The “Magnificent Age” - Catherine II TL

[alexmilman]

18. Going to Asia

“Rather, the geography of Russia determines its history than vice versa."
Efim Bershin
“Geography is not a science needed by the noble people.”
Fonvizin, ‘The minor’
“Certain high ranking person expressed an indignation that town of Morshansk has its own meridian.”
Saltykov Schedrin
“If the globe is a proof of the sphericality of the planet Earth, then a geographical map is a proof that the Earth is flat.”
unknown author
“In the continuation of my journey along the Volga, I went down from my galley to the shore, 20 versts below the city of Kazan, in order to see the remains of ancient Bulgar, a city built by Tamerlane for his grandson.”
Catherine II to Voltaire [1]​

Travel to Asia
Before work of the Code Commission started, Catherine decided to travel by the Volga to get herself familiar with situation in the region and, as she wrote to Voltaire, “create the laws that would serve both Europe and Asia.” [2] The trip was thoroughly prepared. The Atlas "Geographical Description of the Volga River from Tver to Dmitrievsk for Her Imperial Majesty's journey along this river" was compiled in the Geographical Department of the Academy of Sciences. All maps existing at that time, based on materials from 1735-1736, were used to compile the atlas. The texts contain a list of Volga tributaries indicating the distances between their mouths, a description of the turns of the Volga with an indication of the bearings and information about the main cities of the Volga region. More than 1,150 people participated in the trip, including prominent statesmen, court and army ranks, healers and lady-in-waiting. Foreign diplomats with their suites were invited to accompany the empress for the first time. But she did not take with her Grand Duke Paul.

300 "road carriages" and a large number of horses were prepared for the "massion" of Catherine II and court nobles in Tver. Specially equipped carriages carried a wardrobe, screens, appliances, pharmacy. Earlier, on March 2, 1767, a special decree of the Senate was issued, which required the Yam office to have 75 horses at each station where the Empress is supposed to stop.

The flotilla consisted of 25 ships including a galley specially built for the empress.

In April 29 the empress arrived to Tver, on May 2 she boarded the galley and sailed down the river. The first stop was in Yaroslavl where she visited the local manufactures. Her arrival put the end to a protracted dispute between the major and minor merchants who decided that it would be much wiser to define themselves as complete assholes whose “quarrels threaten the city with a complete ruin” then to get “motherly” involvement into the situation. Their consciousness finally took over and in a meeting of all city merchants, with the local policemaster-general being present, they voluntarily decided to repent and make peace and paid taxation money they owned. She was not satisfied with local voyevoda and sent to the Senate an order to replace him.

Then Catherine sailed to Kostroma, reception in which she liked. Presumably, her entourage had been regularly in tears out of joy. The foreign ambassadors went from Kostroma to Moscow and Catherine proceeded to Nizhny Novgorod where she confirmed creation of a merchant company. She was rather unhappy with the local bishop who was clearly unable to prevent mass conversions into the Old Creed. Her general impression was “This city is beautiful in the situation, and the structure is disgusting, only it will get better soon, because I alone need to build both salt and wine shops, so the governor's house, the office and the archive, that everything is either on its side, or close to it.”

On May 26, the flotilla passed along the Kazanka River to the city to the sounds of cannon salute, bell ringing, trumpets and timpani, shouts of "hurrah". The empress's boats and her retinues approached the piers at the Kazan Kremlin, where Catherine II was met by the first persons of the city, the governor of the Orenburg province Prince A. A. Putyatin, officers, nobility and merchants.

“We found a city that can be the capital of a big kingdom in every way; the reception is excellent for me… Everything is very official everywhere; here the triumphal gate is like I haven't seen it even better… You can't leave the place: so many different objects worthy of a look that it may take ten years…. This is a special kingdom, and only here you can see what such a huge enterprise is our legislation and how the existing laws do not correspond to the position of the empire in general. They destroyed countless people, whose fortune has so far been going to disappear, not to multiply; the same is the same with their property.”

To Voltaire she wrote “These laws, about which there have been so many speeches, have not yet been written, and who can be responsible for their good quality? Of course, not us, but the offspring will be able to solve this issue. Imagine that they should serve for Asia and Europe, and what a difference in climate, people, customs and concepts themselves! Here I am in Asia; I wanted to see it with my own eyes. There are 20 different nations in this city, not at all similar to each other. And yet, they need to sew a dress that would fit them equally well on everyone.”
Convinced of the loyalty of Muslims, Catherine II confirmed the course to alleviate their situation in the country (in 1763 she equalized the Tatar merchants in rights with the Russian, and in 1764 liquidated the Office of New Baptism), giving oral permission to build mosques again. In addition, she proposed to teach some categories of civil servants the Tatar language. After the inspection of the city, the Empress approved the provision on its large civil stone building, for which she was instructed to draw up an accurate plan for Kazan.

In general, she liked what she saw: “Here the people all over the Volga are rich and very well-fed, and although the prices are high everywhere, everyone eats bread and no one complains and does not suffer from a deprivation… The earth is as black as in other places you can’t find it in the gardens. In a word, these people are spoiled by God; I did not eat such fish with taste like here, and everything is in abundance, what you can imagine, and I do not know what they would need: everything is there and everything is cheap.”
How can everything be cheap with the high prices we’ll never find out but she was obviously happy, even if inconsistent.

But Simbirsk was a major disappointment. Numerous houses had been confiscated for the debts, their owners were expelled, the empty buildings had been rotting and already were in such a bad condition that the state was not getting any profit. Catherine was trying to figure out how to get both get money and to put people back to their dwellings before they completely perish. It looked like the only way to save the people was just to forgive the debt (taxes on salt and liquor) that amounted to 107,000.

From Simbirsk she went by land to Moscow making one interesting observation: in the eastern provinces (Simbirsk region) the land is black soil but “the people are lazy”, big stretches of land are void of a population and not developed. Further to the west the soil is getting increasingly worse, the settlements are more frequent, there is no unused land and more grain is produced.”

She arrived to Moscow on June 22 and attended the Senate session at which she declared that during the travel she received more than 600 written complaints, none about the bribes. The Empress, with a straight face, expressed pleasure that since there were no complaints against any government person, it means that justice is in good condition, the administrators and judges conduct the cases unselfishly [3].

Most of the complaints were from the serfs complaining about the oppression by their owners and were returned with a warning that they should not do this in a future. These complaints could be ignored but there were never-ending reports of the peasant unrests (term “Peasants” included workers of various manufactures). By law the serfs sending petitions regarding their owners were rebels and could be executed or beaten and sent to katorga or to their owners and that law was vigorously enforced. However, the Senate in its wisdom came to an amazing conclusion that sometimes the acts of rebellion could be caused by excessively strict behavior of the owners and few senators volunteered to travel to these estate owners and privately and secretly discuss with them the possible reasons for these unfortunate accidents.

It was somewhat different on the state-owned manufactures because, as was the case with the Nerchinsk silver plant, this may indicate that administration was stealing from the state. In most cases the officials guilty of that sin, even if aggravated by lying while under the oath, were just fired from the state service.

Not to be forgotten, during the journey, Catherine II and her retinue carried out a collective translation of the work by J.-F. Marmontel "Velisarius" (fr. Bélisaire), sent to the empress by the author. Each translator got a part of the essay by lot. Also during the journey of M. M. Heraskov and the circle of courtiers accompanying the empress translated a number of articles of the Encyclopedia. Hersakov himself translated articles related to poetry, verbal sciences and magic. A. C Naryshkin translated the articles "Economics (moral and political)" by Rousseau and "Natural Law" by Diderot. The book "Translations from the Encyclopedia" was printed in three parts in 1767.

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[1] All my attempts to compose a comment worthy of the original failed miserably. 😢
[2] See above about geography not being a science suitable for the nobility.
[3] I wonder if the Senate would consider a purchase of the Brooklyn Bridge…

 

[alexmilman]

19. A nice try but …

“The Christian Law teaches us to do each other as much good as possible.”
“The Russian state of possession extends over 32 degrees of latitude and 165 degrees of longitude around the globe.”
“The sovereign is autocratic; for no other power, other than united in his person, can act similarly to the space of such a great state.”
“It is better to obey the laws under one master than to please many.”
“It is a great well-being for a person to be in such circumstances that when his passions turn his thoughts of being evil, he, however, considers it more useful not to be evil.”
“State freedom in a citizen is the peace of mind derived from the opinion that each of them enjoys security on their own; and for people to have this freedom, it must be such a law that one citizen cannot be afraid of the other, but are afraid of all of the same laws.”
“Laws that transient measure for good are the reason why immeasurable evil is born from them.”
“Russia not only does not have enough inhabitants, but also has an excessive space of land, which is not inhabited, and is not cultivated. So, you can't find enough encouragement for the reproduction of the people in the state.”
“It also seems that the newly introduced way from the nobles - to collect their income - in Russia reduces the people and agriculture. All the villages are almost on the line. The owners, not being at all or little in their villages, will charge each soul a ruble, two or even up to five rubles, regardless of the way their peasants get this money.” [1]
“There can be neither skillful labor nor solid-based trade, where agriculture is destroyed or improductively produced.”
“Agriculture is the greatest work for man.”
“Machines, which serve to reduce manual work, are not always useful. If something done by hands is worth a mediocre price, which is equally similar to both the merchant and the one who made it, then the machines that reduce manual work, that is, reduce the number of workers, will be harmful in a big state.”
“Virtue deservedly raises people to the degree of nobility.”
Catherine II, from “Nakaz” (the instructions to Code Commission)​

Russia 1767

As was already said, Catherine came to a correct conclusion that the old, not properly codified, laws do not fit status of the Russian Empire as a major European power. So she ordered to assemble the “Code Commission” (Уложенная Комиссия), an elective body which would discuss the present situation (each deputy had to be supplied with the instructions from his electorate) and develop the new Russian laws. To provide commission with a right direction in their work, Catherine composed instruction (Наказ) to the deputies (painting above shows her at this work), a document consisting of 565 items, which contained pretty much everything that Catherine (and Montesquieu) thought on a subject of the properly organized state. Taking into an account that neither an author nor her “inspiration” (can Montesquieu be defined as a “muse” in this specific case?) had a clue about economy, agriculture, manufacturing and, this being strictly Catherine, a very vague notion regarding specifics of life in the Russian Empire, the resulting document hardly was much more than a list some general good intentions than something truly practical.

The deputies, elected by the social groups, assembled in Moscow and, after the solemn opening ceremony and prayer in one of the Kremlin’s cathedrals, proceeded with their work. Immediately, Count Zakhar Chernyshev asked to be excused referencing to his numerous duties in the Military Collegium. The history is silent on the question why he bothered to get elected knowing of these duties but, this question aside, his excuse was valid and Catherine supported it. His brother, who was in charge of the Russian Navy, also asked to be excused but his appeal was rejected. Probably Catherine was under the impression that everything was fine with the Russian navy even if her personal inspection of the Baltic Fleet produced rather depressing results… Anyway, after these issues had been settled, the Commission proceeded with its work and within few days presented Catherine with the first fruit of their labor: decision to officially name her “the Wisest One, the Great and Mother of the Country.” Probably, if the commission was fully on its own, it would stop right there reporting that its mission is accomplished. Actually, this would save everybody a lot of time and aggravation but, unfortunately, the Imperial Graphomaniac wanted her opus to be taken seriously and acted upon.

To understand the further developments a historical background is necessary and, hopefully, it would be interesting enough to read.

Intermission. Situation with the social classes was somewhat tricky.
Nobility. Historically, equivalent of the European “noble” as a single term embracing all ranks of the noble class did not exist in pre-Petrian Russia and the term “дворянин” later used for that purpose was applicable only to the lower level of the noble class and would be taken as an offense by its upper levels. The noble groups had been defined and referenced based upon their court positions (боярин, окольничий, …, стольник, … дворянин) or perhaps these positions of their families. For example, not all members of a “boyar family” could be “boyars” but they could expect appointments to certain court positions with a chance to grow or, if unlucky, eventually descend into an obscurity. Something like “cursus honorum”. The titles, or rather a single title “prince” (князь) were pretty much meaningless outside the court hierarchy: boyarin, like Sheremetev, may not have a princely title at all but he would be at the top level of that hierarchy. OTOH, with the title transferred to all family members, and the title easily given to the Tatar and other nomadic nobles coming to the Russian service, the number of princes was huge their social position varying from somebody like Golytsins on the top and complete social nobodies on the bottom.
Peter I broke the system substituting it with a new one, looking more Western-like. The nobility became a single class to which the service people could raise by obtaining an officer rank or its equivalent in the civic service. The title of “count” had been added and given (especially in post-Petrian times) rather freely and few new princes (often with the HRE patent) had been created as well. The name of that, now unified, class was initially borrowed from the PLC, “szlachta”, but later switched to the Russian «дворянин». To simplify things, they will be called just “nobles”. So, by Catherine’s time there were:

• “old nobility” - historical noble families of various levels of prominence or obscurity
• “new nobility” - persons raised from the lower classes, who also were divided into two subgroups:
  • those raised personally by the imperial decree;
  • those who raised according to the law by reaching certain class in a service. For the military it was XIVth, the lowest rank in Table of the Ranks, praporschik in infantry and cornet in cavalry, for civilian service it was a much higher VIIIs class, Kollezhsky assessor (corresponding to captain in infantry).

In a future conflict between the “old” and “new”, only the second subgroup was a target for attack by the “oldies”: to the first belonged the people in imperial favor and barking upon them could be dangerous. The beef between the “oldies” and “newbies” was due to the fact that statistically the “newbies” not just tended to perform better but added a new group of the land-owners often competing with the “oldies” in purchasing the land, etc.

However, as a class the nobility had an exclusive right to own the serfs. With some exceptions. Which were an “issue”.

Merchants. The merchants were divided into the guilds (3 by 1767) based upon the declared income. Merchants were subject to a single 40-altin (1 ruble 20 kopecks) per capita tax and were not obliged to pay guild taxes, the amount of which depended on belonging to a particular guild. Many of the merchants even of the higher guilds did not trade due to lack of capital, and merchants of the third guild were engaged in crafts, small trade or worked for hire. However, a number of them had been manufacturers and, by the earlier decrees had workers “assigned” to their factories. Formally, they had (since 1760) an exclusive right of trading and this also required all types of workers. Reality was, as always, somewhat different from the law causing numerous “issues”.

Burghers (мещане) were personally free dwellers of the cities and “suburbs” who were neither nobles nor merchants. They were allowed to conduct a minor trade, could work as the artisans, own workshops (but not the manufactures), drinking places, etc. Of course, in practice a precise separation in the trading activities between them and merchants was somewhat of a grey area because its precise size was not easy to discover.

State peasants were formally free people and had the same issues as in the burghers - merchants conflict: what they are and aren’t permitted besides being peasants?

Small wonders that discussions in the Code Commission deteriorated into the quarrels along the lines of the “class interests”. In the terms of a pure blabbing and demagoguery the “old nobility” had a clear advantage of having in its ranks Prince M.M. Scherbatov, representative of an old but not very prominent Rurikid family (counted a single boyarin) and an eloquent speaker. He was talking at length about the merits and, presumably genetic, virtues of the old nobility in the state service. Somehow nobody pointed out to him that he personally did not demonstrate any of these virtues, being enlisted (as was a habit among the well-connected families) in Semionovsky (but not Preobrazensky, the connections were not good enough) Guards regiment at the age of 13, not distinguishing himself in any way and retiring at the age of 29 as captain-lieutenant as soon as Peter III issued Decree of Nobility’s Freedom. Which, of course, did not prevent him from declaring, in the parliamentarian language, that the new nobility (except those personally elevated by the rulers) are just a bunch of the greedy bastards interested not in a service but in a personal enrichment, which they are using to crowd the real estate market and prevent the old nobility from buying the estates cheap. Which was a very interesting point to which nobody reacted: buying from whom? The most probable sellers were financially pressed members of the old nobility who would be actually gaining from the higher prices (was Scherbatov himself prevented from buying somebody’s estate cheap? The people talking too much about the virtues quite often are scumbags). The remedy was not quite clear beyond closing this practice for a future and introducing various limitations for the undeserving category, like a ban on estates purchase.
The “newbies” objected that if the “oldies” are referencing to the virtues of their ancestors, who said that nowadays the people are lacking the same virtues? There was a proposal, the logical extension of Scherbatov’s argument, to make all nobility conditional, subject to the merits and their rank (the higher rank the more generations of the descendants have a guaranteed nobility).

This part of a legislative process was going nowhere but both “oldies” and “newbies” presented united from on the issue of serf-ownership insisting that it is their exclusive privilege. Their main opponent were merchants/manufacturers class who wanted a free access to the labor market, which meant having a right to own the serfs. It was a consensus among the merchants class that the serfs are much more reliable than a hired help on all levels, up to the clerks, and the law on that subject was a grey area. The numerous examples were quoted about the unreliability of the hired personnel and a need to retain the qualified workers knowing technological secrets or financial situation of a business.

On one hand only the nobles had a right to have serfs but OTOH during the previous reigns the government had been issuing regulations pretty much tying workers to the manufactures or making some specific arrangements like allowing to have few skilled serf workers while the rest should be hired. Existing market of the free labor for hire was quite limited and the serfs on “obrok” were not a solution because they’d have to go home for the seasonal agricultural work.

The reasonable argument from the merchants was that due to the exclusive right of the serf ownership only the nobles will be able to have the manufactures to which the nobles answered that this is just fine: they are quite willing to be the manufacturers. To which the merchants politely explained that the nobles usually have no clue how to do this and don’t have a capital but this argument was ignored [2].

Rather silly and minor part was a request from the 1st Guild merchants to give them a right of wearing the dress swords because their foreign counterparts tend to see the people without the swords as their inferiors. This request caused a tempest of indignation.

Second part of the conflict was one with the lower social levels. The merchants had been insisting on their exclusive right of conducting trade (except for the goods they personally produced) demanding that it has to be absolutely forbidden to the burghers and peasants who, of course, wanted the opposite.

These disputations were continuing in the evil circles without going anywhere throughout 1767. In 1768 Commission moved to St.Petersburg where it continued its activities with the same productivity.

Somewhere in a process Catherine figured out that this is going to be a massive waste of everybody’s time and money but she could not just close the ongoing circus without a loss of a face unless there is some very serious reason. Fortunately, or unfortunately, the “reason” was seemingly becoming a not too far away reality in anticipation of which Catherine, on Chernyshev advice, ordered a new round of recruitment, 1 recruit from 300 men, which should give her at least 50 - 60,000 new soldiers.

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[1] Here CII is bitching about a new “obrok” system under which the serfs had some freedom to chose their occupation and pay owner certain sums in cash. She supports the traditional system, “barschina”, under which the peasant has to work certain amount of time on owner’s estate. In her opinion the old system was more productive in the terms of both breeding (by staying home peasant definitely has more time to attend to this social function) and increase of agricultural production (which she considers a top priority).
[2] Experiments in that area started during the reign of Peter I and continued well into the XIX century. The results usually were not too good by the obvious reasons of inadequate knowledge and capital.

 

[alexmilman]

20. The Great Circus

“Poland survives by disorder.”
A contemporary saying
“The Confederates would be very hard pressed or ashamed if they were forced to accurately complicate what they are dissatisfied with.”
King Stanislaw-August
“From morning to evening, I either lie or swear; worst of all, there are a lot of words, and it's not done.”
Colonel Kar to Prince Repnin about organizing Radom Confederacy
“Knowing that the new primate wants to find a good sable fur, please send it to me, if you please, so that I can give it to him on behalf of our court.”
Count Repnin
​

Actually, the chapter’s name is unjust to the circus because any good circus, especially the “Great” one, is a well-organized enterprise with the highly skilled performers acting within a rehearsed scenario. So I’m referencing to something like the depiction below but slightly more messy and less professional. Repnin’s equivalent is a creature in black with a mike. You can propose candidates for other players. 😂

Background. In 1764 Czartoryskie managed to pass an important reform which was addressing 4 extremely important issues:

1. To get the cities out of the obvious decline, their old self-government тwas returned to them. Had been eliminated administratively and judicially independent parts of the towns and suburbs illegally created by szclahta and clergy. At the same time, in the interests of the cities, the assessor's courts were reformed, which were the last court for citizens, and in royal estates for serfs.
2. Was improved work of the tribunals dealing with the nobility’s judicial cases. In addition, a special commission was tasked with developing draft reforms in judicial proceedings and codification for consideration at the next Sejm.
3. Was accepted the first formal procedure for meetings of the Sejm, due to the absence of which the Sejms often could not make decisions.
4. The most important reform approved by the convocation Sejm was the introduction of government power in the form of two commissions - financial and military. Each of them consisted of the relevant ministers (Podskarbies and Hetmans), four senators and twelve nobles elected at each Sejm by a majority vote. The commissions also decided cases by a majority of votes and represented the highest executive power on military and treasury issues within the limits determined by the decisions of the Sejm. At the same time, each commission had paid officials at its disposal. Instead of the various customs duties that existed up to that time, a single duty was introduced, the amount of which depended on the number of imported goods, and, most importantly, the former customs privileges of the nobility and clergy were abolished. A new property census was conducted to determine the true amount of payment of quarterly taxes.

The result, with all its imperfections, was quite outstanding, taking into an account that Czartoryskie had been squeezed between the Russian government on one side and highly opinionated (and generally ignorant) szclahta on another.

Already at the first Sejms during the reign of Stanislav August, it was decided to seize old counterfeit coins and, by founding a mint, to mint new ones with a higher content of silver or gold, corresponding to the rate of foreign thalers and ducats. As a result, in new money, trade, industry and agriculture have received reliable support for their development. Private banks appeared, and lending revived. Weapons and foundries were founded, and the so-called "cadet school", opened in Warsaw in 1765.

Was szclahta happy? Generally, not because in a present situation any change meant infringement upon their “Golden liberties”. The same applied to the clergy, at least in the areas of the custom dues and exemption from the cities control. So the domestic opposition had been big and rather vocal and so far only the fact that Czartoryskie and Stanislaw-August had been backed by the Russian military presence and money helped to keep things under control. But, while the money were always greatly appreciated by all competing parties, the military presence was frowned upon. The general idea of both the reformers and counter-reformers was that Catherine must order her troops out, give to all members of the circus as much money as they request and keep her nose out of the Polish affairs. There were some underlying problems with this idea but they were routinely shrugged off because a consensus was that the Russians are stupid and can be cheated forever.

The Old Fritz also was openly unhappy but Catherine was, for a while, supportive of these activities because she, with a good reason, assumed that ongoing anarchy in Poland would make it an easy target for Prussia and Austria and at that time she considered a relatively strong Poland more convenient for her interests as a potential substitute of Austria in anti-Ottoman scheme. She was even OK with the expansion of the PLC standing army up to 50,000 providing there is a Russian-Polish military alliance and official confirmation of the Russian dominance in the Polish affairs, aka Russia (or Catherine personally) being declared a guarantor of the Polish constitution. But both of these items were unpopular among the “defenders of the liberties” because increasing of the royal army could change balance of power within the country and, the potential benefits of the Russian guarantees, like prevention of the annexations by Hpsburgs and Prussa, were noting comparing to a hurt national pride. An idea that perhaps having a strong state may prevent annexations was not quite there because to create such a state you’d need to drop the “Golden liberties” and this was an anathema to the true Polish patriots.

On the top of all of the above there was a “dissident issue”. It involved a considerable amount of the demagoguery on the Russian side and a national-wide hysteria on the Polish but, on the Russian side the underlying reasons were quite jpragmatic and cynical. As Panin put it “It is necessary to commit a dissident case not to spread our and Protestant faiths in Poland, but to acquire, through our co-religionists and Protestants, a firm and reliable party with the legitimate right to participate in all Polish affairs. As the weakest part in the future Polish government, dissidents will be able to stay in it only with our help.” He was then pointing out that an excessive strengthening of the Protestants “Can easily unnecessary …lead Poles out of ignorance, in which they are now mostly immersed” and, by strengthening the Polish nation, be eventually against the Russian interests because gratitude does not exists in the politics. While this consideration is not applicable to the Orthodox christians, their excessive strengthening is also not to the Russian advantage both because this may be conductive to increase of the number of peasants fleeing to the PLC. So he recommended Repnin to be quite restrained in the practical help to the Russian dissident allies and limit Russian demands in that area to a bare minimum of just guaranteeing security of the churches and confessional rights. However, even these minimal requests had been producing a huge negative reaction and Czartoryskie freaked out refusing to support any Russian demands, especially the guarantor part and military alliance. For a while they were able to maneuver inventing various excuses but this did not last for long and they went into the list of Catherine’s personal enemies. Even before that happened the support formula changed from “money for the promises” to “first service, then money”.

Which immediately brought the question whom to support. Taking into an account that Stanislaw was clearly good for nothing as a political figure and readily disassociated himself from his uncles, it was decided not to attack him but the only remaining force were the same people against whom Russia was supporting Czartoryskie. Rather predictably, both sides demonstrated extreme flexibility. As the first step, Radziwill, who after elections had been sitting in Saxony. In February 1767, he was negotiating with Russian representatives in Dresden, and on February 28 he signed a declaration in which he declared full obedience to Russia and asked for assistance in the cancellation of the decision of the confederation, as well as in the return of all possessions. On April 8, Panin sent Carol a letter stating his acceptance under the protection of Catherine II. This was done in order to demonstrate a break with Czartoryski and the king. Radziwill was awarded Orders of St. Andrew and St. Alexander Nevsky and for a (short) while, indeed, behaved as promised. Not that Panin or Repnin had any illusions regarding reliability of other coalition members but they were actually out of options. Sejm of 1766 cancelled most of the reforms introduced in 1764. Then the General Confederation in Radom (led by Radziwill), seeking help from Russia, decided to deprive the king of the throne and defend the freedom threatened by him and Czartoryski.

“And why will Prince Radzivil be the marshal of the confederation?" the king asked. "Because," Repnin replied, "that I am more confident in his dependence on us than in the dependence of any other; I want to have people obedient, and not to wait out of the wrong hands to do my own affairs, while I have already been deceived so many times by false promises.” An additional consideration was that Radziwill was ready to work just for return of his property and that this was phased out to stimulate his enthusiasm.

Repnin presented a manifesto to the Radom confederation, which recognized the king and invited him to join the confederation. At the same time, the document recognized the fairness of the demands of the dissidents and transferred Poland under the patronage of the Empress. At that point the coalition fell apart and the former opposition started making noises, especially Soltyk who was using dozens clerks to copy his messages to the faithful [1]. However, it was rather difficult to organize something meaningful while preaching an anarchy as your ideal so not too much came of these efforts. All that political circus made Repnin completely pissed off and he kept reporting to Panin that the only way to do something is to use a military force and to deport the most vocal opponents, Bishop Soltyk of Kraków, Bishop of Zalu of Kiev and Voyevoda of Krakov Rzewuski.

But at that point Panin finally managed to sort out the Russian priorities and Repnin got an instruction to drop the dissidents issue altogether and limit the Russian demands strictly to the guarantor item. As a result, the delegation elected by the Sejm under the leadership of Primate Gabriel Podoski [2] developed a treatise guaranteeing by the Empress of Poland her possessions, forms of government, as well as fundamental freedoms.

A separate act spelled out cardinal laws that could not be changed, which included the legislative power in three classes - royal, senatorial and knightly. The Roman Catholic faith was defined as ruling, the principle of free unanimous election of the ruler was enshrined, except for the transfer of power by inheritance, the principle of neminem captivabi-mus [3], the rights and privileges of provinces and individuals were guaranteed, full power of nobles over property and their serfs, except for the imposition of the death sentence. At the same time, the death penalty was established for nobles who committed the deliberate murder of a slave. Pacta conventa, liberum veto and the right to refuse obedience were also confirmed. Provisions that could only be changed by unanimous decision were also listed separately. These included mainly issues of raising and changing taxes, increasing the size of the army, concluding allied and trade treaties, declaring war and concluding peace, issues related to money, changing the procedure for holding the Sejm and Seimas, changing and creating new institutions, as well as convening a people's militia.

"Golden noble freedom" was waiting for its codification (because at that point none of its defenders could tell for sure what it amounts to), and the Russian empress and her heirs were determined as the guarantor of coups and confederations.

The confirmation of the "golden liberty", which was until recently threatened Czartoryski's reforms, could not but please the majority of the gentry. Nevertheless, some felt in the guarantee of the Russian empress signs of violence against the independence of the country and were feeling themselves quite eager to undermine the achieved balance.

__________
[1] The PLC circa 1760s was technologically backward so there were no copying devices even on xerox level. What is strange is that Bishop of Krakov did not have in his disposal a printing press (as CII had to print her coup manifest). It is hard to believe that there was none in Krakov so was he plain dumb?
[2] Timely delivery of the orders (in this case a sable fur) always good for the business reputation. As a side note, in OTL due to the dissident issue the Russian troops were brought to Warsaw and three persons mentioned above deported to Russia. ITTL the offenses to the patriotic feelings do not include the religious component.
[3] One of the szlachta's privileges, stating that the king could neither punish nor imprison any member of the szlachta without a viable court verdict.

 

[alexmilman]

21. Time to relax?

“Now it's time for us to enjoy calm.”
Panin after the Sejm of 1767
"I'm glad that I helped the republic to get a constitution that is permanent, unchanged and beneficial for all classes."
Catherine II, early 1768
“It is necessary to scatter the cloud gathering in the Bar before it spreads around the country.”
Panin, 1768
“It's very boring to live all the time with a fire pipe in your hands and always walk on warm ashes.”
Stanislaw-August, 1768
"There are a lot of fools around, and we all try to coexist together, fools are dangerous only when they unite.”
S. S. Musanif, ‘And go into the sunset’
“No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making some other poor dumb bastard die for his country.”
Patton​

Bar Confederacy. Confirmation of the Golden Liberies, being a measure pushing Poland back into the state of an anarchy, could not but please majority of the szlachta but even a notion of the guaranteed religious rights for the dissidents and the Russian guarantees were a completely different issues. The same goes for another fundamental item: the members of the pre-Sejm Radom Confederacy wanted King Stanislaw-August deposed [1] and expected the the Russians, who at that time were their protectors (and financiers) will accommodate their demand. However, at the Sejm the Russians rejected this specific demand turning from the desirable allies into the despised oppressors. And, to add insult to the injury, they pushed through a law allowing the non-Catholics to repair their churches and protecting them from being physically harmed by the religious reasons. What’s worse, the new law even permitted marriages between the Catholics and non-Catholics, which was an absolutely horrific. Small wonder that the blood of the true patriots was boiling.

The Sejm’s decisions caused the loud protests headed primarily by Bishop Adam Krasinsky of Kamenets (who actually was known for his religious tolerance) and on February 29, 1768, the Waretsky warden Casimir Pulaski in a small fortress of the Bratslav Voivodeship Bar founded a confederation against domination by Russia, as well as in defense of the former religious and political system, which soon covered all provinces. Krasinski in October 1768 went to Paris where he was received by Louis XV of France who promised support for the confederates, which was taken more seriously that it deserved.

Pulaski issued the proclamation which was quite remarkable on a number of accounts: patriotic zeal, xenophobia, and a complete absence of a grasp upon the realities around him.

“Finally, thanks to you, brave Poles, treacherous allies of Poland became obvious enemies. …
The Republic has been subjected to violence, religion is insulted; the supreme power of the country is under the yoke, justice has become a deception, our rights are broken with their feet, senators languish in chains.

Only cowards can tolerate all this.

The whole world will admire the efforts of our uprising. But who is this tyrant who oppresses us? Who is this impudent people who despise us?

Let's remember that there was a time when this heinous people always fled before our ancestors; that their tsars bowed before our kings; that their provinces became ours… [2] Let's remember that our simple militias from the peasants turned the Tsar and his army into flight [3] and that a few years later our fathers kept the hostile efforts of the whole people against them in the Russian capital and left this capital only after turning it into ashes.

Nowadays, you will say, the Russians have experienced officers, soldiers accustomed to battles, harsh discipline, numerous artillery, and this is their terrible superiority? Well, my brave compatriots, you will not say this; you feel in yourself all the advantages of personal courage and honor, the name of which is not even familiar to our opponents and which is not supported by discipline…

We are all equal, all brothers... We, whom the fatherland calls for his liberation, consider everything we undertake to protect to be the common and personal heritage of everyone.” [4]

Of course, those who is not going to raise to his call are the cowards and traitors, especially if they start asking the preposterous questions about the means and allies “Do we need help or advice to know our desire to be free or die?”

The rebels couldn’t match the Russian troops in open battle, just like they couldn’t catch up with the modern world and, being repeatedly humiliated on the battlefield, they made themselves feel better using moral and genetic (Sarmatians vs. the lower race) superiority. They were, for a while, quite lucky because there was not too much in the terms of the “Russian armies” around and, even before the confederacy started part of these troops, especially those in a geopolitically sensitive Southern part of the PLC, had been scheduled for a withdrawal per Russian-Ottoman agreement.

On March 27, the Senate decided to ask the Empress as a guarantor for freedom, laws and rights of the republic to turn its troops in Poland to tame the rebels. Of course, the withdrawal was cancelled when the upraising started but the upraising which initially started on the South, had been spreading throughout the PLC. The Russian troops amounted to less than 10,000, had been spread in relatively small units and, while the confederates did not have any coherent command structure, the Russian operations had been seriously handicapped by the fact that their top commander on Ukraine, major-general P.N.Krechetnikov had been predominantly busy with the extortions and looting rather than the military operations.

Repnin was sending complaints about his behavior to St-Petersburg but reaction was slow because he was Chernyshov’s protege. It took a while (and a mounting evidence) before Catherine recalled him:
“This general, apparently, has completely gone out of the limits of office and respect for the glory of our weapons and blinded by vile contemptuous covetiousness, produces, as they say, such huge robberies on the land there that he has already sent many wagons with the loot from there. We found to relieve him from the command to be the right thing.” He was replaced by Prince Prozorovsky but the damage was done both in the terms of the locals’s attitudes and in some troops following the bad example of their commander.

However, most of what was coming from St. Petersburg was not good at all because, following Elizabethan tradition, the government was trying to micromanage situation in Poland with the predictable results. As Repnin wrote to Panin, “Military orders send here are such that they cannot be carried out in any way, because they are contradictory.” Understandably, he requested help from those whom he was saving, Stanislaw-August and his government. The military commission, rather reluctantly, decided, not without dispute, to send the crown army, led by the general-regimentary Franciszek Ksawery Branicki, against the Confederates.

But Stanislaw-August was taking a rather peculiar position. While complaining to his “maman” in Paris about ignorance and intolerance of the confederates, he was refusing to declare a confederacy of his own even after they declared his deposition as their goal and Krasinski even called for his assassination. Most probably this was because he believed in the bishop’s political flexibility and because Stanisław August and the Czartoryskis had been hoping to create a ‘national front’ against Russia and already secretly tried to establish contacts with the confederates through the French court. As a result, Branicki got a secret order not to act too energetically against the Poles.

In Lithuania Pane Kohanku was playing a rather bizarre game being formally on the Russian side but at the same time providing the fleeing confederates a refuge in Neswiz claiming that he can’t see the brotherly blood being shed.

In a meantime, the Russian detachments had been generally victorious but this was not helping too much because they were not acting energetically enough and the bands of confederates had been been roaming over the country “Seizing state money, robbing a friend and enemy, a Catholic and a dissident, spiritual and secular.” The peaceful population, especially the peasants and the Jews, had been squeezed on both sides. So was poor (literally) Stanislaw-August because the confederates had been looting the crown estates depriving him of the means to support himself and his court.

Geopolitics. Of course, the seemingly obvious course for Catherine would be to send enough troops to squash the confederates but geopolitical situation was not allowing this.

First of all, so far, Austria was “coquetting” with the Confederacy allowing it to establish the headquarters of its rather dysfunctional council on its territory and permitting the beaten confederates bands to escape there. This, of course, did not mean that at the moment Austria was contemplating a war on the Polish behalf but a major Russian invasion could change the situation because MT&JII were playing with an idea of substituting the Russian “influence” with one of their own.

What was more important, the Ottoman Empire had been growingly unhappy with the situation fearing strengthening of the Russian strategic position. Russian representative in Constantinople, Obrezkov, was in a very difficult position being forced to keep assuring the Porte that the events in Poland have no consequence whatsoever but now the Porte was jumping into a bandwagon of the defenders of Polish liberties and whatever else it could defend. With a promised withdrawal of the Russian troops from the Polish-Ottoman border area being postponed by the ongoing events, this diplomatic dance was getting more and more complicated. For a while the Grand Vizier and Reiss-Effendy had been willing to listen to the Obrezkov’s arguments backed by a solid facts [5] but they were under the increasing pressure from the Khan and local ulemas stirring the crowd. The French diplomacy also was at its usual game and Frederick, who considered the developing situation as a potential opening to grab a part of the PLC while Catherine will be busy elsewhere, was not inclined to use his influence with the Ottomans to try calming them down. Catherine was inclined to avoid war with the Ottomans or at least to postpone it but she also did not want to abandon her Polish project even if so far it was producing nothing but trouble: it already was quite clear that the PLC is not going to be Russian ally against the Ottomans. Finally, “under the public pressure”, the Vizier and Reiss-Effendy had been replaced with more hawkish persons who were openly looking for casus belli.

As a result, the affairs in the PLC got a much lower priority than what started looking as the inevitable major war to which Russia was speedily preparing. The troops operating in the Southern Ukraine had been given the strict orders not to operate close to the Ottoman border but not everything could be controlled because the additional players came to the scene.


_________
[1] Quite a few, including some members of the top nobility, considered it to be humiliating to have as a king not just a Pole (one of the top level magnates or high ranking officials would be OK) but a person who was just a notch above being a social nobody and penniless.
[2] Strictly speaking, if somebody outside the PLC bothered to take his ramblings seriously, the “noble intentioned” fool just provided a perfect excuse for the 1st and 2nd Partitions: if it is OK to conquer foreign territories just because you are stronger, then the same can be done to you.
[3] Puławski's words about the militia of Polish peasants, which turned the Tsar into flight, do not sound quite serious. Is it about Zholkevsky's hussars at Klushino? Well, the history was not exactly his strong point… 😂
[4] Of course, this brotherhood applied strictly to the nobility.
[5] Of course, a bribe amounting to few thousands rubles was not in a single solid piece but each gold coin definitely was solid.

 

[alexmilman]

22. Things are getting messy

“He who defends everything, defends nothing.”
“Diplomacy without arms is like a concert without a score”
“The people say what they like and then I do what I like”
Frederick the Great
“I have no fear, I have only ambition, and I want mine to be the greatest empire in the world.”
“I am one of those who never take no for an answer.”
“A wise ruler knows when to delegate and when to take charge.”
Catherine II
“Everyone was offending mice in the forest. Finally, they came to the wise owl for advice on what to do. The owl advised: "Turn from mice into the hedgehogs." - "But how do you do it?" the surprised mice asked. To which the owl replied: "You have to figure this out on you own. I'm not a tactician, I'm a strategist."
“A very basic strategy — if your enemies know where you are, then don't be there.”
​

The mess in the PLC kept going on without any visible results to a great degree due to the Catherine’s and Panin’s policy of being a little bit pregnant and not committing any serious force there. As a result, the successful military actions mattered little and both internal and external players were getting time and opportunities for strengthening their positions and inventing their own plans. It was more or less clear even to the confederates that their chances to win on their own are quite slim and their hope was upon help from one of the Great Powers. So far France was just making the vague promises and Austria was sympathetic but extremely reluctant to get committed to any action so the only remaining options were the Ottomans. Which was somewhat ironic for the self-declared protectors of the Catholic Faith. The Ottoman Empire had been for a while quite reluctant to get into the war but the Bar Confederates, as befitting the true patriots, promised to the Ottomans Podolia and Volyn thus creating a huge incentive. Now the Porte was just looking for a plausible excuse and it was found.

The Powder Keg.

In the right bank Ukraine religious situation was much more explosive than in the Poland proper. There were Catholics (Poles - all landowners and administration), Uniates (Ukrainians), Orthodox Christians (Ukrainians), Old Believers (Ukrainians) and Jews. Unlike other regions, the Orthodox Church was quite strong and directly linked to one on the Russian left bank. Besides a purely spiritual aspect, there also was a material one: local military class, the Cossacks, both on state and private service, were overwhelmingly Orthodox and so was the “wild card”, Zaporizhians. While being a reasonably privileged category, the Cossacks often had been treated with contempt by szlachta, which under the circumstances was not a smart attitude.

In the 1768 there was a perfect storm. On the Orthodox side the overly zealous Orthodox priests spread a forged manifesto from CII inciting peasants to rebel and kill their landowners, uniates and Jews while at the same time the local administration started squeezing additional money to equip the troops it was raising for the Bar Confederacy.

Predictably, there was an unrest and detachment of the Cossacks had been sent to suppress it [1] but they went on the other side and the s—t hit the fan. For a couple months the rebels had been killing the Catholics, Uniates and Jews and when they took town of Uman they were also killing the Orthodox Christians suspected in sympathies toward the Catholics (total numbers of killed there are assessed between 12 and 20,000).

Of course, from Catherine’s perspective, they were just rebellious serfs raised against their owners so the Russian troops had been ordered to suppress them and this was the only case when the Polish crown troops under Branicki really participated in the action. To Branicki’s credit, he was resisting the demands to completely exterminate the whole villages implicated in the rebellion but, being under the pressure, proposed to the king a much more moderate plan of actions: “I intend to do this: I will order some Haidamaks to be executed for the pleasure of the landlords, while I will send the rest (and there will be more than a thousand of them) to perform servitude and urban works in Kamyanets, Lviv and your royal residence in Uyazdov.” To which the enlightened monarch replied that he liked an idea but there are no money to guard and feed these workers and proposed an alternative solution: “The idea of turning captives to the performance of public and my private works is beautiful, but it is possible under more favorable circumstances, not now... if you come across prisoners from rebellious peasants, then order to one of the ten to cut off one leg and one hand and let everyone free. This measure will intimidate them more than the death penalty; as proof of its usefulness, there are examples in the past.” Eventually, Branicki released many of his prisoners stated that he think it unjust to execute people just because the state is short of money. He even went as far as ordering to scale down execution of a captured rebels leader: instead of initially planned 14 days it would last only 3 days.

Anyway, one of the bands of the rebellious Cossacks had been chasing confederates, who fled across the border to the Ottoman town of Balta, and looted it. The Russian excuse was that these people were either not the Russian subjects or the people not in the Russian service. The captured Russian subjects had been punished (but not executed) on a border in presence of the Ottoman representatives but it was too late: the Ottoman military machine already started moving and could not stop.

Declaration of war. Russian ambassador was arrested and placed into Yedikule Hisari, which was the standard Ottoman way to declare the war.

After this happened, France moved from words to actions. Bishop Krasinsky, who came to Versailles to "throw Poland into the arms of France," as he put it, went to Saxony, having received 200,000 livres from the French court and a promise that in winter this amount would be increased to three million. Krasinsky, without entering Poland, had to help through his emissaries to overthrow of King Stanislav, create the general confederation, choose Prince Condé or the Saxon Prince Albert as king, and the newly elected king should marry the Austrian Archduchess. In France, officers were recruited to go to various Polish confederations to train the rebels in military art. This Grand Plan was more than a little bit on a fantastic side because it was based upon three rather questionable assumptions:

• That the Russians would be either beaten by the Ottomans or at least forced to concentrate all their resources against the Porte.
• That the confederacy will be able to grow up into a comprehensive military force.
• That as a result King Stanislaw-August is going to be overthrown, an idea which even Maria-Theresa was not supporting: removal of a legitimate king could be a very bad precedent.

On a positive side, the active French engagement on the Ottoman side and their activities in Sweden and Denmark automatically resulted in warming up of the Russian-British relations. The Brits were still reluctant to pay subsidies to Sweden, to prevent pro-French party from prevailing, but they were not against some kind of a cooperation with Russia, providing it would not get them directly involved in a war.

Preparing for war. At the news about the Ottoman declaration of war Catherine wrote: “The Turks and the French desired to wake up the cat that was sleeping; I am this cat who promises to let them know the consequences, so that the memory will not disappear soon.”

Catherine’s first step was seemingly in the right direction but implementation was really stupid. Following example of Elizabeth and her Conference she decided to create a military Council, which looked as a reasonable thing to do (her definitely being ignorant in a warfare) but during the 7YW the Conference was micromanaging all military operations depriving the commanders of a freedom of actions and issuing the orders which usually were plain stupid or too late. So far, this style of handling operations in the PLC proved to be a total failure and now she wanted to introduce it for a much more serious conflict. And, to make things even more interesting, she asked Panin’s opinion regarding the Council’s composition. Panin was true to himself starting with a statement that such a council may not even be necessary, at least for an year, but then naming Zakhar Chernyshov (de facto Minister of war), the generals who could get command of the armies, Prosecutor-General Prince Vyazemsky because he was overseeing finances, himself, vice-chancellor Prince Golitsyn, general Golitsyn and Razumovsky because he was a fieldmarshal (without any military experience). Catherine added to the list general Peter Panin and, probably in a hope that he will be useful at least for something, her former favorite Grigory Orlov (or perhaps it was expected that he is going to communicate some ideas of his brother Alexey who was on medical leave in Italy). As a result, majority of the Council were people with zero or close to zero military experience and those who had, with the exception of Chernishov, never held a serious independent command. The two most prominent figures of the 7YW, fieldmarshal Saltykov and general Rumyantsev, were not invited.

Man in charge. Now, the most military prominent out of that rather pathetic lot was Chernishov who, besides having experience of commanding a separate course, was President of the Military Collegium. In this capacity he accomplished some improvements in the military administration and creation of the General Staff as a permanent institution. But the good news ended there. The General Staff was a small group of the officers from a former quartermaster service who were given the much greater tasks to which they were not prepared either by education or experience.
As President of the Military Collegium Chernyshov was responsible for issuing the military charters, which he did. Under the leadership of Chernyshev, a new field charter was issued in 1763. This charter almost completely confirmed the provision of the previous Shuvalov Charter of 1755. The same linear combat orders, the same one-sided fascination with "fire production", the bayonet charges are forgotten, the same Prussian style in all forms and manifestations... The experience of the seven-Year War just passed away in vain. Fortunately, in 1764 Rumyantsev was invited back to the service and issued regimental instructions for the infantry in 1764 and cavalry in 1765. Which, did not produce the warm feelings between these two and one of the Chernyshov’s top priority tasks was to move Rumyantsev aside as much as possible.

The next problem was that, due to his position, he was expected to produce a plan for the war and this was a task well above and beyond his strategic abilities. While there was no danger from the friendly Sweden and it would be enough just to keep the garrisons in the fortresses along Finnish border, he wanted to keep additional few regiments there plus at least two regiments in Estonia, fire regiments in Livonia, five in Smolensk, etc. On October 1768, it was ordered to raise one recruit from 300 souls from all over the state; on November 14, a decree was made to make the second recruitment call on the same base. It was also necessary to take unoccupied sons of clergy and clerics as soldiers.

There was a general agreement to Panin’s statement that the war has to be carried in an offensive manner and that for this purpose the Russian forces have to be concentrated but his …er… “strategic insight” (one more military genius) was rather enigmatic: “It is necessary to try, to exhaust the enemy army and thereby force it, so that it would produce the same action in the capital towards peace as it required war.” To everybody’s surprise Grigory Orlov made an absolutely reasonable statement that, as the first step, it is necessary to define a purpose of the war. An idea was so novel that nobody could immediately come with a meaningful formula and it was decided to discuss it on a latter session after all other important issues are clarified.

They divided the army into three parts: an offensive corps of up to 80,000 people; a defensive, or Ukrainian, up to 40,000 and an observation corps from 12 to 15,000.
At the end of the meeting, Orlov, surprising everybody, proposed to send several ships to the Mediterranean Sea and from there to sabotage the enemy, but that this should be done with the consent of the English court. This proposal was left until future reasoning.

The next meeting was more productive in formulating a strategy. Which, of course, did not mean that this strategy was a good one. In a contradiction to the first session’s decision that the war must be an offensive one, the initiative was left to the enemy:

• If the Ottomans will join with the confederates and invade the PLC then commander of the Russian offensive corps would have to avoid a decisive battle and concentrate upon protection of the Russian borders and parts of Poland and Lithuania to both preserve his strength and provide security of the Russian friends; he would have to keep enemy exhausted by the marches (disregarding destruction caused to the part of Poland), impeding his ability to get the supplies and, when the time comes, use his exhausted condition.
• If the Ottomans will not immediately invade Poland, took Kamenets fortress, establish magazines there and remain near it. If the Ottoman force will be small, advance and take Khotin.

The 1st (offensive) Army was concentrating near Kiev, the 2nd (defensive) army was to protect the southern borders of Russia from Tatar invasions and was located near Poltava and Bakhmut; the third (observation) army - at Lutsk, was appointed as the vanguard of the main army; why there was a need to make it into a separate army and what it was expected to “observe” remains a mystery.

Only at that point Catherine proposed to discuss an issue regarding an intended purpose and desirable results. The agreement was that it will be good to get a freedom of sailing on the Black Sea and establish such borders with Poland that the peace would be guaranteed.
The commanders had been appointed: the 1st Army - Prince A.M.Golicyn, 2nd - Count P.A. Rumyantsev, 3rd - general Olitz. In this appointment, Golitsyn was seen as the triumph of Chernyshev, who thus managed to remove the unloved generals: Peter Iv. Panin at all, and Rumyantsev in the background.

The issue of a Mediterranean expedition was brought up again with the overly optimistic expectations that at the sight of the Russian ships the Greeks will revolt and perform, based upon the written assurances of the agents secretly sent there in 1763, all types of not clearly identified military miracles that will clear the whole Morea of the Ottoman presence. Catherine went from a skepticism into an excessive enthusiasm and wrote to Ivan Chernishov (the naval one) “I have a fleet in excellent care now, and I will truly use it like that, if God commands, as it has not yet been; and I have already prepared to send it, I will not say where…” It is rather strange that she tells the top honcho in the navy (after her son) that the fleet is in a good condition when he was supposed to know that this is not the case and even stranger that she was playing “grand coquette” not telling a person responsible for preparation of the naval operations about destination of the expedition.

So far, one unquestionably good byproduct of these preparations was that, with the army troops leaving the major cities, finally started creation of the police forces, financed by wealthy residents.

Another was of an equal or probably even greater significance: Catherine established order of St. George for the military feats. It was rather unique because it could be awarded only for performing beyond the call of duty.
“Neither the high birth nor the wounds received before the enemy, give the right to be granted this order: but it is given to those who not only performed their position in everything required by oath, honor and their duty, but moreover distinguished themselves with a special courageous act, or the wise, and for our military service useful advice... This order should never be removed: for the merits are acquired.”

There was also an opportunity to get the lowest, 4th, degree for 25 years of service as an army officer or 18 campaigns (with at least one battle) in the navy but these awards looked differently.

_______
[1] Impaling was seemingly the most popular method of a persuasion. The lucky ones could get away with simply being hanged but sometimes those in charge were getting creative and, time and means permitting, could go for cutting skin off the back, breaking on the wheel, mutilations, etc. So it should not come as a big surprise that the local peasants felt certain dislike of their Polish masters.

 

[alexmilman]

23. The war. #1

“A bad strategy is more than a lack of a good strategy. It lives its own life according to her logical laws.”
R. Rumelt
“The best strategy is to always be as strong as possible; this means first of all to be strong at all, and then at the decisive point."
Clausewitz
“The place of military action is the general's chessboard, it is his choice that reveals the abilities or ignorance of the military commander.”
Napoleon
“If a person understands how to do anything, even it is spitting against the wind, he can no longer be called a complete fool.”
“Go somewhere already...
Lord to Moses”
S.S. Musanif, ‘Shooter’s first rule’
"The problem of choosing lesser evil depends heavily on which side of the gun you are on. "
S.S. Musanif, ‘Epoch of the second rate scumbags.’
“If you want peace, prepare for war. If you want war, prepare for war. In short, if you want it or not, there will be a war.”
Unknown author​

Before the Ottoman army could be assembled, the Sultan decided to send the Crimean Tatars into a major raid to cause as much destruction as possible. For that purpose the current Khan was replaced with Qirim Giray, the best Tatar military commander. The numerous Budzhak and Yedisan hordes formed the core of the Khan’s army before his attack in 1769. In addition to them, in Balta, the Khan's army was joined by the corps sent by the Turkish Sultan with a force of about 10 thousand sipahi cavalry. The combined army of the Khan, which marched from the Balta in December 27, 1768 (January 7, 1769) numbered 80,000 Turks and Tatars, in addition, besides 8,000 of the small parties invading allied Poland to collect food and fodder.[1]

There were some critical comments about the weaponry and quality of these troops but strength of these armies was in their high mobility, great numbers and the raiding tactics improved to a perfection by many decades of practice.

December 27, 1768 (January 7, 1769) After a solemn, Asian magnificent ceremony, Qirim-Girey left Kaushany with his guard, top military leaders and dignitaries. The whole next day, December 28 (January 8), the "Bessarabian troops", the main forces of the Budzhak Horde, who had previously gathered in Khan-Kishl under the leadership of their Serasker Sultan, crossed the Dniester on eight ferries. In the camp near Dubossary, Qirim-Girey waited for some time for the rest of the Tatar detachments coming from the east. Then all the forces of the Khan's troops gathered in Balta and eight days later, on January 13 (24), moved from here to the east.

The war was declared in 1768 and Catherine and her Commission expected that it will start later in 1769 giving some time to prepare for it. This was somewhat silly because presumably at least the whole last year Russia was preparing to it and by that reason not sending more troops to the PLC and because starting from September 1768 there were numerous reports about preparations to the big-scale Crimean raid into the Russian southern territories. And most of the data received indicated that the Russian Elisavetgrad province would be the main target of the upcoming Tatar attack. This administrative-territorial unit was formed in 1764 from the former New Serbia and the Novoslobod Cossack Regiment. Pushed forward beyond the natural border formed by the Dnieper and the Ukrainian defensive line, the Elisavetgrad province was closest to the Turkish fortresses of the North-Western Black Sea and the lands of the Edisan and Bujak Nogais. The length of the southern border of the Elisavetgrad province (with the Zaporozhye steppes) was about 250 km, and the western border (with the Polish Uman region) was about 70 km. Strategically, the position of the region was open, and therefore its defense was considered an extremely difficult matter. By the beginning of the war with Turkey, the Elisavetgrad province included the districts of three settled cavalry regiments [2] - the Black Hussar (former Hussar Croats), the Yellow Hussar (former Pandur Infantry) and the Elisavetgrad Pikeman (formed from the former Novoslobodsky Cossack Regiment), as well as the newly settled schismatic freedoms. By the beginning of the war with Turkey, the newly formed province was in the stage of active settlement and numbered about 75,000 inhabitants of both sexes.

The administrative and military center of the province was the fortress of St. Elizabeth construction of which started in 1754. The fortress, located on the right upland bank of the Ingula River, was planned to be large and designed for a garrison of 2,000 infantry and 200 dragoons. P. A. Rumyantsev wrote about it: "The very fortress, laid down and not built completely due to a bad position, is not convenient for anything; it will always be under blockade and cannot stand for a long time without communication, which is easily suppressed from everywhere."

Governor of the province, major-general Isakov, Had a variety of service experience, including judicial, administrative and engineering, but did not command troops during the fighting. For a number of years, he managed the Elisavetgrad province, knew it well and considered its development and defense his main official duty. By 1768 the province had a single regular infantry regiment and about three settled regiments Rumyantsev wrote that they are “just the armed peasants”. On the top of it these cavalry regiments had less than 50% of the needed horses. There were also 3 Cossack regiments, totaling 1,038 people. They stood at outposts near the borders of Novorossiysk province.

Not that situation in Rumyantsev’s 2nd army was too cheerful. In total, 14 infantry and 16 cavalry regiments (3 carabinieri, 2 dragoon, 7 hussars, 4 pickemen) were assigned to the 2nd Army, with 40 field guns and 10 small unicorns. If the regiments were in a prescribed size, the army would have 21,728 infantry, 13 thousand cavalry and 9 thousand Cossacks. However, the recruits recruited at the beginning of the war had not yet arrived, and they only had to be taught military affairs; in addition, the already sparsely populated regiments were weakened by the allocation of teams to accompany the recruits. Out of 14 infantry regiments, 10 were a former landmilitia in a process of being transformed into the regular army. What’s worse, most of these troops had the old muskets, which were so bad that they simply could not be repaired. And the field artillery existed on paper: the army had only small regimental guns.

Small wonder that Rumyantsev believed that the lands of the Elisavetgrad province were too forward and open to enemy attack, which made it inexpedient to defend them. On September 23 (October 4), 1768, two days before the declaration of war by the Porte, Rumyantsev once again wrote to the Kiev Governor-General F. Min Voeikov on this issue: “As far as the defense of Elisavetgrad province by the introduction of my part of the troops is not only to Your Excellency, but also at the Court, I always said one thing that that land, according to its position, has no convenience to protect it with the forces here.”

Catherine’s reaction was that while the gubernia is, indeed, vulnerable, but the military honor requires if not completely repel the enemy’s invasion, than at least make it extremely costly. In other words, for reasons of state prestige and military psychology, the defense of the Elisavetgrad province was considered necessary. Rumyantsev complied by sending two regiments but did not consider this to be a good strategy: his idea for the winter of 1768-69 was defense along the Dnieper and along the Ukrainian fortified line and, on this basis, he built his plans, in which there was almost no place for the Elisavetgrad province. Which, of course, was rather cynical because population of the province would be left at enemy’s mercy. But, OTOH, with his understrength army he was expected to defend the perimeter stretching from far end of the Azov Sea all the way to Moldavia and to be ready to provide help to the 1st Army which had to operate just in Khotin area.

Isakov was repeatedly reporting that the forces in his disposal are inadequate for the province’s size and expected invaders’ numbers. Even with the reinforcements his main force consisted of three under strength infantry regiments totaling 1,800 and garrison of the St. Elizabeth fortress had only 400 (by their quality they were not even considered for the field service). To act against the light Tatar cavalry Isakov asked for 5,000 Cossacks but Rumyantsev sent only 2,000 who proved to be of a low quality. Isakov distributed his forces in a cordon fashion on a front of over 180 km stretching from south-east to north-west with the St. Elizabeth fortress being a center of defense.

All this was done in expectation that the Southern flank is going to be protected by Zaporizhian Cossacks. However, when the invasion started, they made a neutrality agreement with a commander of the Crimean right wing allowing his troops to pass through their territory.

Having passed through the lands of Khan's Ukraine, the invading army on January 15 (26) crossed the ice of the Southern Bug and entered the Russian borders at the Oryol Shants (small earth fortification) at the confluence of the Sinyukha River into the Bug. Then the Tatars, moving along the desert steppes of the Zaporizhian territory, changed the route and went down the bank of the Bug to its left tributary of the Dead Waters River and along it rushed to the northeast, to the Russian Elisavetgrad province. In those days there were severe frosts, with abundant snow and blizzards. The Tatars reached the Ingula River, the border of the Elizabethan Province, crossed it below the fortress of St. Elizabeth, and already on January 19 (30), the advanced detachments approached the fortress at a distance of five versts. This difficult bypass maneuver benefited the Tatars, partly disorienting the Russian command. During the week of the journey, the mounted Khan's army with a pack convoy passed about 280 kilometers through the snow-covered steppe in the frost and blizzard, which was another proof of the unsurpassed mobility of the Tatar cavalry.

Isakov initially concentrated the main force of his force at the village 15 km to the west from the fortress but upon receiving the information that the Tatars are actually approaching from the South sent call for the reinforcements and marched close to the fortress.

At the border of the Elisavetgrad province at the military council of the Khan, it was decided to divide the army and send a third of it, composed of volunteers, to the carry roundup throughout the province. Scattering into many small detachments (or chambula, from the Turkish çapul) for many centuries has been an invariable tactic of predatory Tatar raids. According to Tott, the council decided that these detachments, "constantly splitting into the smaller units, will cover the entire territory of New Serbia, burn all villages, all harvest, capture residents and take the herds away." It was also supposed that "the rest of the army will cross Ingul the next day and go in small marches to the Polish border, gradually drawing up to the fortress of St. Elizabeth to guard the forage and wait for their return." The task of the main forces of the Khan's army was to imitate the threat of the fortress of St. Elizabeth and, without trying to attack it seriously, tie down the garrison forces to allow the chambuls to freely plunder the villages of the province. Then the Tatars were going to move to the Polish lands; the prisoners captured by the detachments should later be fairly divided between the entire army. When the next day the core of the Tatar army led by the Khan followed the chambuls to cross the Ingul, there was a short-term thaw, and by night severe frosts struck, and the next 24 hours became the most fatal for the horde, 3,000 people and 30,000 horses died from the cold. Turkish sipakhs especially suffered from the frost; unused for the harsh climate, they had no supplies, starved and begged for food from the Tatars.
Isakov was sending the parties, including the whole infantry regiments, but the Tatars avoided a direct confrontation. However, when it became known that the enemy’s force amounts to 80,000 the military council decided to keep troops on the fortress and only on January 20 (31) upon receiving report that the enemy is moving within 3 - 4 versts, Isakov got out with his main force. However, the winter storm was so terrible that the visibility was limited to few meters and nothing was accomplished. The Tatars had been spreading throughout the province looting and burning but the weather took its toll and when it reached the Shanets of the 19th Company of the Elisavetgrad Pikener Regiment, located 18 km east of the fortress of St. Elizabeth, “The army was so bad that it was afraid of a sortie: in fact, a detachment of two or three thousand people, attacking us at night, could cut everyone.” To save situation a volunteer unit imitated attack on the fortification allowing the rest of the army to spend a night in a nearby village and in the morning (after the village was burned) the army moved northward toward the Polish border. Isakov had been marching parallel to it at the safe distance. In a piecemeal fashion he got as a reinforcement three weak battalions but the Tatars were already leaving the province. Isakov in his report was blaming his passive behavior upon the small numbers and severe weather which caused a complete exhaustion of his troops.

On January 25 (February 5), when the Khan was already on his way to Poland, few thousands Tatar attacked fortress Tsibulev but were repulsed with the considerable losses. “The enemy suffered much more damage, because in addition to losing people from the cruel cold, seven hundred and thirty-four had been killed by parties sent by me, and we lost ten hussars, pikemen and Cossacks, two were missing, six were wounded.”
On February 1 Khan reached the Polish territory. On February 5 (16) after stopping and distributing the loot Qirim-Girey with the Budzhak horde marched from Savrani towards Kaushan. The rest of the Khan's army was disbanded and sent home. On February 13 (24) Khan reached Kaushani and the raid was over.

Rumyantsev’s headquarters were in Glukhov, 370 km as the crow flies from the fortress of St. Elizabeth, too far from the entire Ukrainian line. In addition, the Tatar attack caught Rumyantsev in Kiev, where he went to a meeting with the commander-in-chief of the 1st Army, Prince A. M. Golitsyn. Having understood from the reports of Isakov and other local commanders, that the events are not developing in the most favorable way, Rumyantsev criticized the commander of the troops in the Elisavetgrad province. “You had quite enough of infantry and cavalry, you had to, having learned only the entry of the enemy, meet him with a military hand and in case of battle, if you could not gain the upper hand, then it would be decent to retreat with your corps to the fortress under protection of its cannons… You, Mr. General, will be responsible for everything that you have already missed, and even more so, if the enemy freely reaches the Dnieper and you will not dare to hit him, behind or from the side, to slow him down with your weapon, without relying upon other commanders.” Isakov came out with his corps from the fortress only 6-7 days after the passage of the main Tatar forces near the fortress, and in two days with forced marches, despite the frosty weather, he went from the fortress to Novomirgorod, about 55 km in a straight line. From there, Isakov moved further west, towards the border entrenchment of Arkhangelsk. For chasing he sent ahead a light cavalry. It failed to catch up with the main Tatar force but was actively hunting down the small Tatar detachments. Taking into an account that most of that cavalry was composed of the locals, cruelty of dealing with the captured Tatars is not surprising.

Simultaneously with the invasion of the Khan's army into the Elisavetgrad province, the smaller hordes under the leadership of Kalga and Nureddin attacked Bakhmut and Wolf Waters, but were successfully repulsed by local Russian garrisons and quickly retreated, although they managed to take prey. The Tatar forces that approached Bakhmut on January 27 (February 7) were estimated by the Russian command at only 5,000 people.

While the military losses on the Russian side were negligible, those of the civilian population had been estimated approximately at 16,000 with a good chance that a big part of that number was taken on the Polish Ukrainian territories. Anyway, the province was thoroughly looted and destroyed.

Upon Rumyantsev’s insistence Isakov was removed from his position. Shortly after returning from the winter campaign, in the second half of March, in the midst of preparations for the upcoming summer campaign, Qirim-Girey suddenly died in his palace in Kaushani of an unknown disease, most probably as a result of poisoning: he was too often and too loudly expressing his opinion about the Grand Vizier.
__________________
[1] Baron Tott, who accompanied the Khan in this campaign reported 3 armies: 100,000 (led by the Khan), 60,000 and 40,000.
[2] These were leftovers of the old system of the military settlements with the military settlers representing a minority of g the province’s population. They lived around few small earth&wood fortifications and were, in general, ill trained and purely armed.

 

[alexmilman]

24. The war. #2. Dances at Khotin

“Usually soldiers win battles, and generals get honors."
"It's bad if young people learn martial art from books: it's a sure way to produce bad generals."
Napoleon I Bonaparte
“Nations always attribute victories to the talent of their generals and the courage of their soldiers, and the defeats are necessarily explained by fatal accident."
Anatole France
“A bad general leads a herd of victims."
Pierre Boist
“The more lead in the chests of the soldiers, the more orders on the chest of the generals."
“Talent generates enemies; talentlessness and mediocrity - friends.”
A. F. Davidovich
“I did not quite get the meaning of your last move.”
‘Father Goose’
“The moment of realizing your lack of talent is a glimpse of genius.”
Stanislav Jerzy Lec
“Who wants to do something is looking for the method, who doesn’t - for an excuse.”
“It is not the uniform that makes a person worthy, but a person should be worthy of the uniform.”
unknown authors​

A little bit of a historic background. The fortress of Khotin, located on the right bank of the Dniester River, was founded somewhere in the X century and passed through the numerous reconstructions. The castle with its 40 meters tall walls belongs to the XIV century. In the XVI century it was regularly taken by pretty much everyone who bothered to attack it, including 500 Zaporyzhian Cossacks who captured it in 1563. However, with the same regularity it kept being returned either to the Ottomans or to their Moldavian vassals. For example, in November 1673, the Khotyn Fortress was lost by the Turks to Jan Sobieski to be recaptured in early August 1674, and lost again in 1684. With the 1699 Karlowitz Peace Treaty, the fortress was transferred from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth to Moldavia. In 1711, Khotyn was again taken over by the Turks. By that time even the Turks had been able to figure out that perhaps the fortress needs some modernization and after six-year (1712–18) reconstruction under supervision of the French engineers, it became the foremost stronghold of the Ottoman defense in Eastern Europe. Which did not prevent its relatively easy capture in 1739 by Burkhard Christoph von Münnich.

Strategic situation after the Crimean raid looked as following. Rumyantsev sent a light detachment toward the Crimea and strengthened garrisons of Azov and Taganrog. Then he transferred the main forces of his army to Elizavetgrad, but could not move further: he had only 30 thousand, of which a third were the Cossacks armed with only pikes, while on the Dniester near Kaushan there was a Crimean khan [1] with 110 thousand Tatars and Turks, and 30 thousand Tatars threatened from Perekop. All Rumyantsev could do was spread false rumors about the movement of his army to Podolia, which completely confused the enemy's calculations. The center of gravity was transferred to the 1st Army on the Dniester.

Prince Golitsyn opened the campaign on April 15 1769 without waiting for the arrival of replenishments (only 45 thousand were considered in his army). Moldova rebelled against the Turks, the lord fled, and the Archbishop of Ias asked Golitsyn to hurry to Moldova to accept it into Russian citizenship. However, instead of going straight to Iasi, Golitsyn set out to capture Khotin first because according to the “master plan” his main task was not to let the Ottomans to enter the PLC and change of the geopolitical situation was neither here nor there.
Initially, Golitsyn operated quite successfully in his march toward Khotin due to a complete absence of an enemy but within few days he clearly demonstrated that such a trifle can prevent him from wrestling a defeat from the jaws of victory and on April 21 he turned back because Moldavia was devastated by the Ottomans and Tatars [2] and because he suddenly discovered that he does not have a siege artillery [3]. The Ottomans attacked his baggage train but had been repulsed with allegedly great losses. On April 24 the 1st Army successfully crossed the Dniester.

He sent cornet Münnich with the report about his maneuvers to St. Petersburg and the messenger allowed himself to report that the things are not going too well at Khotin. Catherine personally interviewed him for two hours and wrote to Panin “I was talking to Count Münnich for two hours and noticed a lot of nonsense and lies in what he said. So, I ask you not to judge anything before your arrival here in the Council tomorrow; then see from the report of the prince Golitsyn, that it's not like what Münnich lied.” However, getting back across the Dniester was undeniable fact and on May 6 Catherine wrote to Golitsyn: “We could not expect after your first report about a victory such an unpleasant turn of the events and with a great surprise can’t find in your report a detailed explanation of the reasons which, without a doubt, put you in such an extreme situation that the very next day you were forced to abandon the glory of a successful opening of the campaign and advantage gained over the enemy. Due to our unshaken trust to you and our generals, we want just to prescribe to you to assemble a military council and find a way to conduct some military operation which will replace, with some newly-acquired glory of our arms and usefulness in a future campaign an unpleasant adventure of your speedy return, which gives a reason to various public interpretations.”
Golitsyn wrote, as an excuse, that he did not took Khotin due to the difficulties which would be necessary to overcome by storming the fortress with the big losses which he would not dare to do without an imperial order and that he was forced to get back across the river because his army’s position was dangerous and because he did not get any information from Count Rumyantsev regarding the measures he could take to improve his (Golytsin’s) situation [4]. Actually, this was just the first step of his planned campaign because he was intended to retreat even further toward the magazines located in Poland. An idea to destroy the bridge across the Danube and a big Ottoman magazine because could not find the volunteers. He also reported that all his troops crossed to the left bank of the Dniester, the bridges are destroyed, infantry placed in the camp, and cavalry placed in the private quarters.

Catherine decided that he must be given some instructions and issued a rescript saying that the glory of Russian arms demands change of his present position and, instead of staying near the magazines, demands an aggressive actions to get advantage over the enemy. He was instructed to cross the Dniester, advance toward the enemy and to force it not only to retreat beyond the Danube but to end campaign with a victory “In order to clean Moldavia and give itself the freedom to conquer Khotyn, therefore, to occupy winter quarters on the Dniester itself.” [5]

In a meantime the Great Vizier crossed the Danube and, operating with the same speed as Golytsin, spent the whole month staying on the Prut. Following the initial plan the Vizier offered to the confederates to move to the PLC with all force of presumably 200,000. This was too much even for the confederates and their proposed an alternative plan of him marching with the main force into Novorossia against Rumyantsev leaving a contingent to protect Khotin. The plan was adopted. Having sent 60,000 Janissaries and Tatars to Khotyn under command of Seraskir Moldavanchi Pasha, the vizier moved with the rest of the forces to the Benders to go to Elizabeth from there. His campaign failed. Rumyantsev's skillful spreadig of false rumors about his army forced the vizier to overestimate the forces of the 2nd Army. He never dared to cross the Dniester and retreated back to the Prut stopping at Ryabaya Mogila (40 versts south of Iasi).

The accumulation of Turkish troops near Khotyn and the attempt of the Turks to cross the Dniester forced Golitsyn to move again in June to this river. On June 24, he crossed the Dniester, repulsed an attack of 80,000 Turks and Tatars [6] near the village of Pashkivtsi and blocked Khotin. The arrival of Seraskir Moldavanchi and the Crimean Khan Devlet Giray prompted Golitsyn to lift the blockade of the fortress and retreat for the Dniester. The commander of the 1st Army considered the goal of the campaign - the distraction of Turkish forces from Novorossiya - achieved. To his defense, he was just following a popular European school of a military thought in which the maneuver was much important than a battle but an excessive erudition is not always an advantage.

In a meantime, the Vizier (who, besides being too passive, was stealing too much) was replaced with more energetic Moldavanchi. The new vizier was commanded to move beyond the Dniester and seize Podolia. The offensive ended badly for the Turks. Moldovanchi crossed the Dniestef with up to 80 thousands on August 29, but these forces were thrown into the river by Golitsyn. The 12,000 strong detachment sent on September 5 behind the Dniester for forage was completely destroyed.

These failures, due to the lack of food and fodder, completely demoralized the enemy army, which consisted of three-quarters of irregular militia and Tatars. Almost all of her was dispersed. Moldavanchi managed to collect only 30 thousand in Iasi (and was forced to flee from them: they wanted to kill him). At Ryabaya Mogila only 5 thousand of them left... The hundred thousandth Turkish army was scattered like smoke. There was only a strong garrison in Bendery, weak detachments in the Danube fortresses, and a Tatar horde in Kaushany. Khotin was abandoned.

Golitsyn did not take advantage of such a favorable situation. He occupied Khotin without a fight (where 163 guns were taken), but then again, for the third time for the campaign, retreated beyond the Dniester. This second return because of the Dniester caused great irritation in St. Petersburg, especially since during July there were constant reports from Golitsyn about the successes. But what was the impression made by the news that they retreated, not fighting not only with the vizier, but also with his advanced military? We saw that Golitsyn directly complained about Rumyantsev; Rumyantsev, for his part, wrote to the prince. M. N. Volkonsky: “As you well know, in all my operations I must acting in agreement with Prince Alexander Mikhailovich but he, with his secret movements makes me completely confused or, better to say, makes me a blind man … not knowing plan of his operations, no matter how much I want to be helpful, can do nothing.”
Even Catherine could not delay the decision for much longer and on August 13 Chernyshov declared that the Empress “decided due to certain reasons recall Prince Golytsin from the army to St.Petersburg, general Rumyantsev has to take command of his army and general Peter Ivanovich Panin is appointed commander of the 2nd Army.”

While being seemingly reasonable, this decision was a part of the usual court intrigue. Golytsin, Chernyshov’s candidate, was compromised and had to be replaced. Rumyantsev’s appointment was, besides the common sense, intended to make the Panin’s party unhappy because they’d prefer that this position, as more prominent, had been given to general Panin. The Panin’s appointment was slap on the face to general Prince Dolgorukov who already served in the 2nd Army being responsible for defense of the Crimean border and neither by rank nor by military talent was inferior to Panin. Most probably, he was bypassed by combination of two reasons: the Panin party wanted at least some command for P.Panin and Catherine personally disliked Dolgorukov.

On September 18, Golitsyn left the army, over which he accepted the command of Rumyantsev. On the 26th, Lieutenant General Elmpt entered Iasi and swore the residents to the Empress of the All-Russian. The Russian detachment was marching toward Bucharest.

________
[1] Devlet IV Giray. Actually, the situation was not as bad as it looked because his attempts to raise an army were sabotaged by some of the local beys who were not enthusiastic all the way to starting the secret talks with Russia. Was dismissed in 1770 and replaced by Selim III Girey.
[2] Which was true but did not prevent in OTL from fighting in that region for the next few years.
[3] Discoveries like that were routinely happening over the ages. Presumably, the Spanish admiral sent to hunt down Francis Drake when he was looting the Pacific coast of the colonies, discovered at the last moment that, due to an omission in the instruction issued by the Vice-Roi of Peru, the gunpowder was not loaded on his ships; he had to return, report, wait for an updated instruction, etc.
[4] Besides guarding with a much smaller army a widely open border of at least 500 km…
[5] This was almost Napoleonic in a clearly formulated idea that the goal must be enemy’s army and not a geographic point. Of course, being “Napoleonic” also involves an ability to implement this principle and, so far, Catherine was relying too much on her personal sympathies and Chernishov’s proposals.
[6] The Russian general tended to feel themselves quite free with adding zeroes to the numbers of the Ottomans and Tatars so don’t ask me how this arithmetics adds up. The same applies to the numbers mentioned later in the chapter: they are all from the Russian reports.

 

[alexmilman]

25. The war. #3. Year 1770. Part 1

“Oh, almighty generalissimo of all heavenly forces! If you do not come to us, your children in Christ, to help, at least do not help these Turkish dogs, and you will see that you will not have to repent of it!”
Prayer of general Johann von Sporck before the battle of Saint Gotthard
“Nothing is impossible for those who try.”
“I'm not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep. I'm afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion.“
Alexander the Great
“A cautious commander is better than a reckless one."
Octavian Augustus
“Even for the most talented commander it is extremely difficult to defeat the twice as strong enemy."
“The main task of the commander should be to achieve the planned general battle and give it in such an environment and with such a balance of forces that would promise a decisive victory."
“Without courage, an outstanding commander is unthinkable... We consider it the first condition of a commander's career.“
Karl von Clausewitz
“There are six types of ill-fated armies: running, loose, sinking, collapsing, disorderly and defeated. These six are not from Heaven and Earth, but from the mistakes of the commander."
Sun Tzu
“The greatest commander is the one who makes the least mistakes."
Napoleon
“The smaller the army, the more brave soldiers it has.”
“Speed and onslaught are the soul of a real war.”
Suvorov​

The Archipelago expedition sails.

Strictly speaking, this naval operation was a pure adventure based upon the overly optimistic reports about readiness of the Greeks and other Ottoman subjects to raise against their masters: the numbers of the potential rebels and their fighting qualities reported by Alexey Orlov from Italy were on the extremely optimistic side. Second adventurous aspect of the enterprise was condition of the Baltic fleet, both the ships and personnel. Between 1725 and 1764 a single frigate sailed to the Mediterranean many of its ships never left the Gulf of Finland.

The plan, as formulated by Alexey Orlov and approved by the St.Petersburg strategists, was support for the uprising of the Christian peoples of the Balkan Peninsula (primarily the Greeks of the Peloponnese and the Aegean islands) and the attack of the Ottoman Empire from the rear. During the fighting, it was planned to disrupt its maritime communications in the Mediterranean Sea, divert part of the enemy forces from the Danube and Crimean theaters of war, block the Dardanelles, capture its important seaside points and occupy the Balkan Peninsula. The expedition planned to break through the Dardanelles to Constantinople and force the Turks to surrender. Taking into an account the allocated resources, there were too many tasks to accomplish. The majority of the Council was skeptical about the expedition's project, but the Empress insisted on it - it was just a kind of a spectacular thing that she wanted. Alexey Orlov was appointed commander of the expedition as an general anshef (full general).
The expedition took place in favorable foreign policy conditions for Russia. Denmark controlled the Zund Straits and exist of the Russian fleet from the Baltic Sea depended upon its consent but Denmark was an ally so this was not a problem and its government even allow hiring of the Danish sailors. Britain also was OK with the expedition (the French being the Ottoman allies), allowing hirings and promising supplies and repairs in the British ports. Benevolent neutrality and assistance to the Russian fleet was also provided by the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, where Alexey Orlov lived for many months; in the main port of this state - in Livorno Russian ships were allowed to repair and resupply.

The expedition included 5 squadrons of the Baltic Fleet - 20 ships of the line, 6 frigates, 1 bomber ship, 26 auxiliary vessels, more than 8 thousand troops, the total composition of the expedition is more than 17 thousand people. In addition to them, 2 bomber ships and several frigates were purchased in England, as well as directly in Greece (or voluntarily joined the Russian fleet).

The 1st squadron (7 ships of the line, 1 cannon boat, 1 frigate and 9 auxiliary ships) under command of admiral G.A.Spiridov left Kronstadt on 18 (29) 1769.

The 2nd squadron (3 ships of the line, 2 frigates and 3 small ships) under command of rear admiral John Elphinstone left Kronstadt on 9 (20) October.

There was something of a ticking time bomb because, regardless difference of the ranks, there was no officially appointed naval head of the expedition and Elphinston, recently hired to the Russian service and speedily promoted to the rear admiral and squadron commander (so far, in the RN he got command of the 60-guns ship of the line only in 1767), got overly ambitious refusing to take commands from Spiridov. He was not a bad naval officer and clearly a brave one but too rash and and having extremely high opinion about himself and rather too low opinion about most of his colleagues.

Much more valuable “acquisition” was rear admiral Samuel Greig, commander of a battleship “Three Hierarchs” and Spiridov’s deputy.

The 3rd, 4th and 5th squadrons remained in Kronstadt for the whole 1769. The 3rd sailed out in the summer of 1770 and the last two even later.

Even getting out of the Baltic Sea turned to be a major adventure. Upon arrival in Copenhagen on August 30 (September 10), more than 300 people were sick on the ships, 54 people died. One of the battleships was damaged so seriously that it had to return to Revel and was replaced by another that just arrived from Archangelsk. One of the small ships was lost as Kattegat. By the time squadron arrived to Hull it had more than 700 sick and the ships required repairs of various seriousness. Spiridov left Greig with most of the squadron in Hull to fix the problems and left for Gibraltar with two ships of the line, frigate and a cannon boat. By the time he arrived there one of the ships of the line was in such a bad shape that it was sent to Portsmouth were found incapable for the later service. During the storm, Spiridov on “St. Eustace” separated from the rest of the ships and arrived in Gibraltar in early November alone. There he decided not to wait for the rest of the squadron, but to go to the then Allied English island of Minorca in Port Mahon. On October 26 (November 6), Greig sailed with the main part of the squadron from England and arrived without loss on November 12 (23) to Gibraltar, where he received news from Spiridov and headed to Minorca. By Christmas 1769, only 9 ships had gathered in Minorca: 4 ships of the line, frigate, 2 small ships and 2 transports. On 9 (20) January 1770 three ships had been sent to Livorno to pick up Orlov. The rest of the force sailed toward Greece, reached the shores of the Moray Peninsula and on February 17 (28) and landed troops in the bay of Itilona (Vittulo). The laggard ships (2 ships of the line and a transport) joined them in March.

Land campaign starts. It would be only fair to say that the members of Panin’s “party” proved to be right when they protested about Rumyantsev’ appointment arguing that he is “too skilled with his pen” and will always find an excuse for not marching ahead. For the court crowd of the “cabinet generals”, and first and foremost Catherine herself, the war was all about the glory and demonstration of a military might (see her letters to Golitsyn in previous chapter). Conditions of the troops, which were expected to deliver the glory was not a serious consideration, especially when everything was just fine on a paper. Cherishov was to busy playing a grand strategist to pay attention to the trifles like supply and logistics and the army commanders had to rely pretty much upon their own inventiveness.

Not being a “political general” like Golitsyn and Peter Panin, or a “cabinet general” as Chernyshov and thee rest of the Council, Rumyantsev, upon taking command of the 1st Army, concentrated upon putting things in a proper order and managed to get from Catherine an agreement not to interfere into conduct of his operations. He summarized the mistakes of his predecessor as follows: no one takes the city without first getting rid of the forces defending him. His main goal was to destroy the enemy's manpower, for this the 1st Army had to act offensively (to prevent the passage of the Turks across the Danube), the 2nd Army was entrusted with an offensive and defensive task (the possession of Benders and the defense of Little Russia), the 3rd Observatory Army was abolished and became a separate division in the 1st. His army still was not in a full size but this aspect of a war was not in his hands. “The army does not have the recruits required to staff the regiments, the supply is not delivered in a large number of things it needs. On my part, requirements have been made to the proper places, officers have been sent for receiving the goods, but nothing has been enough.”

Arriving in the 1st Army at the end of October 1769 , Rumyantsev placed its main forces on quarters in the area between Zbruch and Bug, 60 squadrons and 108 guns were arranged in a rectangle 70 versts long and 40 versts wide. This concentrated position allowed immediate combat preparation. Beyond the Dniester and the Prut, the strategic vanguard was moved to Moldova - 17,000 mostly cavalry under the name of the Moldavian Corps and under the command of General Stofeln. Shtofeln was entrusted with the administration of Moldova, which had just sworn citizenship to the Russian Empress.

The army was reorganized. Regiments, by 2 and 3, were combined into brigades, and brigades in divisions. Artillery management was decentralized and artillery companies are assigned to the divisions. In winter, maneuvers and exercises were arranged (special attention was paid to the speed of movements and cavalry charges). Rumyantsev also sent a report pointing out that the existing Russian cavalry had been created for the European war with its need for the heavy cavalry on the big expensive horses which are not very useful in the current war where the Russians are facing the light and fast enemy’s cavalry. Thus he advocated strengthening of the light cavalry for which plenty of horses were available within the empire.

Stofeln acted bravely and energetically. In November, he captured all of Moldova to Galati and most of Wallachia, capturing both rulers - enemies of Russia. Military operations in the principalities did not stop all winter. Taking advantage of the weakness and scatteredness of the Moldavian Corps, the Turks and Tatars attacked it in early January 1770, but were utterly defeated at Fokshani. Then Stofeln took Brailov, again defeated the Turks at Zhurzha and the Wallachs at Bucharest. All these operations had been accompanied by the massive destruction to make the Ottoman operations there difficult.

These operations had a highly demoralizing effect on the Turks and especially on the Tatars. However, the sultan showed great energy. Without sparing the costs, he assembled a new army, replaced the Crimean Khan Devlet, whose zeal began to cool down, and appointed Kaplan-Giray Khan, who was ordered to prepare for a campaign from Kaushan to Iasi to take away the principalities and crush the Moldavian Corps before the arrival of the main Russian forces.

The news of the Khan's preparations for the campaign made Rumyantsev hurry with the opening of the campaign. Aware of the difficulty of holding the principalities with small forces, he ordered Shtofeln to clear Wallachia and limit himself only to the defense of eastern Moldova, the region between Prut and Seret. Without waiting for expected reinforcements, Rumyantsev went on a campaign, and on May 12 his troops concentrated near Khotin. Under the arms he had (after discounting 5 thousand non-combats and 2 thousand sick) - 32 thousands consisting of 10 infantry and four cavalry brigades. The infantry is consolidated into three divisions - Olitsa, Plemyannikov and Bruce.

Notwithstanding a promise not to interfere into his operations, Catherine, true to herself, had been sending to Rumyantsev valuable advices on how to wage a war.

“Brailov castle does not seem to have become important anymore, having been surrounded by our troops and posts, so to speak.”

“Most of all, I'm concerned about the difficulties of setting magazines in the conquered lands.” with the following ideas of how to use the local carts and oxen…

Rumyantsev’s report about Stofeln’s operations enraged Catherine. “Mr. Stofeln’s exercises in burning city after city and villages by hundreds, I confess, made me very unhappy… Perhaps take it to Shtofeln: the extermination of all the places there will not cause him laurels, nor to us a profit, most if it is Christian dwellings…” However, she left the decision to Rumyantsev “ … Leaving, however, you to do nothing less than prudent caution, and your best martial art and knowledge will put on your mind, having a perfect trust to you that you will do everything to serve the benefit of the service and the deeds entrusted to you. It may be that according to my natural tendency to create more than to exterminate, I accept these unpleasant events too hotly; however, I considered it necessary so that you know my way of thinking.” Rumyantsev replied that he does not get any pleasure out of such events but tried to defend Stofeln, whom he highly valued, by pointing out that the European methods of war are not applicable to the war with the Ottomans. “Truly, a current war has the appearance of the same barbarism that was customary for our ancestors and all wild peoples, why it is difficult to observe measures of goodness against such an enemy, whose actions are one fierceness and inhumanity.” He explained that if the region is not destroyed, the Ottomans would use it as a base and loot the population, anyway, but now, according to the given orders, the people are being evacuated with all their belongings so that they are losing only the buildings.

Regarding the territories seemingly safely under Russian control, Catherine was asking if it is possible to tax the population thus at least somewhat offsetting the military expenses. The problem was in the fact that the local administration was one set by the Ottomans and, formally, could not be taxed. But in practice, the Russian officers had been assigned to oversee the local affairs, including the tax collection. Not that there was too much to collect because the territory was thoroughly looted by the Turks and Tatars during the previous campaign.

The plague raging in Moldova prompted Rumyantsev to stop in northern Bessarabia, but the critical situation of the Moldovan Corps forced him to go forward. A significant part of this corps and Stofeln himself died from the plague. Prince Repnin, who accepted the command, collected the remnants of the corps on the Prut at Ryabaya Mogila, where since May 20 he has been steadfastly repeling the attacks of the Tatar horde of Kaplan-Girey (72 thousand people). General Baur's mounted vanguard sent by Rumyantsev came into contact with Repnin on June 10.

 

[alexmilman]

26. The war. #3. Year 1770. Part 2

“You win battles by knowing the enemy's timing, and using a timing which the enemy does not expect.”
Miyamoto Musashi [1]
“Battles are won by slaughter and maneuver. The greater the general, the more he contributes in maneuver, the less he demands in slaughter.”
Winston Churchill [2]
"We're surrounded, so they can't get away from us."
Baysangur Benoevsky
“There are no wars without losses, and sometimes victory brings so many losses that it looks more like a defeat.”
“When people are afraid, they either run away or fight.”
unknown authors
“The battle is won by the one who is determined to win it!”
Lev Tolstoy [3]
“You don’t count the enemies, you beat them.”
F.F.Ushakov
"If you dare to fight, it's inappropriate to be timid or indecisive. And if the enemy intends to eat you for lunch, you should have him for breakfast.”
Khosrev Ibn-Iskander
“Our glory and dignity do not allow to bear the presence of the enemy standing in sight of us without attacking him.”
Rumyantsev before Battle of Lagra
“How come, Your Excellency, that all your actions result in being a shame to the Fatherland? Can you do something to its glory?”
Saltykov-Schedrin, ‘ The modern Idyl”
"In sex, as in battle, taking a comfortable position does not yet guarantee success."
E. A. Sevrus (Borokhov)​

The glorious year

Ryabaya Mogila. Rumyantsev’s main force reached Repnin’s position on June 16 (27) and at night of 17th (28) the attack started. Rumyantsev, after joining Repnin’s force, had less that 38,000 against approximately 70,000.

The Russian army was divided into several separate detachments, which attacked Kaplan-Giray's troops simultaneously from several sides. Rumyantsev's offensive put the Crimean-Turkish camp at risk to the encirclement and forced the khan to retreat to the Larga River, losing 400 people. The Russian army lost only 46 soldiers.

Despite the small scale of the battle itself, it became known because of the tactical innovations used by Rumyantsev: march-maneuver to the rear and on the flanks of the enemy’s army and and divisional squares instead of a traditional single army square. To increase the mobility, Rumyantsev also stopped usage of chevaux de frise as infantry’s protective measure against the cavalry charges, relying instead upon the artillery.

Lagra. All sorts of obstacles - natural and artificial - made it difficult to pursue. Khan took an even stronger position on the Larga River, where he decided to wait for the arrival of the main vizier's forces crossing the Danube and the cavalry of Abaza Pasha (15 thousand), coming from Brailov. Rumyantsev had no more than 25 thousand after the allocation of units to ensure the rear. Anticipating the intention of the enemy, he decided to break him piece by piece, without waiting for the connection of the entire 250,000th mass.

At Lagra Kaplan-Girey had 15,000 Turks, 65,000 Tatars and 33 artillery pieces. His position was located behind the Larga River, the right flank of which was fortified by trenches. Rumyantsev decided to immediately attack the enemy, and on July 4, advancing from Falci, stopped 8 versts from the Turkish camp. Several thousand Turkish-Tatar cavalry rushed to the Russian forward detachments, but were repulsed. The next day, the Turks and Tatars attacked with larger forces and failed again, and at dawn on July 7, the Russians themselves went on the offensive against the Turkish positions. Russian main attack was against enemy’s right flank while division of general Plemiannikov was demonstrating against the left flank. While being inferior in the numbers, Rumyantsev had a big advantage in the artillery (over 100 guns) and his troops had been much better organized.

When the divisions of Generals Baur and Repnin captured the Turkish trenches, Plemiannikov moved his division across Larga, and the general attack of the Russians forced the Turks to hastily abandon the last fortification and their camp. The Tatar cavalry, which tried to cover up the retreat, was overthrown by the Russian heavy cavalry of Count I. P. Saltykov.

Rumyantsev used a new tactic of movement of troops in columns, which turned in a loose formation in battle. As at Ryabaya Mogila, artillery was used as a protection from the cavalry charges.

The enemy lost more than 1,000 killed, 2,000 prisoners. 33 guns (including 3 mortars), 8 banners, and the camp. Russian losses were 29 killed and 61 wounded.

After the defeat at the Battle of Larga on July 7, the Turkish-Tatar forces of the Crimean Khan Kaplan II Giray retreated towards the Danube. Soon the advanced Russian troops found that the retreating had divided into two parts: the Tatars moved towards Izmail and Kiliya, where their properties and families were left, and the Turks retreated down the left bank of the Kagul River.

Catherine was ecstatic: “You will take in my century an undoubtedly excellent place of the leader of the reasonable, skillful and diligent. I consider you to give this justice and, so that everyone knows my way of thinking about you and my pleasure about your successes, I send you the Order of St. George I class.” Rumyantsev became the first (after Catherine who awarded herself as a founder) recipient of St. George I class. Award was accompanied by a list of the villages granted to him and his descendants.

Kagul. Two Grand Viziers have already been replaced; now the army was commanded by the third, Ivazzade Khalil Pasha. Having learned about the small number of Lagra’s winners and being reported by the Khan that Rumyantsev’s army is very short on food, Khalil crossed the Danube in the full hope that his 100,000-strong army would crush the enemy, who had no more than 17,000 [4]. Khan promised to attack the rear of the Russian troops, while the Grand Vizier was attacking them from the front.

At that time, Rumyantsev was waiting for the arrival of food, and thus made it possible for Iwazzade Khalil Pasha's army to join the detachment standing on Kagul. The number of the combined Turkish army was up to 150 thousand people, including 50 thousand infantry and 100 thousand cavalry.
In addition, on the left side of Lake Yalpug (Yalpukh) there are 80 thousand Tatars who were preparing to cross Salchu (a tributary of the river. Yalpug) to attack the Rumyantsev wagons moving along this river and the transport coming from Falchi. After that, the Tatars could attack the rear of the Russian army. Rumyantsev wanted to move immediately to the enemy, but did not consider it possible to do so without having at least seven-day provisions with him, and therefore sent an order for the immediate movement of wagons, and to speed up he sent regimental wagons, arming the drivers and increasing their numbers. Rumyantsev's position was as follows: there were 150,000 Turks in front of his front; on the right and left, the long lakes Kagul and Yalpug hindered free movement, food remained for two to four days. In case of failure, the army would be in a difficult situation, being locked in a narrow space between rivers and large lakes, attacked from the front and from the rear by the enemy ten times stronger. Rumyantsev could easily get out of this situation, it was enough only to retreat to Falci, and, having provided himself with food, wait for the enemy's attack on the chosen position. Then, even if he lost the battle, he could retreat to join the Second Army and then go on the offensive again. But Rumyantsev remained true to his rule: "not to bear the presence of the enemy without attacking him." Rumyantsev ordered the army luggage train coming from Falci to the Salcea River to go to the Kagul River to prevent a Tatar attack from behind the Yalpug.

The Turks noticed the immobility of Rumyantsev's army, but thought it come from the awareness of their own doom. At 10 a.m. on July 20, the Turkish army withdrew from its position and moved to the village of Grecheni. At the sight of the Turkish army, which stopped in the evening in two versts before reaching Trajan’s Wall and choosing a position, Rumyantsev despite the small size of his army, said to the surrounding officers: "If the Turks dare to set up at least one tent in this place, I will attack them that night." Vizier was planning to start his attack at 10AM but this plan was already hours late compared to Rumyantsev's plan: the Russian force was to launch its offensive at 1 a.m. — only an hour after midnight, with 17,000 infantrymen deployed in squares with sharpshooters defending their flanks as they have to fight their way against superior numbers of the enemy especially their cavalry, while the rest have to be put in reserve in case things went out of his plan.

When the Turks noticed the attackers, they ordered their numerous cavalry to attack, stretching in front of the entire Russian front. Russian squares stopped and opened fire. The fire of the Melissano batteries was especially effective. When the artillery repulsed the attack on the center, the Turks moved the attack to the right to strengthen the attack on the columns of General Bruce and Prince Repnin. Taking advantage of the hollow between these squares, the Turks surrounded them from all sides. At the same time, part of the Turkish cavalry, taking advantage of another valley, crossed the Trajan’s Wall and rushed into the rear of the Olits square. After completing this maneuver, the Ottomans settled in a ditch along the wall and opened rifle fire on Olits’s troops.

At this time, Rumyantsev sent reserves from the attacked columns to occupy the hollow and threaten the Turkish routes of retreat to the camp and retranshments. This maneuver was successful: the Turks, afraid of losing their retreat, rushed from the hollow to the retranchment under the canister fire of Russian artillery. At the same time, the rest of the Turkish cavalry, which attacked the square on the right and left flanks, also hastily retreated. Failure accompanied the Turks on their left flank, where General Baur not only repulsed the attack, but also went on the offensive and under fire successfully stormed the 25-gun battery, and then captured the retranchment, capturing 93 guns.

After repelling the Turkish attack, the Russian troops moved to the main retranshment of the Turkish camp at 8 o'clock in the morning. When Plemyannikov's square approached the retranschment, about 10,000 Janissaries descended into the hollow between the center and the left flank of the fortification and rushed on the square, broke into it and crushed some units. The square was upset, the janissaries seized two banners and several charging boxes; the Russian soldiers fled, trying to hide in the square of General Olits and thereby leading it to a mess. Noticing this and fearing for the fate of the square, Rumyantsev turned to the Prince of Oldenburg, who was nearby, and calmly said, "Now our business has come." With these words, he rode from Olits's square to the fleeing troops of Plemyannikov and with one phrase, "Guys, stop!", kept the runners, who stopped and grouped near Rumyantsev. At the same time, the Janissaries were opened fire by a Messino's battery, they were attacked on both sides by cavalry, and General Baur, who had already entered the retranschment, sent a battalion of jagers to attack the janissary on the left and to longitudinally shell the ditch in front of the retranchment, in which the Janissars also settled. After the confusion caused by the explosion of the charging box, the 1st Grenadier Regiment rushed into bayonets. The Janissaries fled, the cavalry began to pursue them. At the same time, the squares were put in order, the flank columns occupied the entire retranshment and recaptured the banners captured by the Turks. After the loss of fortifications, artillery and wagons, the Turks saw that Prince Repnin's corps was entering their rear, left the camp at 9 o'clock in the morning and fled under the flank fire of Repnin's corps. Vizier and other pashas were trying to stop the fleeing troops but without a success. The routed Ottomans went through a detachment of Anatolian Kurdish cavalrymen supposedly on its way to assist Ivazzade Pasha, but the detachment instead looted whatever belongings the soldiers on flight carried with them, therefore adding to the chaos the Ottoman army was already in.

The fatigue of the soldiers who had been on their feet since one o'clock in the morning prevented the Russian infantry from continuing to pursue more than four versts on the day of the battle, after which the pursuit continued with the cavalry. At the end of the battle, Rumyantsev took a position behind the former Turkish camp.

Soon the pursuit of the Turks continued outside the battlefield. To perform this task Rumyantsev assigned the Bauer's corps. On July 22 (August 2), the pursuers occupied the old Ottoman camp, located 20 versts from the place of the general battle. On July 23 (August 3), Bauer's corps reached Kartal, where they found the remains of the Grand Vizier's troops crossing to the other side of the Danube. Although the Turks had more than 300 ships at their disposal, there was a complete mess at the crossing site. Once at the boarding point, Bauer quickly assessed the situation and decided to attack the Ottomans. For this purpose, the Quartermaster General arranged his troops on a single front, the center of which was formed by infantry squares, and the flanks by cavalry units. In this order, Bauer's corps resolutely attacked the Turks, inflicting another defeat on them and thus completing the defeat of Ivazzade Khalil Pasha's troops. After the battle near the crossing, the winners captured the entire baggage train near the river, an artillery battery of 30 guns, as well as more than a thousand prisoners.

The total Ottoman losses amounted to 20,000 killed, wounded and captured 140 guns and 56 colors. The Russian losses were 951 dead and wounded. True to themselves, the Cossacks

After the end of the Battle ofKagul, the army of the Crimean Khan retreated to Izmail, but, faced with the displeasure of the local population, who did not want to attract the attention of the Russian army, the Tatars were forced to retreat to Ackerman. In accordance with the situation, Rumyantsev decided to start offensive in the direction of Izmail - a detachment of General Osip Igelström was sent for this purpose. Igelström's troops marched at the same time as Bauer's corps and soon seized the bridges at the mouth of the Yalpukh River near the village of Tobaka, as well as the luggage train that had withdrawn to the area. On July 23, Izmail was approached by Repnin's corps, reinforced by units under the command of Potemkin. On July 26 (August 6), Repnin's troops took Izmail, after which they moved on, consistently capturing the remaining strongholds on the Turks on the Lower Danube.

Catherine wrote to Rumyantsev:
“As the first duty, I was able to bring to Almighty God for his countless graces and generosity, kneeling thanks, that this morning (August 2) with all the people and the cannons salute in the Kazan church was fulfilled, and the whole city was very happy. Returning to the palace, sat down at the table and remembering a person giving us the reasons for joy and fun with his art, diligence and mind, was I drinking, with the cannons firing, the health of Mr. Field Marshal Count Rumyantsev, with which I congratulate you to the newly awarded and very well-deserved rank.”
The Ottomans left fortress of Brailov and Bucharest was occupied again. At that point Rumyantsev had to stop to get supplies and reinforcements.

Not too glorious. General Peter Panin was not too happy with his assignment to the less important 2nd Army and when he arrived to it, he became even less happy because his main task was hardly promising the easy laurels: he had to take the fortress of Benderi. Cautious Panin paid special attention to securing communication line with his base in Elizavetgrad, built a number of fortifications and at each night, following the example of Peter I, erected a redoubt. His army did not need anything. On July 6, Panin crossed the Dniester and besieged Bendery on the 15th.

The fortress was not too modern, to put it mildly, but it was defended by 12,500 Turks and had 400 guns. As a result, it was considered a potential threat to the communications of the 1st Army. The 2nd army had 34,000 and Panin started the siege on July 15 hoping to force the fortress to surrender with wear and cannon fire but the Ottomans did not comply. So the whole thing lasted into the September and Panin, was still sitting there suffering from the supply problems and losses due to the diseases. With the winter coming, he was facing a choice of two options, neither of them good: a costly direct assault or abandoning the siege with a loss of face. The first option involved soldiers lives, the second his career so guess which one he chose... You guessed correctly [5].

On September 15, a powerful mine (400 poods of gunpowder) was blown up, and part of the fortress wall collapsed from the explosion. On the night of September 16, Panin gave an order to storm. The fierce battle in the city lasted all night, by the morning the surviving defenders of the fortress laid down their weapons. About 7,000 Turks were killed during the assault, the rest were taken prisoner. Russian losses during the capture of the fortress amounted to 6,000 people, of whom 1,672 were killed. Thus, the capture of this powerful fortress was the bloodiest battle for the Russian side in the entire war. After capturing Benderi, the 2nd Army marched back to Ukraine.

Such a huge loss made a bad impression in the capital and it became even worse as a result of Panin’s report written in an inappropriately frivolous style. The storm was described as a bear hunt and the jokes did not sit well with the huge losses which he omitted to report. Well, the fortress captured and, by the statute, he was eligible to St.George I class, which he got. But the accompanying rescript was formal, short and cold. He was removed from command and replaced with Prince Dolgorukov.

On the Eastern flank. One of the first actions taken by Rumyantsev in 1769 was to sent a detachment to restore fortifications of Azov and Taganrog. The wharves of Voronez had been busy building the ships for a new Azov flotilla but there was a big problem: to get to the sea these ships had to get down the river and somehow pass over the shallow bar at its mouth. In other words, they had to be almost flat bottomed and, as a result, to have a very limited sea-worthiness. A brand, “the newly-invented”, design was developed, sailing and rowing vessels armed with 12-16 guns of 6-12 pounds caliber. The biggest one, three-masted “Khotin”, had 25 12 pounds guns and there were 7 two-masted and few cannon boats. They formed initial flotilla sailing under command of vice-admiral A.N.Senyavin. They were considered inadequate for the operations against the Ottoman Black Sea Fleet [6] so the decision was made to restore a wharf in Taganrog and start building the real sea-worthy ships.

And much more glory had been coming from the Med….

_______________
[1] The greatest Japanese swordsman ever. Won 61 duel. The best (AFAIK) was with another famous swordsman who was using a very long sword. Musashi came to a duel with a much longer heavy stick and kicked the s__t …oops… brains out of him. Not to be confused with a battleship of the same name, which won none of its encounters.
[2] A cavalry lieutenant with an impressive record of the strategic blunders.
[3] Artillery lieutenant who did not make it into Napoleon. As pretty much all his military “philosophy”, this piece of wisdom is highly questionable.
[4] Rumyantsev had 23,615 infantry and 3,495 cavalry with 106 regimental (3 pounders) and 149 field guns but he had to protect the magazines and supply train moving to the army with a 10-day supply of food from Falchi. To fulfill these goals, a detachment of General Fyodor Glebov was allocated with four grenadier battalions, as well as parts of regular and irregular cavalry. At the same time, Rumyantsev ordered the detachments of Major General Grigory Potemkin and Brigadier Ivan Gudovich to move towards the Yalpug River to cover the army from this direction against possible Tatar attack. Thus, just before the battle with the Ottoman Sultan's army, the main forces of the 1st Army numbered 17,000 infantry, as well as few thousand horsemen of regular and irregular cavalry.
[5] If not, I would be very disappointed. 🤔
[6] Strange as it may sound, in OTL this assessment proved to be too pessimistic.

​

 

[alexmilman]

27. The war. #3. Year 1770. Part 3

“They'll be smarter from now on. Nothing in the world will do so much good to our fleet as this campaign. Everything bad and rotten comes out, and it will eventually be in a perfect shape.”
Catherine II to Alexey Orlov
“The Turkish fleet was attacked, smashed, broken, burned, blown into the sky, sunk and turned into ashes.”
Admiral Spiridov to I.Chernishov after Chesma
“- Get me best of the best!
- Best of the best are licking their wounds!
- Then get me best of the worst!”
‘Dog in the boots’
“Out of the whole regiment only the lieutenant marches in step.”
Military report
​

Archipelago Expedition

A little bit of a historic background. In 1763, with the publication of a rescript, which contained an invitation to foreigners to settle in Russia, a campaign began to recruit not only Western colonists, but also sailors. The invitation forms were carried by Lieutenant General Roman Fullerton, who was sent from Russia to Britain in the spring of 1763 with state money and instructions for inviting venerable officers of different ranks to serve in the Russian Navy. Besides a purely formal side (search and negotiations had to be kept secret and permission to enter the Russian service had to be requested by the Russian diplomatic representatives, not directly by the officers; Fullerton, who was born in Britain, used as a coverup for his mission visit to the reltives), the task, however, was complicated by the fact that in Russia they demanded that these officers (especially flag officers, admiral officers) have a "good" reputation, were knowledgeable in "marine architecture" and "ship economy", spoke not only their native language, but also in French or German and were able to benefit the Admiralty ("could be worthy members in the management of our Admiralty").It is no coincidence that Fullerton never managed to persuade high-ranking sailors to go to Russia. A British admiral Gordon (?) with whom Fullerton got friendly explained to him that the British admirals became so rich in the Seven Years' War that they could not be seduced to Russian service with any salary or pension (and those flag officers who could agree were hardly suitable for service). Gordon advised Russian agents to focus on inviting captains, as among them were talented sailors who did not count on promotion in Britain, but were quite suitable to get admiral ranks in Russia. Elphinstone, recruited by I.G. Chernyshov (at that time ambassdor to Britain), was one of these captains. Circumstances of his hiring, beyond Chernyshov’s assurance that he “has a good recommendation” never were quite clear. One of the few known things is that, besides upgrade of a rank, he asked for and got the prize money according to the English formula, and in his contract, when switching to the Russian service, it was stated that he would receive 1/8 of all prizes that he and his squadron would capture. Upon the arrival he expected to find an ally in Samuel Greig, who was serving in the Russian navy since 1764 but this did not work out. A total number of the British sailors in the Archipelago Expedition is not known but a minimal assessment was 40 of all ranks.
To make certain behavioral patterns clear, Elphinstone seemingly quite sincerely despised the leaders of expedition, Orlov and Spiridov both for them being inferior to him both by pedigree and experience. Basically, his attitude to the Russian sailors, and naval organization in general, was rather negative (often not without a reason). Taking into an account his rather explosive temper, it is small wonder that, unlike Greig, his career in the Russian navy was rather tumultuous and short. To be fair, he was instrumental in introducing some new equipment which proved to be quite useful and probably was one of the “triggers” (admiral Charles Knowles being more prominent one), which initiated the big reforms in the Russian Admiralty.

Grand Strategy and reality. The initial plan of the expedition was excessively ambitious being a combination of Catherine’s “grand vision”, rather adventurous personality of Alexey Orlov and faulty intelligence. This plan assumed a capture of at least Morea (with at least one port on the peninsula or islands going to Russia permanently), for which purpose the small Russian contingent will serve as a nucleus for creation a big army of the Greek volunteers, supporting unrests in various coastal areas of the Ottoman Empire, destruction of the Ottoman fleet, blockade of the Dardanelles and, as a cherry on a cake, penetration of the Dardanelles and direct attack of the Constantinople. Besides this plan being quite unrealistic in the terms of the allocated resources, Catherine, in her usual style, threw a big monkey wrench into its implementation. In her long instruction to the commander of the 2nd Squadron, rear-admiral Elphinstone, she provided a lot of the details regarding his expected route, details of behavior in various ports, and numerous geopolitical considerations, defined his task was two-fold:

• To land the troops in the places pointed out by Alexey Orlov.
• “The main subject of your expedition should be to prevent and suppress the entire supply of grain food to Tsar Grad from Egypt and other Turkish places, as well as all your own Turkish and under the Turkish flag of navigation and maritime trade on the aisles where you will be.”

One thing missing from this instruction was his intended relations with commander of the 1st Squadron, Admiral Spiridov. Moreover, it was quite easy to interpret the instruction in a way that was making Elphinstone a completely independent commander with the tasks of his own. Taking into an account a meager size of both forces, this could lead to the catastrophic results.

On May 9 (20), 1770, Elphinstone's squadron arrived on the shores of the Morea, in the Gulf of Kolofinca (eastern shore of the Peloponnese peninsula). On May 11 (22), Elphinstone landed troops at Rupina and decided the next day after his arrival to go in search of the Turkish fleet, which he learned from the Greeks, just moored.

On May 12 (23), he anchored and went to the Gulf of Napoli di Romagna, where the entire Turkish fleet was located. The Turkish squadron was just about to leave the Gulf of Napoli de Romagna. On May 16 (27), Elphinstone met and was not afraid to immediately attack the Turks, although for the first strike he had only 3 ships of the line and 2 frigates, and the Turks, commanded by the highest commander of the Ottoman fleet, the Kapudan Pasha, had 10 ships of the line, 6 frigates and caravels and several rowing galleys and vessels. The Russians opened fire, but the Turks did not accept the fight and hurried to take refuge in Napoli di Romagna under the cover of coastal batteries. The fight lasted about an hour. The losses suffered by Russian ships were negligible: in the hull of "Saratov" and "Do not touch me" there were only four hits of cannonballs, and on one of these ships the mast was slightly damaged; losses in personnel were only on "Do not touch me": 1 killed and 6 wounded. The escape of the Turkish fleet was possible because suddenly calm came, and the Russian ships were completely unable to advance, and the Turkish ships were towed by rowing vessels to the depths of the bay, to the shore. The Russians didn't have any rowing vessels at that time. Only in the afternoon of May 17 (28) a light wind blew out and Elphinstone again decided to attack the enemy, and at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon the Russian ships opened fire. The battle lasted about 3 hours, then the Turks took refuge under the walls of Napoli de Romagna, believing that they were fighting with the stretched Russian fleet. The battle ended without losses for the Russian fleet, the bowsprit was damaged on the Turkish flagship. Elphinstone first tried to block the Turkish fleet in this bay, but then he changed his mind and withdrew due to the overwhelming superiority of the Turkish forces. At this time, Spiridov with the main part of his squadron left the Navarin Bay, took the troops landed by Elphinston at Rupina, and moved to join the second squadron. On May 22 (June 2), Elphinstone's second squadron met with Spiridov's squadron. The united Russian squadron returned to Napoli di Romagna, but the Turks were no longer caught: the commander of the Turkish fleet Hasan Bey and his fleet fled towards Chios. Spiridov was accusing Elphinstone in a rash attack with a small force, which allowed the Turks to escape while Elphinstone was blaming Spiritov for being too slow to arrive ignoring the fact that he had to stop for picking up the landed force which Elphinstone left in Rupia and which, in an attempt to find and engage the Ottomans, he refused to take, contrary to the received orders.
In a meantime, on the land, some Greek volunteers had been raised and there were even some initial successes, which however soon enough turned into the defeats. The Greeks, brave (and very cruel to the prisoners) against the small Ottoman detachments, fled and abandoned their Russian “liberators” when the Turks appeared in the bigger nunbers and it finally downed upon Orlov that the initial plan had to be abandoned to concentrate upon the realistic component. It was not even possible to hold Navarin so far the main Russian base. As Orlov reported to Catherine, “all hope to achieve success on the land is lost.” Orlov blew the Navarin fortress and sailed to join the the 1st and2nd squadrons, which finally got together to find out that “Commanders are in a great quarrel, and sub-commanders in despondency and displeasure.” To stop disputes between the commanders, because Elphinston did not want to obey Spiridov, Orlov, not being a sailor, accepted the command of the fleet himself with both admirals being his deputies.
On June 15 (26), the Russian fleet stocked up on water on the island of Paros, where the commanders learned that the Turkish fleet had left Paros 3 days before the arrival of the Russians. The Paros reported that the Turkish fleet had left the island to the north. At the general military council, it was decided to go to the island of Chios, and if there is no Turkish fleet, then to the island of Tenedos to block the Dardanelles. On June 23 (July 4) near the island of Chios, sentinels on the vanguard ship "Rostislav" found a Turkish fleet in the strait between the island and the coast of Asia Minor.

Battle at Chios. June 24 (July 5)

The Turkish squadron consisted of 16 ships of the line (of which 5 80 guns each, 10 60-70 guns), 6 frigates, and up to 50 smaller vessels. Russian squadron - 9 ships of the line, 3 frigates, 1 bomber ship, 1 packet boat, and 16 smaller vessels. Turkish ships lined up in two parallel lines, adhering the left flank to a small island and the right flank near the city of Chesma. The Russian fleet was built in three lines of battle - vanguard, cordebatalia (main force) and rearguard. Admiral Spiridov was in the vanguard, carrying his flag on the ship "Saint Eustathius" with the ships of the line "Europe" and "Three Saints" and the frigate "Saint Nicholas". Cordebatalia, under command of Greig, included 3 ships of the line: "Three Hierarchs" (of which Greig was a captain and on which Alexey Orlov was present), "Rostislav", "Saint Ianuarius" and two frigates "Hope of Well-Being" and "Africa". In the rearguard - three ships of the line "Do not touch me" (the flagship of Elphinstone), "Saratov", "Svyatoslav", and several small vessels.
At 4 a.m. on the "Three Hierarchs" Greig raised the signal "Chase the enemy" and the Russian squadron moved towards the Turks to the Strait of Chios. The progress of the ships was quite slow and only by 9 a.m. almost the entire Russian fleet was very close to the Turks. At 11 a.m., after meeting with the commanders of the ships of the line, Orlov gave order to attack. To strike a decisive blow, the Russians launched an attack in a line perpendicular to the enemy, which was rather risky unless they approach enemy really fast. At 11:30 a.m., the “Europa”, forward ship, approached 3 cables (560 meters) to the center of the Turkish line, and the Turks opened fire from all the guns. Their guns were mainly hit on the mast and rigging to make it difficult for the attackers to maneuver. The Russian ships did not respond until they approached at a “pistol shot” distance, then from a distance of 80 sazhens (about 170 meters) they fired three volleys one after another, forcing the advanced Turkish ships to weaken the fire. The advanced ship "Europe" made a turn and went out of the formation [1]. Having described the arc, he found himself behind the ship of the Kordebatalia "Rostislav" and re-entered the battle. As a result, Spiridov’s “Saint Eustathius" became the 1st ship of the Rusian line. "Saint Eustace" concentrated fire on the flagship of the Turkish fleet, the 80-gun battleship "Burj-u-Zafer", approached this ship and began to throw it with brandkugels [2] . There was a fire on the Burj-u Zafer, the team rushed into the sea in panic to swim to the shore. "Saint Eustace" by this time had already lost control due to damage to the rigging from the shelling of Turkish ships and was carried directly to the "Burj-u-Zafer" by the current. To tow St. Eustace, the captain ordered the rowing vessels to be lowered, but they could not overcome the current. The two ships collided and got entangled. The Russians boarded the Turkish ship and after the hand to hand fight the remained Turks jumped into the sea. But the attempts to extinguish fire on Burj-u Zafer failed, the sparks flew to the open gunpowder magazine of St.Eustash and both ships exploded. In accordance with the charter, Admiral Spiridov left the ship a few minutes before the explosion. Together with the brother of Commander-in-Chief Fyodor Orlov, they switched to the "Postman" package, and then Spiridov transferred his flag to the "Three Saints". 620 people perished and only 58 had been saved, including the captain. The closest to St.Eustash ship, Three Saints, also suffered serious damage. Of all Russian fleet, the most effective actions were carried out by the "Three Hierarchs" ship, on which Alexei Orlov and Samuel Greig were located. The ships "Rostislav" and "Saint Januarius" were near the "Three Hierarchs" and also operated successfully. Elphinstone’s rearguard, until very end of the battle had been shooting from a long distance causing no damage to the Turks. After the explosion of their flagship at about 14.00, the Turkish ships hastily left the battlefield and took refuge in Chesme Bay, protected by several batteries. Russian ships blocked the exit from it and began to prepare to continue the battle later.

Chesma. 26 June (July 7)
On the night after the Battle of Chios, the commanders of the Russian fleet arranged a military council. At the council, at the suggestion of Samuel Greig, it was decided to attack the Turkish fleet in the Gulf of Chesma and burn it. For this purpose 4 branders (fireships) had been prepared. The attack was scheduled to start at Midnight on June 26 (July 7) with the branders followed by 4 ships of the line, 2 frigates and bomber ship. Greig wrote an explicit plan of the attack which worked out but only up to a certain point.

The ships of the line did penetrate the bay and opened an effective fire under cover of which the branders had been sent. And here the plan did not survive contact with a reality. Out of 4 branders 3 was set on fire too early and only the 4th one, under command of lieutenant Ilyin, did what was expected. However, the results were unexpected. The Turkish ship immediately caught fire, the fire spread to the rest of the Turkish ships. A few minutes after Ilyin’s fireship clung to the Turkish ship, it exploded. After the explosion of the first Turkish ship, the burning wreckage from it fell on neighboring Turkish ships, which also caught fire from this wreckage. At 4.30 a.m., almost all Turkish ships in the Chesma Bay caught fire and the Russians managed to capture only one 66-guns ships of the line and 5 galleys. The rest of the Ottoman fleet ceased to exist.

Orlov in his report to Catherine was quite calm and modest. “I'm sorry that I can no longer have hope to congratulate Your Majesty with a victory on a land, equal to the sea victory; if I was so fortunate, my wishes would be completely satisfied, I could then hope to deserve your favor. Now I have no other choice but to try to block the transportation to Tsargrad and try, if possible, to return to the state the costs used for this expedition.”
But effect in St. Petersburg was overwhelming. After the reports about the bad conditions of the Russian fleet, from which nobody expected any successful independent action, after the news about failure in Morea expedition, in which the fleet was expected to play an auxiliary role, the news about a great triumph of that fleet had been an absolutely exciting demonstration of a new aspect of the Russian power.
Catherine to Orlov: “…Our fleet, under your reasonable and courageous leadership, this time dealt a most sensitive blow to Ottoman pride. All the world will give you justice, that this victory has gained you great glory and honor; you are covered with laurels; the whole squadron that is with you is covered with laurels.”
Orlov was granted a military order (St. George) of the first class and the right to keep the Kaiser flag for life to put it in his coat of arms; Spiridov - St. Andrew's Order and villages; Rear Admiral Greig, who was especially recommended by Count Alexei Orlov, a military order of the second class. A commemorative medal had been minted with depiction of the Ottoman navy and a single word “was” (“былъ”).

The victories on the land and sea were important steps toward accomplishing the most important thing in that war and it was not going to be easy…


_________
[1] Presumably, to avoid the underwater rocks.
[2] Firebombs used by the Russian navy. In the encounters with the western (Swedish) opponents rarely used because, just as the heated cannonballs, considered “uncivilized” weapon capable of easily sink the ship. Which was, of course, not the right thing to do: the proper way was to spend hours punching each other with the “conventional” cannonballs. Where is the fun in putting the enemy on fire within few minutes. As an idle thought, I wonder would the Brits as pissed off as in OTL if it took “Bismarck” a couple hours to sunk “Hood”? 😉

 

[alexmilman]

28. The war. #4. Mostly Politics. 1770-71.

“God created fools and geese to have someone to tease.”
Lev Landau
“It was pleasing to God to give humanity enthusiasm to compensate for the lack of reason.”
Edmund Berk
“In politics, stupidity is not a disadvantage.”
Napoleon Bonaparte
“Apparently, there is no such stupidity in the world that smart people would not consecrate with their example.”
A. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky
"The Crimean peninsula is so important for its location that it can really be considered the key of Russian and Turkish possessions; as long as it remains in Turkish citizenship, it will always be terrible for Russia."
Chancellor Vorontsov, 1762
“We have no intention at all to have this peninsula and the Tatar hordes adjacent to it, in our citizenship, and it is desirable only that they severe from Turkish citizenship and remain forever in independence.”
Catherine II, 1770s
“Crimea is breaking our borders with its position... You must raise the glory of Russia... The acquisition of Crimea can neither strengthen nor enrich you, but only peace it will deliver.”
Potemkin to Catherine II, 1782
​

Successes of the 1770 greatly emboldened the cabinet strategists in St. Petersburg with a rather predictable result of their boldness being in a reverse proportion to the brain power. The boldest project was, surprise, surprise, proposed by Grigory Orlov who wrote an opinion that after capture of Benders an infantry corps must be sent to take Varna and from there sail to Constantinople by the sea.

This was a little bit too much for the rest of the court strategists who pointed out that the first step should be finding information about the vessels that could be obtained on the Dniester and about the Zaporhizian boats, how far do they go to the Black Sea and can they safely pass by Ochakov; in addition, before sending the infantry corps to Varna, it is necessary for Rumyantsev to establish himself on the Danube and set up magazines in it.

However, besides these fancy plans, there were more practical ones. Besides taking Benders general Peter Panin was assigned a diplomatic task. He had to try to get in touch with the Crimean Khanate and convince the Tatars to switch to the Russian side.
Four reliable Tatars from Kazan had been sent to the Crimea and in addition Panin got a rescript saying “We decided to test whether it would be possible for Crimea and all the Tatar peoples to shake their loyalty to the Port by instilling their thoughts to form an independent government.”
Panin on March 4, 1770 informed the Empress that the plan promises success: “Truly, not only all without exception are the Belogorsk, Budzhak and Edisan hordes with all their sultans, Murzas and elders by their law by oath, as a result of my letter sent to them, but also several Crimean officials under the Khan established themselves forever in the retreat from the citizenship of the Turkish scepter.”

On March 15 there was a discussion in the Council with a resulting document stating that:

• The Tatars of the Crimea and subordinated hordes will never become the useful subjects of Her Imperial Majesty because you can collect and decent taxes from them and they can’t serve to protect the Russian borders because without them nobody would attack these borders.
• Making them Russian subjects would cause jealousy and suspicion that Russia wants a limitless expansion of its territory. Such feelings must be avoided, especially when the acquisition is pretty much useless except that the Tatars will not be looting the Russian territories.
• However, it will be a great advantage for Russia if the Tatars form an independent state because the Porte will loose a tool for attacking the Russian borders.
• Which means that Count Panin must keep discussions not about them becoming the Russian subjects but about them getting, with the Russian help, independence from the Turkey. As a compensation, and as a guarantee of their security, they must accept the Russian garrisons in some of their fortresses and give Russia one of their Black Sea ports to serve as a base for our fleet, etc.

This jewel of wisdom had “Nikita Palin” being written all over it being based upon the blissful ignorance of the situation on a ground and a logic with a hole through which one could easily drive the 16 wheels truck if they already were available.

To start with, offering of the “independence” was pretty much meaningless because the Crimean dependency from the Porte was not burdensome and also had a strong religious foundation. Moreover, this dependency was very beneficial for the Tatars because it provided their protection against Russia. Relations with the Khans were quite easy: they had been easily overthrown with a slightest pretext and the Porte usually did not interfere. The Girays had been generally loyal to the Porte: after being kicked out of the Crimea they usually went to their estates in Rumelia and there was a theoretical chance of them getting the Ottoman throne if Osmanli dynasty will extinct.

The members of Catherine’s Council had been using the generalities benefitting Russia but glossed over the details and implications. If the Tatars become completely free, it means that they have a right to define their relations with other states, make the alliances of their choice and, in the case of war, make alliance with the Ottomans against Russia. Which means that an argument about impossibility of the Ottoman attack on Russia becomes a pure nonsense.

The obvious answer would be that this independence would have to be limited by a close permanent alliance with Russia. But a treaty was just a piece of paper so such an alliance would have to be guaranteed by the garrisons in the fortresses, port on the Black Sea, and control of the Kerch Strait. Relations like that are defined by the word “protection”. Russia becomes protector of the Tatars who just change one protector to another and it will be naive to assume that the foreign states would not see this as the expansionist intentions with the resulting replacement of the Ottoman control of the North shore of the Black Sea with the Russian one. The Tatars understood this as well and the only reason for them to get along would be to avoid the obvious danger of a destruction.

Catherine also had doubts about the wisdom of the plan proposed by the Council but, in her usual style, decided, for a while, to go along until the whole situation becomes more clear to her. It was already obvious how well “protection” was working in the PLC and it was not a secret that Frederick got too cozy with Emperor Joseph II, which meant that Panin’s “system” is crumbling and that his political wisdom must be questioned. Definitely, an idea of maintaining the PLC as an ally against the Ottomans was a clear failure and this raised an obvious question if it worth trouble to preserve its territorial integrity by standing up to both Prussia and Austria or to go along with them regarding the PLC and annex the Crimea (and some nice piece of the PLC as well).

But in the early 1770 Crimea was not on the top of the list: the most important things had been happening between the Dniester and Danube and on the Med.

So Peter Panin sent the letter to the Khan Kaplan-Giray who answered with the following: “You explain that your queen wants to deliver the former Tatar liberties, but such words should not be written by you. We know ourselves. We are completely satisfied with everything and enjoy the prosperity. And in the old days, when we were still independent of the Ottoman Porte, everyone knows a out the countless wars and disturbances within the Crimean region so now can you represent these times as the better ones? There is nothing in your intention besides the empty words and recklessness.”

After Rumyantsev’s victories at Lagra and Kagul situation changed and there was a split among the Tatars.
The Tatars in question were divided into:

• Crimean, mostly sedentary (there were nomadic ones in a steppe part f the peninsula). They were, in general, attached to the Ottoman Empire by the religion, convenience of having a protector and commerce. The peninsula had well-developed agriculture many products of which had been exported into the Ottoman Empire together with the highly valued local rugs and knives.

• Nogai, who under different names wandered on the then deserted shores of the Azov and Black Seas from the Kuban to the Dniester. They were much less attached to anybody and, except for the “merchandise” obtained from the raids, did not conduct any trade with the Turks. In the past, selling big numbers horses to the Tsardom was a major source of their income (at that time they lived on the lower Volga region).

The Nogais did not have the same motive to hold on to Turkey as the Crimean Tatars themselves, or had them to a much weakest degree. The religious aspect was less important to them. They joined Karim-Giray expecting an easy loot but starting from Khotin things were not going well and they were forced to retreat to the Prut River and stay there in the conditions quite foreign to them. They did not care too much about the independency, their ancestors had been friendly with Russia and lived well selling their horses, so if the Russians are offering possibility to return home, why not accept the offer? After Lagra and Kagul there was no reason to fear the Khan or the Turks and on July 25 Panin received a message from four Edisan and one Belgorod (Akkerman) Murzas with a request for permission to pass to the Crimean side. They declared themselves under the Russian protection, denounced the Ottomans and sent hostages after which had been allowed to return to their steppe between the Dniester and Bug. Not being too concerned with the terminology, they did not see significant difference between “being under protection” and “being subjects” so its was pretty much up to Catherine and her advisors to figure out how to treat them but the Russian Empire already had plenty of the nomadic subjects so the experience (not always good) was there.

But similar talks with the Crimean Murzas failed: the Khan managed to get to the Crimea. However, many Crimean Nogais escaped the peninsula to join the Edisans.The Crimeans loyal to the Porte decided that Kaplan-Giray is not energetic enough, asked the Sultan to replace him and got (again) Selim-Giray.

In a meantime Nikita Panin in discussion with von Solms, the Prussian ambassador came out with another grand schema. Three Great Powers would have to join their efforts for kicking the Ottomans not only from Europe but also from a big part of Asia.
“Austria should turn against Turkey together with Russia: here it will find a full reward for Silesia. Prussia will gain security through this, and its possessions should be increased by Polish Prussia and Warmia. Then it will not be difficult to put an end to the dominion of the Turks in Europe; Constantinople and the regions that would remain with the Ottomans could form a republic. "And what will Russia take?" asked Solms. "Russia already has so much land that it is difficult to cope; it only needs a few border regions," Panin replied.

 

[alexmilman]

28. The war. #5. 1771

"Diplomacy is to stroke the dog until the muzzle is ready."
Friedrich Nietzsche
"Only mutual fear makes the union reliable."
Thucydides
"Non-interference is a philosophical and political term meaning almost the same as interference."
Charles Maurice de Talleyrand
"It's much easier to win a war than peace."
Georges Clemenceau
“Don't conflict: agree with a smart one, cheat a fool.”
M. Litvak
“Well... diplomacy is not bad. We'll kindly talk first, and then we'll level it to the ground.”
‘Magnificent century’ (‘Muhteşem Yüzyıl’)
"International agreements... Yes, of course; but who we are fighting is our inner business."
Karel Čapek
“For a number of reasons, I can't answer you now with the words you use. But I sincerely hope that when you return home, your mother will jump out of the gate and bite you properly.”
Faina Ranevskaya
​

Diplomacy.
Frederick to Catherine: “If it depended on me, I would easily sign the peaceful conditions required of Porta by Your Imperial Majesty. In your acquisitions, I would see the strengthening of the first and most precious of my allies, and I would be pleased to have the opportunity to give you this new sign of my devotion. But it is necessary to pay attention to many different interests in such a complex matter as peace negotiations, and therefore it is not always possible to afford what you want. I'm in this position now. You will see from the new Porta announcement made to me and the Vienna court that the city of The trims will be released immediately as soon as the mediation article is adopted… I have the right to think that the court of Vienna sincerely wants to restore peace in his neighborhood and will act impartially in case of mediation, but will not agree to peaceful conditions directly contrary to his interests. France's instillations have not yet shaken his system of neutrality; but I will not vouch for his behavior if the war continues.”
A memoir accompanying the letter stated that:

• The Ottomans will conduct talks only through the intermediaries, which could be only Prussia and Austria.
• King of Prussia does not see any chance for the court of Vienna to agree to the Russian peace proposals and can’t guarantee that Austria would not attack Russia.
• The Ottomans will not agree to cede Moldavia, Walachia and parts of the Archipelago.
• The Ottomans will not agree to the Crimean independence because the Khan is on a line of succession of the Ottoman throne.
• If pressed hard, the Ottomans may agree to return to the Hapsburgs Belgrade and other conquests of the previous war in exchange for the Austrian help against Russia.
• Austria would rather go to war that allow any change in the situation of Moldavia and Walachia.
• Russian acquisition of an island on the Archipelago will raise suspicions in Vienna and Italian states.
• All that Russia can get is Kabarda, Azov with the region and freedom of navigation on the Black Sea.

After reading the memoir Catherine was extremely irritated: instead of acting as the Russian ally Frederick became an advocate of the Ottomans. And “It would be desirable for that would be stopped constant mentioning of the Austria's armed or raised hand, because Russia, having been attacked, will be able to defend itself, it is not afraid of anyone.” The peace talks are going to be conducted with the Ottomans and not the court of Vienna with which Russia is not at war. Anyway, while Moldavia and Walachia are subject to the negotiations, the Crimea is not and it is definitely not the Austrian business.

Panin was ordered to disregard the threats and avoid an impression that Russia is looking for peace because otherwise it would get a bad peace. As for the Ottoman declaration regarding the intermediaries, Catherine wrote “it is true that the Porte may declare whatever it wishes; it is also true that its declarations may not and should not be mandatary to the Russian court.” This applied both to the peace. conditions and to the Ottoman selection of the intermediaries.

War plans.
The 1st Army was already on the Danube and its further operations would require serious preparations: building some ships for the crossing, establishing magazines and receiving and training newly recruited troops. So for a big part of the year and perhaps the whole year it was expected to assume mostly a defensive position. Details of the operations were left at Rumyantsev’s discretion as long as he keeps the left bank of the Danube safe. “Offensive actions should be limited to sending over the Danube of some detachments, if the commander-in-chief sometimes considers it necessary. However, the field marshal was left free hands to use everything possible at a convenient time and occasion.” The military supplies had been accumulated in Kiev and more than 20,000 recruits raised but training and getting them to the Danube was a long story. The same applied to the food and forage: Moldavia and Walachia had been thoroughly devastated and the Polish territories close to the theater were not in a much better situation. Plus, there was a need in a huge number of wagons and oxen to carry them and then distribute to the troops spread along the long perimeter.

Knowing quite well that, unless pushed into the action, the Admiralty tend to do things slowly, Catherine asked Rumyntsev to establish a strong personal control over their activities “I ask you to order to make any action as soon as possible, what to build, where, by whom and from what - in a word, to awaken the slowness of the naval gentlemen, and give life and vitality to this enterprise, so that time will not be wasted and we would not be forced to bear the burden of the military flame for a few more years.”

As her contribution, Catherine asked advice of a very experienced person, admiral Sir. Charles Knowles, who since 1770 worked in Russia as a naval consultant. He designed a new kind of vessels, which by the simplicity of their equipment can be controlled by people who almost do not know marine art, are able to go rowing and sailing and can lift from 3 to 4 hundred people with food and guns.

In other words, for at least the next few months the 1st Army would not be able to conduct the major offensive operations. OTOH, the Ottomans did not have a chance to bring a big army across the Danube and even if they did, the memory of Kahul was a great deterrent. In Istanbul the French and Austrian ambassadors kept telling the Porte that the side capable of maintaining the longer military effort will end up as a victor so the only thing the Ottomans have to do is not let the Russians to get the easy victories. As a result, for a while operations on the Danube were reasonably limited. The Ottoman attempt to take Bucharest was defeated by Repnin (who, after death of Olitz took command of the right flank) but then he got offended by Rumyantsev’s reprimand that while pursuing the enemy he did not take Jurja and asked for a leave under pretext of illness [1] and was replaced by Essen who, after the 1st failed attempt, took Jurja.

Activities on the left flank were much more successful, to a great degree thanks to general Weisman.

In March, Generals Weisman and Ozerov made a very successful attack on Tulcea, seized all its batteries, riveted 23 guns, burned 8 ships, killed more than 500 Turks without a single gun, and triumphantly sailed back to Izmail on their very unreliable ships.

In April, Weisman and Ozerov searched Isakchi, also seized the batteries and burned large stores filled with bread. In May, Potemkin burned the city of Tsybry and took 14 large and 100 small vessels. In June, Weisman and Ozerov again went to Tulcea, captured the whole city, except for the castle, and killed up to 2,000 enemies. In October, Weisman and Ozerov proceeded to Tulcea for the third time and occupied the castle abandoned by the garrison, which fled to Babadag; the Russians (4,000) followed in his footsteps and, not reaching four versts from Babadag, attacked an extensive camp of the greatest vizier (25,000). The successful action of the Russian artillery forced the vizier to flee from Babadag, which went to the winners with large reserves and was burned. At the same time, Miloradovich took Machin, Yakubovich - Girsovo. Weisman ended the campaign with the capture of Isakchi. In the October the 1st Army was on the winter quarters with the headquarter in Yassi.

The main operation was going to be conducted by the 2nd Army (30,000 regulars, 7,000 Cossacks), which had to attack the Crimea if, as was expected, the locals will not follow example of the hordes which already broke with the Porte. The new army commander, Prince V.M.Dolgorukov, started his military career during Munnich’s Crimean campaign and became an officer as the 1st person who got on a top of the Perekop’s wall.

Historic background. One would assume that, being a member of one of the top Russian aristocratic families, he would become an officer automatically but his family did a very stupid thing: being the leading members of the Supreme Council they were instrumental in choosing the widowed Duchess of Courland, Anna, as a successor to the deceased Peter II but with a set of conditions that would extremely limit her power. With the support of nobility Anna became an absolute monarch and the Dolgorukovs went to exile but then it was found that they were tried to forge a will of Peter II, and the things became very bad for them. Prince Vasily Mikhailovich was spared but sent as a soldier to army at the age of 13 and, allegedly, Anna swore that none of the male members of the family will ever became an officer. In 1736 before the assault on Perekop, Munnich promised that the first soldier who climbed the fortifications alive would be promoted to officer. The first was the young Dolgorukov, who received the rank of lieutenant for this.
There were two aspects of the task: military and political:

• The military aspect was how to get there through the bare steppe and how to operate within the peninsula. The past experiences were not encouraging: during the regency of Sophia Prince Golitsyn failed even to get into the peninsula and in the 1730s troops of Munnich and Lacy were getting “in” but could not stay due to the shortage of the supplies. It became quite clear by now that to achieve a success, instead of the slow moving huge masses burdened by the humongous baggage train one needs to use the smaller fast moving columns capable to march through the steppe areas outside and inside the peninsula with a relative ease and then capture the densely populated coastal areas. Unlike the earlier campaigns, this one could expect at least some help from the newly created Azov flotilla.

• The political aspect was trickier. Catherine finally made her mind regarding the whole Crimean affair and decided to do exactly what he Council recommended not to do: proceed with a direct annexation of the Khanate. Arguments against doing this were really silly and, besides the fact that quite recently (in 1768) France annexed Corsica, a direct annexation would provide a gain big enough not to insist upon acquisition of the much less important for Russia Moldavia and Walachia, thus providing a big bargaining chip at the negotiations with the Ottomans and defusing the Austrian hysteria.

The task of supply, which in previous campaigns to Crimea was almost the main one, was solved. The Dnieper and the Don were used for supply. Magazines on the Ukrainian fortified line and in the fortifications of the Elizavetgrad province were easily replenished. On the Dnieper, supplies were carried to the former Ottoman fortress of Kyzy-Kermen, along the Don basin - to Taganrog, where the main store was located, then from there the goods on ships were carried to the Petrovsky fortification on the river. Berde and other places. The conquest of Crimea depended on the occupation of its main points. Therefore, it was necessary to capture the Perekop fortress, a moat with earthworks separating the Crimean peninsula from the mainland, and fortified by forts and the fortress of Or-Kapu; Kerch and Yenikale, as fortresses that ensure the connection of the Azov and Black Seas; Kaffa (Feodosia), Arabat and Kezlev (Evpatoria), as seaside points that ensure domination in the Crimea.

Therefore, the 2nd Army was divided into three groups, which had their tasks. The main forces under the leadership of Dolgorukov were to occupy Perekop and go to Kaffa. Major General Shcherbatov had to cross Sivash with the help of the Azov flotilla, take the fortress of Arabat and then go to Kerch and Yenikale. Major General Brown's third detachment was to occupy Evpatoria.

The Senyavin flotilla was based at the mouth of Berda, near the Petrovskaya fortress. In the event of the appearance of Turkish ships in the Sea of Azov, the flotilla had to stand at the Fedotova Spit and prevent the enemy from entering Genichesk. However, heavy Turkish ships, which had a deep landing, could not operate in the shallow waters of the coast of the Sea of Azov. The Russian flotilla could also support the capture of Arabat, Kerch and Yenikale.

The Ottomans promised to send the reinforcements but could not: operations of the 1st Army on the Danube forced them to keep the main forces there and defeat at Chesma with the following blockade of the Dardanelles caused food shortages in Constantinople with a resulting unrest tying down the rest of the troops.

The military part was not too difficult because after Lagra the Tatars did not suffer from the excessive enthusiasm. On May 25, the Second Army gathered at the Mayachka River and on June 14 captured the Perekop line, which was defended by 50,000 Tatars and 7,000 Turks under the command of the Khan Selim-Girey himself. Khan left, and the fortress of Perekop surrendered. According to Dolgoruky, the Russians captured the line almost without losses. Prince Scherbatov took by assault Arabat fortress protecting access to the peninsula through the Arabat Split. The Tatars sent envoys for the negotiations but at this time Dolgorukov was informed that reinforcements were coming to the Turks near Kaffa; Dolgorukov did not consider it possible to wait for the Tatars under such circumstances: on June 29, he went to the Turkish camp and took it, after which the city of Kafa surrendered; the Turks lost more than 3,500 people.

After receiving these news the Turks in Kerch sailed out of it and the same happened in Enikale. Khan Selim-Giray after learning about the Russian advance toward Bakhchisarai fled toward Yalta, where the ships waited for him, and left for Rumelia. At that point the resistance was over.
Now there was a diplomatic part of the task. The Crimean aristocracy had to be persuaded that as the Russian subjects they’ll lose nothing and perhaps even win something. In doing that the recent example of the Edisan and other hordes proved to be quite helpful: aristocracy of these hordes was immediately granted status Russian nobility with the princely titles for the top leaders and the hordes were granted freedom of the religion and possession of the territories with the status along generally the same lines as for the Don Cossacks. Situation within the peninsula was not quite identical but a good reputation was important. In her secret rescript to Dolgorukov Catherine wrote: “Meanwhile, we are sure that you, bringing and inclining the case there to the desired state and to our direct goal, do not miss to use all ways to make the closest connections in the middle of the Tatar peoples, to settle in them will and trust in our side, and, when necessary, to persuade them to bring us a request to accept them into our citizenship.” [2]

This was done with the a little bit of a …er… “gentle persuasion” after which most of the members of pro-Ottoman party left unmolested for their desired destination [3]. The manifest declaring Crimea a part of the Russian Empire had been published: “Announcing to the inhabitants of those places by the power of our imperial manifesto such as their change, we promise sacredly and unwaveringly for ourselves and the successors of our throne to keep them on an equal footing with our natural subjects, to protect and protect their faces, property, temples and their natural faith, whose free exercise with all legal rites will remain inviolable; and finally allow each of them to state all the righteousness and advantages that such in Russia enjoy...” First, the Murzas, Beys, clerics, and then the ordinary population were sworn in. The celebrations were accompanied by treats, games, horse racing and cannon salute. The annexation of the Kuban was also peacefully and solemnly held. The two largest Nogai hordes - Edisan and Dzhambulutsk also swore allegiance to Russia.

Population of the peninsula was by that time approximately 150,000 including approximately 30,000 Christians. The upper class of Crimea was granted all the rights and benefits of the Russian nobility, except for the "right to buy, acquire and have serfs or subjects of the Christian faith". Russian and Tatar officials compiled lists of 334 new Crimean nobles who retained land ownership. At the same time, Sevastopol, Feodosia and Kherson were declared open cities for all peoples friendly to the Russian Empire. Foreigners could freely come and live in these cities, take Russian citizenship. Serfdom was not introduced on the Crimean peninsula, the Tatars were declared state peasants. The relationship between the Crimean nobility and the population dependent on them has not changed. The land and income belonging to the Crimean Khan and the possessions of the feudal lords who left for Turkey passed to the Russian treasury. Privately owned land was preserved in the hereditary possession of bays and murz. All prisoners - subjects of Russia were released.

Immediately after the annexation of Crimea, a thorough study of the economic resources and life of the population of the new region was undertaken, which was caused by both military-strategic considerations and broader tasks of economic development. Distribution of the empty lands started. They were received by military and civilian officials, Russians, Tatars, Greeks, Ukrainians, and then to the “lesser people” from nobility to the state peasants. The mass distribution of land not only to nobles, but also to representatives of other classes, with the obligation to develop and settle the received land, and the provision of various benefits contributed to the development of agriculture and the emergence of industry. All Crimean ports were exempt from customs duties for a period of 5 years and internal customs abolished.

All these processes started while the war was still going on and the Ottoman Empire did not, yet, agree to give up on the Crimea. Now the task was to scare the Ottomans into surrender and to settle other issues, domestic and international.

Speaking of the domestic issues, Catherine issued a rescript, which cost her nothing but had very serious consequences in strengthening her regime: the Cossack officer ranks had been entered to the Table of the Ranks making even the lowest commander, khorunzhiy (XIV class) [6], a hereditary noble [5]. A big number of the Cossacks promoted during the ongoing war suddenly had serious upgrade of their social status. One of them was khorunzhiy of the 2nd Hundred of the Don Cossacks Yemelian Pugachev who distinguished himself at the Benderi. Putting aside this “special case”, situation in the terms “who can do what to whom” both during and outside the active service changed dramatically in the Cossack troops, in the army and in a broader social framework providing Catherine with a big number of the loyalists. How many of them would combine their newly obtained social status with the needs of everyday life was a completely different issue but let’s say that a part of the traditional low ranking mass got a serious leverage in its dealings with the higher levels of the Cossack hierarchy and Russian military and civic administration.
________
[1] The Russian generals had an amazing control of their bodily functions and could easily get sick at will. 😉
[2] In OTL this was her letter to Potemkin in 1782: most than a decade had been lost upon the foolish experiment. To start with, immediately after getting independence the Crimeans installed pro-Ottoman khan who preserved the Ottoman presence on the peninsula. In 1777 Russian military intervention established pro-Russian khan who seriously tried to accomplish “europeization” of the khanate, which resulted in an upraising suppressed by the Russian troops. In 1778 the Christian population of the khanate (Greeks, Armenians, Georgians, etc.) accepted Russian citizenship and left the Khanate to settle on the coast of the Sea of Azov. Russia had to pay 100,000 rubles as compensation for “loss of the subjects”. In 1781 - 82 there was a pro-Ottoman upraising again and the khan’s cruelties after its suppression made Russia looking as a nice alternative. In 1783 before Catherine’s decree about annexation of all Khanate territories was published, the khan abdicated after completely bankrupting his state. So, ITTL we are jumping directly to the end result.
[3] I mean to the Ottoman Empire. 😜
[4] In OTL the population of Crimea, which amounted to 707 thousand people in 1700, had decreased to 92 thousand by 1785 and it started shrinking before the annexation.
[5] In 1722-1845, hereditary nobility was given, starting: in military service - from the XIV class, in the civil service - from the VIII class of the Table of Ranks and when awarding any order of the Russian Empire.
[6] In OTL only starting from 1798. With a better timing and some other measures Catherine could avoid a big trouble in 1773-75.

 

[alexmilman]

29. The war. #6. Still 1771

“The Habsburgs now have a man, and she is a woman…”
Frederick II
“While other nations do battle, you lucky Austria, you wed.”
Maria Theresa
“I do not need your consent for doing good.”
“Let my epitaph be, "Here lies Joseph, who failed in everything he undertook."”
Joseph II
“That was very good of him.”
Wenzel Anton Prince Fürst von Kaunitz-Rietberg when told about the death of Joseph II
“Austria will never give up either its position or its rights in favor of any political system originating outside its borders.”
“Every state is sovereign in its own sphere.”
“In politics, it is necessary to combine the goal with the means and not to forget the means while pursuing the goal.”
“Nationalism is the megalomania of small nations.”
“Chaos is the result of weaknesses.”
Klemens von Metternich
“In that case nobody will get you!”
from as old tragedy
“I’m serving all my allies the Austrian style.”
from an old verse​

Austria. The year of 1770, with the Russian victories on the land and sea, was quite troublesome for the Austrian interests, as being seen by Joseph II, Maria Theresa and von Kaunitz.

The Russian troops had been presently occupying Moldavia and Walachia, the territories which the Hapsburgs would like to occupy themselves. Well, of course if they somehow managed to beat the Ottomans. And because this precondition was not realistic, the important task was not let Russia to get these regions and, as a compensation, to get some piece of the Ottoman territory, no matter how small and valueless. And, speaking of getting something, it would be desirable to get some valuable piece of the PLC.
Of course, all that had to be accomplished without going to war with Russia, just by a mere demonstration of what could pass for the Austrian military muscle, which would be meaningful if the Russians are fully engaged against the Ottomans and in the PLC . To implement this stratagem, in 1771 Austria signed military alliance with the Ottomans by which:

• Austria paid the Ottomans subsidies;
• Austria promised unsubstantiated support to the Ottomans against Russia;
• Austria maintained increased military presence on its border with Moldavia and Wallachia;
• Austria got Bukovina District from the Ottomans (on the map above it is a small pimple on the left, to the east from Galicia and Transylvania. Its population was approximately 75,000, predominantly the Orthodox Christians, Ruthenians (Ukrainians) and Wallachians (Romanians) and overwhelmingly agricultural. Not a big acquisition but, OTOH, the services granted also did not amount for too much.

Insignificant as it may look, this treaty was just a pivotal part of a plan to get, with a minimal effort and risk, a much greater prize: Polish Galicia. It was quite logical. As “everybody knew”, maintenance of the PLCs territorial integrity was one of the cornerstones of the Russian foreign policy defined by Panin’s “Northern System” but being stuck in the endless war with the Ottomans Russia would not be able to resist a joined Austro-Prussian effort to partition the PLC. On its side, the Austrian government was ready, as a compensation, to abandon its Ottoman ally if agreement with Russia is going to be achieved.

Prussia. After the 7YW Frederick became more restrained in his methods but not in his desires. He did not want participate in a war against the Ottoman Empire for which he was going to be “rewarded” with Warmia, about which he commented that “it is not worthy of an effort” but he wanted a much bigger piece of the Polish territory without going to any war. His desire was the Polish Prussia and he was “generously” agreeing to the exclusion of Danzig. Indeed, why bother if possession of the Vistula would give him control of the Polish trade? Warmia would be just an insignificant part of a deal.

After the years of the letters exchange and diplomatic dances leading nowhere, he decided to achieve his goal by sending to St. Petersburg a “heavy artillery”, his brother Prince Henry of Prussia. Besides his high position, Prince Henry had a high reputation as a talented military commander and quite intelligent person. He came to the Russian capital preparing himself to a charm offensive in what was going to be an uphill battle but, to his great surprise, he found that, except for the “Panin’s faction”, the Russian Cabinet and, most important, Catherine herself, are quite willing to listen and accept what would amount to the “reasonable proposals” regarding cutting off the pieces of the PLC territory. Panin kept blabbing but it became absolutely clear that his opinions on the subject will not be listened to: Catherine was clearly in charge and the decisions would be her own. Panin’s role would be limited to the technicalities.

The main issue was Austrian-Ottoman alliance and resulting Austrian attempts to blackmail Russian Empire, which are not going to be tolerated. If the King of Prussia uses his newly-found friendship with Emperor Joseph to convince him to stop meddling into the Russian-Ottoman affairs, then the Austrian concerns could be addressed in a mutually agreeable manner. The rest, namely the specifics of who is going to get what, at the Polish expense, are not going to be a problem if all interesting parties will behave rationally.

With these cheerful news Prince Henry left for Prussia.

Russia. Catherine never liked to make the rash decisions so it took her a while but by 1771 she came to a firm conclusion that continuation of the “Northern System” in its Polish part does not make any sense. Russian Empire had been spending a lot of money and engaging considerable number of troops to maintain its status of the protector of Polish territorial integrity and “constitution” getting in exchange only hatred. And not only from the confederates but also from King Stanislaw-August whom these confederates wanted to either assassinate or at least depose. Why bother with the people who were ready to promise a big chunk of their territory to the Ottoman Empire as a compensation for helping to remove the protection clause and had plans, with the Ottoman help to invade Russian territory and capture Smolensk and other cities on the Russian Western border? And why bother with supporting the king who reneged on all his promises and refused to do anything against these confederates? Even worse, it was reported that the landowners of the Southern voyevodships were encouraged by him not to provide supplies to the Russian 1st Army.

It was a good time to abandon the obviously wrong course and to take advantage of the emerging opportunities but this should not look like Catherine is caving to the Austrian and Prussian pressure. Austrian bluff with concentrating troops on the Moldavian and Wallachian borders must be called.

The order was sent to the Russian troops engaged against the confederates to stop their activities and march to the area of the Kiev, Wolynia, Podolia and Braclaw voyevodships. They would have to be completely cleansed of any sight of the confederates and their supporters and the occupation force must not let either Polish or Austrian troops into that territory. So far, these troops had been arranged into three independent corps units operating in various parts of the PLC. They were now forming a new army, approximately 35,000 strong under command of lieutenant-general Alexander Bibikov, promoted into full general. Taking into an account the size of a territory, he was going to get up to 5,000 reinforcements, mostly the troops held as the garrisons in the main Russian towns which become available after the regular police force was created.

The Bibikov’s army was expected to be adequate for preventing the Austrians from being adventurous beyond the “reasonable limits”. The areas occupied were not (as far as Prince Henry knew) within the Austrian definition of these limits and the most encouraging was a report that Emperor Joseph II ordered to make carriages for travel to his troops on a border: there was a good reason to assume that his personal presence and direct involvement will create enough of a mess to prevent any aggressive Austrian actions against the Russian troops.

However, because in the new situation the serious military activities were rather unlikely, some of the officers were permitted to join the 1st Army where, as a result of the diseases and active fighting, was a clear shortage in the experienced commanders. The highest in rank among them was major-general Alexander Suvorov who started campaign in the PLC as a colonel and was speedily promoted due to his obvious military talent and outstanding energy.

With Prussians acting as the intermediaries, the touchy issue of the Danubian Principalities was addressed. Catherine did not plan to annex them (or at least not the territories to the West of the Prut River), which removed the main Austrian fear. A condition that the Russian approval would be needed for appointing the rulers of Moldavia and Walachia was a little bit itchy but it was acceptable. However, there was one more aspect of the problem: during his operations in the region Rumyantsev was promising Russian protection to the locals to get their cooperation. Leaving them at the Ottomans mercy would be shameful but having the Russian-approved rulers would, supposedly, resolve that problem. Besides, the big numbers of the locals had been already moved to Bessarabia, an area between the Dniester and Prut abandoned by the Edisan Horde, which, upon its request, had been moving back to its old habitat on the Northern shore of the Sea of Azov.

The slices of the Polish pie had been defined. Each participant got his/her piece and even before the Polish government was informed about rearrangement of the PLC borders, the Austrian and Prussian troops entered its territory. Which immediately created a very interesting problem for the Hapsburgs: their dear ally, Louis XV, sent few French officers to train the confederate troops and it just happened that their main area of activities was in the Krakow voyewodship, part of which Joseph was planning to appropriate together with Galicia. Of course, the Austrians, being the Catholics and “civilized”, had been immeasurably better than the Russian schismatics and they were even encouraging the Bar confederates by providing them with a safe heaven, but they were adamantly against any action against Stanislaw-August personally and for Pulaski and his friends this was a big problem. Potentially, for the Prussians as well because their piece of the pie was close to the Yasna Gora, Pulaski’s base of the operations. The French also had been in a rather confusing situation but this was not Catherine’s problem.

As a gesture of a good will Catherine, declared that, due to the clearly expressed wish of the “Polish people”, she voluntarily eliminates the clause of the Russian protection adopted by the last Sejm. From now on the dear Poles are completely free to do whatever they want. Only ignorance of Japanese language prevented her from ending the declaration with “sayonara”.

 

[alexmilman]

To make more clear which territories we are talking about, below is pre-partition administrative map of the PLC (it took a while to find an informative map, which fits to the size accepted by the spirit inhabiting my ipad 👹) and I’m not risking trying to add it to the chapter: the spirit destroyed the text twice before I managed to finish. 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬

 

[alexmilman]

30. The war. #6. Inside of the very long year 1771.

“And how such a bizarrely created state could last so long?”
"If you need to carry out a reform, start by reducing the area of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, because it is the size of the country that is the cause of your misfortunes. Perhaps the neighbors will do you this favor."
Jean-Jacques Rousseau about the PLC
“The Polish social body is a monster made up of heads and stomachs, without arms and legs.”
Charles-François du Périer Dumouriez
"If Russia wants to end the war with great benefits, it would be fair that the Empress Queen and the Prussian King would receive the same amount for their share to maintain the balance between the three powers."
“We don't want to change the Turkish neighborhood to any other, we don't want to give Porta the slightest reason to reproach.”
“Security and self-preservation will be the main subject of our policy, to which we sacrifice all other considerations and visible benefits.”
von Kaunitz
“I consider the Prussian king unchanged in his desire to hide and fish in muddy water.”
“You need to think about how to make the least bad choice. I don't need to tell you how to keep this case secret (partition of Poland), because disclosing it will make a terrible impression, especially in France.”
Emperor Joseph II to his brother
“I'm very annoyed that your court decided to refuse everything, and I'm afraid it will make a bad impression on the Russians.”
Frederick II to Austrian ambassador
“"We will not allow Austria to prescribe laws to us."
Panin to von Solms
“I've never signed documents with such pleasure as this one.”
Catherine II
​

The year was, indeed, a very long one on more than one account and certain events described in a previous chapter require a little bit of in-depth explanation to make general geopolitical framework more clear.

A package deal. The discussions regarding the PLC and ending the Russian-Ottoman war were not as easy and straightforward as they may look because at the start of a process positions of Austria and Russia hardly were compatible and Frederick as an intermediary was trying to cheat both sides to get what he really wanted, specific piece of the PLC, which was not possible without a strong backing of either Austria or Russia and each of these empires had its own interests:

Austrian “system” was shaped by combination of two main factors, the international prestige and the means only marginally adequate for its maintenance. An additional factor was an absence of an uniform approach to the foreign policy. Maria-Theresa, a ruler of the Hapsburg hereditary lands, was against any political expansionist schema unless it will return Silesia. Emperor Joseph was noticeably more politically aggressive and supported an idea of getting a piece of the PLC (actually, the Hapsburgs already occupied a small border region claiming that in a past it belonged to Hungary). Kaunitz was mostly concerned with maintaining European “balance of power” and in this area he had support of both his monarchs. The cornerstone of that balancing “system” was not to allow strengthening of the Russian Empire, especially at the Ottoman expense. The regional status quo hd to be maintained by all means possible because any weakening of the Ottomans by the Russians was going to produce the terrible results throughout Europe. Not that any of the members of that trio could clearly formulate what exactly these terrible results would amount to and in discussions with the Prussians they stuck to the “literature” rather than the specifics. Especially touchy was the issue of the Danube Principalities, which the Hapsburgs would like to acquire but could not. So the goal was to deny them to Russia, even in the form of the Ottoman vassals in which the rulers are being appointed with the Russian agreement. The same applied to the Tatars issue: what if they would start raiding the Hapsburg possessions?

The Hapsburg idea of an ideal peace was that Prussia is getting a piece of the PLC while returning Silesia to its former owners who will also get a piece of the PLC (Maria Theresa was against that part) while Russia is getting a piece of the PLC but returns to the Ottomans all conquests of the current war, with the Tatars returning to their pre-war territories and status. Russia may be “rewarded” by Azov (which was in its possession since 1739 by the Treaty of Belgrade). Even Frederick was somewhat put aback by this naïveté and tried to explain to his Austrian friends that there is absolutely no reason for the Russians to agree to these conditions. Pretty much the same considerations were expressed by Panin to the Austrian ambassador but with a lot of explanations, which looked as the excuses and was misinterpreted by the Court of Vienna as a sign of the Russian weakness, which can be exploited.

The obvious way to do this was to back up political demands by a show of the military force but this was a risky move because Austria may end up facing Russia and Prussia (after all, they had a military alliance). An attempt to get a comprehensive answer from Frederick about his position in the case of such a conflict rather predictably ended with nothing: the Old Fritz had a lot of experience in not giving clear answers to the questions he did not like.

Maria Theresa was adamantly against war with Russia because the Ottomans attacked it. Joseph was writing to his brother: “I give you to appreciate this reasoning (maternal)! Every day of delay is of great importance; we will finally lose so much time that it will be necessary to allow the Russians to do whatever they want. You can judge how my jealousy of the state good suffers. I can't give up my system; I think it's good and true; I'll either force the Prussian king to act, or at least destroy all his credit at Port. If they decide on a direct war, I will lead it, but I will file a written protest, I will absolve myself of responsibility for all the unfortunate consequences, which, in my opinion, are inevitable. If they decide not to do anything, leaving all the cases, and discover my great weakness, I will be forced to testify to the public that I am innocent.”
Eventually, Maria Theresa agreed to having 50-60,000 troops being prepared in Hungary and starting the diplomatic talks with the Porte about an alliance and compensation for it. The Ottomans had been quite happy, agreeing to give up Bukowina (the law was forbidding to give the Muslim lands to the infidels but this territory did not have the Muslim population). But Austrian request for 34,000,000 guldens was a much more difficult issue for a cash-strapped Ottoman Empire so the Sultan agreed to pay 10,125,500 immediately and the rest in future installments. In exchange the Ottomans demanded a peace by which they would not loose anything. After some bargaining it was agreed upon that this would be either peace on a basis of Treaty of Belgrade or something different but easily acceptable for the Ottomans.

Frederick’s “system”. For delivering on such promises the Austrians needed to have Frederick on board but he was too smart for the Austrian diplomacy to be easily cheated. He clearly understood advantage of his position: Russia threatened by Austria will stick to the alliance with him agreeing to the extension of his piece of the Polish pie and moderating its demands toward the Ottomans; there would be no war because Austria after some arguing will capitulate, take its share of Poland and abandon its senseless requests that Russia should make a peace without any gain.

He tried to communicate the last part to the Austrian Ambassador but got the meaningless blabbing “Strength of a peace will depend exclusively upon preserving a balance on the East and from that balance will depend future security of our and your monarchies, which interests are united in this issue.” Emperor Joseph also was thinking along the same lines: “If our court once allows itself hostile actions against the Porta, Russia will be able to easily implement its terrible conquest plans and achieve such advantages, compared to which the acquisition of Moldova and Wallachia can be considered nothing, on the contrary, can be considered a true loss and the first main stone for future submission.” The cornerstone of the Austrian “system” was preserving status quo even at the cost of abandoning possible gains even if a possibility of such games was extremely tempting.

Frederick could not care less about the “balance” on the wrong side of Europe but it looked as the whole situation was a “package deal” and to convince the Russians to moderate their requirements to the Ottomans was a way to get what he wanted. So he was trying to put some pressure on his Russian allies by scaring them with a possibility of a HRE army of over 100,000 plus 25,000 French while pleading an extreme shortage of money which would not allow him to defend his HRE possessions in the case of war. Of course, nobody was going to believe this moaning but the point was to show that he should be seriously counted upon if push comes to shove.

Russian … er … something. A confusing fact for both Prussian and Austrian diplomats was that they could not figure out what was the Russian “system”: depending upon with whom they were talking and even when the conversation took place they were getting the different signals about the Russian intentions. Even Panin himself was switching on almost daily basis between sympathy to the bizarre Austrian demands and some equally extravagant demands of his own with anything in between, which put the foreign ambassadors into a state of extreme frustration. The only subject in which a seemingly rational discussion was possible was a future fate of the PLC and even there not too much of a substance had been added after visit of Prince Henry: Catherine was sympathetic toward the idea in general but neither she nor her ministers and secretaries had been willing to elaborate upon the specifics using as an excuse the ongoing civic war in the PLC participation in which Russia was speedily minimizing: the PLC is a Christian civilized (more or less) country so you can’t just grab a piece of its territory; sooner rather than later you have to get this act ratified by the Sejm and how are you going to call it in a present situation? Russian Empire presently occupied with more important business and is not planning to interfere into the PLC domestic affairs until there is a peace with the Ottomans. Definitely, not on the Austrian and Prussian behalf.

And to discuss the Russian-Ottoman affairs was even more difficult task because the attempts to bring up that issue with Panin was resulting in the prolonged speeches filled with the countless details of geography, ethnography, historical background and many other quite interesting things which, unfortunately, did not led anywhere.

Not being accustomed to the simple ways of thinking or familiar with novacula Occami the recipients of that flow of the verbal garbage had been at loss regarding the Russian “system” and Catherine’s intentions. Which were, actually, very straightforward: to keep both Prussia and Austria out of the Russian - Ottoman business. It was obvious that neither of them will be of any help so why should they be allowed into the picture? Another obvious thing was that the only way to get a favorable peace with the Ottomans was to push them to a brink of a collapse or at least to scare them to death. And this meant a need of the decisive strategic activities on the land and sea.

In a meantime Catherine and her ministers were quite nice to the …er… “friends”, neither obstructing nor helping their first activities in Poland. And, with the removal of the Russian troops the PLC was in flames….


Preparations.
The year had been spent on strengthening the 1st and 2nd armies and now size of the 3rd, Bibikov’s, Army had been increased to 50,000 allowing it to act either in a direct support of the 1st Army or to cover its flank against potential Austrian attack. The last option did not look too likely because Joseph’s 60,000 strong army was extremely slow to materialize even with the Ottoman subsidies. Close to 30,000 would be more realistic estimate and, true to its trusted and regularly failed cordon strategy, these troops were spread in the small units along the long front and could be beaten piecemeal by a concentrated numerically superior force.

Rumyantsev finally got both the numbers and supplies he had been asking for, the ships needed for crossing the Danube, carrying supplies and coastal operations, were either captured or built, the troops were rigorously trained and full of enthusiasm. Fieldmarshal was ready to surpass his glorious actions of the 1770.

The Azov flotilla built by admiral Senyavin finally was operational. Of course, it was grossly inferior to the Ottoman Black Sea Fleet but its crews had been well-trained and, with the main task being protection of the Crimea coast, their small size and almost flat bottoms provided certain advantages.

The Mediterranean expedition had been strengthened by arrival of the 3rd Squadron of 3 ships of the line and 13 transports with 2,000 troops and the 4th Squadron of 3 ships of the line already entered the Mediterranean closely followed by the 5th of 4 ships of the line and 2 frigates. During 1770 and 1771 the fleet was strengthened by 20 frigates purchased or converted from the captured vessels. Orlov even managed to get ransom for Beirut twice and to scare the European merchants at Smirna.
Of course, not everything went smooth. Elphinstone, who after the Chesma was assigned with his squadron to establish blockade of the Dardanelles, run his flagship aground by not listening to the pilot. An attempt to release the ship failed so it was lost and blockade did not happen. Spiridov was raiding the coasts of Anatolia destroying the Ottoman magazines and intercepting the merchant ships going to Constantinople with the food supplies. The Ottoman capital started suffering from the food shortages and it was decided that the main task for the 1772 will be a close blockade of the Dardanelles.
Elphinstone was relieved of his command and sent to St. Petersburg where, before returning to Britain, he spent some time explaining how good he was and how bad were his Russian colleagues. Catherine was not amused but he got the agreed upon pay.

Comic relief.

On the night of 2 to 3 November 1771, King Stanisław August Poniatowski, the last monarch of Poland, was attempted to be kidnapped by the Bar Confederates. The aim of this plot was to force the king to adopt an anti-Russian stance or to influence his abdication.​

Cavalry Captain Stanislaw Strawinski, the chief of this daring plot, observed the rhythm of the King’s day for many weeks, looking for weaknesses in his protection. Working with Casimir Pulaski and Valentin Lukawski, Strawinski convinced the Confederate authorities that a kidnapping was possible. They chose Jasna Góra as the place where the king would be held, due to its symbolic importance and the difficulty of capture by Russian forces.

On the appointed evening, the royal carriage was stopped on one of Warsaw’s bridges by an armed detachment of confederates. Shots were fired between the confederates and the king’s bodyguards. In the chaos, the king attempted to escape on foot, but was quickly captured. Despite initial success, the plan began to fall apart as the confederates began to retreat due to the unexpected resistance of the royal forces and the lack of coordination of the whole action (what a surprise). During their escape from Warsaw, most of the confederates deserted the king, leaving him in the care of Jan Kuzma. Perhaps due to internal doubts or persuasion by the king, Kuzma decided not to deliver the monarch to the confederates, but instead drove him back to Warsaw.

The kidnapping had enormous consequences for Poland. The king and his court used the event to portray the confederates as traitors and regicide, causing them to be condemned in Europe. At home, too, their reputation was tarnished, further weakening their position.

The kidnappers (who were defended by the kidnapped himself) were sentenced to death in 1773, but as many as 27 of the men involved in the kidnapping were not captured. Kuzma, who had betrayed the confederates, was sentenced to banishment. He left the country and settled in the State of the Church, where he lived off money sent to him by Poniatowski.

Łukawski and Cybulski were tried by the Sejm as regicides and were sentenced to death, despite the King's pleas to spare their lives (in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the king had no right of clemency for those sentenced by the Sejm). Łukawski was executed publicly in Warsaw on 10 September 1773. He was beheaded, quartered and burned in the presence of twenty thousand people.

 

[alexmilman]

31. The war. #7. Diplomacy. October 1771 - April 1772.

“What will France say, what will Spain, England say, when we now suddenly get so closely connected with those whom we so much wanted to deter and whose behavior was declared unfair?”
Maria Theresa
“To talk about war, you don't have to be in such sad circumstances as our regions of Bohemia and Moravia.”
Joseph II
“The Vienna Court is aware of the injustice of the cause, but it was to reduce the injustice that he considered it his duty to take part in it, thinking that it was the only way to put its boundaries.”
Austrian Ambassador to French Foreign Minister
“Years, Your Majesty, are minutes in politics, and when they want to count correctly in this science, it is necessary to count for centuries.”
Austrian Ambassador to Frederick II
“Really, Duke, you should do a favor to the Turks, to us, and to all mankind, by persuading Porte to be more accommodating.”
Russian Ambassador to French Foreign Minister
“Poles think that not only Europe, but also three other parts of the world are interested in their feuds.”
Russian Ambassador in the PLC to Panin
“It is clear that success in having all types of turmoil in Poland can only be favorable to us; we can leave things in the position they are now and postpone peace as long as it is able to serve us or at least is not able to harm us.”
Panin to Russian Ambassador in the PLC
“The eloquence of Your Majesty and the power of your imagination took you to the best pages of Plutarch and ancient history; but all this cannot be the subject of our conversation; please descend to the history of Poland and to the history of Count Poniatowski.”
Russian Ambassador to Stanislaw-August
“We still got the undeniable right to demand satisfaction for the fact that the Poles raised weapons against us and caused our war with the Ottoman Porte.”
Panin to Russian Ambassador in Vienna
“Damn it, gentlemen, I see you have a great appetite, your share is as great as mine and the Russian one together; you really have a great appetite!”
Frederick II to Austrian Ambassador
“In politics, there is a general rule: if there is no irrefutable evidence, it is better to express yourself succinctly and not to go into details.”
“Prince Kaunitz wants to become the master of the negotiations, confident that the superiority of the genius he assumes in himself will make the Russians do whatever he wants.”
Frederick II
“- And why should we agree to his demand?
- Because his fortified camp is on your territory and not other way around.”
Konofalsky, ‘Inquisitor’
​

Russian - Ottoman talks. In October 1771, with the fighting season being over, Russia and the Porte agreed upon 6 months ceasefire [1] with the intention to start the peace talks. Which was more or less a doomed effort because the Ottomans were, quite openly, not ready to any concessions beyond allowing Russia to fortify Azov and, to comply with a precondition set by Catherine, to release the Russian Ambassador, Obreskov, whom they kept imprisoned since the war was declared. The Ottomans were also willing to give Russia the Kabarda, which was quite nice of them, taking of the account that they did not have any control over this area except for its recognition of the Sultan, in his Caliph capacity, as a spiritual leader.

The Turkish unyielding position was based upon the rather optimistic reliance upon the treaty with Austria by which the Court of Vienna promised to support their interests. The Russian willingness to give back Walachia and most of Moldavia was interpreted as a weakness so the Ottoman part of the negotiations consisted mostly of repeating the same things time and again: it is impossible to agree with leaving the Tatars under Russian rule and it is impossible to allow Russian navigation on the Black Sea.

Catherine found herself in a rather difficult position. On one hand, she wanted to make peace to have a free hand in the PLC vs. Prussia and Austria but, OTOH she was unwilling to just give away most of the gains already achieved in this war. From the “outside” she was diplomatically pressured by Prussia and Austria to make peace with the Ottomans and proceed with the “Polish issue” and agreement to start negotiations was a way to somewhat relieve that pressure. However, it was clear that, before agreeing to the meaningful concessions, the Ottomans would have to be put into a desperate (or seemingly desperate) situation. Which meant that the 1772 campaign must deliver the very serious blows and to bring the Russian troops closer to the Ottoman “sensitive areas”. And so far she kept getting the letters from Rumyantsev full of complaints about the slow arrival of the reinforcements and supplies, all of which could endanger the next year campaign, perhaps even making it impossible. But by that time Catherine knew the Fieldmarshal well enough to be unduly worried. Rumyantsev was not inventing the problems but he tended to exaggerate them in a futile hope to have his army in a perfect condition before fighting starts. He would continue complaining and bemoaning until receiving the polite but firm order to start an offensive after which all the problems would be forgotten until his troops are achieving a major strategic success after which the old song about the inadequate means would be repeated, etc. 1771 was spent mostly in preparations and while the necessary human and material resources had been coming slowly (what was done fast in the Russian Empire?), they were coming and there will be six more months for getting more. So in April 1772 Fieldmarshal will get his orders to march and, contrary to his reports, will be quite ready. So the whole circus with the talks is going to be just a time gaining game. Of course, the Ottomans will also use it for the same purpose but they were even less organized than their Russian counterparts.

Of course, it would be nice if the Ottomans were willing to change their position and, not to miss such a chance, Obreskov was made one of two Russian negotiators. But the chief one was chosen with the purpose to demonstrate that the Russian side does not really care for the negotiations. Count Grigory Orlov was not a favorite anymore but Catherine still kept him at the court and even made a member of the Council: while in most cases his opinions could be ignored, sometimes he was coming with the useful ideas and was a convenient tool for passing Catherine’s own ideas to his colleagues. During this war he was on an extremely bellicose side with his project of sailing to Constantinople from Varna so he would do just fine. His instructions were rather strange for a chief negotiator: at any time he felt so, he could leave the process to Obreskov and either offer his services to Rumyantsev or to return to St. Petersburg. Catherine had little illusions about Orlov’s ability to get engaged in a serious diplomatic effort for a prolonged period of time but strongly believed in his ability to confuse the professional diplomats with his behavior. And Orlov acted just as expected. Even if his display of a luxury was not enough, his manners were clearly showing who supposed to be a boss. While in the Council he learned (not without a serious effort) not to interrupt the speakers, here he had a field day cutting into the middle of the endless speeches of the Ottoman representative and generally enjoying himself to a great frustration of poor Obreskov who treated the whole process seriously and sincerely tried to achieve some results.

Rumyantsev did not demonstrate any enthusiasm to have under his command a lieutenant-general who never fought above the captain’s rank and had rather peculiar notions about the subordination and other such trifles so Grigory Orlov departed for the capital where he was warmly congratulated for his valuable efforts.

Obreskov issued a deep sight of a relief and continued negotiations with his Ottoman counterpart who, by the mutual agreement, moved his residence to the other bank of the Danube for a better communications with his government. Now the process became an exchange of the lengthy letters going in the circles and getting nowhere except that the Ottomans were now agreeing on paying off some of the Russian military expenses. The assurances of the French and Austrian diplomats that Russian Empire will not be able to maintain its military effort for much longer and perhaps not even for the next year still had been trusted and there was also a very strong belief in an overwhelming power of the Austrian diplomacy.

Vienna. The Austrian Court put itself into the midst of both the Polish and Ottoman affairs in a pursuit of the theory of a “balance of power” promoted by its Chancellor, Wenzel Anton, Prince of Kaunitz-Rietberg (picture below, on the left) who seriously imagined himself the greatest powerbroker in Europe (picture below, his self-image on the right).

He was, indeed, very instrumental in creating the system, which would dominate western part of the continental Europe if not the miserable French and mediocre Austrian performance in the 7YW but still retained some power after it, mostly for as long as France had money to waste on the foreign affairs. Being State Chancellor of the Hapsburg Monarchy since 1753, he did not miss an opportunity to create a whole school of the diplomats fully dedicated to his “system” of maintaining the power balance in Europe and even seriously considering it a science. The system was based upon a premise that, at the moment, Europe is in a “balanced state” and none of the continental powers must be allowed to get stronger without that increase of the strength being matched by the equal increases of other powers. What amounts to the “equality” should be exclusively up to him (as Europe’s supreme mind) to decide. There was, of course, a small problem: besides his self-identified mental supremacy the Hapsburg Empire had very little in the terms of the means of enforcing anything on anybody. It was permanently out of money and its military force, besides demonstrating its inability to be a tool capable of delivering a decisive blow even in the seemingly perfect circumstances, had been spread over the huge space from Belgium to Italy and Hungary.

So the only remaining tool was a very complicated diplomacy backed by the reputation and a pure bluff: to achieve a desirable goal Austria had to get friendly with somebody against somebody else. In this specific case, with Prussia against Russian Empire. However, there were problems. Kaunitz’s “system” assumed that the “friend at the moment” is going to act in the Austrian interests doing Kaunitz’s bidding but it would be too naive to expect this from Frederick. Not that the fact of him being the Russian ally was an obstacle, the Old Fritz tended to consider these pieces of paper rather as the vague recommendations, but Frederick’s own interests were not exactly the same as the Habsburgs’ ones. Speaking of which, there was no uniform opinion in Vienna on what should be the their interests under the present circumstances. There was a general consensus among the ruling “triumvirate” [2] (Joseph, Maria Theresa, Kaunitz) that Russia must not be allowed to gain too much from the Ottomans because this will result in the terrible consequences in some unidentified future. Any attempts to point to the Austrian diplomats that in a foreseen future some of these apocalyptic fears are simply detached from a reality had been countered by an unbeatable argument that in a science of diplomacy one has to count by the centuries [3]. Even a seemingly harmless clause about a free trade on the Black Sea would disrupt the balance because “free trade on the Black Sea is equal to Peru.”
But this was inevitably bringing to the front affairs in the PLC making situation even more complicated. If the Russians are going to be victorious and denied the acquisitions at the Ottoman expense, why would they agree to a peace which brings them nothing? A war with Russia is not possible and the threats did not work: instead of being scared Catherine is increasing size of her army. Obviously, Russia should be somehow compensated and the obvious place to get this compensation from is going to be the PLC. But the PLC being “European”, should not Austria and Prussia get the equal shares with Russia to compensate for its growth and thus preserve the European balance (an option, Austria is getting back Silesia to balance for the Prussian expansion in Poland)? The obvious answer was “yes” but it was bringing the next obvious questions: should the PLC be compensated elsewhere for its territorial losses? If “yes” then the only source for such a compensation would be the Ottoman Empire, with which Austria is presently in an alliance.

Maria Theresa, after agreeing for the Hapsburg participation in the “rebalancing act”, had the second thoughts and now was, again, against the whole affair so the further discussions were between the Emperor and his Chancellor.

Kaunitz returned to his favorite thought: let the Prussian king take what he wants from Poland, only to return Silesia to Austria. But if he disagrees, wouldn’t it be better to ask from him the German lands, Ansbach and Bayreuth ? Finally, if Prussia does not agree to this, it is more natural, more profitable for Austria to seek the spread of its possessions down the main river of the empire, along the Danube, to the Black Sea, to take Wallachia and the coastal part of Bessarabia, while the rest of the latter and Moldavia to give to Poland as a reward for the lands that it will cede to Russia and Prussia. The Ottomans, in Kaunitz’ opinion, could agree to this without a war; to get more it would be necessary to join Russia in a war against the Ottomans and this was extremely undesirable.

Emperor Joseph, reading the opinion of Kaunitz, was struck by the idea that Austria should receive land here or there only to maintain balance, in fact, will not acquire anything, and also risks acquiring much less Russia and Prussia, if not by the amount of land acquired, then by its value in the overall composition of the empire. Joseph declared himself against the chancellor's proposals, declared himself against division, and for the pure acquisition that Austria alone can make. To do this, according to Joseph, it was necessary to try to continue the war between Russia and Turkey: while it was unlikely that the Ottomans would be able to turn the tide, it was also unlikely that Russia during the next campaign would be able to cause the Ottoman Empire even a greater damage. Austria loses nothing from the continuation of the war, on the contrary, it benefits a lot: not only can it benefit from all the accidents of war, but the simultaneous weakening of both warring parties will give Austria the opportunity to demand greater benefits than those it could have demanded so far. Finally, the King of Prussia will continue to spend his money on subsidies to his ally; maybe he will quarrel with Russia and will get closer to Austria to simplify achievement of his goals. Now Austria cannot take part in the war, but in 1773 it will be able to put pressure on the weakest of the fighting states. Porta will either faithfully comply with its convention with Austria or not. In the first case, Austria will be richly rewarded for military costs, in the second case it will have free hands to act against it and take from it the lands it wants most. Therefore, it is necessary to do our best to make the Porte reject Russian proposals and the truce. In the PLC Austria must act as the King of Prussia. It is necessary now to occupy Krakow, Sendomir and Lemberg, on the other side, Częstochowa; at the same time, to announce that they intend to keep the Polish king on the throne and leave all Polish regions occupied by Austrian troops if Russia and Prussia do the same.

The old chancellor victoriously denied the emperor's opinion: it would be strange to expect that Russia would not receive any significant benefits in a further war and that Austria would not suffer large losses from this. Russia, Prussia and Turkey want a peace and the Turkish stubbornness is based exclusively on a hope of the Austrian help in providing it with the good peace conditions. If the Vienna court now opposes peace, the latter will be concluded with the complete exclusion of Austria. Austria, through its military demonstrations and strong tone, has achieved that Russia and Prussia are forced to reckon with it and invite to participate in the benefits they acquire. But now nothing more can be achieved with these demonstrations, when the Porte is even more constrained, and Russia and Prussia agree in everything. Military preparations, in addition to the useless expenditure of a lot of money, will only lead to the fact that Turkey and Prussia will win on the Austrian account: Russia will offer the better conditions to the Turks and will get even closer to Prussia. By preventing peace, Austria will incur the hatred of other powers and be a mere spectator, while Russia and Prussia will benefit from their agreement; by facilitating a truce, one can hope to participate in the congress and extract some benefits from the peace negotiations.

Joseph acknowledged himself to be defeated by chancellor’s “mathematical” arguments and switched to fantasizing about the possible acquisitions. Of course, Silesia would be the best outcome but, if not possible, then Belgrade with a part of Bosnia going to the Drina Gulf to protect the Austrian inner regions from a possible Ottoman attack.

Maria Theresa was glad to know that there is an agreement regarding the peace talks but still commented that “We wanted to act as Prussia and at the same time maintain a kind of honesty”, which resulted in a loss of the reputation. She kept having regular arguments with her son and finally decided to get a spiritual advice to calm down her consciousness. She was assured by the Jesuits that the laws governing the states and their rulers are not the same as the laws applicable to the private persons and in some cases Empress has to be guided by exclusively by the political interests. After which the consciousness did not bother her anymore and this part of a problem had been resolved.

Austrian Ambassador to the Porte was instructed to explain that the bad Ottoman performance is a reason why Austria is now favoring peace and that Austria, is true to its convention by which it was obliged by a force of arms or diplomatic means to provide the Sultan with a descent peace: after all, it spent a lot of money to move its troops from Italy and the Netherlands and scared Russia into an agreement not to annex the Danubian Principalities. It is impossible to go further without putting the House of Habsburg into a grave danger.

The Sultan’s answer was that if at the peace talks with the Austrian help the Porte will get back the principalities and the Tatars, then the Sultan will fully implement all conditions of the convention; otherwise the convention is broken but the Sultan will not ask to return the money.

As expected, Frederich rejected any idea regarding return of Silesia and with it all complicated Austrian schemas of the multi-level exchanges and Prussian involvement in negotiation with the Ottomans of Austrian behalf. “I only have gout in my legs; and such offers could be made to me if gout were in my head; it's about Poland, not about my possessions.” However, he found it rather amusing that the Austrians are ready to get piece of a territory from their Turkish friends.

Now, Joseph and Kaunitz came with another brilliant schema. In Poland Austrian share must be equal to those of Prussia and Russia while Russia should, by peace treaty, to get all the occupied Ottoman territories and to pass them to Austria. Austria will retain Moldavia and Walachia ending up with the borders from Prut to Danube and return Bessarabia to the Ottomans for which the Ottomans will give it Orsova and Belgrade. An underlying assumption was that Russia is so desperate to make a peace that it will agree to all Austrian conditions for the promise to help with obtaining it and, out of the gratitude, will again align itself with Austrian instead of Prussia. Rube Goldberg, in comparison, would pass as an example of a clear straightforward thinking.

While this part of the diplomatic activities was based upon rather complicated and questionable wishful thinking, three-side discussions regarding Poland were moving along but not without the problems because figuring out equality of the shares was a big problem and Catherine was not fully supportive of this notion. After all, Russia was fighting a war in the PLC over it reneging on the agreed upon issue, and not just by the confederates but by the government itself. So it would get territorial gain by the right of conquest while Prussia and Austria are planning to get territories for nothing. Some kind of an agreement would be probably needed but Russia will have to think exclusively about its own interests, not about the balance of power or pleasing anybody. She was not even fully committed to the notion of the partition but position of the King and his uncles was making it increasingly unavoidable.

Even after the failed abduction attempt Stanislaw-Ausgust kept playing a strange game being uncooperative with his only supporter, Catherine, and unwilling to do anything against the people who declared him deposed and tried to abduct or even kill him. With all that he and his government were assuming that the fight against the confederates is to be conducted exclusively by the Russian troops and that the Empress must support him financially. Withdrawal of the most of the Russian forces to the South-Eastern part of the PLC made the military situation a complete mess, especially when the Lithuanian Hetman Oginski [4] joined the confederates but there was no coherent effort to stop them.

The court in Warsaw had been busy with the hunting, the balls, theater and other entertainments, which did not prevent Stanislaw-August from claiming that without the Russian handouts he’ll die from starvation. The new Russian ambassador, Saldern, was quite blunt in explaining him the situation and Catherine’s position, warning that “If the king and his friends prefer to remain inaction and persist in their indifference, then it will not be the Empress’ fault if she take measures dictated by her dignity and interests of her empire” and that pacification of Poland is going to be at the hands of the foreign states, but nothing changed.



________
[1] Which means “until the next campaigning season”
[2] Or what would be the right term, taking into an account that one of its members was a woman?
[3] In OTL within a couple of decades the system crumpled so planning for the centuries ahead clearly did not work well.
[4] Michał Kazimierz Ogiński. Not to be confused with Michał Kleofas Ogiński who composed the famous polonaise. Made several improvements to the design of the pedal harp and wrote an article on this subject for “Encyclopedia” but making him hetman was a serious mistake: in OTL in 1771 his army of 4,000 was completely destroyed by Suvorov who had 900. Anyway, he joined the confederates because the French promised to make him a king of the PLC when Stanislaw-August is deposed. I have no idea how and if to incorporate this possibility into TTL.

 

[alexmilman]

32. The war. #8. Back to war. 1772

“With such good fellows... I'd kick the devil out of hell.”
Captain Kinsbergen, report after Battle at Balaklava
“The smaller the army, the more brave soldiers it has.”
“Speed and onslaught are the soul of a real war.”
Suvorov
“Two thousand warriors against ten... - Gimli said thoughtfully. - It's a sure death. So what are we waiting for?”
S.S.Musanif, ‘The shooter’s second rule’
“- There is nothing impossible either in this world or in any other, … there are only wrong approaches to solving problems.”
“If you want to win, you have to be ready to play unfairly.”
S.S.Musanif, ‘The shooter’s third rule’
“What is the main thing in the siege of the city? Don't stretch it for ten years.”
Agamemnon.​

Campaign of 1772 started in April with a daring raid of the Russian vanguard under command of general Weisman. His vanguard, under the leadership of Weisman, won an impressive victory over army of Numan-Pasha at Kainarji, for which, however, the brave Weisman paid with his life.

The 1st Army. Weisman had 5 thousand, the Turks had 20 thousand but he decided to attack. After marching through the one and a half kilometer long defile, the vanguard reached the Kyuchuk-Kainardzhi valley closed from all sides, where it formed a square, and, in this order, moving forward, took a position on the edge of the hill where it was joined by rest of the troops after which the whole force marched forward and was attacked by the Ottoman cavalry and infantry. A huge crowd of Turks, scattering the Russian skirmishers, fell on the left face of the square, where they caused confusion. In order to inspire the troops, Weisman personally led them; order was restored and the attack was repulsed, but Weisman himself was killed. He only managed to say: "Don't tell the people!" However, this was the last Ottoman’s attempt to attack and counter-attack of the Russian cavalry put them to rout. Major General Golitsyn, who took command of the detachment after Weisman's death, immediately sent all the available cavalry for pursuit, which drove the enemy for 12 versts. As a revenge for the death of their beloved commander the Russians were not taking prisoners. The Ottoman losses amounted to 5,000. Russian losses were only 167 people. Weisman's death deeply saddened the whole army. Suvorov, who was friends with him, wrote: "Weisman is gone, I'm left alone..."

In a meantime Rumyantsev’s main forces had been crossing the Danube. He decided to end the protracted war and penetrate, despite all the difficulties, to the Balkans. He divided his army into four corps (detachments) and the main forces. The main role was to be played by the Kamensky (10,850, 23 guns) and Suvorov corps (14,000, 14 guns), who were ordered to go to Shumla and defeat the 50,000 strong army of the vizier, and both were given complete freedom of action. Repnin's corps was ordered to make a reserve for them, Saltykov's corps to act against Silistria, Rumyantsev himself with the main forces could support in case of need of any of the detachments.
At the beginning of April 1772, Kamensky's division crossed from Izmail to the right bank of the Danube near Isakcha. Suvorov, crossing the Danube at Girsov, marched on May 16 to the Chernovods and, moving in parallel with Kamensky, covered his offensive. On June 2, 1772, Kamensky occupied Bazardzhik after defeating a 5,000-strong detachment of enemy cavalry, which retreated towards Kozluja. On June 8, the troops of Suvorov and Kamensky joined near the village of Yushenly, 7 km from Bazardzhik.

The Turkish army led by Reisefendi Abdul-Rezak, the former Turkish Commissioner at the failed peace congress, came out to meet the Russian troops from Shumla. The vizier gave him almost all his army (up to 25,000 infantry and up to 15,000 cavalry), leaving no more than 1,000 people in Shumla. The Russian army set up a camp in Yushenly for recreation, and Suvorov and Kamensky on the morning of June 9, with the vanguard of the cavalry and Cossacks went for reconnaissance on the way to Kozluja. A detachment of Turks was seen at the exit from the Deliorman Forest. The Turks began to retreat towards Kozluja, and the Russian cavalry went deep into the forest, from which Turkish troops were waiting for it. They attacked the Cossack detachments, which were in the vanguard, and sought to cut them off from the main detachment. The Cossacks began to retreat hastily, as a result of which, due to the extreme narrowness of the road on which the troops were moving and there was a mess. Then Kamensky sent a squadron of pikeman and two squadrons of Kharkiv hussars to deter the attack of the Turks, preventing them from entering the forest. The rest of the troops began to withdraw from the defile and line up on both sides of the entrance to it. This was done quite quickly and clearly, despite the extreme tightness on the trail. At the same time, Kamensky sent for infantry. Soon three battalions arrived (two Jäger and one grenadier), which formed three squares at the edge of the forest. These battalions were commanded personally by Suvorov. Kamensky, as the senior in subordination, led the whole battle. By sending the reinforcements he prevented the Turkish attacks on the Russian flanks and the rear forcing them to retreat back to the forest. A frontal attack was repulsed by the infantry and artillery fire and the Turks had to retreat.
Suvorov immediately moved his troops to pursue the enemy and, having passed the defile, stopped in the hollow. Here, on the heights in front of Kozluja, he met most of Abdul-Rezak's troops. Kamensky, anticipating stubborn resistance, sent all the other forces of his corps to help Suvorov. Part of his cavalry was at the head, and part was in the middle of the column. Suvorov arranged his squares in one line, having cavalry on the right flank, and two regiments in reserve. After the Russian field artillery with a difficulty passed through the defile, Suvorov went on a general offensive. Russian troops occupied the heights and, turning the enemy into flight, captured two of his guns.

Stopping at that position, Suvorov for three hours subjected the Turkish troops to the cannon and rifle fire. When the return fire began to subside, Suvorov moved all squares against the enemy camp, sending forward the cavalry. The Turks could not withstand the attack and when the Russian cavalry approached, they abandoned their camp, fleeing to Shumla and Pravoda.

The Battle of Kozluja began 15 versts from this settlement, located almost in the middle between Shumla and Varna, at twelve o'clock in the afternoon, and ended only at eight o'clock in the evening. Russian troops captured 29 enemy guns and 107 banners, as well as the entire Turkish camp and many military supplies. The number of Turks killed was 500, and the number of prisoners was about 100. The Russians lost 75 lower ranks, 4 officers and 130 soldiers were wounded. While their losses were not too big, the Turks were completely demoralized and hardly capable of a continued fight. On June 16, Kamensky blocked Shumla. Varna was occupied.

Crossing the Danube in early June, Rumyantsev moved to Silistria, and Saltykov was sent to Rushchuk. Kamensky's cavalry detachment of Brigadier Zaborovsky moved beyond the Balkans (where the Russian soldier had never set foot before), sowing horror and panic everywhere. In Shumla itself, the troops began to rebel and go home. Seeing the impossibility of further struggle and risking being left without troops, the vizier appealed to the Russian commander-in-chief with a request for a truce. But Rumyantsev refused him, saying that he could only negotiate peace (which undoubtedly showed a great political flair). The vizier only had to submit.

The procedure took place at the village Kyuchuk-Kainardzhi.

Other fronts:

Archipelago Expedition.

The main force of Spiridov’s fleet was located in the Greek archipelago, using the island of Paros as a base for the Russian fleet, where a shipyard was built, as well as a small settlement. From here it was possible to control a significant part of the enemy supply lines, primarily the supply of provisions from southern Greece to Constantinople, as well as to carry out the blockade of the Dardanelles. The Aegean Sea in its narrowest part was actually completely blocked by Russian cruisers.

Plan of the direct attack on Constantinople through Dardanelles advocated by Elphinstone had been gone with its author: the operation was considered to be too risky: fortifications of the strait were not in a very good shape but they had a big number of the old huge guns capable of firing stone balls of up to 0.63 m diameter and a weight of 1,027.5 kilograms. Of course, their rate of fire was extremely slow but even a single hit could do a serious damage to a wooden ship and, anyway, the whole plan looked too risky and too much relied upon an assumption that the Sultan would freak out at the sight of the Russian ships opposite to his palace and beg for a peace.

At the military council, it was decided first of all to take the island of Tenedos, where there was a convenient parking lot for ships and from where it was possible to block the strait. The Turks rejected the proposal to surrender the fortress, after which a landing of 760 people with 6 guns landed on the shore. The fortifications of the Turks outside the fortress were taken by storm, and 5 banners were captured. The remains of the Turks who fled to the fortress were cut off in the suburbs and surrendered. To shell the fortress itself, 2 batteries with 8 guns were installed, supported by 2 ships. After the second offer to capitulate, the Turks surrendered the fortress without waiting for the assault. 1,200 prisoners and about 80 guns were taken in the fortress. Successful actions allowed the Russian fleet to get a base just 25 versts from the Dardanelles, which made it possible to completely stop the supply of food by sea to Constantinople. By the early July there were already riots in the Ottoman capital.

Azov and Black Seas.

In the campaign of 1772, the Russian Don Flotilla under the command of Vice-Admiral A. N. Senyavin performed the task of suppressing and repelling the attempts of the Ottoman fleet to land landings on the coast of Crimea, the Taman Peninsula and penetrate the Sea of Azov. In May detachment of the Don Flotilla under command of of Captain 2nd rank I. G. Kinsbergen (Jan Hendrik van Kinsbergen), two 16-gun "newly invented" (flat-bottom) ships "Crown" and "Taganrog" (the crew of both ships - 150 people, 32 guns) repaired minor damage on the Balaklava raid when approach of a big enemy ship was reported. Kinsbergen led his detachment to the Black Sea for interception. Upon approach, 3 more ships were found. Later it turned out that these were two 54-gun Turkish frigates, one 36-gun frigate and a 24-gun shebek with landing. Despite the overwhelming superiority of the enemy in the artillery (32 Russian guns against 168 Turkish guns), the commander of the Russian detachment did not evade the battle and continued to approach the enemy. The ensued battle continued for 6 hours with some visible damage being done to the Ottoman ships (on one of them, the side was so badly broken that when turning, several guns fell into the sea). Unable to withstand the Russian fire, the Turkish detachment was forced to stop the battle and leave. Due to their inferior speed, the Russian ships could not pursue effectively and returned to Balaklava. For this victory Kinsbergen was awarded the Order of St. George, 4th class. This was the first Russian sea battle on the Black Sea.

The Ottomans had been planning a big-scale landing in the Crimea where they were expected to get support from the local Tatars many of whom were “opposite to happy” with their changed status. The Ottoman fleet had been carrying anywhere between 30 and 50,000 troops under the command of the Trebezund Governor Seraskir Haji-Ali-bey Pasha (with a former Khan hanging around).

On June 9, the Turkish fleet, consisting of 40 pennants (5 ships of the line, 9 frigates, as well as 26 galleys and shebeks), trying to break through the Kerch Strait, suddenly attacked a detachment of Russian ships under the command of V. J. Chichagov, who cruised near the coast of Crimea to prevent the landing of Turkish troops. At that time, he commanded 3 frigates, 4 sixteen-gun ships, and 5 small auxiliary ships. Chichagov decided to cut off the Turkish attempts to return to their base. The Russian ship detachment anchored at the Kerch Strait, blocked the strait and the next day headed in the direction of Kerch.

On June 28, the Turkish fleet, consisting of 34 ships (6 ships of the line, 7 frigates, 1 koches, 20 galleys and shebeks), tried to break into the Sea of Azov and destroy the Russian flotilla of 12 pennants under the command of Vice-Admiral A. N. Senyavin, who guarded the Kerch Strait. The attack on Senyavin's ships by the Turks, despite three times the advantage of their force, failed and ended in complete failure. The guns of the Russian flotilla had a greater range than those of the Turks, which gave them advantage over the enemy. After artillery duel the Ottomans abandoned attempt to penetrate into the Sea of Azov and left. Due to the inferiority of his force and its low speed, Senyavin could not pursue and remained on his position guarding the Kerch Strait leaving the Ottomans with pretty much free hands in their further steps.

The Crimea.
Crimea was occupied by parts of the 2nd Russian Army under the command of General-in-Chef Prince Vasily Mikhailovich Dolgorukov. While being very good as he was at the conquest stage, in a defense he screwed things up.

The headquarters of the army commander was located on the Dnieper, and directly in the Crimea was the so-called Crimean Corps, less than 10,000, under the command of Lieutenant General Prince Alexander Alexandrovich Prozorovsky. Troops were scattered throughout the peninsula, large garrisons were located in fortresses: Perekop, Kozlov, Cafe, Balaklava, Kerch, Yenikal and Arabat. The corps headquarters and reserves were withdrawn deep into the peninsula for the convenience of control over different parts of Crimea and were located in three retranchments: near Ak-Mosque, Kafa and between Kozlov and Ak-Mosque (Simferopol).

In addition, special small (from company to battalion) detachments or posts were located at each more or less important point, primarily on the Black Sea coast. Such few posts were occupied by Alushta, Yalta, Balaklava, Sudak and other points. The cordon line of Russian troops was thin and weak everywhere. There was not a single intermediate detachment between Alushta and Yalta, Yalta and Balaklava, only weak posts (10-20 people), the nearest reserves in Bakhchisarai were too far by Crimean standards. In addition, communication between parts was extremely difficult for the mountainous terrain and the almost complete absence of carriageways. Such a line of individual posts, built on the well-known Austrian cordon system, when the army forces were scattered in vain for a huge length, any enterprising and strong opponent could easily break anywhere. The faulty of this system was always condemned by everyone, but the generals continued to adhere to it with manic persistence. To make things worse, with the Ottoman landing being expected at the Kerch Strait area, considerable forces had been moved there.

The next day after departing from the Kerch, the Turkish ships reappeared off the Crimean coast and anchored near Alushta, a small place between Yalta and Sudak. It was here, where there were no significant Russian forces, that Haji-Ali decided to start landing. Having an overwhelming numerical superiority, Seraskir was confident of success, but still demanded that the Crimean Tatars support the landing operation by attacking Russian garrisons. After capturing the bridgehead on the southern coast of Crimea, Haji-Ali planned to go deep into the mountains and go to the Angara and Kebit-Bogaz passes, through which the roads led deep into the peninsula, including the capital of the khanate - Bakhchisarai. Having occupied the mountain passes, the Turks could feel safe and easily support the rebellion of the Crimean Tatars. According to Seraskir, one spark was enough to fire the whole Crimea, and his calculations were quite justified. The Tatars not only contributed in every possible way to the landing of Turkish troops, but also openly joined them, and then an uprising broke out everywhere on the peninsula.

The Russian garrison in Alushta consisted of 150 jagers of the Moscow Legion under command of captain Kolychev. The positions of the detachment were located in a redoubt built, apparently near the remains of the old tiny Alushta fortress. The Turks, not expecting any serious opposition from the Russian side, in view of their obvious superiority, quietly began to descend the boats from the ships, which, taking people on board, headed to the Alushta coast. Despite all the apparent absurdity of the resistance, the Moscow jagers met the enemy with shots. At first, with rifle and canister fire, they managed to drive away boats that were trying to approach the shore and land the troops. But the number of enemy boats launched was growing more and more, and finally, powerful fire of numerous large-caliber artillery of the entire Ottoman fleet fell on the coastline, which could not be opposed by Kolychev's detachment. Now the jagers could no longer prevent the landing of the enemy troops, and withdrew from the shore to the last line of defense - the redoubt. The Turks calmly went on land and, gradually accumulating strength, moved to attack the Russian positions. At the hottest moment of the fight, Kolychev's detachment from the rear was attacked by the Crimean Tatars who looted its camp. The jagers had been fighting for over six hours without getting reinforcements (commander of the nearest detachment saw the fight but was afraid to come to their rescue and, instead had been sending reports to his superiors. Kolychev, with his team, broke through and retreated inland. They even managed to save their artillery pieces.

The commander of the 2nd Army Dolgorukov finally arrived with his reserve to the interior of Crimea and stopped at the Salgir retranshement, deciding to gather the main forces of the Crimean Corps there to counter the Turks, wherever they came from. However, he managed to completely misjudge the Ottoman movements and, while the landing was at Alushta, sent his reserves to Balaklava, which allowed the Ottomans to attack another small post at Yalta. In the village of Yalta there were two musketeer companies of the Bryansk regiment, very small in composition, part of the artillery team of the same regiment and 11 Don Cossacks under command of Major Saltanov. Saltanov, having received news of the appearance of the Turkish fleet at Alushta and, most likely, about the upcoming landing, immediately gathered the largest possible detachment and rushed there to help. All night they sneaded along the mountain roads parallel to the shore and even managed to prevent one of the landings but then found that more than 1,000 Turks already landed in their rear. The Cossacks sent to Alushta found it already abandoned by Kolychev and, with the news about more landings, Saltanov decided to retreat back to Yalta where he arrived just ahead of the main Ottoman fleet. After few hours of a desperate defense and running out of the ammunition, Saltanov ordered to spike the now useless guns, collect all the wounded who could still move, and charge the bayonets. Dolgorukov-Krymsky wrote in the report to Ekaterina: "...when it was impossible for his team to stay in Yalta after his batteries were on fire, this major intended to break through the enemy.” They broke out but Saltanov was killed in a process. Along the road the Turks and Tatar kept attacking them killing the wounded. Only 17 people managed to reach the Russian posion. All Christian population of Yalta had been massacred.

After the occupation of Alushta, Haji-Ali Bey was in no hurry to deploy the offensive deep into the peninsula, obviously aware of all the difficulties of the mountain march and waiting for the development of the Tatar rebellion. He only pushed forward 10 versts from the camp of his main troops, an avant-garde of 7-8 thousand people, which occupied the gorges near the villages of Shumy and Demerdzhi to block the entrance to the Alushta valley. Under the cover of the forward detachment, the Turks quietly continued to strengthen the positions of their main camp.

In a meantime, Dolgorukov finally figured out what is going on and started concentration of his troops in the center of peninsula even if Alushta was much closer to Posorovsky than Ak-Mosque. The coastal garrisons had been ordered to assemble at Sudak. Dolgorukov’s plan was to concentrate his forces to prevent any change of the Turkish victories over the small detachments.

Dolgorukov, arriving in Yanisal on July 22 the next day on July 23, sent his son-in-law, Lieutenant General Count Musin-Pushkin, to "search for the enemy", allocating most of his reserve to him, and he himself with two battalions of infantry and two cavalry regiments remained to cover the rear of Musin-Pushkin's detachment. Instead of a decisive attack by the enemy, Dolgorukov ordered his son-in-law to make just a search in the direction of Alushta, and the day after that enterprise "whatever happens, immediately come to him, leaving no post in the mountains." It is not clear why this extremely risky offensive was needed at all, reduced, after all, to a simple demonstration. After joining Musin-Pushkin, Dolgorukov planned to retreat with him to the Ak-mosque, and a day later to move closer to Bakhchisarai, to make it more convenient to observe the development of the Tatar rebellion from there and retreat further beyond Perekop.

But Dolgorukov had a problem with his subordinates who were much more energetic than he was. Even before he sent Musin-Pushkin for his strange mission, Major-General Jacobi already marched out from Janisal towards Alushta with part of the troops, namely: the Tambov Infantry Regiment, the Grenadier and 2nd Musketeer Battalions of the Moscow Legion and the Jäger team. The Tambov regiment, although it had two battalions, was very weak and barely numbered 600 people. The detachment was to be marched along the only road leading to the southern coast of Crimea through the Kebit-Bogaz pass. This road could be called as such only with a big stretch of imagination, it was an ordinary mountain path, however, trampled for, perhaps, several millennia, it went to the Alushta valley and led directly to this Tatar village. At some places it was so narrow that the 12-pounder unicorns had to be carried by hands. The troops, having made a heavy march through the "narrow between the mountains and forests to Alushta defiley", having covered a distance of about 30 km, settled down on July 23 at 6 o'clock in the morning, before reaching the village of Shumy, opposite it in the mountains. With the arrival of Musin-Pushkin, the forces of the Russian detachment increased to 7 battalions of infantry and a small number of Cossacks. A reported total was 2,850 with 14 3-pounder guns or 8-pounder unicorns and few 12-pounder unicorns.

Battle of Shumy. The Turks occupied a fortified position, which was arranged northwest of the village of Shumy "in a very favorable place, on both sides of which there were steep stone rapids reinforced by retranchment", a stone wall stretching from the village of Shumy down the slope through the gardens to the southwest, which blocked the entire defile and covered the batteries from the left flank. Position was occupied by 7 - 8,000.

Musin-Pushkin, having got acquainted with the terrain and location of the enemy, decided on the direction of the main blow. He ordered Jacobi to support the advance of Kolychev's team on the right flank with an attack on the grenadier battalion. Jacobi's square movement was greatly slowed down by natural obstacles, three times the battalion came at deep ditches. Dolgorukov reported to Catherine II: "When did the troops of Your Majesty lead... their attack... they were met with the most brutal of the guns and guns fire. The enemy, taking advantage of the convenience of the place and the superiority of forces, defended himself from retransments with such persistence that for more than two hours, when... the square, moving forward by impassable paths, acquired every step with blood, the strongest shooting made of cannons and guns on both sides did not stop.”

As soon as they crossed the last ditch, Jacobi ordered the grenadiers to "leave the rifle fire, because the continuation of it would have caused more damage to us than the enemy, who was sitting behind the stone wall... Instead of shooting with guns, he ordered them to hit him [the enemy] with the bayonets." The grenadiers’ charge brought them over the wall and the Turks, despite of their superior numbers, fled.
Colonel Liebgolt, who with the Tambov regiment and the 2nd Battalion of the Moscow Legion was placed on the neighboring mountain opposite to the village of Demerdzhi, in order to occupy the heights and gorges there in order to prevent the enemy from entering the rear of the rest of the detachment, arranged the musketeers of the Moscow Legion and the Tambov Regiment in a square and launched an attack on the second battery of the Turks. Before that, he sent 200 musketeers and 100 hurried Cossacks from his team, led by Major of the Tambov regiment Pretorius, "to cut off the enemy's way to the village of Demerdzhi." This square, overcoming powerful gunfire and rifle fire, despite the losses, also acted quite successfully, advancing to the position of the enemy. The attack was facilitated by the fact that the Turks moved most of the people from their right flank to the left to repel Jacobi's offensive. When defenders of the second battery saw the flight of the retrenchment’s defenders, they abandoned their guns and joined flight toward the main position in Alushta.
Meanwhile, on the left flank of the Musin-Pushkin detachment, Major Pretorius attacked the village of Demerdzhi, where a huge number of retreating Turks flocked from different sides. The Cossacks and musketeers broke into the village, killed those who resisted, and the rest were driven on the road to Alushta. Thus, the threat of a strike on the flank and rear of the Russian detachment was eliminated, and Musin-Pushkin's troops could calmly continue the pursuit. On a right flank the grenadiers pursued the Ottomans to Shumy, killing them with the bayonets. Some barricaded themselves in the houses but the buildings had been put on fire with their defenders burned alive: after what happened earlier the Russians were not inclined to play nicely. The resistance crumbled and pursuit continued, with the Don Cossacks being the most effective.

Only two ranking Turks had been taken prisoners. Over 300 Turks had been found dead in the main position at Shumy. Their total losses were impossible to count because many corpses were in the ravines and between the rocks. Russian troops lost 32 privates and non-commissioned officers killed, 163 lower ranks and several officers were wounded, including Major General Jacobi.

When in a hot pursuit the Russian troops got close to the Alushta position, Musin-Pushkin found that it was impossible to attack it with the force he had. Position was well-fortified with seven powerful batteries established and judging by the size of a fortified camp the enemy had an overwhelming numeric advantage. So the Russians returned to the position at Shumy.

The commander-in-chief, obviously, at this time was extremely concerned about the fate of his heavy baggage train, which he had to leave before marching to the mountains under the protection of only a small detachment. Dolgorukov constantly received reports that the rebellious Tatars are attacking Russian troops in many places, including his precious convoy, to which the Crimean khan himself allegedly rushed with a large army. The prince sent 6 cavalry squadrons to the pay and ordered Count Musin-Pushkin, who was already 24 versts from his camp in Yanisal, to immediately retreat from the fortified position of the Turkish landing.

Then Musin-Pushkin was to continue the retreat according to the order and, joining Dolgorukov, to move on the road to the Ak-Mosque to the Salgir retranschment. Dolgorukov, anticipating the "streams of blood", which, in his opinion, should have "soon flowed everywhere," was already preparing to come out of Sarabuz and intended to move further, directly to Perekop, although there was no urgent need for this. Russian troops everywhere successfully repelled Tatar attacks, in particular, the train, dilligently guarded by Dolgorukov, was freed from the Tatar blockade by only four squadrons of the Bakhmut Hussar Regiment and two squadrons of Borisoglebsk dragoons, which easily dispersed thousands of crowds of the Crimean Khan.

But before Prince Dolgurukov had a chance to embarrass himself beyond redemption, two Ottoman messengers arrived to his camp with the news that the peace was concluded in Kyuchuk-Kainardzhi. Dolgorukov was very lucky, because no one can say how his hasty flight from the Crimea would turn out to be for him. He was already reminded of all the minor failures of the Russian troops and was not forgiven for the fact that he could not prevent the landing of the Turks in Crimea and the Tatar rebellion provoked by this. At the end of the Turkish war, Catherine never awarded him the rank of field marshal, limiting herself only to the honorary title of Krymsky. This unspoken disfavor predetermined Dolgorukov's imminent resignation.

 

[alexmilman]

33. Making peace

“The secret of politics? Make a good treaty with Russia.”
“Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied.”
“The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood.”
Otto von Bismarck
"The treaty is valid if it is supported by guns. If the treaty is not supported by force, it costs nothing.“
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev
"Treaties exist to be carried out by the weaker ones."
Karel Čapek
“Whatever Russia did for Germany and for Austria, no matter how selfless it was, it was still known for a lion, roaring, looking for someone to absorb.”
Nikolai Yakovlevich Danilevsky
“Alas! Contracts between the strong and the weak are always a conditional thing, and they are violated at the will of the former.”
Thomas Mayne Reid
"The war is beneficial for the talentless. The peace is always more profitable for the talented."
Mikhail Zadornov
“There is no indispensable man.”
Woodrow Wilson​

Catherine and her Cabinet had been eager to make peace in 1772 because the war was costly with no end in sight, Prussia and Austria had been pressing on the Polish issue with the Austrian position toward the ongoing Ottoman war being unclear, France was intriguing in Sweden pushing the young king to declare a war on Russia and there were numerous domestic issues to attend to. On the top of everything else, the only ally and the greatest military authority available, Frederick II, was pontificating about the dangers of campaigning beyond the Danube offering unsolicited jewels of his military wisdom to his Russian admirers, Panin and Chernyshov, who shared them with the rest of the Council. With a very questionable wisdom, Catherine agreed to Panin’s insistence on getting the Austrian and Prussian help in negotiations with the Porte with a predictable results: now the Ottomans knew about the Russian desire of peace and became obstinate. The only concession they were ready to agree upon was rebuilding of Azov fortifications.

In 1771 Catherine was pushing Rumyantsev into the action but got a detailed report describing a sad condition of his army. It was depleted by the diseases, too many horses died and forage was extremely hard to get, the reinforcements were arriving slowly, etc. Knowing that his ill-wishers at the court had been accusing him in being too passive, he concluded his report with a politely formulated piece of a blackmail: perhaps somebody else with a greater talent will be ready to handle things better and, for the good of the state, he will be just fine with being replaced by such a person. Well, if there was one thing that Catherine and the Cabinet knew for sure was that there was no such a person. Period. So Rumyantsev got a kind letter from Catherine with the assurances that nobody has any doubts in his talents and good service and that he should wage a war in a way he consider the best. But, please, try to finish it fast. He also got a power to engage the Ottomans in the peace talks with a wide latitude regarding the concessions he could make.

In the early 1772 Panin even proposed to Rumyantsev to completely destroy the Principalities, evacuate population to the Russian territories and switch to the defensive war leaving the Ottomans with an unattractive option to wage an offensive war with a devastated area in their rear. Expectations in St.Petersburg had been quite low but when Kamensky was within 5 versts from Shumla and the Russian vanguard crossed the Balkans cutting off communication between the Ottoman army and Adrianople and causing panic and mass desertions, the Vizier sent to Rumyantsev a messenger asking for a cease fire, which Rumyantsev rejected. The next proposal was to continue the peace congress interrupted by the campaign and it was rejected as well. Then Vizier sent two commissioners for peace talks to Rumyantsev’s camp. Upon receiving these news Rumyantsev marched with two infantry regiments and five infantry squadrons to the village Kuchuk-Kainarji pretending that he is going to join Kamenski at Shumla.

The Ottoman envoys met him on July 4th, eager to start talks, but fieldmarshal told them that he is on the march and can’t be distracted. Only after seeing that the Ottomans are in a proper condition, did he agree to start talks for which purpose Prince Repnin was assigned. On July 10th the treaty was signed by both sides.

• The Ottoman Empire promises to use the imperial title of the Empress of Russia (ТЕМАМЕН РУССИЕЛЕРИН ПАДЫШАХ) in all official documents.
• The Crimean Khanate with the Edisan Nogai Horde, Dzhemboyluk and Yedishkul hordes became a part of the Russian Empire.
• Big and Small Kabarda went to Russia. Not that the Sultan really had any authority over them but at least he gave up the claim.
• Russian-Ottoman border is established by the Dniester River.
• Russia returns Walachia, Moldavia and Bessarabia on condition of a complete amnesty, freedom of religion, no extra taxation and extortions by the Ottoman officials and the right of their Princes to have the Christian representatives with the diplomatic immunity at the Sultan’s court; these representatives may address, when necessary, the Ottoman government through the Russian minister at the Ottoman court. Probably this could be considered as at least some form of a protectorate.
• Freedom of the Russian navigation of the Black sea and the Sea of Marmara with the same trading rights as the British and French subjects.
• Russia will have a right to establish the consulates in the Principalities and major ports including those in Tunis and Algeria.
• Russia returns all Archipelago islands with the same provisions regarding the amnesty and respect the Christians’ rights. The Ottoman government promises to supply the Russian fleet with the things it may be needed for the travel home.
• The Ottoman Empire pays contribution of 4,500,000 rubles. The sum was not too big but it was (presumably) the first time when the Ottomans paid contribution to anybody.
• Mutual return of the prisoners.

The rest were numerous technical details regarding time table of evacuation of the Russian troops (and the Ottoman troops from the Crimea and Ochakov). The terms of the contract could not be canceled by the Sultan or his successors.

Of course, nothing ever was simple with the Ottomans and soon enough the Vizier informed Rumyantsev that there are some objections coming from Constantinople and some items have to be modified. Rumyantsev answered that the treaty text is an entity in which nothing can be changed withoute the whole document to be abandoned and that, until the document with the unchanged text comes ratified by the Porte, evacuation of the Russian troops from the principalities is not going to happen. This argument proved to be convincing enough and the document was ratified.

The Ottomans were so scared that they did not even play attention to the fact that at that moment the Russian army was almost “decapitated”: most of its generals, starting with Rumyantsev, had been seriously ill (Rumyantsev could not get out of bed for few weeks) and probably situation with the lower ranks was even worse. But, OTOH, it looks like at that time the Ottomans did not have an army ready to fight at all. As for Rumyantsev, while he was still recuperating, he got as a “present” command of the 2nd Army as well: Dolgorukov after his Crimean misadventure asked for the retirement, received it and left the army without appointing a temporary commander. Rumyantsev was clearly not in a physical shape to deal with the Crimean problems as well and asked Catherine to assign the job to one of the lieutenant-generals of the 2nd Army.

One trap, fully overlooked by Panin, was successfully avoided. As one of the potential concession points he was ready to agree to accept Sultan’s authority as a Caliph in the spiritual affairs of the new Russian Muslim subjects. This would mean that the Sultan would be allowed to establish the muftis as the religious (and judicial) authorities on the territories of the former Khanate and the Hordes. In other words, to create an judicial system independent from the Russian administration.

Needless to say that the Prussians, and even more so the Austrians, were to the various degrees pissed off with the fact that they were left out of the loop and, in the Austrian case, could not limit the Russian gains and got something for themselves for the sake of preserving the European balance. For example, a trifle like Belgrade or possession along the Danube all the way to the Black Sea, or the Principalities. Well, on a positive side, now Catherine had no excuse for further postponing decision regarding the PLC. The Prussian and Austrian troops already were there but who is getting what was still undecided and input from the third partner was needed.

Empress Catherine II granted Count P. A. Rumyantsev's name of «Задунайский» (the Transdanube), an official document describing his victories, a field marshal's staff, laurel and oil wreaths decorated with diamonds, sword with the diamonds and the same cross and star of the Order of St. Andrew the First-Called [1]; gave the village with 5 thousand souls, 100 thousand rubles from the office to build a house, a silver dinner set and paintings for decorating the rooms. The empress also immortalized Rumyantsev's victories with obelisk monuments in Tsarskoye Selo and St. Petersburg, offered him to "enter Moscow on a triumphal chariot through the solemn gate," but he refused.


To celebrate peace Catherine arranged festivities in Moscow and personally did the planning, which was somewhat fancy:
“A draft of festivities was drawn up, and everything is the same as always; the temple of Janus, and the temple of Bacchus, the temple is still... I got angry with all these projects and one fine morning I ordered to call Bazhenov, my architect, and told him: "Dear Bazhenov, there is a meadow three versts from the city; imagine that this meadow is the Black Sea and that there are two roads from the city; well, one of these roads will be Tanais (Don), and the other - Borisfen (Dnieper); at the mouth of the first you will build a dining room and call it Azov; at the mouth of the second - the theater and you will call Kinburn. Make the Crimean peninsula out of sand, place Kerch and Enikalyo here, which will serve as ballrooms. To the left of Tanais there will be a buffet with a treat for the people; against the Crimea there will be an illumination that will depict the joy of both states about the conclusion of peace; on the other side of the Danube there will be fireworks, and in the place that has to depict the Black Sea, boats and ships that you illuminate will be scattered; on the banks of the rivers, which at the same time and roads, there will be views, mills, trees, illuminated houses, and thus we will have a holiday without fancy stuff, but maybe much better than many others.”

__________
[1] Rumyantsev already was a fieldmarshal and cavalier of the St. Andrew. This was (or will become) a standard practice of further upgrading the existing awards of the top level by giving a new version “with the diamonds”.

 

[alexmilman]

34. Piece of cake #1

“The war between Russia and Turkey mixed up the entire political system of Europe, a new field for activity opened; it was necessary to have no dexterity at all or be in a senseless numbness in order not to take advantage of such a favorable opportunity.”
Friedrich II
“The most merciful Sovereign decided to turn their own ingratitude to the Poles in accordance with the King of Prussia and to make at their expense their decent acquisitions both to the borders of her empire and the borders of her allied King of Prussia, following the measure of the Vienna court, which took into its own hands the eldership of Tsip with its circles according to some old claims.”
Count Panin to the Russian Ambassador to Vienna, Prince D.M.Golitsyn, 1771
“Prince Kaunitz has completely changed his system and not only does not want to oppose our species anymore, but after that he wants to enter all orders with us and the King of Prussia in a friendly way.”
Prince D.M.Golitsyn to Count Panin, 1772
“Having adopted a system of partition with the intention not to outrage the balance of states, maybe it was not necessary to seek solution from one Poland, which if it was not quite enough for an equal partition between the three courts, then there would be a means to take away more land from someone else who has a surplus in it.”
Prince Kaunitz to Prince D.M.Golitsyn, 1772
“Bon appétit ! messieurs !” [1]
Victor Hugo, ‘Ruy Blas’
“And Poland? What will become of it?” [2]
‘Marysia and Napoleon’​

Even before the Russian-Ottoman war was over, the negotiations regarding who is going to get what from the PLC had intensified with some stumbling points getting clear and signing a peace greatly helped the Russian diplomacy.

Prussia. With all goings back and forth on the issue, Frederick kept bringing up the Danzig issue insisting that without it the whole schema would bring to Prussia nothing of value. In a meantime his troops stationed in the Royal Prussia kept looting the countryside collecting supplies well above the needs of their numbers and, contrary to the agreement between three potential consumers of the Polish pie, not paying anything.

But this did not sit well with the Russian government:

• After the War of the Polish Succession Danzig got guarantees of its status from the Russian Empire.
• There was a noticeable Russian trade with it [3].
• Frederick would use it to choke pretty much all Polish trade so the Stanislaw-August will be begging for money even more often, which would become unbearably annoying.
• Why to give Frederick such a gift for pretty much nothing?

In a letter to the Russian resident in Danzig, Count Golovkin dated January 22, 1772, Panin informed him that the draft Russian-Prussian convention on the partition of Poland included a provision "to unite this city and its territories, with a view to leaving it as it was, in order to avoid transferring it to Prussia and providing it with such significant advantages that would make it the owner of Poland's commerce and the only outlet to the sea of the Vistula River." In his usual modus operandi Frederick still was trying to get back to this issue but after July 10 (with the allowance for the time needed for the news reaching him), he prudently decided to drop it.

Austria. In April 1772, the Austrian ambassador to the PLC received a project from Vienna, which claimed almost a third of Polish territory, including Galicia and part of Volhynia, with the cities of Lublin, Helms and Vladimir Volynsky. Prince Lobkovich (Ambassador to St. Petersburg) and Van Switten (Ambassador to Berlin), to whom a similar document was sent, were instructed not to agree to any protests in respect of Austria's claims. Two items in the wish list were especially sensitive to the Poles: in Cracow the Polish royal archives had been stored and in Lwow region there were salt mines from which a considerable part of the king’s income was coming.

At the end of April, Vienna introduced a 20,000-strong army into the territory of Poland from Hungary, planning to concentrate another 70,000 soldiers on the borders with Silesia. Of course, a distance between this plan and its implementation was quite considerable and Joseph in correspondence with his brother was extremely skeptical on that account but the pan was announced and everybody involved was made aware of it. Frederick, extremely irritated by this turn of events, sounded the alarm. However, Panin not only refrained from any protests in connection with the actions of Austria, but also considered them useful for suppressing the activities of the confederates, which had strongholds near the Austrian border.

Actually, situation with the confederates had been developing in a somewhat strange or even funny way. After a failed attempt to abduct Stanislaw-August, the Court of Vienna stopped its support of the confederates: an attempt to commit an act of violence upon a legitimate monarch, even if one whom the Hapsburgs did not approve of, was as close to a sacrilege as it goes and can’t be condoned. However, the confederates and Austrian troops communicated with each other quite well and, before the Russian troops withdrew to the East, some confederate units even fled under protection of the Austrian invaders or surrendered to them the fortified places they held.

Intermission: On one of such occasions the confederates who defended a fortified monastery besieged by Suvorov (this, obviously, happened before he joined the 1st Army) managed to contact commander of a nearby Austrian detachment who sneaked at night few of his soldiers into the monastery and then requested from Suvorov to lift a siege because the place already has Austrian garrison. Luckily for everybody involved, Suvorov’s superior commander ordered him to withdrew because he was ready to attack both the monastery and the Austrians.

To make things more “interesting”, there was an alternative point of view in the PLC: quite a few people, including many influential figures, hold an opinion that the Austrians were the worst out of the three invaders. The Russians had serious reasons for the frustration after the PLC government got back on the issues already legitimized by the Sejm and dumped upon them all burden of a war with the confederates. The Prussians were an old and open enemy so the hostile behavior was expected. But the Austrians were friends who, for quite a while, were encouraging the Poles to resist to all Russian and Prussian requests. And now they were the most greedy ones.

In France Minister of the Foreign Affairs, Marquis de Choiseul, was replaced by the Duke of La Vrillière who, after few months in the office, was replaced by the Duke d’Aiguillon.

The new minister was making a military and administrative career fitting to his social position and, while being a governor of Brittany, managed to alienate its parliament and was ridiculed by the pamphleteers, after which he returned to the court and its intrigues. When Louis XV, acting on the advice of Madame du Barry, reorganised the government with a view to suppressing the resistance of the parlements, d'Aiguillon was made Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. His qualifications for this position were zero and elaborate system of the French diplomacy created by Choiseul was falling apart. Taking into an account that the Polish intrigue was quite convoluted and lacked any visible sense while costing money, which France did not have, the French officers sent to make army out of the confederates were recalled home (which they did with a great relief).

Bar Confederation. The only relatively good news for the PLC were those about the Bar Confederation and they were closely related to the international affairs. Specifically to the change of the French foreign policy.

Now, the Confederation was lacking political support from Austria, financial and military support from France, and expectations of the Ottoman invasion became so unrealistic that even the Confederation leaders understood this. Their regions of operation had been pretty much exhausted and even sympathetic szlachta could not supply and host them forever. Their raids, some of them quite daring, were leading nowhere and their numbers dwindled to insignificance. Some of the most notorious … oops… heroic leaders, like Pulaski, left the country to avoid the persecution, the big fish, like Hetman Oginski and Radziwill, made deals and returned to their estates and the small fish simply went back to their homes because nobody was interested in chasing or persecuting them. Definitely not Stanislaw-August who played (unsuccessfuly, as most of the things he did) a defense attorney at the trial of his own kidnappers. Of course, their exploits were going to be a subject of bragging in the drinking parties for the coming years but who cares?

Of course, even with the Confederation being R.I.P. by the natural causes, the PLC was a mess with the foreign troops being present on its territory, government of Stanislaw-August being inept and the King himself seemingly being capable only of two things: making a long pointless speeches against the occupying powers and begging Catherine for money. The szlachta was,, at the time free from drinking and other entertainments, frosting at its collective mouth on account of the dissidents conspiring to destroy the Republic. In which noble occupation they were supported by the Papal Nuncio and most of the Polish bishops. Not that there was any meaningful initiative from any corner to remedy the situation and save their beloved Republic.

Russia. Panin stood firmly for Poland to maintain its political independence after the partition, becoming a buffer between the three powers participating in the partition. His proposed comprehensive approach to assessing the equality of shares made it possible to prove the disproportion of the Austrian claims to Krakow and Prussian - to Danzig and Thorn. In general, however, the negotiations in the triple format were viscous, all the deadlines were broken. Frederick, who was particularly nervous in this regard, later lamented in his memoirs not only about the machinations of Kaunitz, but also about "lenteur et irrésolu tion des Russes". [4]

The slowness shown in St. Petersburg had its reasons. In the Council G.G. Orlov and his supporters openly stated that neither Prussia nor Austria, as powers that did not directly participate in the Russian-Turkish war, had the right to claim any territorial compensation. OTOH, Panin was advocating a “balanced approach” aimed to retaining the good relations with Prussia and perhaps restoring relations with Austria, which may become useful in the case of a future conflict with the Ottomans; regardless the assurances of a mutual friendship in the recent treaty, there was a fair chance that, as soon as it recuperates from the defeat, the Ottoman Empire will try to reclaim its losses: strategic importance of the Crimea was obvious and the Tatar population of the peninsula was unreliable at best, as their help to the Turkish landing at Alushta and the militant activities elsewhere demonstrated.

This circumstance played a role in the fact that when the Russian-Prussian contacts on Polish affairs entered the decisive phase (September - end of November 1771), Orlov found himself in Moscow, where he was engaged in the pacification of the Plague riot. Now he was back, rewarded for his performance in Moscow (where he demonstrated competence which nobody expected from him), but his influence was steadily diminishing. It was rumored that the only reason why Catherine still kept him in the Council was a fear of the “Adulthood Crisis” [5]: Orlov still was popular in the Guards.

Anyway, with the peace signed, Catherine had her domestic and international prestige soaring and, of at least equally important, she had, besides 30,000 in the PLC, at least 60 - 70,000 battle-tested experienced troops with very good generals free to use wherever she sees fit. And this not counting the new troops raised in 1770-71, which were finally equipped, trained and either marching to compensate the losses of the existing troops or forming the new regiments. This was “Ultima ratio regum” which came quite handy: in the summer of 1772, after Austria gave up its claims to Lublin, Helms and Vladimir Volynsky, all the disputed issues were finally agreed upon.

On July 25, two secret conventions were signed in St. Petersburg: one between Russia and Prussia, the other between Russia and Austria. It was based on the draft drawn up by Kaunitz, which differed from the Russian-Prussian convention of January 4 (15) by both the structure and the preamble, which focused on the fears of Poland's neighbors about the "complete disintegration of the Polish state". In the area of a shameless political demagoguery the Russian diplomats and Catherine still had to learn a lot from the Austrians. But they were learning fast both from the Austrians and Prussians.

_____________
[1] While this is not in English, the original will do. 😜
[2] In the movie Maria Walewska asks this question just before Napoleon puts out a candle.

[3] Among other items of a varied importance, the famous Danzig’s “Goldwasser” (root and herbal liqueur with small flakes of 23 karat gold suspended in it; 40% ABV) and “Kirschwasser” (brandy made from double distillation of morello cherries; 40 - 50% ABV) had a big consumer market in the Russian Empire (including its ruling elite) and to put supply of these strategic products into Old Fritz’s hands may create undesirable dependency from Prussia depriving Russian diplomacy of a freedom of diplomatic maneuver.
[4] slowness and irresolution of the Russians
[5] In October 1772 Paul will be 18 years old and there were wild guesses about all types of the potential problems related to his changed status. A greater role in the government? A co-ruler? An Emperor? This subject will be attended to later.

 

[alexmilman]

35. Piece of cake #2

“You can do whatever you wish by simply ignoring the law. You just can’t do it while abiding the law.”
Saltykov-Schedrin, ‘Pompadours and pompadouresses’ [1]
“The energy of action they had been, with a great inventiveness, opposing with an energy of inaction while stubbornly continuing staying kneeled.”
Saltykov-Schedrin, ‘History of a city’
“- Do you like a plain pie or one with a butter?
- It does not make a difference, perhaps one with a butter.”
A.I. Kuprin, ‘The cantaloupes’
“- Money in the morning, chairs in the evening…
- And what about chairs in morning, money in the evening?
- Possible. But the money first.”
I. Ilf, E.Petrov, ‘12 chairs’
“The genius invented the wheel, and the bureaucrat invented how to put stick into it.”
“Bureaucracy has a personal interest in creating the chaos in which it exists.”
Unknown authors
“You can never meet a fox that would reveal any humane intentions towards a goose, as we will never meet a cat prone to friendship with mice.”
Well-known (unfortunately) obscure painter
«Теперь, давай делить! Смотрите же, друзья:
Вот эта часть моя
По договору;
Вот эта мне, как Льву, принадлежит без спору;
Вот эта мне за то, что всех сильнее я;
А к этой чуть из вас лишь лапу кто протянет,
Тот с места жив не встанет.» [2]
I.A.Krylov, ‘Lion at the hunt’
​

Shares of a pie. Conventions of July 25, 1772 finally defined who is going to get what.

Prussia was going to get the bishopric of Warmia, the voivodeships of Pomorie (without Danzig), Malborg, Chelmin (without Torun), part of Inovratslav, Gniezno and Poznan. ~600k subjects. Frederick II, who was called "King in Prussia" before the partition, assumed the title of "King of Prussia".

Austrian acquisitions - Eastern Galicia with Lwow and Przemysl, but without Krakow. ~2.65 million.

[Credit for the great map and population numbers goes to @Hastings].

Russian “modest” acquisitions included voiovodeship of Witebsk, most of the voiovodeship Mstislawskoe with border by the Dnieper, part of the voiovodeship Brest-Litowsk to the South of Pripyat River, and voiovodeships of Wolyn, Kiev, Podol and Braclaw. ~ 3.5 million.
There were few valid reasons for Catherine to change the initially agreed upon schema which included only the northern part of a new deal plus a border by the Dvina (voiovodship of Polock and Inflanty Polskie). First, as a sum total, these were relatively poor areas. Second, Inflanty was a predominantly Protestant area. A presumed advantage of having borders by the rivers was rather a theory than something meaningful. The new southern acquisitions included good agricultural lands of the right bank Ukraine, were bordering on the North and West with the marginally passable Pripyat Marches and on the South would allow, in the case of a new war with the Turks, to avoid a nightmare of having supply base and logistics on the Polish territory (as was the case in the last war when the Russian troops had to occupy Kamenec fortress to establish supply base in it). Very important for the domestic consumption was the fact that most of the Orthodox population of the PLC now became the Russian subjects (even if not all of them had been excessively cheerful of that fact) and this, together with the agreement regarding the Ottoman Christians, was quite important in projecting Catherine’s image as a Defender of the Faith.

The understandable objections raised by the Prussian and Austrian representatives regarding what they considered as a clear inequality of the shares got a comprehensive explanation:

• These are the ancient Russian lands, which are being returned to where they belong.
• Her Majesty, the Empress of Russia, can’t continue letting the Polish Catholics to oppress the Orthodox Christians in a violation of the existing promises.
• Russia spent a considerable military effort and big sums of money to deal with unrest in the PLC and entitled to a compensation that goes on a top of the equal share, comparable to those which Austria and Prussia are getting without any effort and expenses.
• If somebody feels otherwise, Her Majesty has plenty of the means to backup her well-justified demands.

Actually, the Prussians did not object too much: if anything, these territories were further from the East Prussia than those of the initial schema and clearly indicated Catherine’s unwillingness to strengthen its “Baltic flank” and, potentially, infringe upon the Prussian regional interests. Another good news was that their southward expansion put a clear limit to the potential Austrian expansion in the region. So their ambassador did just a lip service to the “common cause” and left Austrian ambassador to fight, if his government wishes, a lost fight, which did not happen: objecting too strong to the Russian-Prussian block, especially now, when Catherine had her hands free, would not be a productive idea .

To somewhat compensate themselves for a moral damage, the Austrians occupied Bukowina, which was promised by the Ottomans as an award for the military and diplomatic help neither of which really were received. When the Ottomans sent the inquiry to Rumyantsev regarding move of the Austrian troops into their territory, the answer was that Russia had nothing to do with it. The Austrian envoy in Constantinople had to explain to the Ottomans the obvious things (what do you expect from these barbarians, they are too backward to comprehend even simplest things) that Austria promised to help with making a peace acceptable to the Porte. The peace is signed, so it was acceptable and Austria is entitled to its compensation. At the moment the Turks were not in a position to raise the serious objections or even to ask the money back so they caved to the reality. The powers participating in the partition agreed at the same time to deliver to the Polish king a joint declaration demanding the convening of the Sejm to approve territorial concessions and introduced their troops in the areas stipulated by the St. Petersburg Convention.

In September 1772, the new Russian ambassador Otto Magnus Stackelberg arrived in Warsaw, replacing von Saldern who was asking for quite a while to relieve him from dealing with the ongoing mess. On September 8, he, together with the Prussian Ambassador Benois, officially informed Stanislav August about the agreement between Russia, Prussia and Austria on the division of Poland on July 25, 1772.

Stanislaw-Augustus appealed to Paris and London for support, but the French could not, and the British did not want to get involved in Polish affairs. To the report of the representatives of the three powers made to the English representative in October 1772, the following answer was given: "His Majesty the King is very willing to think that the three courts based their claims on justice, although His Majesty is not aware of the grounds on which they acted." This left Stanislaw-August with the only option of making speeches for the domestic consumption, which he was doing with more enthusiasm than sense of a reality. On October 14, Stackelberg reported from Warsaw that "while the king makes, as usual, statements discrediting Russia, he is trying to convince the representatives of the szlachta, whom he gathered from the vicinity of Warsaw, that the Empress agrees to support the confederation against the partition." Of course, the royal speeches had only limited effect upon szlachta: there were much more pleasant ways to spend time than being engaged in the politics.

The problem for the three powers was not in the occupation of the chosen pieces of the territory but in forcing the PLC to recognize this fact officially. Which meant that the traditional convoluted procedure has to be followed. There must be the local little sejms to elect the delegates to Chamber of Deputies (izba poselska) of the Sejm. Which meant that election of the proper people had to be guaranteed by the bribery and the threats. Then proper behavior of the Senate had to be guaranteed and this was a separate task, and not an easy one because many bishops tended to tie pretty much any question to the Catholic Faith and arouse the szlachta many members of which were understanding little beyond the catchy slogans. Then, even with the properly chosen “cadres”, there was no guarantee that the Sejm will not be disrupted and that the follow-ups will be implemented properly, that the “government” will implement them in a timely fashion, and so on. The PLC could not resist militarily but it could easily turn the process into a prolonged and frustrating mess. There was practically no chance that the process will take less than a year.

The result of the noice raised in the PLC was the appearance of a new Russian-Prussian-Austrian declaration of January 16 (30), 1773, which stated that if, after the expiration of the established terms, the claims made against Poland were not fulfilled, Russia, Austria and Prussia themselves "will resort to the means that they consider valid and appropriate for the full exercise of their rights." On December 3, 1772 in St. Petersburg and on January 9, 1773 in Vienna, Catherine II, Joseph II, Joseph II and Maria Theresa signed an act of obligations to comply with the provisions of the convention on July 25, 1772.

Stanislaw-August kept appealing to Catherine in the prolonged letters asking for her sympathy and appealing to her promises to protect the PLC but she was fed up with the whole history of Stanislaw and his uncles not fulfilling their promises, sabotaging her efforts to save them and practically openly supporting the confederates and fanatics like Soltyk who, after being released from his exile in Kaluga, was now appearing in in the explicitly shabby clothes, walked to the church services, had been giving money to the poor, was crossing himself all the time and was appearing in the society accompanied by the numerous monks and incessantly blabbing about his readiness to suffer an exile or even imprisonment for the sake of the True Faith as foundation of the PLC (which, with most of the non-catholics going to be on the other side of the border was not actually in danger of being corrupted by the fifth column of those with the wrong religious affiliations). Stupid as they were, his speeches were energizing szlachta and could easily result in an election of the deputies who will be protesting for the sake of protesting without bothering to think things through: if the Protestants and Orthodox were such a dangerous disease for the Republic, then giving away the territories were they lived should be beneficial for the said Republic while keeping these territories would be a never ending source of the problems. You simply can’t to have your cake and eat it. Especially when the cake is going to seriously shrink in size.
Anyway, upon meeting Soltyk, Stackelberg told him that the public will think ever higher about his sanctity if he stayed home. After this, Soltyk noticeably quietened and after some additional persuasions began to repeat that he would not take a single step, would not say a single public word without consulting Stackelberg. H even wrote a very respectful letter to the empress asking forgiveness for the past.

Stanislaw-August to Catherine: “…. Before I am subjected to the blows of fate, I beg you not to deny me consolation, let me know what you want to do for us, what reward your justice assigns to us, and if any hope of saving Poland becomes impossible, accept the request for what I consider necessary in the situation in which Poland will be, and what can at least somewhat mitigate its disasters.”

Catherine to Stanislav-August, February 27, 1773: "Your frankness makes me pay you with the same frankness. … Brought to the extreme by the intrigues and parties of your people, I had to enter into an agreement with Poland's two other neighbors in order to put a end to its turmoil and disasters in our own states…
The circumstances have changed, and now they are such that it is impossible for me alone, without my allies, to decide on certain steps concerning the state of your kingdom... Despite all the difficulties that the Poles imposed on my plans, I did not stop thinking about their common good. As for you personally, Your Majesty, my plans are to continue to ensure the integrity of your crown and your state. As for the Polish nation - complete peace, free, better managed and calmer, more reliable government for it and its neighbors."

In early November 1772, Stackelberg, Benois (Prussian Ambassador) and Revitsky (Austrian Ambassador) demanded that Stanislav August convene a Sejm that would recognize the partition. In response, the king, protesting, pronounced eloquent tirades, which Stackelberg, after being subjected to one of those, compared to "the best pages of Plutarch" but offered to concentrate on history of the count Poniatowski and his place in the ongoing events.

In December, Stackelberg was instructed to obtain from Stanisław August an agreement to convene a Confederated Sejm before February 1, 1773, which was to recognize the St. Petersburg Conventions, and work out a plan for the appeasement of Poland within two months, by the end of March 1773. The Confederated Sejm was needed because it will be impossible to achieve any results in a free Sejm with its liberum veto.

On January 29 (February 8), 1773, the king convened the Senate (only 36 senators took part in it instead of the 150), which decided to convene the Sejm on April 8 (19). The detailed "Action Plan of the Three Ambassadors" for the convening and holding of the Sejm, submitted to the Collegium of Foreign Affairs and edited by Catherine, was sent to Stackelberg on February 24. The ambassador was prescribed to achieve the goals expected from the Sejm in close co-ordination with representatives of Prussia and Austria, using "either military force, or exhortation, or bribery". To bribe the deputies, Stackelberg had to create a general cash register, the contribution to which for each of the countries participating in the section was 150 - 200 thousand thalers. Agreement of all three ambassadors was required for any expenditures. They would have to chose the agents not connected to the Warsaw court or Saxon party and send them to the local sejms and these agents will be informing the ambassadors which means have to be used in each specific case.

When the Sejm begins its activities, the ambassadors will require it to appoint a delegation to negotiate with them; during these negotiations, the ambassadors will not allow any dispute over the rights of their courts to the areas designated for division, no restriction or reduction of the territories assigned to each court, and should insist on a full and decisive concession by the republic.

“As for the constitution of the republic, electoral rule must be renewed and approved forever; from now on, it must be elected kings. Only a Polish nobleman born in Poland and a landowner there can be elected; foreign princes are excluded forever. The sons and grandchildren of the last king cannot be elected directly after the father or grandfather, they can be elected after at least two reigns. Liberum veto remains unchanged by law. Ministers should first of all bear in mind the preservation of the king on the throne. All transformations should tend to restore the balance between the power of the king, the Senate and the nobility (ordre equestre). To do this, the king should not, through his relatives, increase his power at the expense of the other two forces in the state, therefore, royal relatives should not occupy any positions in a government; but, since it is impossible to deprive them of their rights belonging to every nobleman, it is necessary to decide that uncles, brothers, relatives and cousins of the king and queen, cannot be ministers and hetmans, cannot be senators, voivodes, castellans and occupy any smaller position. The Privy Royal Council can only consist of senators appointed by the Sejm. Since the king's influence on the commissions, military and financial, has aroused alarm among the people, these commissions should be destroyed and the posts of hetmans and sub-scarbians should be restored to their previous meaning, if the majority wishes. Only old abuses should be prevented, and the Hetmans should be deprived of the right of life and death over the military, and the subscarbsians should not arbitrarily use the money of the republic; for this, there should be councils under the hetmans and subscarbsians, the members of which are appointed not by the king, but they are elected by the voivodeships every two years. The troops now under the command of the king will pass under the command of the great hetmans, and in the future the Polish king should have neither troops belonging to him nor the troops of the republic under his command. Since the influence of the nobles, and namely the royal family, in the courts serves to oppress the people and disturbs the balance of power, the presidents and members of the courts will be elected by voivodeships and Laws should be issued that would free the courts from any dependence on the king and nobles. Since the nobility, which constitutes the third power, concedes with respect to the other two authorities, the king and the Senate, and is only periodically present at the Sejms, while the other two other authorities have permanent activities, it would be good to decide that several noble deputies should sit in the Senate between the Sejms with the right to protest against all decisions that disagree with the constitution or the privileges of their estate. Since the royal estates have decreased due to the division, it is necessary to add several starostvas to them so that the king's income is at least 400,000 ducats. The distribution of the remaining starostvs remains with the king; but it should be decided that one house (maison) cannot be getting more than two starostvs, which together should not give more than 8,000 ducats of annual income .... There will be no inconvenience to the neighboring powers if the army of the republic increases by 6,000 people."

In other words, position of the King of Poland was going to be truly pathetic. After some consideration it was decided that, for the personal protection, the King should have his own Guards consisting of two battalions of the foreign mercenaries for which money must be allocated.

Of course, preparations to the elections were not going smoothly. After playing a good boy for a while Soltyk became active again, declaring that he is ready to cooperate but not on the issues involving his consciousness and a Pole, approving the division of his state, sins against God's commandments, which prohibit the to touch property of his neighbor, and whoever approves such a case will be his accomplice. Not limiting himself to the words, he managed to introduce his numerous relatives as the future deputies. When Stackelberg accused him in cheating, he answered that he was educated by the Jesuits.
As a result, instead of considering partition as the unavoidable evil, the talks started about breaking the congress and negotiated conditions of a treaty.

Sejm did opened on April 8 1773 as a Confederation Sejm and it promised to be stormy …

______________
[1] “Pompadour” (as in “can do whatever pleases him”) is a local administrator who must have a mistress (goes with the position) and she is obviously a “pompadouress” («помпадурша»). 😂
[2] “Now, let's share it! Look, friends:
This part is mine
According to the contract;
This one belongs to me, like a lion, without dispute;
This one is for me because I'm stronger then you ;
And to this part any of you who will stretch out the paw,
He won't get up alive.”
[3] Neither Krylov’s fable nor “Animal farm”, explaining an issue of the unequal equality, had been written, yet, so the direct references to these important international documents was not possible and certain things, obvious in the following two centuries, needed a detailed answer.