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

On 4 April 1877, Old Style, Romania signed a convention at Bucharest: Russian armies could cross Romanian soil toward the Danube, and Russia would respect Romania's integrity. Bucharest mobilised, and in early May the Romanian batteries at Calafat, on the northern bank, were already trading fire with the guns of Vidin across the river.

On 9 May, Old Style – 21 May by the modern calendar – Mihail Kogalniceanu rose in parliament and read the act of independence as the will of the Romanian people. Prince Carol signed it 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 occupied Plevna with about 15,000 men – the same morning some 9,000 Russians arrived before it. The siege began the next day.

Mihail Kogalniceanu read the act of independence of Romania as the will of the Romanian people.

Romanian War of Independence, English Wikipedia (21 May [O.S. 9 May] 1877)

Meanwhile While the armies march, London plays: the first Wimbledon Championship runs 9–19 July 1877.

Chapter

July – September 1877

First battle

20 July 1877

Great Assault

30 August OS / 11 September

The guns

112 Romanian Krupp pieces

On 20 July the Russians tried to take Plevna on the march. General Schilder-Schuldner's men drove the Ottomans from the outer works, then Osman Pasha counterattacked and threw them back out: 3,000 Russian casualties against 2,000 Ottoman. 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; General Cernat crossed the Danube with 43,414 men. 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 General Manu, with Prince Carol alongside, 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 Romanian 4th division led by General George Manu took the Grivitsa redoubt after four bloody assaults, personally assisted by Prince Carol.

Siege of Plevna, English Wikipedia (11 September 1877)

Meanwhile At Shipka, on 21 August, the Russians repulse the second Ottoman attack on the pass.

Chapter

October 1877 – January 1878

Rahova

19–21 November 1877

The breakout

9 December, across the Vit

The surrender

28 November OS / 10 December

While Plevna starved, the allies removed its outer supports. In November a Romanian-Russian force under Slaniceanu and Meyendorf stormed Rahova on the Danube, the garrison that could still have supplied Osman Pasha. The noose around Plevna closed to a single question: breakout or surrender.

On the night of 9 December the Ottomans tried the breakout: silently over the Vit on thrown bridges, on a two-mile front, through the first Russian trench line. Osman Pasha was wounded in the fighting, and on the next day – 10 December, 28 November in the Romanian calendar – he surrendered the city, the garrison and his sword to the Romanian colonel Mihail Cerchez.

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.

On 9 December the Ottoman forces silently emerged in the dead of night, threw bridges over and crossed the Vit River, attacked on a two-mile front, and broke through the first line of Russian trenches.

Siege of Plevna, English Wikipedia (9 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 Russia and the Ottoman Empire signed their peace at San Stefano. Europe's great powers refused to recognise it, and the treaty went back to the table: in June a congress gathered 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. Read the first myth below before repeating the slogan.

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.