# Littell's Living Age/Volume 135/Issue 1748/The Russians, the Turks, and the Bulgarians

From The Nineteenth Century.
THE RUSSIANS, THE TURKS, AND THE BULGARIANS.
AT THE THEATRE OF WAR.
I regret that for a few lines at the outset I must be egotistical, in order to explain what claims I have to speak on the subject of which this article treats. During the last-five months I have been with Russian soldiers on the march or in the field; during the last three months I have been with them in Bulgaria north of the Balkans. I have been a close spectator of much hard fighting; I have been repeatedly with Cossacks or other cavalry acting as the extreme advance; I have traversed Bulgarian territory and entered Bulgarian villages in advance of any Russian troops. I have lived with, talked with, and dealt with the Bulgarian population, and taken great and persistent pains to ascertain their real condition and true character. I cannot profess to have had much close acquaintance with Turks, although I have taken every opportunity of talking (of course, through an interpreter) with prisoners, and with those who remained behind in the villages and towns, or who returned to their homes subsequently to the Russian occupation. But I have striven to note what they had done and what they had left undone. I have seen their conduct in battle, and their handiwork on the battlefield after the battle was over; I have striven from the aspect and surroundings of their deserted habitations to realize the habit of their lives in the time when as yet no enemy was within their gates. In fine, I may aver that my opportunities for observation have been exceptional, if not indeed unique, and I can further aver, in no spirit of boasting, that I have striven very hard to make the most of my opportunities.
Yet another short paragraph of egotism. I believe that I came to the work as completely a tabula rasa in the matter of prejudices, or indeed previous familiarity with the subject, as it is well possible to conceive. My work has always been the work of action; of politics either home or foreign I know shamefully little, and for them I ought to blush to own have cared yet less. Of the Eastern question I had not made even that extremely perfunctory study which the wide if thin field of leading articles affords. I had indeed repeatedly seen Turks as well as Russians fight in the Servian campaign of the previous year, but it was not difficult to discern that the fighting in Servia was not always "on the square." Having come thus blank to the observation of what has been passing in Bulgaria during the summer and autumn, I have no right to speak now as an argumentator, or commentator, or speculator; I can only venture to ask for some recognition simply as a witness, to which character in the following article I shall strive to confine myself. I ask to be regarded as an accurate witness, limiting myself to the sphere of my own personal observation: first, because I do in all humility think that I have some faculty of keen observation; secondly, because I am without any conscious prejudice except in favor of a good fighting man and against maudlin cant. And finally, I would ask to be regarded as an honest witness in virtue of the fact that what I am now doing must be greatly to my own detriment. In obeying the compulsion to fulfil a duty, I must offend many whose good-will I would fain cherish, must let go many friendships which I value very dearly. In virtue of this paper I am resigning the promised honor of a decoration which is given to foreigners with extreme rarity, and never given at all — wherein lies the pride of having it — but for some specific act of conduct on the battle-field.
{{c|I. THE RUSSIANS.
The Russian has so many charming qualities, that there is a sense of ungraciousness in referring to his qualities of another character. He is a delightful comrade, his good-humor is inexhaustible, he puts up with hardships with a light heart, he is humane, has a certain genuine if unobtrusive magnanimity, and never decries an enemy. In the whole course of my experiences I encountered only two boorish and discourteous Russian officers. There can be no greater mistake than that the Russians are a suspicious race. The frank simplicity of the army amounted to a serious military error; spies might have ​swarmed unchallenged, and I have no doubt were in truth plentiful. Newspaper correspondents, once received, were accorded a freedom of movement, and were unchecked for a boldness of comment, with a liberal toleration, and often indeed a frank encouragement, unprecedented in the annals of war. There was something magnificent, although it was not quite war, in the open candor of the advice given to correspondents, a week or so in advance, to betake themselves to specified points where interest was likely to develop itself. Generals or staff-officers seldom hesitated to communicate to the inquiring correspondent the details of their dispositions, or to allow, indeed to encourage him, to visit the forepost line. It is to the credit of correspondents with the Russians, many of whom were necessarily inexperienced in the discernment of what might probably be published as against what ought to be withheld, that the responsibility of self-restraint was so generally recognized. The Russian officer has the splendid valor of his nationality; he is no braggart, but does his fighting as a matter of course, and as part of the day's work, when he is bidden to do it. As for the Russian private, I regard him as the finest material for a soldier that the soldier-producing world, so far as I am acquainted with it, affords. He is an extraordinary weight-carrying marcher, tramping on mile after mile with a good heart, with singular freedom from reliance on sustenance, and with a good stomach for immediate fighting at the end of the longest foodless march. He never grumbles; matters must have come to a bad pass indeed, when he lets loose his tongue in adverse comment on his superiors. Inured to privation from his childhood, he is a hard man to starve, and will live on rations, or chance instalments of rations, at which the British barrack-room cur would turn up his nose. His sincere piety according to his narrow lights, his whole-hearted devotion to the czar — which is ingrained into his mental system, not the result of a process of reasoning — and his constitutional courage, combine to bring it about that he faces the casualties of the battle-field with willing, prompt, and long-sustained bravery. He needs to be led, however; not so much because of the moral encouragement which a gallant leader imparts, but because, his reasoning faculties, for lack of education, being comparatively dormant, he does not know what to do when an unaccustomed or unlooked-for emergency occurs. He is destitute of perception when left to himself. Somebody must do the thinking for him, and impart to him the result of the process in the shape of an order; and then he can be trusted, while physical power lasts, to strive his pithiest to fulfil that order. But if there is nobody in front of him or within sight of him, to undertake the mental part of the work, the Russian soldier gets dazed. Even in his bewilderment, however, he is proof against panic, and we saw him with sore hearts at Plevna, on the 30th of July, standing up to be killed in piteously noble stubbornness of ignorance, rather than retreat without the orders which there were none to give. The Turkish soldier is his master in the intuitive perception of fighting necessities. The former is a born soldier, the latter a brave peasant drilled into a soldier. If the Turk advancing finds himself exposed to a flank attack, he needs no officer to order him to change his front: he grasps the situation for himself; and this is what the Russian soldier has neither intuitive soldierhood nor acquired intelligence to do.
Of the multitudinous "atrocities" on Turkish refugees charged against the Russian soldiery with so great persistent circumstantiality by Turkish authorities and their abettors, I have never found the smallest tittle of evidence, and on soul and conscience believe the allegations thereof to be utterly false. But as I must not speak of mere belief, it behoves me to say that of all events which occurred south of the Balkans I have merely hearsay knowledge. "Atrocities" in plenty were, however, charged against the Russians north of the Balkans, and respecting these I can speak from a wide range of personal experience. The Turks resident in the towns and villages of Bulgaria were peremptorily enjoined by commands from Constantinople to quit their homes and retire before the advancing Russians. In ​the great majority of cases they did so, and their evacuation was accomplished before the first Russian reached the vicinage of their abodes. This was so at Sistova, at Batuk, and at many other places where murder and rapine were circumstantially and lyingly averred against the Russian soldiers. The Turks who anywhere chose to remain were unmolested without exception, so far as I know. The orders that they should be so were strictly inculcated on the Russian éclaireurs; the Bulgarians were made acquainted with the injunctions of the emperor by the imperial proclamation widely, although surreptitiously, circulated in Bulgaria before the Danube was crossed. To this day you may see the cadi of Sistova walking about the town with an air as if he owned it. Gorni Lubnica is a large village not two hours' ride south of the imperial and grand-ducal headquarters in Gorni Studeni. Nearly half its population were Turks, more agricultural than most of their fellows, and of these a considerable number chose to remain in their dwellings and take their chance of the Russians. They were unmolested by the Bulgarian inhabitants and equally by the Russians. They dwell contentedly in their cottages, they have reaped their harvests and thrashed out their grain; you may see them fearlessly sauntering about their lanes, turban on head, none making them afraid. About Boradim, on the Plevna front of the Russians, many Turks remained in their dwellings; they met with no molestation, and are now earning a livelihood by carting to the front projectiles to be hurled against their brethren. It happened that by an accident I entered the town of Bjela in advance of the Russian calvary, and while there still remained on its outskirts some Turkish irregulars. These went; nearly the whole of the civilian Turks had already departed, but there remained behind a few, some living openly, some seeking concealment. In the evening the Russian calvary came in. The Turks who had chosen to stay openly at home were simply visited by an officer and bidden to stay where they were; those in concealment were searched for by the Russian soldiers aided in their investigation by the Bulgarians, when discovered kept under guard all night till the general had seen them, and then liberated, to return to their homes and avocations. The pillage of the subsequent night by Russian infantry stragglers was the only instance of serious indiscipline of which I am cognizant, and it was no pillage of Turks, but a rough miscellaneous sack of property, Bulgarian as well as Turkish, in which no personal injury was inflicted. A number of Bjela Turks who with their families had sought refuge in the woods around, and were suffering much from hardship and exposure, were visited and invited to return by order of the emperor. They reoccupied their habitations, reaped their harvests, and I have seen them walking about the place among the Russians and Bulgarians with the utmost independence of bearing. When the Turkish soldiers in a panic evacuated Tirnova, there remained behind some sixty Turkish families. The Russian force was a flying detachment chiefly of Cossacks. Tirnova swarmed with Bulgarians professing bitter hostility to the Turks, fraternizing warmly in copious raki with the Cossacks. Now, if ever, was the train kindled for insult and injury to the Turks at the hands of the Russians, under the temptations of instigation and drink. But by the Russians not a hair of their heads was injured, not a scrap of their property touched. As soon as might be, the officer in command detailed a guard to protect from marauding Bulgarians the section of the Turkish quarter where the population remained, and that guard was maintained till the Russians instituted at Tirnova a civic government. Constantly accompanying Cossacks and other Russian cavalry in reconnaissances on the front of the Rustchuk army, I never noticed even any disposition to be cruel. Where Turks were found they were made prisoners, in virtue of the obvious necessities of warfare; when complained of, the accusations were judicially examined and justice done deliberately according to martial law. I do not aver, remember, that atrocities were not committed on fugitive Turks; but not by the Russians. While the Turks yet remained in their entirety in the mixed villages, the Bulgarians did not dare to meddle with ​them. Nor would they venture to interfere with remnants remaining behind from the general exodus, because they knew the terms of the emperor's proclamation, and were afraid to be thus actively vindictive. But reprisals were not to be apprehended from Turks "on the run," encumbered with wives, children, and household substance; there was little danger that any brutality perpetrated on these forlorn fugitives should reach the ears of the Russians; and the Bulgarians in places questionless hardened their hearts, and fell on with bitter, currish venom. But north of the Balkans, at least, Cossack lances and Russian sabres wrought no barbarity on defenceless men, women, and children. The Russian of my experience is instinctively a humane man, with a strong innate sense of the manliness of fair play. The Turkish prisoners I have ever seen well and even considerately treated.
The main causes of the inability of the Russian armies to achieve successes proportionate to the undoubted intrinsic quality of their fighting material are to my thinking three: corruption; favoritism (with its inevitable concomitant and result, intrigue); and general deficiency of a sense of responsibility among the officers all down the roll. Let me devote a separate paragraph to each of these blighting causes.
I tremble to think how high corruption reaches in the Russian army; I shudder to reflect how low it descends. It permeates and vitiates the whole military system. To be venal, so far from not being recognized as a crime, is not so much as regarded as a thing to be ashamed of. Peculation faces the inquirer at every turn; indeed it lies patently, glaringly on the surface. An illustrious personage, high in the army and near the throne, has mines which produce iron. Desiring to sell this iron for military purposes, he, spite of his rank and position, had to accede to the universal usage, and bribe to gain his purpose — a perfectly honest and legitimate purpose. A Vienna contractor comes to intendance headquarters with intent to sell boots to the army. He learns that it is no use to forward his tender direct in a straightforward business way; he must be introduced. He finds the right person to introduce him, and duly arranges with him the terms under which the favor of introduction is to be accorded. The introduction is made, and the contractor displays his samples and states that he is prepared to supply boots of that quality at six roubles a pair. The answer given him is that his offer will be accepted, but that his invoice must be made out at the rate of seven roubles per pair, although the payment will be at the rate of the tender. The Russian government had an account with the Roumanian railway, whereon the statement of the latter showed the former to be a debtor to the amount of ten million roubles. The Roumanian people pressed for payment, but obviously a preliminary duty was a searching audit. The Russian functionary concerned comes to the director of the railway with a proposition. This proposition is that the audit shall be a merely formal operation, on condition that he, the Russian functionary, shall receive a douceur or commission of half a rouble on every thousand roubles, for smoothing the track of an operation which if rigidly, far more if hostilely, carried out, must be arduous and vexatious. Fifty copecks on each thousand roubles seems a bagatelle, but where ten millions of roubles are concerned, the dustouri reaches the pretty penny of nearly a hundred pounds. Scarcely anywhere are the accumulated Russian stores — at Bucharest, at Fatesti, at Simnitza, at Sistova, at Braila — protected by shedding from the destructive influences of weather. Why should they be, when it is in the interest of all concerned except the State and the army, that the inevitable result should ensue — the rotting and condemnation of a huge proportion of the accumulated stores? The contractors are paid by a commission on the quantity of material laid down by them in certain specified places; their commission is earned when that work has been accomplished; their commission swells in proportion to the quantities of fresh supplies rendered necessary by the unserviceability of what has already been laid down. Every intendant concerned has a pinch, greater or smaller according to his position, of this commission; it is to the direct general and several interest of the gang that as much weather damage as may be shall occur among the supplies when once laid down. If any man wants proof of the universal system of plunder, he has only to visit Roumania and use his eyes. He will find the restaurants thronged with gentlemen of the twisted shoulder-knots. Their pay is a pittance, and it is in arrears: Jews, Greeks, and Bulgarians, the debris of the mercantile class, they have no private fortunes. But each gallant besworded non-combatant eats of the costliest dishes, and orders sweet champagne in grating French; the tout ensemble of him would ​not be complete unless his companion were some French or Roumanian beauty, as venal as himself, who is serving him as he is serving Holy Russia. A French correspondent, with a disinclination for going to the front, and a desire to employ his spare time, has been employing himself in collecting and authenticating cases of peculation throughout the Russian army, the record to be published at a safe season when the war is over. The exposure will astonish the world — at least that portion of the world which does not know Russia. In the mean time I venture to assert that every article of consumption or wear supplied to the Russian army costs, by the time it comes into use, more than double what it ought to do under a well-managed and decently honest system. Of other and yet baser corruption — of the little difficulty with which men of whom other things might be expected are to be found willing to be virtual traitors for a consideration, by offering to sell secrets and secret documents — I dare not trust myself to speak. The subject is too grievously melancholy.
Favoritism brings it about that commands are bestowed on men within its ring-fence, with little or no reference to qualifications. The Russian officer does not need merit if he can only attain to "protection." With "protection" a youngster may be a colonel in command of the grizzled veteran of hard campaigns and many decorations, who, destitute of "protection," is still but a first lieutenant. The aim in making appointments at the beginning of this war seems to have been to exclude from active service every man who has ever distinguished himself in a previous command. Todleben has been only sent for now as a last resource. Kauffmann, the conqueror of Khiva, was left behind to chew the cud of his experience. Bariatinsky was not withdrawn from the neglected retirement into which he had been suffered to lapse. Kotzebue's experience of command in active service remained unutilized. Tchernaieff, who with a mass of untrained militia kept the Turks four months at bay, was left for months to cool his heels in Russia, was at length insulted with the offer of the command of a brigade in Asia, and has now finally been ordered back into retirement at the instance of the archduke Michael — jealous of the ovations with which a fine soldier and really capable chief was received on arriving at the former's headquarters. Nepokoitchitzky's claim to be chief of the staff lies simply, so far as I can gather, in his knowledge of the Danubian valley on the Roumanian side of the river, derived by having served in the force which in 1853-4 scarcely covered itself with glory in fighting against the Turks. At Ploesti he seemed to me to fulfil the rôle of a superior sort of staff sergeant, always walking about with a handful of returns and states. He is a dumb man — and dumb seemingly from not having anything to say. Levitsky, his sous-chefy is a young professor, utterly devoid of experience except in the handling in manœuvres of comparatively small bodies of men; pragmatic and arrogant, but with a strong will, which, in conjunction with his incapacity, has been one of the chief factors in the failure hitherto of the Russian army. But he is within the ring-fence of "protection," and holds his ground against the clamors and murmurs of the army. To be within that pale is to be safe, if not from contumely, at least from open disgrace. If there be one thing more certain than another in connection with this war, it is that Prince Schakoffskoy ought to have been tried and broke for insubordination and disobedience of orders at the battle of Plevna of-the 30th of July. But he still commands his army corps, and, so far as I know, did not even receive a direct reprimand. In the old days Krüdener would have been sent to Siberia for the unmilitary and insubordinate act of assembling a batch of correspondents, and essaying to vindicate his conduct through them to the world by the publication of the essentially private orders under which he was forced peremptorily to act. But he holds his position in command of a corps, although his immunity may indeed be owing to the fact of his grimly and threateningly holding the telegrams which exonerate him at the expense of others. Schilder-Schuldner, the hero of the utterly "unspeakable" first fiasco at Plevna, still retains the command of the fragment of that brigade which his crass blundering shattered there. General Kriloff, who the other day, entrusted with a mass of Russian cavalry, and charged with the task of blocking the Sofia road, supinely failed to intercept reinforcements and supplies marching on Plevna, enjoys the equivocal credit of an exploit which the English military reader may be excused for regarding as well-nigh impossible. He commanded for a year a cavalry division at Warsaw, during the whole of which time he possessed no charger, although he drew rations, or rather their money, equivalent for six. ​Favoritism as inevitably begets intrigue as rottenness engenders maggots. Under an irresponsible absolutism the Absolute must have an almost impossible thoroughness and strength of purpose if favors do not frequently go through caprice and from other motives than the sheer claims of honest desert. So far as I can see, even the recognition of merit in the Russian court and military circle is too often capricious. Young Skobeloff had fought as splendidly on the grey morning when we crossed the Danube and plashed through the mud on its further bank to come to close quarters with the enemy, as on the day when he gained the name of the "hero of Lovca," or on that other later day when he stood master of the three Turkish redoubts on the south-west of Plevna. But whereas on the news of Lovca he was toasted at the imperial board, and whereas the Plevna fighting worthily earned him his lieutenant-generalcy, after the first exploit, when the emperor embraced Dragimiroff and shook hands with Yolchine, he turned his back ostentatiously on Skobeloff, simply because he was out of favor, and had not yet got back into favor by dint of hard fighting. Every Russian circle I have had experience of — the camp, court, the headquarter staff, the subsidiary staffs, the regiment, the battalion — each is a focus of unworthy intrigue. Men live in superficial amity one with another, while, to use an Americanism, they are "going behind" each other by every underhand means in their power. Young Skobeloff was under a cloud, and Prince ——— was his enemy. Skobeloff, who is not a courtier, cleft the cloud with the edge of his good sword, and the cloud drifts on to settle above Prince ———. General Ignatieff is in high favor, seemingly fixed firmly in his place close to the emperor's right hand, a man of power, influence, and position. The bad fortune of the war goads certain people, on whom the odium lies of that bad fortune, to wrath against the man who had done so much to bring the war about. There is a period of swaying to and fro of the forces of intrigue, and then Ignatieff goes back to Russia to assist his wife in the nursing of her sick sister. The wheel will come full circle again, no doubt, and then that presently afflicted lady will recover. The mischief of this all-pervading intrigue is that it is a distraction of the forces that ought to be concentrated on real and earnest duty. A man cannot concentrate all his energies on aiding in coping with the king's enemies without when he has to spend — or waste — a share of them in plotting to get the better of a man in the next tent, or to foil the devices of that man to get the better of him. And unfortunately, the man who is the greatest adept in intrigue, and benefits by it in the attainment of a high place, has not always — indeed, as intrigue is demoralizing, it may be said seldom — the qualifications which the high place into which he may have intrigued himself demands.
The deficiency in an adequate sense of responsibility is greatly caused by the evil treated of in the last paragraph. But, indeed, it seems to me that the lack of that thoroughness which a sense of responsibility inspires is innate in the Russian military character, so far as preparation, organization, and system, distinguished from mere fighting, are concerned. The Orientalism of the Russian extraction tends to laissez-faire — hinders from the patient, plodding, steady industry of the north-German soldiering man. Nobody holds himself directly charged with the responsibility of the urgent mending of a bridge, and the bridge is not mended. Nobody has it borne in upon him that it is a bounden duty he owes to himself, to his comrades, and to the State, to see that reserves are ready at hand to be used in the nick of time, and an enterprise collapses for want of reserves. A general of division gets an order to send forward into the fight two of his regiments. His luncheon is spread under yonder tree. A German or an English general would disregard his food, and concentrate himself on the proper execution of the work; his staff-officers would compete with each other in orderly zeal for the successful fulfilment of the order, and crave furthermore for the good luck of being permitted to take a share in the "fun." It is as likely as not — I have witnessed the scene — that the Russian general endorses the order, and passes it on to the brigadier by the messenger who has brought it, while he and his fainéant staff-officers, who have been sitting supinely about when they ought to have been in the saddle, seek the grateful shade of the tree and the contented enjoyment of the refection. Coming down from the Shipka Pass while the fate of the fighting there hung in the scales, I was sent for by the commander-in-chief to give a narrative of what I had seen. The circumstance vividly impressed me, that with the exception of Monseigneur himself, nobody appeared to feel that the general staff, and he himself as a member of it, had intense, engrossing, ​overwhelming concern with the issue of that terrible combat. The subject was discussed with vivacious interest — indeed, with curiosity, with more or less of intelligence; but very much in the tone in which it might have been discussed by a coterie in the Army and Navy Club. With the exception indicated, there was no recognition or apparent realization of responsibility. I left the kibitka with the curious sense that I, the stranger and the foreigner, was, save one, the man who felt the most concern in the episode and the result. Except as regards the actual fighting, there is a strange, inappropriate dilettantism about the soldiering of the officerhood of the Russian army. There is a disregard of the grand military fact that if success is to be achieved, every man, each in his place, must put his hand to the work as if he were working for his own hand — ay,for his own honor and his own life.
One word as to the emperor. I would have it to be understood that no word I have written can apply to him. His position, in proportion to the fulness with which his character is recognized, must move to the sincerest respect and the deepest sympathy. He is a true patriot, earnestly striving for the welfare of his country. But he toils amid obstacles, he struggles in the heart of gathered and incrusted impediments, the perception of which on his part must, it seems to me, kindle wrath which is unavailable, bring about misgivings which must awfully perturb, induce a despair which must strike to the very heart. He is not answerable for the growing up of the false system which strikes at the vitals of the Russian army, but he cannot but recognize the blighting curse of it. He is not the Hercules. to cleanse the huge Augean stable; but he knows, and in this hour of terrible trial must revolt from the foulness of it with a disgust that is all the more loathing because it is impotent. I sincerely believe that the emperor is the Russian who in all unselfishness suffers the direst pangs of anguish under a Russian disaster.
II. THE TURKS.
The Turks have blundered greatly in the management of their military affairs, but two mistakes of theirs were of such exceptional magnitude, that they loom high above minor errors. The Turks are barbarians, pure and simple. They have neither part nor lot in civilization: their religion and its injunctions, their origin, the area of their empire, their conservatism, bar them out from membership in the European family circle. It may be and has been contended that this being so, Europe is no place for them; but with this phase of the subject, involving as it does argument, I have no concern. I would merely remark that when it shall have been conclusively proved that they are out of place in Europe, there remains the physical task of acting on the conclusion; and that task, to the lot of whomsoever it may fall, does not quite bear the aspect of a holiday undertaking. Meanwhile they are barbarians, and they are in Europe. As barbarians and as non-aggressives, it would have been quite consistent for them this spring to hold some such language as the following to all whom it might concern: "We do not want to go to war, but if any power thinks proper to assail us, we give due forewarning that we are barbarians, and will defend ourselves by barbarian tactics. Our religion enjoins on us the ruthless slaughter of the infidel. If we are assailed we give fair warning that we will neither ask nor give quarter; that we will, more nostro, torture, chop, hack, and mutilate our wounded enemies, encumber ourselves with no prisoners, despise such finicalities as flags of truce; our battle-cry will be deen to the Giaour. You are entitled to know this, because the knowledge may be a factor among the considerations which affect your final resolution. If after this intimation you are still bent on assailing us, why, then, come on and see how you like it." This intimation the Turks did not make, but they have consistently acted according to its literal terms. I have myself seen great clumps of mutilated Russian dead on battle-fields. I have watched, without the need of a glass, the Bashi-Bazouks swarming out after an unsuccessful attack on the part of the Russians, and administering the coup de grâce with fell alacrity, under the eyes of the regulars in the sheltered trenches. This style of fighting is working its inevitable result on the Russian soldier, who hesitates to face this grim additional casualty of the battlefield, and it is no improbable supposition that the candid premonition of it would have weighed with the Russian authorities on whom would have vested the responsibility of making war in the face of it. But the Turks have tried to blow hot and cold — to profit by their barbarism, and plough with the heifer of civilization. While slaying and sparing not, they have addressed whining, and it may be added lying, appeals to Europe, invoking the enactments ​of the Geneva Convention, which they themselves set at naught. Wielding the axe and chopper of ruthless savages, they have acted like a pack of querulous and mendacious old women, in cackling to Europe their trumped-up allegations of violations of civilized warfare on the part of their enemies. They have thus sacrificed the sternly intelligible consistency of an attitude of persistent indomitable barbarism, and have admitted the jurisdiction of a court from whose bar it should have been their policy to stand aloof. This has been one capital error on their part: an error which may cost them infinitely dearer than defiant contumacy would have done.
Their second cardinal error comes within the pale of civilized warfare. Not having chosen to resist in force the Russian crossing of the Danube, and having elected to fall back before the invaders of Bulgaria, it was on the part of the Turks a grave military omission that they did not lay waste the territory which they left open to that invader's occupation. Had the territory been exclusively inhabited by their own people, it would have been none the less a military duty to have destroyed the crops, burnt the villages to the last cottage, and left only desolation behind them. It might have been that some fanatic philanthropists might have clamored of the inhumanity of this line of action; but sensible people would have sorrowfully recognized it as one of the stern necessities of ever-cruel war. The Russians could have uttered no reproach, with the precedent in their own history wrought by Kutusoff, Barclay de Tolly, and Rastapchin. If precedents are wanted of a later date, the American civil war — a war between brethren — swarms with them. If the Turks should have obeyed the demands of a military necessity, had the civilian population been mainly their own people, how much less incumbent on them was it to admit deterrent humanitarian considerations as the case stood! The whole Turkish population was ordered back by a command from Constantinople: there remained only Bulgarians, coreligionists of the invader, notoriously sympathizers with his aims, notoriously disaffected to Turkish rule, sure to become guides, spies, hewers of wood and drawers of water to their "deliverers," willing vendors to these of their substance. To leave behind, instead of reeking desolation, a land flowing with milk and honey, a land swarming with unmolested friends to the invader, was a piece of military lunacy almost unparalleled. The Turks should have driven the Bulgarian population inland before them to the last man, and left extant not a sheaf of barley that could have been destroyed. That they did not do so was the second of the two glaring mistakes I have indicated. When the defects of the Russian supply system are taken into consideration, there is no need to waste space in detailing the certainty, or in speculating on the probabilities, with which desolating tactics were pregnant.
It is no task of mine to inquire why the Turks did not pursue these tactics. It may be said that they did not because of their crassness, their hurry, their carelessness, their lack of military foresight; why suggest further reasons ? But the outcome, as a hard fact, stands that the Bulgarian population, left behind unmolested when the Turks fell back, were spared unheard-of suffering. They were in fact left in full enjoyment of their prosperity, it might be forever, certainly for an indefinite period. I want to know, if the Turks choose to assert that they thus sacrificed themselves and spared the Bulgarians from motives exclusively of pure humanity, on what valid grounds is any one to contradict them? If I find my way into a cellar full of untold gold, and am found coming out with empty pockets, am I not, even were I by habit and repute a thief, entitled to claim that my honesty deterred me from plunder? I have said that the Turks are barbarians, and that they are ruthless savages when their fighting blood is up; but there is no inconsistency between this attribute and the attribute of contemptuous good-natured humanity, or rather perhaps tolerant unaggressiveness, when nothing has occurred to stir the pulse of the savage spirit. And I sincerely believe, on the evidence of my own eyes and ears, that the Turks — the dominant race in virtue of those characteristics which, until the millennium, will ever continue to insure the dominance of a race — allowed the Bulgarians — the subject race in virtue of those characteristics which, while they exist, will always make a race subject to some one or other — to have by no means a bad time of it. Proof of this belief I will adduce in detail when I come to deal with the Bulgarians. But just cast a hasty glance at the conduct of the barbarian Turks during the past two years. The period opens with the Bulgarians, subject indeed to the Turks, taxed, no doubt, heavily and arbitrarily, annoyed occasionally by a zaptieh who must have been nearly as bad as the omnipotent "agent" ​on the estate of an Irish absentee landlord, bound to dismount when encountering a Turk on the road, just as a rural inferior at home is virtually bound to touch his hat to his local superior; but withal prospering mightily. The recently imported Circassians are a thorn in their flesh, against whom they have to put up iron bars and keep numerous fierce dogs, precautions which do not always avail; but the Circassian nuisance may be "squared" by judicious occasional presents of poultry and farm produce to the moullah of the district. The Bulgarian population, it is true, are debarred from aspiring to any, even the meanest public function, not even having the distinguished privilege, so much prized by the business Englishman, of being summoned on a jury when private avocations are exceptionally engrossing. To judge by the manner in which the Bulgarian civic functionaries appointed by Prince Tcherkasky are presently fulfilling their duties, from the municipal councillor who is making haste to be rich by pillaging alike casual Russian and resident countryman, to the street policeman of Tirnova or Gabrova, who, clothed in a little brief authority, whacks about him indiscriminately with his ratan, it may be questioned whether the general progress of the world was seriously retarded by the enforced abstention of the Bulgarians from a share in the management of public affairs.
It was no doubt a sad thing that the stalwart manhood of the Bulgarians was debarred from proving in the defence of the country that it had a heart in keeping with its thews and sinews, although circumstances may inspire a doubt whether the iron of this prohibition ate deeply into the Bulgarian heart. The country was badly governed, or rather in effect it was hardly governed at all, and this is exactly the state of things in which the astute man who knows the trick of buying protection is sure to get on by no means badly. I do not mean to say that it was all smooth and pleasant for the Bulgarians, or indeed for any of the races of which the population of Turkey in Europe is made up; but their lot, from all I have been able to learn, was tolerable enough. It seems to have been a lot for which the practical British philanthropist would gladly see a considerable section of his fellow country-people exchange their own wretched, sodden, hopeless plight. The life of the Bulgarian was eminently preferable to that of the miserable victims of the "sweater " who exist rather than live in Whitechapel garrets. I think Devonshire Giles, with his nine shillings a week and a few mugs of cider, would cheerfully have put up with the zaptieh, exclusion from a share in the management of public affairs — although his home share of that privilege is so large and so highly prized — and would have even been resigned under the dispensation of debarment from military service, for the sake of the rich acres of pasture and barley land, the cattle and brood mares of the rural Bulgarian. I know that the Russian peasant soldier who has crossed the Danube as the "deliverer" of the Bulgarian from "oppression” feels with a stolid, bewildered envy that, to use a slang phrase, he would be glad indeed "to have half his complaint."
The times, no doubt, had a certain roughness, and occasionally there were Bulgarians who could not accept the roughs with the smooths, and who kicked against the pricks. There have been Irishmen who have manifested active discontent with the rule of the "hated Saxon," and who have been made to suffer for their peculiar way of looking at things. The discontented Bulgarians sometimes were sent to prison, but mostly escaped into neutral territory without undergoing this infliction; and wherever they found themselves — in Bucharest, in Galatz, up among the hills at Cronstadt, or down in the flat at Crajovo or Turn Severin — there they seduously plotted against the Turkish dominance over the Bulgaria from which they were exiles. I suppose they had a perfect right to do this, and to strive to implicate in their plots their brethren who still remained "oppressed," if prosperous: only the man who plots and the man who joins a plot must, like the man who speculates, be prepared to take the consequences of failure.
As for the argument that the Turks were new-comers and have no abiding places in European Turkey, but that their tenure there is but the empire of superior power — if that is to be admitted and acted on, there logically follows a revolution in the face of the world, and all but universal chaos. We must quit India, and bid an apologetic adieu to the Maori, the Kaffir, and the Hottentot, the Spaniard from whom we wrested Gibraltar, the Dutchman from whom we masterfully took the Cape. We are to take ship from the jetties over which frown the Heights of Abraham, and leave the French habitants and the remnant of red men left at Cachnawaga to settle between them the ownership of Canada East. Poland must ​revolt against Austria, Prussia, Russia; the Tartars of the Crimea are to make a struggle for independence; the Irish are to drive forth the Saxon viceroy and his myrmidons at the point of the shillelagh; the Austro-Hungarian empire shall blaze into a chaotic conflagration, in which "furious Frank and fiery Hun," Serb, Magyar, Croat, and Teuton shall seethe confusedly.
The Bulgarians who abode at home, ignoring their substantial prosperity, and stimulated by their grudge against the Turk by reason of his masterfulness and his religion, tempted further by encouragement that came to them from Russian sources in Constantinople, listened to the voice of their exiled countrymen persuading them to insurrection. Persistent efforts have been made to minimize the radius and importance of the organization of that uprising, which collapsed so futilely and for which the penalty was so tragic. But these efforts can avail nothing before hard facts. When Tchernaieff was in England last winter, he detailed to me the widespread ramifications of the organization for the revolt all over Bulgaria, north as well as south of the Balkans, of which documentary evidence and fullest verbal assurances were furnished to him by the various committees outside Bulgaria, as he passed through the south of Russia and Roumania on his way to Servia. I could name several gentlemen with whom Tchernaieff, during the same visit, entered into the fullest particularity of details on this subject. It was by reason of the assurances of support and cooperation on which his knowledge of this organization entitled him to rely, that he dared to violate strict military considerations, and struck across the frontier into Bulgaria as soon as Servia had declared war. We know how feeble and patchy was the rising of the Bulgarians in reality, but that was owing not to the scanty area of the organization, but to the unpracticality of the conspirators and the faint-heartedness of the instruments. There was no outbreak at all north of the Balkans, but do not let it be supposed therefore that there was no organization for revolt. At Poradim, just before the July battle of Plevna, I, in company with a Russian staff-officer of high position, fell in with a Bulgarian who, now a thriving villager there, had during the previous year been the agent in Plevna of the American Book Society. Six years previously he had been imprisoned for active disaffection, but had regained his liberty by bribery. He had been the head centre of the insurrectionary organization in and around Plevna in 1875-6. He showed us the lists of memberships and of subscriptions — the latter not particularly reckless in their liberality. Everything had been prearranged, but when the time came there was not even a "cabbage garden" rising. The conspirators realized that the theory and practice of insurrection were two very different things, and remained content with the former luxury. The "head centre" had thought it prudent to relegate himself to village life, and to make a friend of the local moullah through the medium of presents of poultry.
The Bulgarian risings, then, such as they were, occurred. The Turks probably were unacquainted with the extent of the organization, but we must assume that they at least knew something. For the rest, omne ignotum pro magnifico. They had their hands full already. Montenegro and the Herzegovine were harassing them sorely; Servia was getting ready for war with all the energy of which she was capable. Other insurrections threatened in other regions of the great incongruous empire. This one at least was in the hollow of their hand; it must be crushed, stamped out, annihilated. The barbarian had got his provocation, and the savage strain in his blood went aboil. We all know what happened in the hapless regions where afterwards Mr. MacGahan wrote and Lady Strangford worked. It can be the task surely of no decent man to be the apologist of the Turkish wild beasts who ravaged and ravished in those fell days. But, on the other hand, indignation is misplaced against wild beasts, who simply do what "'tis their nature to" when provocation kindles the savage "streak" in their nature. What is the use? It is folly to feel wroth with the elephant who goes "must" and pulverizes his mahout. He is "must," and there is an end of it. ​But the Turkish barbarities, like the Bulgarian actual risings, were localized. Perhaps the Turks were ignorant of the north-Balkan complicity; perhaps they ignored it; perhaps, seeing it had come to nothing, they gave no heed to it at all. Be that as it may, in all my wayfarings, from the Lorn near to the Vid, from the Danube to the Balkans, I could neither hear of nor find human being who had suffered because of the business of last year; and I am sure I inquired sedulously enough. I found no man scored with yataghan slashes, no woman with a story of outrage, which from my later experiences I believe she would have been frank enough with if she had cause to speak. Last year's straw-stack stands in the farmyard of every Bulgarian cottager; the color of its thatch proves that his habitation is not an erection of yesterday. The two-year colt trots on the lea along with the dam and the foal. His buffaloes are mature in their ugliness; his wife's white-metal water-pails are pitted with the dints of years. And if the belongings of the rural Bulgarian furnish testimony to the hitherto stable security of his way of life, not less do the surroundings of the townspeople prove their abiding conviction of non-rmolestation. Of the vines whose leaves and tendrils spread with verdant green shade over the garden arbors of Sistova, and whose fruit clusters dangle on the brown fronts of Drenova's old oaken houses, the gnarled stems are as thick as my wrist. Pretty Maritza of Tirnova shows you proudly her blooming balsams, and tells you how she took the trouble to bespeak the seed a year in advance from a famous balsam-cultivator across the Balkans in Kesanlik. It is to be doubted now whether he will ever grow balsams more. Her mother displays the yet remaining large stock of her last autumn's preservings. And, by the way, it was of this same mother that the tale was written to England how the pasha had informed her he would hang her, and indeed had even fixed the day for the operation, on the charge of concealing some obnoxious personage. I was given to understand, indeed, that some unpleasant communications had passed between the pasha and the good lady, but how much, or little, she was perturbed thereby, may be gathered from the fact that she did not desist from her placid preparation of paprika paste — no, not on the very day named or reported to have been named for disqualifying her from the further enjoyment of that dainty.
The Turkish soldiers, when the Russians made good their footing on the southern bank of the Danube, evacuated Sistova without so much as breaking a twig on the front of a Bulgarian house. Their civilian brethren had already departed with like unanimity of harmlessness. The disorganized bands of soldiers fell back through the rural villages without so much as filching a Bulgarian goose or requisitioning a Bulgarian egg. A Turkish army abode for days around Bjela, and finally departed, its rearguard consisting of irregulars, without a jot of injury wrought on the townfolk or their property. All along the Turkish retreat from the Jantra to the Lorn, the Bulgarian experienced the same immunity. The Turkish inhabitants quitted, and the Turkish troops ran away from Tirnova without a blow or a robbery. It may, in fine, be said that the Turks departed absolutely harmlessly out of the territory from the Danube to the Balkans, of which the Russians stood possessed when their area of occupation was largest. How the Bulgarians requited this forbearance — or immunity, if the other word seems to ask too much — will have to be told later.
III. THE BULGARIANS.
I have found it impossible to avoid saying a good deal of the Bulgarians when writing under the preceding heading, and so much are the two subjects intermingled that in writing under the present heading I cannot hope wholly to exclude reference to the Turks. It must be understood that as I have never been across the Balkans, my observations in the character of a witness must be held as applying exclusively to the Bulgarians between that range and the Danube within the region of the Russian occupation. Nor must it be forgotten that this country is Bulgaria proper, where the Bulgarian race is purest: the Roumelian Bulgarians are affected, whether for good or evil, by a considerable miscellaneous intermixture of other races.
An outspoken Russian of my acquaintance, after a large campaigning experience of them, gave it as his belief regarding the north-Balkan Bulgarians that they must either be the result of a temporary lapse in the creative vigilance, or that they must be accepted as a refutation of the Darwinian theory of the survival of the fittest. My Russian friend had doubtless good cause of disgust for the Bulgarians, but I venture to regard his expressions as rather too strong. My experience of the Bulgarians, indeed, is that they have fewer of the attributes calculated to kindle sympathetic regard and beget genial interest than any other race of whose character I have had opportunities of judging. But they have some good points, more especially the rural Bulgarians. They have prospered by reason of sedulous industry practised to some extent at least under arduous conditions, and this is an unquestionable merit. Their prosperity has indeed been used as an argument why the Turks, whose bent is far from being so keenly towards industry, and who accordingly do not display evidences of so great material prosperity, should therefore cease to be the master people. It is not for me to combat this or any other argument, but I may venture to suggest that if a maximum of prosperity is to be regarded as the criterion, we Britons must retire en masse into private life in favor of the Jewish element in our midst. It tells doubtless in favor of the Bulgarian that he is in name a Christian; although his "evidences of Christianity," so far as I have cognizance of them, consist chiefly in his piously crossing himself in starting to drive a vehicle for the hire of which he has charged double a liberally reasonable sum, after having profusely invoked the name of the Saviour to corroborate his asseverations that the price he asks is ruinously low. He cannot be denied a certain candor, which sometimes has a cynical flavor in it, as when he coolly tells a Russian, who in the character of his "deliverer" is remonstrating against his withholding of supplies or his extortionate charges for them, that "the Turk was good enough for him, and that he didn't want deliverance." The Bulgarian is singularly adaptive. He realized his "deliverance" with extreme promptitude of perception, resulting in bumptious arrogance. He drove his oxcart with nonchalant obstinacy in the only practicable rut, and grinned affably when your carriage-springs were broken in scrambling out of it to pass him. In the towns he held the crown of the causeway; in the country regions near the forepost lines he sees it to be expedient to pursue the career of a double spy and a double traitor.
In the preceding section I have spoken at length of his material prosperity prior to the arrival of the "deliverers." The two races — Turk and Bulgarian — dwelt apart; and the Bulgarian, as he drove his wainload of bearded wheat, or his herd of plump cattle and fertile brood mares down the slope to his white cottage among its cornstacks bowered among the trees by the fountain, must often have smiled grimly as his eye caught the barer farmyards and the scantier comfort of the Turkish quarter, and the ramshackle hovels among the scrappy tobacco-plots of the Circassian squatters on or beyond the outskirts of the village. The Bulgarian kept the village shop, and the Turk, when he came for his necessaries, had to sniff the hated odor of pork sausages. The village swarmed with Christian pigs, free to roam into the Turkish quarter till chevied by Moslem dogs. If in the towns and large villages the Bulgarian ear had to put up with the call of the muezzin from the minaret of a mosque, the Osmanli were fain to tolerate the clangor of the bells from the glittering towers of floridly ornate Christian churches. For every mosque in Bulgaria there are at least three churches. Draw near to Sistova from what direction you will, the sparkle of the metallic covering of the towers of churches, imposing in all the showy garishness of Byzantine architecture, first meets the eye. From the Russian batteries on the blood-stained height of Radisovo you discern where lies Plevna nestling among the foliage, not by the slender white minarets, but by the ​{{hwe|tering|glittering} domes and stately spires of her Christian churches.
If ever one race owed a deep obligation to another, the Bulgarians did to the Turks, for the forbearance of the latter in leaving them and theirs unmolested in the evacuation before the advancing Russians in the last days of June and in July. The non-molestation on the part of those "unspeakable" barbarians was as thorough as that on the part of the last remnant of the German army of occupation, which Manteuffel marched from out the gates of Verdun through fertile Lorraine and over the new frontier line bisecting the battle-field of Gravelotte. And how was this forbearance requited — a forbearance that might have gone far to dim the memory of the conventional "four centuries of oppression"? The moment the last Turk was gone from Sistova — not before, for your Bulgarian is not fond of chancing contingencies — the Bulgarians of that town betook themselves to the sack, plunder, and destruction of the dwellings vacated by the Turks. They might have served an apprenticeship with the Circassian, so dexterous and efficient was their handiwork. I have seen few dismaler spectacles than that presented by the Turkish quarter of Sistova when I visited it two days after the crossing. To me, as representing a journal whose good-will the Bulgarians cherished, the Bulgarian patres conscripti of Sistova strove to mitigate the disgrace of this wanton outrage. It had been wrought by the scum of the place while as yet order had not succeeded to anarchy — the Cossacks had had a hand in it, which was a lie — the town was ashamed of the outburst of spite, for which nevertheless it was hinted there was some palliation in the "four hundred years of oppression." But stern measures had been taken to arrest any further devastation (there was little left to wreck), a committee had been formed to collect into the care of the authorities all the plunder, penalties had been enacted for its retention, and the effects were to be stored to await the return of the owners, to whom in the mean time — some of them being understood not to have gone far — overtures were to be sent begging their return and assuring them of safety. I went out from among the patres conscripti, and, ascending the staircase in the minaret of a mosque which had been wrecked and defiled, saw from the summit Bulgarian youths pursuing unchecked the work of wanton destruction on outlying Turkish houses. If the committee was ever formed at all, no results followed. The plunder remained with the plunderers; nobody was punished.
The conscript fathers of Sistova told me also that, to save Bulgaria's discredit in the eyes of Europe, emissaries would be sent out into the villages and towns, praying their inhabitants to behavior more worthy of civilization than Sistova had been able to compass. If they were sent with such a message, it must have been read backwards by the recipients. In every town and village of Bulgaria whence the Turkish inhabitants have fled, their houses were at once wrecked, the huts of the Circassian burnt to the ground. Colonel Lennox and Lord Melgund must be able to testify with how great order the Turks evacuated Bjela. I can speak to the unharmed state of the place when I entered it while as yet the Turkish irregulars were not out of sight. I can speak, also to the zest with which its Bulgarian inhabitants began to wreak their spite on the houses of the Turks as soon as they believed that the presence of Arnoldi's dragoons on the heights above the place deprived the work of any risk. Before the emperor came to Bjela, it took some days to repair or clear away the dilapidations wrought in the Turkish bey's house which he was to inhabit, and after all his Majesty could not but have noticed evidences of the ravage which had been wrought on it. Now this bey was a special favorite of the Bjela Bulgarians. He had effectually kept Bashi-Bazouks and Circassians from molesting them, and they had begged the good man not to go, assuring him that they would tell the Russians how much they owed him. He had to reply that his orders from Constantinople were imperative, and farewells passed with protestations of mutual goodwill. If the bey had thought better of it, and had come back next day, he would have returned to a house wrecked by his well-wishers of the day before. For aught I know, the fittings and timbers of the abandoned Turkish houses of Tirnova still furnish its Bulgarian inhabitants with their supplies of firewood. This was so the last time I was in Tirnova, in the end of August.
It would be interesting to hear Prince Tcherkasky's candid opinion as to the fitness of the Bulgarians for civic self-government. I never had but one occasion to appeal to an official Bulgarian, and the result was not encouraging. I had bought a pony from a Bulgarian citizen of Sistova. As I was not prepared for the moment to take the animal away, I handed to the ​﻿vendor, in the presence of witnesses, half the purchase-money, and a trifle to keep the pony well till I should send for it in a couple of days. The transaction occurred in the man's own house; he was no horse-coper, but everything around him indicated that he was a respectable citizen. Two days later I sent my servant for the pony. On his way he met the citizen riding the beast. My servant hailed him, whereupon he immediately wheeled about and gallopped off to parts unknown. My servant, and subsequently myself, visited his residence, where his sister, who was his housekeeper, smiled blandly upon us, and declared herself ignorant whither he had gone or when he would return. I made a formal complaint in writing to a Bulgarian official in the police-office indicated as the right man to whom to complain, but never again saw either citizen, pony, or money. The complaint died a natural death.
Let me say a few words of what was virtually the civil war between the Turks and Bulgarians, which fringed the edges of General Gourko's operations across the Balkans. I speak, it is true, from hearsay evidence, but there could be no better nor more direct hearsay evidence. The Bulgarians begged arms of the Russians, and received them; then, hot with the fell memories of last year, and conscious that Russians were with and for them, they fell on the Turks with the most ruthless reprisals. I anticipate with interest the publication of his experiences by Mr. Rose, the correspondent of the Scotsman, who accompanied General Gourko's advance, and in whose way fell frequent opportunities of witnessing the conduct of armed Bulgarians. Be it understood I am not blaming them for what they did. I neither praise any one nor blame any one. But this I say, that all the Turks are reported as having done on their reoccupation of the districts, the Turkish grip on which was temporarily let go by reason of Gourko's raid, is on credible evidence not one whit more barbarous than was the conduct of the Bulgarians towards the Turks when Gourko's star was in the ascendant. The barbarian has acted like a savage in his reprisals; the Christian acted equally like a savage in what were virtually his reprisals for what happened a year previously. The one "terror" has but followed on the other. Apologists for the proven barbarity of the Bulgarians — men who acknowledge that they saw them driven away with horror by Russian officers from their work of slaughtering Turkish wounded, over whom an advancing Russian column had passed — advance the plea, ad culpum minuendam, that the Bulgarians have at least not ravished. There is told a different tale in the sad spectacle of the four Jewish ladies, sisters, now forlornly resident in the house of a merchant banker in Bucharest of their own faith — outraged by God knows what ruffiandom of uncounted Bulgarians in sight of their own father as he lay dying murdered in his own house in Carlovo.
I ought to say that what I have incorporated in the foregoing article has been gathered by me piecemeal with constant assiduity, by dint of personal investigation and questioning. I have tried never to let an opportunity slip of getting even a scrap or a sidelight of information. My medium of questioning was my servant, a Servian of whose truthfulness I have had long experience, and who spoke Bulgarian with the fluency of a native, and Turkish and Russian very fairly. I may add that, as a Serb, he was a bitter Turko-phobe, and that all his sympathies were with the Bulgarians. Archd. Forbes.