“He is the greatest general of the age, for he has saved the honour of his country: I will proffer him my hand and tell him so.”
“So,” thought I, when afterwards meditating on this subject, “the Turks have for centuries proved themselves to be utterly unworthy of self-government; they have shown themselves to be ignorant of the first principles of righteousness,—meum and tuum; they (or rather their rulers) have violated their engagements and deceived those who trusted them; have of late repudiated their debts, and murdered, robbed, violated, tortured those who differed from them in religious opinions, as is generally admitted,—nevertheless now, because one of their generals has shown somewhat superior ability to the rest, holding in check a powerful enemy, and exhibiting, with his men, a degree of bull-dog courage which, though admirable in itself, all history proves to be a common characteristic of all nations—that ‘honour,’ which the country never possessed, is supposed to have been ‘saved’!”
All honour to the brave, truly, but when I remember the butcheries that are admitted, by friend and foe of the Turk, to have been committed on the Russian wounded by the army of Plevna (and which seem to have been conveniently forgotten at this dramatic incident of the surrender),—when I reflect on the frightful indifference of Osman Pasha to his own wounded, and the equally horrible disregard of the same hapless wounded by the Russians after they entered Plevna,—I cannot but feel that a desperate amount of error is operating here, and that multitudes of mankind, especially innocent, loving, and gentle mankind, to say nothing of tender, enthusiastic, love-blinded womankind, are to some extent deceived by the false ring of that which is not metal, and the falser glitter of a tinsel which is anything but gold.
However, Osman did not come after all. He had been wounded, and the Russian generals were obliged to go to a neighbouring cottage to transact the business of surrender.
As the cavalcade rode away in the direction of the cottage referred to, a Russian surgeon turned aside to aid a wounded man. He was a tall strapping trooper. His head rested on the leg of his horse, which lay dead beside him. He could not have been more than twenty years of age, if so much. He had carefully wrapped his cloak round him. His carbine and sabre were drawn close to his side, as if to protect the weapons which it had always been his pride to keep bright and clean. He was a fresh handsome lad, with courage and loveableness equally stamped upon his young brow. He opened his eyes languidly as the doctor attended to him.
“Come, my fine fellow, keep up your heart,” said the doctor tenderly; “you will perhaps—that is to say, the ambulance-wagons will be round immediately, and—”
“Thank you,” interrupted the trooper quietly, “God’s blessing rest upon you. I know what you mean.—Look, sir.”
He tried to take a locket from his neck as he spoke, but could not. The doctor gently assisted him. “See,” he said, “take this to Dobri Petroff—the scout. You know him? Every one knows dashing Dobri!”
“I know him. Well?”
“Tell him to give it to her—he knows who—and—and—say it has kept me in—in heaven when sometimes it seemed to me as if I had got into hell.”