SIEGE OF PLEVNA
The ten-month war between the Russian and Ottoman Empires from April 1877 to March 1878 remains one of the most understudied (and under-appreciated) of the 19th century, despite its political, military, economic and social repercussions. The shifting political boundaries following the war can be linked to inducing revolutionary fervour that led to the brutal murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914. The gruesome reality of how wars would be waged in the 20th century also became painfully apparent during this conflict.
Roughly 285,000 soldiers (Ottoman, Russian, Bulgarian and Romanian) perished during this brief conflict, and thousands more civilian refugees succumbed to starvation, disease, or were murdered. Of the thousands of military fatalities, about 75,000 men (26 per cent) fell during the savage battles waged outside the small Bulgarian village of Plevna from the summer to winter of 1877.
War erupted between the Russians and Ottomans in April 1877. The Russians crossed over Romania’s borders, in a stroke ‘liberating’ it from the Ottoman yoke, and in return Romanians would send thousands of soldiers to fight and die alongside the Russians. The Ottoman commanderin-chief, Abdülkerim Nadir Pasha, with no clear plan or objective, left about 160,000 soldiers strung out along hundreds of kilometres on the banks of the
