The sun of Austerlitz* has melted in water. A great battle, as 
was confidentially announced and believed in Paris, was to be 
fought before Sevastopol in celebration of the Second of 
December *”’; but from a dispatch of General Canrobert, of the 3d 
of December, it appears that 

“rain was falling in torrents, the roads were cut up, the trenches filled with 

water, and the siege operations—as well as all the works—put in a state of 
suspense.” 

The Russians hitherto had the offensive, the Alhes the 
defensive, superiority on the Chernaya; at the walls of Sevastopol - 
it was the reverse. In other words, the Russians were strong 
enough on the Chernaya to hold the field, but the Allies were not, 
though able to keep their position; while at Sevastopol the Allies, 
strong enough to carry on the siege, were so nearly equally 
matched by the garrison, that the operations, though not stopped 
from without, yet proceeded with hardly any visible effect. The 
proportions of force seem about to change, and the Allies appear 
on the point of becoming strong enough to repulse the Russians 
from the Chernaya. In that case the Russians can act in two ways, 
after having lost their position above Inkerman. Either they can go 
round and take up the intrenched camp about the North Fort, or 
they can with their main body retreat into the interior, where the 
Allies cannot follow them far. The Allies can hardly be strong 
enough before February either to invest the northern camp or 

> Le Moniteur universel, No. 346, December 12, 1854.— Ed. 

follow a retreating army much further than Bakshiserai. They 
could scarcely fight a second battle against an army intrenched 
somewhere about Simferopol. In either case, they would have to 
fall back on the Chernaya, and thus this game of alternate advance 
and retreat is likely to be played all the winter over, unless, 
indeed, Sevastopol, on the south side, succumbs to an assault. But 
as the news, which we receive by the Atlantic,’ respecting the 
siege is very meager, we cannot say more on this point than that it 
is not at all likely. We are, indeed, aware that, according to a 
dispatch of December 7th, published in the Paris Moniteur, and 
reprinted in the London papers, the allied armies had all of a 
sudden got the upper hand, and only two days after the deluge, 
“almost completed the investment of the town.”* This spurious 
dispatch was evidently concocted with a view to make amends for 
the baffled 2d of December prophecy. 

A short time ago we gave a statement of the sum total of the 
Russian army, together with its disposal.” We then showed that of 
these nearly three-quarters of a million soldiers, up to the present 
time, hardly one-third had been engaged in active operations, and 
that the far greater portion of the remaining two-thirds were 
employed to menace Austria. In spite of the reenforcemenis sent 
to the Crimea, matters have not been much altered since then; for 
Dannenberg’s corps, the 4th, which marched to the relief of 
Sevastopol, was withdrawn from the army of the Danube, where it 
had been previously reenforced. The only essential change in the 
position of the great Western Army of Russia, as we may call the 
corps of some 300,000 men concentrated on the Austrian frontier, 
is a slight extension of its left wing towards Bessarabia, and the 
Middle Dniester, in which position it is enabled, in case of need, to 
receive the remnants of the army of the Danube in case of their 
retreat from Bessarabia. The great Western Army may, besides, 
have detached a couple of divisions to the Crimea, and a few 
reenforcements to the Danube, but in the whole its strength is 
unimpaired, and the march of the 3d division of the Guards from 
Revel, and of some more reserves, will have made up for these 
detachments. 

The Danubian army, however, may be considered as entirely 
broken up, and reduced to a mere corps of demonstration, placed 
in Bessarabia to keep up the appearance of a Russian occupation 

as long as possible. By Liprandi’s and afterwards Dannenberg’s 
departure, that army was deprived of the whole of the 4th corps 
(10th, 11th and 12th Divisions), deducting from the remaining five 
divisions, the 7th, 8th, 9th, 14th, and 15th, the troops necessary 
for the occupation of the coast, and the garrisons of the fortresses 
from Bender and Ismail, to Kherson and Nikolayev, and, 
considering the enormous losses of the two Danubian campaigns, 
these five divisions could not muster for field operations more 
than 15,000 men. They are placed near the coast, and’ wherever 
there is coast, the Russian defensive, so efficient in the heart of 
the continent, is lame in the extreme. It has to guard numierous 
fortresses and dépots against the attacks of the hostile fleet, and 
thus it is explained, that of the 30,000 or 35,000 men composing 
these five divisions not one-half is disposable for the field. 

The dissolution of the army. of the Danube, like most of the 
great strategical measures taken by Russia (for the blunders 
generally commence with the execution of them), is a very 
well-chosen step. Since the Anglo-French have engaged themselves 
over head and ears in the Crimea, no enemy opposes the Russians 
on the Danube. Omer Pasha’s army, hardly amounting to some 
40,000 men after the wear and tear of two campaigns, never made 
up for, has, by the aid of western diplomacy, been so broken up, 
as to leave it scarcely sufficient to invest Ismail, much less to 
detach a corps to cover the siege, or to repel the Russians in the 
field. Besides, an attack upon Bessarabia, which would have 
afforded a powerful diversion some months ago, would now lack a 
definite military object, and, consequently, Omer Pasha’s army is 
now sent to the Crimea. The only force, then, purporting to 
menace the Russians on the south-west, is now the Austrian army, 
which, in a force of some 270,000, occupies Galicia, Transylvania 
and Moldavia. This force must, above all things, be held in check. 
For, should it declare itself hostile to Russia, Bessarabia, and even 
the country up to the Bug, would have to be abandoned, and 
operations have to be conducted either from the offensive basis of 
the Polish fortresses, or from the defensive basis of Kiev and the 
Dnieper. In both cases a Danubian army would be cut off, and 
have to find a base of its own somewhere in the steppes of the 
South, which is no easy matter, in a country which feeds many 
horses and sheep, but very few men. On the other hand, should 
Austria declare for Russia, or turn the points of her neutral 
bayonets towards the Alps and the Rhine, then the Polish army 
might either march into Germany as a reserve to the Austrians, 
after sending a strong corps toward the Danube, or the Austrians 

pour in a mass upon the Danube and risk a march to 
Constantinople. In either case, a separate army on the Danube, 
stronger than a demonstration corps, was superfluous. 

As to the cooperation of Austria in this war, we can, of course, 
only speak in an altogether hypothetical way. The _ noisily 
trumpeted Treaty of Alliance said to have been concluded by her 
with France and England on the 2d of December, turns out to be 
but a snare laid for Parliament, as we warned our readers 
immediately on the announcement of the Treaty.’ 

In the Queen’s speech the Treaty is alluded to in these words: 

“It is with satisfaction I inform you that, together with the Emperor of the 

French, I have concluded a treaty with the Emperor of Austria, from which I 
anticipate important advantages to the common cause;” 

but, being hardly pressed by Lord Derby, Aberdeen went the 
length of declaring: 

“We propose only that the House should learn with satisfaction that Her 
Majesty has made a treaty from which she (viz,.old Aberdeen) anticipates important 
advantages.” © 

This is all the satisfaction he gave. Lord John Russell, in the 
Lower House, was forced by Mr. Disraeli to advance a step 
further, and plainly to confess that the boasted Treaty of Alliance 
means neither a treaty nor an alliance. He avows that it binds 
Austria to nothing at all, while it forces the Western Powers into 
an alliance offensive and defensive with Austria, if she should 
choose to declare war on Russia, and obliges them besides to 
propose to Russia, before the end of the year, conditions of peace . 
on the basis of the famous four points.‘ After all, Austria might 
then, “‘without a breach of faith,’’ release herself from the alliance 
by saying, “at the last moment,” she did not concur in the 
interpretation put on the four points by the Western. Powers. The 
result of Lord John Russell’s explanation of the glorious treaty of 
December 2, was an immediate fall of the funds, both at London 
and at Paris. 

A year ago, the coalition pretended to have allowed the 
massacre of Sinope to take place in order to obtain the alliance of 

Times, No. 21923, December 13, 1854.— Ed. 
The Times, No. 21923, December 13, 1854.— Ed. 
Lord John Russell’s speech in the House of Commons on December 12, 1854. 
The Times, No. 21923, December 13, 1854.— Ed. 

the German powers. Now, a sham treaty with one of these powers 
is held out as the equivalent for the loss not of a Turkish fleet, but 
of a British army. We are even assured by the latest German 
papers that the opening of the British Parliament has given the 
signal for the reappearance of the specter of the Vienna 
Conference, which was about once more to set its cumbrous 
machinery at work.*” 

However, as Austria, according to Lord John Russell, declares it 
possible that she may be driven to war with Russia, and as the 
position taken by the Russian army on the Austrian frontier 
indicates the same thing, we may suppose, for a moment, that 
Austria and the rest of Germany, even including Prussia, are to 
join the Western Powers. How far would Russia be prepared to 
meet such an eventuality? 

If in 1812 the Continental force launched against Russia was far 
weaker than that which she may perhaps see on her frontiers in 
‘April or May; if then England was her ally instead of her foe, 
Russia may console herself with the reflection that the more 
numerous the armies are which penetrate into her interior, the 
more chance is there of their speedy destruction, and that, on the 
other hand, she has now three times the troops under arms which 
she had then. 

Not that we think “Holy Russia” unassailable. On the contrary, 
Austria alone we consider fully her equal as to military resources, 
while Austria and Prussia united, are quite able, if merely military 
chances are taken into account, to force her to an ignominious 
peace. Any forty millions of men, concentrated upon a country of 
the size of Germany proper, will be able to cope successfully with 
the scattered sixty millions of Russian subjects. The strategy of an 
attack upon Russia from the west has been clearly enough defined 
by Napoleon, and had he not been forced by circumstances of a 
non-strategic nature to deviate from his plan, Russia’s supremacy 
and integrity were seriously menaced in 1812. That plan was to 
advance to the Dvina and the Dnieper, to organize a defensive 
position, both as to fortifications, dépdts and communications, to 
take her fortresses on the Dvina, and to delay the march to 
Moscow, until the spring of 1813. He was induced to abandon this 
plan, late in the season, from political reasons, from the outcry of 
his officers against winter quarters in Lithuania, and from a blind 
faith in his invincibility. He marched to Moscow, and the result is 
known. The disaster was immensely aggravated by the mal- 
administration of the French Commissariat, and by the want of 
warm clothing for the soldiers. Had these things been better 

attended to, Napoleon, on his retreat, might have found himself 
at Wilna at the head of an army twice in numbers that which 
Russia could oppose to him. His errors are before us; they are 
none of them of a nature irremediable: the fact of his penetrating 
to Moscow, the march of Charles XII to Poltava, prove that the 
country is accessible, though difficult of access; and as to 
maintaining a victorious army in its heart, that all depends upon 
the length of the line of operations, on the distance and the 
security of the bases. Napoleon’s line of operations from the Rhine 
to Aylau and Friedland, if we consider long lines of operations in 
their capacity of drawbacks upon the active force of an army, will 
be about equal to a line of operations from Brest Litovski 
(supposing the Polish fortresses to be taken in the first year) to 
Moscow. And in this supposition no account is taken of the 
circumstance that the immediate base of operations would have 
been advanced to Vitebsk, Mogilev and Smolensk, without which 
preparatory act a march on Moscow would certainly be hazardous. 

Russia is certainly thinly populated; but we must not forget that 
the central provinces—the very heart of Russian nationality and 
strength—have a population equal to that of central Europe. In 
Poland—that is, the five governments constituting the Russian 
kingdom of Poland—the average is about the same. The most 
populous districts of Russia—Moscow, Tula, Riasan, Nijni- 
Novgorod, Kaluga, Yaroslaf, Smolensk, &c.—are the very heart of 
Great Russia, and form a compact body; they are continued, in the 
south, by the equally populous Little Russian Provinces of Kiev, 
Poltava, Chernigov, Voronezh, &c. There are, in all, 29 Provinces 
or Governments, in which the population is quite half as dense as 
that of Germany. It is only the eastern and northern Provinces, 
and the steppes of the south, where population is very thin; partly 
also the formerly Polish Provinces of the west— Minsk, Mogilev 
and Grodno—on account of extensive swamps between the 
(Polish) Bug and Dniester. But an advancing army, having in its 
rear the corn-producing plains of Poland, Volhynia and Podolia, 
and in front, and for its theater of operations, those of Central 
Russia, need not be afraid of its subsistence, if it manages the 
matter anything like well, and if it learns from the Russians 
themselves how to employ the means of transport of the country. 
As for a devastation of all resources by the retreating army, as in 
1812, such a thing is only possible on one line of operations, and 
in its immediate vicinity; and if Napoleon had not, by his hurried 
advance from Smolensk, tied himself down to a very short time in 
which to complete his campaign, he would have found plenty of 

resources around him. But being in a hurry, he could not forage 
out the country at a short distance from his line of march, and his 
foraging parties, at that time, appear actually to have been afraid 
of penetrating far into the immense pine forests which separate 
village from village. An army which can detach strong cavalry 
parties to hunt up provisions, and the numerous carts and wagons 
of the country, can easily provide itself with everything necessary 
in the shape of food; and it is not likely that Moscow will burn 
down a second time. But even in that case, a retreat to Smolensk 
cannot be prevented, and there the army would find _ its 
well-prepared base of operation provided with every necessary. 

But not only military questions are to be decided. Such a war 
must be brought to a close by political action too. It is possible that 
the declaration of Germany against Russia would be the signal for 
the restoration of Poland by Russia herself. Nicholas would 
certainly not part with the Lithuanian and other West-Russian 
provinces; but the kingdom of Poland, Galicia, Posen, and perhaps 
West and East Prussia, would form a pretty good-sized kingdom. 
Whether such a revival of Poland would be durable, who can tell? 
One thing is certain: it would put an end to what is hollow in the 
enthusiasm for Poland, which, for the last forty years, has been 
affected by everybody and anybody calling himself liberal or 
progressive. A Russian appeal to Hungary would be sure to 
follow; and, if the Magyars should demur, we must not forget that 
two-thirds of the population of Hungary consists of Slavs, who 
consider the Magyars as a ruling and intruding aristocracy. On the 
other hand, Austria would, in such a case, not hesitate to restore 
the ancient Hungarian Constitution, thus aiming to blot Hungary 
out of the map of revolutionary Europe. 

This suffices to show what a wide perspective of military and 
political interest would be opened by the accession of Austria to 
the western alliance, and a chance of a war of all Europe against 
Russia. On the contrary supposition, the spring is likely to see a 
million and a half of soldiers arrayed against the Western Powers, 
and an Austro-Prussian army marching on the French frontiers. 
And then the management of the war is sure to be taken out of 
the hands of its present leaders.