The National Register.
London, England, 1813-07-25 00:00:00

N,•

SUNDAY, JULY 25, WM.

991.

POLITICAL,

ASPECT OF AFFAIRS 1 N THE NORTH.

The Armistice, which for a short period has suspended
the efYnsion of blood in the North of Europe. expired the
With, of thisponth. Opinions are extremely *divided on the
probability or imorobabilitv of its being further extended
all ad vices from ihe countries occupied by the Allies, repre-
senting the renewal of hostilities as certain : while accounts
from France, and from the countries under her yoke, fondly
anticipate the prolongation of the truce, and the ultimate re-
establishment of Peace. This, .of course, rather indicates
the sate of public feeling, than ofpublic information in the
respective countries. The Russians and Germans have deep
injuries to avenge, they see no safety while the power of
the merciless foe remains unbroken, and for them war has no
horrors to be compared with the oppression they have ex-
perienced in peace. France, on the contrary, • and the
wretched countries she has enslaved, bleeding at every pore,
-and complete!)' exhausted, have no interest whatever in the
war, and they naturally expect, or rather they hope, for a
peace, as the only means of putting a term to the enormous
sacrifices they are daily Compelled to make, to gratify the
inordinate ambition of a ,nnseless tyrant. We shall not here
enter into speculations on this momentous subject, involved
as it is at present, in the maze of continental nerciations ;
we shall only observe, that the last arrivals from France,
yesterday, contain no al'usion whatever of a pacific nature ;
and this may afford an ect proof, that even the slender
hopes entertained before, had totally vanished.
A controversy more within our reach is the question on
the advantages which each of the Belligerent parties de-
rived, or are likely to derive from the Armistice. As the
proposition came from BUONAPARTE, he, no doubt, had
some important object in view, and this becomes more evi
dent, since, to ()Wain it, he consented to abandon a large
district of Silesia, and even Breslaw, the capital of that
country. His forces in the beginning of the Campaign were
greatly superior in number to those of the Allies ; reinforce-
ment& of troops could not, in consequence, be to him of ma-
terial importance, especially as the Allies were likely to re-
ceive during the Armistice a much larger accession of forces
than he himself could expect, and thus lessen the nume-
rical disproportion to which he had been indebted for his
(Lillian! successes. Bu; BIJONAP ART E had advanced across
the Elbe in an exhausted country with the same rashness
which proved so fatal to his army in Russia. He saw the
same alarming symptoms which had been the forerunners of
his former disasters; his enemies unbroken, retiring in the
best order before his superior f roes, and disp'uting every
inch of ground with balanced advantages ; in hil rear, swarms
1'o!. VI. No, CCXCI.

,f German patriots had replaced " those clouds of Cossacks"
by w'iich his glory hag been so greatly obscured; cutting.his
detached parties, and intercepting his convoys. He beOn
to feel the want of provisions for that vast multitude, and
the country offered no resource. In those circumstances be
paused, and acknowledged his embarmssinent by soliciting
an'Armisticeoes he had done previous to the evacuation of
Moscow. During that interval of repose he expected to be
able to collect magazines, to disperse the German pattiots,
and to. try what could be effected by the lures of his ma-
chiavelism, before be again tempted the fortune of war,
which he no longer exclusively trusted. He felt, in short,
that he had advanced too far from his resources, and, like
the wolf recently escaped from the toils, apprehended a
snare if he ventured further.

The Allies on the other hand, notwithstanding their he-
roic efforts, felt all the disadvantages of a vast disparity of
numbers. The Russian reinforcements were still remote,
and the Prussian levies net sufficiently organized. In con-
tinuing to fall back on those resources, they would have aban-
doned to the enemy the country between the Elbe and the
Oder, which forms the main strength of the Prussian Mo-
narchy ; fur Spandau was not yet in a state of defence, and
the line of the Spree could not, in consequence, have been
defended for any length of time. The army of the Crowm
PRINCE of SWEDEN was not, moreover, in a state sufficiently
effective to take the field in this stupendous warfare; and
these weighty consideiatious far out balanced the advantages
which BUONAP A RTE might cxpec, flour the Armistice. The
Allies knew besides how to appreciate the real value of those
advantages. They knew that, during the Armistice, the ex-
hausted countries which the French occupy would offer them
no resources, the harvest not beginning till the middle of
August ; provisions for the magazines were, of course, to be
brought from a great distance, at a vast expense and no less
danger. By ti:e delay of the Armistice they secured fOr the
future subsistence of their troops the growing crops of the
countries between the ‘7istula and the Oder, and in case of a
successful or protracted resistance•even the produce of those
between that last river and Elbe. As to the German pa-
triots, the Allies were well aware that al: the efforts of foreign
iegular troops would prove unavailing against the persever-
ance of patriotic partisans waging a guerilla-warfare in their
own country ; expel knee has proved that those views were
correct, for since the Artnisiice BLION APARTIS Bulletins
have teemed with accounts of corn and rice brought from
Bohemia, Hungary, and even from France, and of fruitless
marches of columns against the marauding insurgents.
Should hostilities be renewed, and of this we have now but
little doubt, it is evident that

same or greater difficulties to
eveu suppr,sing that he meets

t BUONAPARTE will have the
encounter, in a very short time,
33 with no check, and that the