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I cannot tell you sufficiently how your dear letter has rejoiced me. X.'s strong box resists a siege even more obstinately than does Silistria; storming it will do no good, and I have consequently nothing satisfactory to tell you.
Early in May the news arrived that the Russians had advanced through the Dobrudscha and had commenced the siege of Silistria. A few hours later the "Falcon" and several other ships of war were on their way up the Dardanelles, convoying numerous store-ships bound to Varna.
To their disappointment, however, the Russians met with a most stubborn resistance from the Turks, and utterly failed to take the fortress of Silistria, where the besieged were encouraged and directed by some British officers. Meanwhile, the queen of Great Britain and the emperor of France had both declared war against Russia, March 28, 1854.
Meanwhile western Bulgaria had not been touched, and it was thither that the Bulgarian patriarch Damian removed from Silistria after the victory of the Greeks, settling first in Sofia and then in Okhrida in Macedonia, where the apostate Shishman had eventually made his capital.
The creation of a Greater Roumania and of a new Southern Slav State would transform the whole Balkan situation, and therefore obviously involves material concessions to Bulgaria and Greece. This means a reversion to the boundary defined under Russian arbitration at Petrograd in January 1913 except outside the fortress of Silistria, where strategic reasons demand its rectification.
Through Russian influence the commission appointed to delimit the boundary between Roumania and the new principality of Bulgaria put the town of Silistria upon the Bulgarian side of the boundary. Now the heights of Silistria command absolutely the Roumanian territory opposite to it and the Dobrudja.
All night long the low thunder of the siege was heard even more continuously than before. He awoke just at dawn, and listened; the wind came from the same quarter, but no longer was the booming sound of the cannon heard. "It is all over with the brave garrison of Silistria, I am afraid," he observed to Sidney, who had joined him outside the tent.
The Danube directly in front of Silistria spreads out in a marsh several miles wide, so that it is impossible to approach Silistria from the Roumanian side by bridge. As a result Roumania has always felt that her southern border was at the mercy of Bulgaria and has always, as one of the chief aims of her national existence, looked forward to the rectification of her southern boundary.
You may rest assured that there is not a province of the Ottoman empire, which is better governed than the pashalic of Silistria. Now and then, a rude Turk appropriates to himself a Bulgarian girl; but the government cannot be responsible for these individual excesses.
You may rest assured that there is not a province of the empire better governed than the pashalik of Silistria. We have no malcontents within the province; but there are a few Hetarist scoundrels at Braila, who wish to disturb the tranquillity of Bulgaria; but the Walachian government has taken measures to prevent them from carrying their projects into execution."
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