VIII
And so the General rode on. It seemed to me that the best way to give evidence that the story of the fall of Alexinatz was untrue was to go there, and despatch telegrams from the place, of whose fall assured tidings had been disseminated far and wide. So Villiers and I took the road by which he had travelled, and plodded our way into empty Alexinatz. It presented an aspect of strange weird loneliness. Not even the cats had been left behind. Popovitz was living in a shed away at the bridge-head, and his soldiers were disposed along the line of the entrenched position in the reverse slope of the upland curtain. No creature was in all that place, whose normal population was close on 10,000 souls. All the doors had been left open. We strolled into the “Crown,” to find the kitchen hearth cold, and what had been our bedroom stripped stark of furniture. Then we went down to the “Greek King,” and gazed on the deserted counter at which “La Belle Hélène” had been wont to preside. On a trestle in a corner of the hospital, where the surgeons had been slaving a fortnight previously, there lay a dead man, her sweetheart. He had died, no doubt, during the night in the midst of the bustle of evacuation, and the heedless Servian orderlies had not troubled to see to the poor fellow’s interment. We were idle, we two, so we carried him out into the garden, and hid him in a shallow grave under the blossoming standard roses. This done, we tramped along the silent streets out to where, at the bridge-head, honest Popovitz had his rough quarters. As we went, Villiers told me the story of the previous day.
The fighting had been very hard, and there had been a time when he had believed the Turks were bent on crossing the Morava, and taking the place in reverse, on the side where it was unprotected. But even had they persevered in this intention, he had realised that there would still remain open the line of retreat out to the east in the direction of Banja, and that it would be quite time for him to go when he saw the troops commencing their evacuation. As the evening drew in, it had been clear to him that the Turks were gaining no ground. He had previously listened to a good deal of heavy firing around Alexinatz, and had learnt to form an estimate of its distance, so when the clamour arose that the bridge had been taken, and when scared breathless men—who ought to have kept their heads better—had panted out that the Turks were “at the bottom of the street,” he had gone out and listened, and had made up his mind that the firing was as yet a good two miles away at the least. And then he had come in and gone on with his dinner, as became a sensible man, and when he had been pressed to come away with the departing people of his nationality, had been unable to recognise the urgent necessity of the hurried retreat.
Popovitz was very civil, and allowed me to despatch a telegram; but could not ask us to luncheon, for the very good reason that he had no luncheon for himself. So we left him, and returned into the silent town. Up at the head of the main street there was, we bethought ourselves, a pretty cottage inhabited by an old Tâtar, who, in the days when the quickest route between Western Europe and Constantinople was through Belgrade, Alexinatz, Nisch, Sophia, and Adrianople, used to accompany the King’s messengers, who had to ride without a halt, save to change from one horse to another, that long rough journey. He was an interesting man, this old Tâtar, with his tales in a broken composite of many languages, of the long winter gallops through the snow-wreaths with Heneage or Johnson, when the wolves would chase the emissary of Britannic majesty, and the Albanian robbers would strive to make prize of him. We had been wont to sit with him in his garden-bower, and listen to his polyglot yarns of the old rough days when he, now bent and shrivelled, thought nothing of riding 800 miles at a stretch. We bethought ourselves now of the old fellow’s cottage, as likely to furnish the most comfortable quarters; and since there was more of the Turk than the Serv in the old Tâtar, it was possible that he might not have cared to clear out with the other inhabitants. We found him at home, sitting quietly in his own leafy porch under the great hanging bunches of grapes; he was too old, he said, to go travelling now, and had resolved to stay and take his chance. Stay he did later, when Popovitz went and left Alexinatz to him and the Turks; and badly enough did he fare at the hands of the latter. The Bashi-Bazouks promptly killed the poor old fellow.
Well, he was as kind to us as his means permitted of. He had neither meat nor wine, but he made us coffee, and gave us bread and grapes, and he gave us sleeping-quarters as well; but when I remember the insect-horrors of that night, I shudder still. Next morning, recognising that empty Alexinatz was extremely stupid, and that probably there would be some fighting soon away in the Krusevatz direction, we paid our farewell respects to Popovitz, took leave of the friendly old Tâtar—the “last man” of Alexinatz, and started back to Deligrad on as hot a walk as ever I remember. We had to make a detour to avoid a handful of Circassians who had crossed the Morava on a foray, and found great amusement at a wayside tavern in the boasting of some Servian militia, who claimed that they had done doughty battle with the Tcherkesses, and driven them back across the river. When I ventured to point out that the barrels of their pieces were clean, they lost their tempers, and threatened to shoot us—a menace which we could afford to smile at, since the old muskets had lost their locks. We never went back to Alexinatz again, but stout Popovitz held the place till the Servian strength was shattered on the heights of Djunis in the end of October; and he then evacuated it only by order of Tchernaieff. Had he been left there one day more, it would have remained with the Servians under the terms of the armistice; but before that came into effect the Turks had occupied Alexinatz, and it was Fazli Pasha’s headquarters during the following winter. When the peace was signed, and its people came back to what had been their homes, they found the place a wreck. The Turks had made firewood of everything that would burn.
AN OUTPOST ADVENTURE
The war correspondent who accompanied the Russian Army which crossed the Danube in the summer of 1877, and who had the good fortune to be a welcome person, found his path of duty made exceedingly easy for him. And whether he was a welcome person or not depended almost entirely on himself. His newspaper might be held in obloquy, but the authorities ignored the hostility of the paper with something that closely resembled magnanimity, and the correspondent was not held responsible for the tone of his journal, but only for the matter in it which he himself contributed. It is rather a mild way of putting it to say that the Standard, for instance, was not friendly to Russia throughout the period in question; but Mr. Boyle, its representative, was quite frankly accepted, and has testified to the courtesy and comradeship of the Russian officers. He had to go, and everybody ought to rejoice that this fate befell him, because it was the occasion of his brilliant and amusing book, The Diary of an Expelled Correspondent; the teterrima causa assigned was a passage in one of his letters. The Daily Telegraph could not have struck the reader as being more bitter against the Russians than was its contemporary of Shoe Lane; but the gentleman designated to represent it when he presented himself at Kischeneff was refused his legitimation. This, however, was for reasons purely personal to the candidate, against whom there was some ill-will in the Russian headquarters, and not, as I understood, because of the tone of the journal by which he was accredited.
His distinguishing badge once strapped round his upper arm—he had repudiated with a shriek of horror the dreadful brass plate such as street-corner messengers now wear that was first served out to him—the well-seen correspondent stood, or moved, chartered to do pretty much anything he pleased. It may seem a paradox; but the Russians are simply the most democratic people in Europe, and for a Russian to be borné would be a contradiction in terms. Every officer was the correspondent’s comrade. Prince Schahofskoy, the ill-conditioned general who made such a mess of the July Plevna attack, was the only exception I ever knew. If the samovar was in service, the officer shared his tea with the correspondent; in the middle of a battle, if the officer had a couple of sandwiches he would offer one of them to the correspondent. From the highest to the lowest, in regard to military information, the Russians were incredibly frank; the correspondent never required to ask questions as to situation, dispositions, or intentions—information in regard to those matters was volunteered to him. The only secret they ever had—and I must own they kept it well—was in regard to the point at which the crossing of the Danube was to be made. Skobeleff “had not the faintest idea,” although a couple of hours previously he had been reconnoitring the approaches. Prince Tzeretleff “really had not the remotest conception.” Still, even in regard to the crossing of the Danube, the friendly Russians were not inexorable. I could not be told the locality of the crossing, but I should be escorted betimes to the headquarters of the general commanding the division which was to take the lead in the operations. It was rather an amusing experience. The guide sent to escort me was in the uniform of a private soldier—a tall handsome man, riding a fine gray horse. He spoke English fluently and without a trace of accent. As we rode along together and talked, the tone of this private soldier’s conversation bewildered me. He knew his Europe as if it had been his native parish. He had what Americans call “the inside track” in regard to English affairs, social, political, and financial. He spoke of country-houses of which he had been the guest, and commented on the merits of a piece of statuary in the drawing-room at Sandringham. At last I asked his name. He was of one of Russia’s oldest princely families, and belonged to the diplomatic corps, but when the war began had volunteered for military service, and, not being qualified to be an officer, had fallen into line as a private soldier. As we rode along I asked him where we were bound for, not imagining that a destination to which we were actually travelling could be any longer a secret. But he looked upon it still in this light, no doubt in accordance with his instructions, and of course I had no more to say for the time being. By and by we reached a point whence radiated four cross-roads. It became obvious to me that my guide was himself at fault. I took no heed while he led me first along one road a little way, then along another, each time returning puzzled to the cross-roads. At last he had to confess, “It seems to me that I’ve lost my way.” “Sorry I cannot be of any service,” was my remark, “since I do not know where it is you want to go to. I have been all over this region and know where each of these roads leads.” My prince-private-soldier-diplomatist burst into a laugh, and then mentioned our destination. “Then this way,” said I, “about an hour’s ride.”