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Part 28: The Last Push
Part 28: The Last Push
Field Marshal Hans Karl von Diebitsch, Commander in Chief of the Russian Army
Field Marshal Han Karl von Diebitsch would prove to be a much more enthusiastic and aggressive campaigner than his predecessor Field Marshal Peter Wittgenstein as was evident in swift reorganization of the Russian Army’s supply situation. New supply depots and roads were constructed from Odessa to Braila where he made his headquarters, and he instructed the Russian Navy to seize the important port town of Sozopol near Burgas to provide a good harbor to dispense supplies to the Russian Army in the area. Though the Russians would succeed in capturing Sozopol in February, their victory was quickly nullified when the Ottomans immediately moved to blockade the port by land, denying Diebitsch from using the city as a logistical hub. The Russian Black Seas Fleet was also reassigned to primarily support operations in the Balkans as opposed to those in the Caucasus due to the successful completion of their objectives there. When the winter finally gave way to Spring, he advanced across the Danube and laid siege to the city of Silistria once again on the 5th of May.
Coinciding with Diebitsch’s attack on Silistria, the newly appointed Grand Vizier Khosref Pasha had begun marching against Varna with 40,000 men seeking to reclaim it for the Porte. Diebitsch upon learning of this, immediately moved from Silistria with much of his force, some 26,000 soldiers and nearly 7,000 Wallachian and Moldavian volunteers, leaving behind a small detachment to continue the siege in his stead. True to his reputation, Diebitsch and his men raced South at lightning speeds to catch Khosref and the Ottomans in the hills near the village of Provadiya on the 12th of June. Arriving on the scene, Russian soldiers immediately moved to seize the hilltops overlooking the road but they were soon opposed by Khosref Pasha and his army who advanced up the hill and drove the Russians from its peak. As the Ottomans attempted to run down their fleeing foe, they were met by the remainder of Diebitsch’s force on the plains north of Provadiya who promptly released an enfilade of cannon fire on the charging Turkish soldiers before the Russian infantry made a bayonet charge of their own. It was a gruesome struggle with casualties mounting on both sides to an alarming degree but by nightfall neither side was willing to cede the field.
Overnight, Diebitsch received reinforcements from the Guard Corps and local Bulgarian volunteers refilling his ranks with fresh bodies. Come morning, Diebitsch ordered a general attack on the Ottoman position and despite fighting uphill, they gradually pushed the Turks back. The main advantage the Russians held at Provadiya lay not in the number of their infantry or cavalry, but rather in their number of cannons and field guns. The 450 artillery pieces that Diebitsch had with him pounded away at the tight ranks of the Ottomans to devastating effect as entire companies of Ottoman soldiers were wiped from existence in a matter of seconds. The thunderous barrage of cannons eviscerated the morale of the Ottomans soldiers causing men to break and flee. Recognizing the battle was lost, Khosref Pasha, his guard, and whatever men he could rally fled back to Shumen where he would remain in wait of reinforcements.
The Battle of Provadiya
Despite being the victor, Diebitsch had suffered significant casualties at Provadiya amounting to 1,681 killed and 5,822 injured to the Ottoman’s 5,139 killed, and 6,089 wounded, with another 1,930 Turkish soldiers captured in the battle along with the entirety of the Ottoman siege and baggage train. Thousands more had simply abandoned the Ottoman camp all together, forcing Khosref to scour the countryside for levies to defend Shumen where he believed the next attack would come. Rather than chase after the Ottomans to Shumen, Diebitsch chose instead to loiter in its outskirts providing the semblance of a siege, while he awaited the arrival of his men from Silistria. The victory at Provadiya was followed two weeks later with the fall of Silistria which finally fell to the Russians, once it became clear Khosref Pasha had been defeated the Ottoman garrison within the city surrendered freeing the 3rd Corps to join the main Russian army outside Provadiya. Now united, Diebitsch immediately tasked the 3rd with occupying the attention of Khosref and his men at Shumen for as long as possible, while the 6th and the 7th Corps would secretly advance towards their main objective, Constantinople.
Striking East towards the sea, the Russian Army circumvented the Ottoman defenses of the Balkan Mountains by traveling first to Devnya then Galata before proceeding down the coast of the Black Sea towards Burgas. Under the protection of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, Diebitsch came to find little resistance in his path as Ottoman morale in the region had completely collapsed in the aftermath of Provadiya enabling the Russian Army to go faster and further afield. Crossing the mountains on the 10th of July near Byala, Diebitsch raced south towards Burgas seizing the city on the 12th of July, Aytos on the 13th, and Karnobat on the 14th. Two weeks late on the 28th, a cavalry detachment from the 6th Corps managed to dispatch a force of Turks near Sliven effectively cutting Khosref Pasha off from the South.
By this time Khosref Pasha finally learned of the Russians’ intentions and marched forth to stop them. No sooner than he did, however, was he attacked by the 3rd Corps which had been left behind to shield Diebitsch’s advance. For nearly a month, Khosref was under the false impression the entire Russian army was besieging the walls of Shumen, when in truth only a quarter of Diebitsch’s force was north of the Balkan Mountains. Though Khosref quickly managed to overwhelm the Russian rearguard, effectively destroying it as a viable unit, they had succeeded in their objective, albeit at great cost. By the time Khosref Pasha and the Ottoman Army could travel south from Shumen it was too late, Adrianople had surrendered without a fight.
Fearing the war lost and lacking contact with Grand Vizier Khosref Pasha, the commandant of Adrianople surrendered to Diebitsch on the 8th of August, ceding the last major fortification before Constantinople to the Russians. Diebitsch, however, had bet everything on his gamble to take Adrianople. His force had been steadily eaten away by disease and battle depleting his force to barely 25,000 men. Even with the aid of the local Bulgarian populace his army had suffered greatly. Though Diebitsch boasted to his men they would march on Constantinople and capture the Sultan himself, in truth, he no longer had the men needed to take Constantinople. Either out of a false sense of bravado or in another desperate gamble, Diebitsch and the remains of the Russian army struck out once more on an offensive towards Constantinople.
Worse still for the Grand Vizier was the deteriorating situation in Anatoli. Over the Spring and Summer, Russian Field Marshal Ivan Paskevich had been relatively successful as well in Eastern Anatolia. Despite being outnumber nearly 5 to 1 by the start of the 1829 campaigning season, Paskevich and his Caucasian Corps, bolstered by volunteers from the local Georgian and Armenian communities, advanced on the city of Erzurum. Opposing him was Hagki Pasha and an army of 20000 Nizam Infantry. Hagki Pasha had placed himself right within the Saganlug Pass that led directly to Erzurum, the shortest and most direct route from Kars. It was also incredibly narrow and defensible as discovered the previous Fall when Paskevich drove Eastwards, only to be repelled by a much smaller Ottoman army composed of less skilled soldiers.
Field Marshal Ivan Paskevich, Commander of the Separate Caucasian Corps
As such, Paskevich opted instead to split his forces, sending one half towards the Saganlug Pass and the other along a longer path to the North. If his plan worked as intended, then the Caucasian Corps would be able to catch Hagki Pasha and his men from both directions and destroy it. Though it took longer than expected to traverse the northern route, Paskevich’s stratagem payed off and Hagki Pasha was surrounded in the Saganlug Pass on the 19th of June. In the ensuing battle, much of the Ottoman army managed to break free of the trap, but Hagki Pasha and several thousand men were not as fortunate. After several more hours of resistance the Ottomans finally surrendered clearing the road to Erzurum which would itself surrender one week later on the 26th of June.
Despite this collapse of the Ottoman frontier to the Russian Army, the war still hinged on a knife’s blade. Four days following the fall of Erzurum, a detachment of the Caucasian Corps sent to secure the road to Trebizond was ambushed and promptly destroyed by a band of local Lazes and Adjars near the neighboring village of Hart. When Paskevich moved to pillage Hart for this transgression the following day he himself was ambushed and though he managed to fight off his attackers, his force had suffered terrible losses forcing him to immediately fall back to Erzurum after burning Hart to the ground. In the Balkans, the Russian Army of Field Marshal Diebitsch was soon cut off from their support in the North and the Black Sea by Khosref Pasha with foes closing in all around them. A skirmish near Kırk Kilise also revealed the porous situation of the Russians in the region when the Russians were forced to cede the field despite inflicting higher casualties on the Ottomans. Khosref Pasha, sensing the Russians were weakening, was of the mind to chase down Diebitsch and destroy him once and for all, but as he readied his force to chase the Russians, a messenger arrived from Constantinople. Sultan Mahmud had made peace with the Russians.
Sultan Mahmud II had thus far been known to the Russians for his aggressiveness, his belligerency, and his stubbornness, yet surprisingly in August 1829 he came to them seeking peace. After eight years of constant war, Sultan Mahmud II had grown incredibly weary as the constant string of setbacks from Greece and Bulgaria to Anatolia and Armenia had gradually worn away at his resistance to anything less than absolute victory. The fall of Adrianople and Erzurum had been proven to be the last straw in a long line of defeats, and within a week of Adrianople’s surrender the Sultan permitted his representatives to begin peace talks.
For all their victories, the Russians were similarly exhausted. The war had hardly been the great success they had envisioned in the Spring of 1828, casualties were mounting, with most coming from disease rather than Ottoman arms, but the result was the same. The Russians were hemorrhaging men at a terrifying pace both in the Balkans and in the Caucasus. By August of 1829, Paskevich’s force had fallen below 12,000 of the original 25,000, while Diebitsch had dipped below 50,000 across the entire Balkan theater. The war had also become surprisingly unpopular in Russia, most likely due to the high casualties, high taxes, and rigid enforcement of conscription caused by the war. Protests and riots were quickly becoming common occurrences in St. Petersburg and other cities across the Empire. It was clear to both sides that peace was needed now more than ever.
Delegates of the Russian and Ottoman Empires met at the city of Adrianople to discuss Peace Terms. Rather quickly though it became apparent that the Sultan, while clearly demoralized, still possessed some dignity and would not cave to all the demands the Russians originally presented, especially when news of the battle near Kırk Kilise reached the conference at Adrianople. As such, the Russians wisely curtailed their demands somewhat to preserve the “honor” of the Ottoman Sultan.
With that the war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire came to an end on the 1st of September 1829.
Next Time: The Long Road to Independence
[1] In truth, the Russians are de facto in control of the Danubian Principalities while the Ottomans hold de jure suzerainty over them.
Field Marshal Hans Karl von Diebitsch, Commander in Chief of the Russian Army
Field Marshal Han Karl von Diebitsch would prove to be a much more enthusiastic and aggressive campaigner than his predecessor Field Marshal Peter Wittgenstein as was evident in swift reorganization of the Russian Army’s supply situation. New supply depots and roads were constructed from Odessa to Braila where he made his headquarters, and he instructed the Russian Navy to seize the important port town of Sozopol near Burgas to provide a good harbor to dispense supplies to the Russian Army in the area. Though the Russians would succeed in capturing Sozopol in February, their victory was quickly nullified when the Ottomans immediately moved to blockade the port by land, denying Diebitsch from using the city as a logistical hub. The Russian Black Seas Fleet was also reassigned to primarily support operations in the Balkans as opposed to those in the Caucasus due to the successful completion of their objectives there. When the winter finally gave way to Spring, he advanced across the Danube and laid siege to the city of Silistria once again on the 5th of May.
Coinciding with Diebitsch’s attack on Silistria, the newly appointed Grand Vizier Khosref Pasha had begun marching against Varna with 40,000 men seeking to reclaim it for the Porte. Diebitsch upon learning of this, immediately moved from Silistria with much of his force, some 26,000 soldiers and nearly 7,000 Wallachian and Moldavian volunteers, leaving behind a small detachment to continue the siege in his stead. True to his reputation, Diebitsch and his men raced South at lightning speeds to catch Khosref and the Ottomans in the hills near the village of Provadiya on the 12th of June. Arriving on the scene, Russian soldiers immediately moved to seize the hilltops overlooking the road but they were soon opposed by Khosref Pasha and his army who advanced up the hill and drove the Russians from its peak. As the Ottomans attempted to run down their fleeing foe, they were met by the remainder of Diebitsch’s force on the plains north of Provadiya who promptly released an enfilade of cannon fire on the charging Turkish soldiers before the Russian infantry made a bayonet charge of their own. It was a gruesome struggle with casualties mounting on both sides to an alarming degree but by nightfall neither side was willing to cede the field.
Overnight, Diebitsch received reinforcements from the Guard Corps and local Bulgarian volunteers refilling his ranks with fresh bodies. Come morning, Diebitsch ordered a general attack on the Ottoman position and despite fighting uphill, they gradually pushed the Turks back. The main advantage the Russians held at Provadiya lay not in the number of their infantry or cavalry, but rather in their number of cannons and field guns. The 450 artillery pieces that Diebitsch had with him pounded away at the tight ranks of the Ottomans to devastating effect as entire companies of Ottoman soldiers were wiped from existence in a matter of seconds. The thunderous barrage of cannons eviscerated the morale of the Ottomans soldiers causing men to break and flee. Recognizing the battle was lost, Khosref Pasha, his guard, and whatever men he could rally fled back to Shumen where he would remain in wait of reinforcements.
The Battle of Provadiya
Despite being the victor, Diebitsch had suffered significant casualties at Provadiya amounting to 1,681 killed and 5,822 injured to the Ottoman’s 5,139 killed, and 6,089 wounded, with another 1,930 Turkish soldiers captured in the battle along with the entirety of the Ottoman siege and baggage train. Thousands more had simply abandoned the Ottoman camp all together, forcing Khosref to scour the countryside for levies to defend Shumen where he believed the next attack would come. Rather than chase after the Ottomans to Shumen, Diebitsch chose instead to loiter in its outskirts providing the semblance of a siege, while he awaited the arrival of his men from Silistria. The victory at Provadiya was followed two weeks later with the fall of Silistria which finally fell to the Russians, once it became clear Khosref Pasha had been defeated the Ottoman garrison within the city surrendered freeing the 3rd Corps to join the main Russian army outside Provadiya. Now united, Diebitsch immediately tasked the 3rd with occupying the attention of Khosref and his men at Shumen for as long as possible, while the 6th and the 7th Corps would secretly advance towards their main objective, Constantinople.
Striking East towards the sea, the Russian Army circumvented the Ottoman defenses of the Balkan Mountains by traveling first to Devnya then Galata before proceeding down the coast of the Black Sea towards Burgas. Under the protection of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, Diebitsch came to find little resistance in his path as Ottoman morale in the region had completely collapsed in the aftermath of Provadiya enabling the Russian Army to go faster and further afield. Crossing the mountains on the 10th of July near Byala, Diebitsch raced south towards Burgas seizing the city on the 12th of July, Aytos on the 13th, and Karnobat on the 14th. Two weeks late on the 28th, a cavalry detachment from the 6th Corps managed to dispatch a force of Turks near Sliven effectively cutting Khosref Pasha off from the South.
By this time Khosref Pasha finally learned of the Russians’ intentions and marched forth to stop them. No sooner than he did, however, was he attacked by the 3rd Corps which had been left behind to shield Diebitsch’s advance. For nearly a month, Khosref was under the false impression the entire Russian army was besieging the walls of Shumen, when in truth only a quarter of Diebitsch’s force was north of the Balkan Mountains. Though Khosref quickly managed to overwhelm the Russian rearguard, effectively destroying it as a viable unit, they had succeeded in their objective, albeit at great cost. By the time Khosref Pasha and the Ottoman Army could travel south from Shumen it was too late, Adrianople had surrendered without a fight.
Fearing the war lost and lacking contact with Grand Vizier Khosref Pasha, the commandant of Adrianople surrendered to Diebitsch on the 8th of August, ceding the last major fortification before Constantinople to the Russians. Diebitsch, however, had bet everything on his gamble to take Adrianople. His force had been steadily eaten away by disease and battle depleting his force to barely 25,000 men. Even with the aid of the local Bulgarian populace his army had suffered greatly. Though Diebitsch boasted to his men they would march on Constantinople and capture the Sultan himself, in truth, he no longer had the men needed to take Constantinople. Either out of a false sense of bravado or in another desperate gamble, Diebitsch and the remains of the Russian army struck out once more on an offensive towards Constantinople.
Worse still for the Grand Vizier was the deteriorating situation in Anatoli. Over the Spring and Summer, Russian Field Marshal Ivan Paskevich had been relatively successful as well in Eastern Anatolia. Despite being outnumber nearly 5 to 1 by the start of the 1829 campaigning season, Paskevich and his Caucasian Corps, bolstered by volunteers from the local Georgian and Armenian communities, advanced on the city of Erzurum. Opposing him was Hagki Pasha and an army of 20000 Nizam Infantry. Hagki Pasha had placed himself right within the Saganlug Pass that led directly to Erzurum, the shortest and most direct route from Kars. It was also incredibly narrow and defensible as discovered the previous Fall when Paskevich drove Eastwards, only to be repelled by a much smaller Ottoman army composed of less skilled soldiers.
Field Marshal Ivan Paskevich, Commander of the Separate Caucasian Corps
As such, Paskevich opted instead to split his forces, sending one half towards the Saganlug Pass and the other along a longer path to the North. If his plan worked as intended, then the Caucasian Corps would be able to catch Hagki Pasha and his men from both directions and destroy it. Though it took longer than expected to traverse the northern route, Paskevich’s stratagem payed off and Hagki Pasha was surrounded in the Saganlug Pass on the 19th of June. In the ensuing battle, much of the Ottoman army managed to break free of the trap, but Hagki Pasha and several thousand men were not as fortunate. After several more hours of resistance the Ottomans finally surrendered clearing the road to Erzurum which would itself surrender one week later on the 26th of June.
Despite this collapse of the Ottoman frontier to the Russian Army, the war still hinged on a knife’s blade. Four days following the fall of Erzurum, a detachment of the Caucasian Corps sent to secure the road to Trebizond was ambushed and promptly destroyed by a band of local Lazes and Adjars near the neighboring village of Hart. When Paskevich moved to pillage Hart for this transgression the following day he himself was ambushed and though he managed to fight off his attackers, his force had suffered terrible losses forcing him to immediately fall back to Erzurum after burning Hart to the ground. In the Balkans, the Russian Army of Field Marshal Diebitsch was soon cut off from their support in the North and the Black Sea by Khosref Pasha with foes closing in all around them. A skirmish near Kırk Kilise also revealed the porous situation of the Russians in the region when the Russians were forced to cede the field despite inflicting higher casualties on the Ottomans. Khosref Pasha, sensing the Russians were weakening, was of the mind to chase down Diebitsch and destroy him once and for all, but as he readied his force to chase the Russians, a messenger arrived from Constantinople. Sultan Mahmud had made peace with the Russians.
Sultan Mahmud II had thus far been known to the Russians for his aggressiveness, his belligerency, and his stubbornness, yet surprisingly in August 1829 he came to them seeking peace. After eight years of constant war, Sultan Mahmud II had grown incredibly weary as the constant string of setbacks from Greece and Bulgaria to Anatolia and Armenia had gradually worn away at his resistance to anything less than absolute victory. The fall of Adrianople and Erzurum had been proven to be the last straw in a long line of defeats, and within a week of Adrianople’s surrender the Sultan permitted his representatives to begin peace talks.
For all their victories, the Russians were similarly exhausted. The war had hardly been the great success they had envisioned in the Spring of 1828, casualties were mounting, with most coming from disease rather than Ottoman arms, but the result was the same. The Russians were hemorrhaging men at a terrifying pace both in the Balkans and in the Caucasus. By August of 1829, Paskevich’s force had fallen below 12,000 of the original 25,000, while Diebitsch had dipped below 50,000 across the entire Balkan theater. The war had also become surprisingly unpopular in Russia, most likely due to the high casualties, high taxes, and rigid enforcement of conscription caused by the war. Protests and riots were quickly becoming common occurrences in St. Petersburg and other cities across the Empire. It was clear to both sides that peace was needed now more than ever.
Delegates of the Russian and Ottoman Empires met at the city of Adrianople to discuss Peace Terms. Rather quickly though it became apparent that the Sultan, while clearly demoralized, still possessed some dignity and would not cave to all the demands the Russians originally presented, especially when news of the battle near Kırk Kilise reached the conference at Adrianople. As such, the Russians wisely curtailed their demands somewhat to preserve the “honor” of the Ottoman Sultan.
With that the war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire came to an end on the 1st of September 1829.
Next Time: The Long Road to Independence
[1] In truth, the Russians are de facto in control of the Danubian Principalities while the Ottomans hold de jure suzerainty over them.
- Earl Marshal
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