Decisive Battles Since Waterloo/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV.
SIEGE OF SILISTRIA—1829.
The part taken by Russia in the destruction of the Turkish fleet at Navarino was by no means disinterested. Russia was then at war with Persia, in which the latter was defeated and obliged to ask for terms of peace. By this war and another which terminated in 1813, Persia lost the provinces of Georgia, Mingrelia, Erivan, Nakhitcheven, and the greater part of Talish, the Russian frontier being advanced to Mount Ararat and the left bank of the Aras River. The treaty which closed the second war was signed February 22, 1828. Russia pressed the conclusion of the treaty with great earnestness, as she was then involved with Turkey in such a manner that a war on a large scale was in the immediate future. In fact, hostilities had almost commenced between the Russian and Ottoman powers before the terms of peace between Persia and Russia had been arranged.
Since the beginning of 1826, Russia had been strengthening her armies on the Turkish frontiers and evidently making preparations for important military movements. Preliminary to an invasion of Turkish territory, Russia presented several demands, which related chiefly to the Danubian principalities and their mode of government, together with the responsibilities of the Porte for the piracies on the Barbary coast, in which Russia, in common with other Christian nations, had suflercd considerably. Turkey was then engaged with the suppression of the Greek rebellion and the overthrow of the Janizaries in Constantinople; she was powerless to resist the Russian demands, and to the surprise of the Emperor Nicholas and his entourage she acceded to the entire list, in a treaty or convention which has since been known in history as the Convention of Ackerman. The plenipotentiaries signed it on the last day that had been allowed by Nicholas; some delay occurred in the ratification by the Sultan, but it was finally ratified and became a binding agreement between the two empires.
Subsequent events demonstrated that Turkey had no intention of holding to the terms of the treaty, and Russia wisely continued to augment her forces on the frontier. Not only did the course of events demonstrate the absence of good faith on the part of the Sultan, but his determination to break the treaty when the proper moment arrived; further proof is found in an official circular, dated December 20, 1827.[1] The signing of treaties without the intention of keeping them is by no means rare among nations, but it is almost without precedent in the annals of diplomacy that a reputable government will openly confess in a public document, as did Turkey on this occasion, that she had signed a treaty solely for the purpose of gaining time, and without intending to carry out its terms.
Numerous manifestoes abounding in accusations of bad conduct were issued by Russia and Turkey during 1827 and early in 1828. The Porte accused Russia of secretly fomenting the insurrection in Greece, of openly joining in the destruction of the Turkish fleet at Navarino, with violations of all the treaties she had ever signed with Turkey, including those of Bucharest and Ackerman, and further accused it of giving aid to all malcontents throughout the Ottoman dominions. Russia accused the Porte of fomenting insurrections in the Caucasus and urging the mountaineers of that region to embrace the religion of Mohammed, of the violation of all the treaties it had signed with Russia, and notably with violating the treaty of Ackerman, and furthermore alleged that on several occasions the Porte had summarily closed the Bosphorus to Russian ships, to the great injury of the commerce of the southern provinces of the empire. The balance of grievances was decidedly in favor of Russia, but there can be no doubt that the complaints of Turkey had good foundation in fact.
Turkey had increased the garrison of her fortresses on and near the Danube at the same time that Russia had massed her armies on the frontier. General Diebitsch was appointed to the command of the army on the Danube, while General Paskievitch conducted the operations against Asiatic Turkey. At the beginning of April, the Russian army on the Danube mustered on paper something more than 108,000 men; it never contained more than 100,000 effectives, and did not at any time bring more than 80,000 men into the field. About 50,000 troops were added to this number during the summer and later in the year another 50,000 was sent to join the main body.
The passage of the Pruth, then the boundary between the empires, was made on the 7th of May. The Turks had only some cavalry videttes to watch the movements, and these retired, in accordance with their orders, as soon as the Russian advance began. In a few weeks the Russians had possession of Jassy, Bucharest, and Galatz, and were in position in front of Brailov and Widin; in fact the entire left bank of the Danube was in their control.[2]
On the 21st of July General Roth, commanding the sixth corps, arrived before the Danubian fortress of Silistria and immediately invested it. Once before (in 1810) it had been entirely demolished, but had been restored by the Turks. The town of Silistria is built in the form of a half circle, the diameter two thousand yards long, being turned to face the Danube. A fortification with ten fronts, each five hundred and fifty yards in length surrounds it. There are only a few fragments of permanent outworks, except two narrow redans looking towards the river. The glacis was built from two to four feet in height, and the ditch was not more than eight to ten feet deep. Rising above the interior slope of the ditch was a scarp twenty feet broad and eight feet high, the lower side of which was defended by palisades. The exterior slope of the bastions was planted with wattles and was very steep; the slopes of the curtain were banked with sods of earth. On the bastions were placed ten guns, four on each front, leaving only one on each flank; and the lines of the ditch, which were very short, were poorly defended. There were four gates, two opening on the land and two on the river. There existed no way of filling the ditch with water, as its bed was higher than the level of the Danube, and there was no water running into it. Around the front facing the land, a lunette about nine feet deep, but quite dry, had been dug in the ditch as a safeguard against Russian mines. General Roth found himself besieging Silistria with an insufficient force and almost no artillery; only one battering train having been provided for carrying on a campaign in which four sieges had to be undertaken. The Turks were defeated in several sharp fights in which they engaged the Russians when the latter were approaching Silistria. General Roth's first position was strictly defensive, his soldiers being posted on the high ground in front of the fortress and beyond the range of its guns.
August 10th a fleet of thirty-six Russian ships appeared before Silistria, but without engaging the fortress. The besiegers were considerably reduced in numbers by the withdrawal of two divisions, who were ordered to Shumla on the 15th of September. The troops suffered from disease, and besides they were poorly fed. There was no ammunition, and the one hundred and twenty guns which the Russians had were useless. Winter was near, and the siege was raised on the 10th of November, after a desultory cannonade lasting forty-eight hours. Part of the besieging force crossed the river with great difficulty, and the rest retreated through a devastated territory, the Turks following in pursuit. Thus ended the so-called siege of Silistria in 1828. It was poorly planned in every way, feebly carried on, and was in every way a failure.
OPERATIONS AGAINST SILISTRIA IN 1829.
The campaign was opened by General Diebitsch, who laid siege to the fortress, which he deemed it necessary to take, because it had a large garrison distant but a march of two days and directly flanking the army in the Balkan Mountains. As the shortest route (by Rassova) was impracticable by reason of floods, the rugged and circuitous road by Kusgan was followed, and the army arrived before Silistria on the 17th of May. The Russians had learned at Brailov, during the preceding year, what was meant by Turkish resistance behind walls, and no attack by assault was attempted. The ditch being only thirty feet wide by twelve feet deep, it was thought possible to throw the counterscarp upon the main wall of the fortress by means of two or three mines under the front of the outer earthworks, and by entirely covering the revetement to secure a practicable ascent. It was evident that an attack could be made more easily on the southern front (bastions five and six) than elsewhere. It could be raked from D, and the attack could be maintained by batteries rising in terraces on the slope of B. This side was entirely without outworks. It was decided in council at head-quarters to make the attack on the east side in order to have the assistance of the fleet. Bastions two and three were, therefore, the scenes of the real attack, which was changed later in the siege to bastions five and six, commencing with a feint. The Russians' guns numbered ninety-six; sixty-five of their own, the remaining thirty-one having been taken at Brailov.
At nine in the morning of the 17th of May, an advance was made upon the fortress from Chernavoda by General Diebitsch, commanding a part of the second and third corps, divided into three columns. The Turks were in possession of the works made the previous year by the Russians, and for some unaccountable reason undestroyed after the raising of the siege. They made a determined opposition to the Russian advance, but were driven back and the trenches fell into the Russian hands. The thirty-one guns captured were placed by the Russians on the left bank of the river, opposite the fortress, at a distance of one thousand yards. The remainder were in readiness to be shipped across the river. The 9th division of infantry, two regiments of horse and three field batteries were in position on the right wing. The centre was held by the 1st brigade of the 7th division of infantry with a single field battery: stationed on the left were three regiments of horse, two brigades of the 6th division, and three field batteries. A battalion of chasseurs guarded the head-quarters, which was behind the right wing; the besieging force was covered by the Cossacks. On the 19th and 20th of May several sallies were attempted. The batteries on the left were placed in position on the 23d and 26th of May at a distance of six hundred yards. A feint enabled the Russians to cut a new trench from one to five, this being the second parallel trench. The positions already secured, together with the embankments and waterways, were utilized, so that from the beginning the works were protected and could be finished without loss. The parallels were extended on the right to the road to Bazardjik, and a communication was made between them.
On the left the attack was greatly assisted during the night of June 3d by carelessness on the part of the Turks. The Russians proposed to use a watercourse as a means of communication with a half parallel, which they expected to establish two hundred yards in front of the second parallel. But when the covering force took position, it was ascertained that the Turks had no posts of outlook in front of their positions, and that the working party could move forward three hundred and twenty-four paces, where a trench, only two hundred and fifty yards away from the counterscarp, and on a line with it, presented an admirable beginning for the third parallel. Posts were planted below the Turkish lodgments, and work was immediately commenced. The garrison was roused by the noise of the besiegers, and opened a sharp fire at once, but it did little damage on account of the darkness. It was a bold and successful attempt, and the third parallel, FF, was brought to the right of the waterway, to the graveyard, and completed in the same night. A sortie on an extended scale was confidently expected on the night of the 4th, and precautions were taken against it. The Turks made a sally at nightfall. They came out in strong force and encountered the 17th chasseurs hand-to-hand, but were driven back at the point of the bayonet by the Russians. Work on the parallel could not be kept up that night, but a sap with traverses was started.
The state of affairs in the Balkans made it necessary to withdraw some of the besieging force. On the 5th of June General Diebitsch quitted Silistria with the second corps d'armée, leaving General Krassowski with twenty battalions of infantry, a few squadrons of cavalry, and two battalions of sappers, to carry on the work of the siege. The besieging army did not now number more than ten thousand or twelve thousand men; the besieged were doubtless in greater force. The Russians could hope to win only by concealing the scarcity of their numbers, and by pushing the work with the utmost speed, in order to keep the Turks within the fortress, and to prevent any new sallies.
The rain poured down in torrents for twenty-four hours, filling the ditches until it became necessary to dig wells to carry away the water, and altogether impeding the siege operations until the 9th. The Russians, from their positions in the terraces on the hills, raked, with a destructive fire, bastions five and six. The Rasgrad and Shumla gates were totally demolished. A heavy discharge of canister was kept up by the Turks from new embrasures which they uncovered. It was said by deserters that countermines had been sunk to oppose the attack on bastions five and six, and that these mines were charged and in readiness to be fired. Thinking still that their numbers were not sufficiently strong, the Russians continued their work on the covered sap, moving forward very slowly. News having been received in the evening of the 13th of a Russian victory at Kouleftscha, they generously allowed it to reach the Turks. A strong fire and a discharge of musketry were immediately begun by the besiegers amid loud cheers; and the Turks, believing a general attack would be made, manned their walls at once.
On the following day the commander of the fortress, Mohammed Pasha, was ordered by General Krassowski to surrender. He refused to do so, stating that "the law enjoined him to make a defence to the last." On the 16th, the first sap had been brought to the crest of the glacis; the Russians crowned the works, and the engineers ordered shafts to be sunk for four double mines. It had been determined to destroy the counterscarp fronting them at that spot, without waiting for the other saps against bastion six to be finished. As the Russians approached the Turkish positions, the defenders retired slowly. The last saps reached the glacis on the 20th of June. Mines were laid and shafts sunk at a distance of thirteen feet from the revetement of the wall, and eight feet below the bed of the trench. The mines were charged with one ton of powder for every one hundred and forty cubic feet of earth. When fired, they tore up the Turkish countermines and filled the ditch. The earth thrown up by the explosion of the mines nearly reached the edge of the revetement, and gave two easy routes for storming.
But the Russians were not ready for an assault, owing to their small numbers; and after the explosion of the mines they made no attempt to profit by the confusion of the Turks. A sharp fusillade was maintained on both sides. When the Turks saw the result of the explosion, they directed their mines as a counter against the piles of earth thrown up. The Russians fired two other mines, the effect and the result being the same as before. At one time the two parties of miners met in the works below the ground, and entered into a hand-to-hand struggle, which ended by the Turks retreating and stopping up the gallery.
One of the Turkish countermines, by some accident, exploded almost simultaneously with the mine of the Russians; the whole front of bastion number four was thus completely opened, and the besiegers were consequently able to occupy the bastion. After making an ineffectual attempt to recover it, the Turks continued to defend themselves in the fort by means of grenades, stones, mines under the cunette, and fire-pots, in addition to an almost continuous fire of musketry. The fire-pots were in frequent use during the siege, and on several occasions they were effectual in driving the Russians out of the ditch. They consisted of earthen pots with gun-powder in the bottom and pitch above. The pitch was ignited, and then the pots were thrown down; they soon exploded with such formidable effect that the enemy was put to flight.
On the 25th of June the mine below the right angle of bastion five was commenced, and in a short time that and another mine were exploded. The Russian chasseurs now moved in without resistance, and General Berg on his own account assaulted and carried the two forts close by which the besieged had almost abandoned. By this time the besiegers had made five large openings, practicable for assault, in the main wall of the fortress. When the Russians were ready to fire another mine farther down the line, Mohammed Pasha gave up and asked for the conditions of capitulation. Some time was lost over the terms of surrender, probably intentionally on the Turkish side, for the purpose of throwing up more earth-works, but a peremptory demand to either surrender or refuse brought the Pasha to terms, and he came to the Russian camp a prisoner of war. The fortress was surrendered, 8,000 men laid down arms, and in the town were found 8,000 people, besides 1,500 sick and wounded, showing that the original strength of the garrison was not far from 16,000 men. Two hundred and thirty guns on the walls and thirty-one on board the gun-boats, together with forty standards, fell a prize to the victorious Russians.
During the siege the Turks displayed great bravery and determination, but they also displayed great ignorance of the art of war. The siege lasted forty-four days from the first investment, thirty-five from the time the first parallel was opened, twenty-five after the third parallel, and nine days after the mines had made a perfectly practicable breach under bastion number five. Twenty-nine thousand five hundred and seventy-six shots were fired into the fort. The chief causes of capitulation seem to have been lack of harmony between the commanders and lack of provisions. It is greatly to the credit of the Russians to have forced an enemy outnumbering them two to one, and behind walls, to surrender, especially with their insufficient equipment. But the poor condition of the fort, the incompetency and quarrels of the commanders, and the miserable handling of the garrison assisted them materially. The most remarkable fact was this: that but little use was made of artillery, the reduction having been made principally by sapping and mining. Silistria was taken at a cost to the Russians of three thousand men and seven weeks' time, a saving of men, certainly, since the loss in one day's assault on the fortress of Brailov was greatly in excess of this number.
Mention has been made of the withdrawal of a portion of the investing army during the siege, and its employment elsewhere. The main body of the Turkish army was at Shumla under the command of Redschid Pasha, grand vizier; it numbered about forty thousand men, mostly irregular troops, and by no means able to cope with a corresponding force of Russians. At Rustchuk on the Danube was Hussein Pasha, with eight or ten thousand men, watching the course of events, and waiting to move at the orders of the grand vizier. Varna to the east of Shumla was held by the Russians, and so was Pravadi, where the Muscovites had maintained themselves without interference during the winter.
Soon after the beginning of the siege the grand vizier conceived a grand plan, which if successful would have ended the campaign and driven the Russians to the north of the Danube. His idea was to overwhelm the Russians in detail, first by recapturing Pravadi with its garrison, and then moving on the force investing Silistria, together with the covering army, which was commanded by General Diebitsch in person. With this object in view the grand vizier on the 28th of May marched out of Shumla at the head of thirty-six thousand men, leaving only a feeble garrison to hold the place. General Roth, who commanded the Russians at and near Pravadi, strengthened the garrison with two battalions, and then retired about twenty miles to the northward with ten thousand men. At the same time he despatched an officer with news of the movement of the Turks, telling him to ride as for life or death. The officer covered the distance of eighty miles in twelve hours without changing his horse. The Turks arrived in front of Pravadi on the 1st of June, and sat down leisurely with the intention of taking the place in their own convenient time. Pravadi stands in a narrow valley at the foot of the Balkans, and is a place of great natural strength, so that an assault was quite inadvisable.
Immediately on hearing of the Turkish movements General Diebitsch determined to move by forced marches with the covering army near Silistria, and also with a part of the besieging force, and check the plans of the grand vizier, which he learned through an intercepted letter to Hussein Pasha. By the 5th of June, he was in motion with twenty thousand men, leaving General Krassowski to continue the siege of Silistria and prevent reinforcements reaching the garrison. This explains the weakness of the besiegers during their operations against the fortress. Diebitsch's plan was to move against the grand vizier's line of communication with Shumla, and not upon the Turkish position in front of Pravadi. By so doing he would compel the Turks to abandon Shumla to its feeble garrison, in which event it would be taken without serious opposition, or else fight their way back to it through the Russian army under circumstances greatly to their disadvantage. Though brave enough behind defences, the Turkish troops were too recently organized to enable them to be satisfactorily handled in the open field, and especially under fire. The Russian artillery was moved by horses, while all the Turkish cannon were transported by oxen. Diebitsch rightly calculated that the Turkish guns, though greatly superior to the Russians in numbers, would be of slight efficiency in the field, when their motive power was by means of oxen only.
Count Pahlen, with the advance of the Russian army, established himself on the 9th of June at a point between Shumla and Pravadi, and was closely followed by the rest of General Diebitsch's force. On the 10th, General Ross, who had skilfully concealed the Russian advance by a thin curtain of Cossack videttes, made a forced march and joined Diebitsch, thus making the available force under the latter something more than thirty thousand men with one hundred and thirty-six guns. The grand vizier first learned that he was cut off from Shumla by some prisoners captured in a skirmish on the evening of the 10th. Not aware that the whole Russian force was in front of him, he started to retire to Shumla in full confidence that he would be able to reach it.
The first onset between the opposing forces was an affair of cavalry and artillery, in which the Russians were the sufferers. The Turks sent three thousand horsemen, the flower of their cavalry, which completely routed the Russian battalion opposing them and captured five guns; they next assailed two battalions of infantry, which they cut down, and captured five more guns. The Russians retreated to their main body, the Turks pursuing, but halting judiciously and retiring when they found they were facing great odds. The Russian stand was made at Kouleftscha, where Diebitsch immediately concentrated all his forces and drew victory out of defeat. As the battle continued, the superiority of the Russian artillery told heavily against the Turks, who were thrown into disorder, and lost heavily in men and guns. The grand vizier took a circuitous route to Shumla, where he arrived with eighteen thousand men and twelve guns; he had marched out a few days before with thirty-six thousand men and fifty-nine guns. The Russian loss in the battle was sixty-three officers and about twenty-five hundred men; all the artillery lost by them in the early part of the battle was abandoned by the Turks later in the day.
Immediately after the fall of Silistria General Diebitsch conceived the daring plan of crossing the Balkans, but he carefully kept it to himself until every thing was ready. He made great and ostentatious preparations for besieging Shumla, and so completely deceived the grand vizier that the latter made no attempt at defending the passes of the mountains. Diebitsch formed a camp in front of Shumla, and during every day detachments of troops were arriving hourly with banners flying and bands playing, while the soldiers already there greeted the newcomers. But during the night other detachments, which were concealed by a chain of outposts, moved silently to the left to reinforce the corps of Roth and Rudiger, which had entered the valley of the Kamtjik with the view of crossing the Balkan chain by the Aidos Pass. The ruse was so successful that the Turks had only three thousand men at the foot of the northern slope of the ridge, and had done absolutely nothing in the way of throwing up intrenchments or otherwise preparing for a defence, when Roth and Rudiger were ready to move with twenty thousand men, carrying four days' rations in their haversacks and ten days' additional rations in the wagons which followed each regiment.
The march for the passage of the Balkans began on the 17th of July, and so admirably was the movement conducted, that the Turks were taken completely by surprise and offered scarcely any resistance. Aidos, on the southern side of the mountains, was full of military stores, which were abandoned by the Turks as the Russians approached, and other important captures of the same nature were made. Communication was opened with the Russian fleet at Bourgas and other points; the Turkish troops seemed panic-stricken and fled in dismay to the capital, and altogether General Diebitsch had things pretty much to his liking. But he was in a critical position, as his army was much smaller than the Turks generally believed it to be; the Bulgarians had spread the rumor that the Russians were countless as the leaves of the forest, and the Turkish scouts reported them at least sixty thousand strong, when they were really less than half that number.
The conquering army reached Adrianople August 20th, and on the following morning entered the city without bloodshed. Eight days later was signed the Treaty of Adrianople, by which the former treaties of Ackerman, Bucharest, and Kainardjii were ratified to their fullest extent, together with the conventions relating to Servia. The passage of the Dardanelles was declared open to Russian merchant ships, in common with those of other nations; Turkey was to pay an indemnity of £750,000 sterling to Russian subjects who had been despoiled of their property, while the Russian government was to receive a war indemnity of £5,000,000 sterling, and the conquered provinces were to be held by the Russians until the indemnity was paid. The Turkish provinces to the north of the Danube were to be practically independent of Turkey, and the Porte engaged not to maintain any fortified post or Mussulman establishment within their boundaries. A small tribute was to be paid to Turkey by the principalities, but every Moslem subject of the Porte north of the Danube was to sell his property and leave the country within eighteen months. Russia was to have the right to interfere in the affairs of the Danubian principalities in case of any violation of the treaty on the part of Turkey.
Russia gained additional territory in Asia as a return for her successful operations in that region. She obtained the fortress and pashalik of Akhaltiskh, with a portion of the coast of the Black Sea; Southern Caucasus and a part of Armenia thus passed into Russian control, where they have ever since remained, and several minor advantages were obtained by the Czar in the Treaty of Adrianople and the conventions which followed it. An officer of rank was despatched to Asia immediately after the signing of the treaty; in less than a fortnight from the memorable 28th of August all hostilities were suspended, and shortly afterwards peace was declared.
General Paskievitch, who commanded the Russian army in Asia, was rewarded with the baton of a field-marshal. A similar honor was given to General Diebitsch, in addition to the title "Zabalkanski" (Trans-Balkanian), in commemoration of his daring march across that hitherto impassable mountain chain. A major-general at twenty-five, and lieutenant-general at twenty-eight, he was one of the most remarkable soldiers whose names adorn the military records of Russia. He was only in his forty-fifth year when he became a field-marshal, after the peace of Adrianople.
- ↑ "Les demandes faites par les Russes, l'an passé à Ackerman, au sujet des indemnités, et surtout à l'égard des Serviens, ne furent aucunement susceptible d'être admises; néanmoins, les circonstances étant pressantes, on y acquiesça bon gré mal gré, et par nécessité, afin de saisir l'occasion de conclure un traité pour le salut de la nation Mahometane."
- ↑ See map accompanying Chapter III.