The Sun.
London, England, 1865-05-04 00:00:00

ments were despatched, which by degrees brought
up the army to 25,000 men in the first line, with a
reserve of about 10,000 in Erzerourn.
it Very soon after the arrival of Getteral Williams,.
Kmety—or, as he was called in the Turkish service,
Ismail Pasha was relieved from his outpost duties
with the Irregulars, and placed in command of a
regular division of the Anatolian army.
The difference of opinion which still prevails among
military men on the manner in which that army was
handled does not concern us here, nor whether it
would not have been wiser to give up the useless
fortress of Kars, and concentrate all forces for the
line of defence, the plateau before Erzeroum, rather
than shut it up in the fortress and lose both the
fortress and the army.
In the beginning of June, 1854,when the Russians
took the offensive, the army had taken up a position
about Kars, which had been converted into an
intrenched camp, extending not only on the right
bank of the river, where the city lies, but inclosing
likewise the plateaux which rise in succession on
the opposite bank of the river. In the beginning
the whole of the lines on the left bank were placed
under the command of Kmety, to whom Capt. (now
Major) Teesdale was attached as chief of the staff.
The lines then only extended on that side to the
immediate vicinity of the river, where a line of
earthworks was thrown up for protection ; but
soon, and in great measure by the advice of Kmety,
it was found advisable to extend the lines to the
uppermost plateau of Tachmaz, which commanded
the works and from which the ground falls off
rapidly towards the plain, and Kmety himself was
placed in command of these advanced lines, with
instructions to hold them to the utmost. The
rumours that the Turkish army under Omar Pasha,
become more than ever useless after the fall of
Sebastopol, would be sent to the relief of Kars,
induced the Russian army before Kars to make an
effort to take the intrenched camp by storm.
Events proved that the Russians were as much
aware of the' importance of the pleateau of Tach-
maz as its defenders, for it was against that very .
position that they directed their chief efforts. On
they came at daybreak on the 29th of September
in three heavy columns, and at the very first onset
carried the open breastwork on the left flank of the
line, taking possession of all that portion of the
Turkish camp. Fortunately, the two closed re-
doubts, one under the animating influence of Major
Teesdale, held out until Kmety, who had driven
back the Russian attack on the right, could come up
with his scanty reserves, and, leading them on
himself, could by degrees disengage the redoubts, in
spite of the obstinate resistance of the Russians.
In the meantime, another attack on the inner line,
after being successful for a time, was finally beaten
back by Colonel Lake, and by 10 o'clock the Rus-
sians were retreating on all points, leaving 6,500
men dead on the field, about 6,000 of them before
the position of Tachmaz, showing clearly where the
real battle was fought.

But the victory became useless. In spite of the
advice of Kmety, the army, which then, at least,
could have been saved, if it could not have destroyed
the enemy, remained inactive until hunger forced it
to surrender.

Kmety, who would not run the risk of falling into
the hands of the Russians, made his escape, accom-
panied by a few of his faithful irregulars, right
across the Russian besieging army, and arrived in
Stamboul.

The Turkish Government was not ungrateful. He
was named lieutenant-general, and decorated ; but
the campaign had ruined his health, and, after con-
sulting French and English doctors, he determined
to retire from the service. While the negotiations
on this point lasted the massacres of Syria called
him once more into activity. He was placed in com-
mand of a division, and arrived just in time to put a
stop to further disorders. This was not a little im-
portant, as the French expedition arrived soon after,
which was as anxious to find the disturbances still
in progress as Fuad Pasha and the Turks were to
finish with them before any one else meddled.
This was the last act of his public life. He soon
after got his retirement, and a liberalpension, mainly
through Fuad Pasha, who had had opportunities of
appreciating his services. He retired to England,
which had been always the country of his predilec-
tions, as he fondly hoped to gather strength for
fresh work.

He was mistaken, for he was carried on Monday
to the cemetery of Kensal-green to repose there
after his hard, active life. The Turkish Govern-
ment claimed the right of burying him, and used the
right worthily. But old Kmety of Kars had friends
too, and, besides his own countrymen, a large num-
ber of them paid him the last honours. Among
others, Earl Ducie, Viscount Strangford, Lord E.
Seymour, Sir Henry Havelock, Colonel Seymour,
R.E., Major Adams, Mr. Cyril Graham, &c., be-
sides the Turkish Ambassador and the members of
the Embassy, came to the burial-ground.
A laurel wreath, decorated with the Hungarian
colours, was placed on his coffin, and never was this
token more deserved than in the case of this soldier,
simple and true, such as becomes the defender of a
good cause.

The Road Murder,
(From the Live
rpool Mercury.)
Of all the undetected crimes which within living memory
have perplexed and defied professional sagacity, leaving the
public mind haunted by an oppressive sense of the impo-
tence of human justice, the tragedy enacted at Road-hill
House on the night of the 29th of June, 1860, is perhaps
the meet fearful, both in the accumulated horrors of its
details and in the hopeless impossibility of tracking out its
guilty author. That a sleeping child should have been
taken from its bed in the dead of night, in the very presence
of its nurse, and foully murdered, and not a trace bo left of
the hand that did the cruel and bloody deed, was one of
the most terrible recorded examples of the failure of society
and its institutions to shield helpless innocence and to
punish crime. There were suspicions, surmises, conjec-
tures, and faint glimmerings of evidence, or what looked
so, which alternately pointed to three inmates of the house,
by some one of whom it was impossible to doubt that the
murder had been done ; but there was nothing on which
justice could take hold. So there was no choice but to
renounce in despair all thought of piercing the
dreadful mystery, and to leave it to wait for the
revelations of the day when the secrets of all hearts
will be made known. And now, nearly five years after
human justice has reluctantly accepted discomfiture
and defeat, a young girl places herself at the bar of a police-
court, and proclaims to all mankind that it was a sister's
hand that slew the sleeping infant.
It is not surprising that the confession of Constance Sent
is received with some amount of hesitation and distrust.
We do not, for our own part, share in this scepticism, but
it would be too much to assert that it is extravagantly un-
reasonable. It may be safely assumed that the
teporetheiseand
lawyerlike wording of the document presented
position of a girl in hor 21st year, weighed
nd d
unaidede 0
own under an
f guilt; and if extraneous interference
a
BOW-
street magistrate, is not the-
spontaneous
overpowering sense o
is once admitted, there is no saying how far it may have
; when we say that
a confession gone. We are casting no discredit on the sworn testimony
of
f Mor. Wssiaognnwelitchhe
comesßrigh through
coluearha thema
medium of a semi-
Romanist father confessor is viewedwith excusable jealousy
by the English public. Nevertheless, there the confession
e
is, and, though it is as yet unaccompanied by a particle of
corroborative or explanatory evidence, there is no definite
ground for doubting its literal truth. The suggestion of
diseased fancy having prompted a false self-accusation is
absolutely gratuitous ; nor is there anything in the re-
corded demeanour of the prisoner herself, on the two oc-
casions on which she has appeared in court, to give the
slightest countenance to the hypothesis of a delirious hal-
lucination. It is still more to the purpose to remember that
justice had at the time its misgivings that Constance Kent
was the murderess. Such fragments or hints of evidence as
there were pointed to her rather than to either of the other
two persons who alone, besides herself, could be regarded
as lying within the range of possible suspicion. There was
the fact of the missing nightdress, with the half proved
suggestion that it had been purposely made away with.
There were vague but significant indications of a rooted
dislike to the infant half-brother, though these were very
properly dismissed as utterly inadequate evidence of a
murderous design. Moreover, there was the character of
the girl herself—wild, wilful, eccentric, and passionate. As
a mere child she was unlike other children, having some
years before run away in disguise from a home which she
apparently hated.
We are told that to this hour the local police had never
relinquished tho belief that Constance Sent, and Constance
Kent alone, was the slayer of hor
• fant brother. It is
possible to forget these things when Constance Kent her-
self declares that the deed was hers. For ourselves, we
which, after all, only
Cannot disbelieve a confession
-
firms previous suspicions, and fits in with antecedent
appearances and probabilities. We feel bound to accept as
authentic the horrible disclosure that a gently nurtured
girl
of 15 or 16 years of age brutally murdered a little
brother as he slept in his cradle.