1832. [MARCH, 



bulent spirit of these troops and their love of war, precipitated, against his 

 will, the Emperor Nicholas into a Avar with Turkey. The Russian sol- 

 dier of 1828 was no longer the brute barbarian of the days of Suworrof. 

 Contact with the armies of Germany and France had taught him a salu- 

 tary lesson j his reasoning powers were developed ; masonic lodges, 

 organized for political purposes, were disseminated through the army ; 

 discontent was spreading through its ranks : more than one revolt had 

 broken out, when the aggressions of Turkey, and her projects of military 

 reform, afforded the Russian government a happy opportunity of em- 

 ploying this formidable machine which threatened the stability of the 

 existing order of things beyond the frontier. 



Immense as was the military force of Russia at this period, she was, 

 for the invasion of Turkey, unable to bring into the field more than 

 200,000 men. The number, small as it may appear relatively to the aggre- 

 gate strength, will not surprise those acquainted with the constitution of 

 the Russian armies, and the frightful system of abuse and embezzlement 

 that pervades every department of its interior economy, which always 

 renders its effective strength considerably below its official returns.* 

 One hundred thousand men of this force were posted as a corps of 

 observation along the Austrian frontier the Russian government had 

 some misgivings of the policy of the Austrian cabinet, who, if hostile 

 inclined, might have operated directly on the flank and rear of the 

 Russian line of operation. It became therefore an imperative necessity 

 to make this detachment, which reduced the active army in the field to 

 100,000 men, a number certainly inadequate to the nature and objects 

 of the campaign. It is true that, during the course of the war, it was 

 reinforced, at different times, by 200,000 men, a number, however, 

 scarcely sufficient to supply the ravages made in its ranks by disease 

 and the sword. The first campaign, by its unimportant results, asto- 

 nished all Europe. The Russian standards floated, certainly, on the 

 shattered walls of Brailow and of Varna, but they cost the invaders 

 100,000 men, and an immense loss of the ee materiel" of the army. The 

 second commenced under different auspices. The cautious prudence of 

 Wittgenstein was succeeded by the desperate en avant system of the 

 German Diebitch ; the Balkan, the hitherto deemed palladium of the 

 Turkish empire, was passed ; Adrianople fell, and a Cossack hurrah 

 was for the first time heard under the walls of Old Stambol itself. But 

 one opinion prevailed from Moscow to Paris the ambitious projects of 

 Catherine were on the eve of their completion the Turkish dominion in 

 Europe was at an end. Yet the Russians did not advance ; neither was 

 their march on the capital arrested by the combinations of European 

 diplomacy, nor by the magnanimity of the Emperor, as it has been so 

 confidently asserted. The real cause of their inaction, is the fact that 

 their position at Adrianople was becoming daily more critical the Pacha 

 of Scutari already threatened their communications peace was indispen- 



* A Russian regiment, it is well known, is never numerically complete, from the 

 circumstance that the colonel receives the funds for the full complement, but 

 is always obliged to have some hundred men short, for the sake of economy, and 

 in order to meet the extraordinary expenses of the corps, for which the government 

 make no allowances. Again, every general officer has for his service from ten to 

 twenty servants, and every other officer the same in proportion to his rank, which 

 diminishes considerably the number of men in the ranks. 



