Modern History Sourcebook:
Philip Gibbs:
The Siege of Adrianople, 1912
[Tappan Introduction] In February, 1912, Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, and Montenegro
formed an alliance for the purpose of wresting from Turkey her European territory. War
began in October. The Turks, fatally handicapped by the inefficiency and dim organization
of their commissariat, were steadily driven back by the invading armies, and Scutari and
Adrianople, their most important cities in Europe, were besieged. So the siege went on, tedious and interminable, and as often as possible I went out to
the hills, dodging the vigilant officers, who had a quick eye for the red brassard of a
correspondent, and riding or walking as far as possible from the main road until I had
reached the last hill which looked down upon the city. From afar the turrets and roofs and
domes and minarets of Adrianople appeared like a mirage through a haze of sunshine and a
thin veil of mist. The sky was very clear above it. Only a few fleecy clouds rested above
the horizon. But suddenly, as I watched one day, a new cloud appeared like a great ball of
snow, which unfolded and spread out in curly feathers, and then, after a few moments,
disappeared. It was the bursting of a great shell, and the report of it came with a crash
of thunder which seemed to shake the hills. Two, three, four shells burst together like
bubbles, and then there followed long, low rolls of thunderous sound like great drums
beating a tattoo. The noise had a peculiar rhythm, like the Morse code, with long stroke
and short, signaling death. It was made by the Bulgarian batteries on the hill-forts, and
it was answered by the Turkish batteries from neighboring hills. Presently, as the wreaths
of smoke from the guns faded into the atmosphere, I saw that tall, straight columns of
smoke were rising from the city of Adrianople and did not die down. They rose steadily and
spread out at the top, and flung great wisps of black murkiness across the sky. It was the
smoke of buildings set on fire by the shells. Other towers of black smoke rose from
valleys which dipped between hills. The Turkish shells, far-flung from their
fortifications, crashed into little villages once under Turkish rule and now abandoned by
all inhabitants. Soon there would be nothing left of them but blackened stumps and heaps
of ash.As I stood watching one day I saw two scenes in this grim drama which made my pulses
beat with a great excitement. A great bird flew across the sky towards the city, and as it
flew it sang a droning song like the buzzing of an enormous bee. It was a monoplane, flown
by a Bulgarian aviator, who had volunteered to reconnoiter the Turkish defenses. It
disappeared swiftly into the smoke-wrack, and for some time I listened intently to a
furious fusillade which seemed to meet this winged spy. After half an hour the aeroplane
came back, flying swiftly away from the shot and shell which pursued it from the low-lying
hills. Its wings were pierced, so that one could see the sky through them, but it flew
steadily from the chase of death, and I heard its rhythmic heart-beat overhead. Its escape
was certain now. It had mocked at the pursuit of the shells, and the loud beat of its
engine above me was a song of triumph. I watched it disappear again---to safety. So it
seemed; but death has many ways of capture, and when I came back to Mustafa Pasha that day
I heard that the unfortunate aviator, after his escape from the guns, had fallen from a
great height within sight of home, and that the hero's body lay smashed to pieces in the
wreckage of his machine.Then on another day I saw another drama in the air. While my eyes watched the
smoke-clouds from the siege-guns something twinkled and glittered to the left of the four
tall minarets of the great mosque of Adrianople. It was the smooth silk of an airship
which caught the rays of the sun; this cigar-shaped craft rose slowly and steadily to a
fair height, though I think it was tethered at one end. It rose above peaceful ground into
a great tranquillity, which lasted about ten minutes. Then suddenly there was a terrific
clap of thunder and a shell burst to the left of the airship. I gave a great cry. It
seemed to me that the frail craft had burst and disappeared into nothingness. But a few
seconds later, when the smoke was wafted away, I saw the airship still poised steadily
above the earth, untouched by that death machine. A second shell was flung skywards, far
to the right; and for an hour I watched shells rise continually round that airship, trying
to tear it down from its high observation, but never striking it. I do not know the names
of the men who piloted that ship, but, whoever they were, they may boast of a courage
which kept them at their post in the sky---amid that storm of shells.It was at night that the bombardment of Adrianople reached the heights of a most
infernal beauty. Then the sky quivered with flashes of light, and tongues of flame leaped
out from the hillsides, and fire-balls danced between the stars. As I lay in bed after a
day on the hills the noise of the bombardment chased sleep away, and every great gun shook
the old Turkish farmhouse in which I lived as though heavy iron bedsteads were being
dumped down upon the roof. Then there came a continued roll of great artillery. It was so
loud and seemed so close that for a moment the wild idea came to me that the Turks had
smashed their way out of the besieged city and that there was fighting in Mustafa Pasha. I
rose and dressed hastily, lighted a lantern, and went out into the darkness. All around me
was the barking and howling of dogs, hundreds of them, baying back an answer to the guns.
I stumbled through quagmires of mud and pools of water until I came to the bridge of
Mustafa overlooking the wide sweep of the Maritza.I passed on through the village, and past many lines of sentries and men encamped round
fires outside the mosques. Then in the shadow of a doorway I stood still and watched the
sky, upon which was written the signs of death still seeking victims, and destruction away
in the city below the hills. There was no moon, but the sky was thickly strewn with stars,
and it seemed as though some flight of fallen angels were raging in the heavens. I saw a
great shell burst below Orion's belt, and the pointers of the Great Bear were cut across
by a sword of flame. The Milky Way throbbed with intermittent flashes like sheet
lightning, and the pathway of the stars was illumined by the ruddy glare of burning houses
and smouldering villages. I had an irresistible desire to get closer to all this hellish
beauty, to walk far across the hills to a place of vantage from which I had seen the
bombardment by day. But when I raised my lantern and walked forward I was arrested by a
Bulgarian officer---and this was the end of my night's vigil.As all the world knows now, the city of Adrianople did not fall before the armistice
arranged between the allies and Turkey; and its garrison, which had maintained such an
heroic defense, deserved the fullest honors.
Source:
Eva March Tappan, ed., The World's Story: A History of the World in Story,
Song and Art, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1914), Vol. VI: Russia, Austria-Hungary,
The Balkan States, and Turkey, pp. 436-440.Scanned by Jerome S. Arkenberg, Cal. State Fullerton. The text has been modernized by
Prof. Arkenberg.
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© Paul Halsall, November 1998
halsall@fordham.edu
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