The Sun.
London, England, 1855-07-30 00:00:00

MAZZINI ON THE WAR.

July, 1855.
My dear Friend,—You ask me why I do not express
my opinions on the war. I feel diShearteno. You seem
to me to be fighting, like Ajax, in the dark ; only he
was praying for light—you have it shining on you from
every side, and shut your eyes resolutely against it. You
have been repeatedly warned. Men who do not claim
any superior insight or power of genius, but who from
their position, from the studies and events of a whole
life, are entitled to know something of continental poli-
tical matters, told you from the beginning of the contest
that Austria would never fight your battles ; that her
only aim was to take possession of the Principalities; that
by your obstinately pursuing the flying phantom of an
alliance with her you were not only degrading your
cause and losing all the sympathies of thegood and brave
throughout Europe, but fettering your intellect, cramp-
ing your schemes, and turning the policy of your war
from the only ground upon which you could rationally
hope for victory, to a wild chase of impossibilities.
All this has been subsequently christened into facts.
Still, you remain inert, impassive, unshaken, bent on
the same identical track—plunging deeper and deeper
into a dark, hopeless region of dreams and deceptions ;
whilst a single act of will would lead you back to the
wide, easy, bright path, on which honour and victory
must bless each step of yours. I see brave deeds,
suffieient to 'redeem a whole fallen nation ; noble
powers of action and endurance, displayed by your
unknown demi-gods, your soldiers, and officers, in the
Crimea ; but for what purpose and with what hope ?
I bow before the quiet silent devotedness with which
your nation accepts all the sacrifices inseparable from
a war, and I 'feel proud of loving and being loved in
-ye:tit-own -countrop; ..but such devotion ought not to be
in vain ; and as far as I can see, it is so. Owing to the
policy which leads the war, you are fighting for an
impossibility.
The thought, unless indeed -all-praotical,sense has
forsaken your nation, must he by this time, atter nine
months of efforts and deceptions, living and restless
within many souls ; still, none dares to give utterance
to it. You are in your Parliament floating between one
party aware of the difficulty of your position, but draw-
ing from that knowledge a policy of cowardice, and
another, fully alive to the supreme necessity of not with-
drawing from the contest before a decisive victory, but
neither understanding, nor wanting to understand, how
victory can be reached ; peace at any cost, even of
honour, and war for war's sake ; the three words uttered
by Mr. Roebuck remaining unsupported, echoless, a
threatening prophecy to be remonbe.red when it will be
too late. Your administrative reform societies are sys-
tematically shunning the vital question, apparently aim-
ing at nothing else but at teaching people how to do
cleverly the wrong thing. Your press, active, far-
sighted, bold, sometimes fierce, and, when combined,
all-powerful concerning details and all second-rate
matter, is silent about the problem— " Can Russia
be conquered through the Crimea ?" Still that
is the question. It is good and brave to die for one's
own flag ; but it is sad, unutterably sad and culpable
to bid the best die a fruitless death, when more
could be achieved. Martyrdom is in certain times and
circumstances the sacred duty of the weak ; the strong
are bound to conquer.

Can you conquer, without a radical change in your
actual policy? It is my deep conviction that you cannot.
To believe that the succgss of a war rests on a ground
of mere organisation and military-detail skill—that the
directing policy has nothing to uo with it—that, when
you have comparative perfection of mechanical arrange.
ments and valour, you have conquered the most of fa-
vourable chances, is an immense mistake. I have wit-
nessed in 1848, in Lombardy, the rapid, progressive, un-
avoidable destruction of a certain triumph through a
single fatal stroke of policy.
There, on a land where a national movement had sud-
denly taken place and swept the territory, the fortresses
excepted, of all foes, from the Alps to the sea, a King
stepped forward, with regular battalions, artillery, and
resources twice equal to a conquered, disheartened, de-
moralised enemy, but with a different aim, the aggrandise-
ment of the House of Savoy, and with a monarchical
tradition entirely antagonistic to the spirit and tendency
of the movement. There was valour in the army, de-
votedness in the officers ; and a whole population glow-
ing with enthusiasm was backing the Piedmontese regi-
ments. The plan was obvious. The 30,000 Austrian
soldiers who had fled to Verona and Mantua could never
reconquer alone the lost ground. To prevent their being
reinforced was the problem to be solved ; and the solu-
tion was easy. To arm the population and tell them—
protect your houses ; to leave behind the fortresses ; to
march to the Alps and establish there, on the points
where the military roads link Rey with the Austrian
empire, two camps of some 25,000 soldiers each; to
bombard Trieste, from whence the Austrians were draw-
ing all their supplies ; to rouse with an appeal to the
Slavo-Illyrian nationalities all the eastern Dalmatian coast
of the Adriatic—was undoubtful, cheap victory. But
Trieste was forbidden by diplomacy ; the Tyrol, I do
not know by what old absurd rights of the German
Confederacy ; to arm the population was out of the
question ; for a people who fights its own battles is a
very dangerous element to rising monarchies ; to protect
the Venetian military roads was to strengthen the repub-
lican Government which had been proclaimed at Venice.
And how could a Government, bent not on the creation
of an Italian nation, but on the formation of a Pied-
montese kingdom of the North, raise a war of nationali-
ties ? Thus, all the truly strategic operations being ex-
cluded, the emancipatin-, war found itself forcedly nar-
rowed down to the regular siege of the fortresses. The
Piedmontese army lingered before Mantua and Verona
until a scorching sun, disease, irregularity of commis-
sariat supplies, and the demoralising discouragement
always attending troops kept in comparative immobility,
pointed out to a freely reinforced enemy an opportunity
for overpowering it. A wrong policy had destroyed all
the chances of the war. Such must be the case in every
war. Its method rests mainly on the policy which rules
the councils of the nation—such is, and most strikingly,
in your own.

Had the policy of your Government been a liberal one,
you would be now firmly established in the heart of your
enemy's land, backed by the insurrection of a whole
brave nation, and with a powerful germ of disorganisa-
tion, through desertion and revolt, at work in the ad-
verse army. A stroke of energy at the service of a
principle would have given you allies on every point of
Europe; and no despotic power would dare or be able to
support Russia against you. We could pledge our word
for that.

By your declaring yourselves hostile to any national
movement—by your courting during sixteen months the
vilest of the despotic powers, Austria—by your re-
nouncing every moral aim, every noble aspiration, for a
paltry and hateful programme of expediency, and status
quo, you have deprived yourselves of the sympathies of
all the good and brave throughout Europe—you have
prevented a Polish rising—you have lost the alliance of
Sweden—you have allowed free space and security to
all German intrigues against you ; and renouncing all
freedom of action, all free choice of places, means, and
military plans, you have, like Charles Albert, in 1848,
narrowed the war to a siege, on a spot which will
be, I fear, henceforward named " the grave
of England's honour and England's sons," The grave
of England's honour and England's sons—the Crimea,
at this period, can be but this.
I confess I cannot understand the silent, obstinate
apathy with which your press, your meetings, your Par-
liamentary men, are witnessing the sacrifice of thousands,
without ever dreaming of asking themselves—Can vic-
tory—a decisive and permanent one, be obtained there ?
I shudder when 1 read such words as those with which
Lord Palmerston coolly assures the House of Commons
that all losses will be met by new supplies of men. You
had better decree at once that the youth of England
shall be periodically decimated, for no other purpose than
that of gratifying the military ignorance of Louis Na-
poleon, and withdrawing every source of alarm from the
Austrian Government.

A. Crimean expedition could in no case, I believe, lead
by itself to a decisive success or to honourable terms of
peace. Odessa, if you wanted to act from the Black Sea,
was the point for you. Still, had you chosen the favour-
able moment and worked with adequate means—had yon
landed at once 100,000 men somewhere above Sebasto-
pol, and marched to Perekop, whilst your fleet would
have got possession of the Straits of Kertch, Cape of
Kezantip, and other points on the Sea of Azoff,
the Crimea might have been yours, and you would have
then fallen back on Sebastopol—thus deprived of all its
communications with the continent. It was no doubt
an important deed. But now, what is your hope ? What
is your aim in systematically sacrificing your best men
under the walls of a town which, in all probability, you
will not take, and which, if taken, cannot give you what
you want ?
It is high time for you, I think, to look earnestly into
the matter, and to see that England's forces, which Eng-
land may need at a not very distant period for her own
protection against allies, are not lost in a hopeless contest.
Cast a glance back on the war. You thought in the
beginning—and it was the first fatal mistake—that you
would frighten the Czar out of the contest with some
50,000 or 60,000 men placed at Constantinople, Galli-
poli, or Adrianople. When you began to perceive that
a real earnest war was unavoidable, you turned to the
Danube; there was your natural basis for offensive ope-
rations. Austria—it is now an established fact—forbade
your acting there. You bowed to Austria, dismissed
the thought at once, and gave up to Austria—the second
fatal mistake—the Principalities.
Forbidden the Danube, and not wanting to arouse,
through Poland, the dreaded question of the nationalities,
you decided upon adopting the Bonapartist scheme of a
Crimean expedition. You landed with troops, material,
and knowledge of the localities and of the enemy's forces
utterly unequal to the object, near Sebastopol. You
wanted to try the north, but found unforeseen and al-
most insurmountable obstacles, and through the most
dangerous flank march possible, you turn to the south.
You could not, for want of troops, invest the place ;
you did not dream of preventing the accumulation of
military stores and victuals which were coming from
the interior of Russia and Siberia, down the Volga and
the Don, through Rostof and Kertcb, to Sebastopol.
But yon simply established yourselves there, trust-
ing to chance, and despising the enemy-and
you still are. Since then you have bleidiuntiomimiin. nteiinet.
danger--avertod only through wit Qt

Russian leaders, and heroic valour in your soldiers at
Inkerman and Balaklava—of being driven back to the
se,. Since then, you have lost the hope of an active
alliance with Austria, lost the confidence of Europe,
lost a considerable amount of money, lost (I speak of
Ergland alone) some 40,000 men, and won—some
counter-approaching outposts erected since your arrival.
This is the summary of the past ; now for the future.
Sebastopol—the besieged southern part is as strong as
ever--the Russian army in the Crimea more strong than
ever ; and, owing to the conduct of Austria, numerous
fresh reinforcements are coming from the interior of
Russia. You cannot dream of starving the enemy ;
your expedition to the Sea of Azoff has come five or six
months too late ; military stores and provisions equal
to the wants of many months were already accumulated
in Sebastopol. And the military road of the Shivagh,
the road across the isthmus, the read leading from
Simpheropol to Sebastopol through Baktchiserai, the
road from the same town to the northern part of the be-
sieged place, are all in the hands of the Russians. Yen
must then take the town by force. How many men will
you have to lose in getting possession of the Malakhoff,
of the Redan, and of the first line of defence ? How many
in conquering the second line ?
Suppose you do gain possession of the whole town how
are you to keep it under the fire of the northern forts
The ground there is much higher than on the southern
side. The octagon fortress, called the Sievarna, the key
of Sebastopol, according to Sir Howard Douglas, com-
mands town, bay, and docks. Its height proteco it from
the fire of your ships, its shores are precipitous. You
must therefore attack it by land, thus finding yourself
after nine months of exertions and sacrifices just before
the obstacle from which you shrank at the beginning.
How much time, how much English blood, will be re-
qu;red to overcome it ? Can you feel sanguine after the
experiments on the south ?
And, then, the Russian forces outside Sebastopol ?
Ilinner in number; exhausted by victories which
would undoubtedly prove like those of Pyrrhus, you will
then have to begin the true war, the Crimean campaign.
There are Russian forces, strong enough now, and which
will be stronger still in a short while, on the right, at
the two extremities of the Tchernaya ; Russian forces on
the Belbek, Russian forces in the proximity of Eunatoria ;
Russian forces under Wrangel, Montresor, Bellegarde,
in the interior. Between those and thringh the steppes
which from Simpheropol up to the isthmus spread over
all the Crimea you will have to fight your way to Pere-
kop. On the steppes, no trees, no shrubs ; against the
intense beat and intense cold an invading army is de-
fenceless : no resting shelter—the Crimea is more than
thinly inhabited ; 10,000 English square miles and te-
nanted by some 200,000 inhabitants, and a few scattered
villages of the interior will lie burnt by the Russians.
Water is there very scarce and saturated with salt. The
winter sweeps the desolate land with overwhelming
snow-storms : the warm season softens through the
melting of the snows the ground to such an extent that
the artillery will sink through it. No road tracks—the
bridges on the ravines not strong, and easily destroyed.
These difficulties you 'will say must work against the
Russians, too ; yes, only the Russians are at home, they
are used to them ; you are not ; you must conquer, they
have only to defend ; every step in advance will leave
you further from your basis of operations, from your
supplies ; every step backwards brings them nearer to
their own.

A t the end of the Crimean steppes lies your objective
point, Perekop. The Russians have been all this while
fortifying it. Then should you conquer it and Russia
not yield, tiiree hundred miles of new steppes . . .
One would say that the man who first planned the
Crimean expedition wanted to solve this problem : how to
sink in an apparently plausible enterprise the best blood
of England, and make her defenceless for a time of need.
Such are your prospects. How many thousands of
men, how many millions of pounds are you disposed to
engulph in their possible, not probable realisation
People who are wanting deliberately to blind them-
selves and England, will talk to you of a probable ope-
ration through the Liman of the Dnieper against Kher-
son, and the naval arsenal of the Crimea, Nicolaieff.
They forget Otchakow and Kilboroun, placed opposite
each other at two and a half miles distance, and forbid-
ding the entrance of the Lagoon ; they forget that every
place on the shores must have been by this time fortified
by the Russians ; they forget that Nicolaieff is now the
point where a reserve army of some thirty thousand
Russians is formed. They will suggest an attack upon
Akerman ; and 0 vidioplis on the Dniester ; they forget
that there you would be faced by the Russians, and
threatened on your flank by the Austrian army. Can
you trust the Austrian army They will hint at a
bold attempt against Perkope. How—by sea! On
the Azoff Sea it is protected by the Shivagh ? on the
Black Sea your men-3f-war cannot cast anohor except
at the distance of 20 miles. By land ? You must first
fight, and conquer the campaign I spoke of some lines
back. Unless you want to find yourselves prisoners
between the forces coming from the interior of Rus-
sia, and those manceuvring in the interior of the Crimea,
you must destroy Wrangel and Bellegarde. With what
forces ? You have now, after all usual deductions made

—and Turks and Piedmontese included-150,000 active
men in the Crimea : probably less, certainly not more.
Some 40,000, almost without cavalry, are at Eupatoria.
How many of the rest will you leave to push on the
siege ? How many to guard Kamiesch and Balaklava ?

No ! Unless you raise the siege ; unless you apply
your energies to the only vulnerable point of Russia—
Poland ; unless you radically change the policy ruling
the war, you can do nothing but systematically and
Periodically perish in fruitless attempts before Sebasto-
pol. Russia is there now too strong for you.
Will your Government ever spontaneously adopt a
change of policy ? Never. The men who had not one
word to say in the name of England's honour when the
Czar in 1848-9 invaded the Principalities and crushed
Hungary, because his object was then to check liberty and
national movements—the men who plotted with Louis
Napoleon for restoring the Pope "under an improved
form of government" at Rome—the men who can,
during sixteen months, exhaust every form of servile
complacency towards such a power as Austria, and,
scorned, do not dare a threatening word—can ally them-
selves with despotic usurpers—they will never say to a
nation, Rise ! Their policy lies between the despatch of
the 23d of March, 1853, in which Lord Clarendon de-
clares that her Majesty's Government is anxious to avert
the risks of any advantage being given to the European
revolutionists, and the speeches of Lord Palmerston,
branding the liberty of Poland as a dream, the future
rising of Hungary as an untoward lamentable event.
They may break their pledge with Sicily ; they will
•never break that which binds them to continental abso-
lutism. But that you, English citizens, who worship
freedom and revere morality—you who have no pledge
except to England's honour and safety—you who all to a
man waved your hats at Poland's glorious rising and pro-
claimed its overthrow a crime, you whose brothers and sons
are dying, the victims of a wrong policy, in the Crimea;
whilst in Podolia and Lithuania they could conquer—
you, the free and able, by a single resolute act of will,
by a sudden energetic collective manifestation to compel,
can sit quietly witnessing the slow, useless work of de-
struction, and trust your fates to men who, thanks to
their policy and to Austria, are besieging, after nine
months of operations, an outer work, is more than I can
explain to myself or others. Every man who has a son,
a brother, or a friend in the East ought to walk with a
map of the Crimea on his breast and a flag with the
name of Poland inscribed, from place to place, from
park to park, from cottage to cottage, and preach and
explain, until hundreds of thousands should peacefully
but sternly signify their will. Change of policy. Down
with Austria. Let Poland's rising be helped. And
then you ought to kneel and thank God most humbly
for having placed the easy accomplishment of a great
act of justice on the very path which leads to English
safety and success.
But Austria! Prussia ! Leave Prussia to her own
people; Austria to Hungary and to ourselves. As sure
as Austria will never fire a single gun for you against
you while we live. The question of the nationalities is
amounting to a general war. What of that ? Will not
the nationalities fight their own battles ? Only those
battles will be yours too. With Poland, Hungary, and
Italy up, the Czar cannot dream of marching to Con-
stantinople.
Out of the road I point depend upon it there is no de-
cisive victory nor honourable peace possible for you. In
a letter which I addressed to the chairman of the Society
of the Friends of Italy, on the 2d of March, I said,
" Your policy is absolutely wrong and immoral, there-
fore you cannot and will not conquer." I maintain
my ground. War is for me the greatest of crimes,
whenever it is not waged for the benefit of mankind,
for the sake of a great truth to enthrone, or of a great
lie to entomb. Yours is not such a war. It shrinks from
the proclaiming of a principle. It equally aims at cur-
tailing despotic encroachments from the north, and
strengthening despotism in the centre of Europe. It de-
clares that Turkey has a right to independence, whilst its
policy and tactics are calculated so as to prevent any
other country from asserting itself independent. I be-
lieve in God, and in a providential scheme ; and conse-
quently I do not believe in triumph crowning a war
grounded on expediency, temporary self-interest, and
antagonism to European rights and liberty.
Czarism is a principle—the principle of unbounded
authority ; it is only a principle—that
universal
liberty—that can conquer it.—Yours faithfullY,
I.
JOSEPH gAZZ
IN

APOTHECARIES' HALL—Names of gentlemen who
passed their examination in the science and practice of
medicine, and received certificates to practise, on Thurs.
day, July 26, 1855 :—George Nelson Collyns, Dulver.
ton ; James Thorpe Cliatterton, Hastings, Susse,
... ; and
Albert Iles, Cirencester, Gloucestershire.
ESTIMATES FOR CIVIL SERVICES.—A general abstract
several
of the grants to be proposed for civil service
exhibits a grand total, under the
es f3r 1855
lsahsose s, o f
6,556,963/., against 6,6441,8711. in 1854
decrease of 87,9081. The items are as, thus
follows, f 11
wingV—
Class l. Public works and buildings,' 746,760/. ; class 2,
1
ealaries, &c., of police departments,
,315,390/. ; class 3,
law and justice, 2,245,2881. ; class 4, education, science
,
and art, 846,6701. • class 5, colonial, consular, and other
forkign services, 328,344/. ;
reties, 218,3421. ; class 7Class 6, superannuations and
(a
porary
091QQW, objects, 756:169/ miscellaneous, special, and.
. ; and civil contiDgencita
_