Sufficient notice has not been taken of the remarkable fact
that no Russian or Roumanian prisoners were foued in Plevna. That means, of course, that all the wounded were butchered on the field of battle in the manner indicated by Mr. Forbes and the sur- geons, who were so much blamed by the Stafford-House Committee for confessing the truth. It is remarkable enough that, this being so, the Russian Government should have treated Osman Pasha with the extreme courtesy and honour described by our various correspondents. Doubtless he had made a most able and gallant defence, but is it conceivable that if he had done. all that is in the power of a Turkish commander to do, to prevent and punish these butcheries, they could have been so effectually continued? We suspect that though military chivalry may have had a good deal to do with the homage shown to Osman Pasha, there was another motive for it as well,—that the Russian Government was very anxious so far to conciliate the military amour propre of the Porte as to smooth the way for a separate
peace between Russia and Turkey, if occasion offered. The Russian people will hardly enter into the extreme cordiality and respect shown to a General by whose troops their own brothers have been butchered and mutilated, as they lay wounded on the field of battle.
Previous page
