him in entering the
city at a certain hour, by a certain point. These letters he managed
should fall into the hands of the Russians. They accordingly prepared
in great strength to defeat the stratagem they had, as they supposed,
so opportunely discovered. The British general made a long detour, and
after a night of forced marching he came upon an opposite part of
the city, an entrance by which the Russians could not have supposed
possible, and to the joy and wonder of the garrison, the best division
of the Turkish army, with its best general at the head, marched into the
city. From that hour the contest was no longer dubious. The Russians
saw that the prize was carried from their grasp. They at last raised the
siege, to be pursued by Cannon and other British officers, at the head
of their gallant Turks, from victory to victory, until the baffled and
beaten Muscovite fled through the Principalities he had so boastingly
invaded, and so ruthlessly plundered and oppressed. To General Cannon's
skill and courage the raising of the siege of Silistria, the grand
turning-point of the campaign, is to be attributed. The conception of
the plan, the peril of the attempt, and the glory of the achievement
were all his own.

Contemporaneously with the war on the Danube, operations were conducted
in Asia Minor, but no British or French troops were sent there at any
period of the war.

During the closing months of 1853, the Russians organized a powerful
army to drive the Turks out of Asia, but the Circassians and other
tribes of the Caucasus were in arms against Russia, and fought so
gallantly and perseveringly, that the troops of the czar were unable to
effect anything until late in the summer of 1854. The Turks organized an
army for the defence of their Asiatic possessions, and committed it
to the command of Jazif Pasha, an utterly incompetent man and bigoted
Mohammedan. Under him was another officer, of like character, Selim
Pasha, who experienced defeat at the hands of far inferior forces of the
enemy. A number of Polish and Hungarian officers, who had fought in the
Hungarian revolution of 1848, were sent to assist the Turkish Muchir in
forming and disciplining an army. Some of these men became Mohammedans,
and obtained substantial rewards and honours; others, refusing to
renounce the profession of Christianity, were not allowed to hold real
authority, but acted as a species of aides-de-camp of high rank,
and counsellors of the pa