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Updated: June 16, 2025
When the divisions of Generals Kent and Wheeler had been distributed along the crest of the San Juan ridge, the line looked too weak and thin to hold the position; but Skobeleff once said that a position carried by attack can be held, even if seventy-five per cent. of the attacking force have perished; and there was no doubt in the minds of the regulars and the Rough Riders that there were enough of them left not only to hold San Juan, but to take the city.
The same disappointing news dispelled the dreams of conquest which had nerved the other columns in their burning march. Thus ended the scheme of invasion of India to which Skobeleff had lately given shape and body. In January 1877, while in his Central Asian command, he had drawn up a detailed plan, the important parts of which will be found in the Appendices of this volume.
His experiences in Africa were of the kind usual in savage warfare; but he became a favorite with his men, whom he cared for throughout his career with much of that fatherly interest which distinguished the Russian hero, General Skobeleff. When the war with Italy broke out, in 1859, Boulanger and his Turcos took part in it.
They numbered about 45,000 in all men, women and children and they believed that the fortress was impregnable. The Russian general, Skobeleff, had a mine carried under the wall. Inside the fortress the Turkomans heard the soldiers working underground with picks and crowbars, but did not understand what was intended.
From his first definite entry into a State career in 1848 to the dismissal of 1887, his deep religion, wisdom, and simplicity of nature are as distinctly Prussian as the glancing ardour of Skobeleff is distinctly Russian. From the Hohenzollern he looked for no gratitude. His loyalty was loyalty to the kingship, not to the individual.
Of course all the world knew of Oscar Oscarovitch, the modern Skobeleff, the lineal descendant of Ivan the Terrible, the crystal-brained, steel-willed man who was to be the saviour and regenerator of half-ruined, revolution-rent Russia, but this was the first time that Nitocris had met him in her present life. When she had returned his stately bow, she looked up and saw with a strange intuition, which somehow seemed half-reminiscent an almost perfect type of the primitive warrior through the disguise of his faultless twentieth-century attire. He was nearly two inches over six feet, but he was so exquisitely proportioned that he looked less than his height. His skin was fair and smooth, but tanned to an olive-brown. His forehead was of medium height, straight and square, with jet-black brows drawn almost straight across it above a pair of rather soft, dreamy eyes that were blue or black according to the mood of their possessor. His nose was strong and slightly curved, with delicately sensitive nostrils. A dark glossy moustache and beard trimmed
The armed intervention of Britain in Egypt turned the thoughts of Frenchmen from the Rhine to the Nile. Skobeleff, the arch enemy of all things Teutonic, passed away in the autumn; and its closing days witnessed the death of Gambetta at the hands of his mistress.
He was seized, of course, by those who first met him, and, not being known to them, was at once carried before a captain of dragoons, who knew him. By the captain he was sent to the tent of the General the younger Skobeleff, to whom he related the important information which he had obtained at so great risk.
Eyiau and Friedland attested this, and many a later field, and the chronicle of his recent wars, from Potiamkin to Skobeleff, from Kutusov to Todleben, illustrate the justice of Napoleon's verdict, "unparalleled heroism in defence." And yet out of the sword the Slav has never forged an instrument for the perfection of a great political ideal.
Is there not a justification for those fine words of Skobeleff after the capture of Gheok Tepe, when the conquered feared reprisals from the victors: "In Central Asian politics we know no outcasts?" "And in that policy," said the major, "lies our superiority over England." "No one can be superior to the English."
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