"The command before Plevna is no easy matter: it will cost many a bloody battle before the Turks are conquered; nay, it may be questioned whether we shall succeed in this struggle! But I could not refuse the Emperor's offer, although I should have preferred my army to fight in its own sphere of operations. Now my troops will form the right wing, the Russian Ninth Corps the centre, and the Fourth the left wing. The Roumanian troops will cross our bridge over the Danube to-day. I shall review them first and then set out for Turnu-Magurele to proceed _viâ_ Nikopoli to my headquarters at Poradim (27 miles from Nikopoli)." Prince Charles found his new headquarters at Poradim a long straggling Bulgarian village about four and a half miles from the Turkish line of entrenchments round Plevna. Only one house at the entrance to the village seemed fit to live in, but at the best it was but a poor apology for a house. Half ruined, without doors or windows, it offered every opportunity for a study of the discomforts of campaigning. Here, as elsewhere, the noisome odour of corruption, caused by the hundreds of unburied carcases of horses and other animals, made the air terrible to breathe. The following morning the Prince found the troops of the Russian Fourth Corps greatly reduced in strength, as their effective strength present for duty only amounted to from 12,000 to 14,000 men for twenty-one battalions. On inspecting the outposts on the heights of Grivitza, Raditschewo, and Tutschenitza, the Prince realised to the full the strategical importance of Plevna, and also the immense difficulties in attacking the Turkish entrenchments. Osman Pacha's communications with Suleiman Pacha were seriously affected by the capture of Lowtcha by Prince Imeritinski and General Skobeleff on September 6, and it then became possible to attack Plevna from the south as well. A General Order was drafted by the Prince and his Staff with a view to the attack on the position, which was so warmly urged by the Grand Duke and his Staff, but which was to be postponed for the present. The troops now under the command of Prince Charles amounted to 107 battalions, 74 squadrons, and 442 guns. Total, 75,000 men and 8000 horses. The Grand Duke Nicholas, whose temperament had suffered much during the last few weeks, declared bluntly: "_Il faut attaquer absolument_," to all the representations of the Prince, who was firmly convinced that Plevna could not be taken before the arrival of the expected Russian reinforcements. The Grand Duke, on the other hand, was afraid that, unless Plevna was taken at once, Suleiman Pacha would effect a junction with Osman, and thus outnumber the Russian force.