Washington sentinel., 1853-11-10
From the Cincinnati Gazette.
The Power Of Turkey.

anu urkcy can Drihg lnIo tne Heiu, db ~ Wds
to see the result Of the negotiations which have
been so long pending. One class Of writers
assert that Turkey will be able to maintain the
integrity, Of her empire, and to repel her inva-
ders while another can see no other result ol
the war which appears about to commence than
a dismemberment of the Ottoman empire and
the expulsion Of the Turks from Europe. Both
classes speak in like dogmatical phrase, and
confound and confuse the enquirer with their
conflicting statements.
The Paris correspondence OF the National
IntcHige'acer, in a late letter in which the pro
bable result ofthe impending contest is sketched
with great plausibility, speaks of the contest as
a" little war;" in which the advantage viii all
be on the side of the Gar "A war of this
i sort, he says, may last year or two at the
end Of which, Turkey, absolutely exhausted,
will accept even harder terms Of protectorate
than she is now resisting, and will be utterly
unable to oppose any effective resistance, il the
Gar shall deem it expedent to advance upon
Constantinople." He does not think, never
theless, that Nicholas viii attempt to dismember
the Ottoman empire at present, but that she
/ will be content to impose upon the Porte the
protectorate embraced in his ultimatum, and
provoke exhaustive efforts now, which will leave
| Turkey utterly inefficient in final struggle,
reasonably calculating that events must arise
in the west before this policy can be pursued
for two campaigns to sever France and Eng
land" This would, of course, leave Russia and
Austria free to pursue any schemes Of terrilo o
rial acquisition they may have conceived, with
out other opposition than that which the Sultan
himself would be able to offer.
This correspondent finds another element Of
weakness on the Sultan's side, in the military
spirit of his people and the old Mussuman
fanaticism, which are thoroughly aroused and
| camorous for a war against Russia.
/ The Sultan" he says, "may still guide,
| but he cannot control these terrible elements.
The capital and the whole theatre of warswarm
with barbarons, warlike, fanatic soldiery, col
lected from the depths Of the Turkish empire.
They have come up at the call of the repre-
sentative the Prophet to defend the religion
Of Mahomet, declared to be in danger from the
aggressions of the infdel These fierce undis-
/ ciplined hordes ofreligious fanatics burn to be
led against the unbelievers. Were they not to
be grati6ed; were the Sultan, after all that has
occurred, to attempt to send them back to their
homes in peace with Russia, such spirit Of
discomfort and rebellion would be reused that
the Sultan would be unable, in all probability,
to keep his seat upon the throne, and the OF
toman empire would be seen tnmblins to pie
ces amid frightful scenes of carnage, anarchy,
and civil war. The Sultan has, from all &C
counts, brought things to such a pass that,
while it may be yet possible for him to ride
upon the whirlwind and direct the storm,
he would instantly become the victim of an
attempt to control and suppress it. The Car,
if his policy dictated such course, would find
it exceedingly difficult, short of two arduous
campaigns, to reach Constantinople athwart
these fierce hostile masses; but would they be
equally formidable il, in their hot impatience
\ to measure themselves with the Russians, they
should attempt to cross the Danube and attack
the enemy in their entertainments? This may
well be doubted"
1 The New York Courier and Enquirer takes
different view Of the relative forces of the
| beligerent powers. 1t says:
I Turkey maintained hard contest with
Russia twenty-five years ago; she will maintain
far harder one now. Then she had reve-
nue. Of twenty millions of dollars-an army of
! but thirty-two thousand men, unorganized and
without tried generals--no fleet, for her feet
had been destroyed at Navarino, all her great
Christian population in state Of insubordna-
ton on account Of the recent war with Greece
| Egypt her enemy, and Syria and Arabia under
| the control of Mehemet Ali. Now she has
twice the revenue-an army six times ais. large,
thoroughly equipped, well disciplined, ably Off
cered-a powerful feet-almost the entire
Christian population enthusiastically in her IA
vor-all the Mahometan races Of northern
Africa and western Asia making common
cause with her. Russia is hardly more power
ful now than then. Her feet has not mate
rally increased. She then had hundred
thousand Poles and thirty thousand Circassians
4 in her army; now every Pole is her enemy, and
sixty thousand men are required to keep these
| very Circassians in check. If she had no
wealth then, she has but little now and but
limited credit A spirit Of deserton pervades
the Russian troops in the princpaities, so that
there has already been necessity of withdraw
| ing the regular cavalry two marches from the
Danube, and replacing them with Cossacks
| The cholera is making havoc in the southern
army; and, as far as relates to commissariat
and hospital accommodation, Russia is now in
much the same condition MS in the last war,
when she lost 100000 men and $4,000 horses
by disease and hunger alone. Besides all this
the Russian forces, on the ground, are abso-
lutely inferior in numbers to the Turkish, and
the season is too far advanced to allow material
reinforcements.
"The Buena Vista style of fighting is what
suits both Russians and Turks And they are
not so far wrong after all, for even Wellington
himself said that hard fighting is the main
thing 1t was fighting of just this description
that gave Suwarrow success in his celebrated
Italian campaign Of 1899, which, so far as mere
theory goes, every military man knows was but
a series Of errors. This same generals ideas
of the mode Of dealing with the Turks may be
seen in the instructions he gave his soldiers in
bayonet practice For the Poles single thrust
was enough; for the Prussians, two thrusts;
for the French, two thrusts horizontally and
one downwards; but for the Turks, not only
two level thrusts and downward one, but
shake on the bayonet in addition, for, as the
old veteran used to say, 'Me Turk must be rery
dead ,ohea he does not try a s,ceeping c,a.'
Russia has been fighting handful of Cir
cassians for twenty years, and she has not con-
quered them. Those greatly mistake who be-
lieve she can finish Turkey in one, or two, or
five campaigns. For the present, at least, the
chances are altogether in favor of Turkey,
even if she have to fight her battles alone But
she will probably be assisted by France and
England certainly by multtudes of revolution.
ary adyenturers from all quarters of Europe,