Through Torpedoes and Ice


"Osman the Victorious," as Skobeleff called the matchless Turkish
pasha, had kept the Russian hordes at bay for one hundred and
forty-two days. Never in the annals of warfare had the world beheld
such unexpected military genius, combined with stubborn endurance, as
was shown during the siege of Plevna. On December 10th, 1877, Osman
came out and made a desperate struggle to break through the Russian
lines; but after four hours' hard fighting the Turks sent up the white
flag, and boisterous cheering swelled over the snow-clad land when it
became known that the greatest Turkish general of modern times had
surrendered. His little army of Bashi-Bazouks had annihilated more
than one Siberian battalion. The Russian loss was forty thousand, and
the Turkish thirty thousand. Had Suleiman and the other Turkish
generals shown the same stubborn spirit as Osman, the Russian army
would never have been permitted to cross the Balkans, much less reach
Constantinople.[1] But after the fall of Plevna the resistance of the
Turkish army was feeble, and the Muscovites were not long in pitching
their camp at San Stefano. Indeed, a rumour got abroad one night that
the Russians were in the suburbs of Constantinople. This roused the
indignation of the English jingoes to such a pitch that the great
Jewish Premier, with the dash that characterized his career, gave
peremptory orders for the British fleet to proceed, with or without
leave, through the Dardanelles, and if any resistance was shown to
silence the forts. Russia protested and threatened, and Turkey winked
a stern objection, but Lord Beaconsfield was firm, and suitable
arrangements were arrived at between the Powers.