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Then at intervals all day and every day, the big gun boomed and the clarion blared until I used to dream that I was back at Plevna or the Shipka Pass, and could not get my "copy" to London and New York because Monsieur Dorn had filled the Houssy Wood with Cossacks from Janenne.
After a few successful encounters, however, the Tsar's soldiers met with serious defeats before Plevna, and persistent appeals were now urged for the participation of the Rumanian army in the military operations. The moment had come for Rumania to bargain for her interests.
Accordingly, early in August, Prince Charles led some 35,000 Roumanians across the Danube, and was charged with the command of all the troops around Plevna . The hopes of the invaders were raised by Skobeleff's capture, on September 3, of Lovtcha, a place half-way between Plevna and the Balkans, which had ensured Osman's communications with Suleiman Pasha.
Such is, or was, Port Arthur, and when we remember how the Turks held Plevna, an open town until the earthworks were hastily thrown up round it, for months against all the force Russia could bring against it, one cannot but feel amazement that a place so powerful should so easily have fallen. Properly defended, it should be unreducible by anything but famine.
He quitted Havre, and returned to Paris; but the very evening of his return, in the bustle and movement of the Champs-Elysees, the long avenue dotted with lights, the flaming gas-jets of the cafe concerts, the bursts of music, he found again, as if the Tzigana were continually pursuing him, the same phantom; despite the noise of people and carriages upon the asphalt, the echoes of the "Song of Plevna," played quite near him by some Hungarian orchestra, reached him as upon the seashore at Havre; and he hastened back to his hotel, to shut himself up, to hear nothing, see nothing, and escape from the fantastic, haunting pursuit of this inevitable vision.
The line of curious coincidences in the experience of the circus-rider had impressed me very much at the time, but in the excitement of the Turkish campaign I entirely forgot the circumstance. I do not, indeed, recall any thought of Nagy during the first five months in the field. The day after the fall of Plevna I rode through the deserted earthworks toward the town.
My host went to the cupboard and produced a bottle, a glass, and a second spoon. When the cork was drawn, the scent of rum escaped into the air. He sniffed at it and dropped a teaspoonful into both glasses. "This is a trick I learned from the Russians after Plevna; they had my little finger, so I deserved something in exchange." He looked round; his eyes, his whole face, seemed to twinkle.
The Balkan Mountains, nature's line of defence for Turkey, lay before the Russian troops, and on the high-road to its passes stood the town of Plevna, a fortress which must be taken before the mountains could safely be crossed. The works were very strong, and behind them lay Osman Pacha, one of the boldest and bravest of the Turkish soldiers, with a gallant little army under his command.
That attribute he evinced with utter recklessness when arriving, as was his wont, too late for a deliberate and careful survey, he galloped round the Turkish positions on the morning on which began the September bombardment of Plevna, in proximity to Turkish cannon-fire so dangerous that his staff remonstrated, and that even the sedate American historian of the war speaks of him as having "exposed himself imprudently to the Turkish pickets."
Many bloody engagements had taken place on the plains of Bulgaria and among the Balkan mountains, while Osman Pasha had carried on for some time that celebrated defence of Plevna which afterwards carried him to the front rank of the Turkish generals, and raised him, in the world's estimation, above them all.
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