on the site of an old Tartar village near the southwest extremity of the
Crimea, built by Russia as her naval station on the Black Sea. It
possesses one of the finest natural harbors of the world, and formed the
central scene of the Crimean War, the English and French armies
besieging it with all the resources at their command. For nearly a year
this stronghold of Russia was subjected to bombardment. Battles were
fought in front of it, vigorous efforts for its capture and its relief
were made, but in early September, 1855, it still remained in Russian
hands, though frightfully torn and rent by the torrent of iron balls
which had been poured into it with little cessation. But now the climax
of the struggle was at hand, and all Europe stood in breathless anxiety
awaiting the result.
On September 5 the fiercest cannonade the city had yet felt was begun by
the French, the English batteries quickly joining in. All that night and
during the night of the 6th the bombardment was unceasingly continued,
and during the 7th the cannons still belched their fiery hail upon the
town. Everywhere the streets showed the terrible effect of this
vigorous assault. Nearly every house in sight was rent asunder by the
balls. Towards evening the great dock-yard shears caught fire, and
burned fiercely in the high wind then prevailing. A large vessel in the
harbor was next seen in flames, and burned to the water's edge. This
bombardment was preliminary to a general assault, fixed for the 8th, and
on the morning of that day it was resumed, as a mask to the coming
charge upon the works.
The Malakoff fort, the key to the Russian position, was to be assaulted
by the French, who gathered in great force in its front during the
night. The Redan, another strong fortification, was reserved for the
British attack. In the trenches, facing the works, men were gathered as
closely as they could be packed, with their nerves strung to an intense
pitch as they awaited the decisive word. The hour of noon was fixed for
the French assault, and as it approached a lull in the cannonade told
that the critical moment was at hand.
At five minutes to twelve the word was given, and like a swarm of angry
bees the French sprang from their trenches and rushed in mad haste
across the narrow space dividing them from the Malakoff. The place, a
moment before quiet and apparently deserted, seemed suddenly alive. A
few bounds took the active line of stormers across the perilous
interval, and within a minute's time they were scrambling up the face
and slipping through the embrasures of the long-defiant fort. On they
came, stream after stream, battalion succeeding battalion, each dashing
for the embrasures, and before the last of the stormers had left the
trenches the flag of the foremost was waving in triumph above a bastion
of the fort.
The Russians had been taken by surprise. Very few of them were in the
fort. The destructive cannonade had driven them to shelter. It was in
the hands of the French by the time their foes were fully aware of what
had occurred. Then a determined attempt was made to recapture it, and
the Russian general hurled his men in successive storming columns upon
the work, vainly endeavoring to drive out its captors. From noon until
seven in the evening these furious efforts continued, thousands of the
Russians falling in the attempt. In the end the exhausted legions were
withdrawn, the French being left in possession of the work they had so
ably won and so valiantly held.
Meanwhile the British were engaged in their share of the assault. The
moment the French tricolor was seen waving from the parapet of the
Malakoff four signal rockets were sent up, and the dash on the Redan
began. It was made in less force than the French had used, and with a
very different result. The Russians were better prepared, and the space
to be crossed was wider, the assaulting column being rent with musketry
as it dashed over the interval between the trenches and the fort. On
dashed the assailants, through the abatis, which had been torn to
fragments by the artillery fire, into the ditch, and up the face of the
work. The parapet was scaled almost without opposition, the few Russians
there taking shelter behind their breastworks in the rear, whence they
opened fire on the assailing force.
At this point, instead of continuing the charge, as their officers
implored them to do, the men halted and began loading and firing, a work
in which they were greatly at a disadvantage, since the Russians
returned the fire briskly from behind their shelters. Every moment
reinforcements rushed in from the town and added to the weight of the
enemy's fire. The assailants were falling rapidly, particularly the
officers, who were singled out by their foes.
For an hour and a half the struggle continued. By that time the Russians
had cleared the Redan, but the British still held the parapets. Then a
rush from within was made, and the assailants were swept back and driven
through the embrasures or down the face of the parapet into the ditch,
where their foes followed them with the bayonet.
A short, sharp, and bloody struggle here took place. Step by step the
band of Britons was forced back by the enemy, those who fled for the
trenches having to run the gauntlet of a hot fire, those who remained
having to defend themselves against four times their force. The attempt
had hopelessly failed, and of those in the assailing column
comparatively few escaped. The day's work had been partly a success and
partly a failure. The French had succeeded in their assault. The English
had failed in theirs, and lost heavily in the attempt.
What the final result was to be no one could tell. Silence followed the
day's struggle, and night fell upon a comparatively quiet scene. About
eleven o'clock a new act in the drama began, with a terrific explosion
that shook the ground like an earthquake. By midnight several other
explosions vibrated through the air. Here and there flames were seen,
half hidden by the cloud of dust which rose before the strong wind. As
the night waned, the fires grew and spread, while tremendous explosions
from time to time told of startling events taking place in the town.
What was going on under the shroud of night? The early dawn solved the
mystery. The Russians were abandoning the city they had so long and so
gallantly held.
The Malakoff was the key of their position. Its loss had made the city
untenable. The failure of the attempt to recover it was followed by
immediate preparations for evacuation. The gray light of the coming day
showed a stream of soldiers marching across the bridge to the north
side. The fleet had disappeared. It lay sunk in the harbor's depths.
The retreat had begun at eight o'clock of the evening before, soon after
the failure to retake the Malakoff. But it was a Moscow the Russian
general proposed to leave his foes. Combustibles had been stored in the
principal houses. About two o'clock flames began to rise from these, and
at the same hour all the vessels of the fleet except the steamers were
scuttled and sunk. The steamers were retained to aid in carrying off the
stores. A terrific explosion behind the Redan at four o'clock shook the
whole camp. Four others equally startling followed. Battery after
battery was hurled into the air by the explosion of the magazines.
Before seven o'clock the last of the Russians had crossed the bridge to
the north side, which was uninvested by the allies, and the hill-sides
opposite the city were alive with troops. Smaller explosions followed.
From a steamer in the harbor clouds of dense smoke arose. Flames spread
rapidly, and by ten o'clock the whole city was in a blaze, while vast
columns of smoke rose far into the skies, lurid in the glare of the
flames below. The sounds of battle had ceased. Those of conflagration
and ruin succeeded. The final flames were those sent up from the
steamers, which were set on fire when the work of transporting stores
had ceased.
Great was the surprise throughout the camp that Sunday morning when the
news spread that Sebastopol was on fire and the enemy in full retreat.
Most of the soldiers, worn out with their desperate day's work, slept
through the explosions and woke to learn that the city so long fought
for was at last theirs--or so much of it as the flames were likely to
leave.
About midnight, attracted by the dead silence, some volunteers had crept
into an embrasure of the Redan and found the place deserted by the foe.
As soon as dawn appeared, the French Zouaves began to steal from their
trenches into the burning town, heedless of the flames, the explosions,
and the danger of being shot by some lurking foe, the desire for plunder
being stronger in their minds than dread of danger. Soon the red
uniforms of these daring marauders could be seen in the streets,
revealed by the flames, and the day had but fairly dawned when men came
staggering back laden with spoils, Russian relics being offered for sale
in the camps while the Russian columns were still marching from the
deserted city. The sailors were equally alert, and could soon be seen
bearing more or less worthless lumber from the streets, often useless
stuff which they had risked their lives to gain.
The allies had won a city in ruins; but they had defeated the Russians
at every encounter, in field and in fort, and the Muscovite resources
were exhausted. The war must soon cease. What followed was to complete
the destruction which the torch had began. The splendid docks which
Russia had constructed at immense cost were mined and blown up. The
houses which had escaped the fire were robbed of doors, windows, and
furniture to add to the comfort of the huts which were built for winter
quarters by the troops. As for the scene of ruin, disaster, and death
within the city, it was frightful, and it was evident that the Russians
had clung to it with a death-grip until it was impossible to remain. It
was an absolute ruin from which the Sebastopol of to-day began its
growth.
_AT THE GATES OF CONSTANTINOPLE._
From the days of Rurik down, a single desire--a single passion, we may
say--has had a strong hold upon the Russian heart, the desire to possess
Constantinople, that grand gate-city between Europe and Asia, with its
control of the avenue to the southern seas. While it continued the
capital of the Greek empire it was more than once assailed by Russian
armies. After it became the metropolis of the Turkish dominion renewed
attempts were made. But Greek and Turk alike valiantly held their own,
and the city of the straits defied its northern foes. Through the
centuries war after war with Turkey was fought, the possession of
Constantinople their main purpose, but the Moslem clung to his capital
with fierce pertinacity, and not until the year 1878 did he give way and
a Russian army set eyes on the city so long desired.
In 1875 an insurrection broke out in Bosnia and Herzegovina, two
Christian provinces under Turkish rule. The rebellious sentiment spread
to Bulgaria, and in 1876 Turkey began a policy of repression so cruel as
to make all Europe quiver with horror. Thousands of its most savage
soldiery were let loose upon the Christian populations south of the
Balkans, with full license to murder and burn, and a frightful carnival
of torture and massacre began. More than a hundred towns were destroyed,
and their inhabitants treated with revolting inhumanity. In the month of
June, 1876, about forty thousand Bulgarians, of all ages and sexes, were
put to death, many of the children being sold as slaves in the Turkish
cities.
Of all the powers of Europe, Russia was the only one that took arms to
avenge these slaughtered populations. England stood impassive, the other
nations held aloof, but Alexander II. called out his troops, and once
more the Russian battalions were set _en route_ for the Danube, with
Constantinople as their ultimate goal.
In June, 1877, the Danube was crossed and the Russian host entered
Bulgaria, the Turks retiring as they advanced. But the march of invasion
was soon arrested. The Balkan Mountains, nature's line of defence for
Turkey, lay before the Russian troops, and on the high-road to its
passes stood the town of Plevna, a fortress which must be taken before
the mountains could safely be crossed. The works were very strong, and
behind them lay Osman Pacha, one of the boldest and bravest of the
Turkish soldiers, with a gallant little army under his command. The
defence of this city was the central event of the war. From July to
September the Russians sought its capture, making three desperate
assaults, all of which were repulsed. In October the city was invested
with an army of forty thousand men, under the intrepid General
Skobeleff, with a determination to win. But Osman held out with all his
old stubbornness, and continued his unflinching defence until
starvation forced him to yield. He had lost his city, but had held back
the Russian army for nearly half a year and won the admiration of the
world.
The fall of Plevna set free the large Russian army that had been tied up
by its siege. What should be done with these troops, more than one
hundred thousand strong? The Balkans, whose gateways Plevna had closed,
now lay open before them, but winter was at hand, winter with its frosts
and snows. An attempt to cross the mountains at this time, even if
successful, would bring them before strong Turkish fortresses in
midwinter, with a chain of mountains in the rear, over which it would be
impossible to maintain a line of supplies. The prudent course would have
been to put the men into winter quarters at the foot of the Balkans on
the north and wait for spring before venturing upon the mountain passes.
The Grand Duke Nicholas, however, was not governed by such
considerations of prudence, but determined, at all hazards, to strike
the Turks before they had time to reorganize and recuperate. The army
was, therefore, at once set in motion, General Gourko marching upon the
Araba-Konak, Radetzky upon the Shipka Pass. The story of these movements
is a long one, but must be given here in a few words. The bitter cold,
the deep snow, the natural difficulties of the passes, the efforts of
the enemy, all failed to check the Russian advance. Gourko forced his
way through all opposition, took the powerful fortress of Sophia without
a blow, and routed an army of fifty thousand men on his march to
Philippopolis. Radetzky did even better, since he captured the Turkish
army defending the Shipka Pass, thirty-six thousand strong. The whole
Turkish defence of the Balkans had gone down with a crash, and the
Russians found themselves on the south side of the mountains with the
enemy everywhere on the retreat, a broken and demoralized host.
Meanwhile what had become of the Turkish population of the Balkans and
Roumelia? There were none of them to be seen; no fugitives were passed;
not a Turk was visible in Sophia; the whole region traversed up to
Philippopolis seemed to have only a Christian population. But on leaving
the last-named city the situation changed, and a terrible scene of
bloodshed, death, and misery met the eyes of the marching hosts. It was
now easy to see what had become of the Turks: they were here in
multitudes in full flight for their lives. The Bulgarians had avenged
themselves bitterly on their late oppressors. Dead bodies of men and
animals, broken carts, heaps of abandoned household goods, and tatters
of clothing seemed to mark every step of the way. Fierce and terrible
had been the struggle, dreadful the result, Turks and Bulgarians lying
thickly side by side in death. Here appeared the bodies of Bulgarian
peasants horrible with gaping wounds and mutilations, the marks of
Turkish vengeance; there beside them lay corpses of dignified old Turks,
their white beards stained with their blood.
While the men had died from violence, the women and children had
perished from cold and hunger, many of them being frozen to death, the
faces and tiny hands of dead children visible through the shrouding
snows. The living were dragging their slow way onward through this
ghastly array of the dead, in a seemingly endless procession of wagons,
drawn by half starved oxen, and bearing sick and feeble human beings and
loads of household goods. Beside the laden vehicles the wretched,
famine-stricken, worn-out fugitives walked, pushing forward in unceasing
fear of their merciless Bulgarian foes.
Farther on the scene grew even more terrible. The road was strewn with
discarded bedding, carpets, and other household goods. In one village
were visible the bodies of some Turkish soldiers whom the Bulgarians had
stoned to death, the corpses half covered with the heaps of stones and
bricks which had been hurled at them.
Beyond this was reached a vast mass of closely packed wagons extending
widely over roads and fields, not fewer than twenty thousand in all. The
oxen were still in the yokes, but the people had vanished, and Bulgarian
plunderers were helping themselves unresisted to the spoil. The great
company, numbering fully two hundred thousand, had fled in terror to the
mountains from some Russian cavalry who had been fired upon by the
escort of the fugitives and were about to fire in return. Abandoning
their property, the able-bodied had fled in panic fear, leaving the old,
the sick, and the infants to perish in the snow, and their cherished
effects to the hands of Bulgarian pilferers.
In advance lay Adrianople, the ancient capital of Turkey and the second
city in the empire. Here, if anywhere, the Turks should have made a
stand. But news came that this stronghold had been abandoned by its
garrison, that the wildest panic prevailed, and that the Turkish
population of the city and the surrounding villages was in full flight.
At daylight of the 20th of January the city was entered by the cavalry,
and on the 22d Skobeleff marched in with his infantry, at once
despatching the cavalry in pursuit of the retreating enemy. The defence
of Adrianople had been well provided for by an extensive system of
earthworks, but not an effort was made to hold it, and an incredible
panic seemed everywhere to have seized the Turks.
Russia had almost accomplished the task for which it had been striving
during ten centuries. Constantinople at last lay at its mercy. The Turks
still had an army, still had strong positions for defence, but every
shred of courage seemed to have fled from their hearts, and their powers
of resistance to be at an end. They were in a state of utter
demoralization and ready to give way to Russia at all points and accept
almost any terms they could obtain. Had they decided to continue the
fight, they still possessed a position famous for its adaptation to
defence, behind which it was possible to hold at bay all the power of
Russia.
This was the celebrated position of Buyak-Tchek-medje, a defensive line
twenty-five miles from Constantinople and of remarkable military
strength. The peninsula between the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmora is
at this point only twenty miles wide, and twelve of these miles are
occupied by broad lakes which extend inland from either shore. Of the
remaining distance, about half is made up of swamps which are almost or
quite impassable, while dense and difficult thickets occupy the rest of
the line. Behind this stretch of lake, swamp, and thicket there extends
from sea to sea a ridge from four hundred to seven hundred feet in
height, the whole forming a most admirable position for defence. This
ridge had been fortified by the Turks with redoubts, trenches, and
rifle-pits, which, fully garrisoned and mounted with guns, might have
proved impregnable to the strongest force. The thirty thousand men
within them could have given great trouble to the whole Russian army,
and double that number might have completely arrested its march. Yet
this great natural stronghold was given up without a blow, signed away
with a stroke of the pen.
[Illustration: THE WALLS OF CONSTANTINOPLE.]
On January 31 an armistice was signed, one of whose terms was that this
formidable defensive line should be evacuated by the Turks, who were to
retire to an inner line, while the Russians were to occupy a position
about ten miles distant. It was no consideration for Turkey that now
kept the Russians outside the great capital, but dread of the powers of
Europe, which jealously distrusted an increase of the power of Russia,
and were bent on saving Turkey from the hands of the czar.
On February 12 an event took place that threatened ominous results. The
British fleet forced the passage of the Dardanelles and moved upon
Constantinople, on the pretence of protecting the lives of British
subjects in that city. As soon as news of this movement reached St.
Petersburg the emperor telegraphed to the Grand Duke Nicholas, giving
him authority to march a part of his army into Constantinople, on the
same plea that the British had made. In response the grand duke demanded
of the sultan the right to occupy a part of the environs of his capital
with Russian soldiers, the negotiations ending with the permission to
occupy the village of San Stefano, on the Sea of Marmora, about six
miles from the walls of the threatened city.
What would be the end of it all was difficult to foresee. On the waters
of the city floated the English iron-clads, with their mute threat of
war; around the walls Turkish troops were rapidly throwing up
earthworks; leading officers in the Russian army chafed at the thought
of stopping so near their longed-for goal, and burned with the desire to
make a final end of the empire of the Turks and add Constantinople to
the dominions of the czar. Yet though thus, as it were, on the edge of a
volcano, their ordinary policy of delay and hesitation was shown by the
Turkish diplomats, and the treaty of peace was not concluded and signed
until the 3d of March. The Russians had used their controlling position
with effect, and the treaty largely put an end to Turkish dominion in
Europe.
The news of the signing was received with cheers of enthusiasm by the
Russian army, drawn up on the shores of the inland sea, the
Preobrajensky, the famous regiment of Peter the Great, holding the post
of honor. Scarce a rifle-shot distant, crowding in groups the crests of
the neighboring hills, and deeply interested spectators of the scene,
appeared numbers of their late opponents. The news received, the
cheering battalions wheeled into column, and past the grand duke went
the army in rapid review, the march still continuing after darkness had
descended on the scene.
And thus ended the war, with the Russians within sight of the walls of
that city which for so many centuries they had longed and struggled to
possess. Only for the threatening aspect of the powers of Europe the
Ottoman empire would have ended then and there, and the Turk, "encamped
in Europe," would have ended forever his rule over Christian realms.
_THE NIHILISTS AND THEIR WORK._
In 1861 Alexander II., Emperor of Russia, signed a proclamation for the
emancipation of the Russian serfs, giving freedom by a stroke of the pen
to over fifty millions of human beings. In 1881, twenty years
afterwards, when, as there is some reason to believe, he was about to
grant a constitution and summon a parliament for the political
emancipation of the Russian people, he fell victim to a band of
revolutionists, and the thought of granting liberty to his people
perished with him.
This assassination was the work of the secret society known as the
Nihilists. To say that their association was secret is equivalent to
saying that we know nothing of their purposes other than their name and
their deeds indicate. Nihilism signifies _nothingness_. It comes from
the same root as _annihilate_, and annihilation of despots appears to
have been the Nihilist theory of obtaining political rights. This
society reached its culmination in the reign of Alexander II., and,
despite the fact that he proved himself one of the mildest and most
public-spirited of the czars, he was chosen as the victim of the theory
of obtaining political regeneration by terror.