The Russo-Turkish War--Constantinople--His Friend the
Enemy--Col. Archibald Campbell--The Courage of Non-
Combatants--Father Stick--Turkish Economy--Memories of
Constantinople.
At this time trouble was brewing in the east of Europe and less than
a year later war between Russia and Turkey was declared. In the early
spring of the year, the opposing forces were playing a game of long
bowls across the Danube, and very soon the forces commanded by “the
divine figure of the North,” as Mr Gladstone most infelicitously styled
the Czar, had set foot upon the enemy's country. Just before this
happened, I received a visit from a gentleman who announced himself as
Colonel Keenan, the English representative of the _Chicago Times_,
who wanted to know if he could enlist my services for the campaign. I
assented eagerly, some sort of a hurried contract was drawn up between
us, and on the morrow I was away, bound for Schumla, proposing to take
Vienna _en route_, and thence to steam down the Danube to the theatre of
the war. I found that the Donau Damp Schiff Company had despatched
its last steamboat to the Black Sea twenty-four hours before I reached
Vienna and that the service was temporarily suspended. There was nothing
for it but to go on to Trieste and to take boat to Constantinople. I
found the city proclaimed in a state of siege and filled with all the
rascaldom and ruffiandom of Tripoli and Smyrna, who held the respectable
portion of the community in terror, so long as they were quartered
there.
There was an encampment of these gentry about five thousand strong
between the city and that dreary and dirty canal which enjoys the
romantic appellation of “the sweet waters of Europe.” They were soon
to be let loose for the suppression of a wholly imaginary Bulgarian
insurrection, and it was they and their comrades who, together with
the Bashi-Bazouks, carried the banner of rapine, fire and slaughter
throughout the land. They gave us a mere taste of their quality before
they had occupied their quarters for a week. A Greek lady and her
daughter, drawn by curiosity, ventured through their lines. They were
subjected to unspeakable outrages and, together with their coachman,
were cruelly murdered; and after this occurrence, the city never
breathed freely until they were marched away up country. After their
dispersal the authorities appear to have paid but little attention to
their commissariat and they were left to live by pillage. Many months
later I ventured to ask an officer of the regulars on what principle
they were supposed to be paid. “Payés?” responded the gentleman whom I
questioned, “ils ne sont pas payés, ils volent.”
One of my fellow-passengers from Trieste was a young German officer who
had fought through the Franco-German campaign and had now obtained leave
to volunteer on the Turkish side against Russia. He was the grandson of
an Irish peer, but his father had long filled some diplomatic office
in Berlin. On his death the family had settled in Germany and the young
officer of whom I speak was a naturalised subject of the emperor. He
and I put up at the Byzance Hotel together and there a strange thing
happened. A fellow-guest at the hotel came to dinner one evening with a
young French officer, a very handsome, alert and gallant fellow, whom I
got to know intimately afterwards. His host sat him down at the _table
d'hôte_ opposite the young German, and almost from the first it was to
be seen that the two looked at each other in a curious way. By and
by the Frenchman arose and drawing his host aside made a whispered
communication to him and withdrew. It turned out afterwards that the two
men had been engaged on different sides in the great cavalry charge
at Gravelotte. When the opposing regiments met, there was a tremendous
_mêlée_ after the first shock, and the Frenchman had engaged both the
young German officer whom he now encountered and his brother, the latter
of whom fell by his hand. They had never met before nor did they
ever encounter afterwards, but the recognition on both sides was
instantaneous. Captain Tiburce Morisot--that was the Frenchman's
name--made another curious recognition of which I was a witness. I was
dining with him at the Hotel Misseri when there entered a big stalwart
fellow who sat down opposite to us. “I beg your pardon,” said my
entertainer, speaking across the table, “but I think that you and I have
met before somewhere.” “So I was thinking,” the big man answered; “I was
trying to size you up in my own mind but I can't manage it.” “Were you
ever in Africa?” the other asked him. “Yes,” the big man answered, “I
spent some years there.” “Big game shooting?” asked my host “Yes,” said
the other. “Do you remember coming across a party of Frenchmen who
were cutting a military road?” He named the region, and the man who
was interrogated answered “Yes,” he did remember it. “You brought a
giraffe's heart into the camp,” said Morisot, “and asked leave to roast
it at our fire.” “I did,” the other answered, “and, by Jove! you're the
man who was in command of that party.” They renewed their acquaintance
with a cordial handgrip, and clinked glasses together. The big
Englishman was Colonel Archibald Campbell, afterwards known as Schipka
Campbell, and there was a story told of these two, which is perhaps
worth relating. They went up to Schumla together, and there for week
after week they lived in a deadly monotony which was varied only by the
intrusion of an occasional shell, hurled by one of the Russian guns from
the other side of the river. “It's getting horribly dull here,” said the
Frenchman one day. “Suppose we go and sit, by way of a change, on the
fortifications and get shelled at.” The suggestion was probably made
in a purely humorous mood, but the Scotchman chose to appear to take it
seriously and said that it was a very good idea. In all likelihood the
answer was as humorously meant as the suggestion, but each carried on
the game with so much gravity that in the end they did actually go and
sit upon the glacis, where they smoked their pipes until such time as
a big shell burst between them, when the Frenchman hinted that they
had done enough for honour, and the pair leisurely withdrew. And here I
recall an experience of my own which befell me a year and a half later,
but may perhaps best be dealt with now. I had been elected to the Savage
Club, and one night I encountered there a number of old campaigning
men--newspaper correspondents, artists, and doctors--who were swopping
battle yarns among themselves, and who were all agreed with respect
to one thing--the extraordinary exhilaration which came of being under
fire. Now I have been under fire for weeks together in my time, and I am
free to confess that I never liked it. I am going to be quite honest; I
never showed the white feather, but I know quite well that many a
time in the course of that campaign, if I could have bolted without
disgracing myself in my own eyes, I should have done it. I stuck to my
place because it _was_ my place, but not in the least degree because
I liked to be there, and all this talk about the exhilaration of being
shot at, and the maddening pleasure inspired by it, hit me very hard
indeed, and set me probing my own mind to ask if I were not, as a
matter of fact, a coward who had just managed to disguise the truth from
himself and others. I went out of the club that night in a melancholy
mood, and as I was wandering purposelessly along the Strand, I felt a
hand upon my shoulder and, turning round, saw Archibald.
Forbes beside me. “You look hit, young 'un,” said he, “come and have
a drink.” He drew me into the Gaiety bar, and there, over a whisky
and cigar, I unfolded my trouble. “My boy,” said Forbes, “I have been
through seventeen campaigns, big and little, and I have had a bit of
experience. You can make your mind quite easy, and the first thing
you can do is to go back to your club and give those fellows my
compliments--Archibald Forbes's compliments--and tell them that they are
liars to a man!” I did not take that message, which was delivered in a
form more emphatic than I have given to it, but I went away a good deal
comforted. I have compared notes since then with many an old campaigner,
and I have never talked seriously with one who has not been in the end
willing to confess to a very serious knowledge of his position at such a
time. In the course of a siege men get inured to it, but even then there
is no particular fun about it, and merely to sit still and endure is
anything but a cheerful experience; to be on the move towards the enemy
is altogether another matter.
I remember, for instance, an incident which occurred at Guemlik, when a
rifle bullet passed so close by my left ear, that for a minute or two I
was deafened on that side, and the ear itself was hot with the passing
of the bullet. I remember that I yelled out to the little party which
accompanied me, “We're under fire!” and flinging myself from my horse,
dragged him into the shelter of a coppice. We held a council of war
there, and it was finally decided that we should ride straight into
the village and trust to what might happen. I had been compelled by the
military authorities to travel with an escort, and I had with me
four mounted Zaptiehs, a sergeant, my interpreter, and a
fellow-correspondent. We all remounted and made a rush at the village,
which was not more than three hundred yards away. We tore along at the
charge, and what with the speed and the risk and the uncertainty, it
was certainly all very thrilling, and even in a sense enjoyable. When
we clattered into the cobbled street, we found a solitary Bashi-Bazouk
armed with a Winchester repeating rifle. Him, the sergeant of my escort
questioned. “Had he fired a shot lately?” “Evvet,” said the insolent
ruffian, with a grin, answering in the affirmative. “What had he fired
at?” asked the sergeant. “A small bird,” was the answer. “Had he fired
in the direction of the highway?” the sergeant asked him again. “Evvet,”
once more. “And had he seen a party coming along the highway?” the
sergeant asked. “Oh, Evvet!” The sergeant rode towards a dilapidated
wattled fence and wrenched from it a thick stake with which he
administered such a hiding to that Bashi-Bazouk as I never saw one man
bestow upon another before or since.
Good old Father Stick seemed to play a very large part in the Turkish
administration. On the march to Plevna, for example, I saw two high
military dignitaries chastised in the presence of their fellow-officers.
What they had done or failed to do I did not know, but I arrived upon
the scene just in time to see each man step out in turn, fold his arms
and with bent head submit himself to half a dozen resounding blows
across the shoulders. It was no perfunctory ceremony, but the two took
it quite quietly and went back to their separate posts of duty looking
as if nothing at all had happened. A third example of the kind took
place at the military hospital at Adrianople. Dr Bond Moore had charge
there and one day I was with him when one of the irregular troops
was brought in with a broken leg. The doctor dressed the limb with a
dilution of carbolic acid and fixed it in a plaster bandage. He left
the man fairly comfortable, and, through his interpreter, promised him
a speedy recovery. But two days later, in the course of our rounds, we
came upon the patient and found him in a state of dreadful suffering.
On investigation it was found that the bandage had been changed and that
the limb was hopelessly distorted, the toes being turned inwards in such
a fashion that even had the man recovered he would have been a helpless
cripple for the rest of his days. The bandage was huddled on anyhow, and
Moore tore it away to discover to his horror, that the brown limb below
it was hideously blanched and inflamed. It turned out on inquiry that
a young Turkish haakim, who had watched the operation at which the limb
was first set, had taken it into his head to rearrange the dressing
before the plaster case in which the limb was bound had dried, and
he had improved upon the process he had witnessed, pretty much as an
intelligent monkey might have done, by applying a dressing of undiluted
carbolic acid. I have rarely seen a man in such a towering rage as Bond
Moore when he saw the full extent of the mischief which had been done.
He was fertile in curses, but when he had exhausted all he knew or
could invent on the spur of the moment, he begged me to send for my
interpreter who arrived in a minute or two, and drew from the sufferer
a description of the man who had so mishandled him. Bond Moore sent for
that man, and having made sure of him, kicked him the whole length
of the corridor and finally sent him flying down a lengthy flight of
stairs, where, very fortunately for himself, he fell upon a load of hay
which had just been delivered for the use of the cavalry regiment
which was stabled below the hospital. The indignant haakim hobbled
off straightway to the military commandant of the city and lodged a
complaint as to the manner in which he had been treated by his English
colleague. In less than a quarter of an hour he was back again and the
Pasha with him, a little, black-avised man with a beard like wire, who
bore a malacca cane in very truculent fashion. He was quivering with
anger, and he demanded in fluent French an explanation from Bond Moore
in a manner which was peremptory in the extreme. Bond Moore knew no more
of French than he did of Turkish, but my interpreter having explained
the position, the Pasha turned round upon the complainant and, after a
few curt and angry questions, set about him with the malacca cane until
he roared: “Amaan, Eccellenza, amaan!” (which, being interpreted, is
“have pity,”) and finally took to his heels and ran for it with the
irate little Pasha in full cry after him.
Of course it would be useless to deny the existence of the delight in
battle which affects some natures, but I am perfectly sure that it does
not come as the result of standing still to be shot at. I have seen
some extraordinary examples of cool courage and at least one of perfect
panic, but the circumstances in which I saw the last, disposed me to
understand and to sympathise with it. We were quartered at Tashkesen
shortly after our enforced retreat from Plevna. The village in which
we lived was two or three miles from the actual front of war, and on
a certain foggy morning I set out with a little hill pony to visit the
fortifications. I may as well make one bite at the whole story, and to
do this I must go back to the time when I was at Vienna and had just
discovered that it was impossible to make my way to Schumla by the
Danube. At the Englischer Hof Hotel in that city I met a gentleman who
had for years been engaged in a military survey of the Balkan country.
He had been under some sort of contract with the Turkish Government, but
on the very eve of the campaign, the authorities had refused to pay him
a sum of £12,000 which he reckoned to be due to him for his labours and
expenses, and at considerable risk and difficulty he had contrived
to smuggle his map out of Constantinople. He was on his way to St
Petersburg with it and eventually disposed of it to the Russian
Government. Without it the Russian army would never have been able ta
force the passage of the Balkans and I always traced the defeat of
the Turks to that poor economy of £12,000. The map was the most
extraordinary thing of its kind I have ever seen. It consisted of a
great number of thin wooden slabs of about a foot square on which were
modelled in wax all the mountains and passes of the Balkan range, built
exactly to scale and showing every road and bypath.
Now at Tashkesen the Russians were in possession of this map, with the
result that they were able to adjust their guns to the precise range of
positions which were out of sight. The road by which I travelled on that
foggy morning was being swept by shell, the evident purpose being to
prevent provisions and supplies from being carried along it to the
troops in front. Probably from want of ammunition, the cannonade had
been suspended from seven o'clock in the morning until about eleven, and
I took advantage of this lull to attempt my visit to the fortifications.
I was about half-way up the hill when a shell burst a few score yards in
front of me; another and another followed. One which had been discharged
at a higher elevation than the rest burst overhead, and I began to feel
extremely nervous. I dismounted and led my pony into the wood on the
right hand side. I had not penetrated ten yards into the wood when a
shell burst in front of me and in something like panic I dragged my
little steed across the road and sought a shelter in the wood on the
opposite side. Crash! came a shell in front of me as I entered, and this
time nearer than ever. Now it is one thing to be in imminent danger in
the midst of your comrades or even when you have the companionship of a
single friend, and it is another to find yourself surrounded by a
ring of fire when you are absolutely alone and have nobody to lend you
countenance. The memory of that time will always make me pitiful to
the man who runs away. For one instant I was on the edge of an absolute
surrender to physical fear. How I got a grip of myself I really do not
know. I was certainly most horribly afraid and my nerve was almost
gone, when I remembered that on a previous journey I had passed a great
outcrop of granite rock, which afforded a perfect shelter. I reflected
that it was just as dangerous to go back as to go on, and I estimated
that my refuge was only two or three hundred yards in front of me. With
this aim in mind, I mounted again and rode uphill as fast as my mount
could carry me. When I reached my shelter the shells were howling and
screaming and bursting everywhere, but I sat in perfect safety, and by
and by recovered my self-possession. I had been there perhaps an hour
and had begun to write an account of my morning's adventure when I
heard a wild voice pealing down the road and the stumbling clatter of a
horse's hoofs at a dangerous, breakneck speed, and the horseman passed
and in his passage, swift as it was, we recognised each other. I knew
the man quite well; he was an English doctor, and I felt as keen a pang
of pity as I have ever experienced in my life as I recognised in him
that condition of abject surrender to fear from which I had myself so
recently escaped, Heaven alone knows how! I had touched the line and had
somehow been saved from going over it; the man who went howling past me
had touched the line and crossed it. He was holding on to the front of
his saddle and his horse's reins were trailing loose and broken; his
face was livid and he was yelling with sheer terror at the top of his
voice. He was gone in a flash and I learned afterwards that within an
hour of his arrival at the village, he put in his papers on some plea of
urgency, and immediately went down country. Years afterwards I brought
my wife to town to hear an afternoon lecture from Mr Bennett Burleigh,
who was just back from one of his numerous campaigns. We were staying
on for the theatre, and in the interim we dined at the Criterion, A
gentleman in evening dress came in with a theatre party consisting of
three ladies. He busied himself for a while in arranging his party and
then sat down facing me. Our eyes met, and I do not remember to have
seen a man more painfully embarrassed. He blushed until his very ears
were pink, and if I could have found the courage I would have taken
him aside and have made to him a confession which might possibly have
soothed his mind.
A reputation for coolness in danger, like other reputations, is often
got without much deserving. At the time of the Russo-Turkish war, the
railway had its terminus a few miles beyond Tatar Bazardjik. I was
travelling north with a party of English doctors and we alighted at the
station there for refreshment. We had been misinformed about the length
of time for which the train halted there and were hurriedly summoned by
the guard when it was already in motion. The engine-driver slowed down
until it was possible, by hard running, to overtake our carriage. I was
in heavy riding boots and somewhat hampered by that fact, and just as
my fingers touched the brass guard at the side of the compartment, I
tripped on a ground wire and fell beneath the approaching train in such
a fashion that the carriage wheel was actually between my thighs. I
clutched the _marche-pied_ with both arms and clung on with all my
might. The revolving wheel was actually rubbing at the inside of my legs
and the spurs were torn from the heels of my boots. How I executed the
manoeuvre I shall never know, but before the train was brought to a
standstill, I was on my knees on the _marche-pied_ and was being helped
into the railway carriage by one of my companions. I suppose that it
must have been the most imminent moment of danger I have ever known,
but I can testify quite honestly to one queer thing--I was absolutely
without fear--and with a horrible death actually grazing me, I was as
coolly self-possessed as I ever have been in the whole course of my
life. But there was the shock of consciousness awaiting me. I was
violently sick a moment later, and for nights and nights to come, I
experienced a horrible nightmare, in which all the terrors which might
have seemed natural to the situation laid hold upon me.
In the Grande Rue de Pera there was a café _chantant_ which was run by
one Napoleon Flam. There was a little silver hell attached to it where
there was a roulette table with twenty-four numbers and a double zero.
There were always plenty of flying strangers who were prepared to throw
away their money here, and I fancy that the fat Greek who presided over
the table made a fat thing of it. In the concert room, the superannuated
artistes of the poorer kind of Continental concert hall shrieked and
grimaced and ogled, and after every item of the show, the performer came
round with an escallop shell into which the more generously disposed
dropped small copper coins. The place was nearly always crowded with men
in black frock-coats and crimson fezzes. Ill-starred Valentine Baker had
been employed by the Sublime Porte to create an English _gendarmerie_,
and this fact had brought a large number of English military men into
Constantinople, who were anxious to enlist under his banner. Many
of them were men who had done good service in their day and held
unblemished records, but there is no disguising the fact that a large
contingent of the discredited riffraff of the British army was collected
in the city at that time. The “Concert Flam” was the accepted rendezvous
for both sets, and on my second night in Constantinople I went thither
in company with the young Irish-German officer, of whom I have already
spoken, and an American newspaper correspondent who had been in the city
long enough to know the ropes.
Young Von A. was a big, genial fellow, full of animal spirits, and on
this particular occasion, _Bacchi plenus_. He was under the impression
that all the little swarthy men who sat about him in their red fezzes
and their black frock-coats were Turks, He was boiling over with
enthusiasm for the Turkish cause, and he had picked up a patriotic
phrase or two. The spirit moved him to rise in an interval of the stage
performance and to bawl out aloud the words:
“Chokularishah Padishah,” which, being interpreted, signifies, “May
the Sultan live for ever!” His enthusiasm was not contagious, for the
assembly consisted almost entirely of people who did not care a copper
whether the Sultan lived for ever or died next morning. There were
lifted eyebrows and cynical stares, but the young gentleman was not in
a condition to regard these and he went on to cry: “muscove dormous!”
signifying that a Russian was a hog, and drawing a masonic forefinger
across his throat to indicate what, in his opinion, ought to be done
with him. The youngster stood there, big and burly and jolly, and
meaning, I am quite sure, no harm to anybody, when a little Greek, who
was seated opposite to him, said, “Je suis muscove, monsieur,” and the
lad leant across the marble table and aimed a mock buffet at him which
unfortunately reached him and rolled him over as if he had been a
ninepin. At the “Concert Flam” a porcelain coffee cup weighed something
like a quarter of a pound, and half a dozen of these came hurling at
the offender from various parts of the room. There were big mirrors
all round the café reaching from the ceiling to the dado; one or two
of these were smashed, and, before one could say “Jack Robinson,” the
wildest disorder reigned and all the place was in a _melee_. The nine or
ten Englishmen who were there ranged themselves round the originator
of the disturbance, who was really in some momentary danger. The whole
posse of us formed into an irregular ring in the centre of the room,
and for a while we had quite a merry time of it. There were flags of
all nationalities hung about the little hall dependent from short wooden
lances with gilt heads, and these our assailants tore down and used as
weapons against us. The conflict was brief and decisive; numerically
there were perhaps six to one against us, but we ended by forming in
lines, and the barbarous English fashion of striking straight from the
shoulder sent the enemy in a hurry towards the narrow and winding
stair which afforded the only exit from the place, and here, in the
exhilaration of the moment, two of our party did an unguarded thing;
they took to dropping the fugitives in the rear over the banister on to
the heads and shoulders of the crowd below. We were left masters of
the field but, as it happened, the “Concert Flam” was situated right
opposite to the lowest Greek quarter, the Rue Yildiji, I think it was
called, and it was approached under a low arch by a dirty flight of
stone steps. Up these steps thronged a great crowd of people armed with
anything they could snatch up at the moment--frying-pans, pokers, fire
shovels, and any article of domestic use which at short notice might be
turned into a weapon of defence. Luckily for us there was one cool head
amongst us. Schipka Campbell, who had not then earned the title by which
he was afterwards so widely known, was there, and he took command of the
party. We were all armed, but though we displayed our weapons for the
intimidation of the mob we were gravely cautioned not to fire a shot on
peril of our lives. The Grande Rue de Pera was raging when we reached
it, but we slipped out one by one, each man revolver in hand, and ranged
ourselves against the wall. I cannot recall that a solitary blow was
struck, but I know that the people in the rear of the crowd were in a
mighty hurry to get at us and that those in front were in equal haste to
retire, and little by little we made our way to the Byzance Hotel where
the gates were closed and barred against the crowd. Shortly afterwards
the Chief of the Consular Police was amongst us making inquiries into
the origin of the émeute. He took an official note of the occurrence and
drank a glass of wine or two and smoked a cigar with us, but we never
heard any more about the business, and though we strolled thereafter
into the “Concert Flam” quite freely, we suffered no molestation.