As if this were not enough, the specter of imminent battle hung over the army now that they had reached the pass to join Radetsky’s encamped forces. Suleiman Pasha’s army was dug in just down the southern slopes of Shipka, and would have to be engaged in full force before they could advance farther. Small skirmishes with outlying companies had already taken place, and there had been numerous encounters with deadly Turkish snipers hiding high in the mountains, raining down dangerous fire on them as they passed. But the full battle yet loomed ahead. And Sergei knew Commander Nicholas would allow them not a moment’s respite.
Gradually he dozed off. Images of swirling white dominated his dreams. White hot specks of pain burned with each touch, singeing the hair and skin off his arm, leaving welts all over his body. In vain he struggled to escape, but the burning snow fell faster and faster. He swung his arms in panic about his head, trying to protect his face, but his wrists and forearms only stung and bled the worse. He began running, trying to escape the blizzard on foot. His leg was well, and he ran like the wind . . . faster . . . faster. At last the flakes lessened, but the white, bitter cold remained. Still he ran; all at once his foot tripped on a large object lying across his path and he stumbled. Suddenly Sergei’s dream-pace slowed. His sprawling body turned over in the air, even as Sergei looked back to see what he had tripped over. It was a human body! “Dmitri!” he tried to yell, but his dream-voice was mute.
Over and over he turned in the air, slowly, rhythmically, while his arms tried to stretch back to help his friend. Dmitri . . . Dmitri! He needed help . . . he was stretched out in the snow . . . in danger of falling over the edge. The body faded from his sight. He would have to crawl back to him as soon as he hit ground. He had to rescue Dmitri!
With a jolt Sergei struck the ground. A chill of foreboding swept over him. The snow had stopped, but the ground was still frozen. Something had broken his fall. It was another human form, and he lay on top of the body.
“Dmitri . . . Dmitri!” he cried. “Get up . . . get up . . . I’ll pull you out of here to safety!” Why wouldn’t Dmitri move? Why was he so cold? The blizzard was over. Why was . . . ?
With a horrifying shudder, he beheld the face lying inches underneath him. The dead man’s eyes were wide open, staring blankly into eternity, frozen where he had fallen in the snow. It was not Dmitri’s body at all! He was sprawled across a corpse of unknown name, whose face . . . whose face . . .
With a silent shriek of agony he suddenly saw in the face beneath him the eyes of a Turkish soldier he had killed. He had not died from the cold at all! He—Sergei Viktorovich—had taken the light out of these mournful eyes! Horrified, he struggled to free himself from the awful presence, the dreadful reminder of what he had done. But he could not move!
Frantically he groped and struggled. His hand lit upon something stiff and hard. He held on to it tightly and pulled with all his might to free himself from the wretched corpse. With an agony of willpower he pulled and pulled. At last he relaxed his grip on the cold steel object. But was that blood on his hand? He had been clutching the razor-sharp steel of a wicked sword blade. His own blood flowed freely.
Sergei’s eyes fell on the sword which had cut him. It was his sword! God . . . oh, God in heaven! . . . The sword stuck straight up from out of the dead Turk’s belly! With a mighty heave of desperation, he grasped the blade of death with both hands. He had to free himself from this horrible cadaver. But as he struggled, more blood from his hands mingled in a torrent with that flowing from the Turk’s wound. He opened his mouth to scream, but what emerged was a muted, dreamlike cry of agony.
He jerked up with a start, eyes wide in the blackness, his body drenched in the sweat of fear, his right arm across Dmitri’s chest.
“What are you yelling about?” muttered Dmitri sleepily, then rolled over without waiting for an answer.
Breathing deeply, Sergei tried to calm himself. He brought up his hands to his eyes, struggling to see them in the dark, expecting the blood still to be flowing. He rubbed them together frantically, then, gradually coming to the waking realization that he had been dreaming, he slowly lay back down.
He dozed fitfully for the rest of the night.
For the last three months, his nights had been like this—brief interludes of sleep interrupted by cruel nightmares without order or purpose, but always with the feel of darkness and death. Red was the dominant color throughout the ill-defined and shrouded images filtering through his tormented brain. And he always woke with the faint smell of gunpowder and smoke in his nostrils. Sleep had gradually become a terror all its own, bringing unknown demons for him to battle before morning dawned.
When light came at last several hours later, Sergei had to rouse Dmitri. How his friend could sleep so soundly under such conditions, Sergei did not know. Yet every morning he seemed to wake almost refreshed. Dmitri climbed to his feet and walked to the mess tent, returning with two tin cups of steaming tea and hunks of bread and jerky for both of them.
“I heard we can expect battle today,” Dmitri said. “The storm seems to have passed by.”
“You sound as if you are looking forward to it,” Sergei replied glumly.
“The sooner we can break through Suleiman’s army, the sooner we will get out of these cursed mountains.”
“I’m not sure I wouldn’t rather freeze to death.”
“Sergei, what kind of talk is that? You’re not going white-livered on me, are you?” He took a swallow of his tea.
“I’ve just had about all I can take of war, that’s all.”
“Why, you were a downright hero at Plevna—saving a man’s life, even if a Cossack, at the risk of your own. And you were right at the fore of Skobelev’s greatest victory. We are almost certain of another victory with the White General this time. With Radetsky to back him up, the man can’t lose! Think of the ribbons and glory that will be ours! And perhaps the promotions as well!”
“It simply doesn’t bother you, does it?”
“What’s that?”
“The killing, the death, the blood on your hands.”
“We are soldiers. That is what we do. I’d rather fight than sit behind a desk, or dig holes with a shovel, or any of the other dreary things men do to feed themselves. You think too much, Sergei—that’s your problem.”
Sergei closed his eyes with a shudder, then rubbed a hand, still numb with cold, across his face. “I wish to God I could close my mind off from these thoughts!” he said despairingly. “But I can’t get the sights and sounds and smells and horror of battle out of my head, even when I sleep—if I could sleep!”
“Well, my friend, my only counsel—if it is counsel you seek—is to admit that you have no choice. For you don’t. Today we will fight. You will fight, I will fight. We both will kill. And we will survive. There is no other way to survive, and there is no sense analyzing it. It is inevitable.”
“It does not have to be inevitable,” replied Sergei, wondering how his brash friend would take his next words. “I have considered not fighting . . . finding some place to slip away from all this madness and go home . . . find a place where there is no more death.”
Sergei did not expect Dmitri’s reaction. “You would no more do that than shoot yourself in the foot!” He laughed. “You’ve got too much pride to take the coward’s way out. Besides, how could you ever face your father again? So quit thinking about it. Quit thinking, I tell you!” He shouted these last words, grabbing hold of Sergei’s head and shaking it good-naturedly.
Dmitri could easily afford to make such a suggestion, for it was not in his nature to think about anything. Would to God it were mine! Sergei thought.
But Dmitri was right about one thing. Sergei would not run from battle. He would stand and march with his comrades, though each step forward seemed to kick relentlessly against his remaining sanity. He would stand with them; his dread of shaming himself before his father was greater than the fear of losing his mind.
The engagement that day held no surprises.
Sergei marched and fought doggedly, for there was no other way to endure it. If he did not think, it was only because his mind became too numb with fatigue and cold to allow it to function. He fired well above the heads of the enemy, and if they came too close, he gradually retreated into the depths of his own fellows so as to come upon no Turks at close range. If others thought of him as a coward, so be it. No one who knew him would ever know. And he knew he was no coward. But he would die himself before he would willingly take another life with his own hand.
Occasionally he caught sight of Dmitri or the Cossack Grigorov, and now and then saw a flash of white he knew was their general. But he stayed well behind them. Part of Sergei envied Dmitri’s lust for battle. But he knew, even as he thought it, that such feelings did not come from his true self. For him to have gone on the attack with a similar vigor would have drained the last ounces of hope from his very soul.
Sergei emerged from the battle on Shipka Pass unscathed except for minor cuts and abrasions, and they had not come from the enemy. His leg had not bothered him and he had not been forced to take a life, but still he felt as dead inside as if it were his own body lying lifeless in the snow with a sword through its heart.
71
It was a great victory for Skobelev’s army. What Radetsky had been reluctant to do, the White Cossack general had accomplished with stunning force.
Suleiman Pasha had been expecting a frontal attack. Thus, Skobelev’s flanking maneuvers took him by surprise. Russian losses were heavy, but 35,000 Turks surrendered, bolstering Skobelev’s boast that his efforts had shortened the war by months.
The passage through the mountains was open at last. Less than two weeks had passed since the fall of Plevna.
Down the southern slopes of the mountains poured the victorious Russian army. Christmas Eve saw the fall of the strategic Bulgarian city of Sofia in the heart of the Balkans. Even as Katrina and Anna and Natalia opened their hearts to the wounded of one of St. Petersburg’s war hospitals, the Bulgarian population welcomed the Imperial troops with jubilant cheers.
From Sofia, Nicholas and his generals led their troops down through the southern Balkan foothills and into the valley of the river Maritsa. From there they would follow the low-lying terrain straight into the region of Thrace and on into the heart of the Turkish Empire at the crowning base of the Black Sea. In stunning succession as the year 1878 opened, Philippopolis was taken and, within two weeks, Adrianople surrendered without resistance.
Russian victory, stalled for so long at Plevna, was suddenly assured. In the six weeks since Osman’s surrender, they had traversed two thirds of the distance. The road to Constantinople, less than one hundred fifty miles away, lay wide open to the advancing Russians.
During the whole of this triumphant march southward, Tsar Alexander sat back in the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg brooding upon the cause to which he had reluctantly committed himself. He knew his brother coveted the great city, and desired to lay siege to it and occupy it. But such was not Alexander’s design. When the army was less than thirty miles from the holy city, he sent orders to halt the advance.
Heated debate arose in the south. Firebrands like Skobelev clamored that they should defy the tsar’s command and take the city. How could he, they argued, from a distance of a thousand miles, snatch away the ultimate reward for the army’s hard-fought labors? Pressure to withdraw his orders to halt mounted upon Alexander, led by the most ardent of the Pan Slavs, including his own son the tsarevich.
But Alexander knew that more was at stake than Russian pride over the defeat of Constantinople. A full-scale war with England was certain to result if he moved on the city. International opinion was swinging in favor of the Turks. And the British played this swing of the fickle public to their greatest advantage, knowing that keeping Turkey as a viable force in the region was the perfect southern buffer to tsarist imperialism. Thus, England had committed itself to the prevention of Russian occupation of Constantinople. Queen Victoria declared, “I do not believe any agreements will be lasting without fighting and giving those detestable Russians a good beating.” The British fleet had been dispatched to the Dardanelles.
Alexander continued to hesitate, the indecision of his nature haunting him. Was he the only man in Russia who realized how high the stakes were? They could not possibly hope to defeat the British! His generals, his people, his own son—they all clamored to march on the city. How wonderful indeed it would be to capture the holy city and to crush once and for all the hated Ottoman Empire! With the city would come possession of the coveted Bosporus Straits. Such a victory would go far toward restoring Russian influence in Europe after the humiliating Crimean debacle. And it would lay to rest forever his dead father’s doubts about his strength as a man of action, a man of war, a leader among the nations of the world!
Yet there remained the specter of Great Britain—the greatest power in the world, with a navy fifty times the size of Russia’s almost nonexistent sea force. And Alexander’s troops were diminished and ravaged from the winter campaigns already fought. To move forward would be foolhardy, suicidal, a defeat worse than that of the Crimea.
In the end, Tsar Alexander II heeded the rational voices of his own soul warning him against further attack. His depleted forces could not face a major war with England and hope to survive.
The Holy City of Orthodoxy was conceded. An armistice with the Sultan was signed. A greater war with England had been averted. Yet with such concessions, what was left of the tsar’s already flagging popularity at home evaporated. He may have averted a major war by his discretion, yet his vacillation only confirmed his weak nature—something his enemies had long despised.
Criticism against Alexander mounted in the ultra-conservative and nationalistic circles. Although Russia had technically won the war against Turkey and had freed the Bulgarians from its grip, many discontented Slavophiles and Pan-Slavs complained that in the eyes of the nations of the world, Queen Victoria had captured the most resounding victory by forcing Alexander to back down. Even having won for his country a great victory, the ill-fated tsar found himself again in the unhappy position of being able to satisfy none of the elements of his diverse constituency.
Weakened rather than strengthened in victory, Tsar Alexander became increasingly sensitive to the criticism he viewed as unjust. He withdrew from his closest counselors and friends, like Viktor. If those of his own household had turned against him, he reasoned, was there anyone he could trust? After his brief visit with Natalia shortly after Christmas, he did not set foot inside the grounds of the Fedorcenko estate again.
Divisions and splits had been developing for years within Russia; now the Turkish War widened old breaches. No group played the tsar’s indecisiveness and failings to better advantage than the radical camp, which had been relatively quiet during the years leading up to the war. No longer were they a mere fringe group. Now they had a just complaint against the reign of the tsar that their countrymen were not only willing to listen to, but disposed to agree with. With the liberation of foreign Slavic lands, cried the radicals throughout the Motherland, did not Russians within the homeland deserve like consideration? Yet the returning veterans of the Balkan campaigns were greeted with the same grinding poverty and suppression of freedom and governmental tyranny as before. They had fought and suffered, and many had died, for rights and privileges they would never realize in their own nation. Freedom, it seemed, was to be fought for on behalf of others, but not to be enjoyed in their own country.
Throughout the spring the weary Russian troops made their way homeward, even as the heads of state throughout Europe prepared for the Treaty of Berlin that summer. The treaty involved all the major players in the European chessboard. In view of Russia’s avowed purpose at the outbreak of the war—that of liberating their Slavic brothers—both the war and the treaty could be seen in a favorable light. Russia regained Bessarabia, which had been lost in the Crimean War, and maintained a stronger position in the Balkans. Ove
rall public sentiment toward the treaty, however, held that Russia had emerged noticeably weaker. Though the original aims of the war had been achieved, they had failed to gain anything significant. The reaction of the Russian people was aptly expressed by Prince Gorchakov, the Russian representative to Berlin that July: “We have sacrificed one hundred thousand men and one hundred million rubles for an illusion!”
Worse yet, Britain had wounded Russian pride, Turkey retained its foothold at one of Europe’s most crucial junctures, and Austria—unopposed by Russia’s supposed ally Germany—stepped in to occupy two important provinces: Bosnia and Herzegovina. No Austrian blood had been shed, yet after the ink was dry in Berlin, Austria benefited the most.
The war had been fought, but not truly won. And the laments of the sick and crippled soldiers trudging home from the battlefields echoed as a rallying cry for the revolutionaries. The House of Romanov was not yet ready to topple, but its underpinnings were surely being weakened.
72
A fine warm breeze rustled through the branches of the cheremukha trees in the Promenade Garden of the Fedorcenko estate in St. Petersburg.
Their colorful blossoms had again burst forth. It had been more than a year since Anna had beheld the delicate white blooms on that life-changing Easter night last year when she and Sergei had shared the quiet of the garden alone together.
One abiding question filled Anna’s heart: had the war changed Katrina’s brother? Would he even remember the things he had said? Would he still feel the same way toward her? Would he still want to deny his rank and privilege and marry a common maid whose father was a peasant?
Any girl would be honored by the attentions of one so dashing as the young Prince Sergei Viktorovich Fedorcenko. Yet did she love him? That question had occupied Anna’s attention ever since the war had ended. She would have to face him soon. And then what would she say?
Just before Easter she had gone home for a visit to Katyk, but she had not been able to bring herself to tell her mother and father about the things Sergei had said to her that evening in the garden. She had never held anything from them before, yet something prevented her from telling them. What if Sergei came home and had forgotten his promises or changed his mind?
The Russians Collection Page 43