and sent the irregulars, Albanians of the tribe of the Mirdites, down to lead the attack.  As soon as these were well entangled in the intricacies of the valley, seeing only the half battalion of Moratsha posted in front of them, Vucovich led an attack down the slope in their rear, getting between them and the regulars, and the Moratshani made a sortie from the convent, which is inclosed by a strong wall, and attacked in front.  The Albanians fought desperately for a short time, but, attacked on both sides, though by forces much inferior in the aggregate to their own, they finally broke in panic.  A large body ran into a ravine, which proved a cul de sac, for the end up which they hoped to escape was so precipitous that few escaped the infuriated Montenegrins following them, who, when the fight was over, counted eleven hundred dead.  The rest of the Albanians continued their flight to Kolashin, the panic involving the regulars, who insisted on returning, and, in spite of all remonstrances of the officers, went back.

The hegumenos, Mitrofan Banovich, whose name deserves record as well as any I heard of in this land of heroes, introduced to me the captain of the Moratsha battalion, who had taken part in the fight.  He had lost his son in it, and of his four hundred men twenty-five had been killed and forty put hors de combat from wounds which disabled them from fighting.  The Wassoivich had exhausted their ammunition and the unwounded of the Moratshani were only enough to carry away the wounded; had the Turkish regulars maintained the attack, there could have been no further resistance, the way would have been open to take the Montenegrins about Danilograd in the rear, and Suleiman would have had a clear course.

The captain told me of one brave Albanian who had fallen wounded from his horse and taken shelter in a crevice of the rocks, and who had killed two Montenegrins and wounded a third before he was disposed of by one of them getting behind him and shooting him through a crevice in the sheltering rocks.  The manner of his death and that of those of his assailants illustrate the war manners of the Montenegrins so completely that I was interested in the case more than in other heroic details of the fight.  The Montenegrin makes a question of amour propre in attacking his enemies face to face and by preference with the cold steel.  Enemies who fall in the general mêlée by rifle-shot he never considers his “heads;” he claims only those he has killed in hand-to-hand combat.  This Albanian was the standard-bearer of his clan, i.e. the hereditary chieftain, and to kill him in hand-to-hand combat was the ambition of the three who attacked him in succession, the shooting from behind being only a matter of necessity.