“Are you as great a coward as those fools you sent into the town last night?”
“They report that the town is heavily fortified, Your Excellency. It is my considered military opinion that a short delay in our attack—”
“Does your military doctrine say anything about obedience to your supreme commander?” interrupted Nicholas, shouting.
“It does,” replied the general. “I only thought perhaps you would want the advice of a general concerned for your own men. And as less than half our total force has yet arrived, it seems that an attack now would be ill-conceived.”
“And I tell you that I will be obeyed! It is a small town, and I want it taken without delay.”
“I beg you to reconsider, Your Excellency.”
“Noon, Krüdener . . . or I will relieve you of your command!”
The general clicked his heels, saluted, spun around, and left the tent. He walked past his officers in silence, head held high but with forebodings of doom etched deep into the lines of his face. They followed him down the hill—those whose regiments had arrived to receive their orders, the others to watch and pray.
General Krüdener mounted the attack with his paltry army at noon.
Viktor, where he stood not far from the tsar viewing the battle through field glasses, had more than military experience stirring fear within his breast. His own son was under General Krüdener’s direct command. Viktor knew, almost from the first round of shots, that the reports had been correct and that the grand duke had committed a horrendous error with his order to attack. Within thirty minutes the tsar’s troops were falling back, utterly routed. The Turkish Commander Osman Pasha had indeed effected a daring crossing around to the other side of the town, and Nicholas had walked into his trap. As the Turks poured out of Plevna’s walls, thousands of proud Russian youths fell dead on the battlefield.
Viktor heard the tsar murmur to himself, “How many lives could have been saved if the General had had the courage to disobey his orders!”
Yet even as he watched the disaster being played out before him, the tsar would never admit to the ineptitude of his brother. Viktor dared not speak. Alexander had not said a word to him once throughout the whole campaign. His cool aloofness was a constant reminder that Viktor had overstepped the bounds of propriety by criticizing the tsarevich. And now nothing could make Viktor utter a word against the grand duke. But his heart ached for this man who would be sovereign and yet was too weak even to admit to weakness in his brother, or that he himself had failed in making him commander. The Motherland’s dear “little father” stood silent and alone above the battlefield, watching the awful consequences of his own command decision, afraid to admit to failure. Insecure in his leadership, the tsar himself deserted his men by his silence when they needed him most.
Still Viktor struggled to cling to his loyalty. Like every commander in or above the field that day, he made excuses both for Alexander and for Nicholas. The tsar must place complete confidence in his commander-in-chief, he tried to tell himself, or they were surely doomed.
His arguments did little, however, to mitigate the horrible fear in the pit of his stomach as he watched the slaughter. One of those lifeless forms strewn about the battlefield might be the young prince of the house of Fedorcenko.
57
Viktor spent the evening of the battle in a dark, agitated mood.
Thanks to the marvelous contraption invented by an ingenious American named Alexander Graham Bell, there had been sketchy communications with the front lines. But he had been unable to get any details about his son.
Night was well advanced when his aide-de-camp announced that he had a visitor. A moment later and Sergei himself stepped into Viktor’s tent.
“Sergei!” said Viktor, jumping to his feet. His arms ached to embrace his son, yet he could not overcome his characteristic reserve. He extended his hand instead, and the words which followed were too formal, indicating none of the pleasure beating in his heart. “How good of you to come.”
“Father,” replied Sergei, grasping his hand firmly.
Viktor stood back and took a moment to assess his son’s appearance. His uniform plainly displayed the scars of battle, and Sergei’s fine, pale features were smudged with dirt and gunpowder. A deep gash scored his forehead, but other than that he seemed to have survived unscathed.
“You should have that wound dressed,” he said.
“It can wait. The doctors have their hands full.”
“Bad?”
“Dreadful. Hundreds and hundreds of seriously wounded. And they are the lucky ones.”
“Come and sit down. I’m brewing some tea.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Viktor always wondered why he felt so much more at ease communicating with his daughter than his son. Naturally, he could not help but have different expectations for Sergei than for Katrina. His son, like many of his station in Russia, had early been primed for a military life, attending the cadet school as had his grandfather and father before him. He had been groomed to inherit the family title, and the responsibilities that went with it, as assiduously as a tsarevich.
Unfortunately, Sergei could never be a Fedorcenko in the style and image of his father or grandfather. He was cast from an altogether different mold, a mold Viktor had never understood.
Perhaps Sergei was too much like a woman. His sensitivities were too keen. His perceptions tended toward the emotional. Traits Viktor could accept in a wife—or in any woman, for that matter—he found difficult to condone in a son and heir.
Sergei displayed no interest in the army or in other masculine displays of prowess and strength. Unlike many Russian aristocrats, Viktor had encouraged his children to obtain an education. He did not want them to be pampered morons. Yet Sergei had carried his intellectual pursuits to the extreme, and now Viktor regretted he had not done more to make a man of him. The boy, from his teen years, had developed more passion for literature than Viktor liked. A son more comfortable with a book of poetry in his hand than a sword was an embarrassment. Moreover, as Sergei had grown, his passion for reading, and now writing, had superseded all his other pursuits. While other virile young men developed their skills with horses or guns or swords, or even with young women, his son was off babbling French poetry or, worse still, trying to write his own!
Viktor had to admit that Sergei was serving with honor in the army. But with his cadet training there was no reason why he should not have attained to the rank of captain by now. Instead, he was already talking about when his term of service would be over so that he could get on with other things that were more important to him.
Such differences could have been surmounted, but over the years Sergei had also lost a great deal of respect for his father’s philosophy of life and politics. Viktor was a moderate, at least a rational man. He could see the tsar’s fallibility, did not beat his servants, and was in a sense part of the new Russian aristocracy that viewed gradual change as a necessary and wholesome product of the times. Yet to Sergei, Viktor looked like a reactionary.
The whole relationship was ironic, for the two were not far apart at all. Yet Sergei could not understand why his father did not speak out more, or why he was so intent upon supporting the tsar in the face of obvious blundering by the government. On his part, Viktor misread his son’s criticism, and took Sergei to be more in sympathy with the radical intelligentsia than he really was. Sergei was, in fact, cut more out of his father’s mold than either realized. Yet both were too blind to see the truth.
The only thing that had spared father and son the pain of open hostility was the blessing of frequent absence. Either Sergei was away at school or Viktor was away on state business. When they chanced to both be home, somehow by unspoken consent they managed to avoid confrontations.
It was not a relationship either was happy about or proud of. Yet neither knew how to improve it. In unguarded moments, Viktor sometimes found himself thinking that Katrina would have made the better son and
heir.
He would have been surprised—indeed, astounded—to know that his son often felt the same way.
Viktor filled the teapot from the portable samovar he had brought with him from the north, then proceeded to fill two glasses. This was his son’s first war experience, and he wanted to talk with him about it, as well as to express his happiness that Sergei was alive and well. But as statesman and adviser to royalty, he was so accustomed to speaking in the impersonal vagaries of government that he could find no words for his son beyond superficial conversation.
“I am delighted you came through the battle looking . . . so well,” he said.
“Many were not so fortunate,” sighed Sergei bitterly, taking a sip of the strong hot tea.
“Will another assault, perhaps tomorrow, prove different, now that you know the lay of the terrain and the town? If General Krüdener deploys—”
“Another assault, another day, Father,” interrupted Sergei, “would only result in more death. All we know, as you put it, is that they outnumber us ten to one.”
“But we are Russians and they are Turks.”
“We are all men, Father—brave young men killing one another, and after the futility of today, I wonder what it is all for.”
“Reinforcements are on the way. Another day will be different.”
“It will make no difference, Father,” insisted Sergei. “If we were to attack at our full strength at dawn—which is impossible—they would still badly outnumber us. The result would be the same as today. The situation is hopeless, and yet the tsar—”
“The tsar makes the decisions that his experience tells him will be best for Russia.”
“Such as marching through a narrow mountain pass and sending thousands of his own men to their death in a suicide attack? For what? So that he can march upon Constantinople and pretend to be Europe’s great shining white—”
“Sergei!” broke in his father, shocked by the bold words. “Keep your voice down.”
“Ignore the truth, Father? Is that what you would have me do?”
“A little discretion is all I ask.”
“Discretion? How will that help my fellows and friends who are dead? Discretion! The word is fine for men like you and the tsar in your drawing rooms, with your cigars and your fine linen shirts, but down there, Father, where I fought today with my hands—down there the ground is red with blood, and discretion will not help those who spilled it.”
Viktor was momentarily silenced. He had witnessed the battle. He knew Sergei spoke the truth.
“Father, can you tell me why we were dispatched against that Turkish fort without adequate troops?” asked Sergei, calming.
“It was by order of the commander-in-chief.”
“Another of our tsar’s unbelievably inane command decisions!” muttered Sergei.
“Sergei! You speak treason.”
“Will you report me?” asked Sergei sarcastically.
“Of course not, but—”
“You must know, Father, that the Grand Duke Nicholas knows nothing of military strategy. The men laugh at his command.”
“They had better do so to themselves, or they will find themselves facing a firing squad.”
“Exactly, Father. Do you not see the absurdity of it? The supreme commander would have men shot for speaking the truth—that they know more of the realities of battle than he!”
“He is the tsar’s brother, and the tsar’s choice to lead us.”
“But he is a bad choice, Father, unfit to lead. Why are you so reluctant to admit the truth?”
Viktor winced. He thought back to his previous argument with the tsar when he had angered Alexander for expressing doubts about the tsarevich. Now here he was angering his own son for defending the tsar. How could he ever please either of them!
“There are always circumstances a commander is aware of that the troops on the field do not see,” he attempted lamely.
“Oh, Father, the grand duke is no commander! Do you know how many men were killed today?”
“I have not seen the final reports, but I understand—”
“More than I’m sure the tsar and his brother will admit to the people back home!” said Sergei. “Thousands, Father! And needlessly. Dmitri nearly had his arm blown off.”
“Dmitri!” exclaimed Viktor. He had forgotten that young Remizov was also under Krüdener’s command.
“He is alive, thank God,” added Sergei, “though with a nasty gunshot wound. Luckily the bullet passed clean through his arm. But he will be laid up and out of commission for a while. And it’s all for nothing.”
“War is sometimes necessary when one nation must stand up for the rights of peoples. That is what we are doing now. Surely you see that our cause is just?”
“War may sometimes be necessary, but this slaughter was not. There is even a report circulating about that the high command knew of Plevna’s strength ahead of time, but ignored the facts and sent us against it anyway.”
“You ought to know better than to listen to rumors, especially in wartime.”
“This is my first war.”
“The commanders must take many factors into account,” said Viktor, skirting the issue.
“Does that mean ignoring the enemy’s superior numbers when we had more men on the way?”
“To wait for reinforcements might only have played into Osman’s hands. It would have given him time to further fortify the town.”
“Plevna was well-enough fortified to have beaten back three of our brigades!”
“Command is not an easy responsibility. Your commanders deserve your respect.”
“The grand duke and the tsar are hardly commanders!”
“They are my superiors, and yours as well.”
“You sound as if you are making excuses for them, Father.”
“Do not be insolent, Sergei!” shot back Viktor. The words hit too close to the truth.
“I intended no insolence. I only question the wisdom of sending an army into a hopeless battle.”
“It is not your duty to question, but to obey.”
“I did obey, Father, as did every man who died. But I disagree with you. If we had had the courage to disobey, perhaps more might have lived. An insurrection against the stupidity of his scheme might have put some sense into the grand duke’s brain.”
The two fell silent, at a seeming impasse.
A pang of regret shot through Viktor’s heart at one more missed opportunity. But try as he might, he could not understand his son’s anger. What Sergei said contained elements of the truth. Viktor knew, even the tsar himself knew, that the battle had not gone well. But that was war. Sergei was a soldier, not some radical student, and he would do well to start behaving—and talking—like one. Trouble awaited him if he did not. Such words uttered in the wrong circles could mean a fate just as bad as any of his comrades had suffered on today’s battlefield. Things would not go well for Viktor either if his son came to be known as a malcontent, and he was already in enough trouble with Alexander.
As a father, Viktor felt duty-bound to keep Sergei fixed on the proper path—the path of obedience, the path of respect for authority, the path of keeping one’s criticisms to oneself. Too many Siberian outposts were manned by insubordinate soldiers. He did not want his son to be joining them. He did not want to join them either!
His gentler side might have understood his son’s emotional reaction to a frightening day; deep in his heart he doubted the ability of Nicholas to command just as much as Sergei did, but his practical side refused to sympathize with his son’s frustration. He ached for a different relationship with him. Unfortunately, now did not seem to be the time.
“It is a dangerous doctrine, Sergei,” he said at length. “More dangerous to voice than you perhaps realize.”
“I realize it, Father. Only too well.”
“Then you know too that I speak wisdom when I counsel you to refrain from such outbursts in the future. You may not always be heard with the
understanding ears of a father.”
Sergei restrained a bitter laugh. If anyone didn’t understand, it was his father. But when he opened his mouth, his words were soft. “People who see such things may not be able to remain quiet forever. There may come a time when my conscience will compel me to speak out, Father.”
“And woe to us all if that day comes when Alexander is in a sour disposition,” said Viktor. “You just watch your step. If you care nothing for yourself, there are others to whom your foolishness could do great harm.”
Sergei did not reply. More words at this juncture were useless. He drained off the remainder of his tea, an act of politeness rather than thirst. He rose and extended a stiff, cordial hand toward his father.
“I had better get back to my regiment,” he said.
“I am glad you came.” Viktor’s words were a dismal and incomplete attempt to express what lay in his heart. Why couldn’t Sergei understand!
He rose and walked with his son to the tent door. Sergei disappeared into the night. “Godspeed!” called out Viktor after him, then returned to his tent, alone again with his thoughts.
It seemed a fitting conclusion to a day of defeat.
58
The days that followed would be no better.
A second attack against the fort-town ended more disastrously than the first. Not only were General Krüdener’s troops thoroughly routed once more, but the battle ended in a disorderly flight among his men, who turned and fled in sheer panic. For weeks afterward the mere cry of “The Turks are coming!” was likely to incite a riotous stampede among the Russians.
Indeed, this crossroads point on the way to Constantinople emerged as the most critical confrontation of the entire war. The days stretched on. Reinforcements gradually bolstered the Imperial Army, but to little avail. The Turks had dug in throughout the mountain region as well as in Plevna itself, and no Russian assault could dislodge them. Defeats on the Russian side continued to mount.
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