he pretended to consider as a shameful violation of principle on the part of his own government.

Mr. Fox, in our opinion, was not more happy in the selection of an ambassador for the Court of St. Petersburgh.-Idle tales were soon afloat of an unheard-of indiguity being offered to his person; and though we were not inclined to give more credit to these, than to other stories of Russian barbarism, the prevalence of the report certainly led us to suppose that the nobleman in question was not in the very best possible odeur at the court to which he was sent.

6

Russia could not, at the time to which we are alluding, have been prepared for the weight of war which fell upon her by the total annihilation of the Prussian armies, at the battle of Jena. She required more time than was allowed, to collect her forces. A small and compact state, when suddenly attacked, may as suddenly send forth the burning cross,' and muster her clans' to the field; but what energy and activity can bring up succours, without due warning, from the distant points of a dominion, which occupies a tenth part of the habitable globe? General Beningsen was not sufficiently experienced to cope with Buonaparte; the Russian commissariat too, at that period, was lamentably defective;-yet, in spite of all these disadvantages; in spite of the refusal of a trifling loan on the part of our government, or even the guarantee of a loan which the merchants of London were ready to raise; in spite of our puerile expeditions to Constantinople and Egypt; in spite of the ridicule thrown upon Russia, for her presumption in attempting to withstand the power of France; and above all, in spite of Lord Hutchinson's gloomy predictions, the desperate battles of Pultusk, Eylau, Heilsberg and Fredland were fought: the Emperor remained faithful to the cause, and refused to listen to overtures of peace from Buonaparte, though accompanied with the tempting offer of sharing with him in the spoils of Prussia.

All these circumstances, together with the firm conduct of Alexander, under his repeated disappointments, are forcibly brought forward by Mr. Eustaphieve. We have Mr. Canning's authority, in corroboration of his statements, who did not scruple to declare in his speech on the Russian subsidy, in the following year, That, of all the difficulties he had to contend with since his coming into office, the most difficult was, that of endeavouring to satisfy foreign ministers for the gross failure, on our part, in answering their expectations of assistance and co-operation.' We can venture indeed to assert, from our own knowledge, that the Emperor complained, loudly and angrily, to the ambassador who arrived from England a short time previous to the peace of Tilsit, of our refusal to afford him any assistance by way of loan; and that he treated with merited contempt the idea, that the pitiful expeditions to the Medi

terraneau

terranean could be supposed, by any human being, to operate, in any shape, as a diversion in favor of Russia. Can we wonder then that his patience was at last exhausted as well as his means of defence? His most faithful ministers, seeing peace inevitable, retired in despair, and he was compelled, however reluctantly, to throw himself into the arms of France. And when we see him beset by new counsellors, avowedly partial to France, and brought within close contact of the most artful and unprincipled tyrant of the age, whose snake-like fascinations, more politic, and more powerful sovereigns have not been able to resist, perhaps we ought not to press too strongly the charge of vacillation against the youthful Alexander.

But, though driven by circumstances to become the ally of France, the whole conduct of the Emperor, during the interruption of all intercourse between the two countries, sufficiently shewed how unwillingly he consented to the alliance. No one act of hostility against this country, on the part of Russia, can be fairly produced, excepting a formal declaration of war. Our merchants remained unmolested in the country; and Buonaparte called in vain for the execution of his burning decrees, and in vain required that the Russian ports should be closed to the English. Not a single ship of war was sent out to disturb our commerce; and, as if to give the lie in the strongest manner to the predictions of those statesmen, who so confidently maintained that England would rue the day, when the expedition to Copenhagen was projected, and that, the national faith was for ever tarnished in the eyes of foreign powers,' one of the first acts of Alexander, on the relations of amity. being re-established between this country and Russia, was to make the voluntary proposal of sending his fleet to England; and thus to shew, in the most unequivocal manner, the entire confidence which he placed in the good faith of the nation.

We shall now proceed to the remarks which we have to offer upon such parts of our author's work as treat of the resources of Russia for military operations, and to shew that, happily for his country and for Europe at large, he has not been led by a pardonable partiality to estimate too highly her powers of resistance, or the character of his countrymen.

'The natural situation of Russia is such, that she can with ease and convenience maintain and support, while on her own ground, not only the formidable force she possesses, but double that number, if necessity should require it. All her means are within herself; and no country in the known world is so little dependent on commercial, or any other intercourse, with foreign nations. Could commodities, or the necessaries themselves, be transported with the same facility as money, which represents them, she might provide for her armies, at any distance from home, better than any power, France herself not ex

FF 2

cepted.

cepted. There is nothing relating to the maintenance of an army, but what she can draw from herself, find on her own land, and manufacture with her own hand; an advantage which she pre-eminently enjoys, of which no external cause can deprive her, and which, as long as it is enjoyed, must render her, on her own territory, invincible. Food, clothing, and ammunition of every kind, are amply supplied to her by art and nature, and placed at her absolute disposal.'-(p. 15.) Yet, with all these advantages, Russia has never been able to keep in pay a military force at all proportionate to that of other European states, or such as might be expected from the extent of her territory and population, and the facility and cheapness with which her troops may be equipped. In the year 1712, the military strength of Russia amounted in all to 167,350 men; at the death of Peter the First, it did not exceed 200,000.' The great Frederic estimated the force which the Empress Elizabeth could command, at not more than 175,000 men; and Manstein, who served in the Russian army during her reign, states it to have consisted at her death, of 270,000 regulars, and 60,000 Cossacks.

Suvaroff, we are told, never had more than 40,000 men under his command during the whole of his campaign in Italy; and we have every reason to believe Sir Robert Wilson correct in his assertion that the troops under Benningsen, in the last Polish war, never amounted to more than 100,000 men.

The numerous garrisons, required for the extensive frontiers of the empire, diminish considerably the disposable force; and the difficulty of communication between its different parts may easily be conceived from comparing the diminutive size of the book which describes the roads, through the whole of the extended dominion of Russia, with that which we have in daily use, to facilitate our progress through the British Isles.

Our author estimates the present force of Russia at 683,150, of which the following are the component parts.

Regular Troops.

1. Life Guards, (Horse,) consisting of five regiments,

2. Ditto, Foot, six regiments,

3. Field Cavalry, forty-six regiments

4. Ditto Infantry, 130 do.

5. Garrisons, nineteen do.

6. Artillery,

Officers,

To this must be added 150,000, raised by a levy of one in a hundred, in 1806; which (after deducting 95,544 for garrisons and invalids) leaves an effective force of 587,606 men. With such an army our author conceives that Russia may defy the efforts of every invader which Europe can bring against her; and, alluding to the danger to be apprehended from the designs of Buonaparte, he says,

The question will not be, whether Austria or Prussia are to be assisted with her arms, or whether England is to be supported in her intercourse with the European continent, but whether Russia shall exist, or be erased from the list of nations. France cannot, as formerly, pretend that she entertains no direct hostility, and no wish to invade the territories, or destroy the political influence, of Russia. The enemy's designs will be unmasked, and his arms openly pointed against the dearest interests of Russia. His assaults will have no other plea but inordinate ambition, an avowed object of enmity, a manifest desire to molest and destroy, and a premeditated, unwarrantable appeal to force; he therefore will be opposed with corresponding vigour, and a determination suitable to the pressing occasion, with a magnanimity and firmness fully proportionate to the magnitude of the danger, and with that firmness and perseverance, which, if protracted, will be finally crowned with success.'

The last campaign in Poland,' he observes, with something like prophetic strain, in another part of his book, distressing as it was to the French, is nothing to what they must experience, should they again invade it; the more men Buonaparte brings with him, and the farther he penetrates, the nearer he will draw to the fate of Charles XII.— (p. 47.)

'Let therefore France,' exclaims he, 'buckle on her armour, and in hostile array march against Russia; let clouds portending disaster gather on, and the threatening tempest again spread wide its rapid wings, and pour its deluge on the North, Russia, undismayed, awaits, nay invites the blow.'-(p. 51.)

We now proceed to shew the progress of that storm which Mr. Eustaphieve foresaw was impending over his country, and the effects of which have completely verified all his predictions.

the

The views of Buonaparte were only partially carried into effect by peace of Tilsit. His revenge was gratified by the total subjuga

tion of Prussia, and his vanity by the submission of the emperor Alexander; while his future designs upon Russia were facilitated by the establishment of garrisons in the Prussian towns, and on the Polish frontier. These became his outposts; and the boundaries to his conquests in a former war, were the points from which he looked to find an easy entrance into the heart of the Russian dominions, in a future contest. In calculating on the probable issue of his projects, Buonaparte, no doubt, built much on the easy temper of Alexander, and much on the mistaken idea that the peasantry of the country were dissatisfied with their government, and eager to receive him as their deliverer from slavery. To effect the same kind of revolution in the north, which his arms and intrigues had carried throughout the south of Europe, was doubtless one of his principal objects; but above all, he trusted, by the subjugation of Russia, to give a death blow to the maritime superiority of England, and to exclude her entirely from the Baltic. We are doubly bound, therefore, to sympathize with the sufferers by his unprovoked aggression, as a heavier weight of vengeance has certainly fallen upon them from their cause being in some degree identified with that of England.

Meantime the dreadful note of preparation' was unceasing throughout France: the king of Saxony had been advised so early as the spring of 1811, to concentrate, on the Vistula, the troops of the duchy of Warsaw; the conscription had extended to boys of sixteen; and the veteran soldiers were marched, from all quarters, towards the North, and their place in the garrisons along the coast, and elsewhere, was supplied by the younger recruits. A pretext for a declaration of war was now only wanting. The emperor had felt himself called upon to issue a protest against Buonaparte's unprincipled occupation of the territories of his relative, the Duke of Oldenburgh; he had also refused to debar his subjects from all advantage of commercial intercourse with other nations, by the inforcement of the burning decrees; he had not neglected (though in silence) to make such preparations for self-defence as the menacing posture of the French armies appeared to demand. Each of these would have been considered as a sufficient cause of offence in the opinion of the French ruler; but they were all enumerated at length in a formal state paper, and produced as so many proofs of the hostile designs of Russia against the peace of Europe.

It was confidently stated, in a publication which appeared in this country some years ago on the comparative resources of Russia and France, that were the hero of Marengo, with all his veterans, on the banks of the Boristhenes, he would never expose himself to the risk of a second journée de Pultava;' and those only who reflected on the obvious impolicy of his conduct in the wanton attack upon Spain, already humbled at his feet, were inclined to

believe