What did Plevna actually win?

Chapter

April – July 1877

Convention with Russia

Bucharest, 4/16 April 1877

Independence read

9/21 May 1877, parliament

Calafat batteries

facing Vidin, early May

From the northern bank of the Danube, the Romanian batteries at Calafat trade fire with the guns of Vidin across the river: the thunder of the guns crosses the water from one bank to the other in early May. A month before, on 4 April 1877 Old Style, Romania had signed the convention at Bucharest opening Russian armies the road through the country toward the Danube, with the pledge that Romania's integrity would be respected. Bucharest had mobilised, and the Calafat guns announced that the war had already begun on the river.

On 9 May, Old Style – 21 May by the modern calendar – Mihail Kogalniceanu rose in parliament and declared Romania independent; the chambers voted for it the same day, and Prince Carol signed the act the next day. Five centuries of Ottoman suzerainty were repudiated in a speech; making the repudiation stick would take a war.

The war came quickly. The Russians crossed the Danube and took Nikopol on 16 July; Osman Nuri Pasha, marching from Vidin with some 12,000 men and 54 guns, found Nikopol already lost and turned south instead. On 19 July he reached Plevna and took up the bare hills north and east of the town – just as the guns of General Schilder-Schuldner's division, sent on from Nikopol, came into action. The siege began the next day.

A Convention had been made with Rumania, allowing the passage of the Russians through the country. The Rumanians proclaimed their independence of Turkey.

1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Russo-Turkish Wars” (April–May 1877)

Meanwhile While the armies march, London plays: the first Wimbledon Championship is played in the summer of 1877 and won by Spencer Gore.

Chapter

July – September 1877

First battle

20 July 1877

Great Assault

30 August OS / 11 September

The Western Army

Romanian and Russian troops under Prince Carol

On 20 July, General Schilder-Schuldner's men storm the outer works of Plevna and drive the Ottomans from their entrenchments – then Osman Pasha counterattacks and throws them back out: the Russians lost 2,800 men out of 8,000, the Ottomans 2,000. A second battle in late July, ordered from three sides at once, broke against the redoubts north and east of the town.

Bucharest answered the Russian call for help. Carol I took command of the joint Russian-Romanian armies before Plevna; Skobelev cut the supply road at Lovech on 3 September; by the end of August the whole Romanian army had crossed the Danube. On 11 September – 30 August in the Romanian calendar – the Great Assault went in: Skobelev seized two southern redoubts, and the Romanian 4th Division under Colonel Alexandru Anghelescu, with Prince Carol in command of the Western Army, stormed the Grivitsa redoubt.

It took four bloody assaults, and Captain Valter Maracineanu among others did not come back. The Turks retook Skobelev's two redoubts but could not dislodge the Romanians from Grivitsa – the one redoubt the allies would keep to the end of the siege. After September the frontal assaults stopped and General Totleben, the engineer of Sevastopol, took over the siege works.

The Rumanians took one Grivitza redoubt, Skobelev occupied two redoubts on the south front, but the centre attack on the Radishevo front failed.

1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Plevna” (11 September 1877)

Meanwhile At Shipka, from 21 August, the Russians hold the pass against Suleiman Pasha's assaults.

Chapter

October 1877 – January 1878

Rahova

19–21 November 1877

The breakout

9 December, across the Vit

The surrender

28 November OS / 10 December

Plevna is starving, and the allies tear away its outer supports one by one. In November, the Romanian-Russian columns of Slaniceanu and Meyendorf storm Rahova on the Danube – the garrison that could still have supplied Osman Pasha – and take it. Around Plevna a single question remains: breakout or surrender.

On the night of 9 December, with the food gone, the Ottomans tried to break out westward across the Vit, toward Sofia. Osman Pasha was severely wounded in the fighting, and on the next day – 10 December, 28 November in the Romanian calendar – he surrendered to the Romanian colonel Mihail Cerchez, commander of the 2nd Division.

After the fall, the Romanian army turned back to the Danube and fought the Vidin–Smardan operations of January 1878. The campaign was over for Plevna; for Romania the prestige was secured, but the legal work – the recognition no army can grant itself – still lay ahead, in March at San Stefano and in July at Berlin.

He held the position, after being closely invested, until the 9th December, when, compelled by want to cut his way out, he was severely wounded and forced to capitulate.

1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Osman (pasha)” (9–10 December 1877)

Meanwhile In the east, the fortress of Kars falls to the Russians in November 1877.

Chapter

March – July 1878

San Stefano

3 March 1878

Berlin Congress

13 June – 13 July 1878

The exchange

Northern Dobruja in, southern Bessarabia out

On 3 March 1878, at San Stefano, Russia and the Ottoman Empire sign their peace between them: the pen passes the paper from one hand to another, and Europe's great powers refuse to recognise it. The treaty goes back to the table: in June a congress gathers at Berlin to redraw what San Stefano had drawn.

The Treaty of Berlin was signed on 13 July 1878. It recognised Romania's independence – and it imposed the exchange: Northern Dobruja and the Danube Delta to Romania, the three southern-Bessarabian counties of Cahul, Bolgrad and Ismail to Russia, despite the pleas of the Romanian delegates. The Russian occupation of Bulgaria was capped at nine months.

So the slogan needs its three dates. Independence was proclaimed in Bucharest in May 1877, paid for at the Grivitsa redoubt in August, and recognised in Europe in July 1878. The war was necessary; the treaty was sufficient – and whoever repeats the slogan without its three dates tells only a third of the truth.

On the 13th of July 1878 the Treaty of Berlin was signed: Rumania received their independence (but was made to cede Bessarabia to Russia, receiving instead the Dobruja).

1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica (13 July 1878)

Meanwhile At Constantinople, the correspondent MacGahan dies of typhus on 9 June 1878.