations as to the possibility of their crossing the Danube. The presumption that Turkey will finally repulse Russia would be as premature as the other, that Turkey was at once to succumb under the irresist- ible power of Russia. Hitherto Nicholas has been keeping up an appearance of military strength in the Principalities, though his actual force now seems insufficient. But it is not to be supposed Tie will accept a defeat without further experiments ; and as Rug- Cuail soldiers have comparatively little regard for their own lives, while the Turks love victory much but life also not a little, it is probable that in a long race of expenditure in men and money the Tuiks may be worn out. The expedient of paper money, to which they are already resorting at Constantinople, may be overstrained. Meanwhile, however, they and their allies probably expect that the present reverses, if they do not absolutely settle the quarrel,' may at all events make the enemy more reasonable and willing to listen to terms.
