WARS and BATTLES
From Ancient Greece - to modern day.

Even as late as 1735, Lord Bolingbroke, in his admirable "Letters on History," speaks of the history of the Muscovites as having no relation to the knowledge which a practical English statesman ought to acquire. It may be doubted whether a cabinet council often takes place now in our Foreign Office without Russia being uppermost in every English statesman's thoughts.

But, though Russia remained thus long unheeded among her snows, there was a Northern power, the influence of which was acknowledged in the principal European quarrels, and whose good-will was sedulously courted by many of the boldest chiefs and ablest counselors of the leading states. This was Sweden; Sweden, on whose ruins Russia has risen, but whose ascendancy over her semi-barbarous neighbor was complete, until the fatal battle that now forms our subject.

As early as 1542 France had sought the alliance of Sweden to aid her in her struggle against Charles V. And the name of Gustavus Adolphus is of itself sufficient to remind us that in the great contest for religious liberty, of which Germany was for thirty years the arena, it was Sweden that rescued the falling cause of Protestantism, and it was Sweden that principally dictated the remodeling of the European state-system at the peace of Westphalia.

From the proud pre-eminence in which the valor of the "Lion of the North" and of Torstenston, Bannier, Wrangel, and the other generals of Gustavus, guided by the wisdom of Oxenstiern, had placed Sweden, the defeat of Charles XII. at Pultowa hurled her down at once and forever.

Her efforts during the wars of the French Revolution to assume a leading part in European politics met with instant discomfiture, and almost provoked derision. But the Sweden whose scepter was bequeathed to Christina, and whose alliance Cromwell valued so highly, was a different power to the Sweden of the present day. Finland, Ingria, Livonia, Esthonia, Carelia, and other districts east of the Baltic then were Swedish provinces; and the possession of Pomerania, Rugen, and Bremen made her an important member of the Germanic empire.

These territories are now all rent from her, and the most valuable of them form the staple of her victorious rival's strength. Could she resume them-could the Sweden of 1648 be reconstructed, we should have a first-class Scandinavian state in the North, well qualified to maintain the balance of power, and check the progress of Russia; whose power, indeed, never could have become formidable to Europe save by Sweden becoming weak.

The decisive triumph of Russia over Sweden at Pultowa was therefore all-important to the world, on account of what it overthrew as well as for what it established; and it is the more deeply interesting, because it was not merely the crisis of a struggle between two states, but it was a trial of strength between two great races of mankind. We must bear in mind, that while the Swedes, like the English, the Dutch, and others, belong to the Germanic race, the Russians are a Slavonic people. Nations of Sclavonian origin have long occupied the greater part of Europe eastward of the Vistula; and the populations also of Bohemia, Croatia, Servia, Dalmatia, and other important regions westward of that river are Slavonic.

In the long and varied conflicts between them and the Germanic nations that adjoin them, the Germanic race had, before Pultowa, almost always maintained superiority. With the single but important exception of Poland, no Slavonic state had made any considerable figure in history before the time when Peter the Great won his great victory over the Swedish king.

What Russia has done since that time we know and we feel. And some of the wisest and best men of our own age and nations, who have watched with deepest care the annals and the destinies of humanity, have believed that the Slavonic element in the population of Europe has as yet only partially developed its powers; that, while other races of mankind (our own, the Germanic, included) have exhausted their creative energies and completed their allotted achievements, the Slavonic race has yet a great career to run; and that the narrative of Slavonic ascendency is the remaining page that will conclude the history of the world.

Let it not be supposed that in thus regarding the primary triumph of Russia over Sweden as a victory of the Slavonic over the Germanic race, we are dealing with matters of mere ethnological pedantry, or with themes of mere speculative curiosity. The fact that Russia is a Slavonic empire is a fact of immense practical influence at the present moment. Half the inhabitants of the Austrian empire are Slovenians.

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