The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1877-09-11 00:00:00

THZ WAR.

The crbde of the war, gays the Standard, hae now
1,.. ~reached, and upon the Irene of the ',reliant week's
fighting the fate of the camps gn for the resent seas.,n
depends. A great battle is going on around !germ',
and another in imminent between the Jantra and the
Kara Lem. Should these evente be decided in favour
of the Russians they will he relieved of the preenure
which ham for the tut nix weeks rendered their iewition
precarious in the extreme, and they need fear no more
offensive movements upon the part of the Turks bet re
the conclusion of the present campaign. Should they
both be decided in fav'mr of the Turka the Ruselane
will probably be forced to retro.. the Danube and
winter in ltonmania. We have now the l'urkish as
well as the ituseian accounts of the capture of Loftcha
before um. The Ruesiatuf had, 001 we learn from our
Special Correspondent, 25,000 infantry, besides cavalry,
and 90 guns. The Turks, sa we hear from Constanti-
nople had but eight infantry battalions. How well
handful iandful of men fought against the Russian muses
we know from Russian account.. Our Correapendent
at Clomji Studer!, who, of course, obtained his infor.
mation from Russian ~ffiLvrs, mtated that they
" fought superbly, and hell on for twelve hours.'
They inflicted an admitted loes upon the Russians
of one thousand men, and retired without the loss of a
single gun. It is singular, however, that Osman Pacha
ehoubl have left this important position with so small
a garrison.
l'he Russian attack upon Plevna has now begun
the Roumanian army taking part in the aas,dt. On
Friday and Saturday eight pieces of artillery played
upon the l'urkinh iesiitions, but no infantry attack
took place. The Riewian official account sums up the
result of Saturday's fi.diting by paying that the
ltiissian left ha ,t taken some heights to the south of
the town with the loss f five hundred men The
centre and right were still from twelve hundred to
fourteen hundred yards from the Turkish entrench-
ments. and their lone had not on the whole been
heavy. l'he grand meault we., we hear from
ilucharest, to be delivered yesterday, and in the
course .1 to-day we may expect to hear the result of
the tremendous conflict which probably took place.
It is etrange that the ltineliaue, having delayed the
attack for no many weeks, did not defer it for a few
daym longer in order to utilise the capture of Loftcha.
Nicksics hse at last fallen. The Ntontenegrins
carried all the defence'', and according to ~ne account
the garrison and inhabitants were permitted to retire
to Ilatcliko, aco.r.licg to another they evacuated the
place under cover of alarkuese, and effected their
retreat in safety. Seeing the savage nature of
Montenegrin warfare, the latter account appears to be
by Car the most probable. The fall .4 Nicksicli will be
a matter of great mortification tg the 'Fmk,' ; but from
a military pint of view,.it ought neves to have been
defended, for its p.sitiou 111 entirely hedated, and the
only approach being up the littga Pans, its relief has
osits the 'lurks thousands of ~,on, wli might have
been .4 vital use upon the Danube. This event
probably clones the Montenegrin campaign for the
year, an the semen, is too far advanced to render active'
operations touch longer possible.
CHRISTIAN RUSSIA.

After the retreat of the RUSSinn. from Kellenlik to the
Balkans, wild hordes of what, according to the description
given by the women, I believe to have been Cossacks and
Bulgarians of the socalleil " LOgion des Vengeurs" pivised
through the village awl ventral their rage and disappoint-
ment on the inhabitante, killing seventy or eighty of the
men and boy+ and outraging the rninf,n. thie of th•
women whoni We found in the village brought me to her
devastatril home, and there in the court yard, close to the
woodden stairnew whkh lead:: to the upper atorey (the
wround floor being occAtic.l by the cattle) showed to me
almtulaut tracec of blood. She call) that her :oily :laughter
bad been murdered there under her oyes by a Bulgarian.
Nearly at the same ts the woman added, two other
Bulgariano entered, and, indignsuit at tin,, 1111 l rdor rf the
pour girl, killed the criminal aggrea.or on the spot,
mixing his blood with that of his victim. I could tell
niany wore tale:: ti tub effect, hut one in Nullivient. There
can be no •lotallt, frau the I:nee:boono atatements of at
least four acore people, that in the ILon, of thin villa',it
was not only the Ihtlgarnma, Mit ale: the Cossacks, who
were guilty of com 11l i l tin. the darkest crime..