Krüdener
The first objective given to the IX Corps, in its capacity as the Western flank guard of the Russian advance, was the taking of Nicopolis. Some fifteen miles west of the crossing point at Simnitza, Nicopolis was a town of between 8,000 and 10,000 inhabitants. It was by no means heavily fortified. An old citadel on a bluff overhanging the Danube was in substantial disrepair; it was commanded by the hills to the south. Most of the town lay outside the walls of this fortress. The River Osma joins the Danube two miles to the west of the town; on the east it was covered by the Danube marshes. Immediately south of the town a plateau, about 700 feet above the level of the river, runs from the Osma to the marshes. Three miles further to the west, the River Vid runs north-east into the Danube, passing about seven miles west of the town of Plevna, which is about twenty three miles from Nicopolis.
During the period before the crossing of the Danube, the Russians had been active on the northern bank of the Danube opposite Nicopolis and the Turks had established a number of batteries to fire over the river, together with rifle pits on the bluffs of the Osma and the Ermenli Ravine to the east. Once the Russians were over the river, hasty efforts were made to construct earthworks on the south side of the town. The garrison of Nicopolis, about 12,000 strong, was under Hassan Pasha. He positioned the bulk of his troops in the new earthworks, in which there were about ten guns; between 3,000 and 4,000 men were in the hills between the Osma and the Vid.1
The IX Corps had been obliged to surrender two cavalry regiments to Gourko’s advance guard; in their place, Krüdener had a brigade of Caucasian Cossacks of twelve squadrons. He left one infantry regiment at Sistova, while another was pushed south-westwards from that place to Bulgareni, on the main road from Plevna to Biela and Rustchuk. With the remainder of his force he marched westwards to Nicopolis, arriving in front of the Turkish positions on July 13. During the following day he reconnoitred and made his plans for an assault on July 15.
Since Krüdener’s orders were to take Nicopolis he concentrated all his attention on carrying out this task which, as the Russians soon found out, was a serious mistake, and an unnecessary one. The Caucasian Cossack Brigade had come under the command of the IX Corps on July 9; but two days prior to this its commander, Colonel Tutolmin, had reported intelligence from the local population to the effect that a company of Turkish troops had occupied Plevna and confirmed the presence of a few Turkish troops which had withdrawn to Rahova. Tutolmin requested an infantry battalion to enable him to take the town, but Krüdener refused, saying that Nicopolis must first be captured. Those units of the IX Corps already over the river halted, awaiting the rest of the corps. On July 10 Krüdener had been told that a mixed force of enemy troops had entered Plevna, apparently from Nicopolis: next day the Cossacks reported that there were now at least four battalions with six guns there.
These troops, under Atouf Pasha, had been sent by Hassan to keep open his communications particularly with Osman Pasha in Widdin, and had arrived there on July 9, a few hours before Tutolmin’s leading patrols reached the town. While Krüdener was preparing his assault on Nicopolis, Atouf’s force was all that there was in Plevna. Krüdener, however, denied himself the chance of gathering further intelligence by employing Tutolmin’s brigade in support of his action against Nicopolis, and Atouf’s troops were left undisturbed. Maurice was sharply critical:
Had this cavalry been employed in work round Plevna and in learning what was going on in the direction of Widdin, it is probable that Krüdener would have discovered that the occupation of the line of the Lower Vid and of Plevna as its key were of greater importance to the Russian plan of campaign than the immediate capture of Nicopolis. To withdraw cavalry which has once gained contact can rarely be justified.2
As it was, there was no means of telling what Osman might be getting up to in Widdin. It was certainly known that there stood much the largest and most dangerous Turkish force in the western part of the country, and information as to its movements was crucial. In fact Osman had been champing at the bit to move eastwards, and it was only after he had submitted five proposals to Abdul Kerim that he finally received authority to move. On July 12 Osman’s preparations were complete; on the following morning at 4.00 am he marched out from Widdin with a force comprising 19 battalions, 6 squadrons, and 9 batteries, a total of 12,000 men with 54 guns.3 His intention was, if possible, to join forces with Hassan, if he did not arrive too late.
Constructing a Russian battery. (Illustrated London News)
For his assault on Nicopolis Krüdener divided his forces in two; one part, under Lieutenant-General Schilder-Schuldner, the commander of the 5th Division, was to advance down the left bank of the Osma, seizing the hills and cutting off any escape route to Plevna. With the remainder of his force Krüdener intended to assault the Turkish positions to the south of Nicopolis. Schilder-Schuldner had the 17th (Archangel) and 18th (Vologda) Infantry Regiments, a regiment of lancers and the Cossack Brigade. The latter was to cover the left and rear against any Turkish reinforcements. His force was linked to the main body by the 123rd (Koslov) Infantry Regiment. For his assault, Krüdener had the 121st (Penza) and 20th (Galicia)Infantry Regiments with five batteries, with the 122nd (Tambov) Regiment in reserve, together with three more batteries and two sotnias. Three sotnias observed the eastern flank of the Turkish position. The intention was to drive Hassan’s forces into Nicopolis and to compel their surrender.4
The Russian artillery opened fire at 4.00 am on July 15, and Schilder-Schuldner’s infantry began to move forward, arriving in front of the Turkish heights at 7.00 am. An assault on the enemy positions soon followed and after a struggle the hills were occupied and their defenders driven over the Osma towards Nicopolis. The 123rd Regiment now moved up to harass the retreating Turks. Two battalions of the 18th Regiment crossed to the right bank of the Osma and joined the 123rd Regiment in climbing the heights above Djournevo, a village on the river about four miles from Nicopolis. It was now about 2.00 pm, and seeing the success on his left Krüdener launched the 20th Regiment towards the Turkish position in the centre. After three assaults the key Turkish redoubt was captured, and the Russian infantry moved up to the walls of the fortress.
Lieutenant-General Schilder-Schuldner, commander of the Russian 5th Division. (Illustrirte Geschichte des Orientalischen Krieges von 1876-1878)
Meanwhile, on the left, Schilder-Schuldner’s advance along the road parallel to the Danube continued, and he launched an attack on a large redoubt to the west of Nicopolis; darkness, however, intervened before it could be taken. During the night part of the Turkish garrison attempted to break out in the direction of Plevna, but were repulsed by the Caucasian Cossack Brigade.
Krüdener had therefore been able to complete his investment of Nicopolis and had seized two out of the three most important positions held by the Turks for its defence. For the following day he planned an all out assault, supported by the Russian siege batteries on the northern bank of the Danube, and at 4.00 am on July 16 the storming columns moved forward. Almost at once, however, the Turks hoisted a white flag, and negotiations were soon concluded for the capitulation of the town. The Turks surrendered 7,000 men, including 300 wounded, together with 110 guns and a large quantity of small arms and ammunition. Their casualties during the fighting were not known. The Russians lost 276 killed, 949 wounded and 84 missing.5 Hassan’s surrender was undoubtedly premature; had he resisted for several days before laying down his arms Osman would have been able to fall on Krüdener’s rear and compel him to lift the investment of Nicopolis. Although possession of that town was crucial to neither side, Krüdener’s retreat to Simnitza would have put Osman in a position to threaten the whole Russian operation in Bulgaria.
It is surprising, therefore, that the Russians should have made so much of Hassan; Forbes described him as ‘the valiant Turkish defender of Nicopolis, of whose fighting prowess the Russian speak with generous appreciation.’ Hassan was reported as saying that he had capitulated because his ammunition was all gone, ‘and he had been obliged to kill with his own hand three or four soldiers who left their duty.’ He added that it was a stupid war into which the Turks had been led by the attitude of England.6
While the Russians were engaged in the reduction of Nicopolis, Osman’s march eastward had proceeded under cloudless skies in extreme heat. The news received on July 14 that Gourko was over the Balkans came as a shock, as a result of which Osman’s troops were ordered to march all through the night, pausing only at noon on the following day. Late on the evening of July 15 came news of the commencement of the Russian attack on Nicopolis, with orders from Abdul Kerim to move with the utmost speed to save not only Nicopolis but also Plevna and Lovtcha. Osman sent on three battalions in advance of the main body to join Atouf in Plevna; the rest set off at 4.00 am, with a twenty-four mile stage ahead of them. They finally reached their objective, the River Skit, at midnight, and bivouacked in a state of extreme exhaustion. It was 4.00 pm on July 17 before they set off again.
The march continued in the intense heat. At noon on July 18 the main body reached the River Isker, where a makeshift bridge of submerged carts and boards had been constructed. News of the fall of Nicopolis which reached Osman at this point did not unduly disturb him, apart from the loss of its garrison; he was more worried about the Russian occupation of Lovtcha, which he regarded as a key point. On July 19 the main body set off at 5.00 am, and marched so quickly as to leave far behind the tail of the column with its ponderous train. William Herbert’s battalion marched at the rear; he described their arrival at Plevna:
Despite all our haste the tired, overburdened horses detained us; it was past 2.00 pm before we arrived at the stone bridge by means of which the Orkhanie – Plevna road closes the Vid. Behind a bend of this road – on the right of which is a hill covered with vineyard and orchards – we came in sight of Plevna, which, lying in a deep, fertile valley, presented a strikingly beautiful picture with its minarets and domes, its white houses, its patches of foliage, its background of hills. At 4.00 pm we marched, or rather dragged ourselves, into the town without having seen an enemy.7
The Turkish garrison of Nicopolis surrenders. (Illustrirte Geschichte des Orientalischen Krieges von 1876-1878)
The main body had arrived at Plevna during the course of the morning, and Osman immediately moved them out of the town into positions identified by Atouf. Anticipating Osman’s arrival, Atouf had collected large quantities of food and other stores, and hot meals were prepared for the tired and hungry troops. The march from Widdin had covered 115 miles in seven days, an average of over sixteen miles a day.
In 1877 Plevna was a town of 17,000 inhabitants, of which 10,000 were Christian. 4,000 of the latter had fled, but since the Russians had crossed the Danube some 2,000 Turkish refugees had arrived in the town. Through the middle of the town ran the Tultchenitza, while the Grivitza ran round the northern edge; the two streams join two miles to the north-west and run into the Vid a mile further on. Herbert’s first impressions of the town were favourable:
Plevna was better built than any other Turkish town I had seen; yet here, too, there were the ruined and deserted houses, the waste spaces full of rubbish, which are a feature of the country. The filthy streets, badly paved or unpaved, and in wet weather impassable, the absence of sanitary arrangements, the thousand-and-one stenches characteristic of urban Turkey, were worthily represented. The Tultchenitza served as a natural (and only) main drain. The town is built without any obvious plan; but the streets were wider and straighter, the houses better, than, say, in Widdin.8
When Osman arrived the town was, as Herbert recorded, entirely unfortified. It was surrounded by hills; Herbert noted in particular the Janik Bair, north-east of Plevna, nearly four miles long, 1,300 feet high and running from west to east 350 feet above the Plevna valley. The hills to the north and east were bare; those to the south and west were covered with vineyards, gardens and orchards. To the west Plevna was protected by the Namasgula Bair and the River Vid.
Plevna was a point of great strategic importance for a number of reasons. First, it lay on the flank of the Russians’ march into Bulgaria and threatened any operations which might be intended, particularly the advance to and over the Balkans. Secondly, it was a road junction through which six routes ran, to Widdin, Sofia, Lovtcha, Pelisat, Rustchuk and Nicopolis. These roads gave ready access to the circle of hills surrounding Plevna, and meant that reinforcements could rapidly be sent to any part of the lines of defence that might be threatened. Furthermore, the roads ran mainly through the valleys of the streams joining the Vid, thus providing a system of covered communications.9
At the Russian headquarters there had been no reports of Osman’s march before July 17, when pickets of the Caucasian Cossack Brigade reported that a strong enemy force was moving on Plevna from a westerly direction. No great significance seems to have been attached to this report; Krüdener was, however ordered by the Grand Duke to ‘occupy Plevna as promptly as possible.’ Krüdener, preoccupied first with the capture of Nicopolis, and then the administrative arrangements for the town, and for its captive garrison, was already aware from prisoners before the town was taken that reinforcements were expected from the west, but he paid no heed to the warning.10 It was not until July 18 that the Caucasian Cossack Brigade was directed to leave its position on the Vid, when it was sent off to the east to Bulgareni on the Osma.
Receiving on that day the instruction to occupy Plevna, Krüdener ordered Schilder-Schuldner to carry out the task. He was to take the 1st Brigade of the 5th Division (17th and 18th Regiments), four batteries and the 9th Don Cossack Regiment, and, marching through Bryslan, to proceed to Plevna. Krüdener also put under Schilder-Schuldner’s orders the 19th (Kostroma) Regiment, which was already on the Rustchuk-Plevna road at Bulgareni and Poradim, and the Caucasian Cossack Brigade. Schilder-Schuldner set out at once, and by nightfall had marched ten miles from Nicopolis. Intending to approach Plevna on a wide arc, he ordered the 19th Regiment to Sgalevitza, about eight miles east of the town, while the Cossack Brigade was to reach the village of Tultchenitza, about six miles south-east of Plevna. Next day he continued his own march south-westwards, reaching the heights south of Verbitza at about 2.00 pm, where he was, to his surprise, held up by Turkish artillery posted on the heights of Grivitza, south-east of the Janik Bair. With no cavalry at all with his main body – he had sent the 9th Don Cossacks to the west – he had no information of the location of any of the Turkish forces in the area.11 When they heard the gunfire, the Don Cossacks, who had been peaceably cooking soup, mounted and rode forward towards Plevna, encountering a party of Turkish infantry with whom they skirmished until nightfall. Meanwhile the rest of Schilder-Schuldner’s forces had reached the objectives assigned to them, and bivouacked for the night, as did the main body.
Atouf had, since his arrival at Plevna, taken some steps to prepare defensive positions around the town, and Osman continued this work. By July 20, however, he had only completed a few field works commanding the Biela road and the Grivitza area. North of Plevna some trenches near Opanetz had been dug, and some of the buildings in the village of Bukova had been loopholed for defence. In the course of a reconnaissance of the Russian forces around Plevna on the afternoon of July 19 he had concluded that the principal attack would come from the units north of the town, and that those approaching Grivitza from the east would merely make a feint. Osman’s total force now amounted to 25 battalions, 10 batteries and 6 squadrons. Of these, he concentrated his small force of cavalry at Opanetz, with two battalions. He assigned eight battalions, with three and a half batteries, to the defence of the Janik Bair, and three battalions and one battery to the hill just west of Grivitza, with four battalions forming a connecting link between these two forces. One battalion and half a battery occupied the hill south of Plevna which commanded the Tultchenitza valley. Two battalions stood between the Tultchenitza and Grivitza brooks, and Osman kept five battalions and three batteries in reserve.12
The heights north of Bukova, seen from the saddle south of the village. This is the ground over which Schilder-Schuldner’s men attacked. (Springer)
Schilder-Schuldner advanced, on the morning of July 20 at 4.00 am, in two columns widely separated from each other. The northern column, of six battalions consisting of the Archangel and Vologda Regiments with four batteries, advanced to the attack on the ridge south-west of Verbitza. At 4.30 am the Russian guns opened fire, and at 5.30 am, after a scarcely adequate artillery preparation, the infantry moved out to the attack. Quickening their pace, they charged down the slope of a ravine and up the other side, driving back the Turks. The Vologda Regiment, with several companies of the Archangel Regiment, set off in pursuit; the enemy retreated constantly until the Russians found themselves entering the town of Plevna itself. At this point, quite unsuspected by the attackers, large masses of Turks who had positioned themselves in the houses at the edge of town opened a heavy fire, before charging upon the outnumbered Russian infantry. Hozier described what followed:
In an instant the Russians suffered enormous losses; they fell by hundreds; and having lost Major-General Knorring, commander of the brigade, wounded, and Colonel Rosenbaum, commander of the Archangel Regiment, who was killed at the head of his men, they began slowly to retreat – still facing an enemy vastly superior in numbers. Many of the wounded were unfortunately obliged to be abandoned, and their comrades saw them massacred and mutilated under their very eyes in a most inhuman manner.13
The other column had reached Grivitza by 5.00 am, and the battery that accompanied it was soon in action against the trenches south of the main road. After only a short artillery preparation the 19th Regiment moved to the attack in columns of companies; it took the first two lines of trenches without difficulty, and then after a hard struggle the third line, and followed the retreating Turks to the edge of town, where the regiment was halted by heavy fire from the gardens and buildings. Colonel Kleinhaus, leading the attack, was first wounded and then as his wound was being dressed killed by a shell burst, shortly before the third line of trenches was taken. It was soon apparent that the foothold on the edge of Plevna could not be maintained, and the regiment fell back, having sustained heavy losses. The Turks followed them to the first line of trenches. The Caucasian Brigade, on the extreme left of the Russian force, had ineffectually fired its mountain guns, having been unable to mount a charge due to the nature of the ground; it moved to cover the retreat of the 19th Regiment as it fell back down the road to Bulgareni. Meanwhile the main body had fallen back to Bryslan, the right flank being covered by the Don Cossacks.
The Russians had sustained very heavy casualties, losing two-thirds of their officers and a third of their men; total losses amounted to 2,823 killed and wounded. William Herbert, whose battalion had been fighting on the Janik Bair, before falling back to Bukova, had taken part in the counter-attack which drove back the extreme right of the Russian assault. He put the total Turkish casualties at 2,000. He described the Russian retreat:
The Russian books state that the troops retired in good order. I can testify to the fact that they were in a desperate hurry, to say the least of it. Closed ranks of our infantry, under perfect control, were at their heels. We joined these, and found ourselves next to a company of our own battalion, with whom we advanced through the fields eastward. Thus we pursued the enemy across fields and meadows, over hedges and ditches, up hill and down dale. The men’s spirits had revived wonderfully, for the joy of victory is as contagious as the despondency of defeat.14
A Red Crescent ambulance and doctor. (Ollier)
Francis Greene was particularly critical of Schilder-Schuldner, holding him responsible for the defeat:
The almost criminal faults of this battle on the part of the Russian commander are so apparent that they hardly need to be pointed out. Without having learned anything about the strength or position of the enemy, and without any reserves whatever of his own, his troops were led blindly to the assault in company columns, along two lines which had no communication with each other, and against an enemy which, as the official report says, was subsequently discovered to be more than four times their own strength!15
Osman, having only a very small cavalry force, did not attempt to pursue the enemy, and turned his attention to strengthening the defences of Plevna against the next assault, which he expected would come very soon. And, indeed, from Russian headquarters, where the euphoria engendered by the crossing of the Balkans ensured that confidence there was undiminished by the setback, orders went to Krüdener to drive Osman back at once. In preparing for this, Osman concentrated particular attention on the defences of the Grivitza redoubt, and the lines between it and Bukova. He also embarked on the construction of a series of redoubts just east of the town. Although he had won a complete victory on July 20, Osman had been sufficiently impressed by the Russian assaults to call for reinforcements. Mehemet Ali, who had only just taken over as commander in chief, put under Osman’s command all the Turkish troops in Western Bulgaria, at Sofia and Novi Bazar. He did not, however, favour Osman’s other request, which was for authority to link up with Raouf Pasha, commanding the Turkish troops in the Balkans. Instead, he ordered Osman to hold Plevna and continue to entrench himself there.16