In the Track of the Troops, R. M. Ballantyne [best pdf ebook reader TXT] 📗

time to exchange a few rapid queries and replies when our men were ordered to advance to the attack.

Very soon the ambulance corps was busily employed, and I had to devote my entire energies to the wounded who came pouring in.

Oh! it was pitiful to see the hundreds of strong and stalwart youths, who might have been the glory of succeeding generations, brought in with frames shattered beyond recovery, with brave lip compressed to check the rising cry of agony, with eyes glaring in the terrible conflict between lusty manhood and sudden death, or, with nerves utterly unstrung, giving vent to the shrieks of the maniac.

Several surgeons and students among us had extemporised an hospital in the shelter of a cliff.

One of the students, whose mind was in advance of his years and whose spirit seemed roused, came suddenly to me, during a brief interval in our labours.

“Our rulers are fools, or worse,” said he, with indignation; “what is the use of diplomacy if it cannot prevent this?”

I remonstrated with the youth on the impropriety of his language, but my new friend the “special” broke in with—

“Ah! young man, you have not yet seen enough of life to understand it. A man is a machine which regulates itself, more or less, for its own interests. A household does the same; a town does likewise; so does a state. No doubt a man sometimes fights with himself—so, too, households are addicted to disagreement, and towns are often afflicted with difference of opinion, while a state is not unacquainted with internal commotions, but, in each and all of these cases, reason and common sense prevent the people from degenerating into pure savages. It is reserved for governments alone, when they come into collision with each other, to do that. Peoples don’t desire war, my good sir, it is government—in other words, the non-combatant gentlemen at the head of the world’s affairs—who thirst for blood, backed up, of course, by such of the people as are more or less interested in the breaking out of war. In all ordinary matters humanity is satisfied to submit its cases to courts of law, to umpires, to individual or collective arbitrators. If things don’t go right, it is usually understood among Christian men and women that a little touch of forbearance here, of self-sacrifice there, of pocketing of slight affronts elsewhere, will bring things into the best possible condition, and, where these plans won’t do,—as in the case of drunkards, maniacs, and villains,—they understand and quietly practise the power of overwhelming constraint. If the Turks had been overwhelmingly constrained by Europe during the late Conference at Constantinople, we should have had no war.”

I never met with any nation so fond of argument as the Scotch! Surrounded as we were by dead and dying men, the “special” and the student (who was also Scotch) sat down and lighted their pipes to have it out. To do them justice, there was a lull at the time in the arrival of wounded men.

“But,” said the student, in that tone which is so well known to the argumentative, “is not overwhelming constraint tyranny?”

“My friend,” replied the special, lighting his pipe at the other’s cigar, “if a blackguard stole a poor widow’s purse, and six policemen took him up, compelled him to restore it, and put him in limbo, would you call that tyranny?”

“Of course not.”

“But it would be overwhelming constraint, would it not?”

“Well—ah!—yes—I see—but—”

“Of course there’s a but. Quite right. That is the word by which it is conveniently stated that the mind is not yet clear. Far be it from me to coerce you. I would, if I could, clear you. Listen, then:—

“Has not the Turk treated his Christian subjects in a way that can only be expressed as diabolical?”

“Unquestionably. Every one admits that: but he promises to govern them better in future.”

“If a thief,” said the special, “were to promise amendment and restoration of stolen property, would you let him off with the stolen property in his pocket?”

“Certainly not,” answered the student.

“Well, then, the Turk has stolen the liberty of his Christian subjects—to say nothing of his own subjects—and he only promises to give it back. He promised that more than twenty years ago, but has not done it yet. Ought he not to have been overwhelmingly constrained by the European Conference to fulfil his promises? And if he had been thus constrained, would not war have been avoided?”

“But perhaps he would have resisted,” said the student.

“No, the Turk is not mad, therefore he would not have resisted united Europe,” returned the special; “and, even suppose that he had, his resistance could not have produced such a frightful war as this, for Europe would have crushed him at once, with comparatively little bloodshed. As it is, we have left the Muscovite (with good or bad intentions, I know not which) to tackle him alone,—and the result is before you. If the Russian is upright in his intentions we have treated him shabbily, if he is false we have given him a splendid opportunity to carry out his plans. I pronounce no opinion on Russia; the sin of this war lies with Europe; certainly not with England, for, whether she behaved rightly or wrongly, she was not omnipotent at the Conference. Perhaps I should say that the sin lies with the members of that Conference who misrepresented Europe, and allowed a notorious criminal to escape.”

“There are various opinions on that subject,” said the student.

“There are various opinions on every subject,” replied the special, “but that is no reason why men and women should be content to have no opinion at all, or a bigoted one—which latter means an opinion founded largely on feeling, and formed before both sides of a question have been considered.”

An ambulance-wagon drove up at this moment. The student and I, forgetting the subject of discussion, hastened with our brethren to attend to the wretched beings who were laid shattered, bleeding, and dying on the ground before us, while the special, seeing that we had run short of water, caught up a couple of buckets and ran to a neighbouring spring. It chanced that the ground between our place of shelter and the spring was at that time swept by the fire of contending troops, but in spite of this the special coolly filled his buckets and brought them in—happily without being injured.

The battle raged during the whole of that day all over the plain. Being taken up almost exclusively with our duties, we surgeons had little time to observe the progress of the fight; nevertheless, mindful of my character as a reporter, I took advantage of an occasional moment of relaxation to jot down a few notes.

There was a hill not far from that on which we stood which was held by a Russian regiment. Around it the fight appeared to rage very fiercely. The roar of artillery and the incessant rattle of small arms had by this time gathered in force until it resembled a storm. Hundreds of white puffs all over the field told of death from shots which were too far off to be heard, while the belching of a battery on the hill just mentioned caused the very earth to tremble.

The Turks at this point executed a flank movement, and attempted to take the hill by storm. At the same time one of their batteries appeared on the top of a ridge opposite, and began to play on the hill with terrible precision. To counteract this a Russian battery of three guns was despatched. I saw the horses come galloping in from the rear; one of the guns was limbered up, and off they went like the wind. At that moment a shell from the Turkish battery fell right under the gun, and, exploding, blew it, with the men and horses, into the air. The other guns reached the hill in safety, wheeled into position, and, for a time, checked the Turkish fire. Nevertheless, undeterred by the withering salvos, the Turks came on in powerful columns till they drew near to the hotly contested point.

At the foot of it the Russians had dug trenches and thrown up earth-works the night before. I observed with surprise that, as the attacking columns advanced, the Russian rifle-fire ceased, though the battery continued to cut lanes in the living masses. It occurred to me that our men were reserving fire according to the Skobeleff plan. In this I was right. When the Turks were within a hundred yards of the trenches the defenders fired as one man. The front ranks of the enemy fell like corn before the scythe; those in rear charged with irresistible impetuosity over their dead comrades. But the Russians had anticipated such an event. They had placed mines in the ground, which, when the Turks passed over them, were fired, and hundreds of men were blown into the air. This checked them. For a time they recoiled and were thrown into disorder. At that moment a young officer rallied them and charged again. The trenches were entered and a hand-to-hand conflict ensued. With my field-glass I could see the fierce expressions of the men as they drove their reeking bayonets right through their enemies, and the appalling gasp and glare of eye in those whose mortal career had been thus suddenly brought to a close. Yells of fury, shouts, curses, clubbed rifles, battered skulls, unearthly shrieks, smoke and blood—who can imagine or describe such a scene!

The Russian soldier fights well. His courage is equal to that of the men of other nations, and his weight gives him the advantage over some, but nothing can resist the power of overwhelming numbers.

Sitting on a height, and comfortably watching the battle through telescopes, the Turkish generals quietly move the “men” on the bloody board. Hundreds of Turks have perished. What matter? there are thousands on thousands ready to follow. Turkey must maintain her “integrity.” Pashas must wallow in wealth. Millions of peasants must toil to accomplish these ends; if need be, they must die. The need at present is—to die. “Push on more battalions to reinforce them” is the order. No doubt the hundreds who have fallen, and the thousands who must yet fall, will leave hundreds of wives and thousands of children to hopeless mourning; but what of that? they are only canaille, cared for by nobody in particular, but God. No doubt the country must suffer for it. We must pay for war. We shall have an enormous national debt—that can’t be helped, and other countries have the same,—besides, we can borrow from rich trusting nations, and repudiate our debts; our land shall feel the drain of its best young blood for generations yet to come, but time heals most sores; people will multiply as heretofore; fate is unavoidable, and Allah is great! Moreover, what does it all matter to us so long as our integrity is maintained, our seraglios remain intact, and our coffers are filled? That hillock must be taken. It is a priceless hillock. Like other hillocks, no doubt, and not very promising in an agricultural point of view, but still a priceless hillock, which must be carried at any cost, for on our obtaining it depends somehow (we can’t say exactly how) the honour of our name, the success of our arms, the weal of the Turkish empire.

And so another order is given; fresh troops are hurled into the trenches, already filled with dead and dying; and the hillock is carried by storm, swept over with fierce cries of “Allah! Allah!” which mingle strangely with Russian curses, and is then left behind and regarded with as much indifference as if it were the most insignificant mass of earth and stone in all Bulgaria!

Flying backwards, the beaten Russians come panting towards the hill on which we stand, and rally, while our men advance, meet and stop the enemy, charge and overthrow them, turn the tide of battle, retake the