The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume IIStillman, William James
History
The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II
Stillman, William James
Journalists -- Biography; Stillman, William James, 1828-1901
The reports of the fight from Bozo sent me down to get the details of
the victory, of which he had given me by telegraph a summary account,
and I arrived at his headquarters at Plana, overlooking the Turkish
movements, late that afternoon, accepting an invitation to pass the
night and see the operations of the next day. Until I arrived at his
camp Bozo had received no information of the passage of the Duga, nor
of the relief of Niksich; but I had not been with him two hours before
we saw the smoke arising from the villages on the northern slopes of
the heights that commanded the head of the valley of the Zeta, which
connects the plains of Niksich and Podgoritza and divides Montenegro
into two provinces, anciently two principalities,--the Berdas and the
Czernagora or Black Mountain. This conflagration showed that Suleiman
had crowned the heights, and would have no more difficulty in
descending through the valley to Danilograd. Suleiman's campaign was
planned on the idea of a triple attack on the heart of Montenegro,
by himself from Krstaz, Ali Saib from Spuz, and Mehemet Ali, my old
friend in Crete, from Kolashin via the upper Moratsha, the three
armies to meet at Danilograd. Ali Saib and Mehemet Ali were
disastrously defeated, though before I left Plana in the morning a
third attack from Spuz was begun, and fought out under my eyes while I
waited, the Turks being driven back again.
I started for a leisurely ride back to Ostrog, and half way there met
a fugitive who told me that the Turks were at the convent, and the
Prince retreating on the western side of the valley. Another half
hour and I should have been in the hands of the irregulars, who were
skirmishing and burning, killing and plundering, as they followed the
eastern side, the two armies being hotly engaged in the forests along
the crest of the mountains above us around Ostrog. I retrograded to
Plana, and thence, by the urgent counsels of Bozo, to Cettinje, as the
position was critical, and the campaign might take an unexpected turn
and make my escape impossible.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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