CHILDREN'S COLUMN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 12833, 5 April 1905, Page 3 (Supplement)

CHILDREN'S COLUMN.

BETWEEN RUSSIANS AND TURKS. The fall of Port Arthur and its long heroic defence by General Stoessel recall another memorable siege—that of Plevna, in which the Russian forces, who were then the attackers, displayed equally indomitable courage. General Skobelcff was the Stormy Petrel of the Tsar's army. As a leader of dash and daring lie bad few rivals, and no superiors. By means of a quality of dauntless fearlessness which held all hearts and an extraordinary daring and amazing freedom from the usual accidents of warfare, he inspired his men with the belief that he was almost a miraculous being. Skobeleff and Gonrko—but Skobelcff essentially—were tho heroes of what may be called " the European section" of the. RussoTurkish war; and of Skobsleff's conduct at Plevna it might well be said: There is a page in the book of Fame, On which is written a single name In letters of gold, on spotless white. Encircled by stars of quenchless light. The young general was in great disfavour with the Emperor—it matters not why— when the war opened. Therefore all men looked anxiously to see what would happen when tint three heroes of the Russian crossing of the Danube stood before the Tsar. The chosen three were General Dragomiioif, old General Yolchine, and young Skobeleff. Alexander 11. embraced the first, shook hands with Yolchine, and—turned his back on Skobeleff with a muttered imprecation. And Skobeleff'.' He, we are told, "bowed deeply. Hushed scarlet, then grew pale and set his teeth hard. It was a "flagrant slight in the very face of the army, and a gross injustice : but be took it in a proud silence that seemed very noble." That happened on June' 29, 1877. The sequel came on September 4 ensuing—the day after Skobeleff's capture of the Loftclui position at Plevna, "To Skobeleff, the hero of Plevna It is the Tsar Alexander himself who io speaking, and the scene is a banquet in the Imperial marquee of the headquarters at Gorni Studen. It is the Imperial method of making the amende honorable, and it is accompanied by the high compliment of making Skobeleff (not yet thirty years of age, remember) lieu-tenant-general, the youngest in the Russian army. Skobeleffs magnificent heroism in front of Plevna may be divided into two " periods" —the period of the first battle. July 30, 1877, and that of the series of September battles which ended in tho almost total overthrow of the Russians. Old General Krudener, anxious to "make merit" with the Grand Duke Nicholas by an immediate occupation ot Plevna, scut, Lieutenant Schilder-Schuld-lKT. with only 6000 troops, to effect this purpose. A rude awakening was at hand. Osinan's Osmanlis were firmly posted in and about Plevnathe formidable "Grivitzu redoubt" had already become an actuality— and Schilder-Schuidner was speedily hurled back with the loss of half his command. Now came Skobeleff's opportunity. Albeit one of the youngest general officers in the Tsar's service, he was entrusted with a quasi-independent command: but. this, alas! consisted only of a battalion, twelve squadrons of Cossacks, and twelve four-pounder guns. With this meagre force he commanded the extreme left of Krudener's grand assault of the outworks at Plevna on July 30: and it is not too much to say that, but for Skobeleff's timely co-operation, Krudener's left wing must have been cut off and annihilated. In this, the first big Russian reverse of the war, the young soldier showed unmistakably that he possessed the head as well as the heart of a born leader. His immediate instructions were to prevent the possibility ot reintoreeiiien'-s reaching Plevna by way of Loftcha. To this end. and also to create a diversion from the main attack, he deliberately exposed his tiny force to a most murderous Turkish fusillade. Forced at last, to full back towards Krishine (afterwards the famous Krishine redoubt), he not only succeeded in carrying off all his wounded, but, discovering in the, meanwhile that the enemy could embarrass (perhaps even cut off) the retreat of Jvrttdener's left, he saved the, situation by. maintaining. the unequal contest till nightfall. By that time he had lost fully one-half of his little command. Certainly Skobeleff had "done enough for honour!" His brilliant deed of daring was the solitary redeeming episode of that lost day. in this first battle for Plevna the Russians admitted a loss of no fewer than 170 officers and 7136 men. The horrors of the night that followed that day of slaughter were accentuated by the atrocities of i!:e BashiBazouks. who moved stealthily about the field, murdering and plundering the RussoRoumauian wounded. After the fight the Russian forces—what was left of them—were in such hopeless confusion that they actually lost their way; when one of the staff-officers was constrained to remark: "We are following a general who has lost his army and is in search of an army which has lost its general, who now, to make the day complete, has lost his way!" Moreover, Generals Krudener and Scbahofsky made bad worst by quarrelling desperately in a mutual effort to shift the responsibility for the defeat. 11. A formal investment of Plevna had to be resorted to, and the month of August was mainly occupied by the Russians, under the I direction of Todlebcn, the veteran defender of Sebastopol, in perfecting their siege preparations. But at first it was a sorry business, and reinforcements arrived all too slow-

It was during this comparatively uneventful period that a laughable incident occurred which is worth retelling here if only because it has been erroneously attributed to Nknbcleff, when, as a. matter of tact, it happened to the (.band Duke Nicholas. The IVluscovito Generalissimo was sitting quietly in his tent by the river's bank, when a Turkish gunner cleverly dropped a shell almost* at his icet. As the Grand Duke sat there, waiting for death, the sentry on guard outside his tent heroically picked up the live shell and dropped it into the river. The Grand Duke called up the mail, one of the many .Semites who enter the Tsar's army in order to escape the racial persecution to which Kussian Jews are exposed. "Do you know you have saved my life asked the Grand Duke. '"Since you say go, my genera!," replied the hero modestly. "Well, it is necessary to reward you. Tell me; would you rather have a hundred roubles- or the Cross of St. George?" The man pondered a moment. " What is the worth of flic Cross, my general?" "Oh, it's worth very little, perhaps not more than live roubles; it is the honour, not the worth, of the reward." Another pause; then, "I think 1 would like ninety-five roubles aiid the Cross of Si. George, if it he permitted, my general." " Skohelefl's battle" was fought and lost on September 11. In the meantime, he had wrested Loftclia from the Turks (September 3), and had succeeded to the comma of Prince Imeretinski's corps; and September 11 was selected for the onslaught because if. happened to be the fete day of the Tsar Alexander 11. lis Imperial Majesty iu person, the Grand Duke Nicholas, and the Prince of Kolirnarjia were all on the- ground, though the conduct of the assault was again unfortunately confided to General Krudener. But it is with'Skobeleti', and with him alone, that we have to deal. To the' Stormy Petrel was assigned the honour'of leading the attack upon the Krisbihe'redoubt, while In the Roumanian allies of the -.Russians wna assigned that of assailing the not less'formidable Grivitza lines. 111. The fateful morning broke in mist and rain, and it was not until eleven o'clock that the 'Jlr.HSo-Hounianian columns rolled out to the attack. The frightful scene that followed has been likened by one writer to Tennyson's description of the final desperate struggle in which King Arthur fell in Lyonesse, and undoubtedly such a comparison is assisted by the fact of this light for Plevna being waged for the most part under almost similar conditions of " death-white mist." The em ions point about Skobclefi's share in the. first day of the second battle of Plevna is that he. the assailant, suddenly found himself assailed, in other words, the Ottomans met his assault with a counter-assault, and from eleven a.m. until late in the. afternoon Rum and Turk were locked in a series of terrible combats.

To meet the Turkish efforts Skobeleff hit upon a happy, arid for the most part successful, device. Causing his troops to restrain their fire until the enemy were with a hundred yards, he then opened so deadly, so sustained a fusillade, that attack after attack melted away. Now it was that the well-nigh idolatrous belief in and veneration for Skobeleff,which his men ever cherished, came out in the most marked and memorable manner. About four o'clock lie, though wholly unsupported, determined to force the lighting. True, he had with him only eight regiments or portious of regiments; but when the men saw their loved general, sword in hand, ready to lead them on, even the wounded raised themselves to give a faint cheer, and murmured, to each other that with Skobeleff the Invincible at ' their'head all would yet be well. As his advance came under the frightful fusillade of the Turkish batteries, the White General, as he was very often called—ho had a. great fondness for white chargersbade fair a£ least to justify this belief in his ability to defy death and wounds. While every member of his personal escort was struck to the ground he alone escaped. It did not seem as if the death that was devouring every other living thing could touch him. And the Russians were dying like the Guard at Waterloo. A bullet shattered his sword-blade. Gathering up the reeling fragments of the advance for one supreme effort, the rush carried him and them over the scarp and coun-ter-scarp of the redoubt! He, a conspicuous figure on his white charger, suddenly disappeared from view. .. . . The horse had received a mortal wound, and fell suddenly, burying the body of Skobeleff beneath its own. The fezzed Turks, as they peered through the battlesmoke to find the charging Russians in their very midst, gave a wild shout on seeing him fall. But they shouted too soon. Skobeleff was on his feet again—surely the miracle of miracles! Next moment, with a cheer that was almost a shriek, the leader and the led swept over the. parapet and bayoneted every man they found there. But where were the reinforcements for Skobeleff? Tivas one thing to take the redoubt, another thing to hold it, and not less than 20C0 gallant Russians lay heaped about the fort they had won, the dying with the dead.

Skobeleff passed a night of terrible anxiety, the hardships of physical exhaustion aggravated by the knowledge that .at earliest dawn he would have to receive the Turkish onslaught. Ami so. of course, it proved. It. was utterly impossible to retain the position unsupported. Again and again did Skobeleff beg for reinforcements to be sent him. The Chief of the Staff (General Levitski) definitely refused aid—though there is an impression that there were no reinforcements to send.

At sunrise of the 12th the Turks attacked furiously, to be as furiously repulsed. But it could not go on, though the general even descended to the Napoleonic "weakness"' of assuring his fainting troops that reinforcements were near at hand, lie was sitting in his tent when the Turks delivered their final assault. Night was coming on—he hod held the position the livelong day —he had lo'.i £000 out. of 8000 men.

The confident " Allah-il-Allah!" of the charging Mussulmans raised a. feeling of indescribable fury in Skobeleft's heart. Ho threw himself on horseback and spurred in among his gallant troops. Many of the Russians died where they stood, the rest fled out of the fort back towards their own line*, the yet tmwounded Kkobelelf striving with impotent rage and grief to check the rout. The " military madness" of which he has been so often accused came out strongly in this supreme moment. Willi broken blade and bloodshot eyes he rode amid the shattered wreck of his troops, facing round upon the foe as though he, like .mother Douay at Wcissenburg, would rush in on them alone, and die upon their bayonets, Eye-witnesses state that his voice had completely gone, such was his despairing fury in that dreadful moment. "I have done my bestl can do nothing more," lie said brokenly. "My regiments exist no longer—my division is more than half destroyedl have no, officers remaining. Reinforcements were denied to me, and I have even lost part of my artillery." Somebody asked the discomfited White General if ho could not allocate the blame for his defeat.

" I blame nobody," he rejoined quietly. " If is the will of God."

Such a reply was eminently characteristic of the chivalrous Skobeleff. who in his heart must, like George Eliot's \Tiddlemurcli, have. "had his own ideas" on the subject, but he could never descend to the pettiness of other Muscovite generals in similar plight. Whole regiments had been practically annihilated, companies that should have mustered by hundreds now were numbered by twenties.

In the Regiment of Archangel the losses were lamentably heavy. Out of a total loss to the Russians, in the two days' struggle, of 20.000 killed, wounded, and missing, onefourth of the casualties were in Skobeleff's command.

It Mould be interesting to know what transpired at the subsequent interview between the White General and the White Tsar. These crushing defeats before Plevna, coupled with the rough handling of the Russians by the Turks in the neighbourhood of the Schipka Pass, almost broke the proud spirit of Alexander 11., who undoubtedly at this period began to foresee at all events* the possibility of an ultimate Turkish victory in the. war.

The real fact was thai the July and September battles for the possession of Osnian Pasha's mud-built defences marked the Turk as slightly the better fighting-man of the two, -riven equal conditions of warfare. At this period of the war, moreover, the generalship of Osman and Suleiman Pashas was infinitely superior to that displayed on the opposite sine. The Russians could not all be Skobelcfl's, granted ; but certainly their tactics, of that bloodstained September month were puerile and abortive, in the extreme.

A distinguished military writer who knew the general well has left a, wonderfully graphic pen-picture of Skobeleff as he appeared immediately nfter bis defeat, with "his Cross of St. George twisted round on his shoulder, his face black with* powder and. (smoke, his eyes haggard and bloodshot, and his voice quite gone." Skobeleft' well might have said,, as Lee said at Fredericksburg, "It,is good that war it; so terrible, else we should grow too fond of it." It is morally certain that the "terrible" side of war appealed powerfully to fskobelcffs imagination. In witting of Skobeleft' at Plevna mention must be made of a quality of his which additionally endeared him to the Muscovite rank and file. This was his sympathy —he was what tho French call a "sympathetic- personality''—and this sympathy was seen in hi-i demeanour to the lowest as to the highest with whom ho came in contact. It will bo readily understood that this was especially grateful to tho soldiers of the Tsar'.s army, where so rigid an autocracy is exercised by officer over trooper. In a word, the White General possessed all the qualities of a truly great commander save one—the quality of caution. It was not in his- nature to be cautious, -though at the same time be was assuredly not, rash with thy rashness of a Rupert. * Often and often his judgment was proved to ha right, and Plevna, a "soldiers' battle" from first to last, must have been e. Russian victory and not a defeat if SkobeleS had been but moderately supported—if only two or three frah' battalions had been 'forthcorning to obey that first, axiom of a soldier's duty and "inarch on the cannon thunder." "' * -.-•-.-

Even as it was. the splendid valour and unmatched leadership of a Skobeleff all but sufficed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. " '