In May, 1810, the Russian main army, under Kamenskoi, again crossed the Danube at Hirsova, passed through the Dobrudja, and marched straight against the Turkish main army to Shumla and Varna. At the same time, the corps of Generals Langeron and Sacken proceeded to blockade Silistria and Rustchuk. The Turks could nowhere keep the field. At Kavarna they were routed; at the storming of Bazardjik they lost ten thousand men; at the storming of Rasgrad three thousand. Silistria was reduced in seven days by Langeron. So far everything was favourable for the Russians. If they had added to their advantages the conquest of Rustchuk, the passes of Tirnova and of Sophia towards Adrianople would have been open, the fortress of Shumla would have been avoided, and the main army of the enemy would have been manœuvred out of it. The taking of Rustchuk, and above all the sparing of the troops, was consequently the next problem for General Kamenskoi. Instead of doing this, the Russians attempted to storm almost simultaneously the fortifications of Varna, Shumla, and Rustchuk, were repulsed from these three places, the defence of which was conducted by English officers, and suffered so enormously, that the Turks felt themselves strong enough to come out from behind their intrenchments, and attack the Russian camp before Shumla. They failed, however, in their attempt to storm it.
[1810-1811 A.D.]
To relieve Rustchuk, the grand vizir sent Mukhtar Pasha with picked troops, by way of Tirnova, to the Danube. But if the Turks with their united forces were too weak to force the Russians to abandon the intrenchments before Shumla, they could certainly not expect with a part of their army to rout the enemy near Rustchuk, where he stood with his united forces between their separate wings. Only in case Mukhtar Pasha, who had increased his forces to forty thousand men, entered Wallachia at Turna, and marched against Giurgevo, could the offensive have a meaning, or any influence, upon the siege of Rustchuk, because here it met with the weak point of the enemy. But to enter upon the offensive with an army in Wallachia, whilst the Russians stood before the fortresses of the Danube in Bulgaria, never came into the heads of the Turks. Mukhtar Pasha intrenched himself at the mouth of the Yantra to cover the passes of Tirnova and Sophia. On the 7th of September he was attacked in front, flank, and rear, held out with his best troops till the next morning, and then surrendered with five thousand men, and all his artillery. After this Sistovo and Cladova capitulated, and on the 27th of September Rustchuk and Giurgevo surrendered.
The road to Adrianople was now open for the Russians, but their enormous losses, caused by their own folly, would have prevented their assuming the offensive beyond the Balkan for this year, even if the season had not been so far advanced. Reinforcements for the next year could not be expected, as Napoleon was preparing to attack Russia, and therefore they began to negotiate. Another insurrection of the janissaries interrupted these negotiations, but did not induce the grand vizir to profit by this opportunity, and fall with his whole force upon the Russians, who, at this time, were scattered over the country from Widdin to Sophia and thence as far as Varna. Not until Czerni George, in February, 1811, had placed the principality of Servia under the protection of Russia, did the grand vizir awake from his apathy in Thrace, and cross the Balkan, with only fifteen thousand men. He, however, proceeded so slowly that Kamenskoi had time enough to assemble sufficient forces.
They met at Lofteh on the Osma; the Turks were defeated, and lost three thousand men. Achmed Pasha, however, a violent and sturdy soldier, without any higher military education, led fifty thousand fresh troops to Shumla, and insisted upon their taking the offensive. The Russians had received no reinforcements, but Kutusov had taken the command. Without any considerable losses, he concentrated his small army at Silistria and Rustchuk, and abandoned Bulgaria as far as the latter place, after having rased the fortresses. In the battle before Rustchuk, on the 4th of July, the Turks were driven back, but on the 7th, they forced the twenty thousand Russians who stood on the right bank of the Danube to give up Rustchuk also, though not until its works had been rased.
Instead of crossing the river from the Dobrudja, and operating with a superior force upon the Russian lines of communication, the grand vizir allowed himself to be induced, by the retreat of Kutusov, to cross the Danube at Rustchuk, without a fortress in his rear. Arrived on the left bank with his main army, a Russian flotilla barred his retreat, while Russian corps recrossed the Danube above and below Rustchuk, and took possession of the town (no longer fortified) and of the Turkish camp (September 7th). The grand vizir fled, but his main army, still consisting of 25,000 men and 56 pieces of artillery, was forced to surrender in the vicinity of Giurgevo. A few days afterwards Count St. Priest took Shirtov, with the whole of the Turkish flotilla on the Danube. Nicopoli and Widdin next surrendered, so that by the end of the campaign the Russians were masters of the whole right bank of the Danube. The Servians, also, aided by a body of Russians, had wrested from the Turks the last fortresses they held in the principality.
The grand vizir asked for a suspension of arms, with a view to negotiating a peace; but the terms now demanded by the victorious Russians were such as the Porte would not accede to. The war was continued in 1811, but always to the disadvantage of the Turks. Resolved on a last desperate effort, they assembled a formidable army whilst the conference at Bucharest was still pending. At last, the rupture between France and Russia changed the aspect of affairs, and compelled the latter power to abandon the long-coveted prey when it was already in its grasp. The Russian minister, Italinski, contented himself with requiring that the Pruth should for the future form the boundary between the two empires. The sultan regarded even this concession as disgraceful; but the Russians carried their point by bribery, and the Treaty of Bucharest was concluded. Its chief provisions were these:
Article 4. The Pruth, from the point where it enters Moldavia to its confluence with the Danube, and thence the left bank of the latter to its embouchure on the Black Sea at Kilia, shall be the boundary between the two empires. Thus the Porte surrendered to Russia a third of Moldavia, with the fortresses of Khoczim and Bender, and all Bessarabia, with Ismail and Kilia. By the same article, the navigation of the Danube is common to the subjects of Russia and Turkey. The islands enclosed between the several arms of the river below Ismail are to remain waste. The rest of Moldavia and Wallachia are to be restored to the Turks in their actual condition. Article 6. The Asiatic frontier remains the same as it was before the war. Article 8 relates to the Servians, to whom the Porte grants an amnesty and some privileges, the interpretation of which offers a wide field for the exercise of diplomatic subtlety. Article 13. Russia accepts the mediation of the Porte for the conclusion of a peace with Persia, where hostilities had begun anew, at the instigation of the English ambassador.
WAR WITH NAPOLEON
Notwithstanding all the demonstrations to the contrary made since the Peace of Tilsit, England, Russia, Prussia, and also Austria partially, always continued to maintain a certain mutual understanding, which was, however, kept very secret, and somewhat resembled a conspiracy. The most distinguished statesmen both in Russia and Prussia felt how unnatural was an alliance between Napoleon, Alexander, and Frederick William III, and directed attention to the subject. This was also done on the part of England, and it is certain that the emperor Alexander, as early as the meeting in Erfurt in 1808, expressed his doubts respecting the duration of his alliance with France. The conduct of Russia in the campaign against Austria, in 1809, first shook Napoleon’s confidence in his ally. Mutual complaints and recriminations ensued; but neither party thought it advisable to give any prominence to their disunion, and Napoleon, even when he had entered, through Thugut, upon the subject of an Austrian marriage, still continued to carry on negotiations for an alliance with a Russian princess.