1829.] ‘England, Russia, and Turkey. 575 
towns would not give way ; the villages were burnt, and could give shelter 
no longer ; and, as the general result, the Russian army were ordered to 
retreat from the Danube. The retreat was a second march from Mos- 
cow. Every thing was lost, buried, or taken. The horses of the 
cavalry and artillery were totally destroyed, the greater part of the 
artillery was hidden in the ground, or captured, and the flying army, 
naked, dismantled, and undisciplined, was rejoiced to find itself once 
more in the provinces from which it had poured forth but a few months 
before, to plant its standards on the seraglio. 
This was defeat and disgrace, and every man who hates aggression, 
exulted in the shame of the invader. But in this exultation we must 
not forget the actual conclusions that force themselves on the under- 
standing from a general view of the campaign. Russia, beaten as 
.she has been, has yet showed that she is too strong for the Turk ; she 
has mastered Varna, a situation of high importance to her further 
movements, and she has been able to baffle every exertion to wrest it 
out of her hands. She has seized some minor fortresses, and in every 
instance she has been equally able to repel the efforts of the enemy. 
She has also conquered a city between the Balkan and Constantinople, 
which, if she shall pass the mountains, will be a place of arms for her 
troops, and a formidable obstacle on the flank of the Turkish army. In 
Asia, her successes have been regular and progressive. Paskevitch has 
advanced with the troops which beat the Persians, has taken some of 
the strongest places on the south of the Black Sea, and what he has 
once taken, no Turkish effort has been able to retake. The southern 
shore of the Black Sea, in its whole length, is open to Russian dis- 
embarkation ; and an army of fifty thousand men marched down to 
Odessa, would keep the entire coast in a state of agitation, probably 
give an opportunity to the rebellious pachas of Asia to rise, and would, 
unquestionably, by their landing, make a most formidable addition to 
the perplexities of the Sultan. The system of the Russian discipline, 
finance, and influence over the population of the North, is so immeasur- 
ably superior to the broken and disorderly polity of the Turk, that if 
the war be a work of time, victory must fall to the Czar. On the other 
hand we must remember the daring and sagacious spirit of the Sultan, 
the fierce bravery of his people, the power of the most warlike super- 
stition on earth, the national abhorrence of the Muscovite, and even the 
new intrepidity of recent success. A still more powerful element of 
defence remains, the jealousy or prudence of the great European king- 
-doms. The possession of Constantinople, by the masters of Moscow 
and St. Petersburg, would shake the whole European system, by giving, 
for the time, at least, an exorbitant influence to Russia. England would 
see in it the threatened conquest of India: France, the complete 
supremacy of the Levant, and the exposure of her own shores to a 
Russian fleet on the first hostilities. Spain, though fallen in the scale, 
must still resist a measure which would lay open her immense sea-line 
from Barcelona to Cadiz. Austria, alone, might look upon it with 
some complacency, if she were bribed by the possession of Albania, or 
the prospect of planting her banners in the Morea. But the aggran- 
dizement of Austria would be resisted by Prussia, and then the whole 
continent must hear the Russian trumpets as a summons to prepare 
for universal war. 
The possession of Constantinople would be, not merely the mas- 
tery of the emporium of Asiatic trade, nor of a great fortress from 
4 
