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==Early life and Conquest of Khiva==

Skobelev was born near Moscow on the 29th of
September 1843. After graduating as a staff
officer at St Petersburg he was sent to Turkestan
in 1868 and, with the exception of an interval of
two years, during which he was on the staff of the
grand duke Michael in the Caucasus, remained in
Central Asia until 1877. 

He commanded the advanced guard of General
Lomakin's column from Kinderly Bay, in the
Caspian, to join General Verevkin, from Orenburg,
in the expedition to Khiva in 1874, and, after
great suffering on the desert march, took a
prominent part in the capture of the Khivan
capital. Dressed as a Turkoman, he intrepidly
explored in a hostile country the route from Khiva
to Igdy, and also the old bed of the Oxus. In 1875
he was given an important command in the
expedition against Kokand under General Konstantin
Petrovich Kaufman, showing great capacity in the
action of Makram, where he outmanoeuvred a greatly
superior force and captured 58 guns, and in a
brilliant night attack in the retreat from
Andijan, when he routed a large force with a
handful of cavalry. 

==Later life and the Battle of Pleven==

He was promoted to be major-general, decorated
with the Order of St George, and appointed the
first governor of the Ferghana Oblast. In the
Turkish War of 1877 he seized the bridge over the
Sereth at Barborchi in April, and in June crossed
the Danube with the 8th corps. He commanded the
Caucasian Cossack Brigade in the attack of the
Green Hills at the second battle of Pleven. He
captured Lovetch on the 3rd of September, and
distinguished himself again in the desperate
fighting on the Green Hills in the third battle of
Pleven. Promoted to be a lieutenant-general, and
given the command of the 16th Division, he took
part in the investment of Pleven and also in the
fight of the 9th of December, when Osman Pasha
surrendered, with his army. In January 1878 he
crossed the Balkans in a severe snowstorm
defeating the Turks at Sheynovo, near Battle of
Shipka Pass IV|Shipka, and capturing 36,000 men
and 90 guns. 

He returned to Turkestan after the war, and in
1880 and 1881 further distinguished himself in
retrieving the disasters inflicted by the Tekke
Turkomans, captured Geok-Tepe, and, after much
slaughter, reduced the Turkmenistan|Akhal-Tekke
country to submission. He was advancing on
Ashkhabad and Kalat i-Nadiri when he was disavowed
and recalled. He was given the command at Minsk. 

In the last years of his short life he engaged
actively in politics, and made speeches in Paris
and in Moscow in the beginning of 1882 in favor of
a militant Panslavism, predicting a desperate
strife between Slavs and Germans. He was at once
recalled to St Petersburg. He was staying at a
Moscow hotel, on his way from Minsk to his estate
close by, when he died suddenly of heart disease
on the 7th of July 1882.

==Skobelev's Memory==

Today, his name still lives, even beyond his
motherland: shortly after the end of the Turkish
War of 1877, the grateful Bulgarians constructed a
park in Pleven, the "Skobelev Park", on one of the
hills where the major battles for the city took
place. The park is also a location of the Panorama
"Pleven's Epopee 1877" memorial, where in one of
the scenes of the gigantic 360 degree panoramic
painting the "White General" is displayed charging
with his horse and bare sword, leading the Russian
attack on the Turkish positions. 

Shortly after the entrance of the park, the bust
of the famous general can be seen, watching over
the city. The park contains memorials with then
names of the Russian and Romanian solders that
died for the liberation of Pleven, and is
decorated with non-functional arms donated by
Russia: cannons, cannon balls, gatling guns,
rifles, bayonets.

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1911