The Great War of 189-: A ForecastForbes, Archibald
History
The Great War of 189-: A Forecast
Forbes, Archibald
Imaginary wars and battles; Science fiction
LATER.
The report is confirmed. An insurrection has broken out in the city; the
Government is deposed, and some members of it massacred. We are moving
forward to the line of the old forts which will be given up to set free
the garrisons to act against the Commune, and from them we hold the
whole city at our mercy.
BRITISH CAMPAIGN IN BULGARIA.
DECISIVE DEFEAT OF THE RUSSIANS.
LONDON.
At length we have great news to report from the British Army. A great
battle has been fought and won. Nay, more—the whole Russian Army in
Bulgaria, caught like rats in a trap, has, after two days of fierce
fighting, laid down its arms. It will be seen, therefore, that the
British Army has, after all, not turned up in Asia Minor, but in
Bulgaria. All the rumours and apparent demonstrations which led to the
belief that a great campaign in Asia Minor was intended, were merely
designed to distract attention from the real objects of the expedition.
Those who are familiar with Lord Wolseley’s methods now profess to have
been always made suspicious by the fact that, as we reported in our
issue of June 4th, he had been talking a great deal of the advantages of
a campaign in Asia Minor. They say that it is notorious that he holds
strongly to the belief that what is supposed in your own army to be
about to happen will soon be believed by the enemy. He succeeded in this
way in imposing on Arabi so completely during the ’82 campaign, that
(extraordinary as it may appear) the Egyptian leader was a prisoner in
Ceylon, when he was for the first time made acquainted with the great
movement of the English expedition from Alexandria to Ismalia. Lord
Wolseley then succeeded in deceiving Arabi because he had imposed upon
the world at large, although precisely in a similar manner he had, by
spreading reports of a call from Captain Glover during the Ashantee
campaign, managed to embark his troops for the surprise of the coast
towns from which the Ashantees were drawing their supplies, without any
one suspecting the direction in which he was going to strike. The former
ruse had been forgotten, and caused no suspicion as to the second. If we
may judge by the comments of our contemporaries on the reports which
have been hitherto furnished of the war, they have been either very
discreet and loyal, or have been completely bamboozled. And yet it was
tolerably plain that the direction in which an English Army could at the
moment be most effectively employed was in clearing Bulgaria of the
aggressive force of Russians, which, from the peculiar circumstances of
the case, she had not force to dispose of alone.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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