vinces on the 8th of May without provisions, levying them on the peasants without payment. The provisions collected in this manner were soon consumed. Fresh supplies were then brought from the Pruth, by forced labour. A great mortality amongst the peasants ensued; the murrain made havoc amongst the cattle; and, at the same time, the plague broke out at Bucharest. The capture of Ibrailow, Isaacza, and Hirsova, succeeded. At the end of June, the Turks had assembled thirty-one thousand eight hundred infantry, and thirteen thousand cavalry, at Shumla, under the energetic Hussein Pacha. At this juncture, the Russians moved simultaneously against Varna, Silistria, and Shumla; twelve thousand men against the first of these fortresses, forty thousand against the second, and twenty-four thousand under Wittgenstein against the third. The results of the campaign were, the capture of Varna, and the raising of the siege of Silistria. Thousands of men died of the plague. Thirty thousand horses were lost.

In the winter the Turks remained inactive; the Russians made every preparation for the ensuing campaign; many of the Turks returned to their homes, and the Russian trenches before Shumla and Silistria were left unharmed. In the spring of 1829, the Turkish force was rather less than in the autumn of 1828.

SECOND CAMPAIGN.

Of

The Russian force, at the commencement of this campaign, amounted in all to one hundred and fifty thousand men. these, forty-five thousand men moved to attack Silistria. On the 17th of May, the Grand Vizier attacked the Russians at Eski, Amandlar, Devra, and Koslugee; at the two latter points with success. The Grand Vizier, seeing the importance of Pravadi, which the Russians occupied with ten thousand men, attacked it with thirty-five thousand men: and, whilst he was occupied in besieging it, Diebitsch planned and executed the passage of the Balkan.

General Diebitsch marched from Silistria, desiring Generals Roth and Rudiger to enclose the Turks in the defiles of Pravadi (with the garrison of that place closing them in the rear) until he himself could arrive with his army. Meantime, Ibrahim Pacha, who was left at Shumla, summoned the Grand Vizier to his relief. A battle ensued in the afternoon, in which, in consequence of the blowing up of four caissons, the Turks fled. The Russians had in the battle forty thousand men and a hundred guns.

The Grand Vizier, during the battle, ordered out the whole garrison of Shumla, to make a diversion in the rear of General Diebitsch. They attempted to do so, but retired afterwards, abandoning even the redoubts, so that General Diebitsch might have had the double triumph of taking it and passing the Balkan. The battle took place on the 11th of June.

On the morning of the 13th of June, the Grand Vizier regained Shumla, and ten days afterwards his force was thirty thousand men. He lost, in the engagement of the 11th, three thousand men, and the Russians very little less.

The Pasha of Silistria was obliged to surrender for want of powder to stand an assault; the Russians having prepared five mines and two practicable breaches.

General Diebitsch then made a feint of attacking Shumla, till the Grand Vizier had recalled his detachment from all the passes. In order further to deceive the Turks, Diebitsch retreated on Yeni Bazaar, six leagues on the road to Silistria. He then turned suddenly towards Devra and Kiuprekiu. In order to pass the Balkan, each soldier was supplied with four days' food, and the waggons brought sufficient for ten days more. Ten thousand men were left to watch Shumla, and to assault it if the Vizier moved. The Vizier sent instantly ten thousand men to intercept Diebitsch at Kiuprekiu, but the Russians had already passed through, and were on their way to Selimnia. The Russians passed the Balkan with only forty thousand men, of whom, in ten days afterwards, ten thousand were in the hospitals. If the Turks had shown front from place to place, the Russians must have retreated towards the sea for provisions.

The forces of Turkey, during the campaign in 1828, never exceeded thirty thousand regular troops, most of them boys.

Exclusive of the forces of Scodra Pacha, they had never at any time in the field more than one hundred thousand irregulars, nor more than forty thousand regulars. The Bosnians only advanced to their own frontier. Amongst the Servians only a few Mussulmans took arms.

The Russians suffered dreadfully from sickness, the Turks not at all, probably in consequence of the religious practice of constant ablutions. The Russians also suffered from the diminution of food, before it reached them, after passing through the contracts of the officers of the regiments.

At Buckarest, in December, 1829, the medical chief acknowledged a loss of twelve thousand Russians, who had died of the plague. At Varna, the officers admitted a loss of ten thousand men. At Silistria the loss was dreadful. At Adrianople, of six thousand sick, every one died in three months. The fever was carried into Bessarabia by the second corps, which returned thither.

In January, 1830, there remained in the Turkish territory forty thousand Russians, of whom twenty thousand were cantoned to the south of the Danube and the Balkan. The total loss of the Russians in the two campaigns was one hundred and forty thousand men and fifty thousand horses.

NARRATIVE OF THE AFFAIRS OF GREECE.

PART IV.

"Trust not for freedom to the Franks."

BYRON.

The desolate condition, both as to material and intellectual means, in which King Otho and the Regency found this poor, unhappy country, on their landing on the classic soil, in February, 1833, has been already described in our last Number. The nation was without an administration, without tribunals, schools, a marine, any troops obedient to the Executive, in the utmost financial extremity, everything split by parties inflamed by the most violent passions — the country on the verge of general dissolution.

The first steps of the Regency were directed to restore tranquillity and order which had been shaken to their foundations-to pacify the excited dispositions-to approximate contending parties to create for the new government confidence, recognition, and esteem.

Immediately, therefore, on their landing, a proclamation inspiring confidence was addressed to the nation, and a general amnesty was passed for all political crimes. The nation on its side hastened to acknowledge the authority of the Regency, by taking the oath of allegiance to King Otho and the laws, in exchange for the pledge of their Sovereign to defend the laws and independence of Greece. We must bear in mind, that amongst these laws were considered the Protocols that defined the attributes of the sovereignty, as well as the constitution of the Regency, established with the

consent of the four powers, and which was to exist inviolate until the majority of the young Prince. Severe measures were provisionally taken to preserve the peace, and three courts were instituted in Nauplia, Missolonghi, and Thebes, to which were attached the best judges Greece could supply, and their sentences were carried into execution with a promptitude hitherto unknown in that country. The use of fire-arms was restricted; an administration, an army, and a marine, were created; the schools previously existing were improved; commissions were appointed to consider of the affairs of the church and public instruction; and a corps of gendarmerie was instituted.

During three months all was harmony and tranquillity at Nauplia, throughout the whole continent, and throughout all the islands of Greece.

At the house of Count Armansperg, the King and his uncle, the Prince of Saxe-Altenburg, together with the diplomatic corps, the military and naval officers of England, France, and Russia, Bavarian gentlemen and travellers from various countries, formed a nucleus of society, in which all the leading Greeks had an opportunity of becoming acquainted with their Prince, whose exemplary and engaging conduct gained every heart.

The Primates and Capitani, whose passions had been so lately excited with deadly animosity, met hand in hand in rivalry of good feeling and loyalty to their Prince. The splendour of their arms, the variety of their costumes, their exploits in the war of independence, the legends of their civil feuds, became the theme of curiosity and deep interest to the King and the Bavarians. From far and wide the Hellenists repaired to Nauplia, to witness the spectacle of European society, and the whole country resounded with benedictions on the Alliance, as having fulfilled all that their utmost hopes could have aspired to.