. Russia's railway advance into Central Asia; . h-eastern corner is the large aperture or break inthe unfinished wall, through which the panic-stricken crowd of defeated Turkomans, withtheir women and children, fled out before themurderous onslaught of Skobeleffs troops, andwere ruthlessly mown down by their pursuerswithout distinction of age or sex. Eight thou-sand of the besieged perished in this disastrousrout, besides 10,000 or 15,000 more slain duringthe siege and capture. So great was the carnagethat thousands of bodies had subsequently to beburnt to prevent the spread of disease. Aftert
. Russia's railway advance into Central Asia; . h-eastern corner is the large aperture or break inthe unfinished wall, through which the panic-stricken crowd of defeated Turkomans, withtheir women and children, fled out before themurderous onslaught of Skobeleffs troops, andwere ruthlessly mown down by their pursuerswithout distinction of age or sex. Eight thou-sand of the besieged perished in this disastrousrout, besides 10,000 or 15,000 more slain duringthe siege and capture. So great was the carnagethat thousands of bodies had subsequently to beburnt to prevent the spread of disease. Afterthis terrible decimation, the Turkomans calledSkobeleff Ouenz kanli, or Bloody Eyes,which corresponds with the late Mr. MacGahansdescription of the Generals bloodshot eyesafter an attack on one of the redoubts at have since enshrined the memory of thecruel exterminator of their freedom in nativeverse, under the more agreeable name of the Sakal airi ooroosi, or the Russian SplitBeard, in allusion to the Dundreary form ofhis Gcok Tepd to Merv. 159 Skobelefif has been severely criticized in Eng-land for his massacre of the Turkomans at GcokTepe ; and his character has lately been sub-jected to the most reckless kind of dissection onthe strength of conversations with Dr. Heyfelder,the obliging host of all foreign visitors to Bok-hara. This amiable gentleman has consequentlybeen attacked in the Russian Press for com-municating disparaging anecdotes about Skobe-lefif to foreign tourists. The fact is that has published the most exhaustiveaccounts of Skobelefif and his personality, thesum total of which is quite the reverse of de-famation of the late Generals character ; andit would be very strange if he now entertainedany other feeling than that of admiration for theRussian popular hero. In recent English criticismSkobelefif has been called eccentric ; a jumbleof nobility and meanness, with a childish temper,and a petulant, ill-assorted, and unprinci
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, bookpublisherlondo, bookyear1890
