Angered by Turkish refusals to live up to past treaties and taking advantage of Turkish preoccupations in Greece, Russia’s Czar Nicholas I sent armies against Turkish possessions in northeastern Anatolia and the eastern Balkan region. After disasters on both fronts, the Turkish sultan sued for peace. The decidedly pro-Russian terms were embodied in the Treaty of Adrianople.
When Nicholas I ascended the throne of the Russian Empire in 1825, he inherited from his brother the problem of what to do about the Ottoman Empire, with whom Russia had been at war intermittently since the early eighteenth century. Turkish defeats in the war of 1806-1812 released its grip on the Danubian territories of Walachia
Turks surrendering Varna to the Russians.
Nicholas did not want to destroy Turkey, which would have invited an onslaught by European imperialists, but he did want to enhance his positions to both the east and west of the dying giant. In his role as czar, Nicholas also presented himself as the guarantor of Christian Orthodoxy in the Balkans, ruling as he did from Moscow, the Third Rome. The antagonistic activities of Sultan Mahmud II in the Danubian territories added fuel to the fire, as Nicholas was far less forgiving than his brother had been. The Greek War of Independence (1821-1829) made allies of Russia, France, and Great Britain through the Protocol of St. Petersburg
On March 24, 1826, Nicholas sent an ultimatum to the sultan insisting on Ottoman compliance with aforementioned treaties and, especially, the Treaty of Bucharest
The victories of General Ivan Fyodorovich Paskevich in Persia
In the east, Paskevich advanced from Tiflis with 25,000 men and 200 cannons. The troops covered 350 miles in just four months and defeated some 80,000 Turkish troops in battle. In late June, 12,000 Russian cavalry and infantry besieged the fortress city of Kars, which was defended by Emin Pasha, who commanded some 15,000 men and 165 cannons. On July 5 the city fell. The Russians lost about 600 men in the fighting and the Ottomans suffered nearly 5,000 casualties and captives. One month later, Paskevich laid siege to Akhaltsikhe with 110,000 men and 70 guns. At the end of the three-week siege, the 40,000-man garrison surrendered, with both sides losing numbers very similar to those at Kars. By the onset of winter, Paskevich had also reduced Anapa, Ardahan, Poti, and Bayazid, before settling down in Georgia.
General Johann von Diebitsch
As the season turned, Nicholas returned to St. Petersburg to consult with his council of war, which recommended that Wittgenstein
Come spring, 1829, Paskevich seized Erzerum and aimed his army toward Trebizond. In the west, Diebitsch energized his Russian army, now possibly 114,000 strong. The fortress of Silistria and its 16,000-man garrison was first to fall, after a forty-four day siege (June 25). Meanwhile, Reşid and Diebitsch
Even with the lopsided Russian victories, the czar lost a total of nearly 140,000 men on both fronts, most of whom died of disease. Ottoman casualties, also mainly from disease, amounted to about 80,000 men.
Czar Nicholas I was able to dictate terms that ensured a Russian presence that would be deeply embedded on Turkey’s western and northeastern borders while leaving the so-called “sick man of Europe,” the Ottoman Empire, largely intact and capable of continuing. By ceding Georgia and other Caucasian territories, and the eastern shores of the Black Sea
Russia’s sponsorship of Moldavia and Walachia merely underlined the terms of previous treaties, but its insistence on Serbian
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citation-type="booksimple" xlink:type="simple">Allen, W. E. D. Caucasian Battlefields: A History of the Wars on the Turco-Caucausian Border 1828-1921. Richmond, Surrey, England: Curzon Press, 2002. Opens with a detailed discussion of the eastern front and the victories of Paskevich. -
citation-type="booksimple" xlink:type="simple">Brewer, David. The Greek War of Independence. New York: Overlook, 2001. Provides important background to the Turkish preoccupation and Russian religious and ethnic goals in the southern Balkans. -
citation-type="booksimple" xlink:type="simple">Curtis, John Shelton. The Russian Army Under Nicholas I, 1825-1855. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1965. Discusses Nicholas’s early reign, helping to explain why the Russians were so successful against the Turks. -
citation-type="booksimple" xlink:type="simple">Lincoln, W. Bruce. Nicholas I: Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias. Evanston: Northern Illinois University Press, 1989. A standard biography in English that paints a fine picture of the czar’s military and diplomatic intentions. -
citation-type="booksimple" xlink:type="simple">Saunders, David. Russia in the Age of Reaction and Reform, 1801-1881. New York: Longman, 1992. A general history of Russia that places the war in the context of Russia’s nineteenth century territorial expansion and developing pan-Slavism.
Ottomans Suppress the Janissary Revolt
Greeks Fight for Independence from the Ottoman Empire
Treaty of Adrianople
Turko-Egyptian Wars
Russian Realist Movement
Crimean War
Third Russo-Turkish War
George Canning; Nicholas I; Alexander and Demetrios Ypsilantis.
