In the fall of 1876, the tsar convened his ministers in Livadia. They listened in surprise to the determined speech of the heir, who called on them to start the war. Under previous tsars, the heirs were silent. Elizabeth, Catherine II, Paul I, Alexander I, and certainly Nicholas I were not interested in the opinion of their heirs. Even “bulldog” Sasha, who took part in all the meetings of the Committee of Ministers and the State Council, always held his tongue. Yet now he spoke out decisively. Alexander reprimanded him with surprising mildness, and did not fail to mention that the empress felt the same way as the tsarevich, and so did the public. Therefore he would probably have to accede, against his wishes.
The ministers finally understood: It was war.
The tsar used the eastern tactic of plausible deniability. The old warhorse general Chernyaev appeared in Serbia and formed the Serbian home guards (“naturally, totally unexpectedly for St. Petersburg and of his own doing,” was how the emperor explained it). The tsar ordered his ambassadors to declare that public opinion did not allow him to control the flow of Russian volunteers to the Balkans and that he must permit his officers to resign their commissions and go to Serbia.
It was then that War Minister Milyutin became certain “that the tsar is acting dually.”
Volunteer committees sprang up all over the country, as did collections for the suffering Slavs. In St. Petersburg, volunteer fighters were seen off to war in nightclubs with gypsy dancing and vodka. Bands played at the train stations, and lovely girls waved good-bye to the heroes. Idealists and patriots, adventurers, failures in business or love, or simply madmen who, as Tolstoy wrote, would “join Pugachev’s gang or go to Khiva or to Serbia,” went to war. In Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina, the hero Vronsky, crushed by Anna’s suicide, resigns from the army and goes to fight in Serbia. Many of the narodniki went to shed their blood for their fellow Slavs.
Thirty-five hundred Russian volunteers crossed the border. Seven hundred Russian officers and two thousand soldiers joined Chernyaev’s home guard.
Dostoevsky, who was in favor of the war, received a letter. “And now the false divide between the people and the intelligentsia is over…. Amidst the preparations for war to free our brother Slavs, the holy sacrament of conciliation took place.” His correspondent was a young woman, the narodnik Alexandra Korba, who would later participate in assassination attempts on the tsar. She wrote as she headed for Serbia to be a nurse.
The Turks were very strong, and General Chernyaev’s troops were beaten. Now the tsar had to step in; Minister Milyutin noted “the tsar’s impatience to take up arms” in his diary.
On April 12, 1877, Alexander declared war on the Ottoman Empire. The country was elated. When he came to the Kremlin to the Cathedral of the Assumption, Moscow’s main streets were filled with roaring crowds shouting huzzahs and ovations. On Cathedral Square people applauded hysterically and wept on one another’s shoulders. It was the second and last honeymoon for the tsar and his people. Alexander should have remembered how quickly popular love fades.
In a crowd-pleasing move, Alexander went to war himself. He acted as his uncle, Alexander I, had done against Bonaparte. The tsar was to be judge and arbiter, but not commander-in-chief. The responsibility for military action and for bloodshed must be borne by another. The tsar had to be blameless.
At the front he would visit hospitals, participate in discussions of operations, and settle disputes. He made Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich commander of the two-hundred-thousand-strong Danube Army.
“The men in the dynasty were all tall, six feet. But he was six foot five inches without his boots, so all the tall Romanovs and the tsar himself seemed much shorter,” wrote his nephew Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich. The gigantic Nikolai Nikolayevich was warlike. “Even at the table he sat tall, as if he expected them to play the national anthem at any moment.”
Kostya was in charge of the navy. Another brother, Misha (Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolayevich, the governor general of the Caucasus), was in charge of the Caucasus Army. The heir and his younger brother commanded army units. Nikolai and Yevgeny Leichtenberg were given cavalry brigades.
All the military leaders were Romanovs. That was the tsar’s way: Without officially taking part in the management of the army, he could get his decisions implemented through them.
Foreign correspondents covering the tsar’s army poked fun at the arrival of his entourage and the general staff. Numerous train cars unloaded magnificent horses and carriages with stately coachmen who looked like generals. The breeze ruffled the peacock plumes on the horses’ bridles.
The army officers regarded this splendor bleakly, for they knew that some of these fancily dressed gentlemen would never return to Russia. No one in the army doubted that the war would be bloody; the Turks had an excellent army trained by outstanding European instructors.
The Russian plan was to conclude the war in a few months so that Europe would not have time to interfere. The campaign began successfully, and the emperor’s troops easily crossed the Danube, with the Turks retreating. The tsar sent an envoy to the Bulgarian people: “Bulgarians, my troops have crossed the Danube, where they have already fought more than once to ease the misery of the Christians of the Balkan Peninsula. Russia’s goal is to build, not to destroy. She is called by Providence to reconcile and pacify all peoples and all confessions in those parts of Bulgaria where people of various ethnicity and various faiths coexist.”
General Gurko’s units went ahead. Gurko was supposed to take Shipka Pass, which led to southern Bulgaria and the road to Istanbul. A ferocious battle in the foothills ensued, in which General Gurko learned a lesson about fighting wily Asiatic armies. The Turks sent a man with a white flag to meet two of Gurko’s advancing artillery battalions. The Russians believed that the Turks were giving up and came close to the Turkish positions. They were met with a squall of fire that brought down 140 soldiers. The battalions retreated, leaving behind dead and wounded.
But soon afterward the tsar was reading a telegram with good news: “Shipka, attacked from north and south, abandoned by Turks, leaving cannon, banners, and camp.” The Russians saw the way the barbarous East fought: Arms, noses, and ears were cut off the dead, in some cases, even their heads. Gurko’s army continued into the mountains and took Shipka Pass. The road to Bulgaria and Istanbul was open.
The Russian troops and Bulgarian volunteers went down into the Valley of Roses, met by elated residents. It proved to be the end of Gurko’s advance. Suleiman-pasha’s army of 20,000 met the general and chased him back to Shipka Pass. The main Russian army (the Danube Army) could not move forward. The Russian army’s flank faced the fort at Plevna, where Osman-pasha stood with a garrison of 15,000 men. Alexander could not leave this constant threat of a strike from the flank.
He decided to attack Plevna and take the fort. The first attack failed, with 3,000 Russian soldiers dead. Better preparations were made for the second storm, by both the Russians and Osman-pasha. The latter brought in reinforcements, so 24,000 Turks now defended the fort. In a short time Osman-pasha had turned Plevna into an impregnable site, surrounded by fortifications and redoubts. The second storm was also repulsed, with another 7,000 Russian bodies at the walls of Plevna.
The guards were sent to the Balkans from St. Petersburg.
The war was dragging on. Grand Duke Mikhail was unsuccessful on the Caucasus front.
By the time of the third storm of Plevna, there were 34,000 Turks in the garrison. Both sides understood that the outcome of the war could be decided there.
Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich began the decisive third storm on August 30, St. Alexander’s feast, the tsar’s saint’s day. The Russian troops numbered 50,000, joined by 32,000 Romanians. Alexander, who had seen enough of Nikolai Nikolayevich’s military leadership, suggested that he turn over the general command of the storm to Romanian king Carol I.
Alexander watched from a high vantage point through a scope as the little figures ran forward. Things were
going well. The Romanians advanced from the east and took the Grivits redoubts. On his white horse and in his white uniform (he was called the White General), General Skobelev led the attack that followed. His troops were met with punitive fire, but he captured the two redoubts protecting the city. The way to the fort was open. Osman-pasha threw his last reserves into the fray. The fighting at the gates of Plevna was fierce. It was Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich who doomed the Russians to failure: At the decisive moment he didn’t send in the reserves (even though less than half the Russian battalions were in the battle).
Skobelev’s troops had to abandon what they had conquered, and the Turks won back the redoubts. Twelve thousand Russian soldiers and 4,000 Romanians fell in the battle. The Turks lost only 3,000 men. It was the bloodiest battle of all the Russo-Turkish wars.
Now Alexander feared that Providence “was giving him a second Sevastopol.” He feared a catastrophic loss like his father’s. It didn’t stop him from writing to Katya every day.
Suleiman-pasha’s troops were ordered to break through to help Plevna. They had to take the Shipka Pass, which was being guarded by the Orlov Regiment and 5,000 Bulgarians. Suleiman-pasha concentrated 25,000 men against them.
The defenders were suffering from the terrible heat and lack of food, but they continued to hold the pass. On August 9, the Turks went on a decisive attack that launched a famous six-day battle. The Turks attacked the strongest part of the Russian positions at the Eagle’s Nest cliff. Out of ammunition, the defenders fought off the Turks climbing toward them with rocks and rifle stocks. General Radetsky led his men into hand-to-hand combat.
After three days of fighting, Suleiman-pasha prepared to finish off the last handful of resisting heroes by the evening of August 11, but help arrived. General Dragomirov had brought 12,000 soldiers in quick march, 70 kilometers a day in the heat. They attacked the Turks and pushed them back from the pass. After six days, the pass was still in Russian hands, with 4,000 dead Russians and Bulgarians.
Snow blanketed the pass and temperatures plummeted. It was in this period that the Russians suffered their greatest losses—not from bullets, but from the cold. The pervasive theft and corruption in the army were partly to blame—they did not have warm clothing. Hundreds died in battle, thousands died from illness and frostbite.
Winter was coming to the plains as well. Alexander’s army was facing two choices. One was to retreat over the Danube and winter there. That was proposed by commander Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich. It would mean stopping the siege of Plevna, leaving the Shipka Pass, giving back everything paid for by the blood of his soldiers. The other choice was to continue the siege of Plevna and try to finish off the enemy. That was very risky, after all their failures.
Alexander wrote Katya an anguished letter: “Oh, God, come to aid us and end this damned war in Russia’s glory and the benefit of Christians. That is the cry of my heart, which belongs to you…my idol, my treasure, my life!”
The next morning he went to the hospital to visit the men. He saw his wounded adjutant and a Hussar colonel dying in the next bed. A shell had torn off his leg, which had been amputated and lay by the bed in a blood-filled basin.
The adjutant was horrified by the way Alexander looked. The lady-in-waiting Tolstaya would write about it later: “A hearty man left for war, and a worn-out old man returned. His hands had gotten so thin that the rings fell from his fingers.”
He suffered from asthma and he was continually ill with something like dysentery. It was all from nerves. But as ever, when it came to the final moment, this deceptively indecisive man turned to steel. Alexander made the difficult decision to continue the siege of Plevna and to take it. It meant thousands more dead. He did not want to be the one to rescind the commander-in-chief’s order, so he pretended to be vacillating. Apparently he commanded his war minister to play the usual game. At a staff meeting, Milyutin dared to attack Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich’s decision. He said that leaving Plevna would cause irreparable harm to the army’s prestige and he spoke of all the blood already shed by Russian soldiers.
The infuriated grand duke suggested the minister take charge.
Now the tsar could be the arbiter. He tried not to hurt anyone’s feelings. He supported the minister’s suggestion but asked the grand duke to remain in charge. But to help him (on the minister’s advice) he brought in the military engineer General Totleben, who became famous in the defense of Sevastopol. The “help” expected from him was to run the siege of Plevna.
Totleben rejected new attacks. He wanted a total blockade of the fort first. That meant cutting off the road that brought supplies to the garrison. There were Turkish redoubts defending the road, but a Russian army of 20,000 people, headed by the brave General Gurko, conquered them. Plevna was now in a blockade. By mid-November 100,000 troops attacked the fort, where food had run out. When Osman-pasha tried to escape from doomed Plevna, the Russians forced him back inside. Six thousand Turks died that day in the bloody field of Plevna. Osman-pasha, with the tatters of his 40,000-man army, surrendered.
Osman-pasha stood before the tsar and offered him his sword. Alexander thought of the mutilated bodies, the prisoners who were killed, and the 32,000 Russian dead in battle at Plevna. Alexander showed him how a knight behaves, as he had once done with Shamil. He took the sword, held it, and then returned it to Osman-pasha, who had expected to be executed. He said it was “a sign of respect for the warrior’s courage.”
A thanksgiving service was held in the captive fort. To keep up the morale of his younger brother, Alexander awarded Nikolai Nikolayevich the St. George Cross.
The road to Istanbul was clear. Joy, like trouble, does not come in ones. General Loris-Melikov came to help brother Mikhail on the Caucasus front. The “splendid Armenian,” as he was known, stormed the Turkish forts of Ardagan and Kars and then Erzerum.
Great victories had come. Blizzards had come to the mountains by then. But waist-deep in snow, Russian soldiers fought off Turkish units in the mountain passes and came down from the Balkans. On December 23, without a battle, they took Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria.
As Count P. A. Valuyev wrote in his diary, “The political horizon is getting dark seeing our victories.” Britain’s diplomacy got tougher, which invigorated Turkey. In order to halt the advance of Russian troops and win time (in hopes that Britain would enter the war), the Turks offered to start negotiation of a truce. Instead, Russian troops marched toward Istanbul. The great dream of Constantinople was coming true.
The Russian army moved through abandoned regions. The populace, frightened by tales of vengeful Slavs, fled in panic. Roads were filled with carts and wagons. The wretches made their way pushing their pathetic belongings, some dying in the crush or run over by carriages of the wealthy. The sides of the roads were littered with corpses of people and horses and overturned wagons.
General Skobelev’s unit was moving swiftly toward Adrianople, Turkey’s second capital. They fought for and won Turkish positions, bridges, and railroad stations. Along the way, Skobelev routed the troops of Egyptian prince Hassan, who came to protect Adrianople. He captured a big wagon train and a hundred camels. Skobelev handed out the camels among the regiments. Soon Russian soldiers were riding them, and the camels quickly learned to respond to Russian swear words.
On January 8, Skobelev took Adrianople without a battle. Nine days later he was within 80 kilometers of Istanbul. The Turkish government asked for a truce. On January 19 it was signed in Adrianople, where the staff headquarters of the Danube Army were moved. Military actions had ceased, yet Russian troops kept marching toward Istanbul. General Skobelev came closest, taking the town of San Stefano and reaching the shores of the Aegean Sea. Now the White General was only 12 kilometers from the capital of Turkey and the great capital of Ancient Byzantium.
This was the key moment in the war—the Russians were at the walls of Istanbul, or Tsarygrad as it was called in ancient Russia. The proud formula was devised in the sixteent
h century: “Moscow was the Third Rome. The first, the Rome of the Caesars, had perished. Then came Byzantium, the heir of the first Rome. It perished, too. Moscow, the Russian kingdom, was the third and last Rome. There would be no fourth Rome.” Orthodox Christianity had come to Russia from Byzantium. Now Russia would liberate the cradle of Orthodoxy, the Second Rome.
“Constantinople sooner or later must be ours!” vowed Dostoevsky (Diary of a Writer, 1877). Many Russians believed that the chance to take Constantinople was a gift from God. It was a personal dream of Alexander’s. It would have been the triumphant conclusion of his work—the serfs were freed of slavery and now the cradle of Orthodoxy would be freed of Muslim slavery. He would be the true Emancipator.
Great-power politics intervened. Britain threatened war if the Russian army took Istanbul. To make its position clear, the British government sent a fleet to the Dardanelles and the sultan allowed them to enter the Sea of Marmara. Simultaneously, the main naval forces began gathering near Malta. Queen Victoria declared that “she would sooner abdicate than allow the Russians to enter Istanbul.”
The entire Russian army demanded to free the city sacred to Russians. Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich and all the generals begged to take Constantinople, maintaining that England’s threats were empty, that England preferred fighting with cat’s paws, and that there was no one there willing to start a war with Russia. But old Gorchakov felt differently. England would start a war because Russia was exhausted by the Crimean War. Others would join London—first and foremost, Austria. Gorchakov implored the tsar to stop and not take the dangerous capital.
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