w words. The bitter cold,
the deep snow, the natural difficulties of the passes, the efforts of
the enemy, all failed to check the Russian advance. Gourko forced his
way through all opposition, took the powerful fortress of Sophia without
a blow, and routed an army of fifty thousand men on his march to
Philippopolis. Radetzky did even better, since he captured the Turkish
army defending the Shipka Pass, thirty-six thousand strong. The whole
Turkish defence of the Balkans had gone down with a crash, and the
Russians found themselves on the south side of the mountains with the
enemy everywhere on the retreat, a broken and demoralized host.

Meanwhile what had become of the Turkish population of the Balkans and
Roumelia? There were none of them to be seen; no fugitives were passed;
not a Turk was visible in Sophia; the whole region traversed up to
Philippopolis seemed to have only a Christian population. But on leaving
the last-named city the situation changed, and a terrible scene of
bloodshed, death, and misery met the eyes of the marching hosts. It was
now easy to see what had become of the Turks: they were here in
multitudes in full flight for their lives. The Bulgarians had avenged
themselves bitterly on their late oppressors. Dead bodies of men and
animals, broken carts, heaps of abandoned household goods, and tatters
of clothing seemed to mark every step of the way. Fierce and terrible
had been the struggle, dreadful the result, Turks and Bulgarians lying
thickly side by side in death. Here appeared the bodies of Bulgarian
peasants horrible with gaping wounds and mutilations, the marks of
Turkish vengeance; there beside them lay corpses of dignified old Turks,
their white beards stained with their blood.

While the men had died from violence, the women and children had
perished from cold and hunger, many of them being frozen to death, the
faces and tiny hands of dead children visible through the shrouding
snows. The living were dragging their slow way onward through this
ghastly array of the dead, in a seemingly endless procession of wagons,
drawn by half starved oxen, and bearing sick and feeble human beings and
loads of household goods. Beside the laden vehicles the wretched,
famine-stricken, worn-out fugitives walked, pushing forward in unceasing
fear of their merciless Bulgarian foes.

Farther on the scene grew even more terrible. The road was strewn with
discarded bedding, carpets, and other household goods.