With the Crescent Above Us 2.0: An Ottoman Timeline

[Nassirisimo]

Fadıl Necmi; The Sublime Ottoman State: A History of the Ottoman Empire: Istanbul University Press

The Crisis of the 1870s​

For all the wrong reasons it seemed, 1873 would be a turning point for the Ottoman Empire. It had been almost a half-century since the destruction of the Janissary Corps and their ossifying influence was broken, and much had changed in the Empire. The Tanzimat statesmen had declared equality between all the religions of the Empire, they had established the beginnings of a modern bureaucracy and built modern schools. They transformed not only the administration of the Ottoman State but its military too, building one of the world’s mightiest navies and ensuring that the army was well-supplied with modern Western arms. The economy was growing and foreign trade booming as Istanbul became a great centre of trade, hosting a community of Europeans in Pera. The reforms had touched even the habits of individuals, with traditional social mores amongst Muslims being increasingly influenced by those of the Europeans who many wished to emulate. French became a prestige language, and it was an Ottoman subject who had commissioned the scandalous L’origine du Monde [1]. Only in Egypt was there an equal effort to integrate the country into the political and cultural fabric of the West.

Yet for all the achievements of the Tanzimat Era there were great adverse effects on the Empire and its people. The old order had been relatively tolerant of regional differences, a key strength in an empire which stretched over three Continents. While sometimes attracting little dissent in the centre, some of the Tanzimat reforms produced great deals of outrage in outlying provinces of the Empire, contributing toward a general sense of disenchantment with the government. The peoples of the provinces still remained largely poor, uneducated and to some extent increasingly alienated from the government. Huge amounts of money went not only on administration, defence and the other necessities of the state, but on building huge palaces such as the Dolmabahçe Palace and the ever-increasing expenses of the court [2]. The provinces saw little return from the taxes that were raised, and the reforms of the Tanzimat had sometimes led to armed uprisings. This perceived mis-rule contributed not only to an image of backwardness in the West, but also inspired the Yeni Osmanlılar or Young Ottomans, who disagreed with the autocratic manner of Sultan Abdülaziz as well as the Tanzimat statesmen. Others, inspired by Islamic reformists such as al-Afghani, turned away from the Westernization of the Tanzimat and advocated for an end to the capitulations and missionary activity.

With the death of the last significant Tanzimat Statesman Ali Paşa, some of the Young Ottomans returned from exile. However Sultan Abdülaziz also took the opportunity to wrest back as much power as possible from the Sublime Porte. In this backdrop of political struggle, the Great Eastern Crisis erupted. In 1873 Europe entered a long period of economic depression, coinciding with a famine in Anatolia, both of which increased pressure upon the already greatly indebted treasury. The government responded by increasing taxes to meet its financial obligations, in particularly the cost of its debt which now accounted for almost 8 million TL a year, more than what was spent on the army. Combined with crop failures however, the increased burden of taxation instead pushed the peasants of Herzegovina to revolt, with the rumoured support of both Montenegro and Serbia. Faced by rebellion as well as a deteriorating financial situation, the Ottoman Government defaulted on its debt repayments in the October of 1875. In light of the rebellion and the financial difficulties of the empire, it was not until the May of 1876 that a definitive solution to the rebellion that was acceptable to all powers had been worked out.

This brought only a short respite before an even greater series of catastrophes struck the empire. Rebellion broke out in Bulgaria, and the stretched Ottoman government turned to Başıbozuks, irregular soldiers drawn mainly from the Tatar and Circassian population of the Dobrudja. These Başıbozuks killed not only rebels but thousands of innocent Bulgarian civilians as well. Reports of Bulgarian villages filled with the corpses of their victims filtered back to the West, replacing the previously positive image of the reforming Tanzimat Ottoman with that of the “Terrible Turk”. Liberal Party leader William Gladstone lambasted the Turks as “the one great anti-human specimen of humanity”. Public opinion in Britain, the erstwhile ally of the Ottomans, had deteriorated to such a level that it was uncertain whether Britain would be able to intervene should another power threaten the Ottomans.

With the internal and external situation rapidly deteriorating, neither Abdülaziz nor his minister Mahmud Nedim Paşa were able to fend off the Young Ottomans, and they were both deposed within a month of each other. Abdülaziz committed suicide (or was possibly murdered) a few days later, and the Young Ottomans now had real influence within the government. Tensions between them and the conservatives soon mounted however, as Hüseyin Avni Paşa disagreed with Midhat Paşa’s drafting of a constitution that would provide for an elected parliament. When Hüseyin Avni was lightly wounded in an attempted assassination attempt, rumours soon began to spread that this had been organized by the Young Ottomans [3]. The threat of political violence, so soon after the death of Abdülaziz was beginning to take its toll on the apparently delicate psyche of the new Sultan Murad. With both the internal and external situations of the Empire desperately requiring firm leadership, Hüseyin Avni and Midhat both agreed that Murad should be replaced by Prince Abdülhamid. Known to be intelligent and ambitious, as well as familiar with liberal ideas, he remained one of the only figures who could unite the Young Ottomans and conservatives in cabinet.

While Istanbul was in a state of political tumult, the Serbs and Montenegrins had attempted an invasion of the Ottoman Empire, leading to discussions between the Austrians and Russians at Reichstadt to discuss what would happen once the Ottomans were defeated. By August however the Ottomans had defeated the Serbs at Alexinatz and were in a position to invade Serbia itself, which they refrained from for the time being. However the Serbs attacked once again in September and were once again defeated with relative ease by the Ottomans, whose modern rifles made short work of the unprepared Serbs. Although the Ottomans steered clear of taking Belgrade, they had occupied a good part of the country when an armistice was signed. The European powers had toyed with various solutions to the Balkan Crisis, from a partition of the Ottoman Empire to an international conference, which was finally settled upon as an acceptable solution by the British Prime Minister Disraeli. The conference was ultimately a failure however, with neither the powers nor the Ottomans finding each other’s proposals adequate.

The diplomatic impasse between the Ottoman Empire and the Great Powers allowed Midhat Paşa to progress with a more unorthodox solution. Midhat’s suggestion that a constitution that guaranteed equal rights for Christian subjects may make the European powers amenable to continued Ottoman rule in areas the Great Powers wanted to give over to the Serbs and Montenegrins did not sway Hüseyin Avni, but made a greater impression on the Sultan. The first Ottoman Constitution, the Kanûn-u Esâsî or “Basic Law”, was promulgated on the 23rd of December 1876. Far from presenting a political coup-de-grace to opponents of the empire in Europe however, there was scepticism amongst many (the leader of the opposition in Britain, the Turkophobe Gladstone noted “Turkish Constitution!!!” sarcastically in his diary at the news). Certainly the Russians, who were as opposed to Constitutional government as they were to Turkish massacres in the Balkans, saw the promulgation of the Constitution as a threat more than anything else. Midhat’s gamble that a constitution would remove the need for the empire to implement the reforms suggested by the Europeans appeared not to have paid off.

Despite the efforts made to clean up the reputation of the Ottoman Empire in the wake of the Bulgarian massacres, the conference ultimately ended in failure due to the unwillingness of either the Great Powers, Young Ottomans or indeed the Sultan to compromise with the other parties. Abdülhamid had wanted to find a working compromise with the Europeans to avoid war, but ultimately lacked the clout to overcome his cabinet [4]. Rumours that he had told Midhat that “The price for your obstinacy will be a sea of Muslim blood” may have been an invention of the enemies of Midhat, but the Sultan was highly disappointed in the results of the conference. The British Foreign Minister Salisbury had warned the Ottomans that without accepting the demands of the powers, the British would be unable to assist the Ottomans should the Russians choose to attack the Empire. The position of the Ottoman Empire was far from enviable, heading toward bankruptcy and completely devoid of allies in the face of renewed Russian aggression. Salisbury bemoaned that “Russia shall be free to take her picking of Ottoman territories, and we shall have to do what we can to secure our own imperial defence”. Bismarck similarly began plans for a great European conference to be held once the Russians had reached Istanbul.

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[1] – This is completely true, of course. The commissioner (Khalil Bey) naturally lost the painting through excessive gambling.

[2] – The Dolmabahçe Palace cost around 5 million TL, or around 75% of the yearly Ottoman budget when it was built.

[3] – Perhaps it goes without saying, but this is the POD as in the previous timeline.

[4] – Abdülhamid favoured a strategy of appeasement and concessions in OTL, but it was actually the constitutionalist Young Ottomans who settled on an uncompromising stance that resulted in war.

 

[Nassirisimo]

Ibrahim Osman, Zeynep Osman; Adventures in the East, A Memoir of a Naturalised Mohammedan: Palgrave Macmillan

Brief notes on the papers of Ibrahim Osman

Ibrahim Osman, around 1905 [1]

Ibrahim Osman, my great-grandfather, is a man little remembered by history. In my own studies of politics in the Islamic World around the turn of the century (which I should hopefully have finished my PHD on next year) his name appears but little else besides. Earlier this year however my attention was brought to a few old papers that my grandmother had in her room after she had died. The papers themselves were a bit of a confusing mess, mostly written in English but some of the later parts in Turkish [2]. Amongst the family we had an idea that my great grandfather was born “In the East” and educated in England the truth was much more interesting.

I’ve taken care to censor various offensive words that were unfortunately amongst common usage at the time and whose full inclusion would not add to the text, and have added a few notes here and there to add context to what Ibrahim says but otherwise have left the writings as I have found them.

[1] – Actually a photo of an Arab officer from Damascus, but in the absence of photoshop skills, use your imagination guys!

[2] It’s worth mentioning that Turkish as its referred to here is different than the Turkish of our own world, retaining more of the Persian and Arabic vocabulary that Ottoman Turkish had. Think of it as a continuation of Ottoman Turkish without the reforms of Ataturk it underwent in OTL.

* * * * * *

Journey to the East

The story of how I had come to be in the service of the Sultan of Turkey is a strange one, but I suppose I should not have expected anything different from my upbringing. From the time I was conceived it would seem that the path I would walk on would be a bit more difficult than that of my fellows. This difficulty was in part due to my father or the lack thereof. My mother had always been most evasive on the whereabouts of, or any other details regarding, my father besides explaining he was “from the East, somewhere”, which didn’t quite square up to the boasts that he had once been an Eton boy, but I digress. Due to the race of my father, which I was ignorant of at the time, I had an appearance unlike that of most British boys, who were quick to identify me as a “W*g” or “Half-N****r” and exclude me on the basis of my distinctly Mediterranean appearance. So I suppose you could say that my childhood was a lonely one and by the time I was coming of age had produced in me an inalienable sense that something was lacking in me, some kind of masculinity.

And as an eighteen year old man there was only one thing for it! I had endeavoured to become an officer in the British army. The 1870s had been a relatively quiet time, with only the odd war against African blacks to keep the soldiers sharp, and perhaps that accounts for what happened at the end of the decade and the beginning of the 1880s when the English began experiencing setbacks to an alarming degree. Alas my own career was to take me to a rather quite different place, as a violent disagreement with an officer of the Lancashire fusiliers. I had only disagreed with his insulting manner of addressing me – w*g– but the unsympathetic army authorities discharged me, leaving me disgraced already before my twentieth year of life, and with but a little income with which to support my mother. Perhaps I should have known better than to try and make a name for myself in what was essentially a white section of the army.

I had by that point made the acquaintance of a man who had told me that he was off to the Near East to “show the Russian bear what for”. The newspapers had talked about the growing crisis in the Balkans, and to be honest the stories of the atrocities that the Turks had committed in Bulgaria made one’s heart sink, and even the Prime Minister Disraeli was not able to follow his usual prescription of support for the Turk against the Russian, leaving them open to the machinations of the Russians. The Russians, insofar that I am able to tell, had the ambition of seizing the city of Constantinople, capital of the Turkish Empire, and restoring the Christian rule that had prevailed in the city prior to 1453. No doubt that behind this were great strategic plans, but these have no doubt been covered in more detailed and well-read histories than my own.

Originally my journey to Turkey was to simply be one to see “what all the fuss was about”, so to speak. By the time that I’d arrived in the January of 1877 the oriental city full of indolent, fatalistic Turks that I had expected was not what I saw. There is of course the old city south of the Golden Horn, in which can be found the old Topkapi Palaces and all the mosques that one expects, but north of this in neighbourhoods like Pera one finds a city which is in every way the match of any in Europe, right down to the inhabitants. Besides the expatriate European inhabitants, there are a great many Greeks, Armenians and even Bulgarians which bring the Christian population of the city to almost half the total. The Turks themselves had been most energised by the impending conflict with Russia, and various guides explained to me the situation amongst the Turkish section of town. I must confess that I was rather taken up in the great storm of emotion in the city, both amongst the Turks and the Turkophile English acquaintances I had made, and before long I had decided to renew my military career in a different setting by enrolling in the military academy.

I still remember the day that I enrolled and began my journey as a Turkish officer. The recruiting officer, a man on the older end of middle age with sunken eyes and a drooping moustache had eyed me sceptically when I had initially attempted in my atrocious Turkish to communicate my wish to sign up. With a raised eyebrow he spoke to me in French, which I thank God I understood. “Another European? I suppose we have room for another one of you. What is your nationality?”

“I’m British monsieur”

“Aha, another Englishman? We have had a few of your countrymen join recently” He looked up and down as if to study me, in a way that made me rather quite uncomfortable. “Most of them speak better Turkish than you”

“I am learning. I already know how to write the alphabet and…”

“Do you have any experience? Combat experience I mean?” the man cut me off brusquely.

“I was commissioned as an officer back in England before I was discharged” I had told a little white lie, as although trained I had never received a commission. Realistically, I knew all that there was to know about being an officer or so I thought, and the rather shabby nature of some of the soldiers surrounding me gave me something of an air of confidence.

However when I told him this, the man’s face suddenly seemed to lift. “Turkish can be taught easily enough, and at any rate one in three of our men find writing beyond their limited capacities. Teaching someone the instincts of an officer is harder. I suppose you will be useful…”

“Then I’m accepted?”

The man shrugged. “You’ll have to bring someone from your embassy. Swear that your disbelief in Islam shall not be an impediment to your service, and this kind of thing. But provided that it all goes well, than you will be one of the Sultan’s soldiers. So I would learn some Turkish in the meantime young man. What’s your name?”

“Abraham Haslam sir”

“That’s easy enough to Turkify I suppose. Any objections to being ‘Ibrahim Osman’?”

I hadn’t quite intended to be a Turkish officer when I had been turfed out of the British army, but the prospect did not seem so bad now. An upcoming war against long odds always promises military glory for those willing to fight for even, even if they are foreigners. Besides improving my Turkish which I was to refine from that point until now, I grew to understand the specifically Turkish way of warfare, which admittedly was inferior of the British In many respects but which had its own strength. By the time that war with the Russians actually broke out in the April of 1877, I had been commissioned as an officer in the Turkish army, in part owing to the military education that I had already received in Britain, and I was ready to play my part in the upcoming war.

* * * * * *

Author's Notes - I had strongly considered adding vignettes to the story when I had began writing it, but I feel as though without this element the timeline will be a bit "dry" for lack of a better word. Rather than focusing on a number of POV characters, for the time being we will focus on Abraham Haslam/Ibrahim Osman, for the simple fact that I already have a story planned out for him that will take him to many interesting places.

A good inspiration for Ibrahim's original journey and subsequent enlistment in the Turkish army is William von Herbert's rattling good read "The Defence of Plevna". Herbert had actually fought in Plevna in OTL and wrote an account which was published several decades later, which besides being an interesting window onto Turkish society through the war, is unfortunately laden with anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry. Interestingly enough though it is far from the most bigoted book I had to read while researching the timeline, and reading though some of the contemporary academic books is certainly an interesting window into how far academia has come along in a century or so.

 

[Nassirisimo]

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.

 

[Nassirisimo]

Sultan Abdülhamid II

The Internal Situation of the Ottoman Empire during the War of 1877

Internally the Ottoman Empire had been so weak at the beginning of the war, the impression amongst some observers was that one last push from the Russians “would bring the crumbling edifice down”. This was not merely wishful thinking, as bankruptcy, rebellion and political infighting had characterised the mid-1870s in the empire, contributing to a sense of the empire’s weakness. Although it was the rebellions in Herzegovina and Bulgaria that would receive the most attention from European powers, the revolts in Anatolia which had included many Muslim participants, seemed to be more threatening for an Empire which relied almost entirely on its Muslim population for its military manpower. However far from providing the final blow to the Empire’s internal situation, the “War of ‘93” would become something of a rallying point for the Empire’s Muslim population as they rallied to its defence despite the reversals in the first part of the war, and enthusiastically celebrated its victories in the latter part [1]. The war would prove to be an anomalous example of a short war whose political dividends perhaps outweighed her costs, at least from an Ottoman perspective.

Patriotism and discipline as understood in the European sense were desperately lacking at the onset of war. Although the Bashibazouks were perhaps the most infamous sections of the Ottoman Army for their lack of discipline, this is not to say that the strict hierarchical order was present amongst the rest of the army. European observers spoke incredulously that “The Turkish private, when off duty, does not salute officers on the street… the social standing of the Turkish officer is below that of the French, German and Austrian”. The army lacked the kind of social prestige and respect that its contemporaries elsewhere in Europe had. The Muslim ethnic groups of the empire were perceived as apathetic and indeed, inferior racially to the Christians, who were presumed to be destined to take control of the European part of the empire sooner or later. One contemporary history argued “The Turks have not only been unsuccessful in the past, but as an inferior race they will be constitutionally unfit in future to raise the countries over which they rule to a level with the Aryan nations of Europe and America” [2]. For all the efforts of the Turkish state to reform itself during the prior decades, Europe still considered it to be vulnerable internationally and frail internally.

However when the Russians invaded Romania and crossed the Danube, the Ottoman state did not collapse in the way that many had anticipated. In an elaborate ceremony in which the standard of the prophet, amongst other holy relics, was taken out of storage in the Topkapi Palace, the Sultan Abdülhamid declared himself a Ghazi, or holy warrior for Islam, and the war against Russia a Jihad. Imams at Friday prayers whipped up a specifically Islamic fervour, preaching about the just cause of the Ottoman army which they framed as struggling for Islam itself, and imploring listeners to volunteer to fight. Some went as far as to suggest that defeat could mean the destruction of the Islamic world. With the stakes presented in such apocalyptic terms, it is no wonder that public enthusiasm for the war among the Muslim section of the Ottoman population grew throughout the war, though it did lead to a limited backlash against the Christian population within the Empire, which was increasingly associated with Russia. European consuls in Eastern Anatolia reported of some isolated killings of groups of Armenians, relatively insignificant in number but which troubled the Armenian community greatly.

Observers were taken somewhat by surprise at the zeal of the Muslim population, who seemed whipped up in a patriotic fury that had not been seen in previous wars. A correspondent for The Times reported “the fanatic Mohammedan spirit, seemingly long absent within the Turk, seems to have been awakened. Amongst the populace of Istanbul the Muslims seem particularly animated in their hatred of the Russians”. Stories of the unexpected Turkish resistance reached Western Europe, and the Sultan and his government managed to secure a war loan from Britain and France despite the default of 1875, a testament to the strategic importance afforded to the Ottoman Empire by the British in particular, who were still highly suspicious of Russian intentions. The revulsion of the British public following the Bulgarian Massacres was still too powerful a force to allow Disraeli to openly intervene on the part of the Ottomans, yet his association of a strong Ottoman Empire with the security of the Mediterranean and British India still led him toward aiding the Ottomans wherever possible.

The financial situation was also alleviated somewhat through the raising of private contributions from the empire’s civilian population to finance some of the war costs, as well as extraordinary taxes raised by Parliament, alongside a war loan raised in the money markets of London and Paris. Although accused of treachery by some, the largely Christian bankers of Galata in Istanbul also loaned money to the Ottoman government [3]. The appeals of the Sultan to Islamic sentiment in the empire as well as the Ulema generated a genuinely enthusiastic response, something that Abdülhamid would not soon forget. As the Russian forces were halted at Tarnovo, previous criticisms of both the Sultan and the cabinet became far more muted, as there seemed to be less to criticise regarding the conduct of the war. The mumblings in Parliament that the government was not prosecuting the war competently gradually ebbed away through the late summer months of 1877. The increasing popularity of the war amongst the Muslim population of the Empire raised the aura of the Sultan in particular, who was seen as a ruler willing to stand up to non-Islamic powers, although the Sultan had been against the idea of war originally.

Indeed within the cabinet the still-contentious debate surrounding the nature of the Constitution, as well as the direction of the empire as a whole was, for a time, subdued as both the conservatives and Young Ottomans focused first and foremost on the war effort. This had resulted in the formation of something resembling a unified front, as they had done during the deposition of Sultan Abdülaziz. Although this united front would collapse soon after the end of the war, it did prevent conflict within the Ottoman government as it fought for its existence as a power. Later advocates for consensus within Ottoman politics would appeal to the “Spirit of ‘93”, which carried connotations of politicians shelving their rivalries in order to work for the common good. Both Hüseyin Avni Paşa and Midhat Paşa, who served as Minister of War and Grand Vizier respectively during the war, won somewhat undeserved reputations as pragmatic compromisers for their cooperation.

What the Ottoman campaigns had failed to do was to awe the Christians of the empire into ending insurrections as had been hoped. Thousands of Bulgarian volunteers had joined the Russian army in its initial offensives, and the population had been keen to welcome the Russians as liberators in the wake of the Bulgarian Massacres. Similarly there were insurrections on the part of Greeks and Serbs, whose countries remained neutral during the war but whose governments still coveted great amounts of Ottoman territory. Greek partisans operated in Arta and Thessaly, while the Serbs in Bosnia rose up in the hope of forcing their governments to support Russia’s floundering offensive, something the twice-defeated Serbian government refused to do. While Ottoman retaliation was somewhat softer than it had been during the height of the Bulgarian Massacres, the Christian populations remained disdainful of Ottoman rule and remained so even as it was apparent that the Russians would not be able to overcome Ottoman resistance. Armed resistance died down for the most part once an armistice had been signed, but a great deal of resentment and a continued yearning for independence meant that the war had not resolved the situation which had caused it. The war would not solve the question posed by Nationalist Revolutionaries in the Balkans.

By the end of the war, the defensive victory had made the reputations both of the Sultan as well as several of his ministers and generals. The value of Islam as a tool to rally the empire’s population had been demonstrated, and the prestige of the army in particular had been greatly advanced by its victories in the war. It had proved itself capable of defending the empire’s borders against a major threat without much in the way foreign support, with the exception of the war loan negotiated with France and Britain, which was something that it had not properly accomplished since the 18th century. Rather than responding with apathy and inertia, much of the Muslim population of the empire responded with enthusiasm to the war, and with the conclusion of the war regarded what was in actual fact an indecisive stalemate as a great victory. Though the population had been encouraged by the relatively successful outcome of the war, the internal conflicts which had led to it were still largely unresolved.

[1] – The war took place in the year 1293 of the Islamic calendar, hence the name.

[2] – This passage is not an invention of myself. It’s worth keeping in mind that this was before the rise of Japan as a great power, and as such racist theories like this had seemingly little to discredit them.

[3] – It’s worthwhile noting that even after the 1875 default in OTL, the Ottomans were able to draw on the bankers of Galata for additional loans, though these often came at higher interest rates than those raised in London and Paris.

* * * * * *

Author's Notes - The internal situation of the Ottoman Empire in the war was definitely a mixed one, as Bulgarian and (to a lesser extent) Armenian Christians welcomed the Russian invaders, but contemporary accounts attest to a strong patriotism at least amongst the Muslim section of the population in the Empire. The war has produced a temporary sense of unity, though as the war ends and the external enemy recedes, the internal rivalries between various politicians as well as the Sultan's attempts to assert himself will likely lead to bickering at the very least.

 

[Nassirisimo]

Turning Turkish

As far as first wars go, the War of ’77 was not a bad one to be in, as long as you were on the right side of course. There was the initial panic as the Russian advance columns stormed their way to the Balkan passes barely a few weeks after they’d crossed the Danube. Then there was the held breath as the Russians attempted to break our fellows positioned at Tarnovo, the relief when their assaults shattered. But the greatest of all emotions felt by both us officers as well as the rank and file was when Osman Paşa, latter referred to as “Ghazi” for his efforts, pulled our forces together and threw the Russians back across the Danube. At that moment, it didn’t matter that the Russians may still have had many more men than us, or that the Ottoman government was on the verge of bankruptcy once again. We had taken an army which, by all accounts was to roll over us, and stopped it in its tracks. Although I am not a Turk, I still felt a tremendous amount of pride in that moment, that little in my life has since matched.

Of course I had done well personally as well. I’d been involved in a number of actions which mostly through no special effort on my own part saw me promoted to the rank of Yüzbaşı, which translates into captain in English. Nevertheless I still embellished somewhat my stories to my mother back home, while emphasising of course that I was not yet missing any limbs. When I’d finally received a letter back it described how she wished she could see her “brave soldier boy”, and supposed that I looked rather fetching in a Turkish uniform. I must confess that by the end of the war, I had become rather partial to the tasselled fez myself, which made me look quite the oriental alongside my appearance.

I’d also met a number of interesting characters during the war, including Osman Paşa, and a Danish officer named Wilhelm Dinesen who had, like me, managed to persuade the Turks to take him into the Sultan’s service. He was a bit of an odd chap, who always seemed rather too eager to be thrown into dangerous combat situations. Were it not for the fact that he usually came out of these unscathed, I would have thought that he had some kind of death-wish. Despite this he was even more experienced than his thirty-two years of age would suggest. As the war came to a close I had discovered from him that he had not only been a veteran of the Franco-Prussian War, but had even been an officer in the Second Schleswig War of 1864 when he was eighteen years of age. Someone who had fought the Germans so many times and survived was a man who clearly knew his way around a battlefield [1]. Especially when battalions, brigades and divisions became disordered as we pursued the Russians, the instincts of a man like Dinesen were life-saving and I thank my good fortune that I knew him.

Of course with the end of the war, most of the Europeans who had joined the Turkish army would go on their separate ways. Most went back to their home countries, and those who went back to the United Kingdom in particular received a warm welcome, though apparently the British army made little effort to see what they had actually learned from a modern war. I too had considered making my way back to old England, but I hesitated. First it was a week, then a month. I had gone so far as to make my way to a booking office for the journey home before deciding “not today”. To this day I can’t quite account for the feeling which seemed to have me chained to Constantinople, but I suppose it was a strange synthesis of reason and emotion. After all, my limited family aside what was waiting for me back home? An army career had been closed off, and the thought of a clerical job produced a great misery within me. Whereas in Turkey, I was already a proven man.

Or so I thought at any rate. Nearly all of the foreigners in the Turkish army had been released from service at the end of the war, and none of the foreigners that I had met in my service seemed to be all too keen on staying. Dinesen had said something along the lines of “I’ll find another war somewhere to fight in”. Sometime in the summer of 1878 I made the decision to re-enlist in the Ottoman Army, when which I was informed that in the peacetime, any such effort from a foreign non-Muslim would be nigh-impossible unless they were from some kind of foreign military mission, or were Helmuth Von Moltke. There was nothing else for it of course, and it was thus that I began my journey into the Islamic religion.

When I had written to home to inform my family of this my mother, who in all fairness was never the regular Sunday churchgoing type, did not seem to be too concerned in her reply which still took me by surprise. Less surprising was that she had told me that my granpapa had begun to rant that the “mad Mohammedans” had taken his grandson. But to be perfectly candid, I couldn’t have cared less about what those self-righteous grouches thought. If this is what it would take to make a career in the army, then this is what I would do. The chap at the mosque near the room that I rented (who is an Imam, more of a prayer leader than a vicar) explained that before I were to become a Muslim, much in the way of study had to be done. Contrary to popular opinion amongst Europeans in which the fanatical Turk seeks the conversion of all infidels in his country with baited breath, the process to actually become a Muslim needs a level of official verification [2]. I began learning Arabic, which remains the primary religious language for all Muslims even outside of Arabic speaking countries, and as well as becoming able to recite the Islamic prayers, which of course are all in Arabic, began to gain a basic knowledge surrounding the theology of Islam.

Of course as any convert who has gone “full Turk” can attest to, the conversion to Islam is far from a painless process, in a very literal sense. As the Jews do, the Muslims conform to the covenant of Abraham and are circumcised. Amongst native Muslims this usually happens as a youth but adult converts are required to undergo the practice as well. I would prefer not to relive this painful memory, so suffice to say that I was in significant pain for a number of weeks. Around three months or so from the time that I made my decision to convert, I said the Shahada or “the testimony” as it is known in Arabic that confirmed my belief that there was no God except for Allah, and that Mohammed was his final messenger. There is much more to being a Mohammedan than this simple ceremony, but that would all come with time.

In the meanwhile my conversion had certainly expanded my horizons in many more ways than I could have anticipated. When it was heard in the higher ranks that there was a native Englishman who had “gone renegade”, which was more common in the past than it was by the late 19th century, there was certainly a great deal of interest, especially from Anglophile factions in the officer corps. Only a couple of years after I had re-enlisted with the Turkish army, I knew many more of the senior brass than a man of my standing would normally do, an in an environment which was characterised primarily by favouritism, this was a good omen for my future prospects.

[1] – Wilhelm Dinesen was the father of Karen Blixen, and an interesting character in his own right. He fought in the Russo-Turkish War of OTL, but ended up committing suicide at a relatively early age.

[2] – At least this is according to The Well Protected Domains by Selim Deringil. In normal circumstances (i.e. outside of intercommunal conflicts and massacres) at least in the core of the Empire there seems to have been a surprisingly rigorous process for conversions to Islam. Muslim minorities such as Alevis and some non-Muslims such as Yazidis were targeted in particular by the state authorities for conversion however.