On the 28th of July I received at 11 P.M.the news of the battle of Vucidol, in which the army of Mukhtar Pasha was routed and nearly destroyed, Mukhtar himself barely escaping by the speed of his horse, entering the gate of Bilek only a hundred yards in advance of his foremost pursuer, his wounded horse falling in the gateway.

Of his two brigadiers, one, Selim Pasha, a most competent and prudent general, was killed, and the other, Osman Pasha, the Circassian, taken prisoner.

He lost all his artillery, and thirteen out of twenty-five battalions of regulars, two hundred prisoners being taken; but while these were _en route_ to Cettinje they became alarmed and showed a disposition to be refractory, and were put to death at once by the escort.

The ways of warfare in those parts were, in spite of all the orders of the Prince, utterly uncivilized, the Montenegrin wounded being always put to death if they fell into the hands of the enemy, and no quarter being given in battle by the Montenegrins, though Turks who surrendered in a siege were kept as prisoners during the war.

I had seen Mukhtar at Ragusa during the conference at the time of the armistice, and he bore out in his personal appearance the description which Osman Pasha gave of him,--dreamy, fanatical, ascetic, who gave his confidence to no one, and who said, when Selim proposed a council of war before Vucidol, "If my fez knew what was in my head I would burn it," and refused to listen to the cautionary measures Selim advised preliminary to the attack.