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Part 27: The Bear and the Horse Tail


Coinciding with the declaration of war on the 1st of May, a 95,000 strong Russian Army under the command of Field Marshal Peter Wittgenstein advanced into the Danubian Principalities starting the latest entry of the Russo Turkish Wars. A conflict between Russia and the Ottoman Empire had become inevitable in recent years since the death of Ecumenical Patriarch Gregory IV over seven years before. Though war had come close on many occasions, the repudiation of the Akkerman Convention Treaty and the closing of the Dardanelles to Russian ships finally provided Tsar Nicholas I with the impetus for war that he had been waiting for. To that end, two armies were prepared that would strike towards the heart of the Ottoman Empire. In the West, the Commander in Chief Field Marshal Peter Wittgenstein would lead the main thrust into the Balkans with elements of the Guard Corps, the 2nd Infantry Corps, the 3rd Corps, the 6th Corps, and the 7th Corps through the Danubian Principalities towards Constantinople. While in the East, Field Marshal Ivan Paskevich would lead the Separate Caucasus Corps into Ottoman Armenia and Abkhazia.

The Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia had suffered greatly from nearly seven years of brutal occupation from the Fall of 1821 to the start of 1828.[1] Though the Akkerman Convention Treaty between the Russians and Ottomans had done much to restore stability to the region, its effects were fleeting, and ultimately the region was thrown into disarray once more with the repudiation of the Treaty in March. Highwaymen became increasingly prominent throughout the countryside and all semblance of law and order in the Principalities had collapsed. Added to this was a terrible drought which had stricken the region leading scores of Wallachians and Moldavians to starve as crops failed and herds went hungry making an incredibly bleak setting even more so. The Russians for their part, were to act mainly as peace keepers in the region, intent on reinstating stability to a region that had become a lawless land ever since Alexander Ypsilantis sparked the fires of rebellion seven years before. Their thrust into Wallachia and Moldavia also served another purely strategic purpose; holding the Danubian Principalities would provide Russia with a strong Southern bulwark against the Ottomans and a base from which they could launch offensives towards Constantinople.

Advancing into the Principalities in early May, the Russians made quick progress in Moldavia, securing the capital of Iasi on the second day of the war followed by the remainder of the Principality in the following week. Their efforts in the Principality of Wallachia similarly went unchallenged except for a determined, month-long resistance by the Ottomans in the fortress of Braila and the city of Galati in the East along with the fortresses of Giuriu and Turnu in the South. Despite the valor of the Ottoman contingent in Galati, the Russians brought in barges and rafts to complete the encirclement of the city from the river leading to its fall on the 30th of May. Once Galati had fallen and realizing aid was not coming, Braila promptly surrendered a week later. Giuriu and Turnu, due to their distance from the main front, would continue to hold out through the remainder of the year. With the Danubian Principalities mostly secured Field Marshal Wittgenstein began advancing southwards across the Danube in early June.

Pushing into Dobruja under the watchful gaze of Tsar Nicholas himself, the Russian soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Corps led the charge across the Danube near Isaccea under heavy fire from the Ottoman line on the right bank of the river. Despite taking grievous casualties, the Russians managed to secure the right flank of the Ottoman trenches by overwhelming their foe with raw numbers. With their right flank in enemy hands, the Ottomans of the center and left flanks were forced to fall back to the South. With their foothold established, the Wittgenstein began transporting the remainder of his army across the Danube. Due to delays caused by the weather, and Wittgenstein’s overly cautious disposition, the endeavor was completed by the end of the June, finally permitting the Russians to move south into Bulgaria. Almost immediately, however, their offensive ground to a halt as the Ottomans had arrayed against them 150,000 Ottoman soldiers with the largest concentration being in the fortresses of Rousse, Shumen, Silistria, and Varna which managed to resist the initial assaults against their walls.


The Ottoman garrison at Shumen was especially large at 40,000 men which massively outnumbered the 20,000 poorly equipped soldiers of the Russian 3rd Corps sent to seize it. Still, Wittgenstein managed to maintain a semblance of a siege around the city thanks in large part to the strong defensiveness of the hills and forests to the east of the city. Their position remained tenuous, however, as Turkish partisans constantly raided their dangerously exposed lines of supply and communication running to the north. The raiders also made scavenging an impossibility resulting in short falls in food supplies. As such, the Russian cavalry was systematically slaughtered by the hundreds to provide food for the rank and file. By the end of August, the only horse in the Russian camp outside Shumen was Wittgenstein’s personal steed. Ammunition also became a scarcity in the Russian camp and disease was running rampant through their ranks killing scores of men every day. On several occasions, the siege came very near to breaking from the combined pressure of the Ottoman garrison, the Turkish raiders in the countryside, and the ravages of disease on the Russian camp, forcing Wittgenstein to strip men and resources from the sieges of Silistria and Rousse to bolster the faltering siege of Shumen.

The Russian position at Varna went somewhat better under the command of Adjutant General Alexander Menshikov. Varna was one of the strongest fortresses in the entire Ottoman Empire with massive stone walls and mighty bastions, 178 guns, a garrison of 15,000 men, and a strong position along the shore of the Black Sea. However, the positioning of the castle proved to be a detriment to the Ottomans as the Russian Navy held complete dominance over the Black Sea. The Battle of Cesme had proven to be especially catastrophic for the Ottomans as nearly two thirds of the Ottoman fleet had been present at Cesme at the time of the battle. Five months later, the damage continued to be felt across the Ottoman Empire as ships were regularly transferred from other theaters to the Black Sea. At the outbreak of war with Russia in May, only 10 warships remained in the Black Sea and another 10 had been stationed in the Sea of Marmara. As such, the Russian Black Sea Fleet reigned supreme in the Black Sea enabling it to routinely bombard the Fortress of Varna from the sea with little opposition from the Turks.

It would take the arrival of fresh reinforcements in the form of the Imperial Guard Corps in late August before any significant progress could be made against Varna’s walls, with their most important contribution to the siege being the detachment of 64 siege guns and field guns they brought with them. Their arrival was followed soon after on the 10th of September by 20,000 Albanian and Ottoman soldiers marching to Varna from the West under the Albanian commander Omer Vrioni. Following his defeat to the Greeks at Missolonghi over five and a half years earlier, Vrioni had steadily lost favor with the Ottoman government and was ultimately reassigned to Üsküp where he was relegated to hunting brigands. Arriving outside Varna, Vrioni chose to loiter on the outskirts of the city and only engaged in some half-hearted attacks and skirmishes against the Russians. What attacks he did make were generally done at the expense of the Turkish troops in his company, who were wasted on several failed assaults across open fields in plain view of the Russian trenches. After three days in the area, Vrioni and his remaining men withdrew to the West as quickly and suddenly as they had arrived. Abandoned by Vrioni, Varna would finally succumb to the Russians a few days later on the 18th of September when Russian mines destroyed five bastions creating an opening in the castle’s northern wall.


Even after the fall of Varna to the combined might of the Russian Black Sea fleet and the Western Russian Army, the situation in the Balkans remained unfavorable to Wittgenstein. Silistria and Shumen continued to resist the Russians well into the Winter, and the Ottomans still outnumbered the Russians by ever growing numbers. Logistics also proved to be a delicate issue, while positions along the coast could be supported, those inland could not. When an Ottoman Army under the Serasker Khosref Pasha began approaching Shumen from the South in early November, Wittgenstein was forced to withdraw back to the North, abandoning the siege of Shumen in the process. This was repeated at Silistria with similar results and by the end of the year, the only position South of the Danube in Russian hands was Varna, which had only just managed to rebuff the Ottoman attempt to retake the city in late November.

To the East, the situation for the Russian Empire was much improved as Field Marshal Ivan Paskevich had made significant progress in the Caucasus Mountains. His offensive was initially designed as a distraction, a ploy meant to hold down as many Ottoman soldiers as possible allowing the main thrust through the Balkans to quickly strike at Constantinople and as such his force was limited to the Separate Caucasian Corps, numbering 25,000 strong.[2] Among his other objectives, Paskevich was to seize the Ottoman castles along the Black Sea which had long provided the Circassians with arms and munitions, furthering their resistance against the Tsar. It was an audacious strategy, and one which was quickly undone in the West by the stout resistance of Shumen and Silistria against the Russians, foiling the Tsar’s grand battle plan. Despite his more limited resources comparted to Wittgenstein’s, Paskevich managed to achieve much more than his cautious counterpart.

Launching his offensive in early June, Paskevich and his Caucasian Corps made quick work of the Ottoman defenses along the border West of Gyumri and began swiftly advancing into the mountains of Ottoman Armenia. His men were primarily of local stock, Georgians and Armenians who had lived in these hills and mountains for generations upon generations. They knew the terrain like the back of their hand allowing Paskevich excellent intel on the environment and enabling him to deftly surmount the Ottoman forces in the region. They were also battle tested and hardy folk who had fought against the Persians the year before to great success. Paskevich himself had served with valor in the war with Persia leading the Separate Caucasian Corps to a string of victories over the Persians, chief among them being the conquest of Yerevan.

Their first target in this war was the fortress city of Kars forty miles to the West of Gyumri. Kars was located on the road between Akhaltsikhe and Erzurum making it a pivotal point of operations for the Ottomans in the region. If Paskevich could take and hold Kars he would effectively cut off Ottoman Georgia from the rest of the Empire, barring the coastal road through Trebizond and Batumi. Arriving on the outskirts of Kars on the 24th of June, a company of Russian riflemen belonging to Paskevich’s vanguard opened fire on elements of the Ottoman garrison who were caught unawares. Despite receiving orders not to advance, several additional units rushed forward to assist the lone company and in the ensuing skirmish an opening was created in the Ottoman defenses.

Taking advantage of this opportunity, Paskevich rushed forward the remainder of his forces and quickly pushed over the walls and into the city of Kars. By nightfall on the 24th, only the citadel remained with most of the garrison either in flight, dead, or captured. Two days later, the remaining soldiers within Kars’ citadel surrendered to Paskevich’s men when they stormed the castle’s walls. Despite being one of the strongest fortresses in the region, Kars had fallen in only three days. 1350 Ottoman soldiers were taken prisoner in the battle and over 2,000 had been killed compared to the 400 Russian soldiers lost in the engagement, in addition to this the Russians captured the vast majority of the Ottoman munitions at Kars along with 151 of their guns. More surprisingly was fact that Kars had surrendered when an Ottoman relief force was only a day’s march to the West. Kios Mehmed Pasha of Erzurum had mustered an army of 20,000 to relieve Kars, but when he learned of its surrender on the 26th, he immediately turned North instead towards Ardahan.



Paskevich’s great feat was continued at Akhalkalaki in July, Akhaltsikhe in August, and Ardahan, Atskhur, Guria, and Poti in September. To the North, the cities of Anapa and Sujuk Kale had also been captured in a daring amphibious assault back in early June by Adjutant General Alexander Menshikov and a detachment of Marines. By the end of the campaigning season the entire northern shore of the Black Sea from the mouth of the Danube River in the West to the outskirts of Batumi in the East belonged to the Russian Tsar. Despite holding a 3 to 1 advantage in manpower, the Ottoman commander in the region Kios Mehmed Pasha was continually outwitted by Paskevich.

At Akhaltsikhe, Kios Mehmed outnumbered the Russians 40,000 to 15,000, yet when Paskevich turned to face him, the levies of the Ottoman Army turned and fled after the opening volley. Kios was himself wounded in the attack and with 5,000 of his original 30,000 he fled into the citadel of Akhaltsikhe were he sought refuge. Beginning the siege of the city, Paskevich set fire to the town killing hundreds of its inhabitants.[3] The ploy was as callous as it was calculated as the civilians of Akhaltsikhe in their despair fled to the citadel seeking refuge and in his humility, Kios Mehmed opened the gates. The Russians in turn fell upon this opening and managed to seize control of the citadel’s walls and by the following morning, Kios Mehmed Pasha and the remaining Ottoman forces in the city surrendered on the 17th of August.

As was the case in the Balkans, Paskevich’s offensive would eventually grind to a halt several miles to the east of Erzurum as he came across increasing numbers of Turkish soldiers. At the end of October, Kios Mehmed was replaced with the more capable Salih Pasha and Hagki Pasha and the number of Ottoman soldiers in the region was also increased to 100,000 men by the start of Spring the next year. These new forces included soldiers of the newly organized Nizam-i-Djedid, the regular army of the Ottoman Empire. Their officers had been meticulously trained by Austrian and French volunteers, they had been taught modern military tactics and strategy, they wore European style uniforms, and they had been equipped with the latest weapons and armaments available. While they constituted a small fraction of the total manpower in the field for the Empire, some 50,000 soldiers out of the total 370,000 men under arms across the entire Empire in 1828, they provided the Porte with a solid core of professional soldiers well beyond the proficiency of their average soldier.

Paskevich’s numbers however, were steadily declining due to attrition and the focus on the Balkan front forcing the Caucasian Corps to take a more cautious approach over the coming months. Another issue was the recent assassination of the Russian ambassador to the Persian Empire. On the 30th of January 1829, a mob of angry Persians gathered outside the Russian Embassy in Tehran demanding blood, specifically Russian Ambassador Alexander Griboyedov’s blood. Three Armenians, one man and two women, had escaped from the Shah’s household seeking the safety of the Russian embassy.[4] When Griboyedov refused to turn the Armenians over to the crowd, they stormed the building killing all inside including Griboyedov. Fear of war with Persia ran rampant in St. Petersburg and while it was ultimately averted, many of the reinforcements dispatched to the Caucasus Front to reinforce Paskevich were instead redirected to the Persian border in the off chance the war with Persia restarted.

The first seven months of the war could best be described as little more than a wash. While the Tsar’s armies had made good gains in the Caucasus and Eastern Anatolia, their results in the Balkans had been underwhelming thus far considering the higher priority that front had received in terms of men and supplies. Wallachia and Moldavia had been swiftly occupied in the opening month of the war, but their efforts South of the Danube left something to be desired as all their gains in Bulgaria, barring Varna, were quickly recouped by the Ottomans over the Winter. The failures of the Balkan Campaign were laid primarily at the feet of Field Marshal Peter Wittgenstein. Despite his success in the Danubian Principalities, he had been too cautious and inept in Bulgaria for the Tsar’s liking and his retreat from Shumen without so much as a fight was simply too egregious an act for him to remain in command. As such he removed Wittgenstein as Commander in Chief and in his stead, Tsar Nicholas appointed the Prussian Hans Karl von Diebitsch as Commander in Chief.

Next Time: The Last Push


[1] Technically there was a brief interruption of the Ottoman Occupation of the Danubian Principalities from the Fall of 1826 to the Winter of 1828 when the Akkerman Convention was in effect.

[2] The Separate Caucasian Corps was in fact a much larger unit comparable to a full army rather than a single corps with its total strength being somewhere in the ballpark of 60,000 men. However, most of these soldiers were tasked with guarding the Persian border and occupying the new land from the Treaty of Turkmenchay as the war with Persia had only just ended prior to the war with the Ottomans.

[3] The cause of the fire is generally unknown. Akhaltsikhe was a densely populated city built mostly from wood and other flammable materials and its very likely the fire was an incidental consequence of heavy fighting in the city’s streets.

[4] The man was believed to be a Eunuch in the service of the Shah while the two women were harem slaves belonging to the Shah’s son. Griboyedov was completely within his right to offer the three sanctuaries in the Russian Embassy as the newly signed Treaty of Turkmenchay enabled the Russian Government the right to protect Christians in the Persian Empire. Suffice to say, the people of Tehran felt otherwise.