The Battle of Constantinople had raged on to this day. No one knew how many corpses lay in the city's corners, left to rot before they could be dealt with.
Both sides only cleared away the bodies right in front of them. The city's corners and the homes of its residents were beyond their reach.
The scorching summer arrived. In Constantinople in August, the stench of decay permeated the entire city, and the oppressive atmosphere was terrifying.
Artillery still thundered, leaving only shattered walls and broken ruins behind to tell of the years gone by. To capture this city, the Russians had already paid far too great a price.
Menshikov had long stopped reading the daily casualty reports delivered to him. Thousands of men were killed or wounded every day; after months of this, he had long since gone numb.
The infamous name "Constantinople Meat Grinder" had spread across the world. Wherever Europeans could be found, they spoke of this war's brutality.
Anyone who cared to tally it would discover that Russian losses here had already exceeded the combined total of the two Battles of Bulgaria. Yet the Russians remained fearless.
That was because Constantinople's outer defensive lines had all been breached—or rather, blasted apart. After expending tens of thousands of tons of ammunition, those fortress works had become ruins.
Street fighting had already begun. Both sides had now entered the stage of simply trading lives. Their exchange ratio had gradually fallen from the initial five to one, to four to one, three to one... and now it had reached 1.3 to 1.
A middle-aged officer said gravely, "Commander, our cannon-fodder units have been all but wiped out, and the incorporated Bulgarian guerrillas have suffered severe losses as well.
"There are not many able-bodied young men left on the Balkan