ART OF THE DAY: DEFENSE OF THE FORTRESS OF BAYAZID BY THE RUSSIANS (June 8-28, 1877) by LEV LAGORIO

 During the short Russo-Turkish war of 1877-78, the Orthodox balkanic coalition led by Russia against the Ottoman Empire scored a number of resounding victories. It was also marked by brutal “ethnic cleansing” of minorities – Christians, Muslims and Jews - by all the parties involved. Adrianople had fallen, Russian troops came as close as 11 km from Istanbul. The firm intervention of Britain stopped them from taking the capital of the Sultans and the Dardanelles, as they came under the threat of the British Mediterranean squadron led by Vice-Admiral Geoffrey Phipps-Hornby stationed at Besika Bay, ready to engage the Orthodox coalition “as to not repeat the bloody blunder of [the battle of] Navarino”-British Prime Minister Disraeli. 

Siege of the citadel of Bayazid by Lev Lagorio, painted in 1891, Military Historical Museum of Artillery, Engineers and Signal Corps, Saint Petersburg.

 

 

 

 

In the Caucasus theater, on April 18, 1877, Bayazid (Doğubayazıt in Ağrı Province), 15 km southwest of Mount Ararat, was occupied by the detachment of Lieutenant General Tergukasov, who then moved on, leaving a small garrison in the city. Captain F. Shtokvich was appointed commandant of the Bayazet citadel (the Ishak Pasha Palace). On June 6, 11,000 Turks under the command of Brigadier General A. Faik Pasha, occupied the city and blocked the 1,700-men strong Russian garrison in the citadel. On June 8, Turkish troops attempted to storm the citadel but were repulsed. The Kurdish irregulars plundered the city, carrying out a complete extermination of the local Armenian population. For 23 days, the garrison repelled all the attacks, and on June 28 it was finally saved by the troops of the Erivan detachment of General Tergukasov. During the siege, the garrison suffered 286 casualties.

After the war, under the terms of the San Stefano Peace Treaty (March 1878), Bayazid and the adjacent territories were ceded to Imperial Russia. But according to the decisions of the Berlin Congress (June-July 1878), this was reversed and Bayazid and the Alashkert Valley were returned to the Ottoman Empire. 

End of the siege of the citadel of Bayazid on June 23, 1878.

British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and the Viennese authorities were unhappy with this extension of Russian power, and Serbia feared the establishment of Greater Bulgaria would harm its interests in former and remaining Ottoman territories. Britain would defend its interests in Constantinople, in Egypt, Suez, and the Persian Gulf by war if necessary. For Prince Aleksandr Gorchakov, “the British find it hard to understand a war of religious and national sentiment, and being incapable of one themselves, they consequently look for arrières pensées”. As for Otto von Bismarck, the German Chancellor, the Balkans were simply “not worth the bones of a Pomeranian grenadier”!

The British fleet in the Dardanelles with ironclads Alexandra, Agincourt, Achilles, Monarch, Invincible, Rupert, Swiftsure, Hostpur, Defense, Thunderer, Raleigh, Ruby, Sultan, Temeraire and Research: 1. The Fleet nearing the town of Kum Kaleh; 2. The Fleet entering the mouth of the Dardanelles. The Illustrated London News, 1878.

  

Disraeli never dissimulated his sympathy for the Ottoman cause vs the Balkan Christians:

“I find the habits of this calm and luxurious people [the Ottomans] entirely agree with my own preconceived opinions of property and enjoyment, and detest the Greeks more than ever”. (Miloš Ković , Disreali and the Eastern Question, 2007). 

William Gladstone, on the other hand, was fiercely in favor of “humanitarian intervention” on behalf of the Christians and disliked the Turks: “Upon the whole, from the black day when they first entered Europe, the one great anti-human specimen of humanity. Wherever they went, a broad line of blood marked the track behind them; and as far as their dominion reached, civilization disappeared from view. They represented everywhere government by force, as opposed to government by law. For the guide of this life they had a relentless fatalism: for its reward hereafter, a sensual paradise.”

PHOTOGRAPH OF THE DAY: BATTERY OF JAPANESE 280 mm HOWITZERS IN ACTION, RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR (1904-1905)

 The 28 cm (11 in) Howitzer L/10 was designed in 1884 by the British Armstrong company and 220 built by the Osaka Artillery Arsenal. It fired a 217 kg shell at a maximum range of 7,800 m. The howitzer entered service in 1892 and was installed in shore batteries in forts overlooking Tokyo Bay and Osaka Bay, when the Meiji "Static Defense" policy of the 1870s and 1880s emphasized coastal defenses.

The L/10 was thus primarily intended for anti-ship operations and remained in use until the end of WW2. It saw use as a siege gun during the Russo-Japanese War due to a lack of heavy siege guns. Requested by General Nogi Maresuke, a battery of L/10 was transported and assembled for the siege of Port Arthur. 

The huge shells were nicknamed "roaring trains" by the Russian troops, and during their period at Port Arthur over 16,949 of these shells were fired. In December 1904, using artillery observers on 203 m Hill, the howitzers were able to sink the Russian warships one after the other:

-The battleship Poltava was sunk on December 5, 1904,

-The battleship Retvizan was sunk on December 7, 1904,

-The battleships Pobeda and Peresvet and the cruisers Pallada and Bayan on December 9, 1904.

All six would be raised, repaired, renamed, and recommissioned by the Japanese after the war.

-The battleship Sevastopol, although hit five times by the 280 mm shells, managed to move out of range of the guns.

-Russo-Japanese War Photo Album of the 3rd Army, No. 3, Meiji 38.4, Japanese National Institute for Defense Studies (NIDS).

 

CRIMEA IS ANNEXED BY CATHERINE THE GREAT, April 8, 1783 (O.S.), SECURING ACCESS TO THE BLACK SEA

 

In 1774, Sultan Mustafa III was defeated by Catherine the Great. The Russian fleet had destroyed the Ottoman navy and the Russian army had inflicted heavy defeats on the Ottoman land forces. The ensuing Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca forced the Sublime Porte to recognize the Tatars of the Crimea as politically independent.

According to the treaty, the Crimean Khanate formally gained its independence (but in reality made the Crimea a protectorate of Russia). The Porte also ceded to Russia two key seaports, Azov and Kerch, obtaining freedom of navigation for the Russian Navy and the merchant fleet in the Black Sea, allowing Catherine II to start a policy of control and hegemony over that sea. The treaty also granted to Russia the position of protector of Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire. Ottoman loss of the Crimea and the end of the Crimean Khanate caused Muslims everywhere to question the sultans' legitimacy as defenders of Islam.

After the failure of the Crimean revolts of 1777-1782, in March 1783, Prince Grigory Potemkin made a rhetorical push to encourage Empress Catherine to annex Crimea. Having just returned from Crimea, he told her that many Crimeans would happily submit to Russian rule. Encouraged by these news, Empress Catherine issued a formal proclamation of annexation on 19 April [O.S. 8 April] 1783. The Tatars did not resist the annexation. Crimea was incorporated into the Empire as "Taurida Governorate". Catherine the Great's incorporation of the Crimea into the Russian Empire increased Imperial Russia's power in the Black Sea area. 

In 1787, Catherine conducted a triumphal procession in the Crimea. Sultan Abdül Hamid I restarted hostilities in the Russo-Turkish War of 1787–92. Emperor Joseph II of Austria joined the war on the side of the Russian Empire. This conflict turned into another catastrophe for the Ottomans, ending with the Treaty of Jassy (1792), which legitimized the Russian claim to the Crimea and granted the Yedisan region to Russia. The Crimea was the first Muslim territory to slip from the sultan's suzerainty. The Ottoman Empire's frontiers would gradually shrink for another two centuries, and Russia would proceed to push her frontier westwards to the Dniester.

-Painting: The Triumph of Catherine the Great by Vassily Nesterenko, Tavrichesky Hall of the Grand Palace in Tsaritsyno, 2007.

-Further reading: Antoine-Ignace Anthoine, Essai historique sur le commerce et la navigation, 1805; I also advise the reading of Brian L. Davies' The Russo-Turkish War, 1768-1774 Catherine II and the Ottoman Empire, 2016 and Eugene Miakinkov's War and Enlightenment in Russia: Military Culture In The Age Of Catherine II, 2020.

MILITARY OF THE DAY : MARSHAL OF THE SOVIET UNION KONSTANTIN ROKOSSOVSKY (1896-1968)

By Lohan Le Formal,
November 25, 2018

Rokossovsky, whose father was a railroad engineer, served in the imperial army as a noncommissioned officer in World War I. In 1917 he joined the Red Army and served in the Civil War, rising through the ranks to various Far Eastern commands, notably leading a cavalry brigade during the Soviet-Chinese dispute over control of the Chinese Eastern Railway (1929).
He was imprisoned in 1938 during the Stalinist purges but was released upon the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 because his military talents were needed. During World War II Rokossovsky had major roles in the battles at Moscow (1941), Stalingrad, and Kursk (1943), as well as in the Soviet drives into Bielorussia (1944), East Prussia, and Pomerania (1945). He won his greatest renown at Stalingrad when he directed six Soviet armies of the Don River front that, along with other Soviet forces, first trapped and then annihilated the 22 divisions of the German Sixth Army. He is the designer of the operation "Bagration"(with Joukov and Vassilievski) whose success, decisive through the destruction of the entire Army Group Center Wehrmacht, earned him his promotion to the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union.

In 1949 he was named Soviet defense minister and deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers of Soviet-dominated Poland and was accorded the title marshal of Poland. He held these positions until the return to power of Władysław Gomułka, former secretary of the communist Polish Workers’ Party, who had been imprisoned in 1948. Upon his expulsion by Gomułka (28 October 1956, on charges of attempting to stage a pro-Soviet coup), Rokossovsky returned to the U.S.S.R., where he was deputy minister of defense (1956–62) and held various other military posts until his retirement in 1962.
When he died in 1968, his funeral urn was sealed in the Kremlin wall.

MILITARY LEADER OF THE DAY: JACOB DE LA GARDIE (1583 - 1652), SWEDISH GENERAL AND STATESMAN WHO CONQUERED MOSCOW

By Siniša Đuričić,
June 20, 2019

On June 20, 1583, Jacob De la Gardie was born, a Swedish statesman and a Field marshal. He was at the head of the Swedish War Council, and had a high position of state Constable (Riksmarsk), even higher than that of a Marshal. His family De la Gardie was of French origin because his father moved from France to Sweden and married himself to a highly-positioned Swedish woman.

Jacob De la Gardie was born in Reval (today's Tallinn), in the area of ​​today's Estonia (at that time the Estonian territory belonged to Sweden). Already in his youth De la Gardie became a soldier and in 1609 and 1610 he led the Swedish atrmy against Russia. He managed to conquer even Moscow, and young Vladislav IV. from the Swedish Dynasty Vasa was then crowned as the Russian Emperor. However, the Swedes soon left Moscow, so that the whole tundertakinng remained only a passing episode.

In 1615, De la Gardie became a Swedish Field marshal (Flemtmarskalk), and in 1620 he gained a higher position of the state constable (Riksmarsk). By this he was placed at the helm of the overall Swedish military force, and he also received the title of Count. Interestingly, Count Jacob De la Gardie was contemporary of another famous Swedish statesman - Count Axel Oxenstierne. Namely, Count Oxenstierna was only about two years older and held high office of the Chancellor of the State (Rikskansler). That is why Oxenstierna was at the head of the Swedish government at about the same time that De la Gardie was at the helm of the Swedish military force. Both have left enormous traces in history, as Sweden was one of the strongest forces in Europe at this time.