"Dread Pultowa's day,
When fortune left the royal Swede,
Around a slaughtered army lay,
No more to combat and to bleed.
The power and fortune of the war
Had passed to the triumphant Czar."--BYRON.
Napoleon prophesied at St. Helena, that all Europe would soon be either
Cossack or Republican. Four years ago, the fulfilment of the last of
these alternatives appeared most probable. But the democratic movements
of 1848 were sternly repressed in 1849. The absolute authority of
a single ruler, and the austere stillness of martial law, are now
paramount in the capitals of the continent, which lately owned no
sovereignty save the will of the multitude; and where that which the
democrat calls his sacred right of insurrection, was so loudly asserted
and so often fiercely enforced. Many causes have contributed to bring
about this reaction, but the most effective and the most permanent have
been Russian influence and Russian arms. Russia is now the avowed and
acknowledged champion of Monarchy against Democracy;--of constituted
authority, however acquired, against revolution and change for whatever
purpose desired;--of the imperial supremacy of strong states over their
weaker neighbours against all claims for political independence, and
all striving for separate nationality. She has crushed the heroic
Hungarians; and Austria, for whom nominally she crushed them, is now one
of her dependents. Whether the rumours of her being about to engage
in fresh enterprises be well or ill founded, it is certain that recent
events must have fearfully augmented the power of the Muscovite empire,
which, even previously, had been the object of well-founded anxiety to
all Western Europe.
It was truly stated, twelve years ago, that "the acquisitions which
Russia has made within the [then] last sixty-four years, are equal in
extent and importance to the whole empire she had in Europe before that
time; that the acquisitions she had made from Sweden are greater than
what remains of that ancient kingdom; that her acquisitions from Poland
are as large as the whole Austrian empire; that the territory she has
wrested from Turkey in Europe is equal to the dominions of Prussia,
exclusive of her Rhenish provinces; and that her acquisitions from
Turkey in Asia are equal in extent to all the smaller states of Germany,
the Rhenish provinces of Prussia, Belgium, and Holland taken together;
that the country she has conquered from Persia is about the size of
England; that her acquisitions in Tartary have an area equal to Turkey
in Europe, Greece, Italy, and Spain. In sixty-four years she has
advanced her frontier eight hundred and fifty miles towards Vienna,
Berlin, Dresden, Munich, and Paris; she has approached four hundred and
fifty miles nearer to Constantinople; she has possessed herself of the
capital of Poland, and has advanced to within a few miles of the capital
of Sweden, from which, when Peter the Great mounted the throne, her
frontier was distant three hundred miles. Since that time she has
stretched herself forward about one thousand miles towards India, and
the same distance towards the capital of Persia." [Progress of Russia in
the East. p. 142.]
Such, at that period, had been the recent aggrandisement of Russia; and
the events of the last few years, by weakening and disuniting all
her European neighbours, have immeasurably augmented the relative
superiority of the Muscovite empire over all the other continental
powers.
With a population exceeding sixty millions, all implicitly obeying the
impulse of a single ruling mind; with a territorial area of six millions
and a half of square miles; with a standing army eight hundred thousand
strong; with powerful fleets on the Baltic and Black Seas; with a
skilful host of diplomatic agents planted in every court, and among
every tribe; with the confidence which unexpected success creates, and
the sagacity which long experience fosters, Russia now grasps with an
armed right hand the tangled thread of European politics, and issues her
mandate as the arbitress of the movements of the age. Yet a century and
a half have hardly elapsed since she was first recognised as a member
of the drama of modern European history--previously to the battle of
Pultowa, Russia played no part. Charles V. and his great rival our
Elizabeth and her adversary Philip of Spain, the Guises, Sully,
Richelieu, Cromwell, De Witt, William of Orange, and the other leading
spirits of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, thought no more
about the Muscovite Czar than we now think about the King of Timbuctoo.
Even as late as 1735, Lord Bollingbroke, in his admirable "Letters on
History," speaks of the history of the Muscovites, as having no relation
to the knowledge which a practical English statesman ought to acquire.
[Bolingbroke's Works, vol ii. p. 374. In the same page he observes how
Sweden had often turned her arms southwards with prodigious effect.] It
may be doubted whether a cabinet council often takes place now in
our Foreign Office, without Russia being uppermost in every English
statesman's thoughts.
But though Russia remained thus long unheeded amid her snows, there
was a northern power, the influence of which was acknowledged in the
principal European quarrels, and whose good will was sedulously courted
by many of the boldest chiefs and ablest councillors of the leading
states. This was Sweden; Sweden, on whose ruins Russia has risen; but
whose ascendancy over her semi-barbarous neighbours was complete, until
the fatal battle that now forms our subject.
As early as 1542 France had sought the alliance of Sweden to aid her in
her struggle against Charles V. And the name of Gustavus Adolphus is of
itself sufficient to remind us, that in the great contest for religious
liberty, of which Germany was for thirty years the arena, it was Sweden
that rescued the falling cause of Protestantism; and it was Sweden that
principally dictated the remodelling of the European state system at the
peace of Westphalia.
From the proud pre-eminence in which the valour of the "Lion of the
North" and of Torstenston, Bannier, Wrangel and the other Generals of
Gustavus, guided by the wisdom of Oxenstiern, had placed Sweden, the
defeat of Charles XII. at Pultowa hurled her down at once and for ever.
Her efforts during the wars of the French revolution to assume a leading
part in European politics, met with instant discomfiture, and almost
provoked derision. But the Sweden, whose sceptre was bequeathed to
Christina, and whose alliance Cromwell valued so highly, was a different
power from the Sweden of the present day. Finland, Ingria, Livonia,
Esthonia, Carelia, and other districts east of the Baltic, then were
Swedish provinces; and the possession of Pomerania, Rugen, and Bremen,
made her an important member of the Germanic empire. These territories
are now all reft from her; and the most valuable of them form the staple
of her victorious rival's strength. Could she resume them, could
the Sweden of 1648 be reconstructed, we should have a first-class
Scandinavian State in the North, well qualified to maintain the balance
of power, and check the progress of Russia; whose power, indeed, never
could have become formidable to Europe, save by Sweden becoming weak.
The decisive triumph of Russia over Sweden at Pultowa was therefore
all-important to the world, on account of what it overthrew as well as
for what it established; and it is the more deeply interesting because
it was not merely the crisis of a struggle between two states, but it
was a trial of strength between two great races of mankind. We must bear
in mind, that while the Swedes, like the English, the Dutch, and others,
belong to the Germanic race, the Russians are a Sclavonic people.
Nations of Sclavonian origin have long occupied the greater part of
Europe eastward of the Vistula, and the populations also of Bohemia,
Croatia, Servia, Dalmatia, and other important regions westward of that
river, are Sclavonic. In the long and varied conflicts between them and
the Germanic nations that adjoin them, the Germanic race had, before
Pultowa, almost always maintained a superiority. With the single
but important exception of Poland, no Sclavonic state had made any
considerable figure in history before the time when Peter the Great won
his great victory over the Swedish king. [The Hussite wars may, perhaps,
entitle Bohemia to be distinguished.] What Russia has done since that
time we know and we feel. And some of the wisest and best men of our own
age and nation, who have watched with deepest care the annals and the
destinies of humanity, have believed that the Sclavonic element in the
population of Europe has as yet only partially developed its powers:
that, while other races of mankind (our own, the Germanic, included)
have exhausted their creative energies, and completed their allotted
achievements, the Sclavonic race has yet a great career to run: and,
that the narrative of Sclavonic ascendancy is the remaining page that;
will conclude the history of the world. [See Arnold's Lectures on Modern
History, pp. 36-39.]
Let it not be supposed that in thus regarding the primary triumph of
Russia over Sweden as a victory of the Sclavonic over the Germanic
race, we are dealing with matters of mere ethnological pedantry, or
with themes of mere speculative curiosity. The fact that Russia is
a Sclavonic empire, is a fact of immense practical influence at
the present moment. Half the inhabitants of the Austrian empire are
Sclavonian. The population of the larger part of Turkey in Europe is of
the same race. Silesia, Posen, and other parts of the Prussian dominions
are principally Sclavonic. And during late years an enthusiastic zeal
for blending all Sclavonians into one great united Sclavonic empire,
has been growing up in these countries, which, however we may deride its
principle, is not the less real and active, and of which Russia, as
the head and champion of the Sclavonic race, knows well how to take her
advantage.
["The idea of Panslavism had a purely literary origin. It was started by
Pollar, a Protestant clergyman of the Sclavonic congregation at
Pesth, in Hungary, who wished to establish a national literature,
by circulating all works, written in the various Sclavonic dialects,
through every country where any of them are spoken. He suggested, that
all the Slavonic literati should become acguainted with the sister
dialects, so that a Bohemian, or other work, might be read on the shores
of the Adriatic, as well as on the banks of the Volga, or any other
place where a Sclavonic language was spoken; by which means an extensive
literature might be created, tending to advance knowledge in all
Sclavonic countries; and he supported his arguments by observing, that
the dialects of ancient Greece differed from each other, like those of
his own language, and yet that they formed only one Hellenic literature.
The idea of an intellectual union of all those nations naturally led to
that of a political one; and the Sclavonians, seeing that their numbers
amounted to about one-third part of the whole population of Europe, and
occupied more than half its territory, began to be sensible that they
might claim for themselves a position, to which they had not hitherto
aspired.
"The opinion gained ground; and the question now is, whether the
Slavonians can form a nation independent of Russia; or whether they
ought to rest satisfied in being part of one great race, with the most
powerful member of it as their chief. The latter, indeed, is gaining
ground amongst them; and some Poles are disposed to attribute their
sufferings to the arbitrary will of the Czar, without extending the
blame to the Russians themselves. These begin to think that, if they
cannot exist as Poles, the best thing to be done is to rest satisfied
with a position in the Sclavonic empire, and they hope that, when once
they give up the idea of restoring their country, Russia may grant some
concessions to their separate nationality.
"The same idea has been put forward by writers in the Russian interest;
great efforts are making among other Sclavonic people, to induce them
to look upon Russia as their future head; and she has already
gained considerable influence over the Sclavonic populations of
Turkey."--WILKINSON'S DALMATIA.]
It is a singular fact that Russia owes her very name to a band of
Swedish invaders who conquered her a thousand years ago. They were soon
absorbed in the Sclavonic population, and every trace of the Swedish
character had disappeared in Russia for many centuries before her
invasion by Charles XII. She was long the victim and the slave of the
Tartars; and for many considerable periods of years the Poles held her
in subjugation. Indeed, if we except the expeditions of some of
the early Russian chiefs against Byzantium, and the reign of Ivan
Vasilovitch, the history of Russia before the time of Peter the Great is
one long tale of suffering and degradation.
But whatever may have been the amount of national injuries that she
sustained from Swede, from Tartar, or from Pole in the ages of her
weakness, she has certainly retaliated ten-fold during the century and
a half of her strength. Her rapid transition at the commencement of that
period from being the prey of every conqueror to being the conqueror of
all with whom she comes into contact, to being the oppressor instead of
the oppressed, is almost without a parallel in the history of nations.
It was the work of a single ruler; who, himself without education,
promoted science and literature among barbaric millions; who gave them
fleets, commerce, arts, and arms; who, at Pultowa, taught them to face
and beat the previously invincible Swedes: and who made stubborn valour,
and implicit subordination, from that time forth the distinguishing
characteristics of the Russian soldiery, which had before his time been
a mere disorderly and irresolute rabble.
The career of Philip of Macedon resembles most nearly that of the great
Muscovite Czar: but there is this important difference, that Philip
had, while young, received in Southern Greece the best education in all
matters of peace and war that the ablest philosophers and generals of
the age could bestow. Peter was brought up among barbarians, and in
barbaric ignorance. He strove to remedy this when a grown man, by
leaving all the temptations to idleness and sensuality, which his court
offered, and by seeking instruction abroad. He laboured with his own
hands as a common artisan in Holland and in England, that he might
return and teach his subjects how ships, commerce, and civilization
could be acquired. There is a degree of heroism here superior
to anything that we know of in the Macedonian king. But Philip's
consolidation of the long disunited Macedonian empire,--his raising a
people which he found the scorn of their civilized southern neighbours,
to be their dread,--his organization of a brave and well-disciplined
army, instead of a disorderly militia,--his creation of a maritime
force, and his systematic skill in acquiring and improving sea-ports and
arsenals,--his patient tenacity of purpose under reverses,--his
personal bravery,--and even his proneness to coarse amusements and
pleasures,--all mark him out as the prototype of the imperial founder of
the Russian power. In justice, however, to the ancient hero, it ought
to be added, that we find in the history of Philip no examples of that
savage cruelty which deforms so grievously the character of Peter the
Great.
In considering the effects of the overthrow which the Swedish arms
sustained at Pultowa, and in speculating on the probable consequences
that would have followed if the invaders had been successful we must not
only bear in mind the wretched state In which Peter found Russia at his
accession, compared with her present grandeur, but we must also keep in
view the fact, that, at the time when Pultowa was fought, his reforms
were yet incomplete, and his new institutions immature. He had broken
up the old Russia; and the New Russia, which he ultimately created,
was still in embryo. Had he been crushed at Pultowa, his mighty schemes
would have been buried with him; and (to use the words of Voltaire) "the
most extensive empire in the world would have relapsed into the chaos
from which it had been so lately taken." It is this fact that makes the
repulse of Charles XII. the critical point in the fortunes of Russia.
The danger which she incurred a century afterwards from her invasion by
Napoleon was in reality far less than her peril when Charles attacked
her; though the French Emperor, as a military genius, was infinitely
superior to the Swedish King, and led a host against her, compared with
which the armies of Charles seem almost insignificant. But, as Fouche
well warned his imperial master, when he vainly endeavoured to dissuade
him from his disastrous expedition against the empire of the Czars,
the difference between the Russia of 1812 and the Russia of 1709 was
greater, than the disparity between the power of Charles and the might
of Napoleon. "If that heroic king," said Fouche, "had not, like your
imperial Majesty, half Europe in arms to back him, neither had his
opponent, the Czar Peter, 400,000 soldiers, and 60,000 Cossacks."
The historians, who describe the state of the Muscovite empire when
revolutionary and imperial France encountered it, narrate with truth and
justice, how "at the epoch of the French Revolution this immense empire,
comprehending nearly half of Europe and Asia within its dominions,
inhabited by a patient and indomitable race, ever ready to exchange the
luxury and adventure of the south for the hardships and monotony of the
north, was daily becoming more formidable to the liberties of Europe.
The Russian infantry had then long been celebrated for its immoveable
firmness. Her immense population, amounting then in Europe alone to
nearly thirty-five millions, afforded an inexhaustible supply of men.
Her soldiers, inured to heat and cold from their infancy, and actuated
by a blind devotion to their Czar, united the steady valour of the
English to the impetuous energy of the French troops." [Alison.] So,
also, we read how the haughty aggressions of Bonaparte "went to excite
a national feeling, from the banks of the Borysthenes to the wall of
China, and to unite against him the wild and uncivilized inhabitants
of an extended empire, possessed by a love to their religion, their
government, and their country, and having a character of stern devotion,
which he was incapable of estimating." [Scott's Life of Napoleon] But
the Russia of 1709 had no such forces to oppose to an assailant. Her
whole population then was below sixteen millions; and, what is far more
important, this population had neither acquired military spirit, nor
strong nationality; nor was it united in loyal attachment to its ruler.
Peter had wisely abolished the old regular troops of the empire, the
Strelitzes; but the forces which he had raised in their stead on a new
and foreign plan, and principally officered with foreigners, had, before
the Swedish invasion, given no proof that they could be relied on. In
numerous encounters with the Swedes, Peter's soldiery had run like sheep
before inferior numbers. Great discontent, also, had been excited among
all classes of the community by the arbitrary changes which their
great emperor introduced, many of which clashed with the most cherished
national prejudices of his subjects. A career of victory and prosperity
had not yet raised Peter above the reach of that disaffection, nor had
superstitious obedience to the Czar yet become the characteristic of
the Muscovite mind. The victorious occupation of Moscow by Charles XII.
would have quelled the Russian nation as effectually, as had been the
case when Batou Khan, and other ancient invaders, captured the capital
of primitive Muscovy. How little such a triumph could effect towards
subduing modern Russia, the fate of Napoleon demonstrated at once and
for ever.
The character of Charles XII. has been a favourite theme with
historians, moralists, philosophers, and poets. But it is his military
conduct during the campaign in Russia that alone requires comment here.
Napoleon, in the memoirs dictated by him at St. Helena, has given us a
systematic criticism on that, among other celebrated campaigns, his
own Russian campaign included. He labours hard to prove that he himself
observed all the true principles of offensive war: and probably his
censures of Charles's generalship were rather highly coloured, for
the sake of making his own military skill stand out in more favourable
relief. Yet, after making all allowances, we must admit the force of
Napoleon's strictures on Charles's tactics, and own that his judgment,
though severe, is correct, when he pronounces that the Swedish king,
unlike his great predecessor Gustavus, knew nothing of the art of war,
and was nothing more than a brave and intrepid soldier. Such, however,
was not the light in which Charles was regarded by his contemporaries at
the commencement of his Russian expedition. His numerous victories,
his daring and resolute spirit, combined with the ancient renown of the
Swedish arms, then filled all Europe with admiration and anxiety. As
Johnson expresses it, his name was then one at which the world grew
pale. Even Louis le Grand earnestly solicited his assistance; and our
own Marlborough, then in the full career of his victories, was specially
sent by the English court to the camp of Charles, to propitiate the hero
of the north in favour of the cause of the allies and to prevent the
Swedish sword from being flung into the scale in the French king's
favour. But Charles at that time was solely bent on dethroning the
sovereign of Russia, as he had already dethroned the sovereign of
Poland, and all Europe fully believed that he would entirely crush the
Czar, and dictate conditions of peace in the Kremlin. [Voltaire attests,
from personal inspection of the letters of several public ministers to
their respective courts, that such was the general expectation.] Charles
himself looked on success as a matter of certainty; and the romantic
extravagance of his views was continually increasing. "One year, he
thought, would suffice for the conquest of Russia. The court of Rome
was next to feel his vengeance, as the pope had dared to oppose
the concession of religious liberty to the Silesian Protestants.
No enterprise at that time appeared impossible to him. He had even
dispatched several officers privately into Asia and Egypt, to take
plans of the towns, and examine into the strength and resources of those
countries." [Crighton's Scandinavia.]
Napoleon thus epitomises the earlier operations of Charles's invasion of
Russia:--
"That prince set out from his camp at Aldstadt, near Leipsic, in
September 1707, at the head of 46,000 men, and traversed Poland; 20,000
men, under Count Lewenhaupt, disembarked at Riga; and 15,000 were in
Finland. He was therefore in a condition to have brought together 80,000
of the best troops in the world. He left 10,000 men at Warsaw to guard
King Stanislaus, and in January 1708, arrived at Grodno, where he
wintered. In June he crossed the forest of Minsk, and presented himself
before Borisov; forced the Russian army, which occupied the left bank
of the Beresina; defeated 20,000 Russians who were strongly entrenched
behind marshes; passed the Borysthenes at Mohiloev, and vanquished a
corps of 16,000 Muscovites near Smolensko, on the 22d of September. He
was now advanced to the confines of Lithuania, and was about to enter
Russia Proper: the Czar, alarmed at his approach, made him proposals of
peace. Up to this time all his movements mere conformable to rule, and
his communications were well secured. He was master of Poland and Riga,
and only ten days' march distant from Moscow: and it is probable that
he would have reached that capital, had he not quitted the high road
thither, and directed his steps towards the Ukraine, in order to form a
junction with Mazeppa, who brought him only 6,000 men. By this movement
his line of operations, beginning at Sweden, exposed his flank to Russia
for a distance of four hundred leagues, and he was unable to protect it,
or to receive either reinforcements or assistance."
Napoleon severely censures this neglect of one of the great rules of
war. He points out that Charles had not organized his war like Hannibal,
on the principle of relinquishing all communications with home, keeping
all his forces concentrated, and creating a base of operations in the
conquered country. Such had been the bold system of the Carthaginian
general; but Charles acted on no such principle, inasmuch as he caused
Lewenhaupt, one of his generals who commanded a considerable detachment,
and escorted a most important convoy, to follow him at a distance
of twelve days' march. By this dislocation of his forces he exposed
Lewenhaupt to be overwhelmed separately by the full force of the enemy,
and deprived the troops under his own command of the aid which that
general's men and stores might have afforded, at the very crisis of the
campaign.
The Czar had collected an army of about a hundred thousand effective
men; and though the Swedes, in the beginning of the invasion, were
successful in every encounter, the Russian troops were gradually
acquiring discipline; and Peter and his officers were learning
generalship from their victors, as the Thebans of old learned it from
the Spartans. When Lewenhaupt, in the October of 1708, was striving to
join Charles in the Ukraine, the Czar suddenly attacked him near the
Borysthenes with an overwhelming force of fifty thousand Russians.
Lewenhaupt fought bravely for three days, and succeeded in cutting his
way through the enemy, with about four thousand of his men, to where
Charles awaited him near the river Desna; but upwards of eight thousand
Swedes fell in these battles; Lewenhaupt's cannon and ammunition were
abandoned; and the whole of his important convoy of provisions, on which
Charles and his half-starved troops were relying, fell into the enemy's
hands. Charles was compelled to remain in the Ukraine during the winter;
but in the spring of 1709 he moved forward towards Moscow, and invested
the fortified town of Pultowa, on the river Vorskla, a place where the
Czar had stored up large supplies of provisions and military stores, and
which commanded the roads leading towards Moscow. The possession of this
place would have given Charles the means of supplying all the wants of
his suffering army, and would also have furnished him with a secure base
of operations for his advance against the Muscovite capital. The
siege was therefore hotly pressed by the Swedes; the garrison resisted
obstinately; and the Czar, feeling the importance of saving the town,
advanced in June to its relief, at the head of an army from fifty to
sixty thousand strong.
Both sovereigns now prepared for the general action, which each
perceived to be inevitable, and which each felt would be decisive of his
own and of his country's destiny. The Czar, by some masterly manoeuvres,
crossed the Vorskla, and posted his army on the same side of that river
with the besiegers, but a little higher up. The Vorskla falls into the
Borysthenes about fifteen leagues below Pultowa, and the Czar arranged
his forces in two lines, stretching from one river towards the other; so
that if the Swedes attacked him and were repulsed, they would be driven
backwards into the acute angle formed by the two streams at their
junction. He fortified these lines with several redoubts, lined with
heavy artillery; and his troops, both horse and foot, were in the best
possible condition, and amply provided with stores and ammunition.
Charles's forces were about twenty-four thousand strong. But not more
than half of these were Swedes; so much had battle, famine, fatigue, and
the deadly frosts of Russia, thinned the gallant bands which the Swedish
king and Lewenhaupt had led to the Ukraine. The other twelve thousand
men under Charles were Cossacks and Wallachians, who had joined him
in that country. On hearing that the Czar was about to attack him,
he deemed that his dignity required that he himself should be the
assailant; and leading his army out of their entrenched lines before the
town, he advanced with them against the Russian redoubts.
He had been severely wounded in the foot in a skirmish a few days
before; and was borne in a litter along the ranks, into the thick of the
fight. Notwithstanding the fearful disparity of numbers and disadvantage
of position, the Swedes never showed their ancient valour more nobly
than on that dreadful day. Nor do their Cossack and Wallachian allies
seem to have been unworthy of fighting side by side with Charles's
veterans. Two of the Russian redoubts were actually entered, and the
Swedish infantry began to raise the cry of victory. But on the other
side, neither general nor soldiers flinched in their duty. The Russian
cannonade and musketry were kept up; fresh masses of defenders were
poured into the fortifications, and at length the exhausted remnants of
the Swedish columns recoiled from the blood-stained redoubts. Then the
Czar led the infantry and cavalry of his first line outside the works,
drew them up steadily and skilfully, and the action was renewed along
the whole fronts of the two armies on the open ground. Each sovereign
exposed his life freely in the world-winning battle; and on each side
the troops fought obstinately and eagerly under their ruler's eye.
It was not till two hours from the commencement of the action that,
overpowered by numbers, the hitherto invincible Swedes gave way. All was
then hopeless disorder and irreparable rout. Driven downward to where
the rivers join, the fugitive Swedes surrendered to their victorious
pursuers, or perished in the waters of the Borysthenes. Only a few
hundreds swam that river with their king and the Cossack Mazeppa, and
escaped into the Turkish territory. Nearly ten thousand lay killed and
wounded in the redoubts and on the field of battle.
In the joy of his heart the Czar exclaimed, when the strife was over,
"That the son of the morning had fallen from heaven; and that the
foundations of St. Petersburg at length stood firm." Even on that
battle-field, near the Ukraine, the Russian emperor's first thoughts
were of conquests and aggrandisement on the Baltic. The peace of
Nystadt, which transferred the fairest provinces of Sweden to Russia,
ratified the judgment of battle which was pronounced at Pultowa. Attacks
on Turkey and Persia by Russia commenced almost directly after that
victory. And though the Czar failed in his first attempts against
the Sultan, the successors of Peter have, one and all, carried on an
uniformly aggressive and uniformly successful system of policy against
Turkey, and against every other state, Asiatic as well as European,
which has had the misfortune of having Russia for a neighbour.
Orators and authors, who have discussed the progress of Russia, have
often alluded to the similitude between the modern extension of the
Muscovite empire and the extension of the Roman dominions in ancient
times. But attention has scarcely been drawn to the closeness of the
parallel between conquering Russia and conquering Rome, not only in the
extent of conquests, but in the means of effecting conquest. The history
of Rome during the century and a half which followed the close of the
second Punic war, and during which her largest acquisitions of territory
were made, should be minutely compared with the history of Russia for
the last one hundred and fifty years. The main points of similitude
can only be indicated in these pages; but they deserve the fullest
consideration. Above all, the sixth chapter of Montesquieu's great
Treatise on Rome, the chapter "DE LA CONDUITE QUE LES ROMAINS TINRENT
POUR SOUMETTRE LES PEUPLES," should be carefully studied by every one
who watches the career and policy of Russia. The classic scholar will
remember the state-craft of the Roman Senate, which took care in
every foreign war to appear in the character of a PROTECTOR. Thus Rome
PROTECTED the AEtolians, and the Greek cities, against Macedon; she
PROTECTED Bithynia, and other small Asiatic states, against the Syrian
kings; she protected Numidia against Carthage; and in numerous other
instances assumed the same specious character. But, "Woe to the people
whose liberty depends on the continued forbearance of an over-mighty
protector." [Malkin's History of Greece.] Every state which Rome
protected was ultimately subjugated and absorbed by her. And Russia
has been the protector of Poland, the protector of the Crimea,--the
protector of Courland,--the protector of Georgia, Immeritia, Mingrelia,
the Tcherkessian and Caucasian tribes. She has first protected, and then
appropriated them all. She protects Moldavia and Wallachia. A few years
ago she became the protector of Turkey from Mehemet Ali; and since the
summer of 1849 she has made herself the protector of Austria.
When the partisans of Russia speak of the disinterestedness with
which she withdrew her protecting troops from Constantinople, and from
Hungary, let us here also mark the ominous exactness of the parallel
between her and Rome. While the ancient world yet contained a number of
independent states, which might have made a formidable league against
Rome if she had alarmed them by openly avowing her ambitious schemes,
Rome's favourite policy was seeming disinterestedness and moderation.
After her first war against Philip, after that against Antiochus, and
many others, victorious Rome promptly withdrew her troops from the
territories which they occupied. She affected to employ her arms only
for the good of others; but, when the favourable moment came, she
always found a pretext for marching her legions back into each coveted
district, and making it a Roman province. Fear, not moderation, is the
only effective check on the ambition of such powers as Ancient Rome and
Modern Russia. The amount of that fear depends on the amount of timely
vigilance and energy which other states choose to employ against the
common enemy of their freedom and national independence.
SYNOPSIS OF EVENTS FROM THE BATTLE OF PULTOWA, 1709, AND THE DEFEAT OF
BURGOYNE AT SARATOGA, 1777.
A.D. 1713. Treaty of Utrecht. Philip is left by it in possession of
the throne of Spain. But Naples, Milan, the Spanish territories on the
Tuscan coast, the Spanish Netherlands, and some parts of the French
Netherlands, are given to Austria. France cedes to England Hudson's
Bay and Straits, the Island of St. Christopher, Nova Scotia, and
Newfoundland in America, Spain cedes to England Gibraltar and Minorca,
which the English had taken during the war. The King of Prussia and the
Duke of Savoy both obtain considerable additions of territory to their
dominions.
1714. Death of Queen Anne. The House of Hanover begins to reign in
England. A rebellion in favour of the Stuarts is put down. Death of
Louis XIV.
1718. Charles XII. killed at the siege of Frederickshall.
1725. Death of Peter the Great of Russia.
1740. Frederick II, King of Prussia, begins his reign. He attacks the
Austrian dominions, and conquers Silesia.
1742. War between France and England.
1743. Victory of the English at Dettingen.
1745. Victory of the French at Fontenoy. Rebellion in Scotland in favour
of the House of Stuart: finally quelled by the battle of Culloden in the
next year.
1748. Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle.
1756-1763. The Seven Years' War, during which Prussia makes an heroic
resistance against the allies of Austria, Russia, and France. England,
under the administration of the elder Pitt (afterwards Lord Chatham),
takes a glorious part in the war in opposition to France and Spain.
Wolfe wins the battle of Quebec, and the English conquer Canada, Cape
Breton, and St. John. Clive begins his career of conquest in India.
Cuba, is taken by the English from Spain.
1763. Treaty of Paris: which leaves the power of Prussia increased, and
its military reputation greatly exalted.
"France, by the treaty of Paris, ceded to England Canada, and the island
of Cape Breton, with the islands and coasts of the gulf and river of St.
Lawrence. The boundaries between the two nations in North America were
fixed by a line drawn along the middle of the Mississippi, from its
source to its mouth. All on the left or eastern bank of that river, was
given up to England, except the city of New Orleans, which was reserved
to France; as was also the liberty of the fisheries on a part of the
coasts of Newfoundland and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The islands of St.
Peter and Miquelon were given them as a shelter for their fishermen, but
without permission to raise fortifications. The islands of Martinico,
Guadaloupe, Mariegalante, Desirada, and St. Lucia, were surrendered
to France; while Grenada, the Grenadines, St. Vincent, Dominica, and
Tobago, were ceded to England. This latter power retained her conquests
on the Senegal, and restored to France the island of Gores, on-the coast
of Africa. France was put in possession of the forts and factories which
belonged to her in the East Indies, on the coasts of Coromandel, Orissa,
Malabar, and Bengal under the restriction of keeping up no military
force in Bengal.
"In Europe, France restored all the conquests she had made in Germany;
as also the island, of Minorca, England gave up to her Belleisle, on the
coast of Brittany; while Dunkirk was kept in the same condition as had
been determined by the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. The island of Cuba,
with the Havannah, were restored to the King of Spain, who, on his part,
ceded to England Florida, with Port-Augustine and the Bay of Pensacola.
The King of Portugal was restored to the same state in which he had
been before the war. The colony of St. Sacrament in America, which the
Spaniards had conquered, was given back to him.
"The peace of Paris, of which we have just now spoken, was the era of
England's greatest prosperity. Her commerce and navigation extended over
all parts of the globe, and were supported by a naval force so much
the more imposing, as it was no longer counter-balanced by the maritime
power of France, which had been almost annihilated in the preceding war.
The immense territories which that peace had secured her, both in Africa
and America, opened up new channels for her industry: and what deserves
specially to be remarked is, that she acquired at the same time vast
and important possessions in the East Indies." [Koch's Revolutions of
Europe.]