Note 48 — CONSPIRACIES IN RUSSIA UNDER THE REIGNING CZAR.

"The day and night of the battle passed, and the sufferers received no food or water, and their festering wounds were undressed. The following morning the Russians entered and took possession, and made the day one of rejoicing with the visit of the Czar and the Imperial Staff; but this celebration of the event, however short it may have seemed to the victors, was a long season of horrible suffering for the wretched, helpless captives who stretched their skeleton hands in vain towards heaven, praying for a bit of bread or a drop of water. Neither friend nor foe was there to alleviate their sufferings, or to give the trifle needed to save them from a painful death, and they died by hundreds; and before the morning of the third day the dead crowded the living in every one of those dirty, dimly-lighted rooms which confined the wounded in a foul and fetid atmosphere of disease and death. It was only on the morning of the third day that these wretched, tortured creatures had been left to their fate, that the Russians began the separation of the living from the dead."—Daily News Letter from Plevna.