Henrique Felipe Salazar; The Conduct of War in Europe and Beyond, 1792 to 1912: Yale University Press
The Russo-Turkish War of 1877
If the Franco-Prussian War had shown the inadequacy of static defence in fixed positions against an opponent capable of complex small-scale unit manoeuvres, then the Russo-Turkish war demonstrated how, combined with modern weaponry, they could be devastating against an opponent reliant on more primitive tactics. In the war it was the Russian War plan that seemed to take the lessons of the Franco-Prussian War to heart. General Nikolai Obruchev had planned a quick strike into Turkish territory, isolating the main Turkish force in the Quadrilateral fortresses of the Dobrudja and driving on toward Istanbul. In comparison, the Turks planned only on an active defence of the Danube and the Balkan Mountain range, with no plan to take the offensive into Russian territory. In the opinion of European military experts, the plan that War Minister Hüseyin Avni Paşa had drawn up was “defeatist”, and was seen as similar to the defensive plan of Napoleon III which had failed so badly. Indeed in the absence of support from her traditional European allies, most observers predicted that the Russian assault would be the last blow to the tottering, bankrupt Ottoman Empire and began to anticipate a partition of the empire.
The Turks had a number of unexpected advantages despite her seemingly precarious position. Her army was already fully mobilised when the Russians had declared war on the 24th of April, leaving her with 165,000 troops available in Bulgaria to a Russian total of 200,000, a dangerous ratio for an attacker in the age of breech loading rifles and guns. The Turkish armies had a measure of experience from fighting rebels in Herzegovina and Bulgaria, as well as in their short war against Serbia. The Turkish forces also possessed better equipment, and the American-made Peabody-Martini rifles outranged the Russian Krenk rifle more than three times. Even the Turkish artillery, which was numerically inferior to that of the Russians, was comprised of breech-loading Krupp guns from Germany, which were superior in quality to the bronze guns of the Russians [1]. The Turkish navy, the world’s third largest at the time, also made coastal operations on the part of the Russians a difficult proposition, and had perhaps dictated the decision of Obruchev to circumvent the Turkish forces in the Dobrudja. It was only in cavalry where the Russians were clearly superior, with well-armed, well trained and well led men as opposed to the inadequate, poorly-horsed cavalry force possessed by the Turks.
The speed of the Russian cavalry lead to great problems for the Turks initially. Before Istanbul was even aware of the declaration of war, Russian cavalry had occupied the Romanian town of Galaţi and her troops were well on the way to Brăila. Once the Turks were fully aware of the situation, her flotilla on the Danube was able to harass Russian forces as they occupied the towns on the Romanian side of the river, though once the Russians were able to bring up their guns, the Turkish fleet was forced to withdraw, as coordination between the flotilla and the army was non-existent, and the navy’s guns lacked the trajectory to counter the Russian guns. The Turks awaited a crossing at the Dobrudja, but even after a week this advance hadn’t come, and the Turks began to recognize that the main Russian crossing would take place somewhere else on the Danube. Another attempt to destroy the Russian railway bridge over the Siret with a Turkish flotilla was abandoned in the face of minimal resistance on the part of the Russians. The Turkish navy, the third largest in the world at the time and one which such high hopes had been placed, had so far demonstrated as little worth as the French navy had been in the Franco-Prussian War.
By July the Russians were moving multiple army corps into Romania, and the quiet situation around the Dobrudja had indicated to the Turkish high command that the main blow would not be toward the quadrilateral forts in the South of the Dobrudja, but would instead land somewhere else along the Danube River. Ignorant of where exactly this blow would come, Turkish commanders were instructed to dig in fight every attempted crossing “to the last man”. Despite the inadequate infrastructure within Romania as well as the various diseases that inflicted the Russians, they were able to deploy 150,000 men into Romania within 30 days of the beginning of the war. To foreign observers with the Russian army, this was an impressive feat though even in the first month thousands of Russians were struck by disease. While the Russians were deploying their forces, the Turks made virtually no attempts to disrupt the movement of the Russian army within Romania, with the exception of an abortive attack on the Russian bridge at Reni. For the journalists and attaches on both sides of the war, the successful Russian deployment and the inactivity of the Turks seemed to point to the direction of the war’s outcome.
The Russian river crossing took place near the small Bulgarian town of Svishtov, where the Turks had just 4000 men to oppose the crossing. The Russians had managed to land their first troops without alerting the Turks, subsequently gaining the cliffs overlooking the river and driving back Turkish skirmishers. Once it had become apparent that this was the main landing of the Russian forces, the Turkish commander Ahmed Namdy Paşa threw every man he had to oppose the Russians on the river bank, and the Turkish forces poured fire onto the Russians as they landed. The determination of the Russian troops enabled them to drive the Turkish forces back with great difficulty, though they themselves had been decimated by the crossing, suffering as many as 4,000 dead and wounded for just 1,200 Turkish casualties [2]. Nevertheless, considering the difficulty that an amphibious operation posed, the fact that the Russians had achieved their goals before Turkish reinforcements from Ruse were able to arrive seemed to improve the situation of the Russians considerably. Having crossed the Danube, the Russians were able to build a pontoon bridge, an action which saw little opposition from the Turkish riverine flotilla.
Although in the few weeks following the crossing the Russians enjoyed a number of successes, with both Skobelev and Gurko leading fast-moving columns to seize strategic towns and passes, the Russian advance was halted at the ancient town of Tarnovo. Entrenched in the hills north of the town, the Turks were shielded from Russian cannonades by their excellent trenches and their elevation, with the flat-trajectory Russian guns making little impact on the Turkish positions. Russian “offensive spirt” was no match for the superior range of the Turkish rifles, whose withering fire often made skirmishing a risky proposition and forced the Russian assaults in July and August to resort to human wave attacks that were all too easily mowed down by Turkish
Nizams armed with some of the best rifles available at the time. Unable to emulate the Prussian tactics of 1870 where the French had been hammered out of their
“Positions Magnifique” by flanking attacks and the liberal use of artillery batteries, the inferior artillery of the Russians and the relatively poor quality of junior officers and NCOs necessitated frontal attacks. Russian officers in particular suffered disproportionately as their need to lead from the front made them excellent targets for Turkish rifle fire.
After the second unsuccessful assault on the 5th of August 1877, the Russians had in total suffered as many as 20,000 casualties attempting to break the Ottoman defences near the town, as many as the Prussians had lost at the bloody Battle of Gravelotte. These were not numbers that the Russian army could simply shrug off, considering the long supply lines through Romania. Furthermore the Russian fixation on breaking the Turks at Tarnovo and progressing through the Balkan Mountains had done little to prevent the build-up of Turkish forces in the rest of the theatre, as Osman Nuri Paşa built up an army to take the offensive against the Russians in Bulgaria. Outnumbered and in a poor position, Russian Grand Duke Nicholas now began to argue that the Russians were best off pulling back to Romania and awaiting the reinforcements that would enable them to prosecute a campaign more successfully. Although bitterly opposed by Gurko and Skobelev, who remonstrated that it would be a crime to leave the Bulgarian population which had welcomed them to the apparently non-existent mercies of the Turks, the Grand Duke eventually had his way. In the course of the August of 1877, the Russians steadily pulled back their forces from Bulgaria, taking up defensive positions on the left bank of the Danube. The ill-prepared Russians had suffered as many as 38,000 battle casualties in their attempt to push through to the Balkan Mountains.
In Eastern Anatolia the Russians similarly had little success. Initially intended only as a diversionary campaign, setbacks in Europe put additional pressure on Russian commanders in the area to secure a victory to save face. More forces had been deployed to Eastern Anatolia, which weakened Russian forces in the main theatre of the war. The Russians attempted to besiege Kars in August, though were driven away and defeated by Ahmed Muhtar Paşa at the Battle of Kızıl Tepe. The extremely difficult nature of the terrain in Eastern Anatolia and the primitive infrastructure of the area, even when compared to Bulgaria, made major offensive moves such as those in the West a challenging proposition. Another Russian attempt on Kars was beaten off in September, but the onset of winter made any serious movement dangerous. The Russians would be unable to salvage pride by victories in the East, but Ahmed Muhtar Paşa secured the title of “Ghazi” for his defensive victories. In Bulgaria, September brought renewed Russian attempts to cross the Danube near Lom. Once again the power of defensive rifle and artillery fire was demonstrated as the Russians struggled to get to the right bank of the Danube. This time the Turks were far better prepared than they had been at Svishtov, and after three days the Russians were unable to establish a bridgehead on the far side of the Danube.
As far as the Turkish government was concerned, continued war would put a critical strain on the already ruined finances of the empire, and there was no guarantee that a better-prepared Russian offensive would not be able to break the defences on the Danube and the Balkan Mountains. Sultan Abdülhamid and his government had already begun the process of seeking intermediaries for peace in the September of 1877, but the Russians were still confident that a renewed offensive once reinforcements had arrived, possibly in the winter, would be able to break the Turkish armies. It was not until a Royal Navy Squadron passed through the Dardanelles Straits and appeared in the Sea of Marmara, bringing with it the spectre of intervention on the part of the British, that the Russian government became more amenable to the prospect of an armistice [3]. By the 18th of December 1877, both parties had assented to Otto Von Bismarck’s offer to hold a conference to work out an acceptable peace as well as an answer to the “Eastern Question”. With a temporary armistice signed, the guns fell quiet on the Danube as both sides licked their wounds and hoped to achieve at the negotiating table what had not been achieved on the battlefield.
Militarily speaking neither power had been vanquished. The Russians had suffered heavy casualties, and it was only the vast distances involved that prevented the quick reinforcement of the Russian army and a renewed offensive. The failed offensive into Bulgaria had certainly been an embarrassing setback, but not a critical one, and there were still plenty more Russian soldiers ready to fight. Indeed it was the threat of British intervention into the war more than a fear of Turkish capabilities which had persuaded the Russians to accept Bismarck’s offers of mediation. Although the leadership of Grand Duke Nicholas left much to be desired, a number of Russian officers had proven themselves to be intelligent and brave leaders, and both Skobelev and Gurko received heroes’ welcomes when both returned. Despite this both armies had had their backwardness painfully illustrated to the rest of the world. Their offensive capabilities were poor, the poor education of the privates and officers had made small-unit tactics all but impossible. A report of the German general staff noted that the only observations worth making were on the Russian Cavalry and the Turkish defences. However both the Russian and Turkish general staffs were to study the lessons of the war in more details. For the most part however, the key lesson that the war seemed to impart was that there were clear limits to the power of the offensive in an age dominated by firepower, a lesson that some armies would absorb more keenly than others.
As a number of observers of the war recognised, things could have easily turned out differently. Had the Russians invaded Bulgaria with the numbers Obruchev’s plan had originally called for, it is difficult to see how the Turks would have been able to resist such an onslaught, even fully mobilised. The ambition of the Russian plan was such that a successful Russian offensive may well have broken Turkish power in the Balkans permanently and may have even landed Istanbul in Russian hands, fulfilling a long-term Russian ambition. What may have happened afterward is hard to decipher. Perhaps the British would have intervened on the Turkish side, once again taking arms against the Russians to preserve the balance of power in the East. Or perhaps they would have seen the writing on the wall and moved to protect the Suez Canal as the Great Powers carved up the remains of the Ottoman Empire.
[1] – It’s worth noting that Ottoman artillery tended to be badly horsed too, and the training of the crews themselves wasn’t up to scratch, meaning that the Krupp guns weren’t the war winning tools they were in 1870.
[2] – Historically the crossing at Svishtov was an example of Ottoman incompetence. Ahmed Namdy Paşa drew no plans for a defence against an attempted crossing, and combined with excellent Russian leadership meant that the Russians lost less than a 1000 men crossing the Danube.
[3] – Tarnovo hasn’t quite had the Plevna effect on the rest of Europe, but the defensive efforts of the Turks have at least given the political manoeuvre room for Disraeli to take some action.
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Author's Notes - Rather than doing a blow by blow account of the war, I thought what was more effective was a overview that looked more into the reasons why the Ottomans actually had a shot of winning the war (certainly most contemporary accounts suggest they did) and addressing what was the critical Ottoman weakness of OTL's war, namely the lack of unity of command. Of course it goes without saying that the Russians also had an opportunity in OTL to have won the war a lot quicker than they did, and the initial brilliance of Gurko's strike into the Balkan Mountains in particular was impressive.
