RUSSIA IN THE BLACK SEA: 1829-1856.
FROM the days of Peter the Great to the treaty of Adrianople the Russians bad been accustomed to vanquish the Turks, dissipate their tinwieldly armies, storm their fortified places, and wrest from them province after province, until the frontiers of Russia were the Pruth, the shores of the Euxine, the mountain-chain of Ara- rat, and the rivers of Turkish Armenia. Europe aided and abetted the Czar in destroying the overgrown power of the Sultans, whose only allies were the Hungarians in their times of trouble. Wil- liam Pitt, indeed, seems to have foreseen dimly the threatening aggrandizement of Russia both by land and sea, and to have made a feeble effort to arrest her progress ; but Charles James Fox and the Whigs saw in Russia the natural ally of England against France, and they prevented Pitt's intended opposition to Potem- kin's mistress. But the growth of Russian power and prestige after the victories of 1812 half-opened the eyes of Europa; and so early as 1815 Talleyrand had dreamed of an alliance between England, France, and Austria, to put a limit to the pretensions of Alexander. Thenceforth wars of E.' ussia against Turkey acquired an European interest, because they indirectly affected European in- dependence; and although the Great Powers united to shear away Greece from the territory of the Sultan, they looked with the gravest apprehension on the campaigns of 1828 and 1829. Those campaigns were the last in which Russia was des- tined to have free scope in her designs against Constantinople : a comparison of their results, therefore, with those of 1854 and 1855, will be interesting as well as curious. It may be safely asserted that the war of 1828 was undertaken by the Emperor Nicholas for the same purpose that he provoked the present contest—to cheek the reorganization of modern Tur- key. Sultan Mahmoud had destroyed the Tanissaries, and the Great Powers had destroyed his fleet and dismembered his empire. But he had begun to form a new army on the European model as a basis for civil reforms. Moltke boasts that Russia "nipped the Sultan's military reforms in the bud," and exults in the fact that "since that time the Porte has never been able to form an army, but what it was immediately destroyed in fresh wars against the Arnauts, the Egyptians, and the Kurds." As it was in 1827 so it was in 1853: the Turkish army was growing again ; reform was lifting up its head; Turkey was making progress ; and the Czar determined on a fresh step in the career initiated by his ancestors. Here the similarity ends, for the military results have been far from identical.
The contrast between the campaigns of 1828-'29 and that of 1854 is not a little remarkable. In 1828, the Czar Nicholas ac- companied his army and partially directed its movements. The Principalities were overrun ; Brailow was captured ; Schumla to some extent fruitlessly blockaded ; Varna besieged and taken ; and the siege of Silistria was begun but abandoned. We might almost say that no generalship was shown on either side ; and had not Varna fallen by the treachery of Jesse f, and the slowness and lack of audacity in Omar Vrione and the Grand Vizier, who eom- mended the relieving army, the sole fruit of the campaign would have been the capture of Bmilow and the occupation of the Princi- palities. The Turks had shown that they could fight, but they had also shown that they could not manceuvre in the field ; and, all things considered, Moltke finds it difficult to say which party was the greater loser in the five months of warfare. But in 1829, an able general, Diebitch, took the command of the Russian arm i y,
making condition ndition with the Emperor, that he should not in-
terfere n the least with the army's movements. In three months General Diebitoh was master of the situation. He laid siege to Silistria ; fought and won a battle at Kulewtscha ; blocked up the Grand Vizier in Schumla ; reduced Silistria ; dashing across the Balkan, he triumphantly entered Adrianople; and, with a force diminished to a few thousands, aided by unscrupulous diplomacy and the apprehension of Europe, dictated a treaty of peace which crip- pled the defensive power of Turkey, gained the control of the Da- nube, and exacted an indemnity for the expenses of the war.
How different the campaigns of 1853-'54! This time Europe backed the Turks, and Omar Pasha commanded them. The Rus- sians had occupied the Principalities without opposition ; but war was no sooner declared than Omar Pasha made the enemy feel that he had a general before him. The brilliant operations which re- sulted in the victory at Oltenitza and the occupation of Kalafat showed that the Sultan had an officer who could make the most of a handful of men ; and the combat at Citate, in the winter, proved that he had taught them to fight in the open field. In 1854, Prince Gortschakoff began the campaign by laying siege to Silistria, and Prince Paskiewitch soon arrived to aid in the enter- prise. The Russian army was at least twice as numerous as the army under Diebitch, and the faults committed in the fermer siege were avoided. But Russia was not in possession of the Elea Sea ; her forces were separated by the broad Danube. Omar Pasha held Schumla in the front and Kalafat on the flank of the Russian army. An Anglo-French force gathered at Gallipoli and pushed on to Varna. An Austrian force was assembling behind the Carpathians in the rear of the Russian line of communications. Add to this the fact that the Turks had actually raised up those outworks in defence of Silistria the want of which facilitated its fall in 1829. When the Russians failed to carry the Arab Tabia before the arrival of the Anglo-French army at Varna, the enemy had no course left but to raise the siege. The Russian army retreated from Silistria, because the possible pressure on it in front, flank, and rear, was such as no army could withstand ; and finally evacuated the Prin- cipalities as much from military as political motives.
But the contrast in Asia is still more striking. General Pas- kiewitch, in the brilliant campaign of 1828, captured three for- tresses and defeated the Seraskier. Anapa and Poti also fell before -the fleet and army. In 1854, the Turks take the aggressive, and the Russians, although victorious in every engagement, are content to wage war on the defensive. In 1829, Paskiewitch, with a small force, outgeneralled and defeated the nuke, added Erzeroum to his conquests, and, in four months of skilful war- fare, carried his arms triumphantly as far as the mines of Gumish Khans, within a few miles of Trebizond. In 1855, General Mouravieff, who served under Paskiewitch, has not been able to do more than seize Ardaghan, invest Kars, and threaten Erzeroum; while the whole of the forts on the Black Sea from Poti to Anapa have been taken from the Russians within the last twelve months.
By the campaigns of 1828-'29, the Russians obtained the whip- hand of Turkey. But even at this period of the campaigns of 1854-'55, Russia has lost all she then gained, and infinitely more. Instead of being mistress of the Euxine and the Sea of Azoff, not one Russian vessel floats on either of these waters. Instead of holding the Circassian coast, she has been expelled from it. In- stead of lording it over the mouths of the Danube, she trembles for Ismail. Nay, more than all, her own territory has been invaded— her cherished Sebastopol, the citadel of the Enxine erected at a cost of many millions, has fallen with the fleet it sheltered ; and the sole advantage she has gained in two years is the capture of Ardaghan and the occupation of the pashabc of Kars. Finally, in 1828-'29, the Russian losses by violence and disease could not have been less than 150,000 men • but in these later campaigns how much greater the loss ! That loss was estimated eight months ago at 270,000, and we fear to speculate on its augmentation since. Thus, by comparing the last with the present war, we see how terrible are the distresses of all kinds which the Western Powers can inflict upon Russia ; and how, in less than two years, they have been able to undo and more Lan undo a large part of the very costly work brought to a close at Adrianople on the 14th September 1829.
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