leave the field, and to provide for his own safety by separating him

self from his army.

We have thus endeavoured to give a brief outline of the transactions of a period, that yields in importance and interest to none with which we are acquainted.

The long and bloody wars in which, in modern times, every state has been successively engaged, have sufficiently tried their resources and strength; but Russia is comparatively a new accession to the European commonwealth, and the station which she ought to occupy in the scale of nations has not as yet been fairly assigned to her. Objects which are seen through mists generally acquire an undue magnitude in the eye of the observer; But the reverse has been the case in the view which has been taken of the resources of Russia; for in proportion to her distance from the seat of active operations, and to the want of accurate information respecting the true state of the country, her power has been undervalued, and her people depreciated. Can we wonder then, that the prodigious faculties which she has recently developed should have deceived the calculations, and confounded the predictions of most of the statesmen of the age; and that the world should now stand amazed at the astonishing close to which she has brought a campaign which threatened her at the outset with nought but ruin and destruction?

It was not to be expected that by Russia, such as she has been described, the first great example would be exhibited to the continental nations of Europe, of successful opposition to that tyranny to which they have so long been subjected; and no one would have believed that that Emperor, whose vacillation was the constant theme of his enemies, would prove himself the only potentate whose firmness would withstand all the efforts of Buonaparte, and his confederated legions; that a nobility, whom we were taught to despise as profligate and venal in the extreme, would arm in the cause of freedom, with a zeal and devotion by no means inferior to the energies displayed by England when menaced by invasion; or that a people, who, as we are told, had no rights to defend, and whom slavery had rendered callons to every feeling of patriotism, would come forward with an ardour for the protection of their liberties, which can only be equalled by the valour and skill which' they have shewn in their defence.

'There is a tide in the affairs of men.'

And we trust that the great powers in whose hands the destinies of Europe are placed, will not neglect to profit by the occasion. Let Alexander but adhere to the same manly and dignified tone, and preserve the same just and wise sentiments which have lately dis

tinguished

tinguished his public declarations-let him maintain the same firm ness in adversity, the same moderation in success as he has recently exhibited, and we shall confidently look to Russia becoming the same barrier to the designs of France on the continent, that this country has so long been to the French power on the ocean.

A great and arduous task still remains for England to perform; she has already done wonders for the cause in which she is engaged, and whatever success may attend the efforts of her allies, no small share of praise is justly her due. Had she been guided by the maxims of one class of her statesmen, and consented to husband her resources till the time was past for bringing them into action, what state could have kept alive, as she has done, the spirit of resistance to the aggressions of her powerful and unprincipled neighbour, and to whom could the oppressed nations of Europe have looked for assistance and support? No one can doubt that her unprecedented exertions in the Peninsula (though opposed by all the difficulties entailed by an odious government) have operated as a most powerful diversion in favor of Russia, during the momentous conflict in which she has been so successfully engaged.

We have purposely refrained from any observations upon the aid which Austria has afforded to France in the late contest, for she has fought nobly in the cause of freedom during the course of this long and desolating war. The fatal battle of Austerlitz blasted all the hopes which we were led to cherish at the opening of the campaign, of 1805; and Prussia, who was preparing to add her forces to the coalition, was doomed to witness their total dispersion shortly after, at Jena. Another effort was made by Austria, and another fatal battle dissipated all the sanguine expectations which the conduct of her armies at Asperne had excited. We then saw Russia compelled to the same unhallowed alliance, to which Austria had been condemued to submit. Since that time a disastrous gloom has overshadowed the whole of Germany; but we trust that the glorious issue of the late contest will excite her to new efforts, and that she will yet be enabled to break her chains on the head of the op

pressor.

Having already trespassed on the patience of our readers, we must touch but lightly on the two other charges brought against Russia, which are enumerated by Mr. Eustaphieve, The defects of her military system, and foreign influence and corruption.' That defects do exist in the composition of the Russian armies we are not prepared to deny; but we conceive that the last campaign has sufficiently proved to the world, that they are not of such a nature as to be beyond the reach of amendment. Perhaps we should say, that one of the most essential faults is the inmeasurable dis

tance

1

tance at which the subaltern is kept from his superior officers, which must serve to degrade him in his own eyes, as well as in those of others, and preclude him from much of that experience in military matters, which is best attained by frequent intercourse with those whom he is taught to obey. To such as may be inclined to doubt the ability of the Russian generals to give such instruction, we would venture to point out the masterly retreat of the army of Kutusoff from the frontiers of Poland to the interior of Russia, during the whole of which, though pressed by a force greatly superior in numbers, no detachment was cut off, no battalion broken, not a standard, nor a single piece of cannon taken by the enemy.

The French soldier has been always celebrated for the impetuosity of his attack, the Spaniard for his patience under hunger and fatigue, and the German for his subordination and coolness in the midst of danger. The Russian soldier appears to unite in himself all these valuable qualities in a superior degree. The belief in predestination, and a blind submission to the will of his commander, produce in every Russian that total contempt of danger, that perfect obedience, which is only the effect of distinguished heroism in other nations. His pay, small as it is, is sufficient to furnish him with what he considers the luxuries of life, and he is content with his simple fare. In patient endurance of hunger and cold, he has no equal upon earth. Should a scarcity of provisions be apprehended in the camp, a fast is proclaimed by the orders of the Sovereign, and he submits without a murmur. No troops on earth are so little embarrassed by being flanked or turned as the Russians. On whatever side the enemy may be, they conceive, that by changing their front he still remains before them; and their immovable firmness under the most destructive and murderous fire, has been noticed by all those with whom they have had to contend. The great King of Prussia has described them in his works by a strong but expressive figure, les Russes sont des murailles de chair and we have already related the testimony of Buonaparte to this distinguishing feature in the character of the Russian soldier. In another bulletin too, he has unwittingly adduced the strongest proof. of the subordination of the army to which he was opposed, when he mentions the deep silence of their march towards Kaluga in the midst of the clouds of flame and smoke which the wind carried thither from the conflagration of Mosco. This he attributes to the consternation produced by the awfulness of the occasion: a more candid enemy would have discovered in it the perfection of discipline, and the triumph of military skill.

Our author has devoted a note of some length to a concise ac count of the Cossacks, and has touched upon the chief points wor

HH 2

thy

thy of notice in the history of that singular and interesting people. We find too elsewhere that Buonaparte is not the first great man whose slumbers have been broken in upon by these indefatigable warriors; as the last Ottoman Emperor, Amurath, was heard to declare, that,' No other enemy had power to disturb his repose; but that he never slept sound when he knew that the Cossacks had commenced their operations against him.'*+

The conduct of the Russians of all ranks, during the late invasion of their country by the French, is the most triumphant answer to the fourth charge, of foreign influence and corruption. In no one instance do we find that a Russian of any description accepted any employment civil or military in the French service, or that a Russian soldier deserted to the enemy. We cannot doubt that bribes were offered by Buonaparte, with an unsparing hand, to such generals as might by their connivance have facilitated his escape;even Romanzoff (who has been represented as the creature of France) we are inclined to believe is a true Russian, and guided in his politics entirely by what he conceives to be the interests of Russia; and though he may at one time have erroneously imagined that the French alliance promised more advantages than that with

Hist. de la petite Russie. Vol. I. p. 121.

It has been said that an English painter, of some eminence in a particular branch of his profession, was sent for to St. Petersburg to put a shirt on Suvarof, whom he had represented in a panorama as fighting without one. We think that a late traveller, in a similar way, may now be called upon to retouch the portrait of a Russian soldier, which he has given us at the head of one of his chapters, as no one will believe that a host of such men would be capable of performing such exploits as those which we have attempted to describe. As his work, however, has already undergone the ordeal of criticism, and as subsequent events have most satisfactorily proved, how little he understood the genius of the people whom he pretended to describe, what we have to offer will not be so much directed against the author, as against those who have misled the public, by the extravagant encomiums lavished on a production, which flattered their worst prejudices, and, by its unvarying tone of reproach, afforded an indirect apology for the unaccountable conduct of their political friends. We are informed in one part of a review of the first volume of Dr. Clarke's Travels, that he unites in his person more of the qualifications essential to a traveller than any one whose labors have been given to the public of late;' and in mother, that he has very great merit in having generally avoided the vice of most travellers, that of publishing what may injure individuals. Now we are really at a loss to understand by what sophistry this commendation can with propriety be bestowed on a writer, who has included the whole population of a country in one sweeping clause of reprobation; and we are confident that every Russian, from the highest to the lowest, considers the account which he has given of the country and its inhabitants as a personal insult. In more than one instance, the second edition has retracted the unfair statements made in the first, to the prejudice of individuals with whom the writer had lived on terms of intimacy, and friendship; but the principal defects of the work are so interwoven with its original composition, that we despair of any effectual amendment. Some plea, perhaps, may yet be found for the inaccuracy, though not for the injustice, of the writer's strictures. He visited St. Petersburgh at a time when it was unsafe for an Englishman to remain in the country; and he appears to have posted through it with that velocity which has distinguished the movements of his countrymen in all parts of the world; for we believe that the whole period of his stay in Russia did

not exceed seven months.

England,

England, it does not therefore follow that he is unfriendly to the

cause of his country.

The enthusiasm, and unrivalled exertions, of the lower orders on every occasion, have sufficiently shewn how little they prized the French offers of emancipation; and though Buonaparte, with his usual effroutery, has taken merit to himself for not stirring them up to open insurrection, we need no more to convince us how lightly the chains of slavery hang upon them, which have been falsely represented as grinding, and oppressive, We know no subject, on which more mistaken notions have been generally propagated, than on the condition of the Russian peasantry, which we are inclined (and not without some degree of personal knowledge) to consider fully as comfortable as that of any people upon earth, we do not even except the cottagers of this country. The abrock or rent which the serf pays to his landlord is always moderate, though justly proportioned to the means which he possesses: under all the inclemencies of the season, he is always sure of a warm house, warın clothing, and plenty of wholesome food; for his village is generally in the neighbourhood of a lake, which supplies him with fish, both summer and winter; and he has at all times his black bread, and his cassia, the milk of his cow, fowls and eggs, in abundance; and if this may not be considered as the extent of luxury, it is at least fully equal to his wants. It is true that with all these comforts, the Russian peasant is a slave, and may be exposed to the tyranny of an imperious master; but as that master must clothe and feed him, however idle and worthless he may prove, unless he consent to send him to the army, very few instances occur of that ill-treatment, which has been the subject of so much declamation.

The meanest slave too, when ill used, is entitled to redress; and we are enabled, from our own knowledge, to contradict the assertion, that the laws for their protection are entirely a dead letter,' as we remember, during our residence in Russia, that a lady of high rank with difficulty escaped the knout, for some severities which she had exercised upon her servants. The well known fact that one of Scheremetoff's slaves offered him 100,000 rubles as the price of his liberty, would serve to convince every unprejudiced mind, that the property of the bondman is not always wrested from him by the extortion of his owner; and the strongest proof, that the condition of the Russian slave is not that Egyptim bondage to which it has been assimilated, is the circumstance that they are often wretched when it is proposed to make them free, and remonstrate against a measure which would render them miserable, by depriving them of the natural protector which they had found in a master. As a farther confirmation of this remark, we need only mention, what, indeed, is generally known, that after the last partition, the