Page:England & Russia in Central Asia, Vol-2.djvu/407

Rh distance, disposition of the country, and the smallness of their effective, could not take part in any operation. The army of the Caucasus on a war footing at the outset of the recent war numbered one hundred and fifty-five thousand three hundred and ninety-nine regulars, and forty thousand nine hundred and thirty-two irregulars. The field artillery amounted to three hundred and forty-four guns. The army of Orenburg numbered, in both regular and irregular troops, about eighty thousand men with sixteen guns. That of Turkestan, about fifty-two thousand men and sixty-four guns. To these may be added between three and four thousand sailors on the Caspian and Aral seas. We thus get a total of two hundred and sixty-four thousand, with four hundred and twenty guns. The troops occupying Khiva and Fergana are not comprised in these figures, as there are no official documents showing their number, but, taking them approximatively, they would probably bring up the whole of the Russian troops in Asia to two hundred and eighty-thousand men and four hundred and eighty-eight field guns.

"We will now consider what portion of these troops it would be possible to devote to an expedition against an English army in position on the frontiers of India, or taking the offensive by debouching through Afghanistan upon the Russian possessions of Asia. Taking the Turkestan army first, which is nearest to the scene of operations. Colonel Weninkof, of the Russian artillery, calculated six thousand men, and M. Stumm, a Prussian officer who accompanied the expedition to