Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 20. December, 1877Various
Science
Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 20. December, 1877
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
Ibrahim Aga, the veteran of Sultan Mahmoud's Egyptian wars,
was originally Thomas Keith, a gunsmith from the "Old Town" of Edinburgh.
Omar Pasha's best cavalry officer in 1853, Iskander Bey, was a Polish
refugee, by name Michael Tchaikovski, whose stirring war-songs are still
affectionately preserved by his countrymen. Bairam Pasha was merely the
Turkish alias of General Cannon. Among the Russians, again, General
Todleben, incomparably the greatest name of the war on their side, was a
Courlander from Mitau. Prince Paskievitch, the conqueror of Erivan and
besieger of Silistria, sprang from a Slavonian family in Transylvania.
Generals von Schilders, Aurep and von Lüders, though Russian subjects, were
all of foreign extraction, as were also Count Osten-Sacken and General
Dannenberg.
But it is in the present war that the foreign element has asserted itself
most conspicuously. Whether on the Russian or the Turkish side, almost
every leader of note is a foreigner. The Turkish fleet is commanded by an
Englishman, who still retains his own name of Augustus Hobart. Another
Englishman--the notorious Colonel Valentine Baker, called, like his
brother, Sir Samuel, "Baker Pasha"--heads the cavalry of the army of the
Danube. The sultan's two best engineers, under whose guidance Shumla has
been refortified, though now known to fame as Reschid Pasha and Blum Pasha,
were serving not many years since in the German army as Captains Strecker
and Blume. Mehemet Ali Pasha himself, the late commander-in-chief, is a
Prussian, born in Berlin. Suleiman Pasha's chief of staff is Bielowski, a
Pole, known in the Turkish army as General Nihad, and General Mina,
recently appointed to the command of a cavalry division at Rasgrad, is a
Belgian. On the Russian side, again, Generals Loris-Melikoff and
Tergukassoff are Armenians, the former having made his first step to renown
by attracting Count Mouravieff's notice as an active young dragoon officer
in the Kars campaign of 1855. General Oklobschio, who commanded before
Batoum last summer, though for many years in the Russian service, is by
birth a Montenegrin, and has the rashness as well as the valor of his
warlike countrymen. Baron Krudener, of Plevna notoriety, comes of a German
family which settled in Russia toward the close of the last century. The
gallant Scobeleff is said to belong to the Ayrshire family of Scobie.
General Nepokoitchitski is a Pole. Prince Tcherkasski has a tinge of
Tartar, Prince Mirski of Polish, blood. General Gourko springs from a
Cossack family of formidable renown in the Turkish and Polish wars of the
seventeenth century; and the family name of General Zimmermann, the leader
of the Dobrudscha army, speaks for itself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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