Tashkessen
The fall of Plevna was of course of crucial importance for the future conduct of the war, but it did not mean that all was over bar the shouting. Certainly the Russians could now proceed in the knowledge that the total forces available to them in Bulgaria were double those of the Turks, and that the latter might well be demoralized by the turn that events had taken. The practical problems of taking the next steps towards ultimate victory which the Russians faced were nonetheless considerable. From their own territory on the Pruth to the Balkans, their line of communications was 500 miles in length, and had been interrupted on the Danube where drifting ice had carried away all the bridges. The Balkans offered a significant obstacle, and the weather was beginning to deteriorate substantially. Until the fall of Plevna it had been tolerably mild, but on December 15 it began to snow heavily, and continued to do so for a week, at the end of which movement became extremely difficult. There were, in any case, only two good roads available to the Russians, those between Plevna and Sofia and between Sistova and the Shipka Pass. The rest were a sea of mud.1
In addition to this severe weather, which came as no surprise to the Russians, and with the problems of which they were not unfamiliar in their own country, there was one aspect of it peculiar to the Lower Danube with which they were not acquainted. This was the Krivitza, as it was known to Roumanians and Bulgarians, a hurricane of snow that lasted two or three days raging with such colossal violence that no one dared to leave their houses:
It uproots the strongest trees, and even carries off the roofs of houses; while everyone outside runs the risk of being buried under the snow. The trains are compelled to cease running while the tempest lasts; and warned of its approach, the people make preparations as if for a week’s siege; for although the Krivitza only lasts three days, at least three more are needed to reopen communications with the outside world.2
The unexpected ferocity of these storms caused a number of Russian disasters. A convoy of wounded, trapped by such a storm, was unable to move, and the snow built up until it was entirely overwhelmed. There were few survivors. In another place an entire camp was buried, and several thousand soldiers had to dig out the men there, some of whom were found dead under the snow. A supply convoy en route from Sistova to Biela was overtaken by the Krivitza, and only escaped, with the loss of part of its train, when its commanding officer ordered an immediate retreat. During these storms the Russians lost thousands of horses and cattle. In the Shipka Pass both sides had to withdraw their outposts in so heavy a snowstorm that visibility was less than fifteen yards.
It had not needed an awareness of what the weather was to lead Todleben to the conclusion that a winter campaign should be avoided. He calculated that the Turkish strategy would be to fall back to Adrianople, and that the Russians would therefore arrive there in the depths of winter, with a supply line that could not be maintained across the chain of mountains behind them. His firm view was that the proper course would be to put the army into winter quarters along the main roads north of the Balkans, and to assemble a large force around Rustchuk to invest that fortress. During the winter a regular siege would lead to its capture, and in the following spring the army would be in good shape to cross the Balkans and advance on Constantinople. This did not commend itself to Nicholas, who even before the fall of Plevna had reached the conclusion that the army should conduct a winter campaign in spite of all the practical difficulties. His main concern was to keep the pressure up; ceasing active operations in the field would give the Turks a chance to recover and, worse still, would give time for international diplomacy to interfere. In particular, the longer the war continued the greater was the risk of British intervention. Apart from Skobelev and Gourko, the Russian generals preferred Todleben’s policy; but on this occasion Nicholas prevailed and as soon as Plevna fell he had therefore taken steps to ensure that Gourko was given the resources necessary to push southwards.3
Russian troops on the march during a snowstorm. (Illustrated London News)
As has been seen, Gourko had paused in front of the Turkish position in the mountains early in December, to await the reinforcements that would be released by the fall of Plevna. The first units moved out on December 14, but were soon held up by the deterioration in the weather, and it was not until December 23 that Gourko received at Orkhanie the last of the additional troops promised to him. By that date the Russian forces in Bulgaria were organised in three separate armies, together with the troops in the Dobrudja, which were not under one command. Gourko had the Guard Corps, of three divisions, and the IX Corps of two divisions; one rifle brigade, and two cavalry divisions. In all, he had 84½ battalions, 54 squadrons, 256 field guns and 24 of horse artillery, a total of 80,000 men. His mission was to beat Mehemet Ali, to capture Sofia, and then to march eastwards past Philippopolis to Adrianople.
Radetzky, whose objective was to defeat the Turkish army at Shipka and then to advance to Adrianople, had the VIII and IV Corps, with the Bulgarian Legion, two rifle brigades and a cavalry division. This gave him 74 battalions, 18 squadrons, 240 field guns and 12 of horse artillery, amounting in all to 66,000 men. The Tsarevich, whose task continued to be the protection of the lines of communication running south from the Danube, as well as the siege of Rustchuk, had the XII and XIII Corps, a cavalry division and eight Cossack Regiments. His strength was 72 battalions, with 60 battalions, 288 field guns and 36 of horse artillery, a total of 71,500 men. Finally, in the Dobrudja there were a further 76½ battalions, with 92 squadrons, 320 field guns and 60 of horse artillery, a further 80,000 men. Tying up so much of the army in the Dobrudja does suggest an excess of caution on the part of the Russians, at odds with the bolder policy now to be adopted elsewhere in Bulgaria.
Gourko, who had what might reasonably be described as the cream of the Russian army at his disposal, outnumbered his immediate opponent by more than two to one. The Turks had some 25,000 men in their defensive line where the high road crossed the Balkans, with 15 guns; about 5,000 men and 4 guns at Lutikova and the same at Slatitza; and a reserve of about 10,000 men at Sofia. Gourko had used the lull in active operations to familiarise himself with the territory into which he must now advance and which, indeed, might offer a more effective obstacle to his progress than the Turkish army. The strength of the defensive positions which confronted him was such that he resolved if possible to turn them.
It was clear to Millet, though, who arrived at Gourko’s headquarters on Christmas Eve, that Gourko must do something soon:
It has been evident for some time that General Gourko would either have to retire from the positions he had taken on the mountains near the Baba Konak Pass, or else cross the range at any cost, for the severity of the weather made it almost impossible to bring up the supplies and ammunition, and life in the bivouacs on the mountain became daily more and more difficult. Scarcely a night passed but frozen hands and feet were counted by hundreds. Thirty soldiers were frozen to death during four days of the storm, and the number of sick from exposure amounted to more than 2,000.4
The deep mud, which was all that the roads consisted of, had frozen solid, and, on any incline, steps had to be cut with axes; they were otherwise impassable. Gourko’s investigation of the possibility of finding a way over the mountains to outflank the Turkish position bore fruit when a Bulgarian shepherd was found who identified not one but two paths which might give Gourko what he wanted. Lieutenant Colonel Stavrosky, of the General Staff, was sent to check this out, and reported that the shepherd was right, and that each of the routes could be used. Gourko made his plans accordingly, intending to move in three columns. Two of these would take the paths that had been discovered, which would outflank the Turkish position to the west, while the third, moving from Etropol, would pass to the east side of it and, having concentrated the enemy’s mind on this threat, ultimately descend into the Slatitza valley at Bunova or Mirkovo and cut the Petricevo road. The rest of Gourko’s army he placed under the command of Krüdener, whose orders were to remain where he was in front of the Turkish position, bombarding it, and holding himself ready to follow up any retreat. Once the routes had been identified Gourko set his engineers to work to create a passable road, an operation that was carried out under Stavrosky’s direction.5
Russian troops advancing from Etropol towards Sofia. (Strantz)
On the Turkish side no significant reinforcements had reached Chakir. There had, however, been a change in the command structure, Suleiman having been recalled to Constantinople with a view to his taking personal charge of the defence of the whole Turkish line along the Balkans. He arrived in the capital on December 19, and at once set off to visit the units bracing themselves for the Russian advance. He reached Sofia a few days later, and made his headquarters there; his intention was that a large part of the troops withdrawn from the Lom should move via Tatar Bazardjik and Ichtiman to Sofia. He had, as Baker later wrote, ‘the wild idea of maintaining the whole of the Balkan line, and at the same time resisting the certain attack of the Serbian army upon the position to the west of Sofia.’6 Baker had already realised that in the changed circumstances the line of the Balkans would be impossible to defend successfully, advocating the immediate retreat of all the Turkish forces in the west all the way back to Adrianople; any that could not retire by this route should be evacuated through Salonika to the capital. Chakir, who forwarded Baker’s paper outlining this plan to Suleiman, emphatically endorsed it, but it cut no ice with the commander in chief, who merely responded to say that his troops from the Lom were beginning to arrive at Sofia.7
Suleiman’s capacity for doing the wrong thing had already been demonstrated on many occasions, and his determination to try to hold the entire line of the Balkans was yet another instance of this. Greene’s observations on the policy that should have been adopted to defend a long river or mountain line were an endorsement of the plan put forward by Baker:
All military writers are agreed that the proper means of defence of such a line is to post small bodies in observation at the various points of passage, and keep the main body of the defenders at some central point in rear, from which, as soon as the enemy’s real attack is made clear, a force can bear down upon him and strike him before his troops have all crossed the mountains or river. Such a point in this case was Adrianople, in itself a naturally strong position, and now defended by numerous half-finished earthworks, and from which high roads lead to Sofia, Shipka, Slivno and Aidos, and railroads to within three days’ march of Sofia, two days’ of Shipka, and one day’s of Slivno.8
Instead of this, Suleiman began to increase the force around Sofia to 40,000 men, the Shipka garrison to the same figure, and left only 10,000 at Adrianople. Of the western army, 15,000 men were at Sofia itself, and the remainder in the mountains.
Gourko may have supposed that his preparations for his outflanking movement had been concealed, and various accounts suggest that the Turks were unaware of the threat. This was, not, however, the case. Baker was very much alive to the danger:
Before the departure of Mehemet Ali, and frequently since, I had expressed my anxious fears relative to the pathway over the mountain leading by Tchuriak to Potop. It was impossible to trust to the Circassians, who were supposed to guard the mountains on the Sofia plains; but these men had long ago reported that a party of Russian cavalry occupied the village of Tchuriak. I had begged Mehemet Ali to allow me to start some day with three battalions, and to clear the whole of this pass from Russian occupation.9
Mehemet Ali, however, had felt unable to spare the troops necessary for such an operation, as did Chakir when he assumed the command. On December 24 Baker made a reconnaissance in the direction of Tchuriak. He could see that the village was occupied but not in great strength. After testing the defences briefly, he concluded that Tchuriak was held by an infantry battalion and a Cossack regiment. Since guns had been seen on the mountain crest, it was obvious that the Russians had constructed a road from the mouth of the pass to the summit. Next day he took Chakir to see for himself and they agreed that this would be the direction from which a Russian advance would come, but Chakir, conscious that his force had dwindled to a strength of 12,500 men, still felt unable to detach any part of it to allow Baker to conduct a spoiling operation at Tchuriak.10
Baker’s staff was temporarily augmented at about this time by the arrival of Lieutenant H H Kitchener R E. Baker took him on one of his visits to the Turkish positions, some 6,200 feet above sea level. Kitchener evidently enjoyed the experience, writing in an article on his return to England:
The sun threw a rosy tinge over all, making the most perfect scene imaginable. There were the Russians, just below us in their trenches. We could see them relieving guard, and they could easily have been picked off with a rifle … The whole positions both of the Turks and the Russians were laid out below us as on a map.11
Gourko had begun his movement on Christmas Day. The advance guard, under Rauch, consisted of 13 battalions, with 16 field guns and 11 sotnias with 4 horse artillery guns, left at 5.00 am, the intention being to reach Tchuriak 24 hours later. Climbing the steep road, covered with a thick layer of ice, the troops struggled to bring up the artillery. By noon on December 26 only four four-pounders had reached the summit. As night fell, a fresh snowstorm further hampered the advance, but before they bivouacked for the night the leading infantry had reached the head of the valley and were over the Balkans. The problems of movement were, however, so acute that it was not until December 30 that the whole of the column had finally concentrated at Tchuriak. Meanwhile on December 27 Gourko, aiming to take advantage of having got at least the leading units of his force over the mountains, ordered the occupation of the hills that separate the Tchuriak valley from the Sofia plain, a task which the Preobrazhensky Regiment accomplished without difficulty. The advance guard had been followed by two further echelons which made up the 3rd Guards Division under Kataley.
The flanking columns to the right and left experienced even greater difficulties than Rauch’s advance guard. On the right Veliaminov, with six battalions, sixteen squadrons and sixteen guns started, like Rauch, from Vrachesti, and was to cross the Oumourgatch Mountain before descending to Jeliava; but this force encountered such deep snow drifts on this route that it was compelled to abandon its advance and fall back to the route taken by Rauch’s column. The column finally reached Tchuriak very much the worse for wear after five days’ march on December 28. On the left, Dandeville had fared even worse. He had nine battalions, six squadrons and sixteen guns, and set off from Etropol on December 25. In spite of deep snow, its advance guard succeeded in reaching the highest point of the mountains before it bivouacked that night. Next day it was joined by the rest of the column, together with four guns, and on December 27 an infantry battalion got as far as the southern slope, with two guns, causing great alarm to the Turks in their fortified position. On December 28, under cover of gunfire from the four guns which had now been brought up, the 11th Regiment moved towards Shandarnik and a battalion of the 124th Regiment in the direction of Mirkovo. This represented the limit of their progress. During the night a fierce snowstorm cut off communication between the various units, and Dandeville could not get orders through until late on December 29. It was clearly impossible to proceed, and he directed the whole column to retreat to Etropol, where it reassembled on December 30. 823 men reported sick with frostbite and 53 had died from the extreme cold.12
On the afternoon of December 27, when Baker reached Chakir’s headquarters, he found that news had arrived that the Russians were over the mountains in force at Tchuriak, and that the telegraph wire to Sofia had been cut, presumably by Cossacks operating on the high road. Clearly, if the Russians could take the Tashkessen Pass, the whole of Chakir’s army would be lost. Chakir asked Baker to take six battalions to hold the position; on enquiring which battalions had been selected, Baker found that the worst Mustafiz battalions had been chosen. This would not do, and he told Chakir so; instead, he took the three Albanian and Bosnian battalions which he had been leading; the Edirné battalion of Mustafiz had by mistake joined the others, but in view of its poor reputation, Baker left it behind, and marched during the night with his three battalions to Tashkesssen which he found, to his relief, had not yet been occupied. At the head of the pass he came upon a large khan, a strongly built stone building, with many windows, which would serve as a key defensive point.13
The Sofia road runs through the Tashkessen Pass, the name of which in Turkish means ‘the cut rock’, the pass resembling an incision in the rocky heights. Coming over the crest, Baker had seen the camp fires of the Russians extending for several miles northwards on the high road, and he estimated that their strength was about 20,000. With only three battalions to deal with, it would be all too easy for the Russians to turn the position. Baker had no expectation that any appeal to Suleiman could produce any assistance, even if it got through; and he resolved to ride back to Chakir to stress how dangerous was the situation. Chakir, in the absence of orders from Suleiman, was reluctant to retreat; but Baker overcame his doubts, and Chakir agreed to do so if no orders came through during the day, and promised him reinforcements in the morning. Baker had another hair-raising ride along the icy tracks to return to Tashkessen, where he found that the Edirné battalion had turned up after all; though ‘a useless body of men,’ it did have an excellent commander. It was clear to Baker that if he could delay the Russians at Tashkessen, Chakir would have a chance of escape, and he made his plans for what would obviously be a desperate defence.
Fortunately, the Russians were slow to move, and Baker had time to get his infantry and guns into position. About an hour after dawn, on December 29 the Russians could be seen to be preparing to advance. Baker described what he saw:
It was impossible to imagine a more beautiful scene of war. From the stony crest we looked down on a most extensive panorama. The whole country was covered with a white sheet of snow. On the distant hills the black masses of the enemy were gathering fast. Below us, on the little ridge, our cavalry vedettes stood quietly at their posts. In rear, and hidden from the enemy, the supporting squadrons were mounted and ready. Amongst the rocks on the crest the brave Albanian and Bosnian battalions lay calmly waiting.14
Baker, watching the Russians deploy, estimated that a Russian division of 16 battalions lay in his right front; he could tell from the uniforms that it was a Guards division. Aiming to convince the Russians that his position was strongly occupied, he ordered his artillery to open fire as soon as they came within range. His hope was that the enemy would pause to bring up further troops, and to his delight he saw the advancing column move to the right to occupy a low range of hills and begin to entrench. That evening he received two more battalions; the El Bassan battalion of regular troops, and the Eski Cheir, ‘a miserable little Mustafiz battalion that could not be trusted’ which was only about 220 strong.15 Baker’s small force was not to be tested on the following day, when heavy snowstorms made movement difficult until late in the afternoon. As a result the Russians deferred their assault. Chakir sent Baker another battalion, the Tchengueri; he regarded this one as ‘indifferent.’
The Russian advance finally began on December 31. By now some 25,000 men had been concentrated in front of the Tashkessen position. With their huge preponderance in numbers, the Russians began to envelop both the right and left of the Turkish position, and it was evident to Baker that he must pull back. At this moment he noticed a gap on the Russian right, as it moved around his flank, and he sent forward his tiny force of cavalry. This cheeky move gave him time to concentrate his centre on the road and around the khan, where he concentrated all his seven guns. It was not a moment too soon; wave after wave of Russian infantry stormed forward against the position, but all were repulsed. As the Russians came forward a great roar rose up from their lines; Baker was determined that this should be answered, and ordered his bugler to sound the Turkish cry of ‘Allah’:
Springing to their feet, the gallant Prizrend shouted their appeal to the God of battles. Battalion after battalion took it up, and it echoed back from the distant mountain peaks. It was a glorious sight to see the confidence of the scanty little band of Turkish troops, as the great Muscovite wave rolled up against our position.16
During the afternoon Baker received word from his aide de camp, Colonel Allix, that Chakir had deserted him, and was in full retreat. If true, this would have meant that Baker’s little force must necessarily be cut off. Baker, however, doubted the accuracy of this report and another to the same effect, and held his ground. His instinct was correct; what Allix had seen was Chakir’s baggage and guns, escorted by an infantry brigade, retreating towards Tatar Bazardjik, in accordance with the agreement that Chakir and Baker had made that this train would be sent away first while Chakir held his position on the mountains; the plan was that once this long convoy was safely on its way Chakir would commence his retreat while Baker held off the Russians.17
Turkish prisoners, winter 1877/78. (The Graphic)
The fighting around the khan had been particularly fierce. As the Russian assault began, Baker intended to put the Edirné battalion, of dubious merit, in the building itself. In the face of Russian rifle fire, the men of the battalion refused to enter the building:
It was in vain that Islan Bey and my friend Captain Burnaby used their sticks on the backs of the skulkers. The wretched battalion hesitated, while only about a dozen more adventurous spirits crept forward to the corner of the building, but would not enter.18
In the end the battalion broke completely, bolting down the road and threatening to disrupt the deployment of the Uskub battalion which was forming up. Fortunately this stood firm, and Baker was able to get four companies into the khan, which proved crucial to the defence of his line.
As night fell, the Russians launched a final assault, pressing up the slope to the final crest of the Turkish position, under heavy fire from the defenders, whose numbers had been heavily depleted. As they neared the summit, the Bosnian battalion launched a bayonet charge, which drove the Russians back. Within a few minutes the firing died down, and Baker could assemble his little force, and start on the retreat to Tatar Bazardjik. With not much more than 3,000 men he had held off at least 17,000 men of the Russian Imperial Guard; and the delay which he had imposed on Gourko’s advance enabled Chakir to escape unscathed from a position in which he would otherwise have been utterly destroyed.
The violence of the engagement may to some extent be judged by the expenditure of ammunition. Accurate records of the amount used during the various battles are usually hard to come by, and could only be compiled from unit war diaries if they ever existed and had survived. And, of course, the mere quantity of the expenditure of rifle ammunition does not carry with it any indication that it was well used. On the Turkish side in particular the infantry were very apt to fire constantly and at random, a practice that did however on occasion inflict a considerable number of casualties. At Tashkessen, though, so great was the total expenditure of rifle ammunition that it does demoustrate how heavily the Turkish troops were engaged. During a battle that lasted eight hours, the Prizrend battalion fired 292 rounds per man, and the other two battalions not much less – or over 30 rounds per man per hour.19