Almost immediately after the fighting ended in Poland, Russia launched another war as part of expansion aimed at the Ottoman Empire and its vassals the Crimean Tatars. Provoked by continuing Crimean raids, and encouraged by Ottoman entanglement in a war with Persia, Russia declared war on the Ottomans in 1735. Mu¨nnich devised ambi-tious plans for cumulative campaigns to win Constantinople, the Otto-man capital, for Russia. He was confident that the superior discipline and firepower of well-drilled Russian troops could master anything the Ottomans might throw in their way. He was not wrong, but premature.
In this and future Russo-Turkish wars, Russian control advanced inexor-ably counterclockwise around the Black Sea’s western shores.
After a failed Russian raid on the Crimea in 1735, the war’s first major campaigns came in 1736. Mu¨nnich faced a number of strategic obstacles.
First, Russia’s objectives were distant both from Russia and each other.
The road to the heart of Ottoman power lay around the western edge of the Black Sea. The Turkish fortress of Azov, controlling the mouth of the
Don River, lay to the east. The Crimean Tatars between them, though rel-atively less powerful than in previous centuries, dominated the north shore of the Black Sea. Efforts against any one target lay open to attack from another to cut lengthy supply lines back north. This forced the Rus-sians to haul masses of supplies with them south across the steppe. Fur-thermore, Russian troops faced formidable natural and artificial obstacles.
The Crimea’s geographic defenses had stymied Russian armies before.
The Ottoman Turks were shielded by major rivers flowing into the Black Sea from the north and the west, each in turn garrisoned by imposing Turkish fortresses.
Mu¨nnich’s plan for 1736 thus delayed a move against Constantinople until he dealt with Azov and the Crimea. The main Russian forces under Mu¨nnich himself moved down the Dnepr to the Isthmus of Perekop guarding the Crimea. His troops stormed the Tatar fortifications with ease in May 1736 and moved into the Crimea. Once there, however, Mu¨nnich was unable to bring the Tatars to battle, as most fled into the Crimean mountains. Mu¨nnich laid waste to the countryside, but lost large numbers of men to thirst and disease. He withdrew that autumn. Lacy’s subsidiary attack on Azov went much better. After a brief siege, Azov’s powder mag-azine exploded and the fortress surrendered in June. Encouraged and
alarmed by Russian successes, the Austrian Empire joined the war against Turkey to share and limit Russian gains in the Balkans.
With Azov captured, the Russian war effort shifted west for the 1737 campaign. Lacy’s troops infiltrated the Crimea not through the Perekop, but instead via the narrow sandbars and spits just east of the peninsula.
Breaking into eastern Crimea in May 1737, Lacy’s 40,000 troops shattered a Tatar horde and carried out the usual ravaging of the countryside, but just as in the previous year, sickness and thirst forced them to withdraw.
While Lacy was in the Crimea, Mu¨nnich marched southwest from the Dnepr River across the steppe to the Bug River. With 80,000 men, he crossed the Bug well upstream, then moved down its right bank to Ocha-kov, a major Turkish fortress. A hasty bombardment and improvised assault in July brought another fortunate powder magazine explosion, allowing the Russians to take the fortress quickly. Shortages of supplies and fodder, as well as the plague endemic to the region, forced Mu¨nnich to leave a garrison at Ochakov and withdraw back northeast.
In 1738, Russia accomplished very little. Lacy mounted the third Rus-sian invasion of the Crimea in as many years, but without any more last-ing results. Mu¨nnich skirted far west of the Black Sea with 100,000 sol-diers, crossing the Bug easily and reaching the next river barrier, the Dnestr, that summer. Once again, plague and short supplies, as well as Turkish screening forces, forced him to withdraw.
For the 1739 campaign, Mu¨nnich moved his main forces even farther west, cutting through Polish territory to cross the upper reaches of the Bug, the Dnestr, then the Prut. Moving so far inland and so deep into Ottoman territory, like Peter the Great in 1711, Mu¨nnich left himself vul-nerable to being cut off by the Turks and the fast-moving cavalry of their Crimean Tatar allies. Exactly that happened in August 1739. Believing Russian discipline and firepower could extract him from this trap, Mu¨n-nich launched a skillful attack on the main Turkish fortified encampment at Stavuchany on 17/28 August 1737. After a diversionary blow on the Turkish right wing, Mu¨nnich carefully massed his troops for a decisive attack on the Turkish left. He utterly smashed the Turks, capturing the encampment with its supplies and artillery, then seized the fortress of Khotin on the upper Dnestr without a struggle.
At the peak of Mu¨nnich’s success, a separate Austrian peace with the Turks cost Russia its only ally. Unsure of the potential for further gains, Russia agreed to terms. Despite its string of battlefield victories, the Rus-sian army had suffered enormously from disease. The cost of the war in lives and money meant that Russia did not gain much from the peace set-tlement, winning some empty steppe north of the Black Sea and regaining Peter the Great’s old prize Azov. Even that was not especially valuable:
the condition was that Azov had to remain unfortified.
Despite its inconclusive result, the war signaled a number of develop-ments that would persist through the ensuing decades. First, Turkish forces were incapable of standing up to much smaller numbers of Russian troops. Though Mu¨nnich’s strategic goals had been too ambitious, he was absolutely correct that Russian firepower and discipline would overmatch the slowly modernizing Turks. Second, terrible losses to disease and insoluble logistics problems gave Russian campaigns a particular pattern:
battles won and fortresses captured did not produce sustained gains, for the Russian army was still incapable of seizing distant territory and stay-ing. In the approaching Seven Years’ War, Russian battlefield accomplish-ments were rendered meaningless by the need to retreat, refit, resupply, and replace casualties.