The Russian and Ottoman Empires clashed repeatedly during the 19th Century. It was a process that progressively weakened the Ottoman Empire and rolled back its frontier from the high tide mark of its expansion. Only when supported by powerful allies during the Crimean War of 1854–1856 did the Turks end on the winning side. The war of 1877–1878 was the latest in a series of conflicts caused principally by the relentless ambition of the Russian Empire. Russian concern for the subject Slav peoples of the Ottoman Empire was an ostensible, though subsidiary, motive for military action.
It was a brutal war, involving very substantial armies and enormous casualties on both sides, fought in conditions that were almost indescribably demanding. It was portrayed in chilling detail by a host of Western observers – diplomats, military attachés, artists and journalists; shocked both by the atrocities which they encountered and the gross incompetence of some of the generalship, they concluded that it was most decidedly not a European war fought between European nations.
In the years following the war it generated, understandably, a flood of books covering all its aspects; but by the dawn of the 20th Century there were other more evidently relevant wars to describe. The Russo-Turkish War ceased to be a subject for Western historians and military commentators, although it continued to receive attention in the countries of the participants. During the 20th Century the only English language narrative studies of the war were The Siege of Plevna, by Rupert Furneaux, published in 1958, which was not solely confined to the events of the siege; and the excellent Caucasian Battlefields by W E D Allen and Paul Muratoff, published in 1953, which devoted nine chapters to a penetrating and scholarly account of the campaign in the Caucasus.
I hope, therefore, that this book may go a little way to filling a historical gap, and to reviving interest both in the colossal struggle that took place in 1877–1878 and in its devastating consequences for the soldiers and civilian populations involved.