Democratic Sentinel, Volume 1, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 August 1877 — RUSTCHUK. [ARTICLE]

RUSTCHUK.

Graphic Account-pl the Bombardment of the DeVoted Town. [Letter to London Daily Telegraph.] The day was fine, the sun shone gloriously, the river—blue Danube, do they not call it ?—sparkled splendidly as it went swiftly by; from the towers of Bulgarian churches came- the sound of wooden bells and gongs of metal, all Rustchuk was quiet, when suddenly a loud explosion close by tlie Armenian church told that from the opposite bank the Russians had begun their long-looked-for attack. The missile had fallen in the street. Turks and Christians alike regarded its fragments with no little interest; it had done no great harm, they said it had been thrown into the midst of the town by mistake, they were sure. But presently another hissing, howling sound was heard—another shell was coming; yes, surely enough it was here, plunging into the very heart of the Armenian quarter once more; while a fellow iron traveler was bursting through the roof a house in which dwelt an aged Bulgarian citizen. And another, and yet another, were on their way; the surprise of everybody was quickly succeeded by horrible terror. Presently somebody raises the cry that the hospital—then full of sick and wounded men—has been struck, and, looking up, we see that three or four shells are falling upon its devoted roof. No matter that over it floated a huge white flag bearing the red crescent—symbols of mercy—the shells still fell madly all over it Something must be done. By this time the people—specially the Turks-—had begun to recover from their alarm, and were ready for work. It was clear that the wounded and the sick in the hospital could not be left to be mangled where they lay. Would any one volunteer to carry them away? Instantly, a number of strong arms were offered, and despite tlie hail of shells directed against that white flag and the roof over which it waved, tlie brave men rushed into the doomed building, and were soon seen bearing to the open street, on mattresses, scores of poor fellows, who, having already received serious wounds or almost succumbed to terrible maladies, were now lieing subjected to a second baptism of fire. All along the sides of the street were laid the beds with these wretched objects of suffering humanity upon them, tended by brave Turkish women, who, utterly regardless of shell and falling masonry, moved hither and thither on their mission of mercy as though they had been all their days in just such scenes, and knew that they led charmed lives. Charmed lives—poor dames ! —the shells were not long in falling upon them too, and in many a lane and street and alley of Rustchuk the mangled bodies of wbmen and children were speedily to be seen. No mercy for the feeble, although from the town of Rustchuk not a shot was being fired; the Russians had determined to make an end of the feeblejfolk who lingered in the town on the river bank. And meanwhile great crowds were essaying to leave the place. Jewish women and men by hundreds—who, by-the-way, I hear, arc now starving in the mountains whither they have tied; Christian men, women and children, carrying as much as they could of their poor effects with them; Turkish dames, half hidden in the plenteous folds of their yashmaks, many of them wounded; little boys and girls, infants and tottering old men, all went to swell that terrorstricken, flying crowd. And what a wail of woe went up as ever and anon a shell would come shrieking and bursting in the midst of that struggling, terrified mass of fugitives. I have seen the terror of defeated soldiers as, driven to bay by a victorious enemy, they have fought without hope for the life that could not long bo theirs, and my heart has almost bled. But here was no fighting man ; here were only the feeble and tho helpless, the very old and the very young; the wounded, the women with their babies in their arms ; and still the shells burst all around, now mangling an infant of a few months, and now ending the career of some aged Armenian or Bulgarian. There were scores of torn and mangled bodies there before that terrible afternoon’s work was done; the dead and the dying were almost in every street. All kinds of fearful scenes were enacted the while that this awful butchery went on. Crashing over the tops of the buildings came the shells, ripping up the frail tenements with a horrible sound, bursting, tilling the air with splinters, with dust, and with smoke, cutting down terror-stricken fugitives, beating in cellars where the frightened people were crowding for safety, and killing them in a way never to be described by the all-too-feeblc pen, utterly destroying the homes of hundreds, and putting a peaceful, harmless populace to flight.