by throwing their sailors and marines on shore. Beyrout, the headquarters of Solyman Pasha, the Frenchman, Ibrahim's second in command, was stripped of its fortifications by a bombardment, which left it open to the Turks. Sidon was assaulted in the most dashing style by Commodore Napier and the young Austrian Archduke at the head of their crews, and 3000 men were made prisoners. Napier then advanced into the country in command of a small miscellaneous force of English, Austrians, and Turks, attacked a strong division of the pasha's troops posted in the mountains, first out-manoeuvred and then out-fought them, taking some thousand prisoners, Ibrahim's green standard, and dispersing the rest. Then summoning the mountaineers to arms, he actually shut up Ibrahim and his main body in the mountain country, where he would probably soon have been compelled to fight at a ruinous disadvantage, had not a still more brilliant achievement been prepared to crown the honours of this brief, but admirable campaign. We allude, of course, to the capture of Acre, which has filled Europe with astonishment at the daring, power, and gallantry of the British fleet, and which all competent judges of military affairs unhesitatingly pronounce the most extraordinary exploit of modern warfare.

The defeat of Napoleon at the head of the army of Egypt, after fifty-two days of open trenches, and opposed only by a feeble garrison of Turks, and the crew of Sir Sidney Smith's ships Le Tigre and Pompee, had fixed the eye of the East upon Acre as the key of Syria. Its siege by Ibrahim in 1832, a siege which cost him eight months, showed its power of resistance, and increased the interest attached to its possession. Its capture by the Egyptians had decided the fate of Syria. From that period, it was made the grand depot of all the stores, guns, and munitions of war, prepared by the pasha for those dreams of conquest which had so evidently dazzled his daring and adventurous mind. He had fortified it with a care suited to its importance, had repaired the old works, and raised new, under the direction of European engineers; armed the ramparts with heavy guns of the newest and best description; and garrisoning it with

6000 picked troops, under the command of a Polish officer, who had taken the turban and title of a pasha, ranked it as the citadel of his new kingdom, and impregnable.

On the 24 of November the fleet under Admiral Stopford, consisting of nine sail, with the two Austrian frigates, and a Turkish ship of the line, approached Acre. A summons had been already sent to the commandant, which was contemptuously rejected. On the 3d, at three in the afternoon, the fleet stood in and opened their broadsides. Before six the fire of the garrison was wholly beaten down; and the sailors and marines were about to laud and storm, when intelligence was brought that the Egyptians had fled. By daylight the allied flags were waving on the walls, and all who survived were prisoners, to the amount of nearly 4000 men.

We are as unwilling to exaggerate British gallantry by foolish boasting, as we are to depreciate it by the pitiful attempts in which the French journalists are now indulging, to depreciate every British achievement. But we are content to stake the whole merit of this success on the judgment of the French themselves, before the operation. We ask, was there one of them which believed that Acre could possibly be taken by any force exhibited by the British in the Levant? Or was there one of them which was not astonished (and we use the word in its strength) at the result; at its rapi dity, at its completeness, at the little loss of life which it cost and at the new evidence of all but irresistibility which it gives to British action?

We assert that there was not a man in France who would not have scoffed at the idea that Acre could be taken by the British fleet in the Mediterranean; still less that it could be taken in three short hours. We know that the journalists now attribute this extraordinary capture to the explosion; but this is a mere pretence. It is notorious that the explosion did not take place until the batteries on the ramparts had almost wholly been silenced: in fact, the fire of the ramparts had been almost wholly overwhelmed from the beginning, as is evident from its having cost the British not more than fifty killed and wounded. No part of the works is said to have been affected by the explosion, nor any injury

blank. But Mohammed left it safely to the envoy's imagination. The effect was fully produced, at least, in his mind; for on his return to the Divan, having probably seen the vastness of the Pasha's preparations, as well as the vigour of his intellect, he advised concession and peace. But Mahmoud, who had not seen either, was indignant at the proposal, and ordered him to be thrown into chains. It is thus that Turks obtain advice, and reward wisdom.

But this bravado was speedily at at an end. Courier on courier came rushing to the seraglio, with news of the advance of Ibrahim. Every despatch brought intelligence of some additional success. Tripoli fell, almost without resistance. Osman Pasha, hastily advancing to check this tide of invasion, was beaten, horse and foot, and forced to fly to the mountains for his life. Finally, Abdallah Pasha was driven into Acre, and this citadel of Syria was surrounded by the Egyptian troops, and doomed, soon or late, to inevitable surrender. The Divan was in consternation, and well it might; for if Mohammed Ali had not, for once, made a false step, and forgotten that the rebel's sword, once drawn, must always aim at the heart, he might have long since sat down in Constantinople. At this period, neither Russia was prepared to interpose, nor any other European power prepared to defend. There was not a ship equip. ped in any sea of Europe, except the Baltic. The attention of the courts had been drawn away by diplomatic triflings among Swiss, Belgian, and Dutch; and in a fortnight from his time of crossing the Taurus, Ibrahim might have been riding in triumph to the mosque of Santa Sophia.

Some remaining veneration for the Ottoman dynasty, or some unnecessary fear of doing too much, and going too far in the road of victory, checked the viceroy in his ultimate object; for there can be no doubt that his "Allah kerim" was profoundly significant. But his son followed the call of fortune with unabated gallantry. Acre alone retarded him; and this fortress, which he ought to have masked, and left to famine, detained him for eight months! not surrendering until May 1832. Being at length, however, disengaged, he now rushed

forward again: in June, took Damas. cus; and pushed on to the assault of the Turkish army, which, too late for every thing but ruin, had just descended from the mountains.

We now come on classic ground. Ibrahim forded the Orontes towards its head, taking up a position on the shore of lake Tatli Gukul, a little to the southward of the plains of Horns. On these plains, the last of the great Roman emperors had fought the last of the Syrian sovereigns; the brazen legionaries of Aurelian, against the light-armed cavalry and rapid archers of Zenobia. In July 1832, the Bedouin horsemen brought intelligence of the approach of the Turkish army. Shortly after, it was seen advancing in three heavy columns, the whole cavalry and infantry amounting to twenty-five thousand men, under the command of the Pasha of Aleppo. But Ibrahim was already prepared in infantry, with six guns, forming the centre, flanked by two heavy corps of regular horse on the right, and another strong cavalry force, combined with irregular Arabs, on the left. The Turks rushed on with great impetuosity, but they lost many men by the fire of the cannon; and the Bedouin cavalry, taking advantage through some slight disorder, rushed with tossing spears, and wild and loud shouts, upon the flank of the column next them. The fault of all Asiatic troops lies not in their want of courage, but their want of steadiness ; and the fault of their discipline is, that they know neither how to retreat nor how to rally. After the first fire, it is generally a mere chance whether they will rush forward on the enemy, or backwards on their own baggage; and when they are once fairly repulsed, every man seems to think his duty done for the day, and that his only business is to escape from the field. The repulse of one Turkish column produced the retreat of all; and the retreat was no sooner commenced, than it turned into a flight. Every thing was left on the groundarms, artillery, and baggage. Ibrahim followed his success, again beat a detachment of the Turks, and took Scanderoon, and Antioch, memorable for having been the place where Christianity first received its name, and distinguished in the days of the crusades, and generally in every other remarkable

period of Syrian history. But he had still one great battle more to fight, before he could throw the Turkish army hors de combat. The Ottomans now fell back into Asia Minor, and drew up their troops at Koniah. Ibrahim, flushed with victory, and aware of his superiority to the Turks, passed the defiles of Mount Taurus, and pouring down into the plain, attacked the grand vizier on the 19th of December 1832. The Turks fought better than in any other period of the campaign; but the generalship of Ibrahim, at the head of troops accustomed to victory under his eye, was not to be vanquished by the inexperience of the Turkish commander at the head of an army of recruits. Ibrahim's cannon and cavalry again broke up the Turkish lines, and the whole army was put to the rout, with the loss of its cannon and ammunition, leaving the vizier prisoner. There was but one prize more to be gained; the defeat had levelled the last barrier of the empire, and its intelligence had scarcely reached the capital, when it was followed by the still more tremendous announcement that Ibrahim was in full march to Constantinople.

The Sultan, who had occasionally exhibited such remarkable energy, and unquestionably possessed both talents and courage, seems to have been then in the commencement of that long disease which finally laid him in the grave. His efforts to repel the Egyptian advance were few and feeble; and if Constantinople had been left to his defence, its keys must have been speedily sent to join those of Acre; but there was a protector at hand-a formidable one in every sense of the word. The Emperor of Russia offered his assistance to defend the Ottoman, and as a first step sent one of his officers with Halif, formerly capitan-pasha, to the Viceroy, to enter into negotiations. On their arrival at Alexandria, the sagacious Viceroy, who saw that the blow was missed for the present, immediately expressed his readiness to come to terms; but, in the mean time, the hazard had come closer still. Ibrahim had pushed forwards as far as Brussa, and the Sultan, now fully aroused by the double fear of an insurrection in his capital, and of seeing the Bosphorus crossed under the walls of the seraglio, hastily sum

He

moned the Russians to his aid. The Russian fleet, awaiting but this signal, instantly weighed anchor from Sebastopol. But the news of the armistice having at length reached Ibrahim, he halted, and the capital breathed again. A treaty was now formed by the suggestion of Roussin, the French ambassador, offering the pashalics of Acre, Jerusalem, and Tripoli, to the triumphant Viceroy. But his reply was instant and contemptuous. asked, "Whether this was all that was to be given as an indemnity for the expense of his campaign, a recompense for his services to the Porte, and an atonement for his injured honour?" To all further negotiation he answered by sending an order to Ibrahim to march without delay to Constantinople. The Russians were now called for once more, and 20,000 of their troops, under Count Orloff, took post at Scutari to defend the Asiatic shore.

But

Such are the fates of empire; yet among the casualties of modern Europe, this was the most extraordinary. Among the metaphorical race of poets and orators there has been a fondness for comparing the life of empires to the life of man, and finding in the infancy, maturity, and decay of human life, some shadowing of the condition of national power. Thus we are pathetically told that the most flourishing country has a certain point of prosperity, beyond which all must decline by the course of nature. the argument is altogether fallacious. There is no analogy between individual life and national power. Further than that, they both are susceptible of increased vigour. There is no instance in modern Europe of the ruin of any great state, with the single exception of Poland, which, from its elective monarchy, its habitual dissensions, and the general dislocation of its government, was rather to be looked on as a vast moral quagmire than a solid government. And yet the greater number of those European kingdoms have been established for a thousand years; and there is not one of them at this moment more likely to perish than it was a thousand years ago. Even in the ancient world, the fall of empires bore no similitude to the gradual decay of nature. Some perished in their full strength by the folly or frenzy of a royal desperado,

who roused the vengeance of a powerful neighbour; others were broken up by the sudden rebellion of great chieftains, who created separate sovereignties. Thus some perished like a king in the field, others like a king stabbed by his domestics; but in neither case the sufferer, up to the moment of extinction, having prepared for ruin, by losing any important portion of his habitual vigour. We express this the more unhesitatingly, because we find this unhappy analogy turned of late years to dangerous purposes. Thus we are constantly told that England is on the point of undergoing the inevitable decay assigned to all empire; that her monarchy has run its course; and that the only hope of restoration is in the total change of the principles and forms of government. On the contrary, we say that the old foundations are still solid enough for the noblest and loftiest superstructure; that though trees may bud at one season and lose their leaves at another, or men may acquire strength from their cradle to manhood, and lose it from manhood to the tomb, there is no more reason to conclude that empire must decay, than that the ground on which its cities stand must be annihilated. If England is not immortal by nature, she may be made immortal by circumstance, like our first parents. She may forfeit her supremacy; but if she has the will she has the power to live. The tree of immortality is before her eye.

The presence of the Russian army protecting the Porte, should be a fearful omen to the Sultan. If the future is to be read by the human eye, that protection will finally be possession; and though long intrigue, and possibly desperate wars, may precede the seizure, yet the Mahometan sovereignty in Europe draws to its close.

The Sultan, scarcely less embarrassed by the presence of his protectors than the advance of his enemies, made another effort to negotiate, and sent a messenger to Ibrahim's head-quarters, offering the pashalic of Aleppo in addition to his former proposals. Ibrahim demanded the district of Adana, and, in the mean time, continued his march. Turkey was now in the deepest state of depression. On the one side was the victorious army of Ibrahim, marching straight to Constantinople; on the other the menacing

guardianship of the Russian battalions. The haughty spirit of the Sultan was now reduced to despair. Determined to free himself from both his terrors at once, even by the deepest sacrifices, by a convention with Mohammed Ali, on the 5th of May, he gave up Adana, with the whole of Syria; and by a convention with Russia, of the 8th of July, so much talked of since as the treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, he entered into a treaty offensive and defensive, by which the Sultan stipulated to shut the Dardanelles against the armed ships of all other nations, on the demand being made by Russia. This treaty naturally excited the strongest dissatisfaction of England and France, against whose fleets this arrogant and unjustifiable stipulation was palpably made; but it must be acknowledged, that the insult was not ill deserved by either, for they had left the Sultan to his extremity; and though both had ships of war within sound of Ibrahim's cannon, some singular wavering of council, or some extraordinary blindness to the first principles of policy, indisposed both to interfere.

Mohammed Ali now regarded himself as sovereign of Syria: his army gradually retired from Asia Minor; but they halted at Adana, and diligently fortified the passes of the mountain, under the direction of European engineers. It was evident that he never intended to give up this con< quest: this was in 1833. It may be asked, What was the government of India then doing? Why did it not protect the Sultan, protest against this formal dismemberment of the Turkish dominions, and avail itself of the close alliance with France, to drive the Pasha back into Egypt? The most sufficient of all answers is, that England was governed by the Whigs, a race of men who, particularly when in opposition, are the most clamorous, and when in power the most supine; who, desperately heroic when heroism costs them nothing but words, become timid when any thing is to be done; and who, having no other principle than love of place, instinctively shrink from any act of energy by which it can be endangered. Thus Turkey was left to its fate, Syria was left to be absorbed by Mohammed Ali; and after having suffered the Russians to cut off one horn of the crescent in Greece, and the Pasha to cut off another in Egypt, have finally placed the country in the