The Russo-Turkish War, 1768-1774: Catherine II and the Ottoman Empire

340 Pages·2016·5.742 MB·English

by  Brian L. Davies

THE RUSSO-TURKISH WAR, 1768–1774

THE RUSSO-TURKISH WAR, 1768–1774
CATHERINE II AND THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE
Brian L. Davies
Bloomsbury Academic
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First published 2016
© Brian L. Davies, 2016
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: HB: 978-1-4725-1293-2
PB: 978-1-4725-0801-0
ePDF: 978-1-4725-1279-6
ePub: 978-1-4725-1415-8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Davies, Brian L., 1953-
Title: The Russo-Turkish War, 1768-1774 : Catherine II and the
Ottoman Empire / Brian L. Davies.
Description: London : Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of Bloomsbury
Publishing Plc, 2015. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015023204 | ISBN 9781472512932 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781472508010 (paperback) | ISBN 9781472512796 (ePDF) | ISBN 9781472514158 (ePub)
Subjects: LCSH: Russo-Turkish War, 1768-1774. | Catherine II, Empress of
Russia, 1729-1796. | Russo-Turkish War, 1768-1774–Influence. | Russo-Turkish War,
1768-1774–Diplomatic history. | Russia–Territorial expansion–History–18th century. |
Turkey–History–Ottoman Empire, 1288-1918. | Borderlands–Russia–History–18th century. |
Borderlands–Turkey–History–18th century.
Classification: LCC DR553 .D38 2015 | DDC 947/.063–dc23 LC record
available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015023204
Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd
CONTENTS
Preface viii
Map x
1 The Russian Empire at a Strategic Crossroads, 1762–1768 1
Catherine II and the Polish project 3
Haidamak revolt 10
The Balta incident 12
2 The Ottoman Empire and its Frontier in Pontic Europe 15
“Exhaustion and decline” 17
Decentralization and army organization 21
Decentralization and military finance 23
Ottoman military “obsolescence” 25
Border defenses 28
Moldavia and Wallachia under phanariot rule 30
The Ottoman Balkans, Bucak, and Ochakov 32
The Crimean Khanate 38
The Kuban steppe and the Caucasus 43
The decision for war 46
3 The Russian Empire and its Black Sea Steppe Frontier 49
Recruit levies and the soul tax 51
Provincial administration and staffing 54
Security, colonization, and economic development in Russia’s Black Soil south 59
The Don Cossack Host 64
Frontier populations and the Black Sea trade 69
Left Bank Ukraine: the fate of the Hetmanate 70
From Sloboda Ukraine to the Khar’kov and New Russian governorates 74
The Zaporozhian Cossack Host 79
Cameralist management of subject nationalities and frontier populations 82
4 The Russian Army at Midcentury 85
The Russian army in the Seven Years’ War 85
Military reform on the eve of Catherine II’s Turkish War 92
The training ordinances of 1763 99
Doctrine and innovation 101
Contents
5 The Khotin Campaign, 1769 107
The Russian war plan 107
The Ottoman war plan 110
The Tatar invasion of New Russia 111
The First Army, April–May 1769 114
The recovery of Azov and Taganrog 118
Golitsyn’s second attempt on Khotin, July–August 1 119
The fall of Khotin, August 29–September 10 125
The First Army in Moldavia, September–December 128
Operations against the Bar Confederates 130
The Caucasus in 1769–1770 132
6 The Year of Victories, 1770 135
The winter war in Moldavia and Wallachia 135
The First Army in winter quarters 137
Rumiantsev’s new training ordinances 139
Riabaia Mogila 141
Larga 142
Kagul and Kartal 144
The Second Army and the siege of Bender 146
Ismail, Kiliia, Akkirman, and Ibrail 148
Orlov’s Aegean expedition 150
The Morean revolt 154
Chios and Çeşme 155
Austria alarmed, 1770 160
7 Stalemate and Break-Out 165
A war of posts 165
Conquest of Crimea 172
Russian naval power in the eastern Mediterranean 178
The defeat of the Bar Confederation 181
The First Partition of Poland 185
The peace talks at Giurgiu and Bucharest 186
The strains of war 188
The Danube Front in 1773 193
The break-out 200
8 Peace, Reforms, and Provocations 205
The Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji 205
The reform of provincial government 208
Liquidation of the Don and Zaporozhian Hosts 211
Ukraine 213
New Russia 216
vi
Contents
The Black Sea Fleet 220
The army under Potemkin 221
The issue of Russian “protection” of the Christian millets 223
The problem of Poland 228
The last days of the Crimean Khanate 230
The annexation of Crimea 234
Triumphal march 240
Conclusions 243
Notes 249
Bibliography 298
Index 316
vii
PREFACE
Many years ago when I was still a graduate student my imagination was captivated
by William S. McNeill’s magisterial Europe’s Steppe Frontier, 1500–1800 (University of
Chicago Press, 1964), which surveyed the development of Pontic Europe—the steppe
frontier zone of southeastern Europe—over the early modern period and its gradual
incorporation into three great competing agricultural Empires, Ottoman, Russian, and
Habsburg. In addition to the breadth of knowledge McNeill’s book displayed, I was
impressed at how skillfully it interwove the geopolitical and military narrative with the
history of colonization, economic development, social policy, and statecraft within the
three expanding empires and the frontier polities they absorbed. I was inspired to devote
my own research to examining the imperial competition for Pontic Europe in closer
detail, making use of Russian-language sources.
So far this project has resulted in four studies. My State Power and Community in
Early Modern Russia: The Case of Kozlov, 1635–1648 (Palgrave MacMillan, 2004) relied
on archival sources to reconstruct Muscovite frontier colonization policy and the ways
in which it structured state–society relations in the southern Russian forest-steppe zone
in the early seventeenth century. My next book, Warfare, State, and Society on the Black
Sea Steppe, 1500–1700 (Routledge, 2007), was intended for a broader audience and
dealt with Russian steppe colonization and military development in the larger context
of Russia’s intensifying competition with Poland-Lithuania and the Crimean Khanate
for mastery of Pontic Europe. A third book, Empire and Military Revolution in Eastern
Europe: Russia’s Turkish Wars in the Eighteenth Century (Continuum, 2011), continued
the narrative of this competition over the course of the eighteenth century as it became
more focused on Russian struggle with the Ottoman Empire. Now, in The Russo-Turkish
War (1768–1774): Catherine the Great and the Ottoman Empire, I offer a more detailed
study of the most decisive and transformative of the eighteenth-century Russian-
Ottoman wars.
The Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774 had enormous repercussions for Eastern
Europe. It resulted in the defeat and ultimately the annexation to Russia of the Crimean
Khanate. It led to the partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. It completed
the incorporation of Ukraine into the Russian Empire and the dissolution of the
Zaporozhian and Don Cossack Hosts. It reduced Ottoman power in the Black Sea, along
the Danube, and even in the eastern Mediterranean and emboldened Europeans to
begin treating the Ottoman Empire as the “Sick Man of Europe.” The war also stabilized
the political fortunes of Empress Catherine II and enabled her to promulgate reforms
further centralizing provincial government, accelerating the colonization of the southern
steppe, and establishing broader foundations for state finances.
Preface
The military and diplomatic narrative of Catherine the Great’s first Turkish War will
be largely unfamiliar to most English-language readers, but those especially interested
in military history should find useful its comparison of Russian and Ottoman military
organization and its identification of certain Russian technical and tactical innovations
that could be argued represented a European “Military Revolution.” In explaining the
circumstances by which Ukraine and Crimea joined New Russia in the Russian Empire,
the book illuminates some issues that have recently become flashpoints in Russian
relations with Europe and the United States. We do not, however, take any position on
what territories rightly “belong” to what modern states, for we see speculations about
organic national “identity” and “historical right” as useless and even counterproductive
to writing serious and objective history.
The military narrative here relies by default largely on Russian-language sources. I
would have liked to compare them with Ottoman accounts of the war but as I do not
read Turkish some important Ottoman primary sources, such as the court histories
compiled by Sadullah Enveri and Ahmed Vasif Efendi, were not available to me. The
one notable exception was Ahmed Resmi Efendi’s Hülasat al-itibar (1781), which was
recently translated into English. I have tried to balance my account of the war with a
sympathetic understanding of Ottoman capabilities and security interests, and I hope to
learn from whatever dialog with Ottomanists my book might engender.
With the exception of places most familiar to readers in traditional English
transliteration (Moscow, Warsaw, Istanbul, Kiev, Bucharest, Zaporozhia, etc.) I have tried
to render toponyms according to modern atlas usage (thus: Dnepr, Dnestr, Chernihiv,
Iaşi, Foçsani). The names of towns and fortresses under Ottoman control are presented
in the fashion most likely to be recognized by Ottomanists (Akkirman, Bender, Ibrail,
Rusçuk, etc.). In a few instances I have chosen to transliterate from Russian because
during the period under examination these places figured largest in Russian discourse
(thus Khotin rather than Chocym or Hotyn).
Unless otherwise indicated all dates are given in the Old Style, that is, in accordance
with the use in Russia (until 1918) of the Julian Calendar. In the eighteenth century
Julian dates were eleven days “behind” Gregorian dates.
I wish to thank the following people for their patience and encouragement: Jeremy
Black, Carol Belkin Stevens, Gregg Michel, Kolleen Guy and her children, my wife Paula,
and my editor at Bloomsbury, Claire Lipscomb.
ix