Long and difficult was the line of country he had to defend along the Danube, but his preparations were well taken, and the Russians could scarcely have crossed at any point without encountering a well-served battery, and, had they even succeeded in penetrating to the Balkan, they would have found every height bristling with fortifications, every defile in the possession of an intrepid foe. The successes of the Russians in 1828-29 depended mainly upon causes which no longer exist. They had then the undisputed mastery of the Black Sea; the Turkish navy had just been annihilated; and the Mussulman army was wholly without organization. The reverse of this was now the case, and the battle of Oltenitza was an earnest of many reverses they were doomed subsequently to sustain. The Ottoman general, alive to the impolicy of allowing Russian and Austrian intrigue free scope for action during the winter, and aware that his own men could not but become, to a great extent, demoralized by remaining for five months in sight of an arrogant foe, boldly determined to take the initiative, and to attempt, by force of arms, that which diplomacy had been unable to achieve. Observing at a glance the immense importance of assuming a strong position before Kalafat (in Lesser Wallachia, opposite Widdin), whence he could effectually exclude the Russians from Servia, he adopted a plan for dividing simultaneously the attention and the forces of his adversary. While, therefore, a hostile division advanced, in Lesser Wallachia, upon Crajowa and Slatina, Omer Pacha prepared to land a large body of troops at Giurgevo, and a still larger detachment at Oltenitza. The attempt on Giurgevo, possibly intended only as a feint, was unsuccessful, but at Oltenitza the manœuvre was brilliantly accomplished. Early on the morning of the 2d November, 1853, the Turks, to the number of 9000, crossed the Danube, between Turtukai and Oltenitza, a small village occupied by the Russians, who, as soon as they perceived the design of the Mussulmans, made a vigorous but futile resistance. Omer Pacha’s troops, eager for the fray, leaped from the boats, long before they touched the bank, fought hand to hand with their antagonists in the water, soon carried the quarantine building, and fortified it with fascines. The precision with which these various movements were effected, sufficiently attested the presence of the Turkish commander-in-chief.