seldom to be neglected in war. Their general design was to hasten onwards, and to penetrate into the Roumelian lowlands, hoping doubtless to finish the war at once, yet not wholly omitting, however, to protect their base and flank from possible attack. With these objects a considerable force was sent to seize Tirnova and Selvi, and open a way to the Balkan range; and, these places having been easily occupied, a division under a gallant chief, Gourko, was despatched over the mountain barrier, with orders to hold one principal pass and to clear Roumelia for an invading army. The march of this small but well-led force forms one of the most attractive episodes of the war, but our space forbids us to dwell upon it. Suffice it to say, that, after great exertions, it traversed the Balkans by almost unknown paths, and, advancing up the valley of the Tundja, not only carried the Shipka Pass, the main issue in this part of the range, but spread terror up to Adrianople. The operations of the invaders in the rear were also marked by no little vigor. On their left large detachments were sent to observe the fortresses of Rustchuk and the course of the Lom, and, extending themselves towards Rasgrad and Shumla, to cover the flank of the Russian advance. On the right, Nicopolis was besieged and stormed, in order to secure the invaders' base and to strengthen their hold upon the Danube; and a division, not of large force however, was directed to make its way to Plevna, and to cover on that side the Muscovite line.

17. These operations were completed between the first and the third weeks of July. The effect of them was to place the Russian army in a line from the Danube to the Maritza; to give it a footing beyond the Balkans, with the command of the chief pass from Tirnova; and to secure it a hold on the tract of country between the Jantra and Osma, and thence to the Tundja. The military position seemed brilliant in the extreme; the invaders, with scarcely the loss of a man, had made their way into the heart of Roumelia; the second great line of the defence of the Turks, the difficult Balkans, had been overcome; a part of Bulgaria had been overrun and was held by the invading host; and from Nicopolis to Sistova the Danube had become a safe avenue for the Muscovite troops. As ominous a sign, too, as any other perhaps, the Russians had been everywhere welcomed as liberators of the Bulgarian race; and the Bulgarian peasantry had, in many places, sought and obtained arms for a war of revenge. No wonder, then, that even in the eyes of experienced statesmen and trained soldiers the Ottoman power

seemed wholly broken, especially as, up to this moment, the Turks had scarcely given a sign of life, and still for the most part kept their armies in the fortresses where they had taken refuge. Yet events were to show that the situation of the invaders was very far from safe, nay, that a single mischance might make it critical. The Russians were not in sufficient force to occupy firmly the great extent of territory they had spread themselves over; it is probable that they had, at this moment, not more than one hundred and twenty thousand men between the Danube and their farthest advance; and these numbers were not large enough to guard several points that invited attack. In addition to this, the left Russian flank, that from Rutschuck to Shumla, was well protected; but the right flank had scarcely any protection on a line from Nicopolis to the Balkans, and a successful effort by the enemy on that side. might at once paralyze the invading forces, and even place them in serious peril. In short, daring and brilliant as it seemed, the strategy of the Russians had been incautious; it assumed that the Turks could do scarcely anything, and thus, so to speak, "took liberties" with them; and, in this state of things, any well-planned attack of their despised foe might have grave consequences. Though the Turks, too, as yet had been motionless, there were indications that they were about to move on either side of the Russian advance; and in that event, should they be once able to break in on the invader's flank, or even to establish a force near it, the Muscovite army, thrown far forward on a narrow front and with a cramped base, from the Danube to the Maritza valley, not to speak of a mountain range between, would be in a position of no little difficulty.

18. Events were, in a few days, to show how perilous the situation of the invaders was, and what risks they had run from extreme confidence. A short time after the fall of Nicopolis, Osman Pasha, the Turkish commandant at Widdin, had set off from his camp round the fortress with an army perhaps thirtyfive thousand strong, his object being, it is believed, either to take part in a general movement of the Ottoman forces against the Russians, or to make a demonstration to relieve Nicopolis, of the surrender of which he had not been apprised. His outposts had just occupied the banks of the Vede and taken possession of the town of Plevna, a position of remarkable natural strength, lying on the right flank of the Russian advance, when Krudener, one of the chief Russian generals, who, as we have scen, had received orders to take the place, as a strategic point

from which the invaders' line on that side would be covered, arrived on the spot to fulfil his mission. The Russian officers, however, elated with success, and ignorant that a large Turkish force was actually within a few hundred yards, marched their

troops incautiously into the streets of Plevna, without reconnoitring the approaches to it; and the result was that the men were assailed by a well-directed fire from the mosques and the house-tops, and that hundreds were slain in a few moments. Krudener seems to have returned to the attack next day, but he

was unable to drive from his points of vantage an enemy already conscious of strength, and his divisions fell back defeated and baffled. The importance of the position of Plevna, commanding one flank of the entire invasion, being now evident in the Russian camp, the Grand Duke Nicholas hastily directed a part of one of his corps to leave the Lom and to join hands with and support Krudener; and he added peremptory orders that the united force should attack and storm Plevna, whatever the cost. This movement, however, required some days; and in the mean time the Turkish commander, evidently also aware of the immense advantage to the Turkish cause of retaining Plevna, had addressed himself with remarkable energy to fortifying and entrenching the place, and making it a formidable point of defence. The natural features of Plevna, we have said, mark it out as a very strong position; but Osman's efforts, short as was the time, added greatly to its defensive power. The town lies behind a range of uplands, not easily approachable at several points, but everywhere commanding the adjoining country from Oponetz on the north to Kirshine southwards, and to the east these form a kind of salient overlooking Gravitza and Radichevo, and resembling the angle of a gigantic fortress. Availing himself of these characteristics of the ground, Osman strengthened the heights at every place where they were most accessible to a hostile movement with ranges of ably-constructed earthworks; he threw up redoubts along the face of the angle, especially one of large size near Gravitza; and he drew up his army within these lines thus formed, concealing it as much as possible from sight.

19. These preparations were completed between the 20th and 31st of July, and they reflect the highest credit on the Turkish leader. By the last-named day the position of Plevna had assumed the aspect of a great entrenched camp, defying an assault at several points, affording a front of most destructive fire at every spot where an attack was possible, and especially along the kind of bastion from the Gravitza to the Radichevo redoubts, and holding in its recesses and under cover a wellarmed and confident force. The Russian commanders, it is said, remonstrated, when they had become aware of the task before them, at the notion of endeavoring to storm the place; and it is indeed certain that even their combined forces were less numerous than those of Osman, a circumstance which condemned an attempt of the kind. The Grand Duke, however, would brook no delay, it is now believed that he had no con

ception of the real numbers of Osman's army, — and, after an ineffectual protest, Krudener, with Shaffosky, the chief of a Lom corps, made arrangements to carry out their orders. The attempt took place on the 31st of July, and even from the first it was ill-planned and executed. From some unknown reason the Russian commanders selected the formidable eastern front, that of the great Gravitza and the Radichevo redoubts, as the scene of their most determined efforts, and for several hours they persistently tried to storm the entrenched camp where it was almost impregnable. The attacks, too, were not well conducted. Krudener, it is said, and Shaffosky disliked each other, and did not cordially act together; and it has even been asserted that the attacks were made in the dense formation of the close column, an almost inconceivable mistake in tactics. Under these conditions the defeat of the Russians almost followed as a matter of course, and the success of the defence was well-nigh assured. The Russians, advancing with devoted courage, more than once entered the Turkish lines, and even carried some outlying works; but their movements were desultory and illcombined, and their serried masses dissolved in fragments under the plunging fire of the hostile redoubts, especially of the Gravitza work, and the withering volleys of the Turkish infantry, almost hidden from sight in their well-laid trenches. After three or four bloody repulses like these, Krudener and Shaffosky gave up the attempt, and their troops were withdrawn from the scene of carnage. On one point, however, of Osman's lines a young Russian chief, Skobeloff, made a real impression; he conducted his attack with remarkable skill, and a few of his men even entered Pleva. But this was only a feigned attack, and Skobeloff's force was, of course, involved in the disaster that had befallen his seniors. By nightfall on the 31st the defeated army had fallen back to its camps of the morning, not, strange to say, pursued by the victors.

fruitless effort were The forces, in fact,

20. The losses of the Russians in this from six thousand to seven thousand men. which they had brought into action were, for the present, completely shattered, and it was fortunate for them that Osman Pasha did not press them as they fell back from his lines. To the military observer the Turkish chief seems now to have had a great occasion to strike a heavy blow at his beaten enemy. He had probably thirty-three thousand men, while the Russians had not, we believe, twenty thousand; these, too, suffering from a heavy reverse; and by the rules of war he ought to have had