THE ELEVENTH WAR : CRIMEAN WAR. 25 



edifices would have arisen, learned Societies flourished, Arts and 

 Science prospered, in fact, with her natural beauties and advantages, 

 Constantinople would have become an attractive rendezvous for 

 civilised Europe, that the Christian religion would have improved the 

 condition of the people, that the slave market, which is now polluting 

 the East, centuries after the odious traffic has been banished from the 

 soil of Christian Europe, would have been abolished ? 



Can anyone doubt, that these and many other beneficent changes 

 would not have been realised, and that the interests of England would 

 not have been imperilled, by curbing the aggressions of civilisation and 

 commerce, by Russia in the East ? 



The first great disaster of the War, was the destruction of the 

 Turkish Flfeet at Sinope, on the shore of the Black Sea. The Turkish 

 Commander aware of his danger pressed for reinforcements, but none 

 came, and on 30th November, 1853, the Russian Squadron swooped 

 down upon the Turkish Squadron, and after a desperate struggle, the 

 latter was destroyed, and this disaster, forced England and France to 

 send their Naval Squadrons into the Black Sea, to compel every 

 Russian ship to return to Sevastopol, and to resist by force any aggres- 

 sion against Ottoman territory. This was in fact a Declaration of War. 



England's Ultimatum to Russia was despatched on February 27th, 

 1854, and at the end of six days, no reply being received, the Declara- 

 tion of War was read, from the steps of the Royal Exchange in the 

 City. 



The forces of England, under the command of Lord Raglan, and 

 the forces of France, under the command of Marshal St. Arnaud, 

 assembled at Varna in the summer of 1854, and under the cover of 

 the Fleet landed in the Crimea, an invasion which was as great a 

 blunder as was the declaration of War, a blunder of miUtary strategy 

 attributed to the Emperor of the French, but, whoever advised it, it 

 was a stupendous act of military folly. 



On the 14th September, 1854, the Allied forces disembairked, some 

 10,000 strong, and on the 19th marched forward to battle, encounter- 

 ing the dense masses of the Russians, under the command of Prince 

 Menschikoff, on the heights of Alma ; and though the soldiers of the 

 Czar fought stubbornly, they could not stand up against the vehement 

 obstinacy of the Allies, and in a few hours the allied victory was won. 



Had this victory been followed up as it ought to have been, had 

 an immediate advance been made on Sevastopol, not only would this 

 renowned fortress have been taken ere the sun went down, but the 

 disastrous campaign in the Crimea would never have been heard 



