Hawke's Bay Herald MONDAY, MAY 7, 1877.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XX, Issue 3908, 7 May 1877, Page 2

Hawke's Bay Herald MONDAY, MAY 7, 1877.

In introducing his description of the battle of Giurgevo, on the Danube, in 1854, immediately after the raising of the siege of Silistria, Kinglake remarks : — " The Ottoman soldiery are of so warlike a nature that, when their enemy is at hand, they are often times seized with a raging desire for the fight ; and the one check which tends to keep down this passion, is a sense of the incoherency which results from the want of good officers. But so ready and so deep is their trust in any of our countrymen who will take the trouble to lead them, that, if Turkish soldiers be camped within reach of the enemy, the coming amongst them of a few English youths, supplies the one thing needed, completes the electric circle, and in general brings on a fight." It is evident that the condition alIn fieri to will be fulfilled in the forthconflict. The Turkish force will \

team with English youths, eager to emulate the fame of Butler and Naysmith, and it should not be forgotten, in calculating the chances of the present contest, that the Turks, thus led, but otherwise unaided by either England or France, forced the Russians, in 1854, to retire beyond the Pruth. After Giurgevo, the war became an offensive one on Turkey's part. Turkish territory was thenceforth no longer the scene of hostilities. It is true that the threat of Austrian intervention contributed to make Russia withdraw her troops ; still, had Silistria fallen, and Guirgevo turned o\it a Russian victory, it is probable that the struggle of 1855 would have been fought out, not below the walls of Sebastopol, but in the basin of the Danube. Major Russell, in the work from The Times' review of which we quoted some days ago, gives the Russians till August to get to Constantinople. We observe, however, that the writer of an able article in the Army and Navy Gazette is of opinion that tlie campaign of this summer will leave them still to the north of the Balkan. Major Russell draws no lessons, as he himself says, from the Crimean war, it having been fought under such different conditions from the present conflict ; but surely lessons might well be draAvn from the history of its earlier stages, from the period when the western allies of the Porte were encamped at Varna, and the Ottomans themselves bore the brunt of the fighting. The lessons, we may remark, that would be drawn from this period do not tend to confirm Major Russell's conclusions. Readers of Kinglake's history will remember the fancied soliloquy of the Czar, in which, in his agony, he sums up its disasters. " I can understand Oltonitza," he is made to say. " 1 can even understand that Omar Pasha should have been able to hold against me his lines at Kalafat — I can partly account for the result of those fights at Citate — I can understand Silistria — the strongest may fail in a siege — and it chanced that both Paskievitch and Schilders were struck down and disabled by shot — but — but — but — that Turks — mere Turks — led on by a General of Sepoys and six or seven English boys — that they should dare to cross the .Danube in the face of my troops — that, daring to atteinj)t this, they should do it, and hold fast their ground — that my troops should give way before them ; and that this — that this should be the last act of the campaign which is ending in the retreat of my whole army, and the abandonment of the Principalities. Heaven lays upon me more than I can bear !" Who can say that Turks— mere Turks— may not do as much again, or, at any rate, may not hold their own, till some fresh change in European politics, alters the conditions of the conflict.