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Instead of dignified sarcasm, we were apologetically regaled with parallels of all the sieges in the world's history Troy, Plevna, Sebastopol, Paris, etc. and calmly assured that our tribulations weighed lightly in the balance with what was suffered in the brave days of "wooden" horseflesh!
Next morning orders were brought off, and no time was lost in weighing anchor and clearing out, and he has never visited the place since. A Pasha before Plevna The Eastern Question was ablaze. Mr. Gladstone had published his "bag and baggage" pamphlet, and made his Blackheath speech in September 1876.
On the march to Plevna, for example, I saw two high military dignitaries chastised in the presence of their fellow-officers. What they had done or failed to do I did not know, but I arrived upon the scene just in time to see each man step out in turn, fold his arms and with bent head submit himself to half a dozen resounding blows across the shoulders.
I heard many stories as to the jealousies and dissensions which had broken out during the war between the Russians and their allies. The siege of Plevna, in particular, had left bitter memories behind it. The Roumanians openly accused the Russian officers of having selfishly sacrificed the soldiers of the little principality in order to save the lives of Russians.
So highly was he thought of there that when, after the unsuccessful attempt on Plevna in the September of the war, the Guard Corps was arriving from Russia and there was the temporary intention to use it with other troops in an immediate offensive movement across the Balkans, he was named to take the command of the enterprise.
He was older and stouter than his brother-in-arms, Henri de Prerolles, and a wound he had received at Plevna slightly impeded his movements, so that he was unable to display the same activity in the dance as the other waltzers, and contented himself with moving a 'trois temps', in an evolution less in harmony with the brilliancy of the music.
When the Russians charged on the Grivitza redoubt at Plevna they first launched one column of men that they knew would be all shot down long before they could reach it. But they made a cloud of smoke under the cover of which a second column was launched. They would all be shot down. But they carried the covering cloud so far that a third column broke out of it and successfully carried the redoubt.
Osman Pasha, the single Turkish commander of ability that the war developed, occupied the town of Plevna with such forces as he could gather, fortified it as strongly as possible, and from its walls defied the Russians. The invaders dared not advance and leave this stronghold in their rear.
In the direst need of the Ansells Solomon held his curly head high among his school-fellows, and never lacked personal possessions, though they were not negotiable at the pawnbroker's. He had a peep-show, made out of an old cocoa box, and representing the sortie from Plevna, a permit to view being obtainable for a fragment of slate pencil. For two pins he would let you look a whole minute.
Little generosities and selfishnesses display themselves more freely when commons are running short and shelter is scanty than they do amongst those who, in the phrase of Tennyson's northern farmer, "has coats to their backs, and takes their regular meals." One British gentlemen we had with us during the siege of Plevna was a perpetual source of joy to me.
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