At last, this long-pending “Eastern Question” appears to have 
reached a step where diplomacy will not much longer be enabled 
to monopolise this ground for its ever shifting and ever resultless 
movements. On the 3rd inst. the French and British fleets have 
entered the Black Sea, in order to prevent the Russian navy from 
doing harm either to the Turkish fleet or the Turkish coast. Once 
before the Czar Nicholas has declared that such a step would be, 
for him, the signal for a declaration of war. Will he now stand it 
quietly? There is a report to-day that the combined French and 
English fleets, together with the first division of the Turkish navy, 
are transporting 17,000 Turks to Batum. If this be correct, it is as 
much an act of war as if they made a direct attack upon 
Sebastopol, and the Czar cannot but declare war at once. 

But would Russia stand alone? Which part would Austria and 
Prussia take in a general war? 

It is reported that Louis Bonaparte has notified to the Austrian 
Government that, if in case of a conflict with Russia, Austria allied 
with this power, the French Government would avail itself of the 
elements of insurrection, which, in Italy and Poland, only required 
a spark to be kindled again into a raging fire, and that then the 
restoration of Italian and Polish nationality would be attempted by 
France. The Austrian government, however, we may confidently 
assume, will be more influenced by its own financial embarrass- 
ments than by the threats of Bonaparte. 

The state of the Austrian Exchequer may be inferred from the 
late augmentation of its depreciated notes and from the recent 
expedient of the government enacting a discount of 15 pct. upon 
the paper money issued by themselves. This device, working the 

depreciation of their own paper, perhaps carries tax making 
ingenuity to its perfection, it is putting a tax on the payment of 
taxes. According to the German papers, the Austrian budget for 
1854 will show a deficit of 45,000,000 flrs. on the ordinary service, 
and 50,000,000 flrs. on the extraordinary. For the 100th time 
Austria is moving towards a loan, but in a manner which promises 
no success. It is now proposed to raise a loan of 50,000,000 firs. 
for the ostensible purpose of paying interest due and some other 
pressing demands. 

When the news of the intended entrance of the united squadron 
into the Black Sea reached Vienna, the money changers had 
enough to do to change paper currency for silver coin. People 
with 100 and 200 florins thronged to their counting-houses with a 
view to secure their endangered treasures. Nevertheless, on the 
decisive moment, the influence of St. Petersburg at Vienna will be 
paramount and entangle Austria, on the side of Russia, into the 
coming struggle. As to Prussia, she is attempting the same game as 
in 1780, in 1800 and 1805,°*° to form a league of neutral Baltic or 
Northern German States, at the head of which she might play a 
part of some importance and turn to which side was to offer her 
the greatest advantages. 

That the Turko-European fleets can destroy Sebastopol and the 
Russian Black Sea fleet, that they can take possession of, and hold 
the Crimea, occupy Odessa, close the Sea of Azov and let loose the 
mountaineers of the Caucasus, there is no doubt. The measures to 
be taken in the Baltic are as self-evident as those in the Black Sea: 
an alliance at any price with Sweden; an act of intimidation against 
Denmark, if necessary; an insurrection in Finland, which would 
break out upon landing a sufficient number of troops, and a 
guarantee that no peace would be concluded except upon the 
condition of this province being reunited to Sweden; the troops 
landed in Finland, to menace Petersburg while the fleet bombards 
Kronstadt. . 

All will depend on the maritime powers of Europe acting 
resolutely and vigorously. 

The New Prussian. Gazette of the 29th ult. confirms the account 
of the Emperor of Russia having ordered all the forces in his em- 
pire to be placed on a war-footing. Not only has he withdrawn 
his deposits from the banks of England and France, but also 
ordered voluntary collections to be raised on the part of his 
nobility, and the railways in progress to be suspended, in order to 
devote to war all the men and money required for their 
construction. 

On the other hand armaments in France are going on more 
actively than ever, the second moiety of the contingent of 800,000 
men of the class of 1852 having been called out. In France, too, a 
loan of 200,000,000 frs. (about £8,000,000) has long been con- 
templated, but the dearth of food, the failure in the wine and silk 
crops, the prevailing commercial and industrial distress, the great 
apprehensions entertained about the payments to be made at the 
end of February, the downward tendency of the funds and railway 
shares, all these circumstances tend by no means to facilitate such 
a transaction. 

It is the intention of the British Government, as we are 
informed by The Times, to raise the number of seamen and 
marines for the current year to 53,000 men, which is an increase 
of about 8,000 on the number voted for last year, and a further 
addition to the 5,000 men, raised under the orders of Lord 
Derby’s administration.* The total increase in the Navy since 1852 
may therefore be stated of about 13,000 men. For the force now 
to be raised for the service of the fleet 38,000 will be seamen and 
boys, and 15,000 marines. 

At last the murder is out, as regards the affair of Sinope. The 
statements published of the relative strength of Russia and Turkey 
at that place, show that the Russians had 3 steam two-deckers, one 
three-decker and 680 guns on their side more than the Turkish 
forces. So considered the event of Sinope has added nothing to 
Russia’s power, and taken nothing from that of Turkey, but the 
reverse. Here we have seen a fact without parallel even in our own 
annals—frigates laying themselves alongside line-of-battle ships, 
and commanders casting the torch into the powder magazine and 
offering themselves up for holocaust on their country’s shrine. 
The real maritime force of Turkey is untouched; not a line-of- 
battle ship, not a steamer having been sacrificed. This is not all. 
According to the last intelligence received, one of the finest 
three-deckers of the Russian fleet, the Rostislav, 120-gun ship, 
has been sunk by the Turks. This fact, kept back hitherto under 
the specious pretext that the Rostislav did not sink during the 
action, but immediately afterwards, is now admitted by the 
Russians, and forms a good set-off against the destroyed Turkish 
ships.**” If one three-decker was actually sunk, we may expect that 
the other Russian vessels received very serious harm indeed 
during the action, and after all the victory of Sinope may have 
more disabled the Russian than the Turkish fleet. When the Pasha 

* The Times, No. 21631, January 6, 1854.— Ed. 

of Egypt* heard of the disaster at Sinope, he ordered the 
immediate armament of 6 frigates, 5 corvettes and 3. brigs, 
destined to fill up the chasm which has been produced in the 
material of the Turkish fleet. 

The Egyptian steam-frigate Pervaz-Bahri disabled and taken 
after nearly five hours’ struggle by the far larger Russian 
steam-frigate Vladimir, was so riddled with shot that she could 
hardly be brought into Sebastopol, and when there, sank at once. 
The Pervaz-Bahri was only carried into the harbour of Sebastopol 
by the aid of its chief engineer, Mr. Bell, an Englishman, who was 
promised on the part of Admiral Korniloff, if he succeeded in 
taking her there in safety, to be set immediately at liberty. When 
arrived at Sebastopol, instead of being released, Mr. Bell and his 
sub-engineers and stokers were put into close confinement, with 
the miserable allowance of 3d. a-day for their maintenance and 
given to understand that they would have to march 80 miles on 
foot, at this inclement season, into the interior. Prince Menchikoff, 
who commands at Sebastopol, was approved by the Czar and his 
Ministers, who turned a deaf ear to the representations of our 
Consul at Odessa” and the British Ambassador at St. Petersburg.‘ It 
was already known that at the battle of Sinope two English merchant 
men, following private trade, were headlessly and ruthlessly involved 
in the general destruction. The following is the simple narrative of 
the destruction of one of those vessels as given by a French paper: 

“On the 30th November the brigantine Howard, belonging to Bideford, a 
seaport in the South of England, had finished the discharge of a cargo of coals to 
the Austrian Consul, Mr. Pirentz, at Sinope, and was then at anchor taking in 
ballast with a view of sailing to Fatsah for a cargo of corn, which she had engaged 
to carry to England, when the Russian fleet suddenly came in sight, and without 
giving any notice whatever, or affording any opportunity for foreign vessels to 
remove out of danger, commenced a heavy fire of shot and shells on the Turkish 
fleet lying at anchor and in a few minutes entirely destroyed the Howard and other 
merchant vessels in the harbour.” ¢ 

This atrocious infraction of international law is paraded in the 
Odessa bulletin, while the Russian journals simultaneously an- 
nounced in insulting language that, while the English fleets dared 
not enter the Black Sea, the English Government dared not refuse 
the use of its dockyards to repair a Russian man-of-war. 

4 «1 ondres, 5 janvier”, Journal des Débats, January 7, 1854.— Ed. 

The latest mails have brought us more supplementary news with 
regard to the military events which lately took place in Asia. It 
appears that the Turks have been compelled entirely to evacuate 
the Russo-Armenian territory. but the precise result of the 
engagements, which determined this retreat, is not yet known?’ 
One Turkish corps had penetrated on the direct road to 
Akhalzikh from Ardahan, while another body took the more 
southern road from Kars by Alexandropol (in Georgian, Gumri) 
to Tiflis. Both these corps, it appears, were met by the Russians. 
According to the Russian accounts the Turks were routed on 
either line and lost about 40 pieces of cannon; as to the Turkish 
accounts, we have nothing official, but in private correspondence 
the retreat is explained by the necessity of going into winter 
quarters. Certain it is, that the Turks have evacuated the Russian 
territory with the exception of Fort St. Nicholas, that the Russians 
followed them, and that their advanced guard even ventured to 
within a mile of Kars, where it was repulsed. We know, besides, 
that the Turkish army of Anatolia, recruited as it is from the 
Asiatic provinces, the seat of old Moslem barbarism, and counting 
in its ranks a great number of irregulars, unreliable though 
generally brave soldiers of adventure, fancy warriors, and filibus- 
ters of Kurdistan—that this army of Anatolia, is nothing like 
the staid, disciplined and drilled army of Rumelia, where the com- 
mander knows how many and what men he has from day to 
day under his command, and where the thirst for independent 
adventure and private plunder is held under check by articles of 
war and courts martial. We know that the Russians, very hard up 
for troops in the beginning of the Asiatic campaign, have been 
reinforced by the 13th division of infantry (16,000 men) under 
Lieut.-General Obrucheff II, and by a body of Cossacks from the 
Don; we know that they have been able to keep the mountaineers 
in bounds, to maintain their communication as well across the 
Caucasus by Vladikavkaz as by sea to Odessa and Sebastopol. 
Under these circumstances, and considering that the Turkish 
commander Abdi Pasha was either a traitor or a dunce (he has 
been recalled since and Ahmed Pasha has been sent in his stead), 
we should not wonder at all if the Turks had been worsted, 
although there can be no doubt of the exaggeration prevailing in 
the Russian bulletins. 

On the Danube, the Russians have some time ago attacked 

“The description of the engagement at Akhalzikh of November 26, 1853. is 

Matchin, a fort situated on an arm of the Danube. A steamer came 
up with two gunboats; they were met by a hot fire; the gunboats, 
it is said, were sunk, and the steamer so far damaged that it had to 
make the best of its way home. Three or four skirmishes occurred, 
partly between the outposts at Kalafat, partly between the Russian 
posts on the Danube and small Turkish parties who crossed the 
river in order to surprise them. The Turks ascribe to themselves 
the advantage in all the encounters. It is to be regretted that the 
Turkish irregulars, fit more for this duty than for any other, have 
not long since been ordered to carry on this war on a small scale 
with the greatest activity. They would have proved more than a 
match for the Cossacks, disorganized the necessarily faulty system 
of outposts of the enemy, faulty because extending over a line 300 
miles in length; they would have disturbed the Russian plans, 
obtained a perfect knowledge of the enemy’s movements and 
might with proper caution and boldness have been victorious in 
every encounter. 

From telegraphic news, received this moment, it appears that 

“on the 6th of this month, a Turkish division, 15,000 strong, with 15 pieces of 
artillery, attacked the entrenched position of Chetatea, not far from Kalafat, and took 
it with storm; that the Russians lost 2,500 men, and that a reinforcement of 18,000 
Russians marching from Karaul, was forced to retire with a loss of 250 men.”* 

According to another report, the great majority of the 
population of Lesser Wallachia has risen against, and Krajova been 
placed in a state of siege by, the Russians. 

Meanwhile Russia exhausted herself in efforts to seduce or 
alarm in all quarters of the world, on our Indian frontiers, in 
Persia, Servia, Sweden, Denmark, &c. In Persia the British 
minister had had a difference with the Government of the Shah, 
who was on the point of yielding, when the Russian Ambassador 
interposed not only to exasperate the Shah against England, but to 
drive him into active hostility too, and a declaration of war against 
the Porte. This intrigue, however, is said to have been baffled by 
the British Chargé d’Affaires, Mr. Thompson’s menace of withdraw- 
ing from Teheran, by the dread of an immediate explosion from the 
dislike of the Persian people for Russia, and by the arrival of an 
Afghan Embassy, threatening, if Persia formed an alliance with 
Russia, an invasion of the Persian territory by the Afghans. 

A crowd of Russian agents was simultaneously overrunning 
Servia—seeking out and applying themselves to the places and 

persons formerly known by their attachment to the banished 
family of the Obrenovic—speaking to some of the young Prince 
Michael—to others of his old father Milos—now making them 
hope, through the protection of Russia, for the extension of the 
limits of Servia—the formation of a new kingdom of Illyria, which 
should unite all those who spoke the Servian language actually 
under the domination of Turkey and Austria,—and now announc- 
ing to them, in case of resistance, innumerable armies and utter 
subjugation. Notwithstanding these intrigues, in opposite senses, 
that Russia ceased not to carry on, she has not succeeded in break- 
ing the bonds between the Servians and the Sultan,* but, on the 
contrary, two firmans were expected from Constantinople at Bel- 
grade, the one suppressing all the relations existing between Servia 
and Russia, and the other confirming all the privileges conceded, 
at different epochs, to the Servian people. Then, the Russian 
Government has actively pursued negotiations at Stockholm and 
Copenhagen, for the purpose of inducing the governments of 
Sweden and Denmark to side with her in the approaching 
European struggle; the great object she has in securing their 
alliance being to obtain the closing of the passages of the Sound 
and Belts against the Western Powers. All she has effected tll 
now, is the conclusion of a treaty between Sweden, Denmark and 
Prussia concerning an armed neutrality, and preparations of 
armaments, ostensibly directed against herself. Private letters from 
Sweden exult in the possibility of the Duchy of Finland, so 
shamefully seized by Russia without a declaration of war, being 
restored to the Scandinavian Kingdom. As to Denmark, the 
attitude, not of the people, but of the Court, is more equivocal. It 
is even rumoured that the present Danish Minister of Foreign 
Affairs” will resign and be replaced by Count Reventlow-Criminil, 
a man known to be intimately connected with the Court of St. 
Petersburg. In France the “fusion” of the Orleanists and 
Legitimists***> owes to Russia the sort of success it has met with, 
while that same power is stirring up heaven and earth to destroy 
the entente cordiale existing between the Governments of England 
and France and to sow distrust between them. Attempts are being 
made by some of the Paris journals, in the pay of Mr. Kisseleff, to 
create a belief that the English Government is not sincere, and we 
see that in England a journal, in the pay of Mr. de Brunnow, in 
return casts doubts on the sincerity of the French Government. 

Another blow, principally aimed against the Western powers, is 
the Russian prohibition relative to the exportation of Polish corn. 

In the meantime the movements of Western diplomacy were by 
no means hostile to Russia, but exhibited, on the contrary, rather 
too anxious a tendency to temporise with justice and to compro- 
mise with crime. It is now obvious to everyone that their course has 
been a mistaken and a mischievous one. The resurrection of the 
Vienna conference and the protocol drawn up by them on the 5th 
ult., the letter of the French and British Ambassadors at Constan- 
tinople to Reshid Pasha,”*’ the collective note of the 4 Great Powers 
presented to the Porte on the 15th, and accepted by the Sultan on the 
31st ult., the circular of Mr. Drouyn de Lhuys, announcing the 
entrance of the united fleets into the Black Sea, to the French 
diplomatic agents, dated 30th ult., such are the principal events of 
the diplomatic history of the last 6 weeks.* As to the protocol of the 
Vienna conference, your readers will have been informed of its 
contents before now. Can there be anything more ludicrous than its 
assertion that 

“the assurances given on several occasions by the Emperor of Russia exclude the 
idea that that august Sovereign entertains any wish to interfere with the integrity of 
the Ottoman Empire,” 

and anything more mischievous than its urging on Turkey the 
propriety of consenting to a month’s armistice? Two days after the 
news of the disgraceful butchery at Sinope had reached Constan- 
tinople on the 5th ult., Reshid Pasha addressed a letter to Lord 
Stratford de Redcliffe and General Baraguay D’Hilliers, com- 
municating the news from Sinope and asking that the fleets might 
enter the Black Sea. On the 12th, a week after the date of Reshid 
Pasha’s note, he received a very indifferent answer on the part of 
the two Ambassadors, intimating to him that 

“the presence of the United Squadron had ‘a political signification,’ consequently 
no military one, and that it was a ‘moral support,’ consequently no naval one.” 

Thus the Porte was coerced into the acceptance of the joint 
Note of the 4 Powers presented to her on the 15th December. 
This note grants the Porte not only no compensation whatever for 
the losses she has undergone consequent upon the piratical acts of 
the Autocrat; it insists not only upon the renewal of all the ancient 
treaties of Kainardji, Adrianople, Unkiar-Skelessi, etc., which have 

> Quoted from The Times, No. 21615, December 19, 1853.— Ed. 

furnished, for a century and a half, the arsenal from which Russia 
has drawn her weapons of fraud, interference, progress and 
incorporation; but it allows the Czar to carry the point of the 
religious protectorate and administrative dictation over Turkey by 
stipulating that 

“the communication of the firmans relative to the spiritual privileges octroyed 
by the Sublime Porte to all its subjects not Mussulmen, should be made to all the 
Powers, and accompanied by suitable assurances given to each of them,” 

and that the Porte shall declare on its part its firm resolution to 
develop more efficaciously its administrative system and internal 
reforms. 

These new propositions, while in their letter investing the 5 
Powers of Europe with a joint protectorate over the Christian 
subjects of Turkey, give in reality the protectorate to Russia alone. 
The arrangement is to be, that France and Austria being Roman 
Catholic countries, are to have the protectorate over the Roman 
Catholic Christians in Turkey, and England and Prussia being 
Protestant countries, are to have the protectorate over the 
Protestant subjects of the Sultan, while Russia is to have the 
protectorate over those professing the Greek faith. Now, as the 
Roman Catholics do not number 800,000, nor the Protestants 
200,000, while those who profess the Greek religion amount to 
nearly 10,000,000, it is plain that the Czar would indeed acquire 
the protectorate over the Christian subjects in Turkey. These 
proposals of the 4 Powers were not accepted by the Porte till on 
the 19th ult., when Riza Pasha and Halil Pasha had entered the 
Ministry, the success of the Peace or Russian party having been 
thus assured. 

On the 2Ist ult., when it became known that the Council of. 
Ministers had notified to the four Ambassadors the adoption of 
the propositions, they had suggested, the Saftas (students) 
assembled to present a petition against the resolution taken by the 
government, and the outbreak of disturbances was only prevented 
by the arrest of the ringleaders. So great was the exasperation 
which prevailed at Constantinople, that the Sultan did not venture 
to repair on the following day to the Divan, nor proceed, as usual, 
amidst the thunder of the cannon, and the hurrahs of the foreign 
war crew, to the mosque of Tophana; and that Reshid Pasha fled 
for refuge from his own palace in Stambul to the palace 
contiguous to the residence of the Sultan. On the following day 
the public mind was somewhat calmed by a proclamation on the 

part of the Sultan, that no stop should be put to the military 
operations. 

These tortuous, pusillanimous and inexplicable movements of 
the Western diplomacy, which, throughout the dreary history of 
the last 9 months, almost exhausted public patience, have thrown 
doubts upon the sincerity of the British Government, and, as the 
public feel themselves at a loss to understand the motives that may 
have caused the long endurance on the part of the Western 
Powers, secret influences are spoken of, and rumours are industri- 
ously spread, that Prince Albert, the husband of the Queen,’ is 
interfering In the affairs of the Executive; that he ts not only atten- 
ding on his Sovereign Lady at the meetings of her Council, but 
is using his influence to control the advice of the responsible 
advisers; that, while exercising his opportunity to be present at 
the meeting of the Queen with her Ministers, he is in constant 
and direct communication with foreign courts, including the Rus- 
sian one, but except that of France. Another tale is, that the 
“fusion” of the Orléans and elder Bourbon branches of the 
late royal family of France receives almost as much countenance 
from our Court as it does from that of Russia, and the visit of the 
Duke of Nemours at the Court of Queen Victoria, fresh from the 
meeting with “Henry the Fifth,”” is pointed at as a proof. 

A fourth report, that the negotiations in the Eastern question, 
have, with the assent of Russia, been delegated to the sole 
intermediation of Count Buol-Schauenstein, brother-in-law of 
Count Meyendorff, is cited as evidence that. this government has 
never desired independent or effective negotiations, but has, from 
the first, sought to aid the designs of Russia and her allies, while 
seeming to oppose her. Mr. Roebuck, it is confidently stated, will 
bring the whole question of Coburg influence before the House of 
Commons, while Lord Brougham is said to intend bringing it 
before the House of Lords. There is no doubt that the Coburg 
influences form, as this moment, the almost exclusive topic of 
conversation in the metropolis. Parliament will reassemble on the 
31st instant. 

So stern a winter as the present one has not been known since 
1809. The intensity of the cold has been by no means the most 
trying incident; the incessant changes both of temperature and of 
the character of the weather have been far worse. The trains run 
on the railway with the greatest difficulty; in some parts transit 

appears to be quite cut off, and in the means of communication 
England is thrown back to times forgotten. The electric telegraph 
has been used to mitigate the inconvenience of commercial 
documents intercepted by snow drifts, and to prevent the noting 
of bills for unexplained non-payment. Nevertheless the noting of 
more than 500 bills in London illustrates the social anarchy 
occasioned by the uncommon inclemency of the season. The 
papers are filled with records of the fearful shipwrecks caused by 
the snow storms and gales, particularly on the Eastern coast. 
Although the recently published tables of trade, navigation and 
revenue* show a continuance of the prosperity with which 1853 
began, the severity of the season, coupled with the rising prices of 
the first necessaries, principally of corn, coals and tallow, acts as a 
hard pressure upon the condition of the lower classes. Numerous 
cases of starvation have occurred. Bread riots in the West are now 
forming an accompaniment to the lock-outs in the North. 

Time, however, compels to defer a detailed account of trade 
and commerce to a following letter. 

Written on January 14, 1854 Reproduced from the newspaper, 

March 6, 1854, in English and Dutch