XXI. rest of that year, the Czar, being kept back by the CHAP. engagements which he had taken, by his fear of breaking with the four Powers, and, above all, by the insufficiency of his means, would abstain from any further invasion of Turkey, and would even be reluctant to alarm Europe by allowing the least glimpse of a Russian uniform to appear on the right bank of the Danube. Omar saw that the river had thus become a political barrier which protected the Turks from the Russians, without protecting the Russians from the Turks. He could, therefore, overstep the common rules of the art of war; and, disporting himself as he chose on the line of the Danube, could concentrate forces on his extreme left, without any fear for his centre or his right. tumn and cam paigns. Therefore, in the early part of the autumn, a large His auportion of the Turkish army was quietly drawn to winter Widdin, a town on the right bank of the river, in the westernmost angle of Bulgaria; and, on the fifth day from the declaration of war, Omar Pasha was over the Danube, intrenching himself at Kalafat, and so established that he faced towards the east, and confronted the extreme flank of the intruding army.* From that moment Nicholas ceased to be the undisturbed holder of the territory which he had chosen to call his material guarantee.' His pride was touched. Tortured by the thought that his power to hold the pledge was challenged by a Turkish officer, he began to exhaust his strength in efforts to assemble * 28th October 1853. The declaration of war became absolute on the 23d. CHAP. a force at the westernmost point of his extended XXI. flank. This was the error which Omar Pasha wished Embarrassment and distress of the Czar. him to commit. At the close of the year, the Czar had succeeded in pushing a heavy body of troops into Lesser Wallachia; and in the beginning of January the lines of Kalafat were attacked by General Aurep. The struggle lasted four days, but it ended in the retreat of the Russian forces; and considering the vast distance between the lines of Kalafat and the home of the Russian army, it may be inferred that this fruitless effort of imperial pride must have worked a deep cavity in the military strength of the Czar. Moreover, Omar Pasha took another, and a not less skilful advantage of the political considerations which prevented the Russians from passing the Danube; for, during the winter, he fleshed his troops by indulging them with enterprises against the enemy's posts along the whole line of the Lower Danube from Widdin to Rassova; and since these attacks were often attended with success, and could never be signally repressed by an enemy who had precluded himself from the right of crossing the river, they gave the Turks that sense of strength in fight which is at the root of warlike prowess. Early in the winter the Emperor Nicholas came to understand the fault which he had committed in prescribing the Danube as a boundary-a boundary to be observed by himself, without the least right for expecting that it would be observed by his adversary. So now he would do the contrary of what XXI. he had done. Because he had committed a mili- CHAP. tary fault in forbidding himself from all enterprises against the slowly-assembling forces of the Porte in 1853, he would now, in 1854, undertake an invasion which must bring him into conflict with the gathered strength of the Ottoman Empire, and that, too, when it had become certain that the armed support of France and England would not be wanting to the Sultan. But perhaps, after all, it was hardly tolerable for a haughty monarch to have to stand passive under the insulting coercion which was now to be applied to him by the Western Powers; and the Czar, having no means of hostile action against the territories or the ships of either France or England, could only strike at his greater foes by striking at the ally whom they had undertaken to befriend. Upon the whole, therefore, he could not so school himself as to be able to abstain from attempting an invasion of Turkey; but the wholesome trials which he had now undergone had so far disciplined his spirit that at length, after bitter anguish, he felt and acknowledged to himself the want of a firm adviser. for aid to vitch. Russia owned a great General who had never He resorts sanctioned by his counsel the errors of the previous Paskieyear; and now-baffled - agitated-driven hither and thither by alternating impulses till his brain had become a guide more blind than chance-the Czar abated his personal claims to the conduct of a war, and came for help and counsel to the veteran Paskievitch. The evil was almost beyond the old man's hope of cure; for how could Russia march XXI. CHAP. upon Constantinople-nay, how in strict prudence could she march upon the Balkan whilst England and France were in full command of the Euxine? But was the Czar then simply powerless against Turkey? Had his million of soldiers been torn from their homes in vain? Had he not busied himself all his days in organising armies and reviewing drilled men, and grinding down his people into the mere fractional components of an army, until the very faces of soldiers in the same battalion were brought to be similar and uniform? Had his life been utter foolishness, and was the labour of his reign so barren that he could not now make a campaign against the simple Turks, who never took pains about anything until the hour of battle? Had he not spoken in the councils of Europe as though he were a potentate so great that the Empire of the Ottomans existed by force of his magnanimity? And now, had it come to this, that at the mere bidding of the Western Powers, and without their firing a shot, he was to stand arrested in the presence of scoffing Europe like a prisoner who had delivered his sword? Paskievitch's counsels. Well, Paskievitch, in a painful, soldierly way, could tell him what would be the least imprudent plan for attacking the inner dominions of the Sultan. The principles of the art of war have a great stability; and although there is an infinite variety in the methods of applying them, it results that the invasion of one nation by another is repeatedly undertaken upon the same accustomed route. By the route which Paskievitch recommended, XXI. the invader crosses the Danube in the neighbour- CHAP. hood of its great bend towards the north; makes himself master of Silistria; encounters and overcomes the assembled strength of the Ottoman Empire in front of the great intrenched camp of Shoumla; then, advancing, forces the difficult passes of the Balkan as best he may; marches upon Adrianople; and thence on-thence on, if he can and dares to the shore of the Bosphorus. Erivanski * could hardly have believed that his master's military power was equal to so great an undertaking as that; but if it succeeded only in some of its early stages, diplomacy might come to the rescue of the Czar, as it had done in 1829; and the plan had this in its favour, that it placed a broad tract of country between Austria and the right flank of the invading army, and another though less extended territory between its left flank and the fleets of the Western Powers. But in the counsels of a wise and faithful soldier there is a pitiless candour-a dreadful precision. He comes in his hard way to weights, and to numbers, and to measurements of space and of time. Without mercy to the vanity of his suffering master, Paskievitch defaced the cherished form of the material 'guarantee,' by insisting that the Czar should cease from trying to hold the Principalities entire, and that all his forces should be quickly withdrawn from the Lesser Wallachia. This done, he promised the *This was Paskievitch's title: it denoted that he was the conqueror of Erivan, a province conquered from the Persians. |