Part 20

A powerful force of Artillery was kept back about two miles from Varna in a favourable position in order to give support to our troops in the event of any disaster. But it was to be a pure Infantry attack, not a gun was to be fired, unless any of our troops were forced to retreat. The sole duty of the Cavalry was to cut off fugitives and prevent any knowledge of what had happened from reaching the Russian General.

We have reason to believe that some of the inhabitants brought off by the fleet had supplied Lord Wolseley with most accurate information as to the nature of the ground in the neighbourhood of the Russian camp, and that this had given him considerable confidence in arranging the details of the attack. Sir Evelyn Wood had charge of the whole of the actual attack, and very great advantage was found to arise from the practice in night marching which had been carried out under his orders at Aldershot.

It cannot, however, be said that the fighting on this occasion was a very severe trial for our troops. The British Army had to all intents and purposes dropped from the clouds upon the Russians before they were aware of its arrival. No very serious preparations had been made to resist attack from the north since there was no reason to anticipate troops coming from that side. The surprise the following morning was complete. That is to say, not that the Russians were caught in their beds, but that the English troops fully organised and ready for the attack were upon them, and into their lines, before the Russians had been able to prepare any organised resistance.

Only on one side, where an active Russian General had cautiously entangled the front of his position with obstacles, was the right brigade checked for a time, and, though some losses were occasioned here, the general effect of the attack on all sides of the Russian position, and the numerous places in which the works had been entered made it impossible for the troops who had resisted the attack of the right Brigade to hold out for any length of time. The Russians fought most gallantly, yet showed very little power of acting for themselves in a case where superior orders could not reach them.

ROUT OF THE RUSSIAN ARMY.

THE RELIEF OF VARNA.

By noon the whole of the works were in our hands, and as the Cavalry intercepted all who attempted to make their escape, the Mounted Infantry holding all such places as were inconvenient for the Cavalry, we had every reason to believe that no one had escaped to tell the tale. The slaughter on neither side was very great, the Russian position being, from the beginning, so obviously hopeless, greatly outnumbered and surprised as they were, that nearly 10,000 men laid down their arms. The prisoners were the following day embarked for Constantinople, considerable supplies and very valuable transport waggons, horses, and mules fell into our hands. To make assurance doubly sure, Lord Wolseley had brought up a fourth of Sir Evelyn Wood’s brigades nearly to the position occupied by the batteries. Meantime, on the same morning that the fight was going on, nearly the whole of the remainder of the force had marched to occupy the high lands which overlook the two roads leading up from Kosluji and Varna upon Bazardjik.

It was evident that, assuming the march of the Russians to be carried out in accordance with the captured dispatch, the two Russian columns would, during a certain period of their march, be not only some ten miles apart, but be separated by some very difficult country. And, moreover, that as the roads converged towards Bazardjik, an English force occupying the uplands would have its two portions much closer together than the advancing Russians. A valuable capture of the papers of the Russian General in command at Varna showed that a duplicate of the intercepted dispatch had reached him the previous day. Apparently a reply had been prepared, but none as yet sent off. This indicated the movements he was intending to adopt in order to join the main force. As it had been ascertained that Kosluji, though not as yet in the possession of the Russians, was in telegraphic communication with the Russian headquarters, it was resolved to repair the telegraph, which had only been cut by the peasants between Kosluji and Varna. As soon as this was done a telegraphic dispatch was sent through in the Russian cypher to the General commanding, ‘Yours of the 10th, Cavalry will be pushed on to cover right flank, and advance of army on Bazardjik. The Infantry and Artillery will join rear of column after the right column has passed the junction.’ The British forces were now distributed as follows: Of the Duke of Connaught’s Corps, the right division occupied the high ground which the road from Kosluji towards Bazardjik crosses shortly after passing Kosluji. The second division similarly occupied the high ground above the Varna-Bazardjik road. The Artillery of the entire army was concentrated on the high ground in such a way as to be able to bring its fire upon the columns debouching from the roads. The whole of Sir Evelyn Wood’s Corps lay in a position between Varna and the high ground, ready to attack the right column as soon as its march should be sufficiently developed to give an opportunity. Advantage had been taken of the number of captured Russian uniforms in the camp at Varna to put up dummy sentries, so as to leave the impression from a distance that Varna encampment and neighbourhood was still held by the Russians. The whole of the ground over which the fight was likely to take place was carefully reconnoitred beforehand. On the morning of June 14th the Russian right column, which, having a considerably longer march to perform, moved off first, had arrived at the point where the road turns sharply to the north leading towards Bazardjik, when a party of Cossacks, who had been sent on to communicate with the cavalry from Varna, which was supposed to be before them on the road, galloped in and reported that they had been stopped on the road in crossing the mountains by finding that the path was blocked with some felled trees and abattis. Supposing this to be the work of some Bulgarian insurgents, the General ordered forward a battalion of Infantry and a couple of guns, and allowed the column to resume the march. Shortly afterwards some Cossacks who had moved towards Varna rode up to some supposed friends in Russian uniform, were captured, and not allowed to return. No alarm therefore was excited on this side. As, however, the battalion of Infantry moved up to the abattis in order to remove it, they were fired upon by unseen foes, and many of them fell. A brigade was now ordered to advance and clear the ground. As it moved forward within close range of the hills it, too, was received with Infantry fire from unseen foes.

THE BATTLE OF KOSLUJI.

ROUT OF THE RUSSIAN ARMY.

The dispatch from our Correspondent of June 18th, published last week, stopped abruptly at the moment of describing how the column of Russians was advancing into the ambush cleverly laid for them by Lord Wolseley. In the following dispatch he continues the narrative:—

As yet not a shot had been fired by the artillery or by any of Sir Evelyn Wood’s troops, whose position was absolutely unknown. The column was now halted in considerable confusion.

The General commanding the Russian brigade, uncertain as to what he had in front of him, did not like to commit himself to an attack without previous preparation by artillery, and asked to have some artillery sent him. Six batteries were brought out in succession from the column on the road at a gallop, and began to shell the heights.

Uncertain as to what they were firing at, they produced very little effect, and none of the guns on the hills replied to them. Meantime the column on the road was in the greatest confusion. A fresh brigade was, however, gradually formed out of it, and moved up towards the right of the road. A third brigade was to be seen also moving up in support of the other two. As the right brigade moved up in successive lines towards the heights, its right came within easy range of the position in which, concealed behind a long line of under-feature, Sir Evelyn Wood’s advanced division lay. When the rear of the brigade had fairly passed beyond his left, a withering volley, followed by magazine fire, was poured into it from the whole line of the division.

Staggered by the unexpected blow, the brigade fell into confusion. Sir Evelyn, seizing the moment, advanced the whole division, having given orders beforehand that the men should be kept in hand as much as possible; and that instead of a skirmishing attack, which was quite unnecessary under the circumstances, lines at least of companies should be kept together as much as possible.

The Russian brigade, though taken in rear as well as flank, endeavoured for a moment to present a front in the new direction. As they did so the guns from the high ground for the first time opened, tearing through the Russian ranks in all directions. Under the double storm, taken in flank whichever way they turned, the brigade gave way, and was followed closely by the leading division of Sir Evelyn’s Corps.

The Russian brigade next on the left began immediately to attempt to dig in order to form a rallying point for the flying brigade, but, overwhelmed by the fugitives, fired into from the heights, and pressed by the pursuing division, they too broke, and carried confusion amongst the guns.

The whole of the troops that had debouched from the road were now little better than a confused mass, unable to act with effect, and suffering appallingly from the cross fire directed upon them by Sir Evelyn’s troops and those on the hill, whose fire was now continually increasing in intensity.

The remainder of the Corps, with little space to deploy, and whelmed by the mass of fugitives, was huddled back upon the road. At this moment a pre-concerted signal from Lord Wolseley directed Sir Baker Russell, who with the whole of the cavalry, less Colonel French’s regiment which was on the extreme right, had been placed near Varna to the left of Sir Evelyn’s force, to charge into the confused mass which now represented the right corps of the Russian Army. Enormous numbers of prisoners were taken, and sent back promptly to Varna to be embarked on board ship. Meantime the left Corps of the Russian Army had begun its advance along the other road towards Bazardjik, but before it approached the heights the news of the disaster which had befallen the right corps reached the General. Though at first his intention had been to attempt to out-flank the position opposed to him on the English right, in order to relieve the pressure on his own right, the rapid progress of the disaster of the right made him change his determination. With his intact Corps he took up a position to cover the retreat of the remnants of the broken Corps. Practically only one English division, besides the cavalry, had been seriously engaged. From the nature of the case the losses had been comparatively small. Smokeless powder had told altogether in favour of the English in the action.

Practically the fate of the Russian army was decided. Lord Wolseley was in full communication with the Bulgarian General, who, with a force between forty and fifty thousand strong, had been following close upon the heels of the Russians. There could be no hope that, with their diminished and discouraged troops, the Russians would be able to defeat the English forces, against which with their intact army they had failed on the previous day. Nor could they turn on the Bulgarians without having both armies upon them at once.

To avoid useless slaughter, the Russian General forty-eight hours later agreed to lay down his arms. As soon as the Russian army had given up its guns and was no longer in a position to act effectively, the English army marched back to the coast, and, according to our latest information, a considerable part of it had already embarked and sailed in an unknown direction.

Lord Wolseley, with Admiral Markham and their Staffs, have returned to Constantinople, doubtless in order to be in communication with Ministers at home, the Ambassador, the Sultan, and other sources of information. It is only fair to a gallant enemy to say that the startling success which has attended our arms is, apart from the gallantry of our soldiers and the skill of the General who led them, to be attributed to the enormous advantage which is possessed by the Power that commands the sea.

From the moment that our fleet cut off the communications of the Russian Army, the Russian General was in a position, such as in our time can rarely happen, of being completely deprived of all means of knowing what his enemy was doing, while, on the other hand, our own Commander was able to obtain information far more accurate than is common in war of everything that his opponent did. No other Power in Europe could have reached and destroyed with the same ease and certainty that dangerous Russian force, susceptible of indefinite increase, as long as Russia held the sea. Meantime, speculation is rife as to the direction in which our army is next going to strike.

ENTHUSIASM IN CAIRO.

DEPARTURE OF THE ENGLISH TROOPS.

(_From our Special Correspondent, Mr. Francis Scudamore._)

CAIRO, _May 8_.

For the past two days the entire populace of this city has lived in a state of frenzied excitement, to which the seething clamour of the days immediately following the memorable 15th September 1882 is only faintly comparable. Then it was, with the arrival before the gate of the citadel of Sir Drury Lowe and his cavalry brigade fresh from Tel-el-Kebir, that England’s peaceful occupation of Cairo began. There were no Europeans in Cairo at the time, and even the better classes of Egyptians had either fled to distant parts of the country or lay hidden in their spacious houses, closely barred against intrusion by friend or foe. Demonstration of popular feeling was confined to the astounded and panic-ridden natives of the lower orders, whose bewildered minds swung for a week between fearful anticipation of the horrors they had been taught to expect at the hands of the English, and trembling delight that the reign of terror under Arabi and Toulba had at length come to an end. They needed time, these stricken, starving people, to discover the state of their feelings; to decide whether they were pleased that foreign aid had come to them, or were only glad to know that Arabi had fled, and would soon be in prison; and in their indecision, for two whole days and nights dense crowds of wandering Arabs, Fellaheen, street merchants, clerks, donkey-boys, and small officials, thronged the European quarters of the town, ceaselessly jostling each other through the streets, and murmuring repeatedly, ‘The English have come. The Effendina is coming.’

That was ten years ago. During those ten years the English soldiers and the Cairenes, both natives and foreigners, have learned so well to know and appreciate each other, that when it leaked out (who shall say how) on Sunday evening that orders had been received for the immediate embarkation of all the British troops in garrison here, the announcement clanged like a tocsin through the startled town.

Once again the Frank quarter was filled with an anxious wondering mob, formed not of Arabs only, but of all the varied nationalities that make up Cairo’s thriving population, who roamed the broad streets round the Esbekeeyeh Gardens, silent, orderly, and sad, or gathered in tight-packed masses in front of Shepheard’s and the New Hotel, and the Sporting Club, and lingered for hours in slowly changing thousands in the great square facing the Abdeen barracks.

It was near midnight, and the moon was high, when the news became generally known. The band of the Alexandria Regiment had for some time ceased playing in the Esbekeeyeh Gardens, and nearly all English soldiers were back in barracks. Some few men, however, who had twelve o’clock leave, were still abroad, and as, on their way home, they shouldered through the throng—wondering, no doubt, what could be the matter—they were instantly seized upon by scores of eager well-wishers, delighted to find an outlet for some portion of the cordial enthusiasm pent up within them. Of one of these spontaneous outbursts of affection towards ‘Thomas Atkins’ I was myself a witness. I was standing with other Englishmen and ladies on Shepheard’s balcony watching the shifting masses of the crowd below, when suddenly there arose, some way up the street—beyond the British Consulate—a wild confused noise of cheering. It was a queer kind of cheer, such as could probably be heard nowhere else in the world—a strange blending of the Zughareet of Arab women—the guttural Fellah Hàgh, the Italian Viva, and the Greek Huzzah, with a leavening of Levantine squeal; but the outcome of the mixture was sufficiently startling to make us turn—for a moment anxiously—in the direction of the sound. Then the crowd before us took up the cry, and quickly pressing back on either side of the way, left room for the passage of the most extraordinary procession it has yet fallen to my lot to behold.

First, leaping in a frantic dance such as one sees here at weddings and religious festivals, came some score of sayces, their lawn sleeves flaunting as they waved their arms, and their gold-broidered waistcoats gleaming bravely in the moonlight. Their usual cry of ‘_Shmarlek, Gemeelek_,’ was interrupted now by hoarse shouts of ‘Inglis, Inglis, long live the Inglis!’—shouts which the crowd readily took up. Immediately behind them paced a tall, half-naked negro, who—such is the length to which enthusiasm will carry these fanatics—held outstretched before him (a sacrifice to friendship), his brawny right arm transfixed by a long knife, from whose blade his blood dripped freely to the ground. A carriage followed—an ordinary hack victoria, captured, doubtless, close by—round which a frenzied mob surged, yelling and gesticulating madly. There was no driver on the carriage. The box-seat was occupied by a mandolin player and a harpist, whose fingers were very busy, though of their music not one note could be heard. In the victoria were the objects of the demonstration, two English soldiers, one of whom, while preserving his good temper, was struggling manfully though vainly against a dozen pair of hands that held him in his place, and loudly declaring in words as unavailing as they were forcible that he was due in barracks at midnight and could not ‘stay fooling’ any later. His protest was disregarded, and his comrade, who had apparently succumbed to the hospitality of a burly Greek who faced the pair, on the Strapontin, nursing a huge demijohn of some pernicious liquor, gave him no help, expressing neither approval nor condemnation of the proceedings, and, indeed, but for the tender ministrations of an old äalem in a saffron robe, who stood on the step beside him, he would probably have fallen out into the road.

The motley carnival passed slowly into the night; the shouts softened in the distance and then died away; but the crowd, silent again, remained staring vacantly at the hotel windows. As I turned from the balcony railings a quiet native spectator on the pavement beneath me looked up and spoke in Arabic: ‘Ah, Hawaga,’ he said, ‘Toufik Pasha has gone; Allah rest him! Now the English are going—evil days are coming.’

Throughout Sunday night and during the whole of yesterday the great crowd filled the streets. Even the announcement made yesterday afternoon that, although the English soldiers were called suddenly away, their Indian brothers-in-arms would replace them, failed to satisfy the public mind, or to remove the painful impression it had received. In some vague way the feeling of the native populace was that, though the Indian troops might be soldiers of England’s Queen, they were not the English they had known; the English who wore yellow clothes, and blue goggles, and hats with towels on them, and who paid so well for donkey hire, and bought so freely in the bazaars, and were so easily persuaded to accept bits of imported blue glass as valuable turquoises, ‘and wonderfully cheap.’

With very few exceptions all British troops were confined to barracks yesterday—not so much on account of their preparations for departure, for ever since the reinforcement of the garrison the commanders of regiments have been held in readiness to entrain in two hours after receipt of orders—but in order to avoid the repetition, on probably a very large scale, of Sunday night’s demonstrations. The natives, therefore, were fain to be content with standing in thousands outside the barrack-yard gates gazing at the busy scene within, while from time to time some English-speaking donkey-boy would accost the impassive sentries on behalf of himself and friends with some such speech as, ‘You going, Missa Soja, Arab prenty solly.’

Thanks to the energy and foresight of the Commander-in-Chief in carefully policing the whole length of the canal with troops from Suez to Port Said to prevent any such apt accident as the sinking of a dredger in a narrow part, the transports suffered no delay. Each ship—there were eight (chartered vessels of the P. and O., British India and Orient Lines)—on reaching Suez landed the troops she had brought from Bombay and passed on into the Canal, employing the time of her passage in cleaning up for the reception of the English regiments at Alexandria. The Indian brigades are for the moment encamped on the Sweet Water Canal, pending dispatch to their several stations.

The British troops were entrained to-day at noon. Two Soudanese and one Egyptian regiment lined the entry to the railway station as a guard of honour. The young Khedive himself, accompanied by his brother, Mehemet Ali Bey, and followed by Zulfikar Pasha and many of the court functionaries, drove to the station to bid them farewell, and arriving a few moments before the first of the departing regiments, caused his carriage to be so placed that the men must march past it. As each regiment passed him, His Highness, who had alighted and stood beside the victoria, saluted, and said repeatedly ‘Good-bye, gentlemen,’ in English. To entrain the troops took, of course, some little time, and the —— remained a while in the small square outside the station while their comrades were taking their places in the coaches. His Highness, who looked very grave and had spoken but briefly with Sir Evelyn Baring and other English gentlemen present, had entered his carriage, and the sayces had leapt to their places before it, when suddenly a voice shouted, ‘Three cheers for Abbas Pasha.’ Who the enthusiast was I do not care to guess; but the cry was taken up eagerly. Despite discipline, despite etiquette, against propriety even though it was, a mighty cheer burst from the waiting troops round the royal carriage, and was echoed from within the station with redoubled volume.