soldiers. There is always the same system of dissolving corruption on one hand, and intimidation on the other. "It is always the history of Poland, of Georgia, of Finland, of the Baltic provinces, of the Crimea, of Moldavia, of Wallachia, of Greece, of Persia,—and Russia, from the midst of all these conquered states, dismembered already, or on the eve of being so, Russia dares to declare to Europe that she has only views of order, and justice, and moderation. Europe does not believe this, but is dependent, egoist, and divided; and she has repeated for years past, in the official discourses of princes, that the general peace is not threatened, while this precious peace is only the result of culpable connivance. "Russia turns to her profit all these elements of feebleness and division; she skilfully and resolutely pursues her work, and, organised for conquest, she will never stop until her principle of activity, which is the condition of her existence, shall, from want of other objects, re-act on herself,—that is, until Europe and Asia become really Russian (Russe de fait). Mons. de Talleyrand, who had deeply studied the resources and spirit of Russian policy in the great phases of the hostility and alliance of that state with Imperial France, reduced the problem of the struggle against Muscovite influence to its simplest expression, when he concluded the treaty of the quadruple alliance, the vital principle of which was the AngloFrench alliance. The peril was then great for Russia, and she hastened, at the first cry of alarm from her diplomatists, to rouse the national susceptibilities of each country, and even to range party against party in the bosom of the two rival states. Dynastic interests, constitutional opposition, radical and legitimist principles,-she employed all these levers; she exhausted all these combinations of calculations and politics, to arrive at the result she proposed to herself, namely, the separation of France and England. She suc G ceeded, and they avowed that they dared not interfere in European politics from fear of Russia. These two richest and most powerful kingdoms of the globe, whose united population amounts to sixty millions of souls, these two crowns, which can dispose, the one of the military forces which have conquered Europe, and the other of a navy without a rival in the world, accepted an affront, and the responsibility of showing a humility more dangerous than war itself. "In good sooth, can we attribute as a crime to Russia her skill in profiting by the chances offered her by the faults of rival cabinets? With her, is not ambition confounded with the supreme law of her own preservation? Without the empire of the Mediterranean, which renders her mistress of the treasures of Asia and the principal markets of Europe, she must renounce entertaining an army of 800,000 men, and once disarmed, once the prestige of her omnipotence destroyed, her forced alliances will escape her, and in a few years she will have retrograded two centuries. But if Russia obeys a necessity in accomplishing her aggressive march, do not England and France, who possess the means of curbing the Russian power, commit a more palpable crime in knowingly running onwards to their discredit, and ultimately to their ruin ?" The spirit of the English people and the intelligence of the French Emperor have brought about that very alliance which the acute and far-seeing French writer wished without expecting, and which it is to be hoped will have the effect of putting a stop to Russian conquests, and rendering useless the enormous aggressive preparations which she has been making for the last twenty years at Sevastopol and other fortresses, in order to increase her own territory at the expense of that of her neighbours. 'Histoire de la Russie,' tom. ii. p. 624, par Mons. Chopin, Paris, 1838. This gentleman was for many years an employé in Russia. CHAPTER VII. THE RUSSIAN NAVY. Early victories of the Varangians, or Organization of the Food of sailors - Russian Its origin under Peter the Great Normans, and Cossacks vessels The navy under culty in manning the fleet Russian fleet No marines vessels on foreign stations - Only one Russian foreign merchant Greek influence diminished in 1844 - "The Twelve Apostles " "The Teredo Navalis " The affair of Sinope - The Paixhans shell system General observations. a - THE Russian navy, like the army, was the creation of Peter the Great, who, when he came to the throne, found his empire without any port except Archangel, and when he died, after a reign of sixteen years, left a fleet of sixteen sail of the line in the Baltic, and his name feared as a naval hero on the Black Sea and the Caspian. In the ideas of that great man the army was intended to be merely supplementary to the navy, and Russia was to be a great commercial and maritime power instead of a military one. "It is thus," he says in his will, "that Russia, which I found a brook and left a river, must, under my successors, grow to a mighty sea, destined to fertilize wornout Europe, and advance its waves over all obstacles, if my successors are only capable of guiding the stream." b The origin of all the numerous naval armaments of Russia in the present day was the little boat built by Peter's own hands, when he returned from his European travels. The first part of this chapter is based upon Haxthausen, vol. iii. b Will of Peter the Great, transmitted by the Chevalier d'Eon, French Ambassador at Petersburg, to his court in 1757, and soon after made public. See 'Geschichte Peters des Grossen,' by Peters, published at Leipsic. In 1836, after a lapse of 113 years, the anniversary of the launching of the little boat, was for the first time celebrated with great pomp at Cronstadt. Twenty-six ships of the line, twenty-one frigates, ten brigs, and seven gun-boats, were anchored in the roads of Cronstadt, and saluted with 2000 cannon the tiny "grandpapa," as the little boat was called, which, placed on a steamer, was carried through the lines. From the earliest times. there has been a slight halo of maritime glory around the Russian name. The half fabulous Varangians, Northmen, or Normans, who conquered Russia as they did France and England, and from whom the Russian nobility still boast their descent, were victorious by sea as well as by land, and the glories of Ruric and Vladimir belong to the Russian nation as much as the victories of Alfred and the Plantagenets belong to us. The Varangians found out the road by water along the rivers of Russia from the Baltic to the Black Sea,—that very road which Peter the Great improved by employing his Swedish and Cossack prisoners to cut the canal of Ladoga. In 886 (shortly after the foundation of the German empire) the Varangians appeared on the Black Sea with 200 boats, each containing from forty to sixty men, and advanced to the attack of Constantinople, which was only saved by a miracle. At the end of the sixteenth century the Russian fleets were still feared on the Baltic, and even under the empire of the Tatars, Novgorod had possessed a flourishing maritime commerce, although in a great measure it was conducted by strangers. But after the fall of Novgorod, when the Baltic provinces fell into the power of the Swedes, the Poles, and the Germans, the maritime importance of Russia began to decline. The single outlet that was left her, Archangel, was only frequented by foreign merchant vessels, chiefly Dutch. Then, the Russians of that time, like those of the present day, occupied themselves entirely with internal commerce, and the spirit of the Varangians disappeared, or only lingered among the Cossacks of the Dniepr and the Don. Peter the Great, in his maritime views, had for a paramount object the conquest of the debouchés in the south, leading to the Mediterranean and the southern oceans, which were then exclusively in the hands of the Turks and Tatars. His first dockyards for a fleet of war were placed near Woroneje, in the country of the Don, and then also for the first time the Russian flag was seen to triumph in the Black Sea over the Turks, their national enemies. At a later period, in the war which Peter the Great had to sustain against Sweden, he employed a fleet consisting chiefly of row-boats, which had been constructed on the lakes of the North, and he found this fleet far more advantageous in the Baltic than vessels of the line or frigates. Even up to the present time flotillas of row-boats have always rendered greater services than large vessels to Russia in the shallow waters of the Baltic. The first result of any importance was the victory which Peter gained in the middle of the Séches, or low reedy islands of the Baltic, over the Swedish Admiral Ehrenskiold, from whom he took a frigate and ten row-boats, but at that time his land army was nearly annihilated on the Pruth, and the conquest of Azof and the possession of the Black Sea was in consequence postponed till the end of the last century. "The condemnation of Admiral Cruys," I here quote the words of Haxthausen, "under Peter the Great for having lost several vessels in an attack which he had risked too rashly against the enemy, was of bad augury for the Russian fleet, although he was afterwards pardoned and restored to all his dignities. In England, Byng was executed, because near Minorca he had avoided battle with the French fleet, which was superior to his own. It is a rule in England always to attack, if the English fleet equals that of the enemy, and this rule has undoubtedly been the base of the maritime power of that country. |