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Kaiser, much meditating, is advised it will be better to go frankly into the Turk on his own score, and try for slices of profit from him in this game. Kaiser declares war against the Turk; and what is still more interesting to Friedrich Wilhelm and the Berlin Circles, Seckendorf is named General of it. Going to besiege Widdin, they say. So has the poor Kaiser been advised.
It was agreed that the Imperialists, under count Seckendorf, should attack Widdin in Servia; while the Russians, commanded by count de Munich, should penetrate to the Ukraine, and besiege Oczakow, on the Roristhenes. They accordingly advanced against this place, which was garrisoned by twenty thousand men, and on the side of the Roristhenes defended by eighteen galleys.
At five o'clock in the evening we passed the fortress of Widdin, opposite which we stopped, in the neighbourhood of the town of Callafat. It was intended merely to land goods here, and then to proceed immediately on our voyage; but the agent was nowhere to be found, and so we poor travellers were made the victims of this carelessness, and compelled to remain here at anchor all night. March 30th.
The Servians, now in possession of the town, resolved to starve the Turks out of the fortress; and having occupied a flat island at the confluence of the Save and the Danube, were enabled to intercept their provisions; on which the Pasha capitulated and embarked for Widdin.
No mere tourist would now-a-days think of undertaking the fatiguing ride across European Turkey, when he can whizz past Widdin and Roustchouk, and even cut off the grand tongue at the mouth of the Danube, by going in an omnibus from Czernovoda to Kustendgi; consequently the arrival of an English traveller from the interior, is a somewhat rare occurrence.
Moreover, there are in that part only two or three passes that can be attempted by an army with artillery. The fortress of Widdin, where Osman Pasha was known to have an army of about 40,000 seasoned troops, dominated the west of Bulgaria and the roads leading to the easier passes of the Balkans near Sofia.
The political existence of modern Servia may be considered to date from 1804, in February of which year a general rising took place of the Christian population against the Moslems, provoked by the massacres and atrocities committed by the spahis, who held lands in the province by military tenure, and whose chiefs had thrown off the authority of the Pasha of Belgrade, and embraced the party of the famous Paswan-Oghlu, Pasha of Widdin, who was then in open revolt against Selim III., as the champion of the janissaries and the ancien regime, against the civil and military reforms which the Sultan was striving to introduce.
Arrival at Widdin Jew. Comfortless Khan. Wretched appearance of Widdin. Hussein Pasha. M. Petronievitch. Steam Balloon. River steaming is, according to my notions, the best of all sorts of locomotion. Steam at sea makes you sick, and the voyage is generally over before you have gained your sea legs and your land appetite.
There they present the appearance of a vast ocean of verdure, having only two outlets, one near Gran and Waitzen, the other between Belgrade and Widdin.
Signs are not wanting that in the suggestions here tentatively offered, we find a key that unlocks the riddle of the Danubian campaign of 1877. At first Abdul-Kerim in the Quadrilateral, and Osman at Widdin, maintained a strict defensive. The former posted small bodies of troops, probably not more than 20,000 in all, at Sistova, Nicopolis, and other neighbouring points.
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