The Russo-Turkish War, 1768–1774

Brian Davies has already become a recognised expert in the military history of Russia before the reign of Peter the Great, having published extensively on steppe warfare before 1700 and on the establishment of a Russian military and administrative presence on the southern borderlands in the seventeenth century. He is now establishing his reputation as an eighteenth-century Russian military specialist with a particular focus on warfare in the south. This present book explains how Catherine the Great’s Russia was able to defeat both the Ottoman Empire and the Polish confederates in the period 1768–74. These were the wars which led to the territorial expansion of Russia to the northern coast of the Black Sea, the acquisition of a large part of what had been the eastern lands of Poland–Lithuania and the conquest of the Crimea or, put another way, finally established Russia as a European great power. This is the first thorough English-language study of the first Russo-Turkish war of 1768–74. It is based on a wide range of published primary and secondary sources. The book is divided into eight chapters, which outline the diplomatic background to the conflict and describe the military organisation of the Ottomans and the Russians by the mid-eighteenth century, followed by a detailed account of the campaigns themselves and ending with an analysis of the terms of the Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji in 1774. In the process, Davies analyses both the process of the extension of a Russian military presence in the south and the relationship between Cossack hosts, and other military servitors on the frontiers, and the Russian regular military forces and the Russian government. Davies is particularly strong on the campaigns themselves, taking the reader carefully and skilfully through all the manoeuvres, sieges and battles with an impressive grasp of both tactics and the often complex sequence of events. He also provides excellent background on the process of Russian military and administrative extension of authority to the southern borderlands, and a good analysis of the condition of the Russian army as it emerged from the Seven Years War. It is a balanced account, made more so by his analysis of Ottoman military organisation and tactics (although, as he admits, based almost entirely on English-language sources), which adds significantly to our knowledge of the wars of this period, and explains why the Russians were able to triumph over the Ottomans having been frustrated in their attempts to do so earlier in the century

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