Under the Red Crescent. John Sandes
Memorable Function—I get Plenty of Partners—Military Wall-flowers—The Ladies of Widdin—The Dance before the Fight—Three Beautiful Roumanians—An Angry Grandfather—Lambro Redivivus—Preparing for the Campaign—Some Forcible Dentistry—Religion of the Turks—The Wrestlers—Visitors from Kalafat—I pay a Return Call—Across the Danube into Kalafat—Dinner with the Roumanians—Pumping the Guileless Stranger—A Futile Effort—Frank Power—Nicholas Leader—Edmund O'Donovan—Wild Duck Shooting.
A march of four days brought us to Widdin, the journey being accomplished by easy stages and with a fair degree of comfort. Of course it must be remembered that there was no such thing as a commissariat department in the Turkish army. The zaptiehs, or mounted police, in each district received notice of our approach, and requisitioned the necessary supplies from the farmers, who received acknowledgments of Government indebtedness for the amount due. We always sent forward a few arabas with an advance party and a number of cooks; so that when the regiment reached the camping-place for the night all the preparations were made, and a hot meal was ready for the men. We usually camped in a Bulgarian village; and if there was no other shelter for the men, we appropriated the mosque, and made up our beds in it. I have slept many a time on the paved floor of a Turkish mosque, in the very arms of Islam as it were; and I must candidly admit that my slumbers were quite as refreshing and my dreams as sweet as they have since been within sound of the cathedral bells of Christendom.
Widdin is a town of considerable commercial importance, and a strongly fortified position of great military significance, being, in fact, one of the keys of Bulgaria, for it is situated on a wedge of Bulgarian territory, having both the Servian and Roumanian frontiers almost under the muzzles of its siege-guns. When we were there the population numbered about fourteen thousand persons, of whom perhaps one-half were Bulgarians, one-third Turks, and the remainder Levantines, Greeks, Italians, Spanish Jews, and Tchiganes or Gypsies. There are a great number of Jews everywhere throughout the Turkish Empire, and they are very well treated by the Turks. It is hardly necessary to say that almost all the bankers and financial agents in the country belong to this race.
There are practically two towns in Widdin—namely, that which is within the fortifications, and that which is outside. The fortified portion faces the Danube, which forms its protection for a distance of about one mile; and it is defended besides by a high castellated wall fully twenty feet in height, which runs right round the town. Facing the Danube, when we were there, were several powerful and perfectly organized batteries, armed with at least fifty Krupp siege-guns of the most modern description. From the Danube side the town was practically impregnable. On the other side, beyond the castellated wall, was a wide and deep moat; and over this was a drawbridge, which was pulled up at six o'clock every night, so that after that hour ingress to the fortified town was impossible until the morning. Inside the fortress were the principal public buildings, including the konak, or townhall, the seat of administration of the Turkish governor in charge of the vilayet, as well as the barracks, which accommodated four thousand men, a large Government mill for grinding corn, and the great granaries in which a reserve of grain was stored for victualling the town in the event of a siege.
The greater portion of the population lived outside the fortress in the different suburbs; and beyond these again was the outer line of defence, a huge wall of earth about twenty feet high, and studded at short intervals with redoubts. Outside this wall the country was low-lying and swampy, capable of being flooded from the Danube, and thus affording additional protection to the town. One result, however, of all this circumjacent water was that Widdin was one of the most unhealthy towns in the whole of Turkey. The climate was excessively damp, and we were never free from malarial fever. At one time there were no fewer than four hundred men in the hospitals with this fever.
A staple article of export from Widdin is caviare, which is obtained in enormous quantities from the roe of the sturgeon, and sent away packed in barrels on board the flat-bottomed boats that ply up the river. I have seen a sturgeon fully twelve feet long caught in the Danube. Three men were dragging it with a rope through the streets of Widdin. The town has also a great reputation for its filigree work in silver and gold, which is very beautiful.
In February, 1877, when our regiment reached Widdin, we found about thirty thousand Turkish troops in the place, mostly infantry, though there were a few batteries of field artillery and about a thousand cavalry. The Kyrchehir Regiment went into quarters in the barracks inside the fortress; but of course there was not sufficient accommodation there for all the troops in the town, and a military encampment was formed a couple of miles out of the town for the bulk of the army corps. Osman Pasha, at that time a comparatively unknown man, was then commander-in-chief of all the troops in Widdin, and Adil Pasha was the commandant in charge of the camp. Osman Pasha had already won considerable reputation by his brilliant defeat of the Servians at Zaitchar; but it was not until his subsequent successes against the Russian arms that his name was flashed through the length and breadth of Europe, and that congratulations poured in upon him from all quarters. It fell to my lot to open and read many of the letters sent to him from England, in which the writers, a large proportion of whom were ladies, expressed their admiration for his gallantry and begged the favour of his autograph. Osman Pasha lived in a large house within the fortress, and I myself was billeted in the same quarter, where I lived quite in the Turkish fashion, sitting cross-legged on the floor and eating my food with my fingers.
At this time hostilities with Servia had ceased, and a long armistice had been declared, during which the Powers were occupied in dictating terms to Turkey, which, however, she declined to accept, her determined attitude in the matter leading ultimately to the declaration of war against her by Russia. The town of Kalafat in Roumania is close to Widdin; and we could see the Roumanian troops there busily engaged in fortifying it in anticipation of hostilities breaking out, and of an attack being made on the town by the forces in Widdin at any moment. The position, therefore, was decidedly interesting, for we could actually see the Roumanians, who were nominally our vassals, building up their redoubts against us as fast as they could. It will be remembered that during the early part of the Crimean war the Turks occupied Kalafat, Osman Pasha being the commander of the forces; and that the Russians lost some twenty thousand men in a vain attempt to take it.
The time of waiting in Widdin was fairly quiet, although every one felt that war was in the air, and that the interval of rest was only the hush that precedes the hurricane. I had plenty of work to do, for dysentery and lung troubles affected the troops severely as well as malarial fever. There were about thirty military surgeons in the town including myself, but most of them were Hungarians or Austrians; and the only other British subject among them besides myself was a man whom I shall call Dr. Black, although that was not his name.
Dr. Black was by no means a credit to his country. In fact, not to put too fine a point upon it, he was a perfect disgrace; and as every fresh scrape that he got into reflected more or less upon me, I began to get heartily sick of him. Few of the people in Widdin had ever seen an Englishman, and Dr. Black's manners and customs were not calculated to prejudice them favourably with regard to the nation in general or myself in particular. Fortunately for me there was one other Briton in the town. To use a convenient Irishism, he was a Scotsman, and he was commonly known as Jack; in fact, I never heard his surname. Jack was a high-class mechanical engineer, and he had been specially imported from Glasgow to take charge of the Government flour-mill inside the fortress. He lived there with his wife, a charming little Scotswoman, and they both spoke Turkish like natives. I had many consultations with Jack as to our common bête noir Dr. Black; but we had to suffer in silence for a while until the whirligig of time brought its revenges, and Dr. Black was at last turned out of Widdin.
I had met Dr. Black before in Sofia, and it was with intense disgust that I came across him again in Widdin. He was a middle-aged man, who might possibly have been of some good in his profession when he was younger; but he had spoiled his life and ruined his chances with drink. He was the most awful drunkard I have ever met. In fact, he was never sober, and in his habits he was perfectly filthy. He used to wear a long, dirty overcoat, in one pocket of which he invariably carried a bottle of the commonest and vilest rum, while in the other he carried a loaded revolver, with which he would blaze away at any one who gave him the slightest provocation.