THE RUSSIANS IN TURKEY?” 

The certainty of war, and the probability that each steamer that 
now arrives from Europe will report the maneuvers of armies and 
the results of battles, render it more than ever necessary accurately 
to understand the respective positions and forces of the comba- 
tants, and the various facts which will govern the movements of 
the campaign. This necessity we propose to meet by a succinct 
analysis of the elements of offense and defense on both sides, and of 
the leading strategic considerations which are likely to have weight 
on the minds of the opposing commanders. 

The Russian troops occupying the Danubian Principalities 
consisted, at the beginning, of two infantry corps and the usual 
amount of reserve cavalry and artillery. An infantry corps in 
Russia, counts three divisions, or six brigades of infantry, several 
regiments of light cavalry, and a brigade of artillery, which, 
altogether, should amount to about 55,000 men, with about a 
hundred guns. To every two infantry corps there is a “reserve 
cavalry corps” and some reserve artillery, including heavy siege 
artillery. Thus, the original army of occupation amounts, upon 
paper, to something like 125,000 men. A third infantry corps has 
since begun to cross the Pruth, and we may, therefore, after all 
due deductions, consider the Russian forces concentrated on the 
Danube to number from 140,000 to 150,000 fighting men. How 
many, in a given moment, may be able to rally around the 
standards, depends upon the sanitary condition of the district, the 
greater or less efficiency of the Russian commissariat, and other 
circumstances of a similar nature which it is impossible correctly to 
estimate at a distance. 

From all the information at our command, the Turkish army 
opposed to the Russians on the Danube, may be estimated at the 
very outside, at 110,000 to 120,000 men. Before the arrival of the 
Egyptian contingent, it was generally asserted not to surpass 
90,000 men. There is, then, as far as we can judge, an evident 
inferiority of numbers on the part of the Turks. And as to the 
intrinsic value and quality of either army, an equal superiority on 
the part of the Russians must be admitted. It is true that the 
Turkish artillery, formed by excellent French and _ Prussian 
officers, enjoys a high reputation, while the Russian gunners are 
notoriously poor marksmen; but in spite of all recent improve- 
ments, the Turkish infantry cannot be compared to Russian 
grenadiers, and Turkish horsemen still lack that discipline and 
steadiness in battle which will allow of a second and a third charge 
after the first has been repulsed. 

The Generals, on both sides, are comparatively new men. The 
military merits of Prince Gorchakoff, the Russian commander, and 
the reasons why the Emperor appointed him to that post, we have 
already had occasion to state to our readers.”*' An honest man, 
and a zealous partisan of Russia’s “manifest destiny,” it yet 
remains to be seen whether he can conduct a campaign of such 
magnitude as that now opening. Omer Pasha, the Turkish 
Generalissimo, is better known, and what we know of him is 
generally favorable. His expeditions against Kurdistan and Mon- 
tenegro were, the first successful under difficult circumstances; the 
second, exceedingly well planned, and certain of almost bloodless 
success, but for the interference of diplomacy.?” The chief 
superiority, then, which can be found on the side of the Turks is, 
perhaps, that of generalship; in most other respects the Russians 
have the advantage. 

Though the Turks have declared war, and are perhaps, more 
vehement in their disposition to come to blows than the Russians, 
it seems evident, that as the weaker party, they will find the 
greater advantage in defensive, and the Russians in offensive 
action. This of course excludes the chances which may arise from 
glaring mistakes in the arrangements of either General. If the 
Turks were strong enough for the offensive, their tactics would be 
plain. They would then have to deceive the Russians by false 
maneuvers on the upper Danube, concentrate their forces rapidly 
between Silistra and Orsova, cross the lower Danube, fall upon 
the enemy where his position is weakest, namely, at the narrow 
strip of land forming the frontier between Wallachia and 
Moldavia; and then separating the Russian troops in both 

The Russians in Turkey 337 

Principalities from each other, repel with concentrated forces the 
corps in Moldavia, and crush that which would find itself isolated 
and cut off in Wallachia. But as all the chances of an offensive 
movement are against the Turks, they could reasonably undertake 
a similar operation in consequence only of egregious blunders on 
the part of the Russian General. 

If the Russians seize the opportunity for offensive action, they 
have two natural obstacles to pass before they penetrate to the 
heart of the Turkish Empire; first the Danube and then the 
Balkan. The passage of a large river, even in presence of a hostile 
army, is a military feat so often performed during the revolu- 
tionary and Napoleonic wars, that every lieutenant now-a-days 
can tell how it is to be done. A few feigned movements, a 
well-appointed pontoon train, some batteries to cover the bridges, 
good measures for securing the retreat, and a brave vanguard, are 
about all the conditions required. But the crossing of a great 
mountain range, and especially one provided with so few passes 
and practicable roads as the Balkan, is a more serious operation. 
And when this mountain range runs parallel to the river, at a 
distance of no more than forty or sixty miles, as the Balkan does 
to the Danube, the matter becomes more serious still, as a corps 
defeated on the hills may, by active pursuit, be cut off from its 
bridges and thrown into the river before succor can arrive; an 
army, thus defeated in a great battle, would be inevitably lost. It is 
this proximity and parallel direction of the Danube and the 
Balkan which forms the natural military strength of Turkey. The 
Balkan, from the Macedo-Servian frontier to the Black Sea, that is 
the Balkan proper, “Veliki Balkan,” has five passes, two of which 
are high roads, such as high roads are in Turkey. These two are 
the passes of Ikhtiman, on the road from Belgrade, through Sofia, 
Philippopolis and Adrianople to Constantinople, and of Dobrol, 
on the road from Silistra and Shumla. The other three, of which 
two are between the above and the third towards the Black Sea, 
may be considered as impracticable for a large army, with the 
impediments of war. They may give passage to smaller corps, 
perhaps even to light field artillery, but they cannot be made the 
lines of operation and of communication for the main body of the 
invaders. 

In 1828 and 1829, the Russian forces operated upon the line 
from Silistra by Dobrol to Adrianople, Ainadjik, this route being 
the shortest and most direct from the Russian frontier to the 
Turkish Capital, offers itself as the most natural to any Russian 
army which comes from the north, is supported by a fleet in 

undisputed possession of the Black Sea, and whose object is to 
bring matters to a speedy decision by a victorious march upon 
Constantinople. In order to pass by this road, a Russian army, 
after having passed the Danube, has to force a strong position 
flanked by the two fortresses of Shumla and Varna, to blockade or 
to take both of these fortresses, and then to pass the Balkan. In 
1828, the Turks risked their main strength in this position. They 
were defeated at Kulevcha”’; Varna and Shumla were taken, the 
defense of the Balkan was but feeble, and the Russians arrived at 
Adrianople, very much enfeebled, it is true, but yet having 
encountered no resistance, as the Turkish army was completely 
dissolved and not a brigade at hand for the defense of 
Constantinople. The Turks committed, on that occasion, a great 
mistake. A range of mountains, as every officer understands, must 
not be defended by a defensive position in front of it, nor by 
dividing the defending armies so as to block up all the passes; but 
by taking up a central position behind it, by observing all the 
passes, and when the enemy’s intentions are clearly developed, by 
falling with concentrated forces upon the heads of his columns as 
they emerge from the various ravines of the mountain range. The 
strong position across the Russian line of operations between 
Varna and Shumla led the Turks to make that decisive stand 
there, which, with more concentrated strength and against an 
enemy necessarily weakened by sickness and detachments, they 
ought to have made in the plain of Adrianople. 

Thus we see that in the defense of the line from Silistra to 
Adrianople the passage of the Danube ought to be defended 
without risking a decisive action. The second stand should be 
made behind, not between, Shumla and Varna, and no decisive 
action risked unless the chances of victory are very great. Retreat 
across the Balkan is the next step leaving the passes defended by 
detachments, capable of as much resistance as may appear 
advisable without bringing on a decisive engagement. In the 
meantime the Russians will weaken themselves by blockading the 
fortresses, and, if they follow their anterior practice, they will 
again take these fortresses by storm, and lose a great many men by 
the operation; for it is a curious fact, and characteristic of the 
Russian army, that up to the present time it has, unaided, never 
been able to lay a regular siege. The want of skilful engineers and 
artillerists, the impossibility of creating in a barbarous country 
large magazines of war, material for sieges, or even to carry across 
immense tracts of country whatever material may exist, have 
always driven the Russians to the necessity of carrying every 

The Russians in Turkey 339 

fortified place by assault after a short, violent, but seldom very 
effective cannonade. Thus Suwaroff took Ismail and Otchakov?*; 
thus, in 1828 and 1829, the Turkish fortresses in Europe and Asia 
were stormed; and thus they carried Warsaw in 1831.*°° In either 
case the Russian army will arrive at the passes of the Balkan in a 
weakened condition, while the Turks have had time to concentrate 
their detachments from all sides. If the invaders are not repelled 
while attempting to cross the Balkan, by a dash of the whole 
Turkish army, the decisive battle may be fought under the walls of 
Adrianople, and then, if the Turks are defeated, they will at least 
have exhausted all the chances left them. 

But a Russian victory at Adrianople can, under present 
circumstances, decide very little. The British and French fleets are 
at Constantinople, and in their teeth no Russian General can 
march upon that capital. The Russians, arrested at Adrianople, 
unable to rely on the support of their fleet, which itself would be 
menaced, would soon fall victims by thousands to disease, and 
have to retrace their steps beyond the Balkan. Thus, even in 
victory, they would be defeated as regards their great object in the 
war. There is, however, another line of operations which they 
may, perhaps, more advantageously take. It is indicated by the 
route which leads from Widin and Nikopolis, by way of Sofia, to 
Adrianople. Apart from political considerations, it would never 
enter the head of any sensible Russian General to follow this 
route. But so long as Russia can depend on Austria—so long as 
the approach of a Russian army to the Serbian frontier, combined 
with Russian intrigues in Serbia, may excite insurrectionary 
movements in that country, in Montenegro, and among the 
predominant Greco-Slavic population of Bosnia, Macedonia, and 
Bulgaria—so long as the crowning operation of a strictly military 
campaign, the taking of Constantinople, is out of the question, 
from the presence of a European fleet—so long this plan of 
campaign will be the only one which the Russians can adopt with 
much chance of success, and without forcing England and France 
to determined hostile action by too direct a march upon 
Constantinople. 

It appears, indeed, from the present position of the Russian 
army, that something of this sort is projected. Its right wing has 
been extended to Krajova, near the western frontier of Wallachia, 
and a general shifting of its array toward the upper Danube has 
taken place. As this maneuver is entirely out of the line of 
operations by Silistra and Shumla, it can only have for its object to 
put the Russians in communication with Servia, the center of 

Slavic nationality and Greek Catholicism in Turkey. A defensive 
position on the lower Danube, combined with an advance across 
the upper Danube toward Sofia, would be perfectly safe if 
supported by Austria, combined with a movement of the Turkish 
Slavonians in favor of national independence; and such a 
movement could not be more forcibly provoked than by a march 
of the Russian army into the very heart of the Slavonian 
population of Turkey. Thus, the Czar* will obtain far more easily 
and in a far less offensive manner what he has claimed 
throughout the controversy. This is the organization of all the 
Turkish Slavonians in distinct principalities, such as Moldavia, 
Wallachia and Servia now are. With Bulgaria, Montenegro and 
Macedonia under the nominal sovereignty of the Sultan” and the 
real protection of the Czar, Turkey in Europe would be confined 
to the environs of Constantinople and deprived of its nursery of 
soldiers, Albania. This would be a far better result for Russia than 
a decisive victory at Adrianople, followed by a dead stand of her 
armies. It is a result which appearances indicate that she is about 
to try for. Whether she is not mistaken in relying on the 
Slavonians of Turkey is a doubtful question, though there will be 
no cause of astonishment should they all declare against her.