The latest mails have brought us some 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 their retreat, is not known. The 
Turks had penetrated on the direct road to Akhalzikh from 
Ardahan, while another body took the more southern road from 
Kars by Alexandropol (in Georgian, Gimri) 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 forty 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. 

The only thing certain is this, 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 the old Moslem barbarism, 
and counting in its ranks a great number of irregulars, unreliable, 
though generally brave, soldiers of adventure, fancy warriors and 
filibusters, that this army of Anatolia is nothing like the stern, 
disciplined and drilled army of Rumelia, whose commander 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, who were very hard up for 

troops in the beginning of the Asiatic campaign, have been 
reinforced by 16,000 men under Lieut.-Gen. Obrucheff II, and by 
a body of Cossacks from the Don; we know that they have been 
able to keep the mountaineers within 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 placed under arrest at Kars; Ahmed Pasha 
was sent in his place), 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. We read in the 
Augsburger Zeitung’ that 

“towards the end of November, Shamyl made a desperate attempt to force his 
way to the south, in order to effect a direct communication with the Turks. The 

strength of his corps was estimated at from 10,000 to 16,000 men, and it is 
affirmed that the Murides, the flower of his troops, were cut to pieces.” 

This however wants confirmation. 

At last the murder is out, as regards the affair at Sinope. One of 
the finest three-deckers of the Russian fleet—the Rostislav,>” 
120-gun ship—was sunk there by the Turks. This fact—kept back 
hitherto under the specious pretext that the Rostislav did not sink 
during the action, but immediately afterward—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 
suppose 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. 
Altogether, the Turks appear to fight like Turks when on the 
water. 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. 
So far, then, the prizes carried off by the Russians amount to 
nothing, and indeed the impossibility for them to carry off a single 
prize from Sinope shows both the obstinacy of the Turkish 
defense and the mutilated state of the Russian fleet after the 
action. 

There is a report that the combined French and English fleets, 
together with the first division of the Turkish Navy, are 

2 Issue No. 9, January 9, 1854.— Ed. 

transporting 17,000 Turks to Batum. If this be true, 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. Immediately prior to the 
entrance of the combined fleets into the Black Sea, the Czar is said 
to have sent his mandate for the withdrawal of all his vessels of 
war from the waters of the Euxine to Sebastopol. A letter dated 
Odessa, Dec. 24, reports that 

“the commander of the Russian flotilla in the Sea of Azov had sent one of his 
aides-de-camp to Sebastopol to explain how critical his position was. Two corps of 
12,000 men each were ready to be embanked at Sebastopol, when this operation of 
war was paralyzed by the news of the imminent entrance of the united fleets into 
the Euxine.”? 

From the last telegraphic news received it appears that the 
Russians intended attempting a general attack on the Turkish lines 
at Kalatat, on the 13th inst., the Russian New-Year’s day. They 
had already pushed forward about 10,000 men in entrenchments 
at Chetatea, a village nine English miles north of Kalafat, but were 
prevented from concentrating their whole available force by the 
Turkish General’s getting the start of them, storming the enemy’s 
entrenchments with 15,000 or 18,000 men, proving victorious in a 
series of most murderous encounters that took place on the 6th, 
7th, 8th, 9th and 10th inst., and finally forcing the Russians to 
retire in the direction of Krajova. The Russians themselves confess 
a loss of 1,000 killed and 4,000 wounded. Gen. Anrep, we are told 
by the telegraph, “who commanded the Russians, was severely 
wounded, as well as Gen. Tuinont.” On the 10th, it is stated, the 
Turks who were commanded by Selim Pasha (the Pole Zedlinsky), 
again retired to Kalafat. Thus far the telegraphic news, hitherto the 
only source of information about these most important events. 
The report winding up, on the one hand, with the retirement of 
the Russians on Krajova, and of the Turks, on the other, to 
Kalafat, evokes a suspicion that great strategical faults have again 
been committed on both sides. There is one report afloat that 
Omer Pasha caused a whole corps to pass the [Danube] between the 
Aluta and the Shil, thus menacing the communications of the 
Russian corps at Krajova. But how could the Turks cross the 
Danube, which is filled with floating masses of ice, at any other 
point than Kalafat, where alone they were prepared for such an 
emergency? 

The defeats the Russians met with at Kalafat are perhaps more 
important in a political than a military view. Coupled with the 
entrance of the united fleets into the Black Sea, they cut off the 
last probability of the Czar’s yielding to the humble supplication 
for peace forwarded by the courier of the Vienna Conference to 
St. Petersburg. On the other hand they must produce the 
immediate effect on neighboring Servia of strengthening the 
National party and intimidating the Russian one, who have lately 
been lifting up their heads with amazing impudence at Belgrade. 
Prince Alexander, it is true, and the mass of the Servian people, 
could not be prevailed upon to break the bonds between their 
country and the Sultan,* although a crowd of Russian agents is 
simultaneously overrunning Servia, carrying on their intrigues in 
opposite senses—seeking out and applying themselves to the 
places and persons formerly known for 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 would unite all those who speak the Servian language now 
under the domination of Turkey and Austria—and now announc- 
ing to them, in case of resistance, innumerable armies and utter 
subjugation. You are aware that Prince Milos, residing at Vienna, 
is the old protégé of Metternich, while Michael, his son, is a mere 
creature of Russia, who in 1842 rendered the princedom vacant by 
flying from Servia. The Russian defeat at Kalafat will, at the same 
time, relieve Austria from the fear of a Russian army appearing 
before Belgrade and evoking among the subjects of Austria, of 
common origin and faith with herself, the consciousness of their 
own strength and of the degradation they endure in the 
domination of the Germans. 

As to Austria, I may state en passant, that she has at last 
renounced the long-cherished hope of raising a new loan. The 
state of her Exchequer may be inferred from the expedient her 
Government has recently resorted to, of exacting a discount of 15 
per cent. upon its own paper money—a financial maneuver only 
to be compared with the devises of the swindling ingenuity of the 
French Rois Faux Monoyeurs,” who appreciated the coin when they 
had to pay, and depreciated it when they had to receive money. 
According to the German papers, the Austrian budget for 1854 

will show a deficit of 45,000,000 florins on the ordinary service, 
and 50,000,000 florins on the extraordinary. Whenever news of 
warlike character reaches Vienna, people throng to the banking- 
houses, in order to change paper currency for silver coin. 

France, too, it is known, has long been moving for a loan of 
200,000,000 francs (£8,000,000 sterling), but the dearth of food, 
the failure of 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 public funds and railway shares, all these 
circumstances have by no means tended to facilitate such a 
transaction. Bonaparte could not succeed in finding takers at the 
Bourse for the new loan. There remained no resource save that 
recurred to on the eve of the coup d’état—sending Persigny to the 
Bank of France, forcing out of it 50,000,000 francs ($10,000,000), 
and leaving in their place that amount of treasury bonds, under 
the head of “securities.” This was actually done on New-Year’s 
day. The fall of the funds to 69 hailed this financial coup d’état. 
The Government will, as we are now Officially informed, obtain a 
loan from the Bank of France of 2,000,000 or 3,000,000 francs, 
against treasury bonds. Those not acquainted with what passed on 
New-Year’s day in the parlor of the Bank of France, will be at a 
loss to understand how the Bank has been prevailed upon to 
accept a loan rejected at the Bourse. 

As to Persia the news continues to be contradictory. According to 
one report the Persian army is marching upon Erzerum, and 
Bagdad; according to another the Russian intrigue has been baffled 
by the British Chargé d’Affaires, Mr. Thompson, who menaced 
withdrawal from Teheran, by the dread of an immediate explosion 
of 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. 

According to private correspondence from Constantinople, pub- 
lished in the Patrie, the Divan has resolved to fortify Constantinople 
on the land side. A mixed commission, consisting of European and 
Ottoman officers, is said to have already commenced the prepara- 
tory survey of the localities. The fortification of Constantinople 
would altogether change the character of Russo-Turkish warfare, 
and prove the heaviest blow ever dealt to the eternal dreams of the 
self-styled heir of the Byzantine Emperors. 

The rumor of Austria’s concentrating a corps d’armée in the Banat, 
to be placed under the command of Gen. Count Schlick, is 
contradicted by the German Press. 

The Correspondenz, of Berlin, states that general orders have been 
given to the authorities to hold themselves prepared, in case of a 
mobilization of the Landwehr.*™ 

Overtures have been made from St. Petersburg to the Cabinet of 
Copenhagen for the cession of the Island of Bornholm to Russia. 

“Bornholm,” as it is justly remarked by The Daily News,” “might be a Malta or 
Gibraltar of the Baltic. It is within a day’s sail of the Sound and Copenhagen, and 
[...] placed by nature at the very throat of the Baltic.” 

In the message sent by Lord Redcliffe to the Governor of 
Sebastopol, and intimating to him the appearance of the united 
squadron in the Black Sea, the only object of the movement is 
stated to be “the protection of the Ottoman territory from all 
aggression or hostile act,”’ no mention being made of the 
protection of the Ottoman flag. 

As all the accounts received from Paris, Vienna, Berlin, 
Constantinople and St. Petersburg, indicate the prospect of war, 
prices have generally declined in all stock markets on both sides of 
the Channel. 

Written on January 20, 1854 Reproduced from the newspaper 

Tribune, No. 3997, February 8, 1854 

Signed: Karl Marx