WARS and BATTLES
From Ancient Greece - to modern day.
The population of the larger part of Turkey in Europe is of the same race. Silesia, Posen, and other parts of the Prussian dominions are principally Slavonic. And during late years, an enthusiastic zeal for blending all Slovenians into one great united Slavonic empire has been growing up in these countries, which, however we may deride its principle, is not the less real and active, and of which Russia, as the head and the champion of the Slavonic race, knows well how to take her advantage. It is a singular fact that Russia owes her very name to a band of Swedish invaders who conquered her a thousand years ago. They were soon absorbed in the Slavonic population, and every trace of the Swedish character had disappeared in Russia for many centuries before her invasion by Charles XII. She was long the victim and the slave of the Tartars; and for many considerable periods of years the Poles held her in subjugation. Indeed, if we except the expeditions of some of the early Russian chiefs against Byzantium, and the reign of Ivan Vasilovitch, the history of Russia before the time of Peter the Great is one long tale of suffering and degradation. But, whatever may have been the amount of national injuries that she sustained from Swede, from Tartar, or from Pole in the ages of her weakness, she has certainly retaliated ten-fold during the century and a half of her strength. Her rapid transition at the commencement of that period from being the prey of every conqueror to being the conqueror of all with whom she comes into contact, to being the oppressor instead of the oppressed, is almost without a parallel in the history of nations. It was the work of a single ruler, who, himself without education, promoted science and literature among barbaric millions; who gave them fleets, commerce, arts, and arms; who, at Pultowa, taught them to face and beat the previously invincible Swedes; and who made stubborn valor and implicit subordination from that time forth the distinguishing characteristics of the Russian soldiery, which had before his time been a mere disorderly and irresolute rabble. The career of Philip of Macedon resembles most nearly that of the great Muscovite Czar, but there is this important difference, that Philip had, while young, received in Southern Greece the best education in all matters of peace and war that the ablest philosophers and generals of the age could bestow. Peter was brought up among barbarians and in barbaric ignorance. He strove to remedy this, when a grown man, by leaving all the temptations to idleness and sensuality which his court offered, and by seeking instruction abroad. He labored with his own hands as a common artisan in Holland and England, that he might return and teach his subjects how ships, commerce, and civilization could be acquired. There is a degree of heroism here superior to anything that we know of in the Macedonian king. But Philip's consolidation of the long-disunited Macedonian empire; his raising a people, which he found the scorn of their civilized Southern neighbors, to be their dread; his organization of a brave and well-disciplined army instead of a disorderly militia; his creation of a maritime force, and his systematic skill in acquiring and improving seaports and arsenals; his patient tenacity of purpose under reverses; his personal bravery, and even his proneness to coarse amusements and pleasures, all mark him out as the prototype of the imperial founder of the Russian power. In justice, however, to the ancient hero, it ought to be added that we find in the history of Philip no examples of that savage cruelty which deforms so grievously the character of Peter the Great. In considering the effects of the overthrow which the Swedish arms sustained at Pultowa, and in speculating on the probable consequences that would have followed if the invaders had been successful, we must not only bear in mind the wretched state in which Peter found Russia at his accession, compared with her present grandeur, but we must also keep in view the fact that, at the time when Pultowa was fought, his reforms were yet incomplete, and his new institutions immature. He had broken up the Old Russia; and the New Russia, which he ultimately created, was still in embryo. Had he been crushed at Pultowa, his immense labors would have been buried with him, and (to use the words of Voltaire) " the most extensive empire in the world would have relapsed into the chaos from which it had been so lately taken." It is this fact that makes the repulse of Charles XII, the critical point in the fortunes of Russia. The danger which she incurred a century afterwards from her invasion by Napoleon was in reality far less than her peril when Charles attacked her, though the French emperor, as a military genius, was infinitely superior to the Swedish king, and led a host against her, compared with which the armies of Charles seem almost insignificant.
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