THE IMMINENCE OF WAR.
Off to Widdin--Strong Fortifications--Osman Pasha in
Command--The Kalafatians at Work--Dr. Black--A Discreditable
Englishman--Shooting on Sight--An Arrest and a Release--"Life
off Black"--Egyptian Troops arrive--Zara Dilber Effendi--Osman
Pasha's Ball--A Memorable Function--I get Plenty of
Partners--Military Wall-flowers--The Ladies of Widdin--The Dance
before the Fight--Three Beautiful Roumanians--An Angry
Grandfather--Lambro Redivivus--Preparing for the Campaign--Some
Forcible Dentistry--Religion of the Turks--The
Wrestlers--Visitors from Kalafat--I pay a Return Call--Across
the Danube into Kalafat--Dinner with the Roumanians--Pumping the
Guileless Stranger--A Futile Effort--Frank Power--Nicholas
Leader--Edmund O'Donovan--Wild Duck Shooting.
A march of four days brought us to Widdin, the journey being
accomplished by easy stages and with a fair degree of comfort. Of course
it must be remembered that there was no such thing as a commissariat
department in the Turkish army. The _zaptiehs_, or mounted police, in
each district received notice of our approach, and requisitioned the
necessary supplies from the farmers, who received acknowledgments of
Government indebtedness for the amount due. We always sent forward a few
_arabas_ with an advance party and a number of cooks; so that when the
regiment reached the camping-place for the night all the preparations
were made, and a hot meal was ready for the men. We usually camped in a
Bulgarian village; and if there was no other shelter for the men, we
appropriated the mosque, and made up our beds in it. I have slept many a
time on the paved floor of a Turkish mosque, in the very arms of Islam
as it were; and I must candidly admit that my slumbers were quite as
refreshing and my dreams as sweet as they have since been within sound
of the cathedral bells of Christendom.
Widdin is a town of considerable commercial importance, and a strongly
fortified position of great military significance, being, in fact, one
of the keys of Bulgaria, for it is situated on a wedge of Bulgarian
territory, having both the Servian and Roumanian frontiers almost under
the muzzles of its siege-guns. When we were there the population
numbered about fourteen thousand persons, of whom perhaps one-half were
Bulgarians, one-third Turks, and the remainder Levantines, Greeks,
Italians, Spanish Jews, and Tchiganes or Gypsies. There are a great
number of Jews everywhere throughout the Turkish Empire, and they are
very well treated by the Turks. It is hardly necessary to say that
almost all the bankers and financial agents in the country belong to
this race.
There are practically two towns in Widdin--namely, that which is within
the fortifications, and that which is outside. The fortified portion
faces the Danube, which forms its protection for a distance of about one
mile; and it is defended besides by a high castellated wall fully twenty
feet in height, which runs right round the town. Facing the Danube, when
we were there, were several powerful and perfectly organized batteries,
armed with at least fifty Krupp siege-guns of the most modern
description. From the Danube side the town was practically impregnable.
On the other side, beyond the castellated wall, was a wide and deep
moat; and over this was a drawbridge, which was pulled up at six o'clock
every night, so that after that hour ingress to the fortified town was
impossible until the morning. Inside the fortress were the principal
public buildings, including the _konak_, or townhall, the seat of
administration of the Turkish governor in charge of the vilayet, as well
as the barracks, which accommodated four thousand men, a large
Government mill for grinding corn, and the great granaries in which a
reserve of grain was stored for victualling the town in the event of a
siege.
The greater portion of the population lived outside the fortress in the
different suburbs; and beyond these again was the outer line of defence,
a huge wall of earth about twenty feet high, and studded at short
intervals with redoubts. Outside this wall the country was low-lying and
swampy, capable of being flooded from the Danube, and thus affording
additional protection to the town. One result, however, of all this
circumjacent water was that Widdin was one of the most unhealthy towns
in the whole of Turkey. The climate was excessively damp, and we were
never free from malarial fever. At one time there were no fewer than
four hundred men in the hospitals with this fever.
A staple article of export from Widdin is caviare, which is obtained in
enormous quantities from the roe of the sturgeon, and sent away packed
in barrels on board the flat-bottomed boats that ply up the river. I
have seen a sturgeon fully twelve feet long caught in the Danube. Three
men were dragging it with a rope through the streets of Widdin. The town
has also a great reputation for its filigree work in silver and gold,
which is very beautiful.
In February, 1877, when our regiment reached Widdin, we found about
thirty thousand Turkish troops in the place, mostly infantry, though
there were a few batteries of field artillery and about a thousand
cavalry. The Kyrchehir Regiment went into quarters in the barracks
inside the fortress; but of course there was not sufficient
accommodation there for all the troops in the town, and a military
encampment was formed a couple of miles out of the town for the bulk of
the army corps. Osman Pasha, at that time a comparatively unknown man,
was then commander-in-chief of all the troops in Widdin, and Adil Pasha
was the commandant in charge of the camp. Osman Pasha had already won
considerable reputation by his brilliant defeat of the Servians at
Zaitchar; but it was not until his subsequent successes against the
Russian arms that his name was flashed through the length and breadth of
Europe, and that congratulations poured in upon him from all quarters.
It fell to my lot to open and read many of the letters sent to him from
England, in which the writers, a large proportion of whom were ladies,
expressed their admiration for his gallantry and begged the favour of
his autograph. Osman Pasha lived in a large house within the fortress,
and I myself was billeted in the same quarter, where I lived quite in
the Turkish fashion, sitting cross-legged on the floor and eating my
food with my fingers.
At this time hostilities with Servia had ceased, and a long armistice
had been declared, during which the Powers were occupied in dictating
terms to Turkey, which, however, she declined to accept, her determined
attitude in the matter leading ultimately to the declaration of war
against her by Russia. The town of Kalafat in Roumania is close to
Widdin; and we could see the Roumanian troops there busily engaged in
fortifying it in anticipation of hostilities breaking out, and of an
attack being made on the town by the forces in Widdin at any moment. The
position, therefore, was decidedly interesting, for we could actually
see the Roumanians, who were nominally our vassals, building up their
redoubts against us as fast as they could. It will be remembered that
during the early part of the Crimean war the Turks occupied Kalafat,
Osman Pasha being the commander of the forces; and that the Russians
lost some twenty thousand men in a vain attempt to take it.
The time of waiting in Widdin was fairly quiet, although every one felt
that war was in the air, and that the interval of rest was only the hush
that precedes the hurricane. I had plenty of work to do, for dysentery
and lung troubles affected the troops severely as well as malarial
fever. There were about thirty military surgeons in the town including
myself, but most of them were Hungarians or Austrians; and the only
other British subject among them besides myself was a man whom I shall
call Dr. Black, although that was not his name.
Dr. Black was by no means a credit to his country. In fact, not to put
too fine a point upon it, he was a perfect disgrace; and as every fresh
scrape that he got into reflected more or less upon me, I began to get
heartily sick of him. Few of the people in Widdin had ever seen an
Englishman, and Dr. Black's manners and customs were not calculated to
prejudice them favourably with regard to the nation in general or myself
in particular. Fortunately for me there was one other Briton in the
town. To use a convenient Irishism, he was a Scotsman, and he was
commonly known as Jack; in fact, I never heard his surname. Jack was a
high-class mechanical engineer, and he had been specially imported from
Glasgow to take charge of the Government flour-mill inside the fortress.
He lived there with his wife, a charming little Scotswoman, and they
both spoke Turkish like natives. I had many consultations with Jack as
to our common _bête noir_ Dr. Black; but we had to suffer in silence for
a while until the whirligig of time brought its revenges, and Dr. Black
was at last turned out of Widdin.
I had met Dr. Black before in Sofia, and it was with intense disgust
that I came across him again in Widdin. He was a middle-aged man, who
might possibly have been of some good in his profession when he was
younger; but he had spoiled his life and ruined his chances with drink.
He was the most awful drunkard I have ever met. In fact, he was never
sober, and in his habits he was perfectly filthy. He used to wear a
long, dirty overcoat, in one pocket of which he invariably carried a
bottle of the commonest and vilest rum, while in the other he carried a
loaded revolver, with which he would blaze away at any one who gave him
the slightest provocation. On one occasion I saw him stagger into a
Bulgarian boot shop and yell out in English to the proprietor, "Give me
a pair of boots, you ----!" Of course the Bulgarian could not
understand, so Black whipped out his revolver and blazed a few
cartridges away among the stock in trade before the trembling cobbler
could pacify him. He was perpetually firing off this weapon, and he was
such a terror to the unfortunate Bulgarians in whose houses he was
quartered, that he was never allowed to stay more than a week at a time
in one place. At last he became such a nuisance that old Hassib Bey, a
most courtly old Turkish gentleman, who was the head of the hospital,
sent for me, and asked me what on earth they were to do with this
compatriot of mine. I suggested that he should be quartered in the
military hospital, where he would have fewer opportunities of being a
nuisance, and my suggestion, which was adopted, speedily brought matters
to a crisis.
One night, when Dr. Black had retired to rest in the military hospital,
drunk as usual, a number of mischievous jarra bashis, dispensers and
dressers, began to tease him by hammering at his door and making
offensive remarks to him. He yelled out to them in English that if they
did not desist he would bring out the inevitable revolver; but they
could not tear themselves away from the fascinating sport of baiting a
boozer; and suddenly, as they were gathered outside in the passage
whistling, cat-calling, and shouting out uncomplimentary epithets, the
door opened, and Dr. Black appeared in his night-shirt, revolver in
hand. There was a frightened stampede down the passage, and as they fled
Black emptied the revolver at random at his assailants. A piercing
shriek told that one of the bullets at any rate had gone home, and
presently the whole hospital was in an uproar, as a little Italian
dresser staggered into the house surgeon's room declaring that he was
murdered. A hasty examination, however, showed that the bullet had
entered a portion of the anatomy where it could do little harm, namely,
the fleshy tissues adjacent to the base of the spine, and no attempt was
made to extract it. Probably that little Italian dresser carries the
bullet about in his back still as a souvenir of campaigning days in
Widdin.
When Dr. Black put his head out of his door next morning, he found a
couple of soldiers stationed there waiting to arrest him; so he
retreated inside the room again, and devised a plan of escape. The
window of the room looked out over a courtyard about fourteen feet
below; and as there was a thick layer of snow in the yard, Black decided
to escape that way. He knotted his blanket into a rope, and dropped
into the yard--also into the arms of the sentry stationed below. He was
brought before old Hassib Bey, who sent for me; and I sent for Jack the
mill engineer to act as interpreter. Finally Hassib Bey decided that it
would be no good to put Black in gaol, and to my intense delight he
resolved to send him away out of Widdin altogether. He treated my
discreditable compatriot most generously, for he had him placed on board
one of the large river steamers which plied once a week from Widdin up
as far as Belgrade, and sent him away scot-free after his escapade, and
with _£_10 in his pocket to carry him out of Turkish territory as soon
as possible. I thanked Hassib Bey for his forbearance, and to my great
joy I never saw Dr. Black again.
When my regiment was sent out of the fortress to the encampment, I was
detailed for hospital duty, and took up my quarters at a small
fifth-rate Bulgarian hotel on the banks of the Danube. The principal
diversion was to go on board the big passenger steamers, and hear the
news of the outside world and what people were saying of us in England.
I met a charming Frenchman on board one of them, a highly cultured and
agreeable military man, named Captain Bouchon, who was going down to
Rustchuk. However, I persuaded him to stop with me for a week, and his
society gave me the greatest pleasure.
The first war correspondent whom I met in Widdin was a man named
Fitzgerald, who came out as the representative of the London _Standard_.
He was a fine fellow, and had seen service in the British army. It was
the month of April when he arrived, among the first of the petrels who
presaged the coming storm; and about the same time there came two
battalions of Egyptian troops under Prince Hassan, the Khedive's second
son. These made a strong reinforcement for the large body of troops
already in Widdin. One day Fitzgerald came to me, and said that he was
going away up the river for a few days. He asked me to look after his
correspondence, and to send any items of news worth telegraphing to the
_Standard_. He took the boat, and went away leaving me in charge, and I
have never seen him from that day to this. I took up his work, and sent
several messages during the campaign which followed to the _Standard_,
spending a considerable sum of money out of my own pocket upon
telegraphing. Afterwards, when I got down to Constantinople and
explained matters to Mr. Frank Ives Scudamore, a well known personality
there, he refunded me the money.
When the Egyptian troops arrived, they naturally occasioned a good deal
of stir, and they were keenly criticised by their Turkish allies. For
physique and fighting qualities there could be no comparison between the
two bodies of men, the Turks easily carrying off the palm. Still, the
Egyptians were by no means to be despised. Their officers were highly
trained and intelligent, and the equipment of the troops was new and
good, far superior, in fact, to that of the Turkish soldiers. Moreover,
the Egyptian force brought with it an excellent band of brass and
strings, which proved a perfect god-send, as we had no band among all
the Turkish forces, and the bugles were not particularly agreeable to
listen to. The Egyptians afterwards behaved well in action, and many of
them fought at the defence of Widdin under Izzet Pasha, who successfully
beat off the repeated assaults of the Roumanians and the Servians, and
preserved the town intact.
Among the many interesting men who were gathered together in Widdin
during this period of waiting and watching was a singularly attractive
and talented Armenian named Zara Dilber Effendi, who was a resident of
the place and the chairman of the local chamber of commerce. He had been
brought up in Germany, and spoke every European language with equal
fluency. I became very intimate with him, and was a frequent visitor at
his house, finding him thoroughly well informed and an intimate friend
of Osman Pasha. In fact, Zara Dilber Effendi and Osman Effendi, a
Turkish doctor who had been educated in Paris, and who was the best
surgeon that I came in contact with during the whole of the campaign,
were my constant companions during my stay in Widdin, as my medical
_confrères_, with the exception of two or three, had few tastes and no
ideas in common with me. Dr. Kronberg and Dr. Busch, however, both
capital fellows and married men, were sociable enough; and I have always
attributed to the promptings of Madame Kronberg and Madame Busch a
brilliant social idea which was developed by Osman Pasha immediately
after the declaration of peace with Servia.
Civil and military society in the town was convulsed one day by the
announcement that Osman Pasha intended to give a grand ball to celebrate
the cessation of hostilities and in aid of the funds of the military
hospitals. All the arrangements for the ball were left in the hands of
Zara Dilber Effendi on the strength of that gentleman's intimate
knowledge of the highest circles of European society; and as it was
generally understood that Osman Pasha's invitations would be issued on
the recommendation of Zara Dilber Effendi, the feminine world of Widdin
was much fluttered. It leaked out pretty early that no one below the
rank of a field officer would be invited, and we were kept on the tiptoe
of excitement until the eventful night arrived. A fine Bulgarian house
with a large room was taken for the night, and for a whole week
beforehand Zara Dilber Effendi was missing. People said that he made
several mysterious visits into Roumanian territory, bringing back each
time a small army of Roumanian servants and many suggestive cases and
packages. It was rumoured that there were to be chairs at the ball, and
knives and forks. People whispered of a regular set supper, with
European dishes and champagne. But Zara Dilber Effendi kept his own
counsel, and went on his way, wrapped in impenetrable Oriental secrecy.
As for myself, having received my invitation, I bought a brand new
uniform, wondering a good deal where the ladies were to come from, and
how the Turks would enjoy a ball carried out according to Western ideas.
My invitation bore Osman Pasha's signature, and I sent this interesting
souvenir out to my father in Australia afterwards.
When I entered the ballroom on that memorable night, I was fairly
staggered. The room had been beautifully decorated by the Turkish and
Egyptian troops with festoons of flags and picturesque devices composed
of swords, rifles, revolvers, and arms of every kind. Upon a raised
daïs, at the end of the room, stood Osman Pasha in full-dress uniform,
supported on either side by Madames Kronberg and Busch beautifully
dressed. He received the guests with courtly politeness, shaking hands
with each as they came up; and as the long line of brilliant uniforms
sparkling with decorations, and of beautiful women dressed with
exquisite taste, filed past in front of him, it was difficult to realize
that one was not assisting at some great State ball in London or Paris,
but at a function in a small Bulgarian frontier town lying almost under
the guns of an avowedly hostile force.
A wide divan ran round the room, and on this the Turkish officers sat
cross-legged, observing the proceedings with grave interest. The Turk is
quite used to paying people to dance for his amusement, but he would
never dream of dancing himself. I watched one dignified old Turkish
colonel striving hard to maintain that decorous impassivity which a few
of the ballroom exquisites of the Western world seem to have borrowed
from the East; but every now and then, as some audacious young Giaour
like myself glided past clasping a vision of beauty all silk and lace
and pearls and flowers in his arms, I saw the old Turk's eyes open wider
and wider in spite of himself. Zara Dilber Effendi had performed his
share of the work well, for he had collected about sixty of the most
cultured, refined, and beautiful women that I have ever seen together in
a ballroom. There were a few Bulgarian ladies of the highest class; but
the majority were Spanish Jewesses from seventeen to twenty years of
age, with the rich colouring, the dark hair, and liquid eyes of all
their race, or stately Roumanians, statuesque in type. There was a
liberal sprinkling of Levantines, Italians, Greeks, and possibly two or
three Servians; but though they differed in race, they were alike in one
particular, for all were beautiful and refined. These ladies, I must
admit, were little short of a revelation to me, for I had only seen a
few thickly veiled Turkish women in the town hitherto; but Zara Dilber
Effendi was evidently a person of some note in Widdin, and the
invitations had been sent out to none but the ladies of the most
aristocratic families in the country.
I was the only Englishman present at that remarkable ball; and I suppose
it is not often that an Englishman finds himself assisting at an
entertainment of such half-barbaric splendour, and held under such
dramatic circumstances. Every man in the room knew that the commencement
of a fierce campaign was only a question of weeks, perhaps days; and we
snatched the enjoyment of the hour as gaily as did the guests at the
Duchess of Richmond's famous ball in Brussels on the eve of Waterloo.
Indeed the parallel between Osman Pasha's ball and the historic ball at
Brussels which Byron has celebrated was a very real one. In both cases
the dancers were dancing on the edge of a battle-field. In both cases
the existence of an empire hung on the issue of the coming struggle. In
both cases many of the brave men gathered there amid the music and the
flowers and under the flags and lamplight were soon to be lying out upon
the blood-soaked plain, cold and deserted--the _débris_ of a dreadful
festival. We had no "Brunswick's fated chieftain" there that evening;
but the courtly old Turkish colonel who sat up cross-legged on the
divan, and watched me so intensely while I danced, makes in my eyes a
far more vivid picture. I saw him afterwards, again in a sitting
posture, outside a redoubt near Radishevo, when the tide of battle had
ebbed back, only to flow again in fiercer volume. His head had fallen
forward on his knees, and when I touched him I found that he was
dead--cut almost in two by a Russian shell.
However, the shadow of the impending war only served to throw the
brightness of the ball into stronger relief, and I gave myself up to the
business of pleasure with all the ardour of two and twenty. There were
only about a dozen of us, mostly members of the medical staff, who were
dancing men, and we were consequently kept busy. I generally divided one
waltz into three parts; and as the other men followed my lead, we were
able to give all the ladies a turn occasionally, and there were no
wall-flowers. A big ambulance tent had been pitched in the garden to
serve as a supper-room, and we paid for the refreshments as we had them,
the money going to the hospital fund. I used to take my partners out
after every dance, and the champagne corks were flying almost as thickly
as the bullets later on. I recollect that I spent just £9 on suppers and
refreshments during the evening. A man is not inclined to be economical
when he knows that before long he may have no mouth to put champagne in
and no head left to get dizzy with it. Zara Dilber Effendi had got in a
splendid supper from Crajova in Roumania, where he also obtained the
favours for the cotillion which was danced in perfect style under the
direction of the experienced Madame Kronberg and Madame Busch.
Among my partners that night were three very charming sisters, who had
been born in Roumania, but whose father was a Greek. They spoke German
very well, and consequently I danced more often with them than with the
other ladies, with whom I found greater difficulty in conversing. The
sisters were good enough to take quite an interest in me, and they
invited me to call at their house during the week, following up their
verbal invitation with a note next day. At the end of a sheet of dainty
little handwriting on scented notepaper was a remarkable postscript (I
find that ladies generally put the most important part of their
communications into the postscript) setting forth that their grandfather
had a rooted aversion to all Englishmen, myself in particular, and that
he would certainly shoot me if he found me calling on his
granddaughters. In campaigning times one is not discouraged by trifles,
and soon after the ball I called upon my three charming partners, who
entertained me with coffee and music at their beautiful home. Suddenly a
step was heard on the stairs, and the eldest of the sisters with a
blanched face whispered that it was their grandfather, and bade me fly
at once. I dropped from the window into the lane below, and as I did so
the irascible old Greek opened fire on me with a blunderbuss.
Fortunately for me his anger had affected his aim, and I escaped
unscathed. A few years more or less make little difference in national
proclivities. Old Lambro, the Greek pirate who attacked Don Juan, is
said by Byron to have been "the mildest-mannered man that ever scuttled
ship or cut a throat"; and the grandfather of my fair partners seemed to
have inherited something of the same temperament with a certain
difference.
In April of the year 1877 we began to realize fully that war was
imminent, and the Turkish commanders set to work to prepare their troops
for a stern and fierce fight. Every day almost the small, flat-bottomed,
single-masted boats that plied up and down the Danube kept arriving with
cargoes of flour and maize for victualling the town, and also with
reinforcements of fresh troops, who were packed on board as close as
eggs in a basket. Most of the reinforcements were quartered in the large
camp, which was pitched about two miles and a half out of Widdin towards
the Servian border; and when all had arrived, we found about thirty-five
battalions of infantry there, with several batteries of artillery and
squadrons of cavalry, the whole making up an imposing _corps d'armée_.
As the camp increased in proportions, it was found that more surgeons
were required, and I received orders to give up my hospital work in the
fortress and report myself for duty at the camp. I was appointed one of
the ambulance surgeons, and rejoined my old regiment, the Kyrchehir,
which had been sent out from the fortress. The camp was situated on a
long, green slope of rising ground, several miles in length; and here
the long lines of bell tents were pitched, among them the tent of my old
comrade the paymaster, with whom I once more foregathered.
About half a mile from the camp was a large marsh or swamp, where great
white arum lilies grew, with jonquils, narcissus, and the different
kinds of iris, in magnificent profusion, as well as millions of the tiny
white snowflakes. I had a trench dug outside my tent, and once a week
our two servants, the paymaster's and my own, went down to the swamp,
and brought back barrowfuls of flowers, which I planted in the trench.
Here too the orderlies made me a great seat of turf, and every morning
from six o'clock till half-past nine I sat there among the flowers to
receive my patients, who used to come up from the different battalions
to have their various ailments treated. Epsom salts formed a sovereign
remedy for most of the trifling sicknesses, and my method of giving the
physic was extremely primitive. As I sat on my throne of turf, I had a
sackful of Epsom salts beside me, together with a bucket of water and a
pannikin; so that when the patient had swallowed a handful of the salts
I presented him with a pannikin of water, and he washed the nauseous
mouthful down. The men never complained, and accepted these simple
ministrations with exemplary _sang-froid_.
As a rule the Turks have excellent teeth; but in such a large assemblage
of men there were of course many exceptions, and I had a good deal of
tooth-drawing to do. Some of those Mussulman molars were dreadfully
obstinate, and resisted every effort of the Giaour with fanatical
determination. One man with a huge aching grinder in his upper jaw came
to me three mornings in succession, for with the simple appliances at my
disposal I was unable to extract it in one sitting. At last I made him
sit down on the ground in front of me, and, grasping the forceps in my
right hand, I braced my feet against the pit of his stomach, and put
forth every effort. There was a crunching, grinding noise, a sound of
breaking and rending, then a "plop" as when a recalcitrant cork comes
out of a bottle of pale ale, and I was lying on my back in the trench
among the arum lilies, with the forceps and the molar in my hand at
last. As for the Turk, he spat the blood out of his mouth, piously
remarked that Allah was very good, and went back to his company.
If any of my patients were seriously ill, or showed symptoms of malarial
fever or dysentery, which was very prevalent, I had them placed in
arabas, and sent back to the hospital in Widdin. Then, when my work of
inspection was over, which was usually the case by about nine o'clock,
the rest of the day was my own, and I spent it in improving my knowledge
of Turkish and consuming large quantities of coffee and cigarettes with
my brother officers. Every day the camp was in a state of great
activity, with never ending drills and ceaseless inspections by the
commandants, who spared no pains to see that everything was ready before
the expected outbreak. The discipline throughout the camp was admirable,
and the men were in excellent good humour.
Nearly every day I used to ride into Widdin to hear the news, and return
to camp in the evening, generally reaching it before sunset. Only life
in a Turkish camp can enable one to realize how deeply the Turks feel
their religion, and how diligent they are in the practice of their
devotions. No dour old Covenanter with a verse of a psalm on his lips
ever flung himself with more dogged courage on the pikes of Graham of
Claverhouse, than did those Turks charge down upon the Russian steel a
few months later, with the cry of "Allah" upon their lips and the
assurance of paradise in their heroic hearts. Perhaps the best
qualification for a good soldier is to be a fanatic--as the next best is
to be an infidel. After "Praise-God-Barebones," the most striking figure
in a _mêlée_ is Sergeant Bothwell, who died "believing nothing, hoping
nothing, fearing nothing." Every evening at the camp near Widdin the men
were formed up in long, double lines just before sundown; and as the sun
sank below the horizon the cry of "La ilaha illallah Mohammed Rasul
Allah" started at one end of the lines, and was taken up by man after
man, dying away in the distance _diminuendo_, and travelling back again
_crescendo_, until it reached the starting-point in a mighty shout of
religious fervour. The effect resembled nothing so much as a _feu de
joie_ of musketry, delivered with the precision and clearness attainable
only by the daily practice of a lifetime.
When the men were dismissed from this mighty church parade, they would
scamper off like so many schoolboys, and indulge in all kinds of games
with the keen joy of living, and the unblunted faculties of sensation
which are seldom found in the alcohol-drinkers of other nations.
Wrestling was a favourite pastime with the men; and it was no uncommon
sight to see five thousand spectators gathered in a huge ring, in the
centre of which picked competitors, stripped to the waist, engaged each
other in a catch-as-catch-can struggle. Hassan Labri Pasha, one of the
principal officers in the camp, was an enthusiast in the sport of
wrestling, and used to get up great tournaments in which the men
wrestled each other for prizes of tobacco and other inexpensive little
luxuries.
After three weeks of this life in camp, I was ordered back to Widdin
again, and took up my quarters at the little Bulgarian hotel on the bank
of the Danube where I had been before. Things were looking very serious
at this time; and though war was not actually declared by Russia until
April 24, 1877, still it was quite certain long before this date that
Roumania would espouse the Russian cause; and when the Russian army
which had been quartered on the Pruth entered Roumanian territory, the
Government of the Porte communicated with the Roumanian Government,
intimating that they construed the act of Roumania in allowing Russian
troops to cross her frontier as an act of hostility towards Turkey.
About a week before the declaration of war, two Roumanian officers came
down the Danube from Kalafat, and landed at my hotel, where they were
stopped and told that they could go no farther. One of them was a
Captain Giorgione, whom I met and asked to dine with me before he went
back to Kalafat. He accepted my invitation, and after a long and
pleasant conversation about the general situation and the prospects of
war he gave me a cordial invitation to go across the river to Kalafat
and pay him a visit in his quarters. As hostilities were expected to
break out at any moment, no one was allowed to cross the Danube from our
side without a special permit from Osman Pasha; and as there was no
probability that he would grant me the necessary permission, I
determined to make the trip on my own account. Possibly this was an
indiscretion on my part; but indiscretions are apt to be the most
enjoyable things in life, and I was getting tired of the humdrum routine
of the camp. I had my English passport with me, which ensured my safe
conduct until the actual declaration of hostilities; and armed with this
precious document, I got one of my colleagues to act as _locum tenens_
during my temporary absence from my practice, and hired a boat and a
crew of boatmen to take me over the river, which at this point is nearly
a mile wide, and flows with a current of extraordinary velocity. I
dressed myself in a suit of mufti, but had no hat, and must have
presented rather a piebald appearance with a Turkish fez surmounting a
suit of English tweed. The Roumanian customs officers stared at me
pretty hard, but they franked me through on my English passport, and I
went into Kalafat, leaving my boatmen on the Roumanian side of the river
to bring me back the same night.
I strolled into a café in Kalafat, which was then a town of about three
thousand people; and the experience of living again in the European
fashion, eating at a table, sitting on a chair, and seeing men in
ordinary coats and trousers and hard black hats, struck me with all the
charm of the unexpected. I felt the sensation of a Robinson Crusoe
transplanted suddenly from his desert island and set down in the Hôtel
Bristol.
Almost the first person that I met after I had finished breakfast was my
friend Captain Giorgione, who expressed his delight at seeing me, and
took me off at once to introduce me to the general commanding the
division, after which I went to the captain's quarters in a house in the
town. Most of the ordinary residents of Kalafat had already left the
place, fearing that the bombardment of the town by the Widdin batteries
was imminent, and the houses were filled with Roumanian officers and
men. I lunched with Captain Giorgione and his brother officers, many of
whom spoke German, and evinced a capacity for hearing news which was
hardly disinterested. However, they were excessively polite, and in the
afternoon we strolled on the promenade, and listened to the strains of
an excellent military band.
As evening drew in my conscience began to trouble me, and I had the
qualms of a schoolboy who has broken bounds, thinking of Osman Pasha and
the remarks that he would be likely to make if he found out where I was.
However, my newly found friends would not hear of my leaving them that
day, and insisted upon my staying to dinner, at which I was given the
seat of honour next to the general. What a capital dinner that was!
Perhaps I enjoyed it all the more from the little circumstance that
Osman Pasha might have me shot as soon as I got back. The Roumanian band
played English airs in my honour, and the officers kept my glass always
filled with Pommery. By the time we had reached the walnuts I found
myself developing a surprising talent for mendacity, and the more
questions that my polite hosts asked me the more astonishing grew my
answering taradiddles. Of course they tried to pump me as to the number
and disposition of the Turkish troops, and of course, guileless youth
that I was, I lied wholesale. Even when I had put down the troops in
Widdin at a hundred thousand men and expanded the artillery to four
hundred guns, I was almost as astonished at my own moderation as they
were at the magnitude of the force which Turkey had already mobilized in
Widdin. One of the Roumanian surgeons who was at that dinner was green
with envy when he discovered that I ranked as a major in the Turkish
army while he was graded as a lieutenant. We had a very merry night of
it, and I hope that all the fibs I told will not be remembered against
me. Then at daybreak I made my way to the river, found my boatmen, and
was back by six o'clock at my hotel with no one a bit the wiser for my
escapade.
I met some interesting men at Widdin just before the war, notably a
splendid young fellow named Frank Power--who, by the way, was a nephew
of the late Sir Peter Lalor, once speaker of the Victorian Legislative
Assembly, and long ago a picturesque figure in the fight at the Eureka
Stockade near Ballarat. Frank Power was a young Irishman, who had joined
the Austrian military service, but afterwards was sent up to Widdin to
act as war correspondent for the London _Daily Telegraph_. He lived with
me; and I found him a most delightful companion, full of romance, and
generously endowed with the love of adventure, and the enthusiasm, fire,
and wit which are characteristic of the best Irishmen. He was a splendid
rider and keen all-round sportsman, had read widely if not deeply, and
with the mercurial temperament of the adventurer he combined more than a
trace of the artist nature. He had the happiest knack of producing
charming sketches in black-and-white or water-colours of bits of
picturesque Bulgarian peasant life, groups of Turkish soldiery, or
glimpses of the iris-spangled country that was soon to be coloured in a
deeper dye. Poor Power was almost heart-broken when they sent up
Nicholas Leader from Constantinople to replace him as the correspondent
of the _Daily Telegraph_. He returned to Vienna, and thence to Dublin,
where he resumed his old journalistic life for a time. But to such a man
as Power a life of comparative inactivity was impossible; and when the
troubles broke out in the Soudan, he soon found his way over there, and
eventually reached Khartoum, where General Gordon appointed him British
consul. Shortly before the fall of Khartoum, Gordon sent him down the
Nile in a steamer with Colonel Stewart and an Arab escort to take
despatches to the force advancing to the relief of Khartoum. However,
before the steamer had got far the smouldering fires of disaffection
among the natives on board broke into flame, and they succeeded in
running the steamer aground. Lured by the friendly demonstrations of the
Arabs on the shore, Colonel Stewart and Frank Power went ashore with
their escort while efforts were being made to lighten the steamer and
float her off again. The full details of what followed will never be
known with certainty; but news of a massacre reached the British column
eventually, and the bearers of the despatches were among the missing.
Those who are familiar with Dervish methods may picture for themselves
the sudden rush of bloodthirsty fanatics, the desperate hand-to-hand
combat, and the deaths of Colonel Stewart and of my gallant young
comrade when they fell pierced by Arab lances on the scorched and
dreadful desert that lies along the banks of the Nile from Wady Halfa to
Khartoum.
Nicholas Leader, who was sent up from Constantinople to take Frank
Power's place in Widdin, had already had an adventurous career, and had
smelt powder in many lands. After seeing service with the British troops
in Canada, he resigned on the declaration of war by France upon Germany
in 1870, and took service with the French arms. He was attached to the
ill fated army of Bourbaki, and was interned with other prisoners of war
in Switzerland. Afterwards, when the Carlist insurrection broke out in
Spain, he joined the standard of Don Carlos, and took part in the fierce
guerilla warfare which the Carlists waged against the Spanish
Government. The war correspondents of those fighting days in Spain were
as dare-devil a crew as ever lived; and Leader described to me with many
a laugh the circumstances under which he first met Edmund O'Donovan,
another Irishman, as gay and reckless as himself. Leader was in command
of a small fort in the north of Spain during the height of the
insurrection, when one day he espied a strange figure clad in a long,
dilapidated overcoat approaching the walls. The Spanish sentries yelled
to the suspicious visitor to halt; and as he took no notice of them,
they fired on him, and the bullets kicked up the dust all round the
stranger. The only result, however, was that he increased his pace, and
came on at the double until he reached the walls off the fort amid a
rain of bullets. "Cease firing, ye blackguards!" he shouted in the
simple dialect of Southern Cork. "I'm Edmund O'Donovan, and how the
blazes can I get in unless you open the gate!" Leader was summoned to
interpret the strange language of the foreigner, and he let him in. Thus
it was that Edmund O'Donovan, who was attached to the Government troops,
walked alone into the enemy's fortress.
Nicholas Leader, after all his wanderings, found a grave in Turkish
soil; for after a few weeks in Widdin, he joined the army of Suleiman
Pasha at the Shipka Pass, and died there of fever.
About the time that Leader left Widdin the town was in a state of
suppressed excitement, for every one knew that the declaration of war
was imminent, and the slightest incident was sufficient to cause a
demonstration.
Once I went with two others by boat to a small island on the Danube,
where there were numbers of wild duck. We got to work upon them in
great style, and soon had a full bag; but when we were in the middle of
the fun, half a squadron of Roumanian cavalry came galloping down to the
opposite bank to see what the firing was about. It would not have taken
much at that moment to provoke a conflict.