When I awoke and went out the firing was still going on, and there were about one thousand five hundred wounded men lying out in the open square. We started to dress them at once. All the wounded men who had been in the hospital were removed for greater safety to the south end of the town, so as to be as far away as possible from the scene of action. We cleared out a number of small Bulgarian hovels belonging to people of the poorest class, and installed the wounded in them.
I had not been at the hospital long before my Circassian servant came down and informed me that the firing at my house was getting very hot, and he wanted to know what he should do. He said that he thought the town was on the point of being taken. I told him to go back, pack up my things, and put them on my horse. I said, "If you see the Russians coming over the crest of the hill, come down here at once with my horse, but not otherwise." My horse had not come out of it scatheless, for a bullet had gone through the muscles of his neck; but he was still full of pluck and able to carry me well.
Meanwhile let us see what had been happening at the redoubts. Attack after attack was delivered through the night without success; and at last, at half-past ten a.m., a vigorous assault, backed up with a telling shell fire, shook the defence, and the Russians began to pour out of Number 1 redoubt, their example being followed by those in the adjoining work. Some of the foremost Turks had already penetrated into the redoubts; but they were sacrificed in vain, for Skobeleff, with his extraordinary personal magnetism and great courage, rallied his men again, and staved off the inevitable moment a little longer. I got away from the hospital at three o'clock in the afternoon, and rode out towards the redoubts where the Russians were sustaining a last furious assault by our troops under Tewfik Bey. As I neared the redoubts this assault was at its height, and this time the Turkish troops would not be denied. The columns deployed under fire and formed lines of skirmishers, who received continuous support from fresh accessions of men behind, carrying the assault forward in successive waves. Soon the Turks were over the parapet once more, cutting down the Russian defenders, and driving the remainder out on the other side and down the slope again towards their own trenches on the Green Hills.
Thus the third battle of Plevna ended, after five days' fighting, in the complete defeat of the Russians, who lost nearly twenty thousand men in the long bloody struggle, and gained nothing but the Grivitza redoubt, which was absolutely no use to them, and which fell mainly through the instrumentality of the Roumanian, not the Russian, troops.
It is amusing to observe how the Russian official documents describe the result. "The points chosen for attack," we read, "were the following: the redoubt of Grivitza, the works in the centre opposite the heights of Radishevo, and the third crest of the Montagnes Vertes. After superhuman efforts and enormous losses, our troops carried the first and last of these points. The Grivitza redoubt and two of the redoubts south of Plevna were in our possession; as to the central works, our troops, notwithstanding that they showed a bravery beyond all praise, could not carry them. Consequently we had obtained some partial successes; but fresh troops were necessary to profit by our gains, and these were not forthcoming. It was decided, therefore, to keep the Grivitza redoubt, and to abandon the Montagnes Vertes."
When I think of that last tremendous charge of the Turkish infantry, when the cry of "La ilaha illallah Mohammed Rasul Allah!" rent the air and rang from one redoubt to the other, as it went like the flame in a train of gunpowder round the whole circuit of the defences, I cannot help smiling at the polite official statement, "It was decided to abandon the Montagnes Vertes."
I was inside the Number 1 redoubt two minutes after the men of the front firing line, and I shall never forget the scene of carnage that I saw there. The redoubt was literally choked up with dead and dying men, and the ground was ankle deep in blood, brains, and mutilated fragments of humanity. The Turks became almost delirious with the excitement of the victory. Everywhere men were shouting, praying, and giving thanks to Allah. About three hundred of them got drag-ropes, and took the captured Russian guns off in triumph to the headquarters camp; and inside the redoubt the soldiers fell on each other's necks, danced, and sang in a perfect frenzy of delight. The excitement of the five minutes following the recapture of the redoubts was worth a lifetime of common-place existence; but all the while in the Grivitza redoubt, three miles away, the enemy stood watching with cannons ready—a silent warning of the conflicts yet in store for us.
After the battle, the Russians withdrew from their positions and retired on Radishevo.
The Turkish army was mad with joy. We attached but little importance to the capture of the Grivitza redoubt by the Russians, because the Turkish garrison simply fell back upon the sister redoubt, which was only one hundred and eighty yards distant from the other in a north-westerly direction, and really commanded it. The unimportance of the loss of this redoubt was proved by the fact that, though the enemy occupied it during the whole of the remainder of the siege, they did little or no damage from it.