taken against it. The Turks made a sally at nightfall. They came out in strong force and encountered the 17th chasseurs hand-to-hand, but were driven back at the point of the bayonet by the Russians. Work on the parallel could not be kept up that night, but a sap with traverses was started.
The state of affairs in the Balkans made it necessary to withdraw some of the besieging force. On the 5th of June General Diebitsch quitted Silistria with the second corps d'armée, leaving General Krassowski with twenty battalions of infantry, a few squadrons of cavalry, and two battalions of sappers, to carry on the work of the siege. The besieging army did not now number more than ten thousand or twelve thousand men; the besieged were doubtless in greater force. The Russians could hope to win only by concealing the scarcity of their numbers, and by pushing the work with the utmost speed, in order to keep the Turks within the fortress, and to prevent any new sallies.
The rain poured down in torrents for twenty-four hours, filling the ditches until it became necessary to dig wells to carry away the water, and altogether impeding the siege operations until the 9th. The Russians, from their positions in the terraces on the hills, raked, with a destructive fire, bastions five and six. The Rasgrad and Shumla gates were totally demolished. A heavy discharge of canister was kept up by the Turks from new embrasures which they uncovered. It was said by deserters that countermines had been sunk to oppose the attack on bastions five and six, and that these mines were charged and in readiness to be fired. Thinking still that their numbers were not sufficiently strong, the Russians continued their work on the covered sap, moving forward very slowly. News having been received in the evening of the 13th of a Russian victory at Kouleftscha, they generously allowed it to reach the Turks. A strong fire and
