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The main point of dispute as to Bolgrad threatened to form a casus belli with even a new arrangement of the Powers, as France gave up the case, and thus encouraged Russia to prove more obdurate. But England and the other Powers stood firm, and Bolgrad was included in Moldavia. The following extracts give a tolerably complete account of what was done.

"My imperial sovereign will never consent to have a Russian province contiguous to Austria; and should Moldavia and Wallachia be governed by hospodars and petty despots, their pretended independence would soon melt away into a Russian dependency. Austria, too, would esteem it a great misfortune if Russia should come into possession of the Crimea and the Black Sea.

A supply of the required 2 c. stamps was provided by a locally type-set design enclosed in a ring. It is said that this delivery of letters was discontinued soon after it was started, hence rarity of the stamp. Only eleven copies of this quaint postage stamp are known, and its market value is probably somewhere about £600. Moldavia, 1858, 81 paras.

When the Magyars overran Pannonia in the tenth century, under the headship of the great Arpad, they appear to have found the Szeklers already in possession of part of the vast Carpathian horseshoe that part known to us as the Transylvanian frontier of Moldavia. They claim to have come hither as early as the fourth century.

The first outbreak was in Moldavia, the ancient Roman province of Dacia which had been cut off from the Empire in the third century. Since then, it had been a lost land, a sort of Atlantis, where the people had continued to speak the old Roman tongue and still called themselves Romans and their country Roumania.

I find nothing of a later time, save the verses which I herewith copy, over which there are, in a woman's handwriting, these words: "VERSES "Writ by Sir Christopher when a prisoner among the Turks in Moldavia, and expecting death at their hands. "Ere down the blue Carpathian hills The sun shall fall again, Farewell this life and all its ills, Farewell to cell and chain

The peace, which was soon concluded at Bucharest, between Russia, and Turkey increased Napoleon's embarrassment. The left of the Russian army, secured by the neutrality of Turkey, was reinforced by Bagration's corps from Moldavia: it subsequently occupied the right of the Beresina, and destroyed the last hope of saving the wreck of the French army.

Admiral Tchichagoff, at the head of 50,000 soldiers, hitherto opposed to the Turks on the side of Moldavia, marched towards the left wing of Barclay de Tolly's force; and the right, which had gradually retired until it reached a strong camp formed on the river Dwina, was reinforced from Finland, though not so largely.

The Archduke Ferdinand, who had advanced as far as Warsaw, had been driven back by the Poles under Poniatowski and by a Russian force sent by the emperor Alexander to their aid, which, on this success, invaded Galicia. Napoleon rewarded the Poles for their aid by allowing Russia to seize Wallachia and Moldavia.

April 16 Germans capture Messines ridge, near Ypres; Bolo Pasha executed. April 23 British and French navies "bottle up" Zeebrugge. April 26 Germans capture Mount Kemmel, taking 6,500 prisoners. May 5 Austria starts drive on Italy. May 10 British navy bottles up Ostend. May 24 British ship Moldavia, carrying American troops, torpedoed; 56 lost.