Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846. Various

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846

Don Baltasar, and by his inferiors he was generally detested on account of his harsh and overbearing demeanour. Of this he was aware; and he vainly racked his brain to find a man in whom he could confide. The details of his nefarious project were already arranged in his mind, and only this one difficulty had yet to be overcome; when, at two hours after dark, he entered the streets of Oñate. Hopeless of being served for affection's sake, he was meditating whom he could make his own by bribery, when a light from an open window flashed across the street, and illuminated the unprepossessing profile of Jaime the gipsy, who, in his capacity of guide, was riding in front, and a little on one side of Colonel Villabuena. The sight of those sinister features, on which rapacity and cunning had set their stamp, was as a sudden revelation to Don Baltasar, to whom it instantly occurred that the gitano was the very man he sought. The circumstance of his belonging to a race despised, and almost persecuted, by the people amongst whom they dwelt, was an additional guarantee against any compunctious scruples on his part; his occupation of a spy bespoke him at once daring and venal, and Colonel Villabuena doubted not that he should find him a willing and useful instrument.

The soldiers filed off to their quarters; and Baltasar, after desiring the gipsy to come to him in an hour's time, betook himself to the posada. When Jaime had given his horse an ample feed, and groomed him with a care that showed the value he set upon his services, he made a hasty meal in a neighbouring taberna, and repaired to the Colonel's quarters. His stealthy tap at the door was replied to by an impatient "adelante," and he entered the room.

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1

This was the explanation actually given by Develuz, our consul at Adrianople, of his exaggerated account of the strength of Diebitsch's army, at the moment when Diebitsch's best hope was, that he might effect his retreat across the Balkan with the shattered and debilitated remnant of his troops! Yet on this authority the Sultan was recommended to yield at discretion, and the

1

2

The present Prince, on public occasions, always wears the fez with an aigrette of diamonds, as a recognition of the suzerainté of the Porte; his predecessor, Michel Obrenovich, gave great offence by wearing a cocked hat.

3

The old Emperor, Francis of Austria, when a Russian general was to be presented, would say, "Now bring in the northern firmament, and all its stars."

4

Sokol must here be a slip of the pen for Szoko. Sokol, the birth-place of the famous Mohammed Sokolli, vizier of Soliman the Magnificent and his two successors, is in the heart of Bosnia, near Gradachatz.

5

In the supplement to the Biographie Universelle, vol. lxi., a strange tale is told, that Czerni George was a native of Nanci, who fled in his youth to Servia – but this is a mere romance.

6

Lamartine (Voyage en Orient) and other writers represent Kara George as having died in confinement in an Austrian fortress, soon after his flight in 1813-an error which has probably arisen from a confusion between his fate and that of Alexander Hypsilantis, who headed the insurrection in Walachia in 1821, and died in Mongatz, after three years' imprisonment.

7

These firmans, with the hatti-shereef of 1838, &c., were printed and laid before the House of Commons in May 1843.

8

The contrast in this respect, between the progress and results of the Servian and Greek revolutions, is forcibly stated in an extract from a MS. document by Wuk Stephanovich, author of the Servian Anthology, in Parish's Diplomatic History of the Monarchy of Greece. – Pp. 387-90.

9

From an early period of the war, the Spanish dragoon regiments, both light and heavy, were armed with the lance, that weapon being considered the most efficient for the mountain warfare in which they were frequently engaged.

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