THE LATE GENERAL SKOBELOFF.

Evening Star, Issue 6030, 10 July 1882, Page 4

THE LATE GENERAL SKOBELOFF.

[From ‘Truth.’ Before hia unfortunate Pan-Slavist speeches at the beginning of the year, General Skobeloff was Best known to Englishmen as the hero of the third assault on Plevna. That, however, was only an accident, and by no means the crowning incident in General SkobelofFs career. Even the battle of Senova, where he captured an entire Turkish army of 30,000 men and forty-one guns with the aid of 25,000 men without artillery, although the most brilliant and decisive victory he has yet achieved, can hardly be spoken of as the crowning incident in a career which as yet has only begun ; for he is not yet thirty-nine years of age, and without exaggeration ho may be described as by far the most remarkable man of his years in Europe. General Skobeloff supplies a striking illustration of the doctrine of heredity. He is a soldier born of soldiers. Not only is Ins father a general of distinguished ability, but his grandfather rose by sheer force of lighting capacity from the ranks to first rank as a general in the Caucasus. From his youth upward Michael Dimitrievitch has been a man of war. When only eighteen he took energetic a part in some disturbances at the University that his attendance at that scat of learning was summarily dispensed with, but not before he had acquired a mastery of several languages and an omnivorous appetite for reading. There are few better-read men in Europe than the general who made himself the idol of the Russian army before ho was three-and-thirty. Wherever he went he carried his books with him, and read, for instance, the account of the massacre of Cahul in 1842 when sitting in his garden at Bokhara, not knowing but that the next clay he might have to share the fate of Elphinstone. How he has found time to read amid the exciting life ho has led is a mystery which Lieutenant Greene does not profess to solve. After his dismissal from the university he was sent with a regiment of the Guards to assist in suppressing the Polish insurrection. That was in 1863, when he was eighteen. Skobeloff returned with his regiment to St. Petersburg, but soon sickened of the sybaritism which is in vogue with guardsmen elsewhere than in London. He could not stand the idle life of the “fine gentlemen of the Guard,” and ho left their society for the Staff College about the time the Prussians were winning the battle of Sadowa. After two years’ diligent study he was sent off' with a captain’s commission to the Caucasus—where his grandfather had gained his laurels—the year before the France-Prnssian war broke out. He was then a youngster of four-aml-twcnty. The lirsfc two or three years were passed in guerilla war in the mountains—a service useful but uneventful. In 1873, when lus upward career may properly be said to begin, he was transferred to Turkestan, and took part in the famous expedition to Khiva as lieutenant-colonel of a Cossack regiment. He displayed such daring and enterprise, that when Khiva was captured he was despatched with a couple of nomads to explore the desert region through which the V snovodsk column was to have advanced on he robber khanate of the steppes, but from which it had recoded in dismay, after half its members hat died o. want of wilcr. Skoboloff, having discharged his difficult mission with brilliant success, wasd.oco-.Mtcd, promoted to a colonelcy, and at tached to Ge m:al Kaufman's st.dk In 1875 _ he ga" :d his Major-generalship, in the first expedition against Khokand, and in 1876 he conquered that province at the head of 4,000 men, and was made Governor of the tract of 30,000 square miles which he had added to the Russian Empire. As soon as the Natives were defeated, he waged such vigorous war on peculating contractors that they accused him of defalcations, and got him reported to the Emperor as being a million roubles short

in his accounts. Skobeloff posted off to the capital, demanded an inquiry, displayed his vouchers, and, after an exhaustive investigation, received a certificate that his accounts were all in order in every particular. No sooner had this been settled than the Russo-Turkish war broke out, and Skobeloff' marched off to Bulgaria without a command. The story of his exploits in the Bulgarian campaign includes all that was most exciting in the war which brought the Russian army within sight of the minarets of Staraboul. From the day when, “to show the stuff he was made of,” ho swam his horse across the Danube while General Dragomiroll was forcing the passage at Simuitza, to the time when he could with difficulty be restrained from marching into Constantinople as soon as the British fleet entered the Sea of Marmora, he was the most prominent actor i.i the drama. Ho became the legendary hero of the campaign, and in the minds of tiie common people he almost monopolised its glories, lie was always in the forefront of the hottest battle ; four horses were shot under him in ten days, but be was only wounded once, and after being in constant expectation of death for months he returned home safe and sound. His white umturm was to ids soldiers as the white plume of Henri Qnartro at the battle of Ivry. “I have heard the soldiers speak of him,” says Lieutenant Greene “as a general under whom they would rather fight and die than fight and live under another.” They had often to die —sometimes 50 per cent, of his command perished ; but he spared no exertion to minister to their wants and supply their rmeds. His division was the best fed, and best clothed, and host armed in the army. He was always with them in the most exposed positions in the fight, sleeping with them in the trenches, and looking after all their necessities in the camp, “in short,” says Lieutenant Greene, “he succeeded so thoroughly in making himself one with his division that his men responded to his thoughts as readily as the muscles obey the will. I doubt if a more thoroughly ideal relation between a general and bis men has existed since the days of Cromwell.” His custom of wearing white, as if to court tho bullets of his enemies, his reckless personal bravery, and tho strange custom of his of always “going into battle in Iris cicino.st uniform and fresh underclothing covered with perfume, and wearing a diamond-hilted sword, in order that, as lie said, “he, might die with his best clothes on,” gained him the reputation of a wild dare-devil, which somewhat obscured his real capacity as a general. In reality they only showed how thoroughly ho had divined that secret of power which lies in fascinating the imagination as well as of appealing to the reason of men. When he was sent to take Geok Tepe and subdue the Tekkcs many shook their heads, and predicted that his impetuosity would bo his ruin. So far from that being the case, he displayed tho utmost caution, acted with the greatest deliberation ; refused to move from July to December, until he had made all his preparations ; and after he had carried on camels to the trenches no fewer than 1,575,000 rounds of ammunition, to say nothing of several thousands of heavy shot and shell, he laid siege to Geok Tepe, and captured that hitherto impregnable stronghold. He had 10,000 troops against 40,000 Asiatics, and he achieved tho conquest of the Akhal Tekke country with a loss of 1)37 men. Only once in that campaign did Skobeloff display his usual recklessness. After tho fortress had fallen he was riding through the country with his escort when he r,wt several Tekkes. He asked who they were. They answered “ Friendly Tekkes.” “ How can I believe your word ?” he asked again. “ Tekkes never lie,” was their confident response, “ Well,” replied Skobeloff, “if that is the case, I will send my escort home and will return accompanied by yon.” He was as good as Ids wan'd, and his trust in the word of the nomads was not misplaced.

General Skobeloii' is a Russian of the Russians, iiis life lias hitherto had only one serious cloud, due to an alliance with one who was as cosmopolitan as ho was Muscovite, and it no longer exists. As his recent speech shows, he is singularly undiplomatic, effusive, and enthusiastic. Five years ago lie used to horrify English correspondents in Bulgaria by discussing plans for the invasion of India, and lie fully shares the national resentment against the interference of the Congress of Berlin. Tie has a, great career before him ; but if M. Aksakoff were to ask him to sacrifice his life as a volunteer in the ranks of the insurgents of Herzegovina he would go to death without hesitation to advance the interests of the cause. It is not often that such enthusiasm is linked to a “stupendous military genius,” which leads Lieutenant Greene to declare that, should Skobeloff live twenty years more, “he will be eommauder-in-chicf in the next war about the Eastern tpiedion, and history will then speak of him as one of five groat soldiers of the century—side byside with Napoleon, Wellington, Grant, and Moltke.”