Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 2.djvu/74

 44 CAUSES INVOLVING FEANCE AND ENGLAND CHAP. Sultan. The principles of the art of war have a __Hl_ great stability ; and although there is an infinite variety in the methods of applying them, it results that the invasion of one nation by another is re- peatedly undertaken upon the same accustomed route. By the route which Paskievitch recommended, the invader crosses the Dauube in the neighbour- hood of its great bend towards the north ; makes himself master of Silistria ; encounters and over- comes the assembled strength of the Ottoman Em- pire in front of the great intrenched camp of Shoumla ; then, advancing, forces the difficult passes of the Balkan as best he may ; marches upon Adrianople ; and thence on — thence on, if he can and dares — to the shore of the Bosphorus. Erivanski * could hardly have believed that his master's military power was equal to so great an undertaking as that ; but if it succeeded only in some of its early stages, diplomacy might come to the rescue of the Czar, as it had done in 1829 ; and the plan had this in its favour, that it placed a broad tract of country between Austria and the right flank of the invading army, and another though less extended territoiy between its left flank and the fleets of the Western Powers. But in the counsels of a wise and faithful sol- dier there is a pitiless candour — a dreadful pre- cision. He comes in his hard way to weights, and to numbers, and to measurements of space and of conqueror of Erivan, a proviuce conquered from the Persians.
 * This was Paskievitch's title : it denoted that ho was the