THE STORMING OF ADRIANOPLE.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1755, 21 May 1913, Page 4

THE STORMING OF ADRIANOPLE.

A WONDERFUL FEAT.

(By H. W. Wallis, in the "Daily News nnd Leader." Sofia, Not, if you please, "Tho Tall of Adrianoplc." Tho fortress tliil not "fall," it was knocked down—stormed by desperate men, directed by military genius of tho very highest order. Is this excessive? Consider the facts. The place is strong by nnlture, invnded by three rivers, swollen this week by the melting snows of tho Khodope, sweeping seaward in brown, rapid tloods, not to be trilled with. Tho one face uncovered by water is defended by a series of forts echellomied ono behind the other for mutual support. Of all the multitude of forts planned by Vou der Goltz, these were supposed to bo the strongest, because arranged to guard 'tho ono vulnerable spot. Not that any living mail' conceived escalade as a possibility, but one must work by rule; there was a straight run in on the south-east face, and no water-jump, therefore let the fences he extra stiff and many. On Monday night, an hour before tho attack began, I was travelling with a little contingent of Serb officers, tall, fine, fat, weary men, who had left the Adrianople lines that morning. "Nothing was happening." They felt they could bo spared, would bo better employed in Scrvia. How sick they must be to-day! O, yes, the besiegers knew the nature of tho nut they must crack. Said the Queen to me, after her return from tho outposts, "Wo canu<yt; we must not. It would cost too much life." So, too, different members of the Cabinet during tho past four, months, have set it. at anything between 13,000 and 20,000. General Ivanoff, on tho evening preceding that long, abortive armistice, told me, "I could take i't in twenty-four hours if they would untie my hands. Cost? Say, nine thousand." Tho least of these estimates is formidable. Lord Roberts was wroth with Kitchener for losing under a thousand men ill (in effort to capture Kronjc. Yet the British Isles—not to say tho British Empire—lias stores of men. What do these figures mean to a little nation of about three-fourth's . the population of Greater London? It was obvious they would not Storm Adrianople.

A Dash to Victory. Again, what general dare ask troops to attempt such a service? Wo took I'el-el-Kobir, buit against iield guns only served by fellahs. We failed at every night attack in Africa, and at some day attacks. Grant's army failed to storm Petersburg, U.S. Moltko never called upon German troops to attack fortifications. The idea was out of date. There are limits to luman, endurance and courage, and these Bulgarians aro only twmity-months-trai'i-ed militia, heavy-footed ploughboys, "deficient in dash" (vide "Times' correspondent inside Tchataldja, after watching Savoff's dysontcry-stricken regiments crawling through bottomless nnul to attack fortified positions). So it couldn't be done; and Shuckri Pasha agreed, and his Belgian General': expert in fortification agreed, and his seventy German otters, and their Belgian and Rumanian confreres, and th',' fourteen Pashas agreed. It couldn't be done.

Theiii 011 Tuesday morning, March 25. a little after midnight, a herd of cattle stampeded up tho glacis of the big fort and let off whatever contact mines tlnre may have been and filled up various pits and trenches. After the beasts camo men. strangely attired. Bronze helmets and cuirasses had they, and held steel shields before them, whilst with wire-pliers they demolished the Entanglements. It wa;i desperato service, but only .10 per cent, were hit. ■ Then came nine battalions of stormcrs, and before Shuckri kirew upon which sector of his long front the tval at tack was to fall, the Hig Fort was stormed, and its five hundred defenders I.ud laid down their arms, and its heavy guns were pounding the supporting forts behind it. The Shipka He/rimcnt (23rd) v.as "first foot." The Jambol men (29th) only ji-ist behind. Some cavalry got into tho city with them, and for many hours cluios raged and roared. Slinckri mado a splendid fight of it. and did all a bravo man surprised could do. Hi? attempted to cut the bridges: the railway britlgo over the Arda is still unusable at the week's end. He lulled all horses, fired some magazines, .-md fell furiously upon the Serb lines N.W. in hopes of breaking throui'ifc: They tell me he refused to give un his sword miiil collared and held; a Turk of the o'd sort, .and a gentleman, as n Bulgarian who knows him assures me. He is already Icilgrd at the Hotel Splcndide in Sofia, and will be well treated.

Mathematics and War, But I am cut-running the event. Tho chaos was a Turkish chaos; on the Bulgarian sido was the niniblo method of a perfectly co-ordinated machine. Every, company officer knew precisely how many hundred yards he must run (in the dark, jf you please), and when, to the tick of his watch, he must halt, bear to tho right, deploy, and what not. "It was mathematics," said a man to me who wears tho Slivnitza cross. Nothing was unforeseen or left to chance. The nino battalions marched from position to position, fort after fort fell. At last, by Wednesday noon, after some I hirty-six hours' lighting, resistance ceased, and the victors could count tho spoils. They are very quiet about it. I can get few details. They found six hundred and eighty guns of position, jsomo injured, some destro/ed, but most are in working order, and the best are already cn route for Tcliataldja. They found in one magazine 100,000 new, Unused Mausers, and only grumble that they aro not "our pattern; it complicates the ammunition to!" (Some people never will bo satisfied.) Tho prisoners were interned in the forts, and will there remain until released. I hear few accounts of the city's health. There is nothing that one could justly call an epidemic. King Ferdinand's state entry on Thursday was spectacular. Prince Boris rodo beside him. The shops Here all open, and the shopkeepers stood smiling at their doors. All looting had been suppressed by a mixed force of BulgarTurk military police. But for the dead horses everywhere there were few signs of war. and the few fires had been got under promptly. I hope to get in on Monday or Tuesday, but railway communication is slill blocked by the broken bridge. Meanwhile, Europe is face to face with a new factor —an army of small free-hold-ers, destitute of nerves, silent, fit, absolutely disciplined in all that counts, though slouching and slovenly to tho eye, literate to tho tune of 95 per cent., solrer exceedingly, and to be trusted with women, and with a perfect passion tor getting in with the bayonet. _ Wc have had no such force in England since Cromwell's Ironsides: and shall never have r.tich a one again until the break-up of the estates and the re-settlement of rural England upon English land. But what is to conic next ? Men here talk easily of stovmiii'r Tehataldja. Salonika and Monaslir and Silistria present themselves as minor difficulties to bo overcome,in turn —Imi to be overcome!