The special correspondent of the Times in Thrace, writing from
Adrianople on April 2nd, sends a long and illuminating account of the siege. The garrison numbered 58,000 men, the investing army 155,000 (120,000 Bulgarians and 35,000 Servians). Adrianople, he declares, was never a first-rate fortress : its strength lay in topographical advantages, and a continuous chain of well-placed and strongly armed redoubts. The Turks also had a wonderful weight of up-to-date position fortress artillery, and were well provided with communications and supplies. But Shukri Pasha had no semblance of an intelligence department on his staff ; the construction of the works was execrable ; and the spadework was so inadequate that the infantry were quite unable to be a real factor in the defence. The Turks, in short, put their trust in their artillery and in the contract-built entanglements surrounding their main works. Adrianople, he sums up, ought to and could have been taken by the Bulgarians any time during the five months of the investment. He does not, however, minimize the vigour and persistence of the attack once it was pressed home. The official estimate places the losses of the Allies at 7,000 casualties, and 10,000 killed and wounded for the Turks. The correspondent acquits the Bulgarians of the charges of maltreating and butchering prisoners ; at least "nothing of the kind happened after the military control was firmly established." In fine he rates the capture of Adrianople as a great achievement, even when all allowance is made for the ineffectual ordering of the defence and the paralysis of administration inside the walls.
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