ciently strengthened to hold their position. Certain it is, however, that after a prolonged and heroic struggle at Ponte di Magenta and Ponte Vecchio di Magenta, both of which points were taken, lost, and retaken several times, and after an immense carnage had taken place, the day was decided by the success of Macmahon, who, driving the enemy out of Magenta upon Corbetto, left the Austrian divisions upon the Ticino without any support, although Count Gyulai describes himself as bivouacking at Robecco, and covering his retreat the next morning by a feint upon Ponte di Magenta, carried out by the gallant regiment Grand Duke of Hesse Infantry.

The battle had been equally hardly contested at Magenta itself. Fifteen hundred Hungarians had been captured at the farm of Cascina Nuovo, which precedes the village. Motterouge's division had been separated from Espinasse's till relieved by the Voltigeurs of the Guard under General Camon. At length the village and outbuildings were invested, the troops seized upon house, and farm, and bridge, one after another, causing the Austrians, who defended every available point with the utmost pertinacity, enormous losses. Nor were the losses sustained by the French much less. General Espinasse fell at the attack on the village, and Macmahon's division lost altogether 1500 men killed and wounded.

This hard-fought, desultory, and most sanguinary engagement only ended with the night. The Austrians-part of whom we have seen retreated the same night, and part the next morning-left behind them four cannons, two standards, and seven thousand prisoners. Twelve thousand muskets and thirty thousand knapsacks are also said to have collected on the field. General Macmahon, who decided the event by carrying the village of Magenta on the flank of the enemy, was rewarded by a marshal's bâton, with the title of Duke of Magenta.

The battle of Magenta was decisive as far as the fate of Lombardy was concerned. The Austrians hastened to evacuate Pavia and Piacenza, and after an ineffectual stand at Melegnano, they withdrew from the valleys of the Adda and Oglio, abandoning Lodi, Cremona, and Pizzighettone (Garibaldi having occupied Bergamo), as also the Roman States, and took up their olden position in the famous quadrilateral of the Mincio and the Adige-Peschiera and Mantua, Verona and Legnano-to which all eyes will be now for some time directed.

The emperor and King Victor Emmanuel, whose non-participation in the battle of Magenta caused some surprise, entered Milan in triumph at eight o'clock on the 8th of June. A Te Deum was sung on the 9th-the same day that, with the extraordinary celerity which has characterised all the movements of the French, Marshal Baraguay d'Hilliers's division was engaged in expelling the Austrians from their position at Melegnano; and the first act in a most melancholy drama may be said to have come to a close. The Po and its upper tributaries passed into the hands of a conquering army, and it will remain to be seen if the allies, who eschewed Pavia and Piacenza, and even shrank before the bold front presented by the Austrians in advance of Mortara, will meet with the same brilliant successes on the Lombardo-Venetian tributaries to the Po and their renowned strongholds, as have attended upon their hitherto clever and dashing movements.

NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

THE ARMED INVIOLABILITY OF GREAT BRITAIN.

THE necessity that exists for placing this prosperous and commercial country in a better condition of defence than heretofore-a condition of unattackable security, as Lord Ellenborough expresses it, or of armed inviolability, as we would prefer to say-is admitted on almost all hands. It is no longer a question of intervention or non-intervention, for peace is declared, but it is impossible not to feel that the armed attitude of the German Confederation, bringing about a most desirable peace and staying the effusion of blood, was not only more dignified and praiseworthy, but also more wise and considerate than that pictured forth by certain politicians of the ultra-economical school, of a would-be great nation standing by in misanthropic selfishness, contemplating the carnage not merely with indifference, but actually gratifying its egotism with the misery inflicted upon others. It is that having declared our lukewarmness in the cause of the Italians, may not liberty and nationality, sacrificed at the shrine of despotism, still assert themselves, casting off the next time the duplicity of intervention from whatever source it comes; it is that having duly chronicled our unwillingness to uphold the oppression of Austria, or to countenance Napoleon III. as the sole arbiter of the destinies of Europe, may not the former, to thwart the pre-eminence of Prussia in Germany, throw itself into the arms of France; it is that having officially advised Prussia, our great continental ally, not only of our resolution not to co-operate in bringing about peace by armed demonstrations, but also of our refusal of support in case of war resulting from such demonstrations, we have not only pitted the absolutism against the liberality of Europe, but also Roman Catholicism against Protestantism. We have, at the same time, by our wondrously wise policy, isolated ourselves from every power in Europe, we have left ourselves without a friend or ally on the Continent, and it behoves us to assume at once an attitude of inviolability, or be prepared to succumb on the first demonstrations of enmity.

The bases upon which all conditions of defence, or, if possible, of actual armed inviolability should be founded, are not solely whether an uncertain despotism will assail us, or be made to do so by prætorian or by revolutionary pressure, it is whether the prosperity, the pride, and the egotism of this great nation are not, and have not for a long time been, as thorns in the side of less wealthy but more martial and still more arrogant people; whether it is not in human nature to envy our far-spreading commerce, our vast colonial possessions, our strongholds and fastnesses Aug.-VOL. CXVI. NO. CCCCLXIV.

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sown broadcast all over the world; our merchant and war ships ploughing every sea, and riches and wealth pouring in from every direction, an Atlantis in Australia and a Golconda in Columbia? The very fact of a nation so endowed being in a defenceless condition, tempts the longing wish, and the facility of putting it into execution warms up into a passion that might be allayed, if not nipped in the bud, by our assuming that attitude of defence which, while it repels insult, also enables us to defy all attempts at hostility.

It must not be omitted also to notice that certain collateral conditions are to be taken into consideration in weighing the for and against the additional expense of increased armaments. Thus, for example, the tone of mind and the national instincts of a people have to be taken into consideration as an important component part of the argument, although we do not lay primary stress upon such. Thus, for example, Lord Howden very justly and significantly dwelt, in his place in the House of Peers, upon the hot-headedness of the French, who never calculated the waste of life and treasure that might attend an attempted invasion of this country. He (Lord Howden) did not believe but that every Frenchman living dreamed by night and studied by day upon the best method of humiliating this country. He had lived in France and knew the people, and he was certain that if there was one project of all others which could unite the dislocated sections of Imperialists, Republicans, and Orleanists in France, that project was a war with England. No matter how absurd it was shown to be, or how utterly devoid of all chance of success, he believed there was not a single widow in France who would not give her last sou, nor a beggar who would not give his last penny, in support of such a war. Lord Brougham joined issue that the best way to secure peace was by being thoroughly prepared both by land and sea, but, above all, by sea, so as to prevent-and indeed render it an absolute impossibility for any successful attempt being made to land on the shores of this country. The noble duke at the head of the Admiralty declared that the present Board were as anxious as the late one could be to see that the country was protected. The Earl of Hardwicke said that the point was not only how to raise the defences of the country so as to ensure it from risk, but even from the possibility of danger. It was the duty of the government to render the navy of England powerful, to maintain the British Channel as a British Channel, and to fix the boundaries of this country at the low water-mark of the French shore. The Earl of Ellenborough argued that no extent of increased efficiency in the navy-not even the seventy sail of the line to which he, in common with Lord Hardwicke, would extend the navy-would give us effectual protection against invasion. The advantage which the navy of France derived from having such naval ports as Brest and Cherbourg, in conjunction with the increased advantages of steam navigation, was such that, if the French were determined, they could land sixty or eighty thousand men upon any part of the south coast of England. No time, therefore, was to be lost in protecting all their ports, their roads, and their shores, in which it was possible for an enemy to place a fleet with any degree of security

But, whatever they might do with regard to the increase and efficiency of the navy, it was, above all things, necessary that they should have an efficient army. It was necessary for their interest and their honour that they should have a well

appointed army. A navy might be of great advantage as a means of defence, but it would not alone be sufficient, and unless they were prepared to place upon a permanent and secure basis the defensive military power of this country, he felt confident, considering the passions which animated persons on the Continent hostile to them, and considering the vast power those persons had at their disposal, which might make them run the risk of invading this country-he spoke from his own mind, almost in the spirit of prophecy-that an attempt at invasion would be made. It was not during the present war that they had anything to apprehend, but when it terminated. It was when France had triumphed over the other powers of the Continent, and when she had a closer understanding with Russia, that the Emperor of France would be prepared, at the head of a victorious army, to realise the last unexecuted project of the great Napoleon, and all of which he believed it was his destiny to fulfil. He could not avoid taking that opportunity of declaring his conviction that, unless they took advantage of the time given them while France was engaged in war, they would be giving up what all men in this country valued-its independence, its honour, and its constitution.

As far as recommendations could go, nothing could be more desirable than the attitude assumed by the Upper House at the present crisis; unfortunately between that and execution there is a wide interval. Yet everything must depend upon energy and decision. General Sir Howard Douglas justly remarks, in his "Treatise on Naval Gunnery," that "there is nothing more dangerous in warfare than to despise your enemy; or, what is tantamount to it, to entertain an overweening estimate of your own prowess and powers." But if such is dangerous in warfare, how much more so is it in time of peace, when, by false counsels, a nation is put off its guard, soothed into a state of indifference, and scientifically reconciled to proximate disaster and humiliation? The reward of such a false estimate of national means of resistance, as more particularly manifested by the charge of fear made to others, should be the permission to the small phalanx of economists, when the occasion presents itself, to form the van of the little army of defence to which their patriotism would reduce the maintenance of the empire.

We have premised that the question of the state of our defences does not refer solely to the possibilities of invasion. We have positions and possessions, political and commercial relations, that lie beyond the precincts of Great Britain and Ireland. It is impossible to tell the day when some of these wide-spread and vital interests may not be affected. This might bring about war between allies in civilisation and in the brotherhood of nations, but hereditary enemies in the Channel and in the Mediterranean. Now, as that very eminent and distinguished officer, Sir John Burgoyne, assumes as his leading principle, "a review of the comparative state of preparation for war between France and England will show that a conflict could not be entered upon by the latter without risk of invasion and the most frightful disasters."* It is not, then, invasion alone that we have to apprehend, but it is that defenceless state which, not enabling us to defy insult or offence, or to carry on hostilities with any chance of success, would tempt invasion that we have to guard against.

The Military Opinions of General Sir John Fox Burgoyne, Bart., G.C.B. Collected and Edited by Captain the Hon. George Wrottesly, Royal Engineers, and Aide-de-Camp. Part I. National Defences. II. The War in the Baltic and Crimea. III. Military Maxims, &c. Richard Bentley.

Most writers upon the question of national defences, Sir John Burgoyne and General Shaw Kennedy among the number, agree in lamenting that the first great obstacle which the advocates for military efficiency have to encounter is the delusion under which the generality of Englishmen labour, that thousands or hundreds of thousands of enthusiastic men would spring to arms to repel an invading foe. "But this," Sir John Burgoyne remarks, "is a complete fallacy. Suppose they did so rise, they would sink to nothing before the pressure of an organised, disciplined army. Such effects may have succeeded in a poor, wild, and strong country of great extent, and after a long contest; but never has, nor ever will, in one of plains, covered with large, open, rich towns." So, also, says Lieutenant-General Shaw Kennedy: "The opinion is very popular in Great Britain-and the belief seems to be pretty general-that as the country is so much intersected by enclosures for agricultural purposes, the spirit and patriotism of the people so excellent, and the number of arms in the hands of the people considerable, the resistance by the country people to the advance of an enemy would be very formidable. That a population so very imperfectly armed, and totally unorganised, should make any serious opposition to the march through the country of a great and well-disciplined army when acting in junction, we look upon as a mere delusion, and the opinion as injurious, by holding out as a means of defence that which would not prove effective. If the peasantry of this or any other country were to attempt the defence of their enclosures against the light troops of France, it would result in a cruel sacrifice of their lives, with very trifling good result."* The same judicious writer adds: "It would be a downright error to employ yeomanry, volunteers, and local militia alone in the open field against highly disciplined troops; and injudicious to do so if even acting in conjunction with well-disciplined troops, unless they were in a very small proportion of the latter." This, then, is the first delusion that has to be got rid of; and it must be felt that in the presence of the known discipline, the long experience, and the attested prowess of the French arms, the less dependence we place upon armed men rising up from places that only exist in hopeful imaginations, or even in volunteers, except abetted by a proper system of fortifications, the better. A next objection to combat is a political one, and it embraces what is called the constitutional dislike to a standing army and its expense. The first feeling may be traced back to the disputes between Charles I. and his parliament about the command of the militia, and the jealousy and distrust with which the increase in the number of regular troops by James II. was viewed. The Bill of Rights (1689), however, made the military force of the empire essentially a national force, and even the royal prerogative is checked by the necessity of acts of parliament to provide pay and maintain discipline. An efficient standing army in a country so constituted can then be objectionable, politically, upon no other ground than that of expense. That is as unavoidable as it is objectionable. It touches us to the quick as much as it does any parochial representative or member of the Peace Society. We wish all nations would disarm, submit to arbitration, convert their swords to reaping

*Notes on the Defences of Great Britain and Ireland. By Lieutenant-General Shaw Kennedy, C.B., Colonel 47th Regiment. John Murray.