A Tour Up the Straits, from Gibraltar to Constantinople: With the Leading Events in the Present War Between the Austrians, Russians, and the Turks, to the Commencement of the Year 1789Sutherland, David, Captain
History
A Tour Up the Straits, from Gibraltar to Constantinople: With the Leading Events in the Present War Between the Austrians, Russians, and the Turks, to the Commencement of the Year 1789
Sutherland, David, Captain
Mediterranean Region -- Description and travel; Russo-Turkish War, 1787-1792
After an absence of four months, we returned here on the 24th instant,
and found the Turks in the highest spirits. The Emperor has declared
against them: but this was a proceeding they had been prepared for; and,
far from his arms having as yet been attended with any decisive success,
he tarnished them in the onset, by beginning the war in a pusillanimous
style, not at all expected from so powerful an enemy.
We had scarce left this country, before advice was received of a
treacherous attempt to take Belgrade; but the slovenly manner in which
this enterprise was conducted, gave the Emperor an opportunity of
denying his being privy to it. It proved unsuccessful; and, as the Baron
De Herbert, the Imperial Minister, had changed his threats into
negociations for settling a peace between Turkey and Russia, the Porte,
unwilling to provoke the Emperor to hostilities, and in hopes that this
failure would discourage him from pursuing his designs against a people
who were so much better prepared than he expected, very politically
seemed to admit the Internuncio's excuses for this breach of faith.
It seems, that an officer who had passed through Belgrade, reported at
Vienna, that the fortifications were in a most ruinous state, and that
none of the cannon were fit for service. On this fallacious information,
orders were hastily sent to Generals Mitrowski and Alvinzy, to pass the
Save, with a detachment of troops, who were to be supported by Generals
De Gomingen and Klebeck, and to make an immediate attempt on this
important fortress; but the latter Generals not arriving at the
appointed time, and the fortifications appearing in a very different
state from that in which they had been represented, Mitrowski and
Alvinzy were obliged to retreat, and to repass the Save.
Notwithstanding the Internuncio's disavowal of the Emperor's knowledge
of this attempt, accounts were soon received, that Generals Mitrowski
and De Gomingen were ordered to Vienna, to answer for their failure;
and, on the 8th of February, Baron De Herbert delivered a formal
declaration of war.
After the journey to Cherson, the unremitting armaments which
immediately followed, and, to crown the whole, the treacherous attempt
upon Belgrade, the Imperial Manifesto, to the surprise of every body,
begins in the following manner.--
"All Europe have been witness
to the good faith with which the
Court of his Imperial Majesty has,
for many years, cultivated peace with
the Ottoman Empire; the sincere dispositions
it has manifested, on every
occasion, to preserve their good neighbourhood;
its disinterested and indefatigable
endeavours to avoid any
interruption of their mutual harmony,
and its readiness to lend every office of
mediation, to prevent any rupture between
the Porte and the neighbouring
Courts.
These pacific intentions, &c. &c."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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