“An army can do little,” says the official narrative, “where there are no roads, nor adequate means of transport for artillery, and when the enemy retires into jungles, and we have to contend against the heat of a tropical sun varied by long periods of incessant rain.” The end, however, was not far off. By this time the greater portion of the Burmese was under our jurisdiction, and the ultimate and final success of the British arms seemed to be but a matter of time. Such, at least, was the view taken by the King of Ava, and without the drawing up of any formal treaty he at length decided to treat for peace by granting the concessions demanded of him. Protection to British trade and life was definitely assured, and the British forces shortly thereafter withdrawn. CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE BATTLE OF THE ALMA. 1854. Following upon their declarations of war with Russia, upon the 27th and 28th March, 1854, respectively, arrangements were at once made by the Governments of France and Britain for forwarding a sufficient number of troops to the East. Gallipoli, on the south side of the Sea of Marmora, was chosen as the rendezvous, and here in due course arrived the armies of the allies. The armies were under the respective commands of Lord Raglan and Marshal St. Arnaud. The Turkish army, then actively engaged with the Russians upon the Ottoman frontier at Silistria, was commanded by Omar Pasha. It was resolved by the three generals, after some preliminary disagreement by St. Arnaud, to advance the armies to Varna, in Bulgaria, and from that base to operate for the relief of Silistria, where a Turkish force was being besieged by the Russians. Our only present concern with the successful defence of Silistria (so that on June 23rd, 1854, the siege was abandoned by Russia), and with the Turkish successes upon the Lower Danube at Rustchuk, is the moral effect which they produced in Britain. At both these places the Turkish troops were practically led by young British officers who had flung themselves into the enterprise without orders, and practically for the pure love of fighting. At both these places their efforts, backed by the unflinching Turkish soldiery, had met with signal success. The names of Butler, Nasmyth, Ballard, Bent, and others were household words in Britain. Men’s eyes kindled with enthusiasm as they heard of the defeat of the dreaded armies of the Czar by a handful of mere boys, and now that they had, so to say, tasted blood, the people of Britain clamoured for an offensive, rather than a defensive, campaign. True, the Turkish frontier had been successfully freed from the enemy, and that without the co-operation of the allied armies; true, an honourable peace might be concluded with Russia at this juncture, but both these things, good enough in their way, were not satisfying. Through the medium of the “Times” newspaper, then in its infancy, and in a hundred other ways, backed by the Minister of War, the Duke of Newcastle, and