Russo-Turkish War of Liberation 1877-1878

Chapter One - State of the countries, participating in the war, their armies and weapons at the start of the war

The Ottoman Empire

The collapse of feudalism in the Ottoman Empire, which was multinational and territorially large, started at the end of the 18 th century. Three main factors had contributed to this: defeats followed by the loss of territories and population; the upsurge of strong national movement for liberation among the occupied non-Muslim people; the increasing economic dependency on Western countries. Turkey turned into a market and a provider of natural resources. This led to the gradual creation of a local bourgeoisie, which was weaker in comparison with the bourgeoisie of the captive peoples in the Ottoman Empire.

The reforms in the Turkish army started with the dissolution of the janissary corps in 1826. More considerable changes came in the period of 1839-1862. The Western officers, who were recruited as military instructors and commanders, had also contributed to the reforms. They established the Prussian model of staffing and training of the Turkish army.1 The process of reorganization, which had not been completed, was conducted under their guidance.

Christian men were exempted from the military service. The population of other regions of the Empire such as Kurdistan, Albania, Arabia, Lebanon, Basra, Tripoli, Crete, Dodekanezite, and others were also excluded from the regular army.2 This limited the possibilities of recruiting enough soldiers and officers for the standing army and the reserve army. Only 118,000 persons were enlisted in the acting military service in Turkey in the period preceding the war.3 The training was of a very low level. Most men were illiterate and with limited knowledge of military matters. They had strong religious fanaticism and hatred towards the captive Christian population. The corps of commissioned officers was made up of men coming from the ruling Turkish class as well as of foreigners. There were around 40 military high schools in the empire and mainly in Istanbul established after the Western model. They trained junior officers that were relatively well-educated but were enrolled in the army with no practical preparation. These officers called mektebli , i.e. educated, were 20 percent of the army's commanding staff. The majority of them, however, were officers called alayli without the necessary school or military education and preparation. They were selected among soldiers and non-commissioned officers who had served longer time and had demonstrated good performance.

The Turkish Army was composed of troops within the regular military service called nizam ; troops of completed military service transferred to the reserve troops, called redif ; troops with completed service in the reserve and transferred to the volunteers' corps, called mustafhuz ; and of irregular troops composed of Kurds, Tatars, Cherkessks, Albanians, and others.4 men of age between 20 and 40 years were eligible and the service lasted for 20 years.5

The first category, nizam , served 6 years altogether including the two years' service in the reserve.6 The service in the second category lasted also for 6 years and was divided in three periods – Mokadem, Tali, and Salisse.7 The service in the third category, mustafhuz , was of the longest period, which was 8 years.8

In order to recruit and staff the army, the Empire was divided into six military districts following the administrative division into six vilayets, while the seventh was in the process of being established. Those were the Danubian, Rumelian, Arab, Egyptian, Anadolian, and Syrian districts.9 Due to the bad organization and economic difficulties, the army manning was slow and incomplete. In times of mobilization, the Turkish Army in its different categories totaled around 210,000 nizam, 270,000 rediff, and 145,000 mustafhuz.10 It could hardly reach 1,000,00011 along with the 65,000-strong Egyptian Army12 and the irregulars.

At the outset of the war, Turkey had only 190,000 men to confront the 180,000-strong Russian Danube Army.13

The Turkish Army was divided into infantry, cavalry, engineer, auxiliary troops and the navy. The infantry, cavalry, auxiliary and engineer troops were directly accountable to the Military Ministry and the Headquarters14; the rest were subordinate to independent administrations.

As in the Russian and Romanian armies, the fire and cool arms of the Turkish Army were of different systems. In qualitative terms, however, it was equipped with more up-to-date firearms. In this regard, Turkey was supported economically and armed by Britain, the United States and France. Their aid contributed to the construction of new and the re-equipment of already existing factories for production of arms and munitions. However, Turkey could not meet its needs with its own production and had to order 600,000 rifles Henry-Martini and 40,000,000 bullets from the United States.15

During the war, the main firearm systems were Snayder of British and American production totaling 325,000 pieces16, Henry-Martini of American production – 600,000 pieces17. The better part of the army was equipped with those two rifles, 70% of which were Henry-Martini.

The cavalry was armed with rifles and carbines Winchester mod 1866. The Egyptian corps was armed with rifles Remington mod 1865.

Compared with Russian and Romanian armies, the Turkish army was better qualitatively and quantitatively equipped with firearms and munitions. The factors conducive to the overall decline of the Ottoman Empire turned out to be decisive for the defeat of its army.

With the announcement of the war some districts lost their privileges exempting them from recruiting soldiers. The process of enrolling volunteers started at that time. The procedure was unusual as former military personnel was eligible to do that. The appointment of commanders was contingent on the number of volunteers recruited. One could get the rank of sergeant for 50 volunteers recruited, captain – for 100, and camp commander – for 1,000. Those were bashi-bazouk camps, notorious for their violent excesses during the war.18

Cherkessks, Arabs and Kurds were recruited for the cavalry. They could man 50 incomplete regiments.

At the end of April, the Turkish Danube army was stationed as follows:

•  50,000 men between Vidin and Lom;

•  12,000 men between Oryahovo and Hikopol facing the valley of the river Olta and Turno Magureli;

•  20, 000 men between Rousse and Tutrakan;

•  More than 25,000 men between Silistra and Rasovo (Hursovo);

•  12,000 men in Dobroudja;

•  Around 22,000 men in Varna – some of them were designated to fight in the direction of Bazardjik/Dobrich;

•  35,000 men altogether between Shoumen and Razgrad, some of them facing the Danube, others at the outskirts of the Balkan between Kotel-Eski Djumaya and Osman Pazar.

Other Turkish units were in the process of formation in the towns of Yambol, Turnovo, Sofia and Nish. Smaller units were stationed at key positions at Berkovitza, Pleven, Lovech, Novi Pazar, Bazardjik, and other places.19

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