Note 310 — Chapter X · THE WINTER OF 1854-55 IN THE CRIMEA.

Hamley, War in the Crimea , p. 194. Whether the Russians were destitute of the necessary courage to take advantage of the obviously favourable chances that the winter offered them of sweeping away the feeble residue of frozen and plague-stricken Englishmen that still survived before Sevastopol, or whether their conduct was the result of a deliberate design, may perhaps be revealed at some future time, when eventual consequences of the Crimean war have been fully developed. It may easily be imagined that the Government of St. Petersburg shrank from converting the existing war of cabinets, hitherto purely local, into a general struggle of nations and principles (Klapka, War in the East , p. 101). For had Great Britain been driven from the Crimea, she would surely have taken her revenge, and have removed the contest from a barren and useless fortress, where unhappily she became involved, to a vital point in the armour of her foe. If there were to be a war at all, it is obvious that the struggle for Sevastopol was the least expensive and the most advantageous form of hostilities that the Tsar could engage in; he lost comparatively little if the contest should prove adverse to his arms, more especially if he could prolong his resistance against the united efforts of the two great Powers of Europe. The more he succeeded in doing this, the more he gained a fictitious prestige, the more he exhausted our resources, by the dissolving process which the winter must surely effect, and the more he made the Western nations beware for the future how they again attempt to thwart his plans.