The route which the main advance over the Balkans was to take was by Tirnova and the Shipka Pass, and thence on Adrianople through the rose-gardens of Kazanlik and down the beautiful valley of the Tundja. Two corps had been sent to the left to protect the advance from the Turks holding the Bulgarian quadrilateral. Old Krüdener, the chief of the 9th Corps, had been sent off to the right, with the airy order to storm the fortress of Nicopolis and then to march to the Balkans without delay, leaving as he passed detachments in Plevna and Loftcha for the protection of the right wing, and to cross the great range into Roumelia by the Trajan Pass. “Grandfather” Krüdener, grimmest and toughest of warriors, began handsomely. He so smothered with shell-fire the obsolete and crumbling fortress of Nicopolis, that after two days’ endurance of the Russian cannonade the garrison capitulated. It was quick work, and there were not wanting hints that he had backed his shell-fire by a bribe to the pasha in command. Anyhow, Krüdener scored, when on the 17th there surrendered to him 7,000 men, including the pasha--the cost of the triumph 1,300 Russians killed and wounded, and the trophies of it, among other things, six flags and 110 guns. FIRST BATTLE OF PLEVNA, JULY 20TH. Next day the Grand Duke Nicolas telegraphed to Krüdener to “occupy Plevna as promptly as possible.” That smart old warrior had anticipated this order by pushing out towards Plevna, which is about twenty miles south-east of Nicopolis, an infantry regiment and the brigade of Caucasian Cossacks, and on the same day moved out General Schilder-Schuldner with an infantry brigade. In all this there was no apprehension in regard to Plevna; the order and movements just mentioned were simply in the line of fulfilment of the original instructions that Krüdener should hasten to cross the Balkans by the Trajan Pass. But no Russian troops were to enter Plevna for six long months to come. Osman Pasha, whose fame was soon to ring through Europe, was on the march down the Bulgarian bank of the Danube from Widdin, with an army of 40,000 of the best troops in Turkey. Learning that the Russians had already crossed the Danube, he had turned inland, reached Plevna on the 17th, and, recognising the strategical and defensive characteristics of the place and its immediate surroundings, settled himself there, and promptly set about throwing up a line of entrenchments along the northern ridge from the village of Bukova eastward to the site of the subsequently famous Grivitza redoubt.