Neue Oder-Zeitung.
No. 93, February 24, 1855.
Midday Edition

X. London, February 21. (State of the Armies.) We have seen that England, for the next 12 months, can oppose the enemy with no more than 50,000 men of its own troops, a force which, however, despite its numerical weakness, is not to be despised given good leadership and proper administration. Let us remember the Battle of Inkerman.

France, with a much larger army and an incomparably more complete military organisation, has by no means engaged its forces to the same extent. France possesses 341 infantry battalions, namely 100 line regiments, 3 Zouave regiments, 2 regiments of the Foreign Legion, each of 3 battalions, besides 20 rifle battalions and 6 African battalions. Of these 341 battalions, 100—one for each line regiment—are depot battalions for the reception and training of recruits. Only the first two battalions are employed for service outside the country, while the depots prepare the reinforcements intended to keep the former up to full strength. Hence 100 battalions must be deducted from the total of the operational army. If the depot battalions are used as the basis for a third field battalion, as often happened under Napoleon, this is done by assigning them an extraordinary number of recruits. It then always requires some time to make them fit for field service. At present, therefore, 241 battalions are available. Of these, Algiers requires at least 25; 4 are in Rome; nine infantry divisions, about 80 battalions, have been dispatched to the Crimea, Constantinople and Athens—thus a total of 109 battalions engaged, almost half of the available French infantry on a peace footing, minus the depots. The improvement of the French army and the particular military educability of the French make it possible to double the number of infantry in about 12 months. Considering the uninterrupted armaments since mid-1853, the formation of 12 battalions of the Imperial Guard, and the strength which the French troops counted last autumn in their various camps, we may assume that their infantry in the interior is as large as before the embarkation of the 9 divisions, and even larger, if the 3rd field battalions are included, which can be formed from the depot battalions without essentially impairing their effectiveness as depots. France can therefore command over 350,000 men by March 1. With cavalry, artillery, etc., this infantry strength would, according to the French military organisation, represent an army of about 500,000 men. Of these, at least 200,000 men must be counted for the interior, as cadres for the depots, for the maintenance of the existing order, for the military workshops, for the hospitals. France could therefore take the field by April 1 with 300,000 men, including about 200 infantry battalions. These, however, are by no means on a par with the troops shipped to the Crimea in organisation, discipline, or steadiness under fire. Among them many recruits, many battalions newly formed for the occasion, in which officers and men are strangers to one another; in every respect, therefore, inferior in quality to the old bodies with their esprit de corps. The 80 battalions in the Crimea represent a far more important part of the French army than the purely numerical ratio indicates. While England has almost the entirety, France has almost half of its better troops in the Crimea.

On a previous occasion we gave an overview of the active Russian troops available against Europe. It suffices here to repeat that Russia disposes of 750 battalions against the West, of which 250, not yet fully formed, will always remain weak, and another 200 have suffered greatly in the last two campaigns. The 5th and 6th reserve battalions must consist mainly of time-expired soldiers, if the original plan of organisation has been followed, the 7th and 8th battalions, on the other hand, of not very serviceable recruits, since the Russian, despite his docility and imitative impulse, learns military service only extremely slowly. Moreover, the whole reserve is poorly led. Russia has therefore already engaged half of its regularly organised active army. The other half, however, constitutes, as shown earlier, the flower of its army. Only the influence of diplomacy on Western warfare explains the results which Russia has already achieved—the offensive power of Turkey destroyed, a British army of 50,000 men sacrificed and England eliminated as a land power for at least 12 months, France forced to engage proportionally as many troops as Russia itself and to place its best African regiments before the enemy, while the elite of the Russian army has not yet fired a shot, and all this, although the Russian army in Europe cannot boast of a single success, but, on the contrary, has had to yield in every significant action and abandon each of its own undertakings.

Austria, however, decisively turns the scale against Russia. It tips the balance. It disposes of about 500,000 men, ready for field service, along with 100,000 in depots and 120,000 in reserve. Its total strength can be brought to 850,000 men by no excessive recruiting. We estimate it, however, at only 600,000 men, including the depots and disregarding the reserve, which, as far as we know, has not yet been called up. From these 600,000 men, 100,000 in the depots and about 70,000 in Italy and other parts of the interior not threatened by Russia must be deducted. This leaves 430,000, stationed in various armies from Bohemia to Galicia and the lower Danube. Of these, 150,000 men can be concentrated at any given point in a very short time. We saw earlier that, since the whole Russian Danube army has been shifted to the Crimea, the Austrians are superior to the Russians at every point and can bring their reserve to the frontier just as quickly, despite the head start Russia has gained. Only it must be noted that the Austrian reserve is numerically far more limited than the Russian, and that, once the 120,000 reserve men have been called up, every fresh increment must arise from new levies, and can therefore be put into the field only very slowly. The longer Austria therefore delays its declaration of war, the greater advantage it concedes to the Russian. A French auxiliary army is supposed to offset this, but it is far from Dijon and Lyon to Cracow. The longer the diplomatic delay, the more unlikely also their timely arrival. Should, however, the timely arrival of Russian reserves deprive Austria of its superiority for a moment, a few skilful manoeuvres, a quite insignificant withdrawal would compel its opponent to detachments which would immediately restore the chances in its favour. From the moment Austria moves its armies, Russia is thrown onto the defensive, considered purely militarily. Even a momentarily successful offensive could change nothing in this result.

Finally, it must be considered that if France raises its army in the interior to 500,000 men and Austria its entire army to 800,000, each of these countries is capable of calling at least 250,000 more men to arms in 12 months, while England’s contingent would grow continuously from the second year onward. The Tsar, on the other hand, if he completes the 7th and 8th battalions of his infantry regiments and swells his entire active army to 900,000 men, has pretty well exhausted everything at his disposal for the offensive. His latest levies already encountered great difficulties: the height standard had to be lowered and other extraordinary means resorted to in order to obtain the required manpower. His decree summoning the entire male population to arms betrays only the incapacity for further regular recruiting. The same means was employed at the time of the French invasion of 1812, and then only in 17 provinces. Moscow raised 80,000 volunteers, or 10 per cent of the province, Smolensk 25,000, etc. But during the war they were nowhere to be found, and these hundreds of thousands of volunteers did not prevent the Russians from arriving at the Vistula in just as bad a condition and just as complete a dissolution as the French themselves.