During the night of September 6 the Russians brought up their artillery under cover of the darkness, and threw up cover for the guns with their entrenching tools. When the morning of September 7 broke in cold and drizzling rain, the Russians had surrounded us, the Roumanian divisions being placed in the north and north-east, while the Russian divisions lay in the south-east and south. All the west side was occupied by cavalry, who commanded the valley of the Vid and the Orkhanieh road, so as to cut off the Turkish fugitives who were expected to fly in that direction.
The Russians had about eighty thousand infantry, twelve thousand cavalry, and four hundred and forty guns; while the Turkish forces numbered about thirty thousand infantry with seventy-two guns and an inappreciable number of cavalry.[3]
Every precaution had been taken by the Russians to avoid a repetition of the previous disasters which had attended their attempts to force Plevna by assault, and they relied for success upon their vast preponderance in numbers and upon a prolonged artillery preparation which was intended to demoralize the defence.
At six o'clock in the morning of September 7 I heard the roar of the commencing bombardment from Opanetz in the north, and it quickly worked round, until the two Grivitza redoubts due east of Plevna were involved. Across the Bulgarian road, Ibrahim Bey's redoubt and three or four others connected with it sustained a fierce bombardment, and the line of guns extending southwards across the Tutchenitza ravine and the Lovtcha road added their voices to the general roar as far as the village of Brestovitz, where a heavy fire from siege-guns was concentrated on the Krishin redoubt. A short experience of the bombardment, however, showed our troops that they had little to fear from the Russian artillery, and casualties were few and far between in the redoubts.
What was called the "mammoth battery," consisting of a tremendous group of fifty heavy Russian siege-guns, was placed in position due east of Plevna, and bombarded Ibrahim Bey's redoubt all day, the guns of the redoubt replying with spirit. The garrison of the redoubt were so well covered that they lost only forty men in killed and wounded after the whole day's firing, and the damage which was done to the earthworks during the day was repaired at night.