An English boy as Turkish Lieutenant--A mêlée--Wounded by a horseman--Takes letter to Russian camp--The Czar watches the guns--Skobeleff’s charge--The great Todleben arrives--Skobeleff deals with cowards--Pasting labels--The last sortie--Osman surrenders--Prisoners in the snow--Bukarest ladies very kind. After Turkey had put down the insurrection in Bulgaria (1876) and had beaten Servia (October, 1876), Russia made her tenth attempt to seize Constantinople. The Czar, Alexander II., declared war against the Sultan, Abdul Hamid II., and the result was a war which in cruelty and horrors has had no equal since the first Napoleon retired to St. Helena. There were a few young Englishmen fighting on the side of the Turks, one of whom, Lieutenant Herbert, has left us a full account of the siege of Plevna. He says in his preface: “I have witnessed much that was heroic, much that was grand, soul-stirring, sublime, but infinitely more of what was hideous and terrible. If you have too firm a belief in the glories of soldiering, try a war.” Herbert was soon made Mulazim, or Lieutenant, and his friend Jack Seymour was in the same company. The first successes of the Russians were checked when Osman Pasha stood at bay at Plevna, and the Turks literally dug themselves into the hills around the city, while the Russians lost thousands of men in vain assaults upon the earthworks. It was in the second battle of Plevna that a Bimbashi, or Major, came up to Herbert and said: “The General has sent for reinforcements. Take your company; an orderly will show the way. Do your best, Mulazim. You are but a boy, in a position which might unnerve a man twice your age. Rise to the occasion, as Englishmen are wont to do. The soldiers love you. You and your compatriot have but to lead, and they will follow. Remember the Czar Nicholas’ furious cry in the Crimean War: ‘We have been beaten by a handful of savages led by British boys!’”