The military-political crisis that engulfed Eastern Europe at the turn of 1737–1738 brought the Russo-Austrian alliance against the Ottoman Empire to the brink of collapse. The campaign of 1737 produced contradictory results for the allies. While Russian troops under Field Marshal B. Kh. Münnich captured Ochakov, the Austrian (“Caesarean”) troops of Emperor Charles VI, which entered the war only in the second half of 1737, suffered one defeat after another. Vienna began persistently to seek ways of ending the ruinous war with the Porte.
An attempt at reconciliation was made at the Congress of Nemirov, attended by Russian, Austrian, and Turkish plenipotentiaries. Turkish diplomats sought to divide the allies by offering Russia favourable terms for a separate peace. Faithful to its obligations, the government of Empress Anna Ioannovna rejected these proposals; nevertheless, the congress ended in failure, making the continuation of the war inevitable. Thereupon, Charles VI appealed to French mediation and sent a draft peace treaty to St Petersburg. This provoked profound “bewilderment” in the Russian Cabinet. St Petersburg rightly maintained that Austria’s readiness to make peace at any price would only strengthen the Porte’s resistance and demonstrate the weakness of the alliance.
At the same time, the Austrian court feared being left alone to confront Turkey and deprived of Russian support. In order to overcome the disagreements and formulate a common strategy, Austrian Feldmarschall-Leutnant Marquis Botta d’Adorno arrived in St Petersburg on 18 February 1738. The brief negotiations resulted in the signing of a secret Military Convention on 22 March (2 April) 1738. This document laid down in detail the parties’ obligations, troop strengths, and the logistics of a large-scale offensive. This article examines this ambitious strategic plan for eighteenth-century coalition warfare, the principal burden of which was borne by Russia.
The military campaign of 1738, planned in detail in St Petersburg, was a large-scale and bold undertaking. As the principal force in the war against the Porte, the Russian Empire developed a strategy of simultaneous offensives in two diverging directions. Rather than isolated attacks, the plan envisaged coordinated operations by two enormous armies: the Main (Dniester) Army, directed against Ottoman territories on the right bank, and the Don (Crimean) Army, intended to strike at the very heart of the Crimean Khanate. Both groupings were to be deployed with the same impressive complement of regular and irregular regiments as in the preceding campaign of 1737.
The Main Army, commanded by General Field Marshal Burkhard Christoph Münnich, was to deliver a crushing blow towards the Dniester. It was a colossal military machine. The Orel River was designated as the rendezvous point, where the regiments were to assemble in mid-April. Because of the early spring, when the steppe had not yet had time to produce sufficient grazing, the soldiers were ordered to carry fodder for their horses directly from their winter quarters.
Münnich’s army was to march through the wild steppes. The plan demanded the highest possible tempo: the army was to reach the Bug River by the shortest route, construct bridges there by mid-May, and cross the obstacle. It was then to advance towards the Dniester.
A particularly delicate aspect of the campaign was the diplomatic question. Münnich’s route ran dangerously close to the borders of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. St Petersburg categorically demanded that the neighbouring state’s strictly neutral status be observed: during the march as far as the Bug, the borders of the Polish state were to remain absolutely inviolable, while the lands beyond the Bug were to remain unoccupied “as far as possible.” Under threat of severe punishment, irregular Cossack units were forbidden to disturb Polish frontier possessions. Should military necessity require Russian troops to enter Polish territory, Vienna undertook to share with Russia all the diplomatic burdens and consequences.
Münnich’s strategy on the Dniester envisaged three flexible scenarios:
While Münnich advanced towards the Dniester, the second army, commanded by General Field Marshal Peter Petrovich Lacy, was preparing for a thrust into Crimea. This direction was intended to deprive the Porte of its most mobile ally—the Crimean khan, whose cavalry regularly ravaged Russia’s frontier regions.
The assembly of Lacy’s army posed a complex logistical task. Troops wintering in Ukraine and along the Donets were concentrated at Bakhmut. At the same time, forces from Azov, Don Cossacks, and Kalmyks assembled at the headwaters of the Kalmius River. Having united into a single force, the army was to march into Crimea by the shortest and most convenient route.
Lacy was assigned exceptionally stringent objectives. Intelligence reported that the Turks were concentrating substantial forces in Crimea and that they had sent the well-known European renegade Bonneval, who had converted to Islam, to assist them. If the Ottomans came forward to meet him, Lacy was to accept battle and defeat them. If the enemy avoided battle, Lacy retained room for manoeuvre: he was to break through into the interior of Crimea and “utterly devastate what has not yet been ravaged.” Alternatively, the plan permitted Lacy to advance and join Münnich in support of the Dniester operation, or to withdraw to the Berda River in order to provide reliable cover for Russia’s borders.
Russia’s two-pronged blow was a masterpiece of strategic planning for its time. The Empire struck on two fronts separated by a thousand kilometres of steppe, seeking to squeeze the Ottoman giant in a pincer movement.
For the campaign of 1738, the Russian Empire mobilized manpower on a colossal scale by eighteenth-century standards. The Main Army under Field Marshal Burkhard Christoph Münnich numbered a record 108,281 men. Its regular core consisted of 94,781 soldiers, including the Imperial Guard; dragoon, landmilitsiya, infantry, and cuirassier regiments; as well as three thousand artillerymen, miners, and engineers. Münnich’s army also included 13,500 irregular troops—Zaporozhian, Don, Little Russian, Chuhuiv, and Wallachian Cossacks.
On the Don axis, a second grouping under Field Marshal Peter Petrovich Lacy, numbering more than 65,000 men, was concentrated. The regular component of Lacy’s army—dragoon, infantry, and garrison regiments—comprised more than 40,000 men. Its enormous mobile force consisted of 25,000 irregular fighters, notably 10,000 Kalmyks and 6,000 Don Cossacks. In total, Russia fielded an armada of more than 173,000 warriors for simultaneous operations on two fronts.
The Russian army’s technical superiority was ensured by an extremely powerful artillery train, divided into siege, field, and regimental artillery. Münnich’s Main Army carried an impressive arsenal overland: 262 guns, 11 mortars, 16 howitzers, and 440 small portable Coehorn mortars for high-angle fire. To overcome water obstacles, the army had at its disposal 36 pontoons with all their equipment. Heavy siege guns, which required hundreds of transport carts, were in part conveyed by water to Ochakov and other coastal fortresses, so as not to overburden the overland trains.
Lacy’s Crimean Army was likewise excellently equipped. It was followed overland by heavy 18- and 24-pounder guns, powerful five-pood mortars, 60 Coehorn mortars, field artillery—including guns ranging in calibre from 3 to 12 pounds and howitzers—and the Cossacks’ light regimental guns.
The chief adversary of the Russian army in campaigns against the Turks was the waterless and uninhabited steppe itself. Supplying the Main Army, which numbered more than 105,000 men, required colossal reserves of resources. The regiments set out with a month’s supply of provisions carried on their own carts. Reserves for the following three and a half months were transported in mobile army supply depots (magaziny): more than 98,000 sacks of flour and groats, together with more than 18,000 poods of salt.
Transporting this enormous mass of supplies required the provisioning of 25,166 pairs of oxen or horses and an equal number of carts. This vast caravan was managed by 12,583 drivers. General-in-Chief Prince Bariatinsky was allocated the fantastic sum of 300,000 rubles, by the standards of the time, for procuring and organizing this transport.
On the Crimean front, supplying Lacy’s army required no less effort: a five-month food reserve was transported overland. The regular troops, Don Cossacks, and Kalmyks were to receive from the depots more than 48,000 sacks of flour, more than 3,000 sacks of groats, approximately 9,600 poods of salt, and wine for hospital needs. In order to move these supplies, 20,440 pairs of oxen and 10,220 drivers were mobilized.
The success of the steppe campaigns depended directly on control over the mouths of the Dnieper and Don. In the Liman, near Ochakov and Kinburn, hundreds of Russian vessels were already stationed: double sloops, canchebas, Zaporozhian boats, and baidak barges. During the winter of 1738, however, the Bryansk shipyards undertook emergency construction of new warships to counter the Turkish fleet in the Black Sea.
Bryansk shipwrights were preparing to launch two prams, ten special galleys for transporting horses, twenty galleys for landing infantry, twenty brigantines, forty lastovye vessels, ten Venetian boats, and fifty small Cossack boats. The principal task of these vessels was to seal off the Liman, prevent the Turkish fleet from breaking through from the Black Sea, and ensure uninterrupted deliveries of provisions to the Dniester Army during the autumn months.
While the Russian Empire prepared its armies for a thrust across the Dniester steppes and the Crimean isthmuses, its ally—the Holy Roman Empire under Charles VI—was deploying no less impressive forces in the Balkans. The Danubian theatre of operations was intended to divert a considerable part of the Ottoman forces and strike at the Porte’s European possessions.
The Viennese court undertook to field an army larger than that of the preceding unsuccessful year. Its basis consisted of thirty-one infantry regiments—an imposing mass of 71,300 infantrymen. Cavalry cover was provided by sixteen cuirassier, twelve dragoon, and six hussar regiments, numbering in total more than 32,000 professional horsemen.
The most distinctive component of the Austrian (“imperial”) forces, however, consisted of regional and frontier contingents. To fight the “hereditary enemy,” Vienna mobilized 15,000 Croatian pandurs (referred to in the document as panderini), renowned for their courage and brutality in mobile warfare. They were joined by 8,000 men of the frontier militia from the Karlstadt and Varaždin Generalates, the warlike cavalry militia of Transylvania, and Serbian (“Raizian”) units. In total, the allies’ land forces numbered more than 130,000 men.
Austrian artillery embodied the advanced engineering thought of the age. Some eighty guns, including rapid-firing pieces and long-barrelled Feldschlangen, were intended for field battles. Yet the true triumph of Austrian gunsmiths was the heavy siege (“operational”) artillery concentrated at Belgrade. It comprised ninety heavy guns, notably sixty-six gigantic 24-pounder demi-cannons and twenty-four long 12-pounder quarter-cannon Schlangen.
For high-angle fire and the destruction of fortress walls, the allies prepared forty-two heavy mortars (designated in the original as pöllers), including monstrous 100-pounder pieces capable of reducing any Turkish fortification to ruins. This formidable artillery park was served by more than two thousand gunners, supported by a special Engineer Corps consisting of seventy-five officers.
ГThe Danube was to become the campaign’s principal transport and combat artery, on which the Austrians deployed a powerful fleet. Its core consisted of five enormous warships armed with more than two hundred guns in total. The crews of these floating fortresses numbered 2,000 sailors and artillerymen. The river squadrons were supported by fifteen fast, manoeuvrable chaikas, each carrying fifty combatants and two small one-and-a-half-pounder guns.
The logistical scale of the campaign was astonishing. In order to ensure unimpeded manoeuvre, the Austrians planned to construct one gigantic bridge across the Sava near Belgrade and two across the Danube, each of which was to rest upon 200 vessels. For rapid crossings, they brought sixty light tin pontoons and wooden “walking” (ferry) bridges on cables. The entire armada was supplied by water by means of 800 transport vessels and 400 rafts.
The army’s provisioning was organized on an imperial scale. In Hungary and Transylvania, 350,000 centners of flour were stockpiled, guaranteeing the baking of a staggering 28 million bread rations. The army ovens were staffed by 1,600 hired bakers. For the overland transport of dry goods, 2,000 wagons drawn by thousands of horses and oxen were allocated.
The strategic objective of this colossal machine moving downstream along the Danube was the powerful Turkish fortress of Vidin. Throughout the winter, the Austrians prepared fascines (bundles of brushwood) and wooden gabions for siege trenches. Although Vienna could not specify the precise date on which the assault would begin—since the campaign was to be coordinated with the Russian advance on Bender—Charles VI guaranteed that his army would fight as long and as stubbornly as Münnich’s Russian regiments, until the enemy’s complete capitulation.
In an age when orders and dispatches were carried by mounted couriers for weeks at a time, coordinating the operations of vast armies across the immense theatre of war extending from the Danube to the Dniester and Crimea constituted an exceedingly complex logistical and communications task. Recognizing this, the drafters of the Convention of 22 March (2 April) 1738 devoted particular attention to mechanisms of interaction between the Russian and Austrian general staffs.
The principal foundation of the new agreement was the binding Austro-Russian Convention signed in Vienna as early as 9 January 1737. The 1738 document developed its provisions and required the commanding generals of both empires to display an unprecedented degree of mutual trust. The commanders-in-chief undertook to furnish one another regularly and promptly with “open, without concealment” information concerning the manoeuvres of Turkish troops.
This exchange of intelligence pursued more than a merely informational purpose. The military leadership planned to coordinate the movements of their armies by mutual agreement. The ultimate tactical aim of this complex manoeuvring was, when opportunity permitted, to “lure the enemy into the middle”—that is, to trap the principal forces of the Ottoman army in a pincer movement between the advancing Main Russian Army and the imperial forces moving from the west.
The parties sought to anticipate even potentially acute diplomatic incidents. Thus, a secret clause of the Convention stipulated that, should the Main Russian Army be compelled, during its march to the Dniester, to encroach upon the borders of the formally neutral Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Vienna would assume part of the political responsibility and would “jointly, by the very deed” settle all subsequent diplomatic complications with the Polish court.
These coordination mechanisms were developed against a backdrop of profound geopolitical mistrust. The Ottoman Empire actively sought to split the alliance between the two Christian monarchies. During the Nemirov Congress of 1737, Turkish diplomats offered Russia favourable terms for a separate peace, hoping to isolate Austria. The government of Anna Ioannovna, however, demonstrated firmness and considered it its duty to remain faithful to its allied obligations.
Vienna, at the same time, behaved far more ambiguously. Having suffered a series of defeats, Emperor Charles VI secretly turned to French diplomatic mediation and drafted a peace proposal that effectively accepted hasty concessions, provoking justified “perplexity” in St Petersburg. The Russian side directly informed the Austrian resident that Vienna’s readiness to make peace at any price merely emboldened the Porte and rendered its concessions impossible.
Nevertheless, Vienna’s fear of being left alone to face the Turkish threat compelled it to send Marquis Botta d’Adorno to St Petersburg to formulate a rigorous military plan. The entire Convention was permeated by a single “unremitting intention”: to inflict a coordinated defeat upon the enemy and thereby compel it to conclude a general peace that would be honourable, secure, and acceptable to both parties.
The tense negotiations reached their conclusion in St Petersburg on 22 March (2 April) 1738. On the Russian side, the historic document, which set out a detailed campaign plan, was signed by prominent statesmen of the period: Vice-Chancellor Count Andrei Osterman and Cabinet Minister Prince Aleksei Cherkassky. On the Austrian side, it was signed and personally sealed by the Emperor’s plenipotentiary, Generalfeldmarschall-Leutnant Marquis Antoniotto Botta d’Adorno.
The Convention of 1738 has remained in history as an outstanding monument to eighteenth-century staff planning and administrative thought. Every detail was meticulously calculated: from bread rations and the number of ox teams to the calibres of siege guns and routes of march. Yet, as subsequent events demonstrated, paper could not account for the harsh realities of steppe campaigns, epidemics, and the growing weakness of the Austrian army, as a result of which the principal burden of this bloody war once again fell upon the shoulders of Russian soldiers.
The Convention document sets out the plans in detail, but the campaign of 1738 itself unfolded in practice in an entirely different manner from that envisaged on paper.
Dates and periods: 1738; the turn of 1737–1738; 1737; 18 February 1738; 22 March (2 April) 1738; the eighteenth century; mid-April 1738; mid-May 1738; winter 1738; 9 January 1737.
Persons: Burkhard Christoph Münnich; Charles VI; Anna Ioannovna; Antoniotto Botta d’Adorno; Peter Petrovich Lacy; Claude Alexandre de Bonneval; Prince Baryatinsky; Charles VI of Habsburg; Burkhard Christoph von Münnich; Andrei Ivanovich Osterman; Aleksei Mikhailovich Cherkassky.
Geographical locations: Eastern Europe; Ochakiv; Vienna; Nemyriv; St Petersburg; the Dniester; the Omelnyk; the Bug; Bender; Crimea; Ukraine; the Seversky Donets; Bakhmut; Azov; the Kalmius; the Berda; the Liman; the Dnieper; the Don; Kinburn; Bryansk; the Black Sea; the Balkans; the Karlstadt Generalate; the Varaždin Generalate; Transylvania; Belgrade; the Danube; the Sava; Hungary; Vidin.
Political entities: the Russian Empire; Austria; the Ottoman Empire; France; the Crimean Khanate; the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth; the Holy Roman Empire; the Porte; Austria (the Habsburg Monarchy).
Events and processes: the Russo-Turkish War of 1735–1739; the campaign of 1737; the capture of Ochakiv (1737); the signing of the Russo-Austrian Military Convention of 1738; the campaign of 1738; the Nemirov Congress of 1737.
Documents: the draft peace treaty sent by Charles VI to St Petersburg; the Military Convention of 1738; the Russo-Austrian Convention of 22 March (2 April) 1738; the Austro-Russian Convention of 9 January 1737; the Russo-Austrian Convention of 1738.
Peoples and communities: Don Cossacks; Kalmyks; Turks; Zaporozhian Cossacks; Little Russian Cossacks; Chuhuiv Cossacks; Wallachians; Cossacks; Croatian pandurs; Serbs; Austrians.
Organizations and institutions: the Cabinet of Ministers; the Main (Dniester) Army; the Don (Crimean) Army; the Imperial Guard; the Crimean Army; the Main Russian Army; the Dniester Army; the Viennese court; the Engineer Corps.
