Moreover we must not forget the difficulties of the climate. The fine season barely lasts four months in Russia. The roads are impassable for pedestrians in spring and autumn, and during the winter the cold is too severe, the days too short, the snow-storms often too prolonged to allow of putting regiments on the march, not to say sending them to the Caucasus across the uncultivated and desert plains that stretch between the Sea of Azof and the Caspian. The route by sea is equally impracticable. No use can be made of the Caspian on account of the arid and unproductive steppes that belt it on the Russian side. Astrakhan, the only town situated on that part of the coast, is obliged to fetch its provisions from a distance of 200 leagues. The Black Sea is, indeed, more favourably circumstanced; but it only affords communication with the forts on the Circassian side; and the mountaineers always wait to make their attacks in the season of rough weather, during which navigation is usually suspended, and it is exceedingly difficult to reinforce and victual the garrisons. The tediousness and difficulty of conveying stores is the same by land. With the exception of the forts of Circassia, supplied directly from the ports of Odessa, Theodosia, and Kertch, all the garrisons of the Caucasus receive their supplies from the nearly central provinces of the empire. Thus the materials destined for the army of the Terek and of Daghestan arrive first in Astrakhan, after a voyage of more than 200 leagues down the Volga; and then they are forwarded by sea for the most part to Koumskaia, on the mouth of the Kouma, where they are taken up by the Turcomans on their little ox-carts, impressed for the service, and reach their final destination after fifteen or twenty days' travelling. The mode of proceeding is still more tedious and expensive for the implements and materiel of war which arrive from Siberia only once a year, during the spring floods of the Volga, the Don, and the Dniepr. Such obstacles render it impossible to augment the forces employed on the Caucasus. France is infinitely better circumstanced with regard to Algeria. We have nothing to prevent our keeping up strong military stations on the Mediterranean shore. We can at any moment command the means of rapidly transporting to Africa whatever forces may be required by ordinary or unforeseen circumstances. We will by and by return to the war in Algeria, as compared with that which the Russians are carrying on in the Caucasus.
We have yet to speak of another cause of weakness to the Russian arms, and one which is the more serious as it operates exclusively on the moral of the soldiers. Russia has made the Caucasus a place of transportation, a regular Botany Bay for all the rogues in the empire, and for those who by their acts or their political opinions, have incurred the wrath of the tzar. In reference to this subject, we will mention a fact which may seem hard to believe, but which I attest as an eye-witness. In 1840, the fifteenth division, commanded by Lieutenant-General S----, received orders to march to the Caucasus. On leaving Taganrok, it was about 1200 short of its complement, and its deficiency was supplied from the prisons of southern Russia. Robbers, pickpockets, vagabonds, and soldiers that had been flogged and degraded, were marched into Taganrok, and incorporated with the regiments which were about to begin the campaign. These singular recruits were put under the keeping of the soldiers, and each of them, according to his supposed degree of rascality, was guarded by two, three, or four men. Surely the moral of the Russian troops is sufficiently jeopardised by the social and military institutions of the empire, and it cannot be prudent so deeply to debase the soldier by associating him with thieves and highway robbers, and to change the toilsome wars of the Caucasus into a means of punishment, I may say of destruction, for political offenders and real criminals. Furthermore, a conflict so prolonged, so disastrous, and that for so many years has been without any tangible result, must inevitably have the worst effect on the minds of troops who are not actuated either by the sense of glory or honour, or by the feeling that they are defending the right. We have visited the Caucasus at various times, and never did we meet one officer who was heartily attached to the service in which he was engaged. Despondency is universal, and many expeditions against the mountaineers have been marked by a total absence of discipline. The soldiers have often refused to march, and have suffered themselves to be massacred by their officers, rather than advance a foot.