The true Democrat., 1855-10-23
4 Pro Russian Statesman on the Fall of
 S,LUStOuOi.

[Private letter communicated for the rribune.l
 Brussels, Thursday, Sept. 13, 1855.
 My DEAR-: One act of the dramma is through. The Russians have lost Sebastopol and with 1t the Crimea; and certainly they will not attempt to retake them. I think that the real war will now commence. For all who have written on this war have lost sight of the fact that there has not been from the beginning either on the Danube or in the Crimea, sin gle pitched battle. All the fighting has been in attacking fortified or ntrenched places; Olten- za, Alma, Inkerman, Sistria, Chernaya and Sebastopol. Now we shall sec I have all ways thought and still think that in an open field the Russians can cope with their enemies. At any rate they can if they could do it at h. hermann and Chcrnaya, where they fought un- der all possible disadvantages and where they were huddled together by the grounds and could not deploy. On level field the Rus sans manouyer as we'll and as quickly as any other troops, and the Improvements of modern tactics are more familiar to them than to the English. One thing is sure, they will fight well, better than they have foughtso far. De- leats and disasters do not injure their morale; believe me- that is peculiarlty of the Russian character. But, take 1t all in all, it is terri ble blow to Russia; not to her prestige, but to her power. Sebastopol and the Crmea con- trlbuted far more to the preponderance and the prospects of Russia than that little region which goes by the name of Poland. It was the most vulnerable point Tn the whole empire. Mutt late that and 1t will take quarter of a century to heal the wound. In my opinion 1t is as bad as a bombardment of St. Petersburg; I would have preferred the latter. 1 always have maintained this against every body, and 1 still maintain that the man who planned the expe- dition to the Crimea played a hazardous game but knew where to strike. The only consola- tion for me is to see that babbler, Kossuth, made an ass of, with his predictions. Believe me-and l feel the palpitations of Russia's heart-the past and present Emperors, as well as every Russian statesman and general would have preferred thousand times to see all Eu- rope-no matter million of men, in arms in Poland, on the Vistula, or the Nieman, to the Crmea expedition. The Russians have cer- tainly lost more ill resources, horses, cattle and men, in supporting their army in the Crimea, than they did in the campaign of 1912. Any man who knows the country knows this as surely as that the sun shines. And then a million of men in Poland fighting for her na- tionality, as Kossuth says, would have starved, ruined, devoured that nationality-that is, Pc. l.tiiu, NuClSsto, it lo llloSlt WHICH now SuuCTS and blceds from St. Petersburg to the Black Sea- It would have been easier for the Rus sians to maintain 6OO,OOO men between the Baltic and Beesarabia than 10000 in the Cri- mea. And then all Europe in arms on the Ne- men or the Vistula would have been starved out in three months Germany and Prussia would have suffered terribly; while France could and can, as well as England, much more easily provide for her troops in the Crimea by the aid of her fleets than she could in Poland, or in any place in the interior of a poor coun- try which the Russians would have laid waste for hundreds of miles around. 1 am sure that even now, if the Russians could choose they would rather see PellSsier and his army in Po- land than continue the struggle in the Cri- mea. This is what the Crmean expedition amounts to-
 believe, I hope, that the Russians will do the impossible But to tell you the truth. ny heart bleeds for see that by this event the progress ot civilization has been stopped on two points. First, in the west, Louis Napoleon is fortified and the abjectness of the French in- creased--in whose eyes, with very few cxeep- tions, the least glare of military glory suffices for liberty, honor, morality and real national dignity; and then in the east, where, ill spite of
  agent of civilization, and where Russia alone could and can fill that office.
 The Czars have received fearful punish ment for having followed more than twenty years past a German and not a Russian policy; for meddling with European squabbles, for marching into Hungary in 1S49 instead of talk ing Constantinople in lS48, as Russian interests demanded at time when nobody could have opposed it. It is terrible lesson by which they will profit You are young, and you will live long enough, am sure, to see Russia rise again. Her latent forces are too great to be bro- ken by even this terrible blow. As for me, l have nothing but the petty consolation of see' ing the great Kossuth aoored. If even last year Russia or Nicholas had had the courage to make an appeal to the Sclaves of Southern Europe, where now would Austria be with or without her allies?