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her coast, a force as large as we sent to the Crimea, and the leading nations of Europe would have felt that they possessed an interest in putting an end to a misunderstanding which they now doubtless regard as affecting none of their number save England and Russia. It is the want of a speedy means of communication by the Euphrates Valley route which allows this very paltry dispute to be prolonged through months and years, and threatens our Indian exchequer with a burden in comparison with which all the possible expenditure on both railway and telegraph may prove a very trifle.

It had been thought that the dreams of conquest of the successors of Peter the Great had ended with the destruction of the forts and docks of Sebastopol. Nothing can be more illusory. The late war repelled Russian aggression for a time, but a premature peace has reserved to that colossal power all its Asiatic conquests, and all that it wanted besides— "breathing time." As it is, Russian conquest has only changed its direction; foiled on the shores of the Euxine and the Sea of Azof, she now turns to the Caspian and the regions of the Aral:

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Russia may pause to gather strength, but she is still Russia, and a " PEACE RATIFIED MAY NOT BE A PEACE SECURED." So far as the present security of the Ottoman Empire is concerned, no one disputes that the objects of the war have been, to a certain extent, attained. The neutralisation of the Black Sea-the demolition of Russian fortresses-the reduction of Russian armaments, which once existed in dangerous proximity to Constantinople-each of these is unquestionably a concession of no trifling moment. The restoration of Ismail-that bloodstained trophy of the ambition of Catherine the Second and of the ferocity of Suwarrow-affords an important security to the Sultan against any further aggressive movement from Bessarabia. The residence of European consuls at Sebastopol and Nicholaieff will effectively prevent the sudden appearance of a Russian fleet in the waters of the Golden Horn. Of still greater consequence is the admission of the Ottoman Empire to the dignity of a place in the general councils, and a participation in the benefits of the international code of Europe. But the question still returns, whether, even allowing that much has been done, much more might not easily have been effected-whether all has been insisted upon, which would certainly have been conceded-whether the concessions actually obtained are such as under existing circumstances the Allied Powers were not only entitled, but bound by the clearest rules of policy to demand. The late war, like wars of a less recent date, has shown convincingly that Turkey, formidable in her means of defence upon the Danube, is essentially weak on her Asiatic frontier, and that her vulnerable point can be most easily reached, not by armies menacing Widdin or Silistria, but by armies defiling through the passes of the Caucasus. On this side, there is still no material guarantee afforded against Russian aggression. Deprived of its Asiatic provinces, it is plain that the Ottoman Empire could not for six months together hold its ground as an independent power, or be prevented from falling by a general insurrection of the Christian races under its dominion. The security of Asiatic Turkey should therefore have formed an indispensable condition of the Treaty of Paris. As it is, if ever a new cause of quarrel brings the Muscovite and Ottoman armies once more into mortal collision, we may be assured that the former, taught by experience, instead of attempting that front movement which has again and again been frustrated, will confine their operations to attacking that flank of their adversaries which is still left unprotected, and which, under existing circumstances, it would perhaps be impossible successfully to defend. Let us add to these considerations the consideration no less important to England, that Persia is still as much exposed as ever to the march of the Russian forces, and that Tiflis commands not only the road to Teheran, but the readiest route to the gates of Herat. If British India was ever endangered by the ambition and intrigues of the successors of Peter the Great, it may be imagined whether the peril is less, now that Russia, barred from further development of her power in Europe, is compelled

to turn her attention to Central Asia, and to substitute in her visions of future conquest the southern coast of the Caspian for the southern coast of the Euxine Sea-now that, in addition to her long-standing jealousy of England as her great rival in the East, she is further excited against this country by the remembrance of a serious injury, and the shame of an open defeat. To France and to Austria it is of little consequence whether Circassia is free or dependent-whether Georgia is occupied by the troops of Abdul Medjid or the troops of the Czar Alexander. But the statesmen of England may yet live to lament the day on which an invaluable opportunity was lost of protecting the shores of the Indus by an alliance with the warlike tribes who command the banks of the Terek, and of making the ridge of the Caucasus the advanced line of defence of our empire in Hindostan.

With a railway along the Euphrates connected by efficient steamers in the Persian Gulf, with a railway along the valley of the Indus, the veteran armies of India might be wielded with a rapidity and a force that would be felt in Europe as well as Asia, at St. Petersburg as at Teheran:

"In these days, the connexion between events in the East and in the West is far better understood than it was at the beginning of the present century, and news travels infinitely faster; but even at the beginning of the present century we may remember that it was the superiority of the arms of France in Europe that induced Tippoo to rise against us, and led to the contest with him, which ended in the taking of Seringapatam. Indeed, there is no one who really knows India that is not aware how greatly even the extremities of our empire there are agitated by the slightest appearance of a reverse in any quarter, so sensitive is the bond by which those vast subject populations are held.

"We did not relish the idea of the Czar at Stamboul, and we may find his influence not quite agreeable at Teheran; neither must we close our eyes to the fact, that Persia is insidiously and perseveringly advancing her outposts both in Central Asia and along the line of the sea-board of the Gulf of Oman. She has already taken Herat, formerly regarded as the key of India, from the Affghans, and has wrested Bunder Abbass in the Persian Gulf from the Imaum of Muscat. Had the British minister at the Persian court been under the immediate orders of the Governor-General of India, the Shah would speedily have recoiled before the remonstrances of an authority backed by 300,000 men. We do not fear a Russian invasion of India, but we must guard our prestige of invincibility with the treacherous and semi-barbarous courts of Asia, as the best means of protecting our Indian dominions from the dire effects of internal commotions, and from the hostile incursions of the turbulent and warlike tribes on our north-west frontier. While the ancient seat of empire of the Cæsars in the East is in the hands of the soldiers of the West, and while British enterprise is surely, though gradually, adding the Sultan's empire to the area of its wide exertions, his dominion in Asia Minor, and our name in the East, have received a shock by the capitulation of Kars. We owe India a victory in Asia;' we owe it a victory that shall efface from the standards of Russia the record of our heroic misfortunes at Kars. But now that the temple of Janus is closed for a season, let us stamp on Asia the impress of our genius and our power; let us render the invasion of Asia Minor by Russia for ever impossible, by throwing open to the world, by the irresistible power of steam, the rich and forgotten plains of the Euphrates and Tigris-the once-famed granaries of the East-and subduing to industry their wild inhabitants. This would be a greater triumph than the recapture of Kars, and at once a colossal and enduring monument of our science and enlightenment, as well as of our energy and might as a people.

"The Indian army has not only fought the battles of England in India and Central Asia, but the Sepoy of Bengal and Madras has crossed bayonets with the best soldiers of Europe, in Java and the Mauritius, while their brethren of Bombay marched to oppose the same gallant enemy in Egypt. Notwithstanding this, our tried and magnificent army in India has been practically ignored in the late war.

"There is now in India an army of nearly 300,000 men at the disposal of this country, apart from 31,000 subsidiary troops and contingents from native states. In that army there are about 26,000 Europeans belonging to the Queen's service, including cavalry and infantry of the line; and 15,000 European troops in the Company's service, of every arm except cavalry, and 240,465 native troops. This last figure includes 233,699 exclusively native troops, together with 3644 Eu ropean commissioned officers, and 3122 European warrant and non-commissioned officers and rank and file. The number of the commissioned officers of the Queen's troops amounts to 588. The police corps regularly organised consists of 24,015 native commissioned and non-commissioned officers and privates, and 35 commissioned European officers. Large and costly as this army may be, it might easily be increased, especially from the warlike tribes lately added to our dominion. Here, then, is a reserve, and an ample reserve, well organised, officered, and generally with some experience of war. How could it be said that

we had no reserve? Of this immense force, 40,000 are British soldiers. Of the rest, the irregular native cavalry is just the force we most required in the late war, and could not supply from home. Here, then, is everything that we have ascribed to Russia.

"All former empires that ever pretended to hold distant countries in subjec tion made a fair exchange of armies, so that while Italians were holding Britain, or Numidia, or Dacia, Britons, Numidians, and Dacians were stationed in Italy, and even supplying candidates for the imperial purple. Whatever the final results, the Roman Empire would not have lasted ten years without that interchange.' Russia carried on the war with forces drawn from the heart and extremities of Asia, as well as from the most northern shores of Europe; and when we talk thoughtlessly of her overpowering population, it is these distant regions that we are unconsciously thinking of. Our case is the same as Russia's, only we have not got the sense to see it, and shall not see it till our eyes have been opened and our wits quickened by a succession of disasters.'

"The mutual dependence of our Western and Eastern empires was clearly pointed out many years ago in these words: In case our enemies should prove sufficiently powerful to press us hard either in Europe or Asia, it would be a matter of inestimable importance to have it in our power to transport our military forces from Europe to Asia, and from Asia to Europe, with the greatest possible celerity, as the exigencies of war may demand. A rapid means of communicating between India and Malta, both by means of the Red Sea and of the Persian Gulf, through Egypt and through Syria, would multiply tenfold the resources of Britain, and secure the defences of our possessions from Canada to Hong-Kong. Indeed, England, with her small standing army, with her population not trained and disciplined to defend their own territory against invaders, and with ministers who neglect her navy, can never be duly secured against the sudden attacks of her rivals and enemies, until she can impose some restraint on their ambition, by having it in her power to array the Sepoy on the shores of the Mediterranean, and the highlander of Scotland and the gallant sons of Erin on the banks of the Indus and the Ganges, with a degree of speed which no other power can equal. The small amount of our military force, in comparison with the enormous extent of our empire, must be counterbalanced by abundant means of communication and extraordinary rapidity of transport.' Russia, aware of the mistake she committed in going to war with imperfect means of transit, is, with our money, about connecting the shores of the Caspian, the Black Sea, and the Baltic with the heart of the empire by means of railways communicating with her navigable rivers.

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"In America, ten miles of railway are on the average opened every day for the accommodation of the regular traffic of the country.

"And shall we, while enriching with railways Russia, America, France, Italy, and Austria, forget what is due to India with her boundless resources and vast population?

"It is evident that to have the benefit of even the moral weight of our magnificent and well-appointed army in India, on the great events which are now in

progress, and of the consequent changes which must necessarily flow from them, that we must have, above all things, increased facilities for moving troops and stores upwards or downwards along the line of the Indus, as well as up the Persian Gulf, or to the Red Sea, as circumstances might render necessary.

"While these pages are passing through the press, the shadow of coming events in the East is deepening and extending, and it becomes more emphatically the duty of this country to make their army in India, by proper means of transit, not only sufficient for the internal peace of that country, but that some portion of it should also, by the same means, be made available wherever and whenever the welfare or the honour of the paramount state might demand its service. There never was put forward a greater fallacy, or an error more likely to be mischievous, than that the Turkish question was of no importance in an Indian point of view.' The grand problem, now in course of solution in Turkey, must affect in its results, whatever they may be, in the most immediate and powerful manner, our power and prosperity in India.

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Every act in the great drama of the war has elicited either the apprehension or the applause of the nations of the East. In the mosques of Bokhara, five thousand Moolahs prayed daily for the success of the Sultan of Room, and ‘the name of Mouravieff is probably now repeated with awe by the Persian and the Affghan.'

"The Eastern shepherd, in his solitude, pondered over, and the warrior, in his fastness, watched with kindling eye, the varying fortunes of the field, while every incident of the campaign, whether in Europe or Asia, has been minutely discussed, and will be well remembered in the bazaars throughout the length and breadth of India."

By establishing a steam and electric connexion between England and India and the confines of Central Asia, not only would the power and control of England be enhanced over her 150,000,000 widely-scattered subjects, but a great and glorious step would be taken towards securing the progress, the freedom, and the peace of the world.

We have only taken up one bearing of the question in this noticethat which refers to our present difficulty with Persia and with Russia in Central Asia. The bearings of the question in reference to Turkey, and to our commercial relations with that country, with our Eastern empire, and with the East generally, present a vast field of inquiry. The reader will find them ably expounded in Mr. Andrew's work. France, most interested in the opening of the canal of Suez, has naturally not looked on at a project which it most erroneously supposes to be a rival one, without some feelings of rancour, and the possible and very imaginary power to be gained by the establishment of a railway along the great valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris has been a source of no little heart-burning and jealousy. It will not be a little amusing to the reader, then, after going over the recent traffic returns of North Syria and Mesopotamia, furnished by Mr. John Kennedy, and of those countries and of Baghdad from various other sources, to find a notice of a memoir of French origin, on the comparative political and commercial importance of the route by railway by the Euphrates, and by the Suez canal, in which all the arguments are not only strongly in favour of the first, but the author actually demonstrates by figures and calculations, very carefully made, that those advantages would be much greater than have ever been propounded by its advocates in this country. Such a testimony, coming as it does from such a source, cannot be looked upon with that sceptical incredulity with which almost all great undertakings are viewed at the outset, not by philanthropists and patriots, but by the race of schemers in our own country.

MARMONT'S MEMOIRS.*

DURING the earlier portion of Marmont's memorials of his time, we found him enjoying the full tide of prosperity: he had the luck to be engaged against inferior generals, and he gained a considerable portion of renown, not justified by ensuing events. The prestige attaching to his name had, indeed, become so great, that Napoleon selected him to supersede Masséna in the Peninsula, and had ample reason to regret his choice. Instead of Marmont maintaining the reputation of the French arms, he, by his own showing, spent his time in unworthy disputes with the other generals holding separate command, and thus strengthened the English power. On his own ex parte evidence, he was no match for Wellington; and, disguise it as he may, he was out-generalled at Salamanca. But we shall have occasion to refer to this subject presently.

At the end of the second volume we left Marmont at Zara, opposed to the Russians and Montenegrins. Various skirmishes took place during the winter, and the rebels (as Marmont chooses to call them) suffered very condign punishment by his burning the town of Castelnovo over their heads. The next step proposed was a combined operation of the French and Austrians to capture Cattaro, but it ended in nothing; fortunately, perhaps, for Marmont, as the Russian naval force was very large, and it would have been unfavourable to contest the sovereignty at sea with them. In the mean while the Dalmatians, who had been amicably disposed to the French at the outset, began to grow discontented at the prolonged occupation, and aided the Russians in carrying out their numberless intrigues. Hence it is not surprising that Marmont felt greatly disposed to take an active part in the war between the English and Turks, which Duckworth's forcing of the Dardanelles appeared strongly to suggest, and proposed to join the Turks with 25,000 men. He obtained the emperor's assent, and opened negotiations with Mustapha Bairaktar, so celebrated for his devotion to the unhappy Selim; with Passwan Oglou, and with the celebrated Ali Pacha, of Janina, to the latter of whom a field battery and abundance of matériel were sent. The sudden change which took place in the conduct of the Porte, however, overthrew all these laboured schemes, and the retreat of the Russian fleet enabled Marmont to devote his attention to a branch of military occupation for which he always showed a remarkable genius. In the expectation that his long-cherished dream would be fulfilled, and that Turkey in Europe would be broken up, and subjected to a Polish partition, Marmont paved the way by opening up roads into the interior of Dalmatia. By these means he regained a great portion of his popularity with the inhabitants, who said, in their flowery language: "During eight years the Austrians drew up and discussed plans for roads, without carrying them out: Marmont mounted on horseback to have them made, and lo! ere he descended, they were finished." About this time, too, an envoy from Ali Pacha visited Marmont, who gives the following account of his mission:

* Mémoires du Maréchal Duc de Raguse, &c. Vols. III. and IV. Paris: Perrotin.

Feb.-VOL. CIX. NO. CCCCXXXIV.

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