There are those who profess to believe that Russia has no malevolent designs upon Turkey, and who bring forward many plausible reasons in support of their opinion; but this number has very materially diminished since the disclosures which preceded the late Russian war.  The character of the Turkish people, their religion, and their social and political institutions, may all have tended to produce the calamitous state of affairs.  Yet when we probe the matter to the bottom, there we find the root of all evil—­Russian policy and imperial ambition.  It is not to say that this monarch or that was desirous of annexing by conquest, and holding by force of arms, a gigantic empire.  Such a thought were madness.  Far more subtle is the scheme which was, and is, inherent in every Russian ruler.  It has been, and still is, their own aggrandisement, direct or indirect, based upon the ruins of Turkey.  Ably and laboriously have they worked to effect that which still seems as distant as ever.  No sooner were the bloody days of 1828-9 past, than they applied themselves afresh to the work of disorganisation, and in this appeared to succeed too well.  They had launched the Slave against the Turk, and then the Christian Slave against the Mussulman Slave, whilst at the same time the Asiatic Turk—­the Turk pur sang—­was struggling throughout Anatolia against the reformed and European Turk.  It now remained to find a pretext to justify her in effecting an armed intervention, that cloak for so much that is arbitrary and aggressive.  This was soon found in an insignificant rising of the Bulgarians, brought on by her roubles lavishly dispensed by old Milosch Obrenovitch, the ejected Servian Prince, and the sympathy felt for Kossuth and Dembinski, who had taken refuge at Widdin.  This rising, however, which was at first directed only against the Turkish Spahis or landowners, soon acquired more important dimensions, and on January 8, 1850, the three Nahias of Widdin, Belgradchitch, and Verkovats, were under arms.  Having failed in an attack upon the fortress of Belgradchitch, they retired and entrenched themselves at different spots in the adjacent country.  Better armed and provisioned, and of greater physical courage, the Spahis soon succeeded in overcoming these disorganised masses, and bloody was the vengeance which they took.

‘Victors in every encounter,’ says Cyprien Robert, ’the Mussulman Spahis began to visit on horseback the villages, more than two hundred in number, which had taken part in the insurrection.  The devastation that ensued was worthy of the most barbarous time.  Neither age nor sex was spared.  All the young were carried off to the vulture-nests of the Spahis of the Balkan.  In vain did Redschid Pacha enjoin milder measures; neither he nor the Sultan could check these bloodthirsty tigers.  There needed to that end the unexpected arrival of Omer Pacha at Nish.  He fell among them like a thunderbolt, and all was silence.  The Bulgarians ceased to