Half Fall In Sortie From Adrianople.

New York Times 100 years ago today, November 24, 1912:
Turks, Fighting Desperately for Bread, Are Repulsed with Terrible Loss.
BULGARS HAD MADE READY
Killing Fire Was Concentrated on the Foe, Advancing in Darkness — Disease Spreads in the City.
By FREDERICK PALMER,
Special Correspondent of The New York Times.
Special Cable to The New York Times.
    MUSTAPHA PASHA, Nov. 23, 6:40 A.M.— The drama of Adrianople, with its garrison at the point of starvation and desperation, is steadily proceeding.
    The Bulgarian method of whittling down the defenders by murderous repulses of their sorties is proving terribly successful.
    At 1 o'clock this morning Mustapha Pasha was awakened by such a heavy gun fire that it seemed as if a general assault on the city must have begun.
    It seems that yesterday the investing force saw that the Turks were preparing to make sorties in heavy force to the west and south of Adrianople. Withdrawing their advance posts the Bulgars encouraged attacks upon them, and at the same time converged a killing fire from the infantry, batteries and rapid-fire guns upon the enemy.
    The Turks advanced with ghastly courage into the face of death, while the Bulgarians showed that they could be as skillful in night defense as they were in night attack.
    The end of the fighting did not come till noon to-day, when the Turks fell back on their positions, leaving a large proportion of their men on the field. Some estimate that a least half of the attacking force were killed or wounded.
    The sortie, according to all accounts, was a fight for bread as well as for Allah.
    The losses of the Bulgarians were slight, as they remained in positions not exposed to the enemy, and were firing steadily on an object whose position was exposed by the light of the bursting shells.
    Although the Bulgarian soldiers have for the most part not been out of their clothes for six weeks and are sleeping on the ground, they continue to amaze the foreign observers by their cheerfulness and aggressiveness. They are impatient to storm Adrianople, but wiser counsels prevail among the Generals, and the policy of piecemeal destruction of the Turkish Army will be continued.
    Opinion in the army here is strongly adverse to the signing of peace until Adrianople falls.
    The sanitary conditions in the besieged city are reported to be ghastly. Much of the town is on a low level, and the heavy rains, with the high water in the Maritza River, are said to be spreading disease as well as famine.