The Romance of Modern Sieges

CHAPTER XX

PLEVNA (1877)

An English boy as Turkish Lieutenant – A mêlée – Wounded by a horseman – Takes letter to Russian camp – The Czar watches the guns – Skobeleff’s charge – The great Todleben arrives – Skobeleff deals with cowards – Pasting labels – The last sortie – Osman surrenders – Prisoners in the snow – Bukarest ladies very kind.

After Turkey had put down the insurrection in Bulgaria (1876) and had beaten Servia (October, 1876), Russia made her tenth attempt to seize Constantinople. The Czar, Alexander II., declared war against the Sultan, Abdul Hamid II., and the result was a war which in cruelty and horrors has had no equal since the first Napoleon retired to St. Helena.

There were a few young Englishmen fighting on the side of the Turks, one of whom, Lieutenant Herbert, has left us a full account of the siege of Plevna. He says in his preface:

“I have witnessed much that was heroic, much that was grand, soul-stirring, sublime, but infinitely more of what was hideous and terrible. If you have too firm a belief in the glories of soldiering, try a war.”

Herbert was soon made Mulazim, or Lieutenant, and his friend Jack Seymour was in the same company. The first successes of the Russians were checked when Osman Pasha stood at bay at Plevna, and the Turks literally dug themselves into the hills around the city, while the Russians lost thousands of men in vain assaults upon the earthworks.

It was in the second battle of Plevna that a Bimbashi, or Major, came up to Herbert and said:

“The General has sent for reinforcements. Take your company; an orderly will show the way. Do your best, Mulazim. You are but a boy, in a position which might unnerve a man twice your age. Rise to the occasion, as Englishmen are wont to do. The soldiers love you. You and your compatriot have but to lead, and they will follow. Remember the Czar Nicholas’ furious cry in the Crimean War: ‘We have been beaten by a handful of savages led by British boys!’”

As they climbed to a distant hill they suddenly overlooked a battle-field of twenty square miles in area – terrible to see, terrible to hear. The thunder of 240 guns seemed like the crash of so many volcanoes; the earth trembled like a living thing. It was like standing in the centre of a raging fire. Presently the Russian troops drew near. The Turks began a quick fire of three minutes’ duration. Deep gaps showed in their lines, but they were soon filled up, and still they drew nearer. The Russian “Hurrah!” and the wild Turkish cry of “Allah!” mingled together. Now there were only 100 paces between the charging lines, the Russians coming up hill, the Turks rushing down. Then came a chaos of stabbing, clubbing, hacking, shouting, cursing men: knots of two or three on the ground, clinging to each other in a deadlier Rugby football; butt-ends of rifles rising and falling like the cranks of many engines; horses charging into solid bodies of men; frantic faces streaming with blood. All the mad-houses of the world might be discharging their contents into this seething caldron of human passion.

“I remember nothing; all I know is that I discharged the six chambers of my revolver, but at whom I have no notion; that my sabre was stained with blood, but with whose I cannot tell; that suddenly we looked at one another in blank surprise, for the Russians had gone, save those left on the ground, and we were among friends, all frantic, breathless, perspiring, many bleeding, the lines broken, all of us jabbering, laughing, dancing about like maniacs. Fifteen minutes after the first charge the Russians returned. Of this charge I remember one item too well. A giant on a big horse – a Colonel, I think – galloped up to me and dealt me a terrific blow from above. I parried as well as I could, but his sword cut across my upturned face, across nose and chin, where the mark is visible to this day. I felt the hot blood trickle down my throat. He passed on. Sergeant Bakal, my friend and counsellor, spoke to me, pointing to my face. Jack said something in a compassionate voice. I fainted. When I came to myself, my head had been bandaged, the nose plastered all over. Water was given me. How grateful I was for that delicious drink! Then I was supported by friends to the outskirts of Plevna. As we went along I noticed a Russian Lieutenant who, after creeping along for a space, had sat down by the side of the track, leaning against the belly of a dead horse. He was calmly awaiting death in awful forsakenness. He counted barely twenty summers, poor boy! He looked at me, oh! so wistfully and sadly, with the sweet, divine light of deliverance shining in his tearful eyes. He said faintly: ‘De l’eau, monsieur?’

“I had some cold coffee left in my flask, which I got my companion to pour down his throat. He bowed his poor bruised head gratefully, and we left him to die. The ground was strewn with haversacks, rifles, swords, wounded men; riderless horses, neighing vehemently, trotted about in search of food. These sights were revealed to me by the peaceful, dying golden light of a summer sunset. Even war, that hell-born product of the iniquity of monarchs and statesmen, receives its quota of sunshine.”

A few weeks later Herbert was summoned to the Ferik, or General of Division, and asked if he could speak French well enough to take a letter into the Russian camp. He said “Yes,” made himself smart in new tunic and boots, and flattered himself that his tanned, smooth, youthful face looked well below the bright red fez with its jaunty tassel, in spite of his chin being still under repair. A corporal carrying a white flag and a bugler well mounted rode with him. They were handsome, strapping fellows, in the highest of spirits. After a ride of six miles they came in sight of a detachment of Cossacks. A young Russian Lieutenant rode to meet them, waving his handkerchief. Herbert stated his business in French, was asked to dismount while awaiting instructions. The Russians crowded round out of curiosity; the horses were fed and watered, cigarettes were exchanged, and friendly talk ensued. In half an hour a horseman rode up, and Herbert was bidden to mount. His eyes were bandaged, his horse was led. After a sharp trot of twenty minutes they halted, the handkerchief was taken off, and he found himself in a battery. An officer came up and took the letter, then handed Herbert over to an infantry Colonel, who took him into a small tent. Here, with some other officers, they had a cosy meal – wine, bread, and soup – a pleasant chat and smiles all round. It was a fortnight since the last battle, and the Russians were still lost in admiration of the bravery with which the Turks had defended their positions.

“Vos hommes, mon camarade, sont des diables. Jamais je n’ai vu pareille chose.”

That was just a glimpse of the enemy, and proved that, though men may fight by order, they may yet be friends at heart.

The Czar Alexander had been present, watching the varied issues of every fight and assault. The sappers had built for him a kind of outlook on a little hill beyond the line of fire, where he could see far away on all sides. A large tent was standing behind, supplied with food and wine, where his suite made merry; but the poor, worn, anxious Czar could not eat, could not bide in his safe tower, but would go wandering round among the gunners and the guns. It was his fête-day when the great September battle was being fought. There he stood alone on his little balcony, under the lowering sky of an autumn day, gazing through his glass at the efforts of his soldiers to storm the Gravitza redoubt. All the afternoon assault had followed assault in vain, and now the last desperate effort, the forlorn hope, was being pushed to the front. The pale, drawn face on the balcony was now quivering with agonized sorrow; the tall figure was bent and bowed, and seemed to wince under the lash of some destroying angel. With awful losses the Russian battalions staggered and struggled up the slopes slippery with their comrades’ blood.

“See, sire, they have entered the redoubt; it is carried at last!”

Hardly has the Czar time to smile and breathe a prayer of gratitude when from a second redoubt higher up a terrible fire is turned on the Russians, and they are swept out of the place they had so hardly won.

There was one Russian officer who seemed to have a charmed life. He was the bravest of the brave, was beloved by his men, and did marvels of heroic feats – Skobeleff. On a day of battle Skobeleff always wore a white frock-coat, with all his decorations. Seeing the battalions coming back from the Gravitza in disorderly route, the tall white figure on the white horse dashed at full speed down the slope, passed the linesmen, who gave their loved chief a great cheer as he galloped by, caught up the riflemen who were advancing in support, and swept them on at the double. Men sprang to their feet and rapturously cheered the white-clad leader. He reached the wavering beaten mass, pointed upwards with his sword, and imparted to daunted hearts some of his own courage and enthusiasm. They turned with him and tried yet once more. Then the white horse went down. The glass trembled in the hands of Alexander.

“He is down!”

“No, sire; he rises – he mounts again! See, they are over and into the Turkish entrenchments!”

What a medley of sights and sounds – flame and smoke and shouts and screams! But the Russians were for the present masters of the redoubt.

In the evening Skobeleff rode back without a scratch on him, though his white coat was covered with blood and froth and mud. His horse – his last white charger – was shot dead on the edge of the ditch; his blade was broken off short by the hilt. Every man of his staff was killed or wounded, except Kuropatkin.

“General Skobeleff,” wrote MacGahan to the Daily News, “was in a fearful state of excitement and fury. His cross of St. George twisted over his shoulder, his face black with powder and smoke, his eyes haggard and bloodshot, his voice quite gone. I never saw such a picture of battle as he presented.”

But a few hours later the General was calm and collected. He said in a low, quiet voice:

“I have done my best; I could do no more. My detachment is half destroyed; my regiments no longer exist; I have no officers left. They sent me no reinforcements. I have lost three guns!”

“Why did they send you no help? Who was to blame?”

“I blame nobody,” said Skobeleff; then solemnly crossing himself, he added: “It was the will of God – the will of God!”

Skobeleff’s heroism was magnificent, and did much to nerve the common soldier to face the Turkish batteries; but success came not that way. Men and officers began to ask one another why the Czar did not send them the help of the great Todleben, who had defended Sebastopol so brilliantly. It seems that the Grand Duke Nicholas had nourished a grudge against Russia’s most eminent engineer, and had kept him out of all honourable employment. But Alexander had sent for Todleben, and this was the turn of the tide. Todleben came in such haste from Russia that he had brought no horses with him. Now he was at last in the Russian camp – a handsome, tall, dignified man of sixty, straight and active, and very affable to all. The attack was to be changed. No more deadly assaults in front, but a complete investment, and wait till famine steps in to make Osman submit.

But Skobeleff had not yet finished with daring assaults. One day the “Green Hill,” which the Russians had taken under his command, was being endangered by Turkish sharp-shooters. Russian recruits who were posted near had fallen back in a scare, thrown down their rifles, and simply run like hares. Skobeleff met them in full flight, and in grim humour shouted: “Good health, my fine fellows – my fine, brave fellows!”

The men halted and gave the customary salute, being very shamefaced withal.

“You are all noble fellows; perfect heroes you are. I am proud to command you!”

Silent and confounded, they shambled from one leg to another.

“By the way,” said Skobeleff, still blandly smiling, “I do not see your rifles!”

The men cast their eyes down and said not a word.

“Where are your rifles, I ask you?” in a sterner tone.

There was a painful silence, which Skobeleff broke with a voice of thunder. His face changed to an awful frown, his glance made the men cower.

“So you have thrown away your weapons! You are cowards! You run away from Turks! You are a disgrace to your country! My God! Right about face! My children, follow me!”

The General marched them up to the spot where they had left their rifles, and ordered them to take them up and follow him. Then he led them out into the space in front of the trench, right in the line of the Turkish fire, and there he put them through their exercises, standing with his back to the Turks, while the bullets could be heard whistling over and around them. Only two of them were hit during this strange drill. Then he let them go back to their trenches, saying: “The next time any one of you runs away, he will be shot!”

The investment of Plevna went on relentlessly through October, November, and part of December. By the 9th almost all their food was exhausted, and Osman determined to try one last sortie before surrendering. Herbert had charge of a train of a battalion outside the town. He made up a fire, saw his men installed for the night, and then walked to the town. A snowfall was coming down lazily; bivouac fires lit up the gaunt figures of men and beasts. The men, talking of to-morrow’s fight in a subdued tone, were yet excited and eager. Many Turkish residents, with their carts and vehicles, were spending the night on the snow-covered plain, the men brooding and gloomy, the veiled women sobbing, the children playing hide-and-seek around the fires and among the carts. It was a weird sight – all these thousands eager to go out after the army when the last struggle should have carved them an open road through the surrounding foe.

At head-quarters an officer met Herbert, and asked him to post some labels at the ambulance doors of a certain street. He says:

“Armed with a brush and paste-pot, I turned bill-sticker, and affixed a notice on some twenty house doors which were showing the ambulance flag. Anything more dismal than that deserted town, abandoned by all but dying and helpless men and some 400 starving Bulgarian families, cannot be imagined. Desolate, dead, God-forsaken Plevna during the night of the 9th and 10th of December was no more like the thriving and pretty Plevna of July than the decaying corpse of an old hag is like the living body of a blooming girl. The streets, unlighted and empty, save for a slouching outcast here and there bent on rapine, echoed to the metallic ring of my solitary steps; while occasional groans or curses proceeding from the interior of the ambulances haunted me long afterwards as sounding unearthly in the dark. Twice I stumbled over corpses which had been thrust into the gutter as the quickest way of getting rid of them.

“As I walked I had to shake myself and pinch my flesh, so much like the phantasy of an ugly dream was the scene to my mind. As I plied my brush on the door-panels, I felt like one alive in a gigantic graveyard.

“At one of the ambulances I was bidden to enter, and found, by the feeble light of a reeking oil-lamp, some invalids fighting for a remnant of half-rotten food which they had just discovered in a forgotten cupboard. Men without legs, hands, or feet were clutching, scratching, kicking, struggling for morsels that no respectable dog or cat would look at twice. I pacified them, and distributed the unsavoury bits of meat. As I turned to go a man without legs caught hold of me from his mattress, begging me to carry him to the train bivouac, that he might follow the army. Happily an attendant turned up, and I wrenched myself away.”

Herbert was returning by a narrow dark lane when someone sprang upon him and tore the paste-pot away from him. He had doubtless seen it by the light of the Lieutenant’s lantern, and thought the vessel contained food.

He belaboured the fellow’s face with his brush, making it ghastly white, and setting him off to splutter and croak and swear, and finally he rammed the bristles hard down his throat. At this moment two other Bulgarians came up; but, taking time by the forelock, Herbert pasted their mouths and eyes before they could speak, then shouted out, “Good-night, gentlemen, and I wish you a very hearty appetite.” He then turned and ran for all he was worth to the officers’ mess-room. It was about ten o’clock p.m. when Osman Pasha and his staff rode up, preceded by a mounted torch-bearer, and escorted by a body of Saloniki cavalry.

When he came out again, the light from the torch fell full upon his face. His features were drawn and care-worn, the cheeks hollow; there were deep lines on the forehead, and blue rings under his eyes. Their expression was one of angry determination. He responded to the salute with that peculiar nod which was more a frown than a greeting. They all rose and went after him into the street to see him mount his fine Arab horse. He and his staff spent that last night in one of the farm-houses on the western outskirts of Plevna.

After a supper of gruel and bread, Herbert and the others walked in a body to the train bivouac. The night was intensely dark; a few snowflakes were flying about; it was freezing a little. They did not talk, for each was saying to himself, “It is all over with us now.” Hardly any expected to see the next nightfall.

Herbert and two other Lieutenants slept in a hut by the river’s brink; they could hear the water murmuring, and every now and then a lump of ice made music against the piles. A little after five in the morning he moved on, crossed with the first division the shaky pontoon bridge, and rejoined his company. Twenty-four crack battalions of the First Division were marching on to face the ring of Russian guns; the dark hoods of the great-coats drawn over the fez and pointing upwards gave an element of grotesqueness to the men. They were marching to certain death, with hope in their hearts.

In front the Russian entrenchments rose out of the vapours and fog in threatening silence; once beyond them, and they were free! The country and military honour called for this supreme sacrifice, and they offered it full willingly.

At 9.30 a.m. the bugles sounded “Advance,” and the whole line, two miles long, began to move in one grand column. The Turks went at the quick, hurling a hail of lead before them. The troops kept repeating the Arabic phrase, “Bismillah rahmin!” (In the name of the merciful God!), but the fire became so deadly that they came to a dead-stop. The men in the front line lay down on their stomachs. After an interval of ten minutes, the bugles of the First Division sounded “Storm.”

The men jumped to their feet and rushed at the nearest trench. A murderous discharge of rifle fire greeted them; many bit the dust.

But very soon the Turks had the first trench in their possession, then a second and third; and before they knew what they were about, they were in the midst of the Russian guns, hacking, clubbing, stabbing, shooting, whilst overhead flew countless shells, hissing and leaving a white trail in their track.

Then they waited for the support of the second line, which never came; but at noon the Russians came down upon them in force. Herbert was ordered to ride and report that they could not hold out longer without reinforcements. He says:

“As I rode towards the centre, I was drawn into the vortex of a most awful panic – a wild flight for safety to the right bank of the river.

“I had never been in a general retreat. It is far more terrible than the most desperate encounter. I was simply drawn along in a mad stream of men, horses, and carts. Officers, their faces streaming with perspiration in spite of the cold, were trying to restore order; the train got mixed with the infantry and the batteries, and the confusion baffles description. My horse slipped into a ditch, and I continued on foot. I heard that Osman had been wounded and carted across the river; the pitiless shells followed us even to the other side of the river. The screams of the women in the carts unnerved many a sturdy man. I came to a sort of barn, where two Saloniki horsemen stood sentry. Being dead-beat and hungry to starving-point, I sat down on a stone. Whilst I crunched a biscuit a cart drove up, and a man badly wounded in the leg was assisted into the building. So sallow and pain-drawn was his face that at first I failed to recognize Osman. There were tears in his eyes – tears of grief and rage rather than of physical pain – and in their expression lay that awful thought, ‘The game is up, the end is come,’ which we see in Meissonier’s picture of Napoleon in the retreat from Waterloo.”

The last sortie from Plevna was witnessed by Skobeleff from the heights above. The Turkish infantry were deploying with great smartness, taking advantage of the cover afforded by the ground. The skirmishers were already out in the open, driving before them the Russian outposts.

Skobeleff was very excited.

“Were there ever more skilful tactics?” he said. “They are born soldiers, those Turks – already half-way to Ganetzky’s front, hidden first by the darkness and now by the long bank under which they are forming in perfect safety. Beautiful indeed! Never was a sortie more skilfully prepared. How I should like to be in command of it!”

Skobeleff then turned his glass on the Russian defence line. He seldom swore, but now a torrent of oaths burst from his lips.

“Oh, that ass – that consummate ass – Ganetzky!” he shouted, striking his thigh with his clenched fist. “What fool’s work! He had his orders; he was warned of the intended sortie; he might have had any number of reinforcements. And what preparation has he made? None. He is confronting Osman’s army with six battalions when he might have had twenty-four. Mark my words: the Turks will carry our first line with a rush. We shall retrieve it, but to have lost it for ever so short a time will be our disgrace for ever.” Then Skobeleff spat angrily and rode off at a gallop. How true those words were we have seen already.

At 2 p.m. Osman had been obliged to surrender, and shortly after he met the Russian Grand Duke Nicholas – Osman in a carriage, Nicholas on horseback. They looked one another long in the face, then Nicholas offered his hand heartily, and said:

“General, I honour you for your noble defence of Plevna. It has been among the most splendid examples of skill and heroism in modern history!”

Osman’s face winced a little – perhaps a twitch of pain crossed it – as, in spite of his wound, he struggled to his feet and uttered a few broken words in a low tone. The Russian officers saluted with great demonstration of respect, and shouts of “Bravo!” rang out again and again.

Poor victorious Osman! conquered at last by King Famine. He had lived in a common green tent during the whole period of the investment; his last night at Plevna was the first he spent under a roof.