The troops set out between four and five. I rode with the Nizhegorodsky dragoon regiment, conversing with Raevsky, whom I had not seen for several years. Night fell; we stopped in the valley where the whole army had made a halt. Here I had the honor of being introduced to Count Paskevich.
I found the count in quarters before a campfire, surrounded by his staff. He was cheerful and received me amicably. A stranger to the military art, I did not suspect that the fate of the campaign was being decided at that moment. Here I saw our Volkhovsky,50 covered with dust from head to foot, overgrown with beard, exhausted with cares. He found time, however, to talk with me as an old schoolmate. Here I also saw Mikhail Pushchin,51 who had been wounded the year before. He is loved and respected as a fine comrade and a brave soldier. Many of my old friends surrounded me. How changed they were! How quickly time passes!
I went back to Raevsky and spent the night in his tent. In the middle of the night I was awakened by terrible shouting: you might have thought the enemy had made a surprise attack. Raevsky sent to find out the cause of the alarm: several Tatar horses, torn loose from their tethers, were running around the camp, and the Muslims (as the Tatars who serve in our army are called) were trying to catch them.
At dawn the army moved forward. We rode up to the tree-clad mountains. We went down into a gorge. The dragoons talked among themselves: “Watch out, brother, steady now: you’ll catch some case shot.” In fact, the location was favorable for an ambush; but the Turks, sidetracked by General Burtsov’s maneuver, did not take advantage of it. We passed safely through the dangerous gorge and stopped on the heights of Sagan-loo, seven miles from the enemy camp.
The nature around us was dreary. The air was cold, the mountains covered with mournful pines. Snow lay in the glens.
We barely had time to rest and have dinner when we heard gunfire. Raevsky sent for information. The report was that the Turks had started a skirmish on our advance picket lines. I went with Semichev52 to have a look at a picture that was new to me. We met a wounded Cossack: he sat swaying in the saddle, pale and bloody. Two Cossacks were supporting him. “Are there many Turks?” asked Semichev. “A whole swiny swarm, Your Honor,” replied one of them. Having passed through the gorge, we suddenly saw on the slope of the mountain opposite no less than two hundred Cossacks, formed into a single line, and above them about five hundred Turks. The Cossacks were slowly retreating; the Turks were driving ahead with great boldness, taking aim at twenty paces, firing, galloping back. Their high turbans, handsome dolmans, and brightly caparisoned horses were in sharp contrast with the blue uniforms and simple harness of the Cossacks. Some fifteen of our soldiers had already been wounded. Lieutenant Colonel Basov sent for reinforcements. Just then he himself was wounded in the leg. The Cossacks were in confusion. But Basov mounted up again and remained in command. The reinforcements came quickly. Noticing it, the Turks disappeared at once, leaving on the mountainside a naked Cossack corpse, decapitated and truncated. The Turks send cut-off heads to Constantinople, and the hands they dip in blood and put the prints on their banners. The shooting died down. Eagles, the companions of armies, hovered over the mountain, seeking their prey from on high. Just then a group of generals and officers appeared: Count Paskevich arrived and went up the mountain behind which the Turks had vanished. They were reinforced by four thousand cavalry concealed in the hollow and the ravines. From the top of the mountain the view of the Turkish camp opened out, separated from us by ravines and elevations. We came back late. Going through our camp, I saw our wounded, five of whom died that same night and the next day. In the evening I visited young Osten-Sacken,53 wounded that day in another battle.
