PREFACE. TH HE war between the great Powers on the borders of Europe and Afia, neceffarily demanded, on various accounts, our utmost attention, in treating the History of the present year. Its importance was not only proportioned to its prefent magnitude, and the greatness of the parties immediately engaged, but to the general and abundant danger with which it feemed teeming. Having, in the first inftance, fpeedily extended its baleful influence to the northern kingdoms, it was apparently on the point of involving the greater part, if not the whole, of Europe in the calamity; nor would it have been easy to draw a line in any quarter of the world, beyond which, from its nature, it was not poffibly capable of reaching. This war, in its actual and more confined state, prefented a spectacle neither common nor incurious. It fhewed the extraordinary exertions which the untaught genius of a single man, operating upon the defperate courage of a people fighting for their all, but almost totally deftitute of military knowledge, experience, and discipline, were together capable of making, when oppofed, not only to a vast fuperiority in number and force, but to the veteran armies of two of the first military Powers in the world, who have long been uniformly endeavouring to carry the art of war, in all its parts, to the highest poffible point of perfection. |