The Sun.
London, England, 1854-10-04 00:00:00

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LONDON, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1854.

Some doubts have been cast, both in London
and Paris, as to the magnitude of the successes
achieved by the Allied Forces in the Crimea. It
has been hinted that the reports relating to the
Capture of Sebastopol have been at least prema-
ture, and that although from the unquestionable
victory at Alma there was every reason to antici-

pate a felicitous termination to the campaign, yet
the greater portion of the work was still to be
done, and much blood would be shed before the ,
object of the Allies was completely accomplished,
and Sebastopol, with all its munitions of war, and
the Russian fleet, shattered beneath its for-
tresses, would be within the power of the Anglo-
French armaments, and the Union Jack and

Tricolour waving above its walls.
These doubts have been occasioned by the ab-

Bence of official confirmation of the "glad tidings,"

that had been promulgated with unusual rapidity.
The speculators on the Bourse and at Capel
Court awaited the " booming" of the cannon, or
the proclamation on the Royal Exchange that
announced the receipt of official despatches from
the seat of war. The glorious victory at Alma
had thus been inaugurated, and those engaged in
the patriotic task of depreciating the national
securities for their own private purposes eagerly

caught at the absence of similar demon-
strations as a ground for discrediting the
glorious, and, to all other persons, gratifying
intelligence that had been received from perfectly
trustworthy, although non-official, sources. A
large body of Croakers joined in the outcry, men
who, although not actuated by any unworthy
purpose, so far as they were personally concerned,
yet habitually indulged in desponding views, and

took a gloomy pleasure in predicting reverses.
Those " prophets of evil" strove to maintain their
own reputations by a determined scepticism, and
endeavoured to obtain support to their views by

pointing out the variety of versions extant on the
subject of the " taking of Sebastopol," and argu-
ing therefrom that no such event had at all oc-
curred.

Notwithstanding this scepticism we have no
hesitation in adhering to our original opinion,
and expressing our earnest and unflinching con-
viction that the accounts already published are
substantially correct, that Sebastopol had virtually
fallen, and that there had been an enormous
sacrifice of human life amongst its defenders; and
we fear we must also add amongst its gallant
assailants, and also that a large number of pri-
soners had been taken. Any persons at all
acquainted with principles of evidence will know
that numerous accounts varying from each
other in minor details, but all manifestly
resting on the same basis, carry with them much
greater weight than those corresponding in the
minutest particulars, and where there is what is
termed " a very suspicious coincidence of state-
ments ;"—the former showing the impressions
conveyed to many different persons by the same
event ; the latter a rehearsal and pre-arrange-
ment of the accounts to be given. If we take a
dozen impartial witnesses of the same event no
two will receive precisely the same impressions.
They will, of course, concur, e. g., in declaring
that a conflict has taken place, and that one
party has conquered ; but there the agreement
ceases. As to the different movements that
led to the result, and the mode in which the
victory had been attained, there will be the
greatest diversity of opinion and of statement ;
and that, notwithstanding the anxious desire of
the parties to narrate " the truth, the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth." Previous concert,

when the witnesses have conferred together, and

they are all endeavouring to support a concocted
statement, may be detected by the uniformity of
accounts, that render it more than probable that
"'the witnesses are repeating a narrative they have
404 by rote rather than their own impressions
respecting what has taken place. The evidence
certain officers at a recent Court-martial may

furnish a familiar illustration of this class of

evidence.

From every side, then, we hear intelligence of
the " FILL or SEBASTOPOL." The Turkish Am-
bassador at Vienna transmits it to the Ottoman
Minister (in London without the slightest ex-
pression of doubt, while Count BuoL sends a simi-
lar account to the Representative of Austria, who
is ordered to congratulate the French Government,
in the name of the Emperor of AUSTRIA, on " the
glorious successes which have attended the French
arms in the Crimea."

These matters prove to a certainty that the
event which has humiliated the pride and de-
stroyed the power of Russia in the East has
actually occurred. The " congratulations " of
FRANCIS JOSEPH would not otherwise have been
tendered. The Power that refused to abandon
its disgraceful neutrality on the contemptuous re-
jection of its propositions by the AUTOCRAT would
not have spoken so clearly and distinctly on any
uncertain tidings. It would have " given
the benefit of any reasonable doubt " to the
Muscovite Criminal, and still have abstained from
any demonstration by which it would have been
decidedly committed in opposition to the Northern
Despot. We believe, then, that Sebastopol has,
as we have stated, virtually fallen, after a second
conflict, in which the Russians were conquered at
the plains at Kalantai, on the Kartcha, and that
they were closely pursued to the very entrench-
ments of Sebastopol that Fort Constantine
and other fortifications had becn captured after a
severe conflict, in which many men on both sides
had perished, and that MENSCHIKOFF, with
the discouraged remnant of his forces, was only
holding out for terms which could not by any
possibility be granted, and that he had probably
surrendered at discretion, if not on the 25th, at
the latest on the 26th. The official confirmation
of these auspicious tidings will probably be re-
ceived before the publication of another impres-
. sion of our journal. At all events, we believe
that they may be received as strictly authentic,
and acted on by the community at large.

VENGEANCE ! Yes, in this mild, sentimental
age we deliberately call for vengeance. The blood
of our soldiers, shed in a righteous cause, demands
it as loudly as did the blood of the first victim of
hellish passions. Accurate details may increase or
lessen by a few,the number of our slain ; but be
the number what it may, their deaths must be
avenged. Blood for blood we ask not, unless,
indeed, a CZAR could be made to atone for his
military murders as a CHARLES STUART once did.
A glorious consummation It would be to behold a
European court of equity sentencing the blood-
shedding disturber of peace to the due reward of
his crimes. We have some faith, however, in
solitary. confinement ; and though the CZAR of
Moscow has no right to life at the hands of Euro-
pean justice, we should be content to send him to
Siberia, or, better still, to St. Helena. Infinitely
more than its former distinguished prisoner does
he deserve that prison. Nor will Europe breathe
freely till in some way the barbarian is caged or
wholly disabled. No ;it is not the blood of his
unfortunate, half-starved serfs that we demand.
We would rather feed and clothe them—unhappy
victims as they are of the grossest ignorance and
superstition, played upon by the terrors of a never-
relenting despotism. We demand vengeance for
their blood, so profusely shed, with only inferior
energy to that with which we ask it for En -
1 lish blood. The former, however, is chiefly the
concern of his own benighted subjects ; the latter
is ours, English widows, English orphans, and
English brothers and sisters will too soon read a
black.-bordered catalogue with weeping eyes. The
glory of death for the freedom of Europe will but
feebly console the holiest sorrows of our nature ;
and great will be the cost of agony to survivors,
at which the vindication of right and justice has
been purchased. For all this agony and grief the
barbarian of Moscow is responsible, and for all
this agony and grief he must—he shall—pay.
By ten millions of our money we have hitherto
demanded satisfaction of the CZAR ; but this war
for the right is now consecrated by something
more sacred than money. We cheerfully sacri-
ficed our gold, but we have sacrificed with sorrow
the blood of our noblest sons. We thought little
of sparing a few of our luxuries, but NICHOLAS
Mad be made to feel that we do not bereave our
hearths, and part with our countrymen's lives so
Ilightly. Fourteen hundred of our soldiers mur-
dered by the artillery of reckless ambition give a
new turn to the whole war. The marauder who
has necessitated this sacrifice to stop his ravages
must now be made to smart far more heavily.
First, then, though the lightest part of his punish-
ment, full pecuniary indemnity to all the families
suffering by the loss he has occasioned, must be
one distinct item when the question of costs is
settled. The CZAR must not be let off more
lightly than a railway company. He put the train
in motion which has wronged so many families ;
he must give them compensation. Let France
and England keep this distinctly in mind.

A more heart-cutting vengeance must, how-
ever, be inflicted. We must now determine 'to
reduce the barbarian to a mere Russian—a Tartar.
Europe does not want him ; despots may, but the
despots of Europe are not Europe. Germany,
Hungary, even Italy, above all Poland, would be
infinitely better without him. Strip him, then,
of all his Western acquisitions. Tear from him all
of Europe he has enslaved from the North Sea
and the Baltic to the very borders of Turkey.
We have demanded it before by the rights of
nations, by the unique opportunity, by the liber-
ties of the Continent, by the interests of civilisa-
tion ; we now demand it by the blood of our sol-
diers. We could bear the loss of those we loved
if their death became the life and liberty of the
nations whom the barbarians have exiled, mur-
dered, or enslaved. This, then, is the vengeance
we demand for our slain—a war carried out to its
just objects—the monster who has provoked and
compelled it, cast out from the great European
family, and restored to the position of the prede-
cessors of PETER the Great;—every nation he has
seized freed from his grasp, and he himself re-
duced to a mere CZAR, as he is, or ought to be.
Let our countrymen now insist on a really wor-
thy conclusion to the war. If the barbarian
wants to treat, let the unrelenting answer be—
Yes, on condition of your retiring to Russia, and
restoring all of Europe you and yours have stolen,
from the North Cape to Ismail. Great, indeed,
would be the revolution to see the huge Eastern
despotism wherewith the little Western despots
theirAt subjectsfirst
shrunk toit
its proper dimensions. menace
have been accustomed to
seems hardly conceivable that a power which has
so long assumed, so lofty a tone—which has spread
itself over such vast territories, and paraded its
of soldiers, and its
granite fortresses, its myriads
huge navy,
of no more
before all Europe—should be rendered
importance to it than a Tartar khan.
Yet this may
be done. All along her present Western border
Surely now be done, and ought to
Russia is no way formidable. It all consists of
countries which, like the Crimea recently, would
hail the approach and feed the armies of the
liberator. Let not the example of the Grim-
Tartars be lost. Our troops may yet again and
again enjoy the highest pleasure of a soldier, that
of the joyful welcome of nations liberated by their
presence. `Whether, like other bullies, the CZAR
will now endeavour to coax us to terms, or
whether he chooses to show fight, is all one. Our
course must be the same. He can no longer be

allowed to hold his European conquests. All the
Russias, the real Russias, he and his successors
are welcome to ; but the territories he has only
first enslaved, and then used as a knout for
European liberty, must be his no longer. Natu-
ral nationality must recast the map of Europe.