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RUSSIANS, TURKS, AND BULGARIANS.
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the great majority of cases they did so, and their evacuation was accomplished before the first Russian reached the vicinage of their abodes. This was so at Sistova, at Batuk, and at many other places where murder and rapine were circumstantially and lyingly averred against the Russian soldiers. The Turks who anywhere chose to remain were unmolested without exception, so far as I know. The orders that they should be so were strictly inculcated on the Russian éclaireurs; the Bulgarians were made acquainted with the injunctions of the emperor by the imperial proclamation widely, although surreptitiously, circulated in Bulgaria before the Danube was crossed. To this day you may see the cadi of Sistova walking about the town with an air as if he owned it. Gorni Lubnica is a large village not two hours' ride south of the imperial and grand-ducal headquarters in Gorni Studeni. Nearly half its population were Turks, more agricultural than most of their fellows, and of these a considerable number chose to remain in their dwellings and take their chance of the Russians. They were unmolested by the Bulgarian inhabitants and equally by the Russians. They dwell contentedly in their cottages, they have reaped their harvests and thrashed out their grain; you may see them fearlessly sauntering about their lanes, turban on head, none making them afraid. About Boradim, on the Plevna front of the Russians, many Turks remained in their dwellings; they met with no molestation, and are now earning a livelihood by carting to the front projectiles to be hurled against their brethren. It happened that by an accident I entered the town of Bjela in advance of the Russian calvary, and while there still remained on its outskirts some Turkish irregulars. These went; nearly the whole of the civilian Turks had already departed, but there remained behind a few, some living openly, some seeking concealment. In the evening the Russian calvary came in. The Turks who had chosen to stay openly at home were simply visited by an officer and bidden to stay where they were; those in concealment were searched for by the Russian soldiers aided in their investigation by the Bulgarians, when discovered kept under guard all night till the general had seen them, and then liberated, to return to their homes and avocations. The pillage of the subsequent night by Russian infantry stragglers was the only instance of serious indiscipline of which I am cognizant, and it was no pillage of Turks, but a rough miscellaneous sack of property, Bulgarian as well as Turkish, in which no personal injury was inflicted. A number of Bjela Turks who with their families had sought refuge in the woods around, and were suffering much from hardship and exposure, were visited and invited to return by order of the emperor. They reoccupied their habitations, reaped their harvests, and I have seen them walking about the place among the Russians and Bulgarians with the utmost independence of bearing. When the Turkish soldiers in a panic evacuated Tirnova, there remained behind some sixty Turkish families. The Russian force was a flying detachment chiefly of Cossacks. Tirnova swarmed with Bulgarians professing bitter hostility to the Turks, fraternizing warmly in copious raki with the Cossacks. Now, if ever, was the train kindled for insult and injury to the Turks at the hands of the Russians, under the temptations of instigation and drink. But by the Russians not a hair of their heads was injured, not a scrap of their property touched. As soon as might be, the officer in command detailed a guard to protect from marauding Bulgarians the section of the Turkish quarter where the population remained, and that guard was maintained till the Russians instituted at Tirnova a civic government. Constantly accompanying Cossacks and other Russian cavalry in reconnaissances on the front of the Rustchuk army, I never noticed even any disposition to be cruel. Where Turks were found they were made prisoners, in virtue of the obvious necessities of warfare; when complained of, the accusations were judicially examined and justice done deliberately according to martial law. I do not aver, remember, that atrocities were not committed on fugitive Turks; but not by the Russians. While the Turks yet remained in their entirety in the mixed villages, the Bulgarians did not dare to meddle with