was in the possession of the imperial armies, Waitzen, at the knee of the river, was the true strategical point de mire, and not Pesth. "In Pesth steht man in der luft," said one of the Russian staff to me afterwards.

By the battle at Raab and the two severely contested days near Acs on the 2nd and 11th of July, the object of the Austrian army was gained, and Georgey was compelled either to shut himself up in Comorn and allow himself to be taken like a mouse in a trap, or to manœuvre his way to the Theiss through the army of Marshal Paskievich enclosing him on the north-east. This latter he did with masterly skill, and the impression which Marshal Paskievich has left in Hungary is, that his strategy was able; but that considering the forces at his disposal his tactics were not equally satisfactory, whether in allowing Georgey to slip through his fingers, and when that had taken place, in not pressing with sufficient speed and vigour the operations to the east of the Theiss, so as to have left so large a force in the environs of the Maros to cope with the Austrian forces who, led by the vigorous and energetic Haynau across the sands of Ketskemet, were making for Temesvar. Haynau was certainly in his way a sort of Blücher, and was well entitled to the nick-name "General Forwards;" for he no sooner was in Pesth than he prepared for that bold and fearless march to Szegedin and Temesvar, the operations of which brought the campaign to a prompt and brilliant conclusion.

Next to Haynau, the honour of the day of Temesvar belongs to Prince Francis Lichtenstein, from all accounts one of the most brilliant cavalry officers in the Austrian army, who by bringing up the reserve at the right moment, threw the Hungarians into confusion and compelled them to retreat; from which time they never seriously rallied again. This distinguished officer was at Pesth at the period of my visit, and as one of my letters was to him, I had much pleasure in making the acquaintance of a most amiable man, who was as popular even among the Magyars from the suavity of his manners and the mode

ration of his political opinions, as he was esteemed by his brother generals for his professional ability. And when a hard case occurred, he would speak to Haynau when no one else had the courage to do so. This I heard from others, and what I heard from him confirmed me in the opinion that Haynau was, with all his fanatical sense of duty, not inaccessible to humane considerations. One day he told me that a man compromised in the rebellion, who had been enrolled in the Austrian army, had a wife and several children, and on his applying to Haynau to get him struck off the roll, he flatly refused that, but said that he would give him an unlimited leave of absence, and that it would have been well if he had paid more attention to the welfare of his wife and family and thought more of their prospects during the rebellion.

CHAPTER XXVI.

COMORN AND THE FORTRESSES OF HUNGARY CONSIDERED WITH REFERENCE TO STRATEGY.

I had by this time had enough of travelling in Hungary, and the steamers on the Danube being again plying for the season, I took my passage in one of them and once more bade adieu to the discomforts of Hungarian roads, for certainly the tourist who alternately walks the deck, lounges on a sofa and takes his meals at the appointed hours, or reads a book in one of the well-appointed Danubian steamers, can have no conception of what is commonly understood by the expression "travelling in Hungary;" and I was truly glad to make this voyage once more without the alarms of war; for the last time that I had passed the crumbling ruins of Vissegrad and

the lofty cathedral of Gran, the passengers were disembarked some miles above Comorn, and after a long tour in a diligence through the blockading Austrian posts, reembarked again some miles below that fortress.

But although the war was ended, the deadly antipathies that it had engendered were not a whit allayed. Several of the passengers were Magyars, one of whom, an acquaintance of my own, was Mr. B- a conservative deputy of considerable eloquence, and there were besides several priests, ex-tribunes and ex-prefects of the DacoRoman militia, which in German receives the appropriate name of Landsturm, but not one syllable did the eloquent deputy and the land-stormers exchange with each other during the voyage, which was, perhaps, all the better for the tranquillity of the rest of the passengers.

What a curious contrast my late voyage on the Adriatic and my present one on the Danube suggested. As I paced the uncovered streets and excavated baths and temples of Salona, I saw the traces of the destruction which the Avars, a Hunnish race, cognate with the Magyars, had visited upon the monuments of Roman civilisation-where the vast masses of the palace of Diocletian had alone resisted the efforts of time and barbarism, and where the moral wreck of the law, that wall of brass that seemed to surround the whole fabric of Roman empire, disappeared from the astonished gaze of a world, that for centuries had thought that right was might, and awoke as from a trance, to the stern reality that might was right. But thirteen centuries elapse, and the Hun and the Roman exchange places in the basin of the Danube and in the recesses of the Carpathians. The Hun magistrate and landed proprietor is a civilised man, and the Daco-Roman brutalised by long centuries of oppression, is a ruthless barbarian.

It was well on in the afternoon when we arrived at Comorn, where I did not land, having been through it repeatedly. The possession of this celebrated position

must always have an important effect upon any military operations in this part of Hungary, for it not only commands the passage of the Danube and the Waag, but the country around being thus divided by water ways, no siege or blockade can be carried on without a very large force; because it is in the power of the besieged to break suddenly out in three different directions, and choosing the weakest opposing corps, bring a large force to bear upon it before the aiding forces can be brought across the rivers to the support of the attacked besieging force.

At

In order to understand this, we must ask the reader to cast his eye on the map of Hungary, and observe how the greater Danube from Presburg to Comorn runs in an easterly direction with a slight inclination to the south, while the smaller arm of the Danube below Presburg diverting to the left, forms the island of Schütt. right angles with the Danube, the Waag comes from the Carpathians, that is to say, from the north to the south, but before its junction with the Great Danube it falls into the Little Danube to the north of the island of Schütt, and both conjointly flow into the Great Danube under the walls of Comorn. The fortress is situated on the eastern tip of the island of Schütt, on ground which is in the form of the head of a fish when drawn on paper, or an acute angle, one side of which is formed by the Great Danube, another by the united Waag and Little Danube, while the base of the triangle is a very strong line of fortifications carried right across from one river to the other. The only side, therefore, on which Comorn can be entered by storm is from the island of Schütt, for at the other sides are the rivers. At the very tip or apex of the triangle is the citadel; further west, where the island of Schütt is broader, is the town; while between the town and the outer fortifications are meadows, on which oxen, which the garrison possesses, graze in security. Two bridges then connect the citadel on the north, across the Waag, with the tête-de-pont

on the left bank of that river, and on the south with another tête-de-pont on the right bank of the Danube. These têtes-de-pont are not mere field-works, but are of masonry, with a central fort in each and surrounded by bastions. To open trenches from the island of Schütt is difficult, on account of the marshy ground in front of the so-called palatinal fortifications; and even the possession of the têtes-de-pont still leaves the breadth of the Danube and the Waag between the besieger and the defenders. Even these outworks would be very difficult to take, for outside the one over the Great Danube is a fortified camp on two hills, one called the Sandberg, the other the Schwarzberg, which the imperialists attempted to take from Georgey in July, 1849, not only without success, but with the loss of so many men that in some places the dead had scarcely room to fall without being on the top of each other. This was commonly called the battle of Acs, the bloodiest in the whole war, in consequence of the very strong position that Georgey held, with Comorn at his back to retreat to in case of a

reverse.

The reader may therefore easily understand that Comorn is, beyond all comparison, the strongest fortress of the Austrian monarchy; for although the defensive capacity of Mantua is equal to it, Comorn, as a centre of offensive operations, is much more formidable; and although Mantua is so difficult to take, it is also easy to invest. Now in Comorn the investing circle must be considerable, and from these strong têtes-de-pont the force within can at will break out in any direction they choose, as was the case in August, 1849, when Klapka broke out towards Raab, and 700 men were cut down or drowned in the bog behind. Like Mantua, Comorn is one of the most unhealthy towns in Hungary, and those very swamps that render it so difficult of access to a besieging force, are terrible allies by the slower process of disease. No doubt, however, can exist that the possession of the two fortresses of Comorn and Peterwardein make an enormous difference in a Hungarian campaign. Jomini lays down