Friedrich Engels

The War on the Danube

Written on July 6, 1854.

From the English.

[“New-York Daily Tribune,” No. 4139, July 25, 1854, leading article]

About eighty years ago, when the victorious armies of Catherine II were tearing one province after another from Turkey, and subsequently transforming them into what is now called Southern Russia, there occurs in one of those outbursts of lyrical enthusiasm in which the poet Derzhavin was wont to hymn the glory, not to say the virtues, of that empress and the divinely ordained greatness of her empire, a memorable line which even today sums up the defiant boldness and self-consciousness of Tsarist policy:

And wherefore dost thou need, O Russia, any ally?

Advance, and the whole world is thine!

This would still hold true today, if only Russia could advance; but a rather stout bolt has been thrust against this movement. Hence, at least for the time being, it is compelled to postpone the seizure of the whole world a little longer. What particularly wounds its pride, however, is that in its retreat it can take with it no pledge of world dominion, but must even leave behind it the keys of the mere fortress of Silistria on the Danube, which it had sworn to possess. And, more painful still, it leaves behind the remains of some 50,000 of its brethren, who perished in this campaign alone, either by disease or in combat.

Without doubt, the siege of Silistria is, from a military point of view, the most significant event since the beginning of the war. The failure to capture this fortress makes the campaign a failure for the Russians, and to the retreat now taking place behind the Sereth is added disgrace and the Tsar’s disfavour. We have already described the earlier stages of the siege to our readers in detail and, as we hope, intelligibly; now that the official Russian reports have at last arrived with the *Pacific*, we can follow the whole affair to its conclusion without doing injustice to either side. Besides the Russian reports, which recount what they relate clearly, distinctly and soberly, but which present a mass of omissions, we have at our disposal the report of Lieutenant Nasmyth (of the Bengal Artillery) to the *London Times*. This is a complete diary of the siege, with interesting details, but somewhat carelessly composed, and occasionally with inaccurate dates. Our earlier expressed views and conclusions concerning the siege are, we may calmly assert, fully confirmed by these later and more detailed accounts, with the single exception that the Turks were not obliged to abandon the defence of Fort Arab-Tabia, as we supposed in the course of the siege. Besides, the Russians probably proceeded even more recklessly in their operations than we assumed. At first they formally attacked the fortress from the east side, in the low ground along the Danube, hoping to turn the whole of the detached forts and at once to breach the main rampart of the fortress. This attempt certainly possessed no other merit than that of originality. It offers, perhaps, the first example of entrenchments and approaches for the siege of a fortress being thrown up in ground that was not only flanked but directly commanded in rear by heights fortified by the enemy. Subsequently, however, a second, non-formal attack was undertaken on those very heights, and was conducted with such skill that, after a fortnight of fruitless attempts at storming and reconnaissances, in which thousands of Russians were killed or disabled, a formal siege also had to be opened against the heights. So much for the skill of the Russians. Now let us pass to the details during the siege.

On 1 June, a new train of siege artillery crossed from the left bank of the Danube, and the Russians erected it as a battery against Arab-Tabia. The Turks dug shafts and drove mines under the counterscarp and the glacis of this fort. On 2 June, Mussa Pasha, the commandant of Silistria, was killed by a shell. Towards evening, the Russians exploded a mine under one of the bastions of Arab-Tabia. As they could not yet have reached the crest of the glacis by this time, the mine was certainly not very exactly placed. The distances, as well as the line of least resistance, must have been wrongly calculated, and so it happened that the mine, instead of damaging the Turkish works of defence, exploded backwards and showered the Russian trenches with a hail of stones and earth. Here, however, the assault columns stood ready for the attack, and the effect of this hail of stones upon them can easily be imagined. To what extent, by the way, the Russians succeeded in effectively investing the fortress is shown by the fact that on this day 5,000 Turkish irregulars from Rasgrad, west of Silistria, cut their way through into the besieged town.

From 4 to 8 June, work on the trenches against Arab-Tabia was continued. The Russians reached the glacis and boldly pushed a sap up to its crest, though they were only very feebly supported by the fire of their artillery. They began to lay a mine below the ditch and advanced with it as far as beneath the escarp of the bastion. At the same time, on 9 June, Field Marshal Paskevich again staged one of his incomprehensible armed spectacles, in the shape of a great forced reconnaissance of the fortress with 31 battalions, 40 squadrons and 144 field guns. What he hoped to gain by this spectacle cannot be said. It looks as though it were undertaken merely in the hope that some opportunity might present itself of proceeding seriously, or at least of producing upon the enemy an impression of irresistibility. On the Turks, however, it had no such effect. On the contrary, they sent forward 4,000 cavalry, who, according to the Russian bulletin, were dreadfully beaten. Nasmyth, on the other hand, assures us that they captured 60 Russian horses in the hand-to-hand fight. And instead of reconnoitring something to his own advantage, Paskevich himself, according to the report, was reconnoitred by a Turkish cannon-ball, which put him *hors de combat* and made it necessary to convey him to Jassy.

On 10 June, the siege reached its climax. The great mine, Schilder’s last hope, had been fired. It indeed blew a practicable breach in the front bastion of Arab-Tabia. The Russian columns advanced to the assault; but, as they might well have guessed, the Turks had long since erected a *coupure*, or second parapet with a ditch, a little behind the main rampart, and when the Russians had come up they found themselves checked and exposed to a murderous fire. Once an assault column is brought to a halt, however, it is already beaten, for the opponent, covered by the parapet and supported by artillery, fires at a distance at which every shot tells, and compels the column to withdraw in a few minutes. The Russians accordingly had to beat their retreat through the breach as quickly as possible; they were pursued by the Turks right up to their own trenches, who destroyed part of the siege works. This assault was the last serious undertaking of the Russians against Silistria. If the siege was continued in appearance and for form’s sake until the order came to raise it, this was done only to save face. By 12 June, so little remained of the investment that European officers were able to enter the fortress without difficulty from Shumla.

The Russians had opened their trenches in the low ground on 19 May. On the 22nd, their batteries, seven in number, opened fire on Arab-Tabia. A further fifteen guns were brought to bear against this fort the following day. Nevertheless, according to the Russian report, the formal attack on Arab-Tabia did not begin until 31 May. This seems to indicate that the batteries erected on the 21st and 22nd had only the function of a first parallel, and consisted only of heavy field guns intended to enfilade the fort. From 31 May to 10 June, the Russian batteries approached the fort to within a hundred yards, that is to say, from the first to the third parallel at the foot of the glacis. But the glacis was neither crowned, nor were trench batteries erected; instead, as already mentioned, a sap was driven up the slope of the glacis in order to sink the mine-shaft there. Since it is evident from all accounts that Arab-Tabia was hardly more than a field work, of great extent but of slight strength, the conduct of its defenders, who consisted only of 4 battalions and 500 irregulars under Hussein Pasha, certainly deserves the highest praise. A nine-day cannonade, eleven days of open entrenchments, two mines and four or five assaults, and all this ending with the defeat of the enemy—truly, we recall no second example in the history of war where a simple outwork of the kind of Arab-Tabia held out so well. It may best be compared with the defence of Kolberg by the Prussians in 1807 and that of Danzig by the French in 1813.

There has probably been considerable astonishment that Omer Pasha did nothing during the whole siege to support or relieve so important a fortress. From his letter addressed to Sami Pasha, the Governor of Vidin, however, it appears that he was actually already making preparations to come to the aid of Silistria when the Russians withdrew to the left bank of the Danube.

“You know,” it says in this letter, “that I had assembled all our troops before Shumla and that I prepared the march for the relief of the fortress. Six cavalry regiments and three batteries had already left Shumla for that purpose. As the Russians had got word of this movement, they withdrew with their entire artillery in great haste to the left bank. During the forty-day siege of the fortress they had lost 25,000 dead.”

What the Russians will now do is impossible to decide. Some Vienna papers report that they intend to take up a position behind the Buseo, but the same papers assert that it is allegedly fear of Austria that drives them back, and that the Buseo has already been turned by the Austrians. Should the Russians attempt to hold Moldavia, they would be outflanked by the Austrians from Galicia and the Bukovina. A timely concentration of the Russian troops in Poland with the former Danube army in Podolia and Volhynia, however, would in turn outflank the Austrians and endanger the north-eastern part of Galicia as far as the San and the Dniester.

If we disregard political considerations for a moment and assume that Austria is prepared to join the allied forces for an attack on Russia, the situation would be as follows: Austria could put 200,000 to 250,000 men into the field to join with the Allies, who on their part dispose of about 160,000 men – 100,000 to 120,000 Turks and around 60,000 Anglo-French troops. Against these forces Russia could oppose the four corps of the Danube army together with their reserves, which, after deducting an appropriate allowance for losses, amount to about 200,000 men. The second corps, commanded by Panjutin, and the three reserve corps of cavalry with some additional infantry reserves and reinforcements from fresh levies would probably make up a total of about 180,000 men, so that Russia’s entire military strength would amount to 350,000 men, from which the garrisons protecting the Crimea and a part of South Russia would have to be deducted. Beyond these, there would remain the guards, the grenadiers and the first army corps available for the defence of Poland and the Baltic provinces – not counting the Finnish Corps of about 15,000 men. Taking everything into consideration, the difference between the two belligerent powers would not be so great that Russia could not count on moderate success if it confined itself to a skilful defence.

If, as the latest diplomatic news and its total inactivity on the Moldavian border indicate, Austria has no intention other than to mediate between the belligerent powers, we can safely assume that nothing at all will happen in the course of this year, neither in Moldavia nor in Bessarabia.