The Tsar himself encour ges persecuion Let the Tsar Say frankly what he wants Christians in Turkey may well dread At present he has not been able even to allege any oppres sion of the Christians, except that which he himself practice in the Principalities. I believe the real fact at the bottom o all these unintelligible pretenses is, that what he really want is that the Sultan should not, by liberal measures and pro gressive improvement, interfere with the arbitrary and tyran nical powers which the Greek clergy now too often exercise whether by right or by assumption, to the cruel oppression of the Greek communities. But if the emperor wants no more than what I have said, he ought to be satisfied with the declarations which the Sultan is ready to make. If, on the other hand, the emperor wants to become acknowledged protector of the Greek subjects of the Sultan, and to be allowed to interfere between the Sultan and the Sultan's subjects, why, then I say let him manfully avow this pretension, and let us manfully assist Turkey in manfully resisting it, and let the fortune of war decide between the emperor's wrongs and the Sultan's rightful cause. I believe that what I have last stated is what the emperor really means and wants, and therefore I am coming reluctantly to the conclusion that war between him and Turkey is becoming inevitable. If such war shall happen, upon his head be the responsibility of the consequences. I by no means think with you that he will have an easy victory over the Turks. On the contrary, if the betting is not even, I would lay the odds on the Turks. .. The fact is, that the Christian subjects in Turkey know too well what a Russian régime is, not to be aware that it is of all things the most to be dreaded, and the oftener Russian troops enter Turkish territory the stronger this conviction is impressed upon the people; Russia ought not to forget that she has weak points, Poland, Circassia, Georgia. My wish is that England should be on friendly terms with Russia; it is desirable that this should be, for the sake of both countries and for the sake of Europe. Neither country would gain anything by war with the other. Brunnow has often said to me that, however different the internal organization of England and Russia, and however opposite their respective views as to the theory of government, PALMERSTON Nicholas I, finding that he could hope to gain his ends in no other way, invaded Turkish territory. Thereupon England and France came to the Sultan's assistance and declared war on the Tsar in 1854. In the autumn of that year English and French troops landed in the Crimea, and after the battles of Alma, Balaklava, and Inkermann they concentrated their efforts upon the capture of the great fortress of Sebastopol. This was defended by two powerful batteries, the Malakoff and the Redan. After a long bombardment it was arranged that on September 8 the French should attack the Malakoff and the English the Redan. The former were so successful that the Russians blew up their magazines and evacuated the city. The English attack on the Redan had however failed, after a terrible loss of men. A celebrated war correspondent, Mr. Russell, gives the following picture of these awful September days. storm On the 9th September Sebastopol was in flames! The fleet, 347. the object of so much diplomatic controversy, and of so many in the bloody struggles, had disappeared in the deep! One more Sebast great act of carnage was added to the tremendous but glorious (much tragedy, of which the whole world, from the most civilized dense nations down to the most barbarous hordes of the East, was the anxious and excited audience. Amid shouts of victory and cries of despair in frantic re joicing and passionate sorrow a pell of black smoke streaked The bom by the fiery flashings of exploding fortresses, descended upon the stage, on which had been depicted so many varied traits of human misery and of human greatness, such high endurance and calm courage, such littleness and weakness. A dull, strange silence, broken at distant intervals by the crash of citadels and palaces as they were blown into dust, succeeded to the incessant dialogue of the cannon which had spoken so loudly and so angrily throughout an entire year. Tired armies, separated from each other by a sea of fires, rested on their arms, and gazed with varied emotions on all that remained of the object of their conflict. The last and decisive cannonade had been commenced on bardment the morning of Wednesday, September 5, by the French; it was continued with great vigor and effect, and was followed at night by a devastating bombardment, in which all the allied batteries joined. On the morning of the 6th the English and French together opened the cannonade, beneath which the Russian batteries were almost broken to pieces, and to which they could not answer. In the evening the bombardment was renewed, and kept up all night; a fire appeared behind the Redan, and the enemy seemed, by their constant signaling, to be in much uneasiness. On the 7th the cannonade was continued in salvos, as before, and it was remarked that the town began to present, in a most unmistakable manner, traces of the terrible effects of the nightly bombardment. Nearly every house within range was split or in ruins. The bridge between the north and south side was much crowded all day with men and carts passing to and fro, and large convoys were seen leaving the town. In the middle of the day there was a council of the allied generals, and at two o'clock it became generally known that the allies would assault the place at noon on the 8th, after a vigorous cannonade and bombardment. The hour was well selected, as it had been ascertained that the Russians were accustomed to indulge in a siesta about that time. The weather changed suddenly on the 7th September, and on the morning of the 8th it became bitterly cold. A biting wind right from the north side of Sebastopol blew intolerable er clouds of harsh dust into our faces. The sun was obscured, and the sky became of a leaden, wintry gray. Malako The French were reënforced by five thousand Sardinians, The Fr who marched up from the Tchernaya. It was arranged that the attack French should attack the Malakoff at noon, and, as soon as their attack succeeded, we were to assault the Redan. At five minutes before twelve o'clock, the French, like a swarm of bees, issued forth from their trenches close to the Malakoff, scrambled up its face, and were through the embrasures in the twinkling of an eye. They crossed the seven meters of ground which separated them from the enemy at a few bounds; they drifted as lightly and quickly as autumn leaves before the wind, battalion after battalion, into the embrasures, and in a minute or two after the head of their column issued from the ditch the tricolor was floating over the Korniloff Bastion. The musketry was very feeble at first, indeed, our allies took the Russians by surprise, and very few of the latter were in the Malakoff; but they soon recovered themselves, and from twelve o'clock till past seven in the evening the French had to meet and repulse the repeated attempts of the enemy to regain the work, when, weary of the fearful slaughter of his men, who lay in thousands over the exterior of the works, and despairing of success, the Muscovite general withdrew his exhausted legions, and prepared, with admirable skill, to evacuate the place. Redan As the alarm of the English assault on the Redan circulated, The Er the enemy came rushing up from the barracks in the rear of assault the Redan, increasing the force and intensity of their fire, while our soldiers dropped fast. The Russians were encouraged to maintain their ground by the immobility of our soldiers and the weakness of a fusillade, from the effects of which the enemy were well protected. In vain the officers, by voice and act, by example and daring valor, tried to urge our soldiers on to clear the works. The men, most of whom belonged to regiments which had suffered in the trenches and were acquainted with the traditions of June 18, had an impression that the Redan A bloody combat rushing confusedly to the front, were swept down by th enemy's fire. Every moment our men were diminishing in numbers, whil hand-to-hand the Russians were arriving in swarms from the town, and rushin down from the Malakoff, which had been occupied by th French. The struggle that ensued was short, desperate, and bloody. Our soldiers, taken at every disadvantage, met th enemy with the bayonet too, and isolated combats occurred in which the brave fellows who stood their ground had to defend themselves against three or four adversaries at once In this mêlée the officers, armed only with their swords, had but little chance; nor had those who carried pistols much opportunity of using them in such a close and sudden contest They fell like heroes, and many a gallant soldier with them. The bodies of English and Russians inside the Redan, locked in an embrace which death could not relax, but had rather cemented all the closer, were found next day as evidences of the terrible animosity of the struggle. A terrible ditch The scene in the ditch was appalling, although some of scene in the the officers have assured me that they and the men were laughing at the precipitation with which many brave and gallant fellows did not hesitate to plunge headlong upon the mass of bayonets, muskets, and sprawling soldiers,— the ladders were all knocked down or broken, so that it was difficult for the men to scale the other side, and the dead, the dying, the wounded, and the uninjured were all lying in piles together. Section 99. Revolts in the Balkan Peninsula Some twenty years after the Peace of Paris which closed the Crimean War, an insurrection against the Sultan's rule broke out in Boznia and Herzegovina, and set all of the Sultan's dominions in Europe in a state of unrest. The Turks met this revolt by the most cruel atrocities, especially in Bulgaria, and the powers failing |