A HORRIBLE SCENE | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 10, 1878

A HORRIBLE SCENE.

THE following heart-sickening picture of the condition of Plevna when taken by the Russians, will serve to convey something of an idea of what will take place on a larger scale when Rev. 19:17-20 shall be fulfilled in the time of trouble before us. There is a force we as yet little realize in Christ’s instruction, “Watch ye, therefore, and pray always that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man.” Luke 21:36.

New York, Dec. 26.—Details of the condition of Plevna when captured confirm the reported horrors there. The famished dogs were feeding on the corpses of the dead and the bodies of still living wounded. The savage howls of the greedy brutes as they tore the putrid flesh of the dead or crunched the bones beneath their teeth, and the cries and groans of the wounded as they vainly struggled with the dogs, might be heard for miles around, and made the soul sick. Birds were pecking at skulls, hopping from body to body with beaks and plumage besmeared with human blood, and screaming with fiendish delight. Dogs fought among themselves, and bird struggled with bird for possession of a morsel of human flesh, and the most indescribable horror prevailed. In one house alone 37 dead and 53 wounded Turks were found, some of the former half decomposed and putrid, and the wounded in a condition that can be more easily imagined than described. Some of the wounded were able to crawl about, and clutched at odd morsels of food found in the hands of the dead, devouring it with feverish avidity; but thousands were utterly helpless, and awaited death or succor with a listless fatalism. Eighteen hundred prisoners were huddled together on the banks of the Vid, and the horrors of their position equalled those of the plague. The living and dead were piled together promiscuously in heaps like wood, and carted away. There were only three carts available for this work, and the confusion was indescribable.