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Sited where the foothills of the Balkan Range descend to meet the Danubian plain, the industrial city of PLEVEN is an important regional centre with an unusually high quotient of worthwhile urban sights. Many of these are monuments or museums honouring the siege of Plevna - probably the most decisive episode of the War of Liberation. When the Russians crossed the Danube at Svishtov in 1877, their flank was threatened by the Turkish forces entrenched at Plevna (as the town was then known), which resisted three assaults costing the Russians thousands of casualties. In response to Grand Duke Nicholas' pleas, Romanian reinforcements came with King Carol I, who personally led his troops into battle (the last European sovereign to do so) crying "This is the music that pleases me!" Russia's top generals, Skobelev and Totleben, then arrived to organize a professional siege, weakening the defenders by starvation and blasting each redoubt with artillery before the attackers made repeated bayonet charges, finally compelling the Turks to surrender on December 10. More than 40,000 Russians and Romanians and uncounted numbers of Turks and civilians died, but as a consequence of Plevna's fall northern Bulgaria was swiftly liberated. The defeat had a shattering effect on Ottoman morale, but garnered a great deal of public sympathy in the West, allowing the British and Austrian governments to adopt a much more openly anti-Russian line in the peace negotiations that followed. Pleven's other claim to fame is its extreme climate ; Bulgaria's hottest summer temperatures are usually recorded here, and it's correspondingly cold in winter. Easily reached from Sofia, Varna or Ruse by train, Pleven stands at the centre of an extensive local bus network that serves the smaller towns along the Danube to the north as well as Lovech and Troyan to the south.
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