The operations around Plevna are among the most instructive in modern warfare, as illustrating the immense power that quick-firing rifles confer upon the defence.  Given a nucleus of well-trained troops, with skilled engineers, any position of ordinary strength can quickly be turned into a stronghold that will foil the efforts of a far greater number of assailants.  Experience at Plevna showed that four or five times as many men were needed to attack redoubts and trenches as in the days of muzzle-loading muskets.  It also proved that infantry fire is far more deadly in such cases than the best served artillery.  And yet a large part of Osman’s troops—­perhaps the majority after August—­were not regulars.  Doubtless that explains why (with the exception of an obstinate but unskilful effort to break out on August 31) he did not attack the Russians in the open after his great victories of July 31 and September 11-12.  On both occasions the Russians were so badly shaken that, in the opinion of competent judges, they could easily have been driven in on Nicopolis or Sistova, in which case the bridges at those places might have been seized.  But Osman did not do so, doubtless because he knew that his force, weak in cavalry and unused to manoeuvring, would be at a disadvantage in the open.  Todleben, however, was informed on good authority that, when the Turkish commander heard of the likelihood of the investment of Plevna, he begged the Porte to allow him to retire; but the assurance of Shevket Pasha, the commander of the Turkish force at Sofia, that he could keep open communications between that place and Plevna, decided the authorities at Constantinople to order the continuance of defensive tactics[152].

[Footnote 152:  A. Forbes, Czar and Sultan, p. 291.  On the other hand, W.V.  Herbert (op. cit. p. 456) states that it was Osman’s wish to retire to Orkanye, on the road to Sofia, and that this was forbidden.  For remarks on this see Greene, op. cit. chap. viii.]

Whatever may have been the cause of this decision it ruined the Turkish campaign.  Adherence to the defensive spells defeat now, as it has always done.  Defeat comes more slowly now that quick-firing rifles quadruple the power of the defence; but all the same it must come if the assailant has enough men to throw on that point and then at other points.  Or, to use technical terms, while modern inventions alter tactics, that is, the dispositions of troops on the field of battle—­a fact which the Russians seemed to ignore at Plevna—­they do not change the fundamental principles of strategy.  These are practically immutable, and they doom to failure the side that, at the critical points, persists in standing on the defensive.  A study of the events around Plevna shows clearly what a brave but ill-trained army can do and what it cannot do under modern conditions.