THE SEAT OF WAR.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 890, 2 May 1877, Page 3

THE SEAT OF WAR.

The following description of the scene of war between Russia and Turkey is given by the Melbourne Argus : Late telegrams have informed ns that the Russian army is advancing on Jassy, and that the Commandcr-in-Chicf of the Turkish forces has proceeded to Shumla. Each of these places will no doubt constitute the base of operations for the power occupying it, as was the case during the war of 182 S-9. Jassy, the former capital of Moldavia, which has been since merged in the principality of Roumania, is about twelve miles from the river Truth, which constitutes the boundary lino between that principality and the Russian province of Bessarabia ; and it will be remembered that the first overt act of hostilities against Turkey in July, 1853, was the crossing of this river by the Czar’s troops ; although, acting under the advice of the allied Towers, the Sulian refrained from treating the outrage as a casus belli.

As a strategic position, it is the only one available. It offers a ready means of communication with the whole frontier line of Bulgaria, washed by the Danube, from Widiu on the west to Bassova in the cast; and supplies can be drawn from Odessa, the granary of Southern Russia, in the event of that port not being bombarded and destroyed by the Turkish licet, of which the inhabitants were very apprehensive in December last. On the south, or Bulgarian side of the Danube, there is a chain of seven fortresses, constituting the first line of Turkish defence. These arc Widin, Nicopolis, Sistova, Rustchuk, Tuturkai, Silistria, and Bassova ; the latter being connected by Trajan’s Wall with Ivustendji, on the Black Sea. [Three of these —Rustchuk, Tuturkai, and Silistria —cover that part of the Turkish territory which would most likely be selected for invasion, and they form the base of a right-angled triangle, which has Shumla for its apex. This almost impregnable position, which has been selected as the head-quarters of the Turkish army, forms part of the second line of defence; the other fortresses being Sophia, Tirnova, and Osman Bazar, on the west, and Varna and Bazardjik on the cast. Shumla is about fifty miles distant from'the port of Yarnaonthe Black Sea, from which it would draw supplies ; and Varna is 160 miles distant by water from the capital.

Shumla is probably one of the finest natural fortifications in the world. It is an entrenched camp occupying a plateau, enclosed hy lofty hills, which present the aspect of dill's extornallv, and offer a steep and almost perpendicular face to an enemy advancing from the north ; while the approaches to the town are covered by numerous redoubts mounted with heavy artillery. The citadel is strongly fortified and abundantly provided with munitions of war.

There arc only three passes by which an invading army could hud its way through the Balkan Mountains into Roumelia, so as to approach Constantinople by land. These are the Trajan’s Grate, the Chipka, and the Great Pass. The road to the first is barred by the fortress of Sophia, the second by Tirnova, and to the third by Shumla. The last is that by which the Russians would most likely endeavour to force their way, Assuming them to have reduced Shumla, and to have penetrated the Balkans, they would have to confront the Circassian population settled on their southern slopes, and to take the fortress

of Kamabat, which faces the southern outlet of the Great Pass ; and then moving on t< Adrianople, they would have to capture tb >■ fortified city as they did in 1829, before set dng themselves down before the line < f de fences protecting the peninsula on which Constantinople stands. According to the foreign officers who have been engaged by the Porte to superintend the construction and equipment. of these defences, the position can be rendered almost impregnable, especially as, with 1 lie sea on both sides, a besieging army would be exposed to the fire of the licet on each (lank.

It scorns reasonable to anticipate that the Turks will await the entry of the Russians into Bulgaria, and that the battle ground ol the two powers, if Turkey should accept the challenge to a general engagement, will be the quadrilateral enclosed by the fortresses of Rustchuk and Silistria on the north, and by Osman Bazar and Bazardjik on the south. This woidd enable the Turks, if defeated, to fall back upon Shnmla, which lies nearly midway and in a straight line between the two last; while supplies and reinforcements could bo poured in from Varna. This quadrilateral embraces an area of about fifty miles square.

It remains to speak of the Principality of Roumania, across which the Russian march will be directed. This is tributary to the Porte, and comprises the two principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, which were incorporated by a firman of the Sultan in 18G1, and placed under the rule of an elective hospodar. As its neutrality has been guaranteed by the great powers, in a convention signed in 1858, supplementary to the treaty of 185fi, Russia, by invading Roumania, places herself outside the pale of the jus gentium, and, as the Times observed in August last, she by such an act “ releases the other contracting parties from any moral or legal obligation to keep engagements which they might find onerous or inconvenient.”

Tlio Roumanians have nothing in common with the Slav races of Turkey. On the contrary, they are the lineal descendants of (hose brave Dacians, whose conquest by the masters of the world is commemorated in the Trajan column at Rome. They hold the same territory which their forefathers occupied in the first and second century of the present era, and are consequently, like the Hellenes, the oldest population in Eastern Europe. When their semi-independence was conceded in consideration of an annual tribute of £36,800, to be paid to the Sultan, it was believed that Rouraania would serve as a bulwark between Russia and Turkey, and that its instinct of self-preservation would make it the faithful guardian of the most insecure outpost of the Ottoman Empire ; and the Roumanians have certainly no cause to love the Russians. On the lasi, occasion of the latter crossing the Pruth, they incorporated the whole of the small army of Moldo-Wallachia with the vanguard of their own, forced them to fight, thrust them into the very front of the battle, and compelled Moldavian artillerists to work their own guns against the fortress of Silistria which was defended by their Turkish fellowsubjects. In the previous occupation of these principalities by Russia in 1828, the country was lit erally devastated by the Muscovite hordes, and it is a well-established fact that the population of the country diminished one-fourth under the patronage and protection of the Czar. When the Hospodar of Roumania mobilised his small army a few months ago, Russian agents in the various capitals of Europe industriously circulated the report that it was'intended as a demonstration against Turkey ; and it was generally believed to be such. " Since then, however, it is understood that representations have been addressed from Bucharest to all the protecting powers, giving an entirely opposite account of the motives of Roumania in so doing; while the Hospodar was likewise anxious to prevent the smuggling of Russian soldiers info the Servian territory, but was restrained by the advice of the consular representatives at. Bucharest, who individually and collectively counselled the Roumanian Government to shut its eyes to what was being daily perpetrated on its soil by Russian subjects, lost, an attempt to stop them should compel the Russian Government to take steps that, could not fail to lead to an European war. “If we are invaded by Russia,” said a distinguished Rouman statesman to a correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph at Vienna, in November last, “our army cannot, will not, attempt to resist the entry into our territories of the Russian t roops. It will retire before them, with the Prince at its head, and the Roumanian flag living wherever ho may be. And thereupon a'Carpathian peak, or in some fastness of Little Wallachia, wo may still bo able to exclaim, ‘ Where that flag flies, stands the Roumanian army, the representative of a free country.’ ”