FROM WIDDIN TO PLEVNA.
Declaration of War with Russia--An Ominous Silence--The First
Shot--An Interrupted Luncheon--Under Fire at last--Disappearance
of the Inhabitants--A Move Underground--Running the
Gauntlet--Blowing up a Gunboat--Our Hospital shelled--Killing
the Wounded--Operations under Fire--A Terrible Coincidence--How
a Turkish Mother died--Some Marvellous Escapes--Circassians on a
Raiding Expedition--Cattle-lifting on a Grand Scale--A Long
Bombardment--Insignificant Losses--Osman Pasha in the
Batteries--Rewarding a Good Shot--Circassian Peccadilloes--Osman
Pasha's Plans--He is baffled by Red Tape--A Fatal
Delay--Good-bye to the Kyrchehir--Marching out from Widdin--A
Picturesque Bivouac--False Alarms--A Forced March--How the
Russian Army was placed--Fall of Nicopolis--A Race to the
Balkans--Sleeping in a Tomb--Pushing on to Plevna--A Terrible
Night--Lost in the Bush--Many Cases of Sunstroke--Goose for
Dinner--I flesh my Maiden Sword--A Record March--We cross the
Vid at last--Arrival at Plevna.
Although we knew that war was coming, still the actual declaration fell
with the suddenness of a bombshell. On April 25 I had done my hospital
work, and was walking down the street, when I noticed a great commotion,
and saw groups of people talking excitedly together and orderlies
galloping about in all directions. Presently Tallat Bey, a nephew of
Osman Pasha and one of the headquarters staff, came cantering down the
street. I stopped him to ask what all the excitement was about, and he
told me that war had been declared by Russia on the previous day. A
regular hum pervaded Widdin all that day, as the people repeated to one
another the ominous news that Turkey would have to fight once more for
her very life. We had been arranging all our ambulance work beforehand;
and old Hassib Bey undertook, in compliance with my request, that I
should be attached to the first troops that took the field.
But strangely enough, though war had been declared, and though we could
see the Roumanian troops busily engaged in completing the fortification
of Kalafat, several days went by without a shot being fired from either
the Widdin or Kalafat batteries, and we were left looking at each other
in grim expectation and suspense.
I remember well the first time that I ever heard a shot fired in war. I
was sitting in my little Bulgarian hotel on the bank of the river with
Colonel Stracey, who afterwards commanded the Scots Guards. He had been
inspecting the Russian army at Kischeneff, and between the time that he
left them and his arrival at Widdin war was declared. When he came to
the hotel where I was staying, I was delighted to see him, since he was
the first Englishman, apart from the war correspondents, the notorious
Dr. Black, and my friend Jack, the engineer of the Government mill, whom
I had met in the town. We were having lunch together, when we heard a
loud "boom" apparently close at hand, followed almost immediately by the
distant roar of a heavy gun; and before we could realize what was
happening, a shell struck the end of the hotel and crashed through two
rooms, bringing bricks and plaster down in all directions with clouds of
dust. The bombardment from Kalafat had begun at last, provoked by a shot
from a Turkish gunboat on the river; and within a few minutes the shells
were shrieking over us, the women were screaming, and valorous old Turks
were running out of their houses armed with rusty flintlocks or anything
in the shape of a weapon that they could get hold of. Now and then a
shell came crashing into the hotel; and as it stood in an isolated
position on the bank of the river affording a capital target for the
enemy's fire, it soon became too hot a corner to remain in. So it was
shut up, and Stracey and I, both of whom were then under fire for the
first time, moved farther back into the town, where I had secured a
house for myself on the previous day in anticipation of some such
trouble. The firing went on for about three hours, and all the women in
the town were of course terribly frightened, and were rushing about
shrieking and weeping, not knowing what to do. It was curious to see
the behaviour of the different nationalities in the hour of danger. Most
of the Spanish women gathered together under the walls of the fortress,
where they erected a roof of mats with the fortress wall as a support.
Here they were perfectly safe from the Roumanian shells, which either
struck the wall on the outside or else passed over it, dropping much
farther in the natural course of their trajectory. The Turkish women
huddled together in two large alcoves in the wall of the archway leading
into the fortress, refuges which were almost like dungeons hewn out of
the solid masonry, and which were absolutely safe from projectiles. When
the firing was over I went to the hospital, and found that four or five
people had been wounded. A Spanish boy had lost his arm, and a Turkish
woman had been killed by a shell bursting in her room. One unpleasant
result of the bombardment was that Stracey and I had nothing to eat all
night, as all the butchers and bakers in Widdin were down in their
cellars, and no amount of money would induce them to come out. They put
their heads above-ground next day, cautiously emerging like rabbits from
their burrows, but always went back at night.
That evening when I was dozing off to sleep there was a terrific crash
of artillery, the vibration of the firing breaking every window of the
house; and as it was quickly replied to by the batteries of Kalafat, I
jumped into my clothes, and rushed out to find the cause of this sudden
eruption of hostilities. It was plain enough. A Roumanian vessel loaded
with troops was running the gauntlet down the river in front of Widdin;
and as she steamed past in the night on the far side of the long island
opposite the town, the smoke of her funnel betrayed her, and the
earth-shaking roar of the forty heavy siege-guns in the Widdin batteries
told that the attempt was discovered. Only the vessel's smoke-stack
could be seen over the island by the sparks flying upwards in the dark,
and through this phantasmal target the big shells hissed and shrieked in
vain, bursting in mid-air and burying the fragments in Roumanian soil
across the river. The batteries at Kalafat took up the tale at once, and
for a few hours we had a lively time of it. It was the adverse fortune
of war for the Roumanian vessel; for after she had dodged the storm of
shells from our siege-guns and got safely out of range, she was blown up
by a Turkish monitor lower down the river, and every soul on board
perished.
On June 1 I was detailed for duty in the main hospital, which was just
then receiving an unusual amount of attention from the Kalafat
batteries. Unfortunately for the wounded, this hospital was situated a
few hundred yards from one of our batteries; and while the Roumanians
were finding the range for this battery, a good number of their shells,
which had too much elevation, dropped on the hospital and on the
surrounding houses. I was sitting in my room in the hospital one day
when a shell burst with an awful crash in the middle of a ward full of
sick and wounded men. It struck the lattice of a window, and at once
exploded. When I rushed in, the ward was full of dust and smoke, out of
which came terrible screams and cries. Four of the patients had been
killed on the spot, and seven others had been wounded. One man, who was
delirious from malarial fever, had his side ripped open from hip to
shoulder by a fragment of the shell. He was still alive, but wildly
delirious. Another had his arm fearfully mangled, and I took it off at
the shoulder there and then. The only nurses that I had were the men
supplied by the different regiments for hospital duty. One of them, a
stalwart private from my old regiment the Kyrchehir, was among the four
who were killed by the shell. A great outcry was made outside Turkey
about the Roumanians violating the Convention of Geneva and the
principles of humanity by firing on the hospital; but my own opinion is
that they could not avoid hitting it in the position which it occupied,
and that it should never have been placed there at all.
One strange and grim incident happened during the bombardment, and, to
the Turkish mind especially, seemed to illustrate the doctrine of
fatalism with appalling vividness. In the height of the firing, when the
shells from the heavy siege-guns at Kalafat were dropping incessantly
within the fortress, one of them, as it exploded, tore a great hole in
the ground large enough to contain a horse. A Turkish woman, who was
cowering with three children under the shadow of the wall, determined to
take refuge in the newly made hole, reckoning by the doctrine of chances
that it was about the least likely spot to be again disturbed. Hardly
had she crept in and drawn the three children after her than another
shell, leaving the cannon's mouth at Kalafat nearly two miles away,
dropped into the very same hole and blew the four hapless creatures who
were hiding there to atoms. On another occasion I saw a shell strike the
angle of a house, tear two walls down, and reduce one half of a room to
ruins. In the other half of the room were a Turkish woman and two
children, all of whom escaped unhurt.
As soon as the war had fairly started and the troops had smelt blood,
the Circassians began to display the wild courage and the love of
pillage inbred in them in the mountain fastnesses, which they only left
to become the troublesome members of the Turkish Empire that they
generally turned out to be. Of their bravery and resourcefulness there
could be no question; but their rapacity was inextinguishable, and no
one who did not wear a uniform was safe from them. Soon after the
commencement of the bombardment, a party of about fifty Circassians
organized a private raid on their own account into Roumanian territory,
and carried it out with extraordinary dash and brilliancy. One dark
night, when the flash of the guns at Kalafat and the answering stream of
fire from the Widdin batteries illuminated the blackness with fitful
gleams of light, the Circassians crossed the Danube in boats, towing
their horses behind them by ropes. They had made ingenious lifebelts for
the horses out of the inflated pigskins which were used as wine casks in
the country, and thus equipped each hardy little animal swam easily
behind the boats and crossed the river without mishap. When the
Circassians reached the opposite bank, they removed these novel
lifebelts, mounted their horses, shot a couple of Roumanian sentries,
and galloped off in the darkness with the instinctive knowledge of the
whereabouts of plunder that is born in the blood of hereditary
cattle-stealers. Before long they had rounded up a goodly mob of the
small black cattle of Roumania, and had them headed for the Danube. The
Circassian is an expert stockman, and for the party to bring four
hundred cattle down to the river was an easy task while the Kalafat
gunners, blissfully unconscious of the _coup_ that was being executed
under their noses, kept pounding away at the Widdin fortifications. To
bring a mob of cattle across a river nearly a mile wide and with a
current of great velocity would need some skill in daylight; but to
bring them across in pitch darkness, and under the guns of the enemy,
was a feat which few but Circassians could accomplish. Those black
cattle, however, that are found along the banks of the Danube are almost
amphibious, and they take to the water like dogs. As soon as the front
files had taken to the water the others followed them readily, and the
Circassians followed in the boats, rounding up the stragglers with their
whips, and towing their horses, re-equipped with the pigskin lifebelts,
behind them. So in darkness and rain, across the hurrying flood of the
Danube they brought four hundred head of Roumanian cattle, and left
behind them two dead sentries lying with their faces turned towards the
sky.
All that May the bombardment of Widdin was continued at irregular
intervals; but there were occasionally several successive days on which
there was no firing, and at these times life in Widdin was inconceivably
dull. While these voluntary armistices were in progress, we could see
the Roumanians hard at work constructing new batteries, which made the
Turkish troops in Widdin chafe at their enforced inactivity.
Owing to the conditions under which the bombardment took place and the
strong fortifications of Widdin, the Turkish loss in killed and wounded
was remarkably small; for on June 27, after several weeks of
intermittent firing, we only had about twelve killed and twenty wounded.
The Roumanian gunners seemed to have great difficulty in finding the
range; for on June 26, when I was sitting on the verandah of the
Austro-Hungarian Consulate, all the Roumanian batteries, six in number,
opened fire apparently on the consulate, though it was said afterwards
that their target was a Turkish monitor lying a little farther down the
river. The first two shells flew over the consulate, the next exploded
in the adjoining house, and the next fell into the river about twenty
yards from where we were sitting. Despairing, it seemed, of hitting the
consulate, my quondam entertainers, with whom I had dined not so long
before, directed their efforts upon the fortress, but without doing any
serious damage. On the following morning they commenced operations at
seven o'clock, and from that hour until three o'clock in the afternoon
the screaming of the shells was incessant. This was decidedly the
biggest day that we had had, and the Turkish batteries responded very
vigorously. Osman Pasha took the keenest interest in the artillery
practice, and remained in one of our largest batteries for the greater
part of the day. While there he told one of the gunners to direct his
fire upon a certain battery. The gunner fired three times, and on each
occasion he dropped the shell right into the Roumanian battery. Osman
Pasha was so delighted that he embraced the man, and made him a sergeant
on the spot.
In spite of the stunning noise of the projectiles, many of which weighed
sixty pounds apiece, one soon got used to the cannonading; and while the
bombardment was going on, I often sat on the battlements with my legs
dangling over the side, and watched the Roumanian gunners at their work.
Our friends the Circassians, whenever they found time hanging heavy on
their hands, were in the habit of relieving the monotony by private
forays across the river, during which they made things very unpleasant
for the Roumanian outposts. Osman Pasha himself admitted that he could
put no reliance upon the Circassians. In his treatise on the campaign,
he sums up this branch of his troops in one fitting sentence: "En
résumé, leur concours fut plus invisible qu'utile." At the same time he
points out that the savage excesses of the Circassians were equalled, if
not surpassed, by the exploits both of the Cossacks and the Bulgarians,
who never allowed an opportunity of massacre or pillage to escape them.
At the same time, while admitting the excesses of the Circassians, he is
careful to point out that the regular Ottoman troops were kept in a
thorough state of discipline by their officers. "We can affirm," he
declares, "that the Turkish regulars never committed an act similar to
the massacre of the defenders of Lovtcha, nor to the inhuman treatment
of which the Turkish prisoners were the victims after the fall of
Plevna."
It may not be out of place here to give a brief sketch of the plan of
campaign which Osman Pasha submitted to the commander-in-chief, Abdul
Kerim Pasha, about the end of June, and which, had it been adopted,
would probably have changed the whole issue of the war. From the
official records, since collated under the Muchir's personal
supervision, it appears that Osman Pasha proposed to the
commander-in-chief to leave about twelve battalions of infantry for the
defence of Widdin, and to unite the remainder of the forces at his
disposal, namely, nineteen battalions, so as to make a _corps d'armée_,
at the head of which he (Osman Pasha) should leave Widdin. He would pick
up on the march a few battalions from the garrison of Rahova, make for
Plevna, and there join the division of Hassan Hairi Pasha, who would
quit Nicopolis without waiting for the enemy's attack. Then passing
Lovtcha, the whole column would march upon Tirnova, where Osman Pasha
would effect a junction with the eastern army from Shumla under Mehemet
Ali Pasha, and then with the two combined armies march in the direction
of Sistova. If this junction were prevented by the movements of the
Russian army, Osman Pasha could occupy the position of Lovtcha, which
was better situated than Plevna for the defence of the Balkan Passes.
However, Osman Pasha could not obtain leave to carry out his plan, and
he even encountered opposition in making the necessary preparations. His
idea was of course to assume the offensive, and hurl the Russians back
upon Wallachia before their reinforcements arrived, instead of being
compelled, as afterwards happened, to act on the defensive at Plevna.
Afterwards, on July 10, the Sultan gave Osman Pasha a free hand, but it
was then too late; and so it came about that delay at the critical
moment, combined with the incapacity of Redif Pasha, the Turkish
minister of war, who was responsible for the defective organization of
the Ottoman army, its reduced strength, and its lack of proper transport
and commissariat services, operating together, neutralized the brilliant
generalship of Osman Pasha and the devoted courage of the men who fought
under him.
On the evening of July 12 we heard the news that we were to march next
morning, and every heart beat high at the prospect of an early escape
from the demoralizing inactivity of life in the bombarded town. Among
the troops left in Widdin for garrison duty was my old regiment the
Kyrchehir; and on the evening of July 12, just eight days before the
first battle of Plevna, I rode out to the camp to bid farewell to my old
comrades, from whom I was now to part, for in accordance with my own
request to Hassib Bey I had been appointed to go on duty with the troops
about to take the field. My relations with both the officers and the men
of the Kyrchehir Regiment had been of the most cordial nature ever since
I joined them in Constantinople. They all expressed their regret at the
separation, which, I need hardly say, I felt as keenly as they did. My
leave-taking with my little comrade Mehemet Ali the paymaster, whose
tent-mate I had been, and who had taught me most of the Turkish that I
knew, was specially affecting; and I can say with truth that, as I
cantered back to Widdin that night to take the field against the enemy,
I carried with me the good wishes of all my old comrades.
On July 13 at five o'clock we marched out of Widdin, bound, as we
afterwards understood, for Nicopolis. Osman Pasha's army consisted of
nineteen battalions of infantry, fifty-eight guns, and one regiment of
cavalry;[1] while Izzet Pasha was left behind with the remainder of the
troops to garrison Widdin. I was attached to the Shumla Regiment, which
had the reputation of being one of the finest fighting regiments in the
Ottoman army; and two other surgeons, Weinberger and Kustler, both
Austrians, accompanied the advance guard with me. We said good-bye to
the others before we started, and we all drank each other's healths, and
wished each other good luck in the unknown struggle that was before us.
The men of Osman Pasha's army were all in splendid fettle, and were
looking forward with longing to the time of coming to close quarters
with the enemy. Since the close of the Servian war they had all been
well fed and well clothed, the horses were in tiptop condition, and the
men set out upon the march with a light heart, carrying each his seventy
rounds of ammunition and his accoutrements reduced to the lightest
marching order as if the weight was nothing. We had a baggage train
consisting of waggons full of ammunition; but there was no commissariat
service, and we had to rely for sustenance solely on the great army
biscuits, each as big as a soup-plate, of which every man carried a
supply. Water was obtained from the water-carts, which followed the
column in case streams or wells should fail us _en route_.
It was the height of summer, and the weather was terribly hot when we
started on the morning of the 13th, the line of march following the
course of the Danube, though at some distance back, this precaution
being adopted for two reasons--first, to conceal our objective from the
enemy and, secondly, to minimize the danger from their guns.
The Roumanians of course were quickly aware of our departure, and they
followed us with their field-guns on the other side of the river. When
they began to shell us, however, at Vidpol, we diverged from the main
road, and, striking farther back, continued our march without sustaining
a single casualty. At five o'clock in the afternoon the column camped
near the village of Artzar, and I rode into the village on a foraging
expedition to see if I could not supplement the biscuits, which were
very hard fare, and had to be broken with a hatchet and soaked in water
before they could be eaten.
I managed to buy some _kabobs_, or small pieces of meat fixed on
skewers; and Weinberger, Kustler, and I made a fire, and cooked a modest
supper, which we ate with the best of appetites. We determined to camp
about a mile away from the main body, and tied our horses up to the
branches of a huge walnut tree, while we admired the novel sight of the
bivouac. The column had halted in a wooded valley among the hills and
along the bank of a river; so that the lights of a thousand camp-fires
danced on the quiet water, and the hum and laughter of thirteen
thousand men came to our ears on the soft night breeze that was
whispering through the walnut trees. Gradually one by one the lights
died down; the men, tired with the long and dusty march, wrapped
themselves in their great-coats; and the camp was sunk in slumber. At
about nine o'clock it began to get very cold, and Weinberger, Kustler,
and I decided to shift our quarters, and move in among the main body to
warm ourselves by the smouldering camp-fires. Picking our way gingerly
among the sleeping forms that lay thickly on the bare ground, we came to
a water-cart, to which we tied our horses, and then lay down to sleep.
In the middle of the night there was a tremendous uproar, and I woke
with a start, fancying that the Russians were upon us; but the scare was
groundless. Our horses had pulled over the water-cart, broken their
bridles, and were galloping mad with fright among the sleeping men;
while the cries of the sentries and the curses of the rudely awakened
sleepers speedily put the whole camp into confusion. In the middle of it
all Osman Pasha put in an appearance to see what the noise was about,
and the disturbance ceased as quickly as it began. With a few blessings
from the sentries, we dozed off again to snatch what sleep we could,
knowing that we had a hard day before us on the morrow.
On the following day the marching was terribly severe, for the heat was
intense, and the distance we had already travelled had told on the men.
About half a dozen fell down from sunstroke, and we had to leave them by
the side of the road on the chance that the arabas bringing up the rear
would pick them up. We came to several small rivers which were not
bridged and had to be forded, while the roughness of the country caused
much trouble to the artillery. In many places the path was so
precipitous that the horses had to be taken out, and the guns pulled up
to the summit by the men with drag-ropes. At four o'clock in the
afternoon the column reached Krivodol; and here Osman Pasha received an
urgent telegraphic message from Said Pasha, the Sultan's private
secretary, instructing him to push on with the utmost possible despatch,
and declaring that the Turkish Empire was then between life and death.
In order that the fatal consequences of the long delay in Widdin, at a
time when every moment was precious and when every Turkish soldier was
needed on the frontier, may be clearly understood, it is necessary to
take a bird's-eye view of the disposition of the Russian forces and
their plan of campaign during those momentous days in July.
As the Franco-German war opened with a race to the Rhine, so the
Russo-Turkish war opened with a race to the Balkans, and the Russians
got there first. By July 5, while we were still in Widdin, three Russian
army corps had crossed the Danube at Sistova, with a division of cavalry
and several Cossack regiments. General Gourko, with a strong advanced
guard, including infantry, cavalry, artillery, and mounted pioneers, had
crossed the Balkans by the bridle-path of Hain-Bogan, an exploit
requiring extraordinary efforts, and debouched near Hainkioj on July 14.
Here Gourko's dragoons easily routed a regiment of three hundred
Anatolian Nizams; but a single Turkish regiment properly informed and
properly led could have barred the pass for days. On July 19 the Shipka
Pass was taken, a considerable Turkish force was dispersed, and a panic
was struck at Constantinople. Meanwhile General Krüdener, with the Ninth
Russian Army Corps, left Sistova on July 12, on the 15th invested
Nicopolis, and on the 16th received the surrender of that fortress, upon
which Osman Pasha was then marching. Ahmed Pasha, Hassan Pasha, with
seven thousand men, were made prisoners, and one hundred and thirteen
guns, with a large quantity of miscellaneous stores, fell into the hands
of the Russians. Had Osman Pasha's propositions for an earlier departure
from Widdin been carried out, Nicopolis would probably have been saved
and the course of the campaign entirely changed. It was the news of the
imminent attack on Nicopolis, which was communicated to Osman Pasha
while we were lying in camp at Krivodol, which caused him to break up
the camp after a few hours' rest and push on with that terrible forced
march to Plevna.
We reached Krivodol at about five o'clock in the afternoon of July 14,
and bivouacked near the village. It was a most picturesque little place,
dotted down as it were in the middle of a sheltered valley which was
watered by a little river. Here and there in the valley I saw curious
mounds of earth about twelve feet high, and on inquiry I found that
these were the tombs of Greek inhabitants who had settled here under the
Byzantine Empire. After a successful forage for eatables in the village,
I decided to bivouac on the top of one of these tombs which had a small
hollow in the summit very enticing to a tired man; but before I wrapped
myself in my great-coat for a sleep, the spirit of antiquarian research
got hold of me, and I resolved to investigate the contents of my uncanny
sleeping-place. By the offer of a few piastres apiece, I got a dozen men
from my regiment with picks and shovels, and under my direction they dug
down into the tumulus until they came to an old stone coffin containing
some bones, two pretty Greek vases, and a few Byzantine coins. I left
the bones in their place, and filled up the tomb again, taking with me
the coins and the vases. The coins I afterwards gave away, and the
vases, which I wrapped up in a sheepskin and tied to my saddle, were
broken by a little accident which occurred next night on the march.
Before midnight the march was resumed, and for the remainder of the
night and all next day the journey was continued, until we reached the
village of Veltchiderma late in the afternoon. Weinberger and myself
rode on in advance of the column to the village; and I was so thoroughly
done up by the intense heat of the day and the exhaustion of the march,
that I made straight for the Turkish khan or hotel, and after getting my
horse something to eat I fell fast asleep in the only decent-sized room
in the place. When I woke up, I found Osman Pasha and his staff in the
room talking. I apologized for my presence, and he was most good-natured
about it. "A soldier sleeps when he can, my boy," he said; "for he never
knows when he may get another opportunity."
After my sleep I went down to the river and had a splendid swim, while
the main body of the column, which extended several miles in length,
arrived at the camping-ground. We were just preparing to make ourselves
comfortable for the night, when I noticed that there was an unusual
amount of excitement about my regiment; and I found to my disgust that
an advanced guard of about seventeen hundred men, including my regiment,
had orders to march right through the night, and push on to Plevna with
the utmost possible speed. Osman Pasha had received news by telegraph
that Nicopolis, which was his objective, had been taken by the Russians;
and he made up his mind to march straight to Plevna, which was distant
sixty-nine miles from Veltchiderma.
Oh, the monotonous horror of that march! We were dead tired when we
started; and all through the dark night the men stumbled blindly on,
forbidden to sing or even to speak, lest they might betray their
presence to the scouts of the enemy. Silent, sleepless, footsore, sick
for want of food, and faint for want of water, they marched on the long
road to Plevna. Our commander was Emin Bey, and we had about fifty
cavalry scouts with us, but no guns. I rode behind Weinberger, and at
about two o'clock in the morning his horse pitched head foremost into a
deep hole in the track, and I went after him. The two of us with our
horses floundered out of the hole somehow or other, and we fortunately
escaped with a few bruises; but my archæological treasures were lost, my
Greek vases tied up in the sheepskin were smashed to atoms, and all my
sacrilegious enterprise had gone for nothing.
Next night the men were so tired that we had to camp for a couple of
hours in the open plain, as they could positively go no farther without
a rest. My horse had had hardly anything to eat all day; so I rode away
a hundred yards from the main body to a place where there was some good
grass, and decided to let him have a feed. I tied the reins round my
wrist, and went to sleep on the open plain. When I woke up all was
silent, for the troops had gone, and so had my horse, while I knew that
the country all round was swarming with Cossacks. It was not a nice
predicament to be in; but luckily my horse, a beautiful little Arab
stallion and very quiet, had not strayed far, and I easily caught and
mounted him. Then I went in pursuit of the troops, and by a combination
of luck and judgment I found them before I had ridden many miles.
We lost half a dozen men next day from sunstroke; and I could do nothing
to save the poor fellows, who simply dropped in their tracks, and had to
be left to die at the side of the road. We had hardly any water, and the
men suffered terribly, the feet of numbers of them being quite raw with
continual marching. I bound up their feet as well as I could with linen
and old rags, but the men who wore sandals were much better off than
those who wore boots; and the severity of the march may be guessed from
the fact that, while the advanced guard consisted of one thousand seven
hundred men when it started, there remained only one thousand three
hundred when it reached Plevna. The others had dropped out on the way,
and those that remained alive were picked up by the waggons following
the main body behind us.
That afternoon we crossed the river Isker, the men wading through the
water, which reached to their shoulders. Weinberger and I found that the
troops were to halt for a couple of hours near a Bulgarian village, and
we rode in to see if we could not get something to eat. Since leaving
Widdin we had eaten nothing but a handful of kabobs, some maize plucked
in the fields, and our hard biscuits.
The first thing that attracted my attention as I rode into that village
was a flock of geese, and I remember saying to Weinberger, "Look here; I
don't know what you are going to do, but I am going to have a goose for
dinner." We saw a Bulgarian, who was evidently the proprietor of the
geese; and Weinberger, who spoke Bulgarian fluently, opened
_pourparlers_ on the subject, and offered a medjidie apiece for two of
the birds. The Bulgarian was obdurate, and refused to sell at any price.
We talked to him politely, we urged the claims of hospitality, and we
descanted upon the high price which we were prepared to give, but all to
no purpose. The idea of losing a splendid dinner which was already
practically in my grasp enraged me, and I made Weinberger cover the
Bulgarian with his revolver while I secured the materials for a meal.
With the revolver barrel levelled at his head, the Bulgarian was
obliged to watch me sulkily as I chased the flock of geese with my drawn
sword. The blade was as keen as a razor, and with a couple of swishing
strokes I smote off the heads of two of the birds. We plucked them,
cleaned them, and roasted them; Weinberger ate one, and I ate the other.
When we had finished this hearty meal, we found that the troops had gone
on; so we rode after them, and travelled right through the night,
finding ourselves next morning about four miles from Plevna. This was
the sixth day after leaving Widdin, and we had done one hundred and
twenty miles altogether, having covered the last seventy miles in three
nights and two days of almost continuous marching--a feat which will
bear comparison with the greatest forced marches on record. The men had
subsisted on two biscuits per day with a very small allowance of water,
and each man had carried seventy rounds of ammunition as well as his
accoutrements. Few of them, moreover, had received a single penny of pay
for the past twelve months, and yet they stuck to their work with
indomitable pluck and good humour.
When we reached the bridge across the Vid, about three miles from our
destination, on the morning of July 18, the column could go no farther,
and we halted for the last time in sight of the minarets of Plevna.
Alouf Pasha with three battalions had been in the town for some time,
and Osman Pasha had sent us on in advance to assist him in holding
Plevna until the main body could arrive.
When I rode into Plevna at eleven o'clock in the morning of July 18, I
went straight to a khan and had a Turkish bath, after which I sallied
out to survey the town.