Only one thing remained, to draw off his men and save as many of them as possible.
A colonel of one regiment of Cossack infantry, however, without orders, put his men at Skobeleff’s disposal and once more he started for the redoubt.
The Turks were swarming over the ramparts, mounting its walls on dead bodies. The garrison defending themselves by bayonets began to despair. At last through the fog and smoke they saw their comrades coming. But Skobeleff had only one battalion; not enough to drive out the Turks.
“I think he wants to cover our retreat,” said the Major. He gathered his men about him. “Comrades go. Open your way with your bayonets. This place can no longer be held. God bless you, my children. Forward.” And bowing his head he reverently made the sign of the cross over his men. “And you, father?” they exclaimed. “I stay with our dead. Tell the general I have kept my word. Good by, children.” They watched him as they turned their heads in their retreat. They saw him standing on the ramparts waving to them. Then the Turks rushed in. They saw the struggle. They saw his body uplifted upon Turkish bayonets.
“It was just after this,” said a correspondent, “that I met General Skobeleff the first time that day. He was in a fearful state of excitement and fury. His uniform was covered with mud and filth, his sword broken; his cross of St. George twisted round on his shoulder; his face black with powder and smoke; his eyes haggard and bloodshot, and his voice quite gone. I never before saw such a picture of battle as he presented. I saw him again in his tent at night. He was quite calm and collected. He said, ‘I have done my best. I could do no more. My detachment is half destroyed; my regiments do not exist; I have no officers left; they sent me no reinforcements, and I have lost three guns.’ ‘Why did they refuse you reinforcements?’ I asked. ‘Who was to blame?’ ‘I blame nobody,’ he replied. ‘It is the will of God.’”
The Russians fell back from Plevna for a little breathing spell, having lost in this third assault more than twenty thousand men.
At Bucharest General Skobeleff met General Todleben, the great engineer who had planned and superintended twenty-one years before the defence of Sebastopol. It had been decided to plan works by which Plevna should be taken, not by assault but by starvation.
By the middle of October, 1877, Skobeleff was back at the seat of war with his division of about forty thousand men. He had no longer with him the “lions,” the “eagles,” the “heroes” of the third assault, but largely new recruits whom he must train.
Two months of the siege sufficed to starve out the garrison, and Osman Pasha surrendered unconditionally on December 11th, and thirty-two thousand men laid down their arms and the gates were open towards Constantinople. As soon as Plevna fell Skobeleff was appointed its military governor. The Roumanians in the Russian army had already begun the plunder of the city. When Skobeleff remonstrated, their officers replied: “We are the victors, and the victors have a right to the spoils.” “In the first place,” answered the general, “we were never at war with the peaceable inhabitants of this place, and consequently can not have conquered them. But, secondly, please acquaint your men that I shall have victors of this kind shot. Every man caught marauding shall be shot like a dog. Please bear this in mind. There is another thing. You must not insult women. Such conduct is very humiliating. Let me tell you that every such complaint will be investigated and every case of outrage punished.”
Compare this order with the horrible atrocities continually committed upon the Bulgarians during this campaign by Bashi-Bazouks and the thirty thousand Circassian horsemen, who were allowed to follow their own fashions, in which they excel even the Apache tribes once the terror of the Southwest. Before them went anguish and horror; after them death, ruin and despair.