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| Siege of Pleven | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of theRusso-Turkish War (1877–1878) | |||||||
 The capture of theGrivitsa redoubt, by Henryk Dembitzky | |||||||
| |||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||
 Russian Empire Kingdom of Romania Bulgarian Volunteers |  Ottoman Empire | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Tsar Alexander II[4]Yuri Schilder-Schuldner (1st Rus. assault)[5] Nikolay Kridener(2nd Rus. assault)[5] Pavel Zotov(Great Assault)[a][5] Grand Duke Nicholas(Great Assault)[b][5] Mikhail Skobelev(Great Assault)[5] Eduard Totleben(Breakout attempt)[5] Iosif Gurko(Breakout attempt)[5] KingCarol I of Romania(Great Assault)[c][5] Mihail Cerchez | Osman Nuri Pasha  Edhem Pasha Sefë Kosharja Abdullah Pashë Dreni | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
130,000[2] | 67,000[2] | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
50,000 killed, wounded and missing[1] |
| ||||||
Thesiege of Plevna orPleven, was a major battle of theRusso-Turkish War of 1877–1878, fought by the joint army ofRussian Empire andKingdom of Romania against theOttoman Empire.[6] After the Russian army crossed theDanube atSvishtov, it began advancing towards the centre of modern Bulgaria, with the aim of crossing theBalkan Mountains toConstantinople, avoiding the fortified Turkish fortresses on theBlack Sea coast. The Ottoman army led byOsman Pasha, returning fromSerbia after a conflict with that country, was massed in the fortified city ofPleven, a city surrounded by numerous redoubts, located at an important road intersection.
After two unsuccessful assaults, in which he lost valuable troops, the commander of the Russian troops on the Balkan front,Grand Duke Nicholas of Russia insisted by telegram on the help of hisRomanian allyKing Carol I. King Carol I crossed the Danube with the Romanian Army and was placed in command of the Russian-Romanian troops. He decided not to make any more assaults, but to besiege the city, cutting off the food and ammunition supply routes.
At the beginning of the siege, the Russian-Romanian army managed to conquer several redoubts around Pleven, keeping in the long run only theGrivitsa redoubt. The siege, which began in July 1877, did not end until December of the same year, when Osman Pasha was wounded in a failed breakout attempt. Finally, Osman Pasha received the delegation led by GeneralMihail Cerchez and accepted the conditions of capitulation offered by him. The Turkish general, Osman Pasha, when he capitulated and declared himself a prisoner during the Russo-Turkish War, handed over his sword to the Romanian general Mihail Cerchez, commander of the Romanian troops in Pleven. It was housed in the Museum of the Iron Gates Region, but was stolen in 1992.
The Russian–Romanian victory on 10 December 1877 was decisive for the outcome of the war and theLiberation of Bulgaria. Following the battle, the Russian armies were able to advance and forcefully attack theShipka Pass, succeeding in defeating the Ottoman defense and opening their way toConstantinople.
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In July 1877, the Russian Army, under the command ofGrand Duke Nicholas, moved toward theDanube River virtually unopposed, as the Ottomans had no sizable force in the area. The Ottoman high command sent an army under the command ofOsman Nuri Pasha to reinforceNikopol, but the city fell to the Russian vanguard in theBattle of Nikopol (16 July 1877) before Osman reached it. He settled onPlevna, a town among vineyards in a deep rocky valley some twenty miles to the south of Nikopol, as a defensive position. The Ottomans quickly created a strong fortress, raising earthworks withredoubts, digging trenches, and quarrying out gun emplacements. From Plevna Osman's army controlled the main strategic routes to theBalkan Mountains. As the Turks hurried to complete their defenses, Russian forces began to arrive.
| Date | Ottoman | Russian and Romanian |
|---|---|---|
| 20 July (first battle) | 11,000 | 25,000 infantry 3,000 cavalry108 guns |
| 30 July (second battle) | 19-22,000 infantry 700 cavalry58 guns22,000 total | 35,000 170 guns |
| 3 September (assault on Lovech) | 27,000 98 guns | |
| 11 September (third battle) | 84,000 424 guns | |
| Mid-November (the investment) | 120,000 522 guns |
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GeneralYuri Schilder-Schuldner, commanding the Russian 5th Division, IX Corps, received orders to occupy Plevna. Schilder-Schuldner arrived outside the town on 19 July and began bombarding the Ottoman defenses. The next day his troops attacked and succeeded in driving Ottoman forces from some of the outer defenses; however, Osman Pasha brought up reinforcements and launched a series of counterattacks, which drove the Russians from the captured trenches, inflicting 3,000 casualties at a cost of 2,000 of his own men.[8]
Osman Pasha strengthened his defences and built more redoubts, his force growing to 22,000 men and 58 guns,[8] while the Russians obtained reinforcements from the army of Prince Carol of Romania (later kingCarol I of Romania), who received the command of the joint besieging force. GeneralNikolai Kridener also arrived with the Russian IX Corps. The overall number of Russian troops increased to 35,000 and 176 guns.[8] On 31 July Russian headquarters ordered Kridener to assault the town, attacking from three sides, with every expectation of a Russo-Romanian triumph. General Alexey Schakhovskoy's cavalry attacked the eastern redoubts, while an infantry division under GeneralMikhail Skobelev assailed theGrivitsa redoubt to the north. Schakhovskoy managed to take two redoubts, but by the end of the day the Ottoman forces succeeded in repulsing all the attacks and retaking lost ground. Russian losses amounted to 7,300, and the Ottomans' to more than 2,000.[citation needed]
The third battle of Plevna is also called the "Great Assault".After repulsing the Russian attacks, Osman failed to press his advantage and possibly drive off the besiegers; he did, however, make a cavalry sortie on 31 August that cost the Russian 1,300 men, and the Ottomans 1,000. The Russians continued to send reinforcements to Plevna, and their army, now personally led by theGrand Duke swelled to 100,000 men. On 3 September Skobelev reduced the Turkish garrison guarding the Ottoman supply lines atLovech before Osman could move out to relieve it. The Ottoman army organized the survivors of Lovech into 3 battalions for the Plevna defenses. Osman also received a reinforcement of 13 battalions, bringing his total strength to 30,000 men-the highest it would reach during the siege.
In August, Romanian troops led by GeneralAlexandru Cernat crossed the Danube and entered the battle with 43,414 men.[9] On 11 September the Russians and Romanians mounted a large-scale assault on Plevna. The Ottoman forces were dug in and equipped with GermanKrupp-manufactured steel breech-loading artillery and American-manufacturedWinchester repeaters[10] andPeabody-Martini rifles. For three hours they pushed back the waves of advancing Russians with superior firepower.[11]Czar Alexander II and his brotherGrand Duke Nicolas watched from a pavilion built on a hillside out of the line of fire.[12] Skobelev took two southern redoubts. The Romanian 4th division led by General George Manu took theGrivitsa redoubt after four bloody assaults, personally assisted by Prince Carol. The next day, the Turks retook the southern redoubts, but could not dislodge the Romanians, who repelled three counterattacks. From the beginning of September, Russian and Romanian losses had amounted to roughly 20,000, while the Ottomans lost 5,000–6,000.[13]
Growing Russian and Romanian casualties put a halt to frontal assaults. GeneralEduard Ivanovich Totleben arrived to oversee the conduct of the siege as the armychief of staff. Totleben had proven command experience in siege warfare, having gained renown for hisdefense ofSevastopol (1854–1855) during theCrimean War. He decided on a complete encirclement of the city and its defenders. Osman requested permission from his superiors to abandon Plevna and retreat, but the Ottoman high command would not allow him to do so. By 24 October the Russians and Romanians had closed the ring. Supplies began to run low in the city, and Osman finally made an attempt to break the Russian siege north-west, in the direction ofOpanets. On 9 December the Ottoman forces silently emerged in the dead of night, threw bridges over and crossed the Vit River, attacked on a two-mile front, and broke through the first line of Russian trenches. Here they fought hand to hand and bayonet to bayonet, with, at first, little advantage to either side; however, outnumbering the Ottoman forces almost 5 to 1, the Russians and Romanians eventually drove them back across theVit, wounding Osman in the process (he was hit in the leg by a stray bullet, which killed his horse beneath him). Rumours of his death created panic. After making a brief stand, the Ottoman forces found themselves driven back into the city, losing 5,000 men to the Russians' 2,000.[14] The next day Osman surrendered the city, the garrison and his sword to Romanian Col.Mihail Cerchez. He was treated honorably, but his troops perished in the snow by the thousands as they straggled off into captivity.
The siege of Plevna seriously delayed the main Russian advance into Bulgaria, but its end freed up Russian reinforcements, which were sent to GeneralJoseph Vladimirovich Gourko, who then decisively defeated the Ottoman forces in theFourth battle of Shipka Pass. The siege was widely reported and followed by the public in Europe and beyond. Although the declining Ottoman Empire was by this time often regarded as "thesick man of Europe", its five-month-long resistance against a much larger army earned a degree of admiration, which may have contributed to the unsympathetic treatment of Russia at theCongress of Berlin.
According to the British diplomatic historianAJP Taylor:
The siege also signalled the introduction of the repeating rifle into European warfare.[11] Both the Russian and the Ottoman armies were each using two types of infantry rifle at Plevna. Russian troops were largely armed with the oldM1869 Krnka, a single-shot lifting breech block conversion of the muzzle loading M1857rifled musket. It was soundly outperformed by the more modern single-shot TurkishPeabody-Martini rifles. At the time, the Russian Army was in process of reequipping with the more modern but still single-shotBerdan rifle.[11] It became clear at Plevna that it was already obsolete while it was introduced and that it was outclassed by the TurkishWinchester repeaters. Reports of the heavy losses suffered by the Russian Army at the hands of the Turks at Plevna prompted militaries across Europe to start re-equipping themselves with repeating rifles or finding a way to convert their existing single-shot rifles intomagazine-fed weapons.
Battles of 1877....
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: John Henry Verinder Crowe (1911). "Plevna". InChisholm, Hugh (ed.).Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 21 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 838–840, see page 838.Battles of 1877....
