The Sun.
London, England, 1855-08-29 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

( From the Times of this cloy.)

By the arrival of the Carmel from Constantino-
ple we have full details of the battle fought on the
Tchernaya on the 16th. Encouraged, it may be,
by the arrival of a portion of the Grenadiers, and
probably urged on by the impatience of high per-
sonages at St. Petersburg, the Russian General
determined on an attack on the allied position, and
made preparations for many days, with a disregard
of caution which revealed his plans and, but for
extraordinary remissness, should have caused their
more easy discomfiture. It is said that the move-
ments of the Russian force were plainly visible—
that their collections of pontoons and engineering
materials were exposed in front of their position,
and that no means were taken to hide the prox-
imity and the magnitude of the attack from a foe
whom the Muscovite General might have learnt to
respect, but whom the oft-repeated alarms of an
attack had lulled into security. At last, on the•
morning of the 16th the Russians, pouring down
the steep sides of their position, and favoured by
the mist, without cry or beat of drum, burst upon
the Piedmontese position ; driving in the outposts,
they reached the Tchernaya, forded the narrow
stream, and, notwithstanding a heavy fusillade
from the Zouaves, rushed upon the allied camp.
They attacked two French regiments in front and
flank with a desperate bayonet charge, and a hot
contest ensued, in which General D'Herbillon,
with 10,000 men, had to sustain the attack of the
Russians, who probably by this time had brought
a much larger force into action. Reinforcements,
however, soon arrived, and a long and formidable
combat ensued, in which the Russians were
beaten on every point. Their artillery was
silenced by the superiority of the allied fire,
and they appear to have been on this occasion
I entirely outdone in the effective management
of their favourite arm. Their greatest loss,
no doubt, was from the deadly action of the
enemy's cannon and rifles against their advancing
columns. Descending a slope, they presented the
fairest aim for the well-served artillery of an enemy,
and the Minie and carabine-a-tige, with which the
French are armed, must have done deadly execu-
tion upon them before they could reply with their
inferior weapons, or close, as they appear to have
attempted, in hand-to-hand combat. The superi-
ority of position as well as of military skill on the
part of the allies is proved by the great dispropor-
tion of loss on the two sides. While the Russians
are officially declared to have suffered to the extent
of 6,000 men, probably a fifth of those actually en
I gaged, the French and Sardinians together com-
pute their loss at only 1,200 men. No less than
900 prisoners had arrived at Constantinople when
the packet left.
No attempt was made to follow up the victory,
and indeed such an enterprise would have been im-
possible. General Pelissier says that General Mor-
ris, who commanded the cavalry, was eager to pur-
sue the enemy, but his own opinion was that enough
had been done, and the judgment of the Comman-
der-in-Chief must command the assent. In a coun-
try so difficult as the Crimea the attacking party
has always the disadvantage ; and, though the de-
feated and retreating Russians might have suffered
from a charge of cavalry, it is difficult to say that
some such fate as that of Balaklava might not have
awaited the adventurous General, had he ad-
vanced far into a tract of land where cavalry
might easily he placed in a difficult position, and
where the enemy possess the advantage of a
superior knowledge of the ground. As for an
advance against the Russian position itself that is
a matter for the most cautious strategy, and not for
soldiers with blood roused by the excitement of a.„
new victory. The day went sufficiently against
the Russians, whom it foiled in a long-planned
scheme and roused from a dream of success, which
we may think absurd, but which we see was suffi-
cient to lead them on to immense exertions and a
most hazardous and deadly conflict. It is not
difficult to see the object of the Russian General,
though how he could hope for success is sufficiently
surprising. Gortschakoff knew that the allies
were pressing close their works round the Malak-
hoff ; that the batteries they were erecting were on
a scale and of a power unknown in the past history
of the siege ; that, in spite of sorties and ambus-
cades, his soldiers had never regained a foot of
ground that they had lost ; he knew that the ships
• and the steamers in Sebastopol were in danger,
and that even the daily communication with the
north side of the harbour might soon be threatened.
It was expedient, then, to seize a position from
which he could annoy the allies, menace a con-
tinual and advantageous attack, and divert them
from the assault of the Malakhoff, cr force them to
attempt it with diminished forces, while the flower
of their army should be watching the Tchernaya.
It was a bold idea, and the means taken to carry
it out were probably correct enough according to
the rules of war. But the Russian Generals for-
get one thing, or, with negligent cruelty to those
they lead, disregard it where the faintest hope of
success appears. They have yet to learn or more
thoroughly appreciate the inferiority of their troops
in the open field. The late Czar could not, it is
said, believe it, yet probably a conviction of its
truth reached his heart sufficient to embitter his

latter days. Behind the works which they have
constructed with such labour and such enduring
courage they have fought with success, and may
still further prolong resistance, but until the social
causes which form the character of the soldier be
changed he will never, especially in offensive ope-
rations, equal those against whom he is now en-
gaged in conflict.
There is one point which must gratify all readers
of this brilliant victory. The Sardinians, fiercely
attacked, fought with desperation, and in the long
struggle which followed showed themselves worthy
comrades of the French and British. Piedmontese
valour had till this eventful day no means of show-
ing that its flame had not become dim since the
times of its former glory. The troops of Victor
Emmanuel had arrived late on the scene. The
officers, a noble and high-minded class of men,
had, perhaps not unnaturally, been surprised and
mortified by the apathetic 'reception given to them
by the Turks, ignorant that the French and British
had long before wondered at the same obtuseness,
although they regarded it too little to take offence.
In the Crimea there was nothing for them to do.
They encamped in the valley which has been lately
the scene of their heroism. Either through some
agreement, or through the unwillingness of the
French and British to have foreign troops in their
lines, they were excluded from the trenches. Then
came sickness, which decimated their force. They
were much discouraged, and began to murmur.
A political party at home, which had opposed their
being sent at all, began to exult in the accomplish-
ment of its gloomy prophecies. One day has suf-
ficed to change the spirit of the Piedmontese.
They are brothers in arms to the Allies, who had
before met the enemy ; they can be content to
wait for further renown until operations are at-
tempted in which they can have a share. They
have justified their claim to high consideration on
the part of the world, and vindicated the wisdom
of the Government which sent them to fight for
civilisation that they might be a source of hope and
confidence to unhappy Italy uutil the day arrives
for her deliverance.

(From the Morning Post of this day.)
It cannot be denied that much anxiety—perhaps
indeed unworthy, but still not unnatural—has
been felt in this country as to the probable conduct
of Austria at the present crisis. Her good faith has
been from the first distrusted, and the tortuous
course of policy she has pursued, and has not yet
abandoned, has justified our instinctive distrust ;
we say instinctive, for her professions were fair
enough, and her preparations almost satisfied
Europe of their sincerity ; but still the weighty
obligation under which the intervention of Russia,
at the hour of her direst necessity, in the Hunga-
rian insurrection, had placed her
to that Power,
was felt to introduce grave complications into the
already too tangled web of continental politics.
With the oriental blood of the Magyar—a race but
lately dominant, now depressed in position and
ruined in fortune, boiling in Hungary ; a nation
of soldiers burning to draw the
i sword, with gover-
nors and governed hopelessly involved in a vicious
circle of mutual wrongs in Italy—with the elements
of revolt smouldering everywhere within her boun-
daries, and the apostles of sedition without watch-
ing her movements with eager eyes, and marking her
out for their first prey, it was feared that she had
not troops to spare from the indispensable police of
her heterogeneous territories, and that her military
action abroad might unchain the demon of discord
at home, and light a flame which might again, as in
campaign of miracles
1848, spread over Europe. Her aid was felt to be
important—her course the nations scrutinised with
doubt and foreboding ; there wore many strategists
yetwit h which the
alive ho re
Firstcol
Napoleon
l ec tdt he
astonished Europe in
1814, and more than half suspected that it owed no
small part of its miraculous character to the tardy
co-operation of the Austrian Commander with the
energetic and true-hearted Prussian. When will

such terms be applicable again to Prussian chief ?
Atud now, as the stately march of events leaves her
behind in inglorious inaction, though not iu inglo-
rious ease, it also tears away the veil from her policy
and from cierposition. No oue shuts his eyes to the
difficulty, and even danger, of the circumstances
under which she is placed—no one doubts that the
reins of empire on the Danube must be held by a
skilful and a cautious hand ; but skill without prin-
ciple is less a gift than a snare, and in the phreno-
logy of nations, as well as individuals, it does not
require the science of Gall or Spurzheitn to dis-
cover into what passion caution, unbalanced by
firmness, inevitably degenerates: -
;But one short year ago there were many who
thought that Vienna was the pivot upon which
European action was to move, and when, on the
20th of August, an Austrian army poured down the
Pass of the itothenthurm, on its way to Bucharest,
many rejoiced in a potent ally taking his place by
our side, though there were others who boded no
good to European freedom from an Austrian army
in Wallachia. But the illusion of the co-operation
of Austria being indispensable was dispelled by the
thunders of the Alma and Inkerman. The. joint
baptism of fire was a regeneration from the unholy
feuds which had so long parted the great nations of
the West, and even in the blackest gloom of that
sepulchral winter, of which it is hard to say
whether history will see the British soldier more
the martyr or the hero, the self-reliance of the
great allied nations, tried by adversity, purified
by self-sacrifice, and shining bright in the glory
that was settling upon its deeds and its sufferings,
struck its roots deep, in the heart of the peoples,
grew and blossomed, and promises in. thic7w-time to
bring forth golden fruit. Can it be Matter of re-
gret that we are not to be called to share. that har-
vest with the Austrian ? is it not better that we
should make war without a slippery ally, and make
peace without a double-dealing partner ? Ever
since Austria exhibited unmistakeably her neutral
tendencies, her decline in external influence and
internal credit has been
_steady and continuous.
An abrupt check has been given to the marked
amelioration she was introducing into her financial
credit on the strength of the railways and other
internal improvements she was constructing in
Bohemia and Hungary. She can no longer con-
tract loans upon the guarantee of her railways in
Lombardy and Venice, because they are no longer
marketable securities. Qais custodiet ipsos custodes,
who will guarantee the guarantees themselves,
now that she has lost the political credit which
would have resulted from her alliance with the
Western Powers ? She has also lost the financial
credit thereunto belonging, and is compelled to
disband her troops, because she can no longer raise
money to maintain them, and that, too, at a time
when the necessity of reinforcing her army in Italy
is becoming more and more urgent, as the antici-
pated rising of her Austro-Italian subjects becomes
more and more imminent.

Nor is the position of the smaller German Courts
more dignified, or more secure. Differing in sen-
timents and policy from the feeling• and the in-
terests of their peoples, who are now reminding
them of promises made in 1848, as in 1830, they re-
minded them, and with the like result, of promises
made in 1813, they can only maintain their autho-
rity by the sword, and yet they are even now dis-
banding the soldiers they cannot pay, and relying
for protection from those attacks upon their li-
berties, and, indeed, upon their very existence,
which would be the certain results of a pro-
longed war, upon Prussia, who cannot protect
herself. A few days would bring a French army
to the Rhine, the object of its traditional am-
bition ; fewer still would see a Russian force
on the Vistula, its long-coveted military fron-
tier. No doubt, France, like ourselves, disclaims
territorial aggrandisement ; but war has its neces-
sities, which overrule the most earnest and the most
sincere disclaimers ; and Frenchmen have never
forgotten that Charlemagne lived at Frankfort,
and lies buried in Aix-la-Chapelie. Of course, so
long as Prussia affords a transit to Russian 'produce,
which, however circuitous and costly, keeps open
some egress to raw material which she must dis-
pose of, and ingress to munitions of war she cannot
manufacture at home, Russia will respect Prussian
territory and protect Prussian interests ; but in case
of a rupture between the latter Power and France,
Russia would demand, and with perfectly sound
military logic, the line of the Lower Vistula for
the defence of her own frontier, in return for what-
ever assistance she might render the faded heritage
of the great FroderiCk ; and Russian armies have
not yet shown any great aptitude for evacuating
territory they have once occupied—the Russian
god, Terminus, has not yet learned to recede,
though a combination, the like of which Europe
has not yet seen, sternly announces that his hour
may be at hand—and, if it be, Prussia will not b©
the instrument that is to drive the Cossack back into
the wilderness, whence he came and whether he
must return, if freedom and civilisation are to con-
tinue to exist in Europe. Nor can the day be far
distant when the question will arise whether it is
consistent with the interests of that freedom that

••
the despotic rule of Austria should be stretched
over those provinces of Wallachia and Moldavia
whose future is as yet darkling and indistinct, who
at present are but the playthings and victims of
absolute Government, but who may form no un-
important portion of the great Federation of States,

in which the solution of the Eastern question seems
to lie. However that may be, we have fought the
great battle without Austrian aid, and conquered
in spite of Austrian duplicity. Alma, Balaklava,
Inkertnan, Tchernaya, are all ineffaceably regis-
tered in the Great Book of the war as barring her
claim to a voice in the conditions of the peace.
Perhaps even whilst our pen traces these words
the sword has added a mightier and deadlier name
to the roll of her disqualifications, and the death
throes of Sebastopol are heralding a reconstruction
of Europe, in which the victorious Allies will be
unfettered by the necessity of deferring to Austria.