Conclusion
The war of 1877-1878 was the last major European war of the 19th century. It was much the most comprehensively covered by war correspondents, who had access to modern technology that enabled their editors to satisfy the demands of their readers for immediacy of information in a way never before possible. The war was studied carefully by military men for the next three decades, searching for the key lessons that might be learned from it, until another equally avoidable war fought by the Russian Empire replaced it as a subject for detailed military analysis. It did not, however, provide as much enlightenment as the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, nor did it influence military thinking to anything like the same extent.
It had seemed, before the war began, that it was a war which Russia would certainly win; and in the end the outcome was as expected. Along the way, however, there were a considerable number of alarms, sufficient to demonstrate that the margin between victory and defeat was much narrower than anyone expected. With rather more effective leadership on the part of some of the Turkish commanders, and a bit of luck, the result could have been different. Although it was always highly improbable that the Russians could have been totally defeated or their armies destroyed, it was possible that they might have been fought to a standstill, and obliged to bring the war to an end without having defeated the Turkish armies. As it was, although by the end Turkish military capability had been almost completely destroyed, the Russians themselves were not in good shape to have gone on fighting very much longer, not least because financial difficulties were becoming acute.
No nation’s leaders, embarking on hostilities, can be unaware of the death, destruction and misery that must ensue. In 1877 Russia’s generals hoped for and anticipated a quick victory. It was a state of mind in which military men have frequently set off down the road to Armageddon, but as has so frequently been the case in the course of human history the hopes of winning without paying a high price were to be disappointed.
Both sides began the war by making fundamental mistakes, but those made by the Turks were the more serious and less easily made good. As Moltke had pointed out, initial errors have lasting consequences:
Even the first deployment of the army – assembling the fighting means in readiness – cannot be planned without a previous plan of operations, at least in a very general sketch. One must consider in advance what one intends in the defence, just as for the attack … Even a single error in the original assembly of the armies can hardly ever be made good again during the entire course of the campaign.1
The Turkish mobilisation and initial deployment demonstrated this in full measure. Although the likelihood of war with Russia was evident throughout 1876 and still more so early in 1877, the mobilisation was conducted at a languid pace. This, according to Valentine Baker, was the fault of Redif Pasha, the Minister of War, whom he described as ‘a man of a low order of intellect, but bold and unscrupulous,’ and whose measures to prepare for the coming war were ‘stamped with incapacity.’ For the mobilisation to be successfully conducted, the military system must be efficient. Baker noted the extent of the War Minister’s responsibility:
During the Serbian War, Redif Pasha had so completely broken up the system of army organisation which had been established by Abdul Aziz that all the military departments were in confusion.2
The Tsar returns from Kishinev to St Petersburg. (Strantz)
Redif’s incompetence also extended to the part he played in the selection of field commanders, a process in which the Sultan insisted in taking a hand. In Europe, the key appointment was of course the overall command of the forces to defend the Danube and the Balkans, and the choice of the seventy-year old Abdul Kerim proved, as has been seen, to be a particularly serious error. Mukhtar’s appointment to the command in the Caucasus, on the other hand, proved an inspired choice. Less happy was the decision by Abdul Hamid to set up a war council in Constantinople as the supreme decision making body, composed effectively of the most elderly and incompetent generals that were not engaged in the field. He also established a separate private military advisory council, composed of members with close connections to the palace but lacking in military ability. Thus the War Ministry had to compete for the Sultan’s attention with two other bodies without any definition of their proper responsibilities.3
Abdul Kerim’s decision to concentrate the bulk of his army in the Quadrilateral was, as has already been noted, based on his intention to offer a purely static defence. As Maurice observed, ‘except as one more example to prove that a passive defence is no defence there is nothing to be learned from Abdul Kerim’s strategy.’4 It was a decision that effectively gave up any defence of the line of the Danube and discarded one of the Ottoman Empire’s principal advantages in a war with Russia, namely the command of the sea. Not only would this have enabled a Turkish seizure of Reni, Galatz and Braila, thus taking up a position on the flank of any Russian advance; it also provided a strong river flotilla with which an active defence of the Danube could have been conducted.5
The Turkish General Staff was, as has been previously observed, grossly incompetent, and this was noted frequently by the military attachés and war correspondents. Not only was it utterly inefficient when it came to organising the movement of troop units; it could not even arrange to keep commanders well informed. Early in the war, Kemball commented to Layard on the
utter helplessness of the Turkish commanders not only in the matter of interchanging information between their several corps and positions, but of learning with any degree of certainty what is passing within even twenty miles of their respective centres.6
On the Russian side there had been partial mobilisations on November 1 1876 and April 3 1877, but these failed to provide sufficient resources to conduct the campaigns against the Ottoman Empire. Both in the European campaign and that in the Caucasus the Russians began with what had appeared to be strong enough forces but which it was soon evident were not. The lack of sufficient manpower meant that the bold plan of Obruchev to cross the Danube and plunge straight forward to the Balkans with defensive screens on either side became a victim of those at Russian headquarters arguing for a more cautious strategy. In the Caucasus, the troops immediately available achieved some initial success before becoming bogged down; it took a further mobilisation in July to bring Grand Duke Michael’s forces to a level sufficient to take on Mukhtar’s army.
With a few exceptions, Russian generalship was not a great deal better than the Turkish. The Grand Duke Nicholas was of limited ability, although to his credit he did grasp the importance of keeping up the pressure after Plevna even though it meant a winter campaign. Todleben’s arrival brought much needed stability to the Russian headquarters. Skobelev was outstanding, and Gourko and Radetzky were effective: in Asia, much the best of the Russian leaders was Lazarev.
Reference has already been made to the superior weaponry with which the Turkish army went to war. The adoption of the Peabody-Martini rifle gave the Turkish infantry a significant advantage, while the performance of the new Krupp steel cannon entirely lived up to expectations. By comparison the Russian artillery struggled to make sufficient impact; the flat trajectory of their field guns generally meant that they were unable to inflict high casualties when the Turks were in secure fortifications. Todleben gloomily estimated that it required one day’s battery firing to kill a single Turk.
The Russian infantry stoically endured the most fearful conditions without complaint, and almost invariably displayed outstanding courage in battle. Their officers provided inspiring leadership, especially at regimental level, and paid a high price in the casualties which they sustained. Medical services had improved dramatically since the Crimean War, the mortality rate for sick and wounded having fallen to about one-third of the previous level.7 Supply services, on the other hand, were completely inadequate; as the army’s line of communication lengthened, the situation steadily deteriorated. This applied not only to the provision of sufficient food, but also to boots and winter clothing, a problem that caused severe suffering in the dreadful weather conditions which the troops endured.8 Greene paid a particular tribute to the Russian soldiers to whom he ascribed the principal cause of the Russian success in the winter campaign:
From the time the movement was well under way the men never saw their knapsacks, which remained north of the Balkans till some time after the armistice. They marched and fought and slept in snow and ice, and forded rivers with the thermometer at zero. They had no blankets and the frozen ground precluded all idea of tents … their clothing at night was the same as in the day, and it differed from that of the summer only in the addition of an overcoat, woollen jacket, and a ‘bashlik’ or woollen muffler for the head … there was more than one instance where the men fought, and fought well, not only without breakfast, but without having tasted food in twenty four hours. Yet, in face of these unusual privations and hardships, there was not a single case of insubordination.9
Greene was, however, well aware of the downside of the characteristics of the Russian soldier:
He instinctively looks for orders, and obeys them with a blind instinct, without stopping to question their merit; left to his own resources, he is almost helpless, and will often get killed from sheer stupidity in standing still and waiting for an order when everyone is dead who has the right to give one … Deprived of their officers, a body of Russian soldiers may degenerate into a helpless, inert mass, and be slaughtered by means of their very cohesiveness, but will never take a panic.10
Compared to the Turkish artillery, the Russian gunners, much less well equipped and with horses that were often worn out, were frequently ineffectual, although their courage in bringing their guns into action usually matched that of the infantry which they supported. The Russian cavalry, frequently poorly commanded, achieved less than might have been expected of them; on the whole the Cossack units seem to have done better than the regular cavalry. Menning suggests that cavalry commanders failed to employ their troops in conjunction with infantry as a result of the changing role of cavalry on a battlefield in which the killing power of weapons had so markedly increased.11
The Turkish regular infantry of the Nizam and Redif generally displayed just as much courage and endurance as their Russian adversaries, coming forward to attack enemy positions with great determination. They were, however, badly led; the quality of Turkish officers at all levels was poor. This in particular was the cause of the collapse of morale that on occasion led Turkish infantry to break and flee. The Mustafiz, frequently largely composed of troops with little training, were much less reliable. Overall, the quality of individual units was, as Baker for instance speedily learned, extremely uneven. The Turkish infantry did of course have the Peabody-Martini and it was also much better clothed than previously in the history of the Ottoman army – better, too, in the matter of winter clothing, than the Russian infantry.12 It, too, endured the dreadful conditions of the winter campaign with immense fortitude.
It was generally agreed by observers, military attachés and war correspondents alike, that the infantry on both sides were basically of high quality. Wellesley reported:
As far as the individual soldier is concerned, without in any way detracting from the stubborn courage and powers of endurance which characterize the Russian, it has been proved that the Turk is quite his equal.13
And another British observer suggested that ‘man for man the Turkish soldier seems the better, but is very badly officered, which must tell in operations on a large scale in the open,’ a view that was repeatedly borne out in the course of the war.
The Turkish artillerymen generally made effective use of the superiority of their guns, especially when employed in the defence of prepared positions. In the open field they were handicapped by the poor quality of their horses. Their performance would have been improved had more attention been paid to their technical instruction. The regular cavalry were badly mounted and poorly trained, and there were not nearly enough of them; Mukhtar in particular was gravely handicapped by the lack of sufficient horsemen to provide a screen and to gather intelligence. The irregular cavalry were, generally, worse than useless, more concerned with looting than in making any effective contribution in battle. Hirschfeld, the German military attaché at Constantinople, thought that the Turks ‘received not the slightest bit of support from this material,’ while Colonel Lennox considered that their discipline was ‘infinitesimal’:
They march when and as they please, there is no roll-call; their actions are almost independent of all authority and after pillaging they quietly drive off cattle to their homes which may be literally hundreds of miles away.14
The Sultan decorating wounded Turkish soldiers. (The Graphic)
Although the Ottoman army was thus better clothed and equipped than it had ever been, the rear services remained disastrously bad. Medical services were lamentably inadequate, although the devoted service of a considerable number of foreign doctors somewhat assuaged this problem. Ammunition was generally well supplied, but other stores and provisions were often lacking. Transport, or the lack of it, remained a serious handicap throughout the war in both theatres.
The many foreign observers, military attachés, war correspondents and volunteers that accompanied the armies brought back accounts of a number of aspects of the fighting to illustrate the military lessons to be derived from the war. Of these, much the most important feature was the use of field fortifications in the context of the development of firearms. Temporary fortifications were a response to the range, precision and rapidity of fire of modern rifles, so much so that it could be said that during the war ‘the combination of trench and breechloader attained such a perfection, that the whole campaign may be said to have consisted – tactically – of the attack and defence of more or less hastily fortified positions.’15
Greene illustrated the stopping power of the latest rifles by a calculation that four hundred men occupying a redoubt with a front of one hundred yards could deliver 24 shots to a range of a mile and a quarter in twelve minutes, the time to be taken by an attacking force to cover that distance. If only five per cent of the bullets found a target the defenders could have put out of action three times their own number. Greene put it thus:
The above illustration is sufficient to call attention to the great fact of modern tactics, viz., that in the last few years the defence, behind fortifications, has enormously gained upon the attack, owing to the improvement in small-arms; or in other words, that any attacking force is now at a very much greater disadvantage than it was fifteen years ago.16
The necessity of being able to construct field fortifications quickly applied to the attackers as well as the defenders. Three decades after the war, reviewing the lessons to be learned from it, General Langlois noted that Skobelev ‘never advanced a foot without making sure of his position by field fortifications,’ and that he constantly complained of the entrenching tools available:
If we consider in how short a time the Russians ultimately were able to construct very efficient cover, although they were poorly supplied with the necessary tools, we shall come to the conclusion that the rapid construction of field works, which are of such high value nowadays, is quite as much a factor at the disposal of the attack as it is of the defence. It allows the attack to firmly establish itself at each stage of its progress. Skobelev understood this and made use of all the advantages that the offensive could gain from this new feature in war.17
Not all Skobelev’s colleagues grasped the point as clearly as he did, and throughout the war the Turks were much more proficient in strengthening their positions rapidly in this way, as a result of which the Russian infantry frequently sustained heavy casualties when coming forward to attack while unable to make an effective reply.
Greene was irritated by the talk of Russian officers who spoke of the Turkish use of earthworks as ‘a new method of making war,’ reporting to Washington that ‘the lessons of our civil war have unfortunately not been studied by the Russians.’18 Kemball, however, had noted, as had other observers, the extent to which some at any rate of the Russians had learned from their adversaries, reporting to Layard:
In illustration of the caution with which their reverses in this campaign have inspired the Russians I may mention that the battlefield is ploughed up on every side with rifle-pits and shells-trenches dug by them on their first advance upon the Turkish lines or in the successive steps of their retreat as well as to secure the flank and rear of the main column.19
However, an instance of one Russian commander, at any rate, who had not learned the lesson properly occurred as late as the final crossing of the Balkans, when Prince Mirsky rejected a suggestion put forward by Pfeil:
I was not always able to carry my own views through. For example, I proposed that various field fortification works should be executed during the night, so as at all events to secure our line of retreat. Neither the Prince nor the two colonels would, however, hear of them.20
The reliance placed by the Turks on their effective field fortifications was partly responsible for the mindset of commanders who were reluctant to conduct a war of manoeuvre; this hesitation was also, quite justifiably, prompted by an awareness of the inability of the staff to organise movement in the face of the enemy with any degree of efficiency. Werder, writing after the Second Battle of Plevna, mourned the opportunity that he felt had been lost, due to the Turkish lack of energy and initiative when on the offensive compared to that which they displayed when standing on the defensive; another army, he thought, would at once have taken steps to threaten the position of the Tsarevich’s army.21
In her comprehensive assessment of the reports of the foreign military attachés who accompanied the armies, Maureen O’Connor observed that in considering the lessons that might be learned from the war, they had to take account of the fact that ‘these were not European armies officered by European men playing by European rules.’22 This view was particularly strengthened by their experience of the atrocities which they encountered. The evidence of the attachés as to these may be more to be relied on than that of the war correspondents, who were writing for a popular audience and able to give free rein to their portrayal of what they saw. On the whole, however, the accounts given by the war correspondents were remarkably consistent with the reports of the attachés.
The war had begun against the background of the painfully explicit accounts of the most revolting barbarity with which the Turks had suppressed the Bulgarian insurgency. Even now the stately Victorian prose in which these events were reported still has the power to shock the modern reader. If MacGahan’s letters from Bulgaria were written in the most emotional terms, the horrors that he described were amply confirmed by others, such as Eugene Schuyler, who as a US consular official reported them from a different standpoint. MacGahan was clear in what he wanted to achieve:
The crimes that were committed here are beyond the reach of exaggeration. There were stories related to us that are maddening in their atrocity, that cause the heart to swell in a burst of impotent rage that can only find vent in pitying, useless tears … If I tell what I have seen and heard it is because I want the people of England to understand what these Turks are.23
After publication of the reports of the appalling barbarities that had occurred in 1876, it was accordingly to be expected that once the fighting had begun there would be allegations and counter-allegations made of atrocities committed by both sides. Many battles ended with a detailed report of such acts, perpetrated both on opposing troops and upon the civilian population. It is necessary to consider whether the conduct of the troops on either side went substantially beyond the casual and murderous brutality that has been the characteristic of soldiers in battle down the ages. This had been a war between two ancient enemies, one of which was culturally not really on a par with the countries of Western Europe, and the other in which mediaeval barbarity was still a feature of everyday life; it was always going to be fought with an extreme ferocity that was shocking to the Western observers.
The existence of the perceived cultural and social difference between Russia and Turkey on the one hand and the remaining Great Powers on the other was something of which observers were obliged to take account, in their assessment both of the fighting qualities of the troops involved and of their behaviour as a whole. Attitudes in Russia sometimes came as a considerable surprise; Wellesley, for instance, was shaken by what he found at Russian headquarters:
No words can describe its filthy condition. It was absolutely innocent of all sanitary arrangements, and although, as I have elsewhere pointed out, Russia is the strangest mixture of luxury and barbarism, it always appeared to me inconceivable that the Emperor, who was continually moving about the camp, should have tolerated such a disgusting state of things.24
This kind of thing confirmed the foreign military observers in their belief that this was not, fundamentally, a European war.
It was not long before they began to experience personally some of the appalling aspects of warfare between these two nations. The incident witnessed by Liegnitz in July 1877 during Gourko’s defence of the Shipka Pass, when the Turks fired on a flag of truce, was an early indication that not only the Turkish irregular cavalry were capable of the most appalling atrocities but that at times the regular infantry, usually very disciplined, could behave very badly, and could do so on the orders of their officers. MacGahan, who was present, and reported the mutilation of the Russian dead and wounded, considered the reason for the incident:
Evidently a pure outburst of savage ferocity; the rage of the savage who finds himself beaten on all hands by a civilised enemy, and flings a deliberate defiance at civilised modes of warfare and revenges himself in the only way his barbarous nature can find satisfaction by violating the most sacred law of civilised warfare.25
The massacre at Eski Zagra also appears to have taken place with the connivance of Turkish officers as well, it was suggested, of Suleiman himself; it was alleged that he had ‘reduced the entire town to ashes on account of the “treason” of the inhabitants in asking the Russians to come there.’26 In this case the victims were the Bulgarian population, but the ferocity of the attack upon them may have been exacerbated by the fact that it was troops of the Bulgarian Legion that had opposed the Turks there.
The evidence of Turkish atrocities, in both the European and Caucasus theatres, was convincing, although it was from time to time exaggerated in the reports of pro-Russian observers. On the other hand Layard, of course, was always prepared to put the best face he could on the Turkish position. He pointed out that the atrocities that had been committed against Christian populations were ‘assigned by all trustworthy authorities’ to the Circassians and the Bashi-Bazouks. While, he wrote, the Turkish government had to accept responsibility for their actions, he implausibly offered excuses:
But it must not be forgotten, at the same time, that Turkey has been forced into this struggle for existence, and that she has been compelled to have recourse to every available means to defend all that is dear to men – honour, country, religion, and life.27
The Turkish authorities endeavoured to suggest that the Russian troops were also guilty of grave crimes on a regular basis; although there were certainly atrocities committed against the Turkish civilian population, these seem to have been the work of Bulgarian civilians. A large number of observers reported on what they had found in relation to the Turkish allegations; perhaps the most magisterial of the published accounts came from Archibald Forbes, in an article for the 19th century for November 1877, in which he set out in detail his conclusions:
Of the multitudinous atrocities on Turkish refugees charged against the Russian soldiery with so great persistent circumstantiality by Turkish authorities and their abettors, I have never found the smallest tittle of evidence, and on soul and conscience believe the allegations thereof to be utterly false.28
In a lengthy article, he refuted the suggestions that the Russian soldier was a ‘brutal ignorant boor’ and reported that, to the contrary, he had found them ‘delightful comrades, of inexhaustible good humour, light hearted under hardship, humane, of a genuine, if unobtrusive humanity.’29 Forbes’s account was emphatically confirmed by Colonel Brackenbury, in a lengthy article published a month later in The Times. None of this was, of course, to the taste of those engaged in whipping up anti-Russian feeling in England. These views of the Russian soldier were matched on the other side; Herbert, serving with Turkish regulars inside Plevna, found much the same qualities in his comrades there.
One Turkish commander at any rate made plain to his troops the behaviour he expected of them. In a proclamation which he published to his troops early in October 1877 when he was contemplating an advance across the Russian frontier, Ahmed Mukhtar made an emphatic statement of his position:
By the grace of the All Powerful the enemy has been obliged to retreat from our country, beaten and humiliated. Since then, our most ardent wish is about to be fulfilled; we are going to take the offensive and cross the frontier. Although we have had in our country to endure iniquitous, illegal and barbarous acts at the hands of the Russians, I expect each one of you to conduct himself sympathetically towards the oppressed people of Erivan. In accordance with your inmost feelings and your traditional generosity you will avoid any actions to satisfy base passions; you will not break our holy Law which is above civil law and no man among you will shame himself by committing acts of pillage and oppression as the Russians have done. It is a horrible crime, against our law, to kill a human being, the most wonderful creation of God. Therefore you will forebear from unjust killing or acts of pillage … As thinking men, take these precepts to heart, obey your leaders and respect your holy Law.30
But if the Russians may be acquitted of actively perpetrating outrages of the kind suggested, they must nevertheless be found guilty of the most appalling treatment by default of the prisoners that fell into their hands after Plevna. No provision had been made for the huge numbers with which they had to deal, even though it had been obvious for a long time that sooner or later Plevna would fall and the problem of caring for them would immediately arise. Their fate, illustrated by the war artist Frederick Villiers in his drawing of the ‘Death March of the Turkish Prisoners,’ was dreadful beyond words. As they were marched off into captivity, scantily clad and barefoot, in fearsome weather, it was estimated that 5,000 died before they reached Bucharest; of the 43,000 that were sent northwards, only 15,000 reached Russia.31
Every war is a profound tragedy for the people of the country in which it is fought. Humanity, decency, kindness and mercy may be largely suspended, even by the civilian population. For the people of Bulgaria, Christians and Moslems alike, the experience of 1877-1878 was peculiarly dreadful, coming as it did after the well-documented atrocities of the repression of the Bulgarian uprising. The war left a ruined country. True, Bulgaria had taken a long stride towards freedom and independence, but the price paid was fearful, in the loss of life, the devastation of towns and villages and the destruction of the framework of society. Consul Fawcett wrote to Layard after visiting the districts south of the Balkans that the war ‘had probably caused more human misery than even the invasion of the Visigoths, who fourteen centuries before desolated these same fertile countries.’
Understandably, most of those involved in the war looked back on it as an outstanding event in world history. For Francis Greene, the heroes were the Russian soldiers:
Their self abnegation and cheerfulness under great physical suffering, to which their brilliant success was pre-eminently due, are excelled by nothing of which we have any record in history, and they entitle every man of those trans-Balkan columns to the lasting gratitude of their own countrymen and the friends of Christian government everywhere, no less than to the admiration of the entire world, which still appreciates the value of military heroism.32
On the other side of the hill, William von Herbert reflected not only on the horrors of the battle for Plevna:
It is also rich in features which lay bare all that is most beautiful and most noble in human nature. Even if no moral, whether strategical or tactical, historical or political could be drawn from it, even if it could not form the basis for a whole superstructure of conjectures for the future, it shows the sublime grandeur to which men can rise who fight (or imagine they fight) for a righteous cause.33
