Why Europeans are the Gods of War.

Sunday, 13 July 2014

Many people seem to be interested in how the Europeans were so successful militarily. They reach simplistic erroneous conclusions such as that the Europeans all had guns and everybody else did not.

While there were certainly other factors at play, such as sophisticated use of sea power and siegecraft, and early attempts to develop military theory, there was one factor that contributed more than any other.

It is important to bear in mind that the primary weapon of an army is and always has been organisation.

Weapons and tactics are less important in the grand scheme of things. Even inferior weapons can get the job done, and minor tactics can be adapted quickly, indeed can be invented on the spot, by armies with sufficient cohesion.

The great advantage European armies possessed in the early modern age was discipline. It is worthwhile to briefly describe this phenomenon.

European armies consistently bested those of the Middle-East and India even when in inferior numbers, following the Thirty Years' War.

This was not because European weapons or tactics were intrinsically superior, it was because Europeans moved and acted as a unit. And they were drilled to the point of being able to accept significant casualties without breaking.

As other Europeans quickly adopted these systems during and after the Thirty Years' War, which saw the rise of permanent standing armies in Europe, it was less dramatic in contests between European states. The Prussians under Frederick appeared to have achieved little, but that was because their opponents were other Europeans, primarily Austrians. In reality the Prussian Army could have annihilated any state outside of Europe with ridiculous ease, if they had ever fought.

Following the Thirty Years' War the first effects of the new European system were to be witnessed in battles against the Turks. During the Austro-Turkish War of 1663-1664, the Austrians bested the Turks, including most famously at St. Gotthard. This was a prelude to the complete subordination of the Turkish system during the Great Turkish War of 1683-1699.

So why did the Austrians win? Prior to the Thirty Years' War the Austrians fought roughly the same way the Turks had. Both raised temporary levies or mercenaries who would engage haphazardly in a ferocious melée and then be disbanded at the end of campaigning season because the bureaucracy wasn't able to afford permanent establishments.

This changed with Austrian participation in the Thirty Years' War. During that conflict Albrecht von Wallenstein created a permanent standing Austrian Army which was never to be disbanded again until the empire's dissolution in 1918.

This army was drilled to perfection, or near to it anyway. And the Austrians were to apply its advantages in the east.

The Turks continued to fight using undisciplined irregulars for the most part, with the Janissaries in the vanguard. The Turkish victories prior to 1663 were dependent upon the training and fury of the Janissary in individual combat, and augmented by sheer numbers.

European forces, usually outnumbered, lacked the cohesion to withstand charging Turkish forces. So the Turks frequently broke holes in European lines and filtered through like a rushing torrent to surround and destroy European armies piecemeal.

Starting with Montecuccoli and the Austrian Army, this was no longer sufficient, or at least it could be countered.

Montecuccoli recognised that Austrian cavalry and skirmishers were inferior to their Turkish counterparts, so these were deployed within the infantry. The infantry was formed in deep formation protected by long pikes and chevaux de frise against cavalry.

Whereas the Austrians would often adopt looser formations against Western opponents, to take advantage of their Hungarian light cavalry, and their famous light infantry like Pandours, Grenzers, and Jägers, against the Turks they fought in very tight formations.

This erased the only advantage the Turks had. The Austrians were now disciplined enough to withstand charges by the Turks, and the Turks could no longer infiltrate through gaps in the Austrian lines. They could swarm around the Austrian body, but so long as this held the Turkish mass could be itself struck down in detail.

Unable to coordinate effectively, Austrian generals were consistently able to concentrate against one or other Turkish wing and annihilate it. Once one flank was destroyed the Austrians were able to concentrate on the other to drive that off too.

In such a way were battles like Slankamen and Zenta won. Austrian discipline allowed them to concentrate quickly in one spot, the inability of the Turks to retain effective command over their undisciplined masses meant that Turkish commanders were unable to oppose this overwhelming concentration at the critical point and were helpless to prevent their armies being defeated one segment at a time.

These tactics were copied by the Russians, who improved upon them by forming square, such as at Kagul. Forming square also allowed Napoleon to win at the Embabeh, where the outnumbered French absolutely annihilated their Egyptian opponents.

Prince Eugene had advised that the tight formation be maintained even in pursuit of the enemy. The Turks scored a few successes by feigning retreat which caused the Austrians to foolishing break ranks, allowing the Turks to get between their units. To avoid this, Eugene specified that the Turks were to be pursued by cavalry only, for if these were routed they could always fall back on the infantry. If the infantry were routed the battle was lost.

The Turks as individual soldiers remained fearsome, as they always had been. They had no shortage of bravery or resolution. Indeed they were oftentimes described at fanatic. Their weapons remained good, especially their artillery. Their engineering and fortifications were fantastic, Montecuccoli noted that their fortified camps were much the superior of the Austrian counterparts.

But they failed to work as a collective. The Turks, especially the Janissaries, would not form column or line. They would not hold formation, and they would not obey commands for more complicated manoeuvres. Once battle was joined there was no controlling them.

Turkish sultans were not unaware of this fact, and repeated attempts were made to reform the army along European lines, but the resistance of the Janissaries was too great. These attempts at restructuring weren't helped by occasional success against incompetent opponents.

For example Wilhelm Neipperg allowed his formation to become too loose at Grocka, the far superior numbers of Turks broke through his ranks and threw the Austrians off the field in disarray. Peter the Great very unwisely crossed the Pruth into Moldavia while leaving the Turks free in the Dobrudzha. With their left flank protected by the curve of the Danube, the Turks were able to cross the Danube to the north between Dobrudzha and Bessarabia, and thereby cut Peter's communications with Russia. Trapped on the right (west) bank of the Pruth, unable to recross into Bessarabia or move forward over the Danube or Sareth, Peter was compelled to capitulate his entire army.

While the enormous numbers of Turkish irregulars in these instances proved useful and showed that the Turks could still win using their own methods, the reality was they could only do so in exceptional circumstances and usually only when their opponent made a serious misstep. A general like Traun or Khevenhüller would not have lost at Grocka as Neipperg had. Russian generals like Potemkin and Rumyantsev learned from Peter to always secure their communications and prevent the Turks from crossing the Danube behind them.

After the Russo-Turkish War of 1735-1739, therefore, the Turks scored very few successes. By 1806 the primary defence of the Ottoman Empire, as British Colonel Francis Chesney noted, was its territories' own lack of provisions south of the Danube. The Russians were prevented from marching over the Balkans not because of Turkish resistance but because their logistics were insufficient to feed them this far away from home with such inadequate roads.

This was changed by 1828 with the existence of the Russian Black Sea fleet and its ability to escort provisions to Varna and Burgas by sea.

By that time the sultans had already been frantically reforming the Ottoman military structure that finally culminated with the destruction and disbanding of the Janissaries forever in 1826.

But it would be a mistake to conclude that up to that time the Turks were losing because they were too few or because their weapons were inferior. Turkish soldiers remained competent, Turkish generals learned to use their resources cleverly, such as in 1788 against Joseph II. Austrian and Russian generals were much impressed by their individual qualities. But their inability to create a true professional standing army frustrated their efforts.

This same factor affected the Indians against the British. Indian armies were often very large, often had more cannons than the British, but they nonetheless were consistently defeated by superior British discipline. What's striking here is that the East India Company quickly created its own standing army funded by taxes taken from the administration of an ever growing territory and manned by native Indians. Though officered and commanded by British, the Indian Army was Indian in rank and file, but they were able to crush their co-nationals due to superior organisation.

So the idea that Europeans showed up with guns and killed all the peaceful sword wielding natives is a myth. This was true, to an extent, in the Americas, at least in the early stages. But in the east it was definitely not the case. The sophisticated Muslim states had long been using gunpowder, even longer than the Europeans had been using it. The Janissaries were using primitive muskets as early as the fifteenth century when Europeans were still charging with knights. And the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans also had advanced gunpowder weapons.

So when one looks for why Europeans succeeded, it was not because of just guns. It was because of their institutions. European bureaucracies emerged from the Thirty Years' War as institutions to create and maintain permanent standing armies. This was not the case anywhere else. There were no career soldiers, besides officers. Troops were raised for campaign and then sent home afterwards to save the treasury the expense of feeding them and to harvest crops to increase tax yields.

Sophisticated European fiscal structures allowed them to pay for trained armies in perpetuity, and to continuously drill and train them even in peacetime. And this was Europe's advantage over all other peoples.

Undisciplined Turkish forces were defeated by the Austrians as a result of the total military revolution during the Thirty Years' War, and Peter the Great was perceptive enough to realise the advantage of the German system, which he had the Germans teach to his soldiers. Henceforth the Austrians and Russians were far the superiors of the Turks and consistently defeated them until the Nizam-i Cedid in the mid-nineteenth century.

The Turks were themselves more resilient than many, and where they suffered setbacks, other less advanced opponents succumbed to the Europeans entirely.

These same factors favoured the Romans in their wars against the barbarians, and favoured the Macedonians under Alexander in their wars against the Persians. Indeed the Europeans after the fall of Rome relied upon a system of contractual service in order to save money, as knights were obliged to appear on the field when summoned, and bring some of their peasants too.

While this saved the king money, for the knights paid for their own equipment, it made for poor cohesion. The Turks were initially invincible because the knights had no discipline, and examples abound, like Nicopolis in 1396, where impetuous knights took it upon themselves to charge the Turks without support, and were cut down by overwhelming numbers.

Gradually this was replaced by a system of mercenaries, who were much better, but extremely expensive and very unreliable. Mercenaries frequently switched sides if bribed, and oftentimes refused to fight if their pay was in arrears.

So even as late as the Long War which ended in 1606, the Austrians did not dare face the Turks in the open field.

But very quickly, in the space of less than fifty years, the Turks went from being unstoppable to being incapable of securing hardly any victory at all, which is quite shocking in retrospect.

Thereafter one is struck by the number of victories gained against the Turks despite the much greater numbers of the latter. At Peterwardein the Austrians defeated 150,000 Turks with 60,000 of their own men. On the River Larga the Russian defeated the Turks numbering over 80,000 with less than 40,000 men. This could not possibly have been due to the Russians having guns and cannons, for the Turks had them too.

Instead it was due to their organisation. The fanatic Turkish assault was like a wave crashing against rocks, submerging them, but not damaging them. The Russians stood their ground and smashed sections of the Turkish forces until the latter panicked and ran away.

Pictured is the assault on the Turkish fortress of Ochakov by the Russians under Grigori Potemkin in December of 1788.

- Kaiser

PS - It should also be noted that the Russians used the bayonet more than they used the musket in these later conflicts. Exemplary Russian generals like Suvorov and Rumyantsev even advised closing with the bayonet as the Russians had the advantage in close combat. If the Russians had superiority in firearms, that was a strange way of showing it. 

Poltova and the fall of Sweden

Saturday, 12 July 2014

In September of 1707, Swedish king Karl XII left occupied Saxony, accompanied by an army of 43,000. Besides this army, count Lewenhaupt, one of his best generals, waited for him in Poland with another 20,000 men, with another 15,000 awaiting back in Sweden and Finland. How all these men, along with Swedens position as a superpower, came crashing down at the fields of Poltava, will be revealed here.

At this time, the Russian czar Peter the Great, was in Lithuania trying to revive the party of former Polish king, August the Strong, who was also the elector of Saxony, who had been replaced with Stanisław I Leszczyński under the pressure of Karl XII and his armies.
The czar had ordered his troops to retreat at the first sign of Karl XII following them, and the Russians were not late to oblige his command.
The Russian forces had entered and left Poland over 20 times, and this was not a daunting task.
The nobles in Poland were one of the strongest aristocracies in the world, and the nobles were extremely wary against any attempts of the monarch to solidify his hold, and because of this Poland was a very open country, with no fortifications protecting the borders.
During the time Karl was in Saxony, the Russians had advanced all the way to Lemberg, in southern Poland, and now Peter the Great was in Grodno in Lithuania.

Karl left Poland in Stanislaus' hands, who was given 10,000 Swedish and Polish forces to secure his throne.
In January 1708, Karl marched on Grodno through the ice and snow. He had already crossed the river Nemen, situated close to Grodno, before the czar was informed of Karl closing in.
After capturing Grodno from the fleeing Russians, all Russian troops in Lithuania withdrew to the voivodeship Minski, close to the Russian border.
The Swedish followed them, and both the fleeing Russians and the pursuing Swedish marched day and night, through the winter hardships.

From Grodno all the way to Dniepr, the area is filled with marshes and wilderness, and there were little supplies to be found anywhere.
On the 25 June 1708, Karl and his forces found themselves in front of the river Berezina, right across from Boryslav, in modern Ukraine. In this area, the czar had gathered a large amount of forces, with strong fortifications to protect them.
Karl deployed a few of his regiments by the beach of Berezina, as if he would cross there, right in front of his enemies eyes, and then he took the rest of his forces south where the Swedish built a bridge, and fought back 3,000 Russians attempting to stop them.

The Russians did not sit around and wait for what would come however, and they broke up and fell back towards Dniepr, while destroying the roads and everything else they came across.
On his way to Dniepr, Karl encountered a force of 20,000 Russians who had entrenched themselves at a place called Holofsin, situated behind a swamp.
The only way to get there was to cross a river.
Karl took his Life Guard on foot and got into the waters, passing the swamp and the river, and while he moved forward, he gave orders to his cavalry to move around the swamp and attack the Russian flank. The Russians were suprised to find that apperently, there were no places safe enough to protect them from the Swedish, who attacked them from two sides at the same time.
This battle was commemorated by the Swedish with a medal, that said: "Silvae, paludes, aggeres, hostes victi" (Fortifications, marshes, and enemies overcome).

The Russians were driven back from Poland and into their own land from every direction, and the czar were seriously thinking about peace with Sweden.
Karl, however answered the peace requests by saying that the czar could have his negotiations with Karl in Moscow, a bold statement telling the czar that peace was out of the question until Russia was completely subdued.
Czar Peter answered this with a famous statement: "My brother Karl thinks himself an Alexander (the Great). But I flatter myself with, that in me, he shall find no Darius (III)".
Following the Dniepr north of Mohilev, you find the province of Smolensk, and through Smolensk goes the road between Moscow and Poland, and this is where the Russians and their czar fled, with the Swedish right behind them.
Over and over again, the Swedish engaged their enemies in combat, and even though the Swedish were often the victorious ones in these small skirmishes, they drained them of troops and energy.

2 September 1708, Karl XII attacked an enemy army of 10,000 cavalry and around 6,000 Kalmyks near Smolensk.
The Kalmyks are tartars, and lived between the Kingdom of Astrakhan, which belonged to Russia, and in Samarkand, home to the Uzbeki tartars.
The Russian czar claimed to be the ruler of the Kalmyks, but because of their nomadic life-style, it did prove difficult to rule them, and Peter the Great was content with ruling them like the Ottoman Sultan ruled the Arabs, one day the czar looked the other way when the Kalmyks pillaged and plundered their surroundings, and the next day he punished them.

Karl XII had under his command 6 cavalry regiments and 4,000 infantry and when they first attacked, the Russians withdrew, but as they did so, Karl did not notice the Kalmyks who had been hiding along the roads and now they sprung forward and they managed to surround one of the infantry regiment with the help of the rest of the Russian army.
The Swedish did eventually win the battle, but it cost them.
The way towards Moscow was now open to Karl XII, but instead of continuing towards it, and instead of awaiting the arrival of count Lewenhaupt with 15,000 reinforcements, Karl took his army and turned east into the Ukraine.
In the Ukraine, Karl met with a man named Mazepa, who originally was a Polish noble, but who had been appointed the ruler of Ukraine by the czar.
When the czar proposed to Mazepa that he would implement harsh discipline in Ukraine, and especially with the Cossacks living there, Mazepa said that their way of life made any form of military discipline almost impossible, and the czar then threatened to impale Mazepa for this "treachery".
And so, Mazepa sought to make a deal with Karl XII, to speed up the fall of Peter the Great.

Mazepa promised Karl 30,000 Cossack soldiers along with supplies, and so the Swedish decided to spend the winter in Ukraine, and then march into Russia.
When they finally arrived at the shores of the river Desna, they did not find Mazepa there, but instead a Russian army awaited them. Karl decided to cross the river and attack them, and the Russians consisted of 8,000 men, which proved to be not enough to stop the Swedish.
When they finally met Mazepa, he came to them, not as a powerful ally, but more as a person in exile.
He had only managed to get away with around 6,000 men and some gold and silver.
Count Lewenhaupt, along with his 15,000 reinforcements, were stopped at the village of Ljesna, where he found himself against a Russian army of 40,000 men, commanded by czar Peter the Great himself.
After 5 attacks, the Swedish had been beaten, and only 4,000 men remained, while the Russians had lost 6,000 but they had routed the Swedish, showing everyone that Sweden was not invincible.

Lewenhaupt arrived with his men, but without supplies that were so badly needed, so during the winter in the beginning of 1709, Karl XII decided to take his army and march into Russia, despite this winter being one of the coldest in memory.
During these marsches, they were constantly attacked by small groups of Russians, and in April, the Swedish had only 18,000 men left, and they were in bad shape.
Karl managed to recruit some mercenaries on the way, and when he arrived at Poltava, which was a city converted to a supply magazine by Peter, he commanded 30,000 men, but the czar was fast approaching, with a huge army.

During a reconnaissance mission on 17 June, Karl was shot in the foot, and they medics had to cut extremely deep into the foot, to avoid amputation.
They did not manage to take Poltava by force, so on 28 June, the Russians and Swedes stood ready for the Battle of Poltava.

The Swedish infantry advanced towards the Russian camp.
Its attack was met by the Russian cavalry which forced them to retreat.
As the infantry withdrew, the Swedish cavalry counterattacked, driving back the Russians.
Their advance was halted by heavy fire and they fell back.
Field Marshal Carl Gustaf Rehnskiöld again sent the infantry forward and they succeeded in taking two Russian redoubts.

Despite this foothold, the Swedes were not able to hold them.
As they attempted to bypass the Russian defenses, Prince Aleksandr Menshikov's forces nearly encircled them and inflicted massive casualties.
Fleeing back, the Swedes took refuge in the Budyshcha Forest where Karl rallied them. Around 9:00 in the morning, both sides advanced into the open.
Charging forward, the Swedish ranks were pounded by the Russian guns.
Striking the Russian lines, they nearly broke through.
As the Swedes battled, the Russian right swung around to flank them.
Under extreme pressure, the Swedish infantry broke and began fleeing the field.
The cavalry advanced to cover their withdrawal, but was met with heavy fire.
From his stretcher at the rear, Karl ordered the army to begin retreating.

The Battle of Poltava was a disaster for Sweden and a turning point in the Great Northern War.
Swedish casualties numbered 6,900 dead and wounded, as well as 2,800 taken prisoner.
Among those captured was Field Marshal Rehnskiöld.
Russian losses were 1,350 killed and 3,300 wounded.
Retreating from the field, the Swedes moved along the Vorskla towards its confluence with the Dniepr.
Lacking enought boats to cross the river, Karl and Mazepa crossed with a bodyguard of 1,000-3,000 men.
Riding west, Karl found sanctuary with the Ottomans in Bendery, Moldavia.

Pictured is a painting of the Battle of Poltava by Denis Martens the Younger, and a painting showing Karl XII and Ivan Mazepa at the river Dniepr after the battle.

- Tobbe

Russia and Germany, 1815, strategical analysis.

While examining the distances from Constantinople to Vienna earlier, I was suddenly struck with the uncomfortable proximity of the Russians to the two German capitals after 1815. The Russian forward garrisons in western Poland were only about one-hundred and eighty miles from Berlin, while their forward garrisons in southern Poland were only about two-hundred and twenty miles from Vienna, and one-hundred and sixty miles from Budapest.

Granted Austria was in the better position since the Riesengebirge and the Carpathians throw themselves between Poland and the two Habsburg capitals. Poor Prussia had no defences at all. It was a straight shot across flat ground to the capital on the Spree.

Opposed to that, it’s over four-hundred miles from East Prussia to St. Petersburg, and six-hundred miles to Moscow. From Galicia it’s about seven-hundred and fifty miles to St. Petersburg and close to six-hundred miles to Moscow. Attacking St. Petersburg would be pointless, since without a navy that city would never fall to siege, neither Austria or Prussia had a navy of any value, while even if the Austrian Navy could make it to the Baltic the Russian Navy was better still and would sink it.

With Lake Ladoga to the east and Neva Bay to the west the city could be supplied indefinitely, while any attack on Neva Bay would have to overcome the obstacle of the Kronstadt which could easily hit any ship in the narrow channels on either side of it.

With the Russian Navy and the guns of Kronstadt in combination, nothing was entering Neva Bay. I doubt even the Royal Navy could have forced its way in. This why I have concluded that St. Petersburg is in one of the most beautiful strategic positions imaginable.

Why do you think Napoleon attacked Moscow even though Moscow was no longer the capital of Russia? Because attacking St. Petersburg was a pointless waste of time. Why do you think that St. Petersburg survived nearly four years of siege by the Germans in WWII and never fell? Because its geographic location is the best I ever saw, with the exception of Constantinople, of course.

So in many respects Russia seemed like the new Ottoman Empire for the German Powers. Their imminent danger forced them together in resistance, especially Prussia’s danger. Austria had a solid chance of repulsing the Russians from the line of the Riesengebirge and the Carpathians, albeit at the sacrifice of Galicia.

Prussia was completely exposed. By itself Prussia was doomed, so Prussia needed Austria. St. Petersburg wasn’t going to fall without a navy that neither of them possessed, and attacking Moscow would have yielded basically the same results as Napoleon’s invasion. So Russia’s strategic position against either of them alone was invincible.

That said, Russia’s strategic position was altered to its detriment when facing them both in combination. She'd almost certainly lose Poland to a massive pincer attack like she did in WWI. But even so, that would hardly be fatal to Russia. Its loss would be a sharp blow though, and would allow Berlin and Vienna (and Budapest) to breathe again.

For this reason Metternich cleverly tied Prussia to Austria, since Prussia was completely defenceless without Austria in the east. The interesting thing is, Bismarck’s system was a Revised Second Edition of Metternich’s, as now Austria became tied to Germany, since Austria would be vulnerable without the Germans. It’s interesting that Bismarck’s system is practically identical to Metternich’s except that the roles were reversed.

So at first glance it would seem that Russia was putting herself at risk by moving her capital two-hundred miles west and placing it on the sea, but in actuality that’s virtually the best move she could have done. Moscow is just an “ordinary” city on a tributary of the Volga. Defensible enough, but still vulnerable to siege as any other city.

St. Petersburg was practically invulnerable. It could be reinforced and resupplied by sea from either the east or west forever, and cutting these lifelines was extraordinarily difficult. Unless one successfully navigated the channels between Kronstadt and the mainland on either side, or took Kronstadt (which is itself easily reinforced by way of Neva Bay), then the lifeline could never be severed.

But even supposing that Neva Bay could be closed, canals linking the city to Lake Ladoga allow supplies and reinforcements to arrive from the east. Rivers and canals connect Lake Ladoga to Lake Onega, which is connected to Lake Vyg and thence to the White Sea. While waterways also connect Lake Ladoga to Lake Beloye and Lake Rybinsk and thence to the Volga and the endless steppes to the South-East.

Cutting off these links would take a lot of walking along a broad front that would expose one to very dangerous overextension. Peter the Great was a genius for recognising the value of this position.

To demonstrate, the first map depicts the series of waterways connects St. Petersburg by way of the Neva-Ladoga-Svir-Onega-Vyg-White Sea and thence to the rest of the world. A backdoor route for logistical sustenance of the city to the northeast.

While the map shows how canals connect St. Petersburg by way of Neva-Ladoga-Svir-Onega-Beloye-Rybinsk-Volga-Don and thence to Moscow and ultimately the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea by way of the Volga-Don Canal. This offers another route of supply and another means of keeping communications open and offering another backdoor to sustain the city with supplies from the southeast.

This latter system was not constructed until several years after Peter’s death, not until the reign of Paul, but the addition to St. Petersburg’s strategic strength is considerable. The city would have too be severed from all directions in order to force its capitulation.

And the map is the city of St. Petersburg itself. Supplies can easily be brought in from the west, through the Baltic which connects the city with the rest of the world, or even if the Baltic is closed by a power holding the islands of Denmark, at least with Scandinavia and possibly the Baltic States/Poland/Germany. Some place with supplies anyway.

Any attempt to close the western window of St. Petersburg would be frustrated by the island of Kotlin and the fortress of Kronstadt whose guns easily control the narrow channels on either side. Forcing Kronstadt Bay by sea would consequently be extraordinarily difficult, yet failure to do so would allow the city to sustain itself with seaborne shipments of necessary revictualling.

So. in short, the city is virtually impossible to take by siege. Another advantage is that even should St. Petersburg fall, an enemy could make no use of it because Kronstadt would prevent any ships leaving or entering the harbour to supply the new occupants, while the water networks to the southeast and northeast could simply stop sending supplies.

Thus if the city were taken and the Russians forced to lay siege to retake it, the enemy could not use the advantages to sustain their garrison that the Russians enjoyed, so long as the latter retained possession of Kronstadt and the waterways to the east.

It should also be noted that the way to take the city would be to close the Baltic and the Svir. The Svir is protected by the size of Lake Ladoga which forces an opponent to go around either north or south, assuming they didn't possess a fleet on the lake, which they wouldn't. The approaches to the Svir from the north are empty of infrastructure, full of dense forests, devoid of people, and bitterly cold.

So an invasion from Finland would be difficult. It would likely be easier to cut the Baltic-White Sea water network farther north, but the results of that would yet allow supplies from the Caspian-Baltic-Black Sea waterway to reach the city. So one would have to attempt to cut the Svir from the southern approaches.

This is what the Germans attempted in the Second World War, and found it extremely tenuous because the area, besides being freezing cold in winter, is a massive marshland in summer. The region of the notorious Volkhov Swamps.

Mechanised warfare is out of the question as the ground is all morass, with large portions of it completely submerged. This entirely favours the defenders. Thus the Svir is well protected no matter how you approach it. And as long as the Svir remains open, St. Petersburg cannot fall.

The final photograph depicts German troops in the Volkhov Swamps. This is what lay between an enemy and the Svir. Forget about Blitzkrieg. Tanks would just sink. The only think getting through is men, plodding through with boots.

Carthage under Hannibal defeats Rome in Tuscany 217 bc

Saturday, 21 June 2014

21 June, 217 B.C., the Carthaginians under the famous general Hannibal Barca defeated the Romans under Gaius Flaminius on the northern shore of Lake Trasimene in Tuscany.

The Battle of Lake Trasimene was one of the most brilliant victories in history, and set the stamp on Hannibal's genius.

Having crossed the Alps and entered the Apennine Peninsula, Hannibal had defeated the Romans on the River Trebbia in what is now Piedmont, before crossing the Cisa Pass over the Apennines to enter Tuscany.

The Romans had sent another army of about 50,000 under the Consul Gaius Flaminius to intercept and defeat the upstart Carthaginians, numbering about 30,000, in the sunshine of the hilly groves and vines that make Tuscany famous and popular as a tourist attraction.

Hannibal intended to draw Flaminius into battle by ravaging the surrounding countryside, but Flaminius did not budge from his fortified position in Arretium (Arezzo).

Hannibal then decided upon an audacious manoeuvre to cut off Flaminius's communications with Rome. This was perhaps the first time in warfare that a general had intentionally severed the line of communications of an army by turning its flank, in this case Flaminius's left.

Having moved southwest of Arretium, Hannibal placed himself between Flaminius and the city of Rome. This extremely effective manoeuvre forced the Roman general to come out and fight on ground of Hannibal's choosing in order to re-open his link with his base.

This movement was to be widely copied after Hannibal, such as by the Austrians under Leopold von Daun who employed the exact same tactic in 1757 against Frederick the Great, who was then besieging Prague. This forced Frederick to fight, and lose, at Kolin.

Returning to our subject, though, we find Flaminius marching out to meet Hannibal. Hannibal had skillfully passed east along the northern shore of Lake Trasimene, along a narrow defile separating the lake to the south from some wooded ridges to the north.

Flaminius followed in pursuit, entering the defile and marching towards Hannibal who had drawn up his infantry at the eastern end of the passage.

As the Roman rear-guard entered the narrow defile, the Carthaginians blasted their trumpets to signal their forces situated in the woods to pour down the ridge.

They had soon cut off the entrance, and were now falling upon the Romans from three directions to push them against the lake. It was an ambush.

Unable to escape, the Romans fought for over four hours as the Carthaginians separated their army into three parts and overwhelmed them one by one.

When it was all said and done, the entire Roman army lay dead on the placid shore of the lake, Flaminius's lifeless body among them.

Hannibal Barca had won again, using clever manoeuvre to force his enemy into an trap, where he was cut to pieces, despite being nearly twice as numerous.

Great was the fear and consternation in Rome when it was heard that Tuscany had been despoiled and their great army was no more. Hannibal continued south through Latium, receiving the defection of Capua in Campania, south of Rome, and then marched southeast into Apulia to strike the granaries and fields that fed the Roman capital.

Here, during the following summer, in 216 B.C., Hannibal would win his greatest victory and one of the most brilliant successes of all time; Cannae. But we'll save that story for another day.

Depicted is a map showing the battlefield. In red is the route of the Romans. The rising ground forming the forested ridges north of the lake is shown in yellow, where Hannibal's troops awaited the signal to descend upon the unsuspecting Romans and slaughter them from three sides.

- Kaiser

Scottish independence and Britain's Strategic Position.

Tuesday, 17 June 2014

The independence of Scotland could be a potentially serious diminution in the strategic position of the United Kingdom.

Firstly, there would be an independent nation sharing the island of Great Britain for the first time in over three centuries. Historically the French had close ties to Scotland and used Scotland as a distraction upon England.

Without going so far as to say that it will recur, I will simply limit myself to saying it can recur.

But the relative strengths of Scotland and England have grown to an enormous disparity since the Act of Union in 1707. At nearly ten times the population of Scotland, and more than ten times the GDP, England has little to fear from her northern neighbour.

What's more serious, however, is Scotland robbing England of her geographic advantages.

Currently the only nations that can circumvent England's control of Europe's coasts are Spain, Portugal, and France.

All other nations have to pass through the Straits of Gibraltar, the Straits of Dover, or through the Norwegian Sea.

If Scotland were to become independent, and, like Ireland, deny England the use of her facilities, this would tear a gaping hole in England's fortuitous position.

The northern European nations, most especially Russia and Germany, could escape into the Atlantic between Scotland and Norway whereas before they could not.

This would hugely complicate England's insular defences. Once the enemy is out into the open sea, where would he go? The answer, of course, is wherever he'd like. And it would extremely difficult to track him down.

Controlling narrow waterways is easy, hunting ships in the Atlantic is akin to finding needles in a haystack. If that haystack was 41 million square miles. And since all the oceans are connected, we're talking potentially 133 million square miles (presuming they won't sail in the Arctic for obvious reasons).

Obviously finding a ship in that vast of an area is impossible. The British would have to rely on their age old strategy of attempting to catch the enemy when he had to re-enter port. While this served Britain in good stead, as a general strategy it left much to be desired. For the Spanish and French were liable to slip through the cracks and land in Canada, in America, in Egypt, in Ireland, wherever the fuck they felt like.

Britain's control of Scotland made this impossible for Germany during the two world wars. The much more narrow waters between Scotland and Norway could be effectively patrolled and radar could pick up any activity. When the Bismarck made its sally, it was quickly found and hunted to extinction.

Scotland also provided England with superb bases for her fleets to control the North Sea, especially against Germany but also against Russia.

Rosyth on the Firth of Forth is an excellent harbour, but the real treasure is Scapa Flow. Without these, the farthest north a British fleet could dock would be the estuary of the Humber, or perhaps even as far south as the Medway.

While this would prevent the British from catching an enemy fleet, these harbours also were much less useful than Scapa.

Scapa Flow is virtually the most perfect anchorage on the planet. It has everything a navalist would need for a base. It has three narrow, easily controlled, exits leading in three different directions. One could go south, east, or west as necessary, without having to circumvent anything, and waste time thereby.

The harbour is relatively shallow, any sneak attack would not necessarily inflict total losses. The Germans scuttled their own fleet, but the British were able to drag them back up to the surface as they had not gone down that deep. The British could equally refloat their own ships if sunk in the harbour.

Another point in its favour is the fact that it's enormous. Scapa is over 120 miles square, it could dock the entire US Navy with room to spare. The entire Grand Fleet found comfortable lodgings there. This is doubly advantageous because any sudden attack would give the fleet plenty of room for evasive manoeuvres, unlike the narrow strait jackets of the Humber and the Medway.

The islands forming the harbour could easily be utilised to provide for aerodromes and drydocks to shield the fleet from aerial assault and to repair the ships if necessary.

Another superb attribute is that the islands are remote. They have a population of 21,000, which is puny. Security would be easily obtained. Unlike farther south where spies would find it easy to blend in, and where positions of the ships would be almost absurdly easy to discover.

Remoteness protects the fleet even more by vastly increasing the distance between the enemy and it. It is unlikely aircraft or ships making for Scapa would get anywhere near the anchorage before the fleet was aware. Since the distance would increase, the flying time of the enemy would also be much more limited than farther south.

For all of these reasons the British found Scapa to be a gift from God. In Portsmouth, in Chatham, in Hull, the harbours are narrow, chock full of civilian craft, and perilously close to Europe. German aircraft could cause havoc in them, and given the many civilian ships and the limited space, the ships' freedom of movement would be much restricted and their time under fire would be much increased.

Without Scapa the Germans may well have been able to sink the entire Royal Navy from the air. As it were, Scapa was too far away and too huge. The Germans based in Norway attempted to hit the fleet base but failed to cause any serious damage.

If the British were to be deprived of Scapa they might well face the prospect of having their fleet sunk by aircraft, especially if their air force were inferior to the enemy's, as the RAF was to the Germans in WWII.

The loss of Scapa could severely compromise the Home Islands. Not only would the enemies be able to enter the Atlantic, but Britain's own defences would be called into question. If a sudden French air attack sunk the fleet while it was swinging at its moorings in Portsmouth, what would there be to stop the French from landing in the Thames?

With a fleet snugly tucked away in Scapa, the risks of landings would be so great that it would be unlikely that the enemy would attempt them. Thus embodying Lord Torrington's "fleet-in-being" concept.

The map shows Scapa Flow, with the Scottish mainland to the south. The islands form a protective cocoon around the anchorage, with narrow channels allowing access and excess. Across these channels could be strung sonar booms and anti-submarine nets. On land could be based aeroplanes.

It should also be noted that the United States derives immense advantage from Britain's position, and its own influence in Europe would be diminished by the UK's loss of Scotland.

Russia and the Crimea. A not so brief history!

Monday, 16 June 2014

Apologies for the length of this one, but much talk has been made of the recent developments in eastern Europe, most particularly the acquisition of the Crimea by the Russian Federation. I thought it would be useful to examine the region's history and Russia's long-standing interest in the area.

It's interesting to note the history of the Crimea. And I'm not just saying this for idle fascination, but because it gives us an window through which to view Russian foreign policy and Russia's current requirements in regards to the peninsula.

So when taking a cursory glance at a map the most immediate and obvious fact one is struck with is naturally that the Crimea juts south from the Ukraine into the Black Sea.

It should be understood what this entails.

First off it ensures that the power controlling the sea has the advantage. Being connected to the rest of the Ukraine only by the very narrow Isthmus of Perekop, the Crimea is a distinct geographic entity that generally took a different historical path than the rest of the region north of the Black Sea.

It is well known that in antiquity the Sarmatians and Scythians, now known to be Iranic-speaking tribes related distantly to the Persians, inhabited the steppes of southern Russia. But they did not inhabit the Crimea, or at least not for long.

For the Greeks established colonies at Theodosia, Eupatoria, Panticapaeum (today's Kerch), and most importantly at Tauric Chersonesus (today's Sevastopol), which was built by Greek colonists from Heraclea Pontica, on the northwest coast of Anatolia, in the fifth century B.C., twenty-five hundred years ago.

Heraclea was itself founded by the city of Megara located in a plain on the Isthmus of Corinth between the mountains of Geraneia and Pateras, whose people also founded the much more famous city of Byzantium near the Bosphorus.

But what's particularly interesting is that the Greeks also established settlements at nearly all of the other current major ports on the northern shore of the Black Sea. At Tsemes Bay, where today the city of Novorossisk lies, was Bata. At the mouth of the Southern Bug where the great shipyard of Nikolaeyev now stands, was the city of Olbia. The mouth of the Don, where Catherine the Great built the port of Rostov, was already noted as advantageous and settled by Greeks from Miletus in the third century B.C., which they called Tanais. At Ochakov was the Greek colony of Borysthenes. At Odessa was the city of Tyras.

Of all these places, the most important was Chersonesus. This was partially because it was by far the most defensible, as it lay in the mountains of the southern Crimea. But apart from its ability to be easily defended by the Isthmus of Perekop and the Crimean Mountains in the south, it was in a perfect central position to command the maritime access of all the major rivers draining the steppes to the north.

Given their superior sea power the Greeks were able to retain control of the Crimea and many of these outlying harbours through the whole of antiquity. Even as late as the thirteenth century, nearly two-thousand years later, when the rest of the steppes had been continuously washed by the flood of Asiatic conquerors like the Huns, the Alans, the Pechenegs, the Avars, the Bulgars, the Magyars, the Slavs, and the Mongols, we find that Chersonesus was still a thriving port populated by Greeks and owing allegiance to the Byzantine Empire.

The Byzantines were at last supplanted, but not by Slavs and Tatars from the north as one might have expected. Instead they gave way to Italians from the city of Genoa. Sevastopol became Kalamita. What is now Balaclava was given the very Italian name of Cembalo, and the old Greek Theodosia became Caffa. The Genoese also established trading posts at Azov and Novorossisk.

Genoese rule finally came to an end following the rise of the Ottoman Empire during the fifteenth century. The Turks began a vigorous naval construction programme to challenge Italian and Spanish supremacy in the Mediterranean, but what many tend to overlook is the much less dramatic corollary of this effort, their establishment of total maritime supremacy over the Euxine.

The Turks extinguished the Italians and erected fortresses on the ruins of the Greeks who had pinpointed the strategic importance of the areas almost two-thousand years before. Chersonesus became Akyar. Theodosia became Kefe. Eupatoria became Gözleve. And on the mainland the Turks built fortresses to control the Southern Bug at Kinburn near the old Greek city of Olbia, Akkerman to control the Dniester near the ruins of Tyras, Özi on the remains of Borysthenes, and Azak near Tanais and the more recent Genoese settlement of La Tana. Lastly, the Turks constructed a fort on the Tsemes Bay named Soğucak.

From Akyar and its superb natural harbour the Turks were able to remain in constant communication with their base as the Greeks and Genoese had been able to do, and additionally from this harbour they were able to retain control of the mouths of every major river as well as the important Tsemes Bay.

Peter was the first of the Tsars to realise the significance of this fact, essentially that Russia was at the mercy of the Turks. In order to reach the outer world in full force and emerge as a Great Power, the Black Sea must be opened to Russian trade. The Tatars of the steppes fought long wars with the Russians, but time was on the side of the Muscovites who continuously pushed them south until their last stronghold was in the Crimea under the direct protection of the Turks. But here the Russians ran into problems.

Possessing no fleets, and no habours in which to shelter any fleets, the Russians found taking the Turkish forts at the river estuaries to be nigh impossible. With their backs to the sea, the Turks could remain in supply with Anatolia and the Balkans forever. And the Turkish fleet could remain close at hand issuing out from Akyar as required.

The Russians were not oblivious to the fact that the Turkish position was anchored on the Crimea. Unfortunately, initial Russian attempts to directly strike the heart by forcing Perekop and physically occupying the Crimea resulted in lamentable failure.

The primitive Russian communications frequently broke down, leaving crucial provisions in short supply. The distances to their bases were immense, and without control of the sea they were forced to use the narrow neck at Perekop which resulted in many Russians dying from famine and disease, such as during 1687 and 1689 under Prince Vassili Golitsyn, depressing defeats at the same time that Prince Eugene was driving the Turks out of Hungary and Francesco Morosini was capturing the Morea. In 1695 Peter himself laid siege to Azak for several months but was forced to call it off, having achieved nothing.

Peter next sought to rectify this situation by a costly, but successful, assault on the fortress of Azak. This was assisted by an embryonic Russian fleet, a small flotilla in the Don, and in July of 1696 Azak was taken. The Russians built a new fort to the west of the site, naming it Azov. On the newly acquired territory Peter also built Taganrog in 1698. But his defeat and capture on the Pruth in 1711 resulted in his being forced to demolish the fortifications of Azov and Taganrog, burn his fleet, and return his gains to the Porte.

As the Greeks had proven long before, the power on the Black Sea with its communications by water was at a distinct advantage over the power on land to the north. Just as the Greeks could not be dislodged save by the naval power of the Italians, and the Italians could not be dislodged save by the naval power of the Turks, despite all the successes of the Mongols all around the Crimea, so too would the Turks remain until dislodged by the naval power of Russia. And so it became imperative for Russia to build a fleet.

The clock was unfortunately set back for Russia following Peter's defeat in 1711. But his successors made up for lost ground by starting another war in 1735, which Austria joined in 1737. Though the Russians took the more inland Tatar capital of Bakhchisary in 1736, they failed to take any ports and retreated back upon the Ukraine once they ran out of supplies. The Russians captured Azov by storm in June of 1736, and the following year took Özi, by then becoming known as Ochakov. The Russians again forced Perekop and reached major inland cities in 1737, but lack of supplies and Turkish reinforcements by sea again compelled them to retire.

The Austrians were meanwhile defeated in Bosnia and, even more seriously, outside of Belgrade, after which time Belgrade was lost and Austria withdrew from the war in humiliation. Though the Russians had crossed the Dniester to take Khotin and invade Moldavia, the removal of Austria from the war and the impending declaration of war by Sweden seriously undermined Russia's ability to continue fighting. Accordingly, the Russians gave up their more ambitious claims, in the end settling for just Azov and the mouth of the Don, and agreeing that they were not allowed to maintain a fleet on the Black Sea.

But, naturally, this was bound to be only a temporary check. In 1768 the ambitions of Catherine the Great again put Russia at odds with the Turks. But interestingly, this time the Russians managed to bring a fleet into action. Their fleet in the Baltic circumnavigated Europe to reach the Aegean, where it engaged and destroyed the Turkish fleet at Chesma.

The Turks were most foolish for facing the Russians there when they could have retired into the Black Sea, where the Russians could not follow. As it were, now deprived of their most powerful ships, the Turks in the Black Sea were hard put to protect their forts. At the same time, the Russian victory under Admiral Alexei Orlov allowed the Orlov Revolt in Greece and the Balkans to flare up, tying down thousands of Turkish soldiers, raising the spectre of dismemberment of Turkey's European empire, and dramatically displaying the boundless ambition of St. Petersburg in the Balkans for the first time.

However, thanks to the intervention of Austria and the still tenacious resistance of the Turks, the Treaty of Kutchuk Kainardji in 1774 was not as bad as it could have been. The Southern Bug with the fortress of Kinburn, became the new western border of Russia. There Prince Gregori Potemkin built Nikolayev, the largest shipyard in Russia. The Crimea became independent of the Turks, as a sort of buffer, to which was included the mouth of the Don. And finally the line of the River Kuban demarcated the two empires in the northern Caucasus.

But Catherine's ambitions were insatiable. In 1783 with great pomp she annexed the Crimea and designated Sevastopol as the Russian Black Sea fleet's headquarters. As a sort of delayed reaction, the Turks declared war in 1787. In 1788 Prince Potemkin, with the help of the rapidly growing Russian fleet, captured Ochakov. Admiral Fyodor Ushakov then turned his fleet against the Turks at sea, which defeated their fleet at Tendra and the Kerch Strait. This allowed the Russians to cut the supply lines of the Turkish forts and to ferry supplies to their own armies. Not surprisingly, therefore, the Russians under Aleksandr Suvorov were able to push as far as the Danube before the Ottomans threw in the towel.

Once again foreign intervention, mostly Prussian and French, together with another invasion by Sweden, compelled the Russians to accept a modest peace. They pushed their frontier to the Dneister and the fortress of Akkerman controlling its mouth, where they were soon to found the city of Odessa. But Russia won the greatest prize of all, the Crimea, for the Sultan recognised its annexation by Russia and could no longer prevent the construction of a Russian fleet.

The decline of the Turks, exacerbated by their numerous enemies fighting them on multiple fronts, had allowed the Russians to gain naval supremacy in the Black Sea. For the first time in history, the power dominating the Black Sea was centred on the north shore instead of on the south shore. This was unnatural as Russia's centre was still comparatively very distant. But Turkey's weakness allowed this to happen.

Because of this the Russians were to fight with increasing success against the Turks in the following century. The latter, deprived of their sea power, could no longer adequately project their power north of the Balkan or Caucasus ranges in Europe and Asia respectively. As a result they could no longer maintain their strategically placed fortresses, allowing the Russians to seize them before crossing the Danube at Galatz.

So in the next war, that of 1806-1812, the Russians crossed the Danube into Bulgaria and made off with Bessarabia, pushing their border to the Pruth. They also achieved a protectorate over Georgia. In the war after that, 1828-1829, the Russians got farther than they ever had before. The Balkan Mountains were successully traversed. Fed by supplies over water to Varna and Burgas, the Russians pushed down the Maritsa to capture Adrianople on the Thracian Plain. Constantinople lay before them, but the Turks panicked, deciding to sue for peace. The discomfort this caused in European capitals convinced the powers to impose a moderating influence on Russia.

Consequently, Russia accepted the annexation of all Turkish territory north of the Caucasus, which Russia began to push to the south of henceforth, already having won wars against Persia pushing the Russian border to the Araxes to the east, and also the creation of an independent Greece and Serbia.

The power of Russia was now greatly increasing. It became clear to the powers that Russian naval supremacy expedited Russian attacks through the Balkans and the Caucasus, allowing them to sustain many more men and to move them much more rapidly than previously, while the Turkish defences were by constrast fatally undermined. Statesmen began fearing that Russia would soon destroy the Ottoman Empire. The Russians themselves unfortunately encouraged this belief by suggesting a partition of Turkey. But Russia's confidence was soon to endure a severe setback.

In 1853 the Russians invaded the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia. Immediately they were demanded to evacuate by Austria. Where Austria threatened, France and Britain acted. Both declared war on Russia and began the Crimean War.

Many think this war was silly and pointless, nothing could be farther from the truth. The overarching purpose was to destroy the Russian Black Sea fleet, by this action alone could Turkey be saved, which was at length achieved. Not without difficulty, however, for unfortunately the Russians prudently withdrew their fleet into Sevastopol.

While this protected their fleet, it was a dangerous game as there was nowhere else it could go. This meant that the British and French need only bring artillery within range of the harbour, as the Americans were to do at Santiago de Cuba to force Admiral Pascual Cervera out in 1898, to force the Russians into the open.

The Crimean War again demonstrated the superiority of the sea over the land in this quadrant of the globe. The Russians were to be reminded that the only reason they held sway in the Black Sea was on account of Turkish decadence. Faced with the power of France and Britain at sea, they had no hope of victory. And it was soon found out that the British and French could bring troops to the Crimea more quickly by sea than Russia could by land over its dreadful roads. The Russians found themselves not only unable to push their enemies back into the sea, but could not even relieve Sevastopol, which at last fell after a lengthy siege.

Russia's proud sailors scuttled their fleet in the harbour, and Russia's Black Sea presence came to an end for the next several decades. Russia's frontier was pushed back to the Dneister, as Bessarabia was returned to the Turks.

Now one might object that the Crimean War failed to achieve its purpose, for the Russians declared the 1856 Treaty of Paris null and void, deciding to rebuild their fleet following France's defeat at Prussia hands in 1871. I am of a much different opinion.

Though the Russians had declared their intention to rebuild their fleet, by the time war again broke out with Turkey in 1877, they hadn't actually seriously begun to do so. They found themselves with no fleet, and failing this they were unable to turn the position of Chataldzha that was the last ditch protecting Constantinople. Though the Russians were able to set up an impressive system of supply that stretched overland through the Troyan and Shipka Passes, they were greatly delayed at Plevna and permanently halted at Chataldzha.

The sluggish Russian advance compared unfavourably to their achievements in 1828-1829, and this was most probably due to inferior logistics caused by their lack of a fleet. When the Russians arrived before Chataldzha they found themselves unable to muster the strength to assault it head on, and had no fleet with which to bypass it.

Thus the Crimean War arguably saved the Turks one last time. Unable to seize Constantinople, the Russians contented themselves by stripping Turkey of Bulgaria, forcing her to disgorge the valley of the Morava to Serbia, Thessaly to Greece, while taking Kars and Bessarabia (again) for themselves. Though the Turks were much diminished by this, they survived.

As it turned out, 1878 was the last chance Russia had to gain Constantinople and because it did not have its fleet at the critical moment, thanks to its loss in the Crimean War, she missed it. In 1912 the newly created Balkan states united to destroy most of the remaining Turkish European empire, while Germany was drifting into open collision with Russia. Though Russia had superiority on the Black Sea during WWI and WWII, the pressing necessity of resisting the Germans to the west prevented them from effectively taking advantage of it to assault Turkey with troops that were required elsewhere.

With the end of WWII the United States took up the burden of defending the Turks from Russian aggression. This was symbolised with American financial and military aid to Turkey to suppress its communist elements favourable to Russia, recently incited to sedition in both Greece and Turkey by Moscow.

Stalin, realising the strengh of American sea power and therefore of the futility of pressing aggressive intentions upon Constantinople, agreed to a sort of balance in the Black Sea. Turkey would remain a client of the US, but would open the Straits to Russian shipping. Russia would predominate on the Black Sea from Sevastopol, using its fleet as a bargain chip to ensure Turkish compliance and goodwill. And this situation has quietly persisted down to our present day.

Having completed the narrative, it is worthwhile to touch base on what we learn from what it shows. But first off we need to go over what geography tells us about the situation. This section was taken from something I wrote at the beginning of the present dispute to explain Russia's geographic interest in the peninsula.

As you may know, navies are limited by what harbours they can use. Harbours sufficient for civilian use are most often not suitable for military purposes because they lack depth, space, protection, and adequate facilities for storing reserves of fuel, ammunition, and foodstuffs, housing personnel, as well as for repairing vessels which usually requires very large dry-docks as warships are larger and heavier than merchant ships.

Basically what we see is that naval harbours have to be very deep, very spacious, with sheltered harbours having easily controlled and protected entrances, plenty of room on shore for logistical facilities, as well as for facilities to maintain and repair warships, and additionally preferably are remote from major civilian metropolises.

Thus, for example, we see that France's naval bases are limited to two major ports, Brest on the Atlantic, and Toulon on the Mediterranean. Despite France's extensive coasts and myriad of commercial harbours, none of them for various reasons are of any use as fleet bases save the aforementioned two.

This is the first cardinal fact, that not just any port can be a naval base, in fact relatively few of them can be. Another useful example of this point is that despite Italy's extensive coasts, with water on all sides, the only suitable anchorages for a fleet base are La Spezia in Liguria, La Maddalena in Sardinia, and Taranto in Apulia.

Understanding this, we realise that the harbours available as fleet bases in the Black Sea are likewise extremely limited.

This map shows the important commercial harbours for Russian trade as orange circles; Nikolayev, Odessa, and Azov in Ukraine, with Rostov and Novorossisk in Russia. The vast majority of Russian export trade passes through these ports on its way across the Black Sea and thus to the outside world.

Looking towards the southwest of the map, we see the Sea of Marmara. Connecting the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara is the very narrow Bosphorus Strait, highlighted in green. Connecting the Sea of Marmara with the Aegean Sea is the Strait of the Dardenelles. Together the two straits are colloquially known as the Turkish Straits, and are the only way most Russian export trade can get from the Black Sea to its customers across the oceans, as well as importing commodities from foreign sources.

For this reason, anybody controlling Constantinople controls the lifeline of Russia. If the Turks closed the straits Russia would suffocate as she could neither import nor export the vast majority of what she needs.

In order to guarantee themselves against the possibility of Turkey closing the straits for any given reason, Russia maintains a Black Sea fleet. This fleet gives Russia leverage against the Turks, allowing Russia to strike at the extensive northern coast of Anatolia and the ability to strike rapidly at Constantinople itself, called Istanbul on the map, the largest and richest Turkish city and the hub of its economic activity. This is a potent weapon to compel the Turks to keep the straits accessible in times of crisis. Without it, Russia is powerless to keep her airway open.

Now going back to naval bases, where Russia could permanently dock this fleet is extremely limited. The yellow circles identify those within close proximity to Russia. In Georgia are the limitedly useful harbours of Batumi and Poti, which are no longer used for naval purposes. The only truly suitable anchorage for a main fleet base is Sevastopol in the Crimea.

So what we see is that Russia is forced to either hold Sevastopol, or her naval presence on the Black Sea is to be terminated. If the Russian Black Sea Fleet left the Black Sea for the Baltic, Russia would have no means of obtaining assurance that the Turks keep the straits open to Russian trade if major war were to loom.

The Turks have closed the straits to Russia before, and the results have been absolutely devastating. Such as in WWI, the dislocation of the Russian economy and the subsequent discontent of the Russian people which led to two revolutions in one year was largely the result of the stifling of Russian trade by the closure of the straits by the Turks. Additionally, this precluded Russian access to crucial war material needed from her allies in the West, which arguably contributed to Russian shell and artillery shortages, causing her armies to be perpetually inferior to the Central Powers in firepower. Naturally this weakened Russia's ability to successfully contend with her antagonists and contributed to her staggering losses.

Thus the retention of Sevastopol and the removal of any threats to it by the government of the Ukraine, or of anyone else, is imperative to the survival of the Russian state.

One may object that Russia could put pressure on the Turks by a direct land invasion. As can be seen on the map, this would be most difficult from the west, as the Balkans and the Ukraine separate Russia from the straits on the European side. Additionally the comparatively narrow neck of land between the Carpathians and the Black Sea that forms eastern Romania is a death trap that the Austrian Empire traditionally exploited to compel the Russians to evacuate the Balkans, such as in 1829, 1856, and 1878. Especially considering that the marshes of the Danube Delta determine that Galatz is the farthest east one can cross from Moldavia into Wallachia over the line formed by the rivers Tatros-Sareth-Danube, essentially narrowing the Russian lines of communication even further to extend through a corridor formed between Foksány and Galatz, a distance of only about fifty-five miles in width. Though the Austrian Empire is no more, its policies can yet teach those who remain what may be done in similar situations.

This leaves the possibility of Russia striking through Georgia, which is weak and small. While this might seem ideal since Georgia is hardly to be expected to prevent Russian entry, the geography in this area is much less favourable for military operations, especially those of armoured formations which are Russia's primary advantage. The Caucasus Mountain chain, outlined in red, throws itself between Russia and Turkey, with colossal jagged peaks. Once across the main spine, there's still mountainous country for several hundred miles in any direction. This is highly defensible terrain for even weak opponents, and the Turks certainly aren't weak on land, further compounded by the fact that Russia would be unable to deploy her great numerical superiority in armour.

Furthermore, though there's less territory separating Turkey from Russia in this area, there's much more territory separating Russia from the straits, namely the whole length of mountainous hostile Anatolia. This is additionally constricted by the remoteness of the Caucasus from the Russian centre of gravity, which is far to the northwest. Getting troops to the region and maintaining them there would tax Russian logistical capacity, which would be further taxed by having to use narrow mountain passes traversible only by single columns of trucks, rather than by multiple trains. The amount of forces the Russians could deploy there would therefore necessarily be only be a fraction of their total strength, and, even if successful, would still be so far from the Turkish Straits as to hardly be able to compel the Turks to reopen them.

And so Russia's only real hope lies with the Black Sea fleet. This is much stronger than the Turkish fleet, and allows Russia a direct and decisive means of driving a stake into the very heart of Turkish power with great rapidity, which the Turks could not effectively prevent. It is the only thing standing between Russia and her potential suffocation. For this reason Russia absolutely cannot allow anything to happen to Sevastopol, and this fact serves to explain Russia's recent activity over the past few months in relation to the Ukraine in general and the Crimea in particular.

Understanding these salient points is only part of the lesson we draw from history and geography, however. For the above presupposes that Turkey, or any power using Turkey to access the Turkish Straits, remains passive. This would be making a dangerous assumption. For if the opponent were to be more active than suggested above, they could easily inflict even greater damage upon Russia, which shall be described below.

The historical narrative supplements the lessons of geography with yet further illumination. These lessons are primarily that the power controlling the sea is superior to that stronger on land. A relatively small force backed by a strong naval presence could destroy the Russian Black Sea fleet and seize control the Crimea by virtue of its more facile access by maritime communication and narrow connexion to the mainland.

This would be disastrous for Russia. The reason for this would be, of course, that the enemy could then base their fleet in Sevastopol. All of the ports in the north apart from Sevastopol are of limited utility for a major fleet. But assuming that Russia attempts to use them anyway, the problem is that any fleet leaving the Sea of Azov or the estuary of the Dnieper and Southern Bug must pass either east or west of Sevastopol, which can therefore intercept fleets moving either direction. This is equally true of any commercial shipping, which would have no choice but to hazardously sail close to the Crimea.

What this means is that a vigorous naval power, as the Greeks, Persians, Romans, Byzantines, Genoese, and Turks were at one time or another, could effectively prevent any establishment of sea power, commerical or naval, on the northern shore of the Black Sea. Not only could they thus prevent the Russians from sending their trade through the Black Sea, they could prevent the Russians from even developing any means of protecting this trade. Like the Greeks, Genoese, and the Turks in their prime, the hypothetical naval power could use the Crimea as a base to control the mouths of every major river either directly or indirectly. This would essentially gather all the threads of the major Russian, Belarussian, and Ukrainian trade routes in the hands of the naval power controlling the Crimea.

What history and geography also tell us is that this situation would be exceedingly difficult to reverse for a land-based power on the northern shore. Using the extremely defensible chokepoint of Perekop, and the power of its fleet, the naval hegemon can prevent an enemy army from bursting through into the Crimea, and even if that were to happen, the defensible position of Sevastopol, surrounded as it is by rugged mountainous terrain, wwould tend to again make its capture a difficult enterprise. Additionally, if the enemy were to breach Perekop, he would risk leaving his army trapped in the Crimea if a force were to land behind him and retake the isthmus.

Yet, so long as the Crimea remained in enemy possession and harbouring an enemy fleet, it could dominate the trade of the northern rivers which must necessarily collect in, and issue from, harbours close by and easily dominated by a fleet stationed at Sevastopol. The ancient city of Tauric Chersonesus grew rich by controlling the trade of the Don, the Southern Bug, the Kuban, the Dnieper, and the Dniester, which it then transported to Constantinople. This in antiquity was one of the major routes for the introduction of Chinese goods into Europe. This northern trade coupled with the direct route through Persia, also controlled by Constantinople, and the route through the Red Sea ports of Egypt, controlled by the Ottomans or Byzantines, allowed Constantinople to gather most of the eastern trade in its own hands. This made the power on the Bosphorus enormously wealthy, but at the expence of the impoverished Slavs and Tatars on the northern shore.

The Russians with admirable determination and implacable will have redressed this handicap in their favour, alone of the inhabitants of the steppe for the whole of recorded history. But it must be borne in mind that the only reason they were able to achieve this at all was because of the shameful decay of Turkish naval power. The fact remains that Russia's relative strategic position is much less advantageous than a potential naval power across the Black Sea. If the Crimea were lost, Russia would forfeit not only her sole guarantee for Turkish friendship, but would also forfeit any ability of ever regaining a position of dominance again. For what other port could she use? And even if by herculean efforts she did manage to dredge one to sufficient depth and width, how could she solve the problem of it being controlled by the central position of Sevastopol?

It is most important to recall that Russia was not a major European power until Kutchuk Kainardji, which is seen as a decisive turning point for so many different important reasons. But for our purposes, the one most relevant was the establishment of a Russian Black Sea fleet at long last. This dramatically reversed the course of the Russo-Turkish Wars during the nineteenth century. Whereas before they were small scale affairs with limited Russian success on the bleak northern shore, once they were equipped with a fleet the Russians threatened to storm Constantinople itself and tear down the minarets of the Sultan to their very foundations. For that reason many historians choose to open the classic diplomatic conundrum of the "Eastern Question" with Kutchuk Kainardji, which serves as a useful watershed on so many levels.

Faced with this alarming development, the Turks could no longer be so cavalier in their treatment of the Russians. As the nineteenth century progressed, Russian trade through the Black Sea swelled year after year. Grain shipments doubled, and redoubled. Population exploded. From 1800 to 1900 Russia soared into first place in Europe in size of population, its GDP surpassed that of France, and if Professor Norman Stone's figures are correct, overtook Britain's too before the outbreak of the First World War.

Turkish unilateral attempts to forestall this resulted in heavy defeats that came dangerously close to definitively ending the existence of the Ottoman Empire. Britain and France formed a temporary restraint, but Russia's growth was at last arrested, and at length reversed, by the efforts of Germany in conjunction with Turkey. Russia's future hopes of economic and political recovery are in large measure dependent upon retaining her dominant Black Sea position. She is at a vulnerable low at this point in time. The Soviet Union was able to threaten Constantinople by land through the client states of Bulgaria and Romania, augmenting the already terrifying sword of Damocles that was the Soviet Black Sea Fleet.

But times have since changed. Bulgaria, Romania, and even the Ukraine now impede any Russian advance overland, while Russia's Black Sea fleet is aging. It cannot seriously hope to fend off a determined modern navy. If such a navy were permitted into the Black Sea, repercussions for allowing which Turkey now has little to fear, the Crimea could plausibly be seized using its unique position in relation to the sea. That would leave Russia's ultimate destruction ensured.

So I end this treatise by stating that Russia's current Black Sea supremacy is singular in history, that it was largely accidental on account of Turkish weakness, and is in potential danger of being undone. A reversion to the more natural state is entirely possible. With the Ukraine adamantly resisting Russia, access through that country to reach the Isthmus of Perekop is doubtful at best, impossible at worst. This leaves Russia's communications with the Crimea very perilously dependent upon sea communications between Kerch and the Caucasus. While these are not serious in peacetime, given proximity, they may easily become exposed in wartime. If a fleet were to seize Kerch and operate even light naval units out of the harbour, communication with Russia would be irrevocably severed.

Without trying to sound too dramatic or prophetic, we may well be witnessing the beginning of the end for Russia. In many respects the rise of the Russian Empire, a power based on the northern shore of the Black Sea, was contrary to the nature of economics and power politics determined by geography. The dilapidation of Turkey made it possible, and for two glorious centuries Russia has catapulted herself to the forefront of European nations. But it would appear that the sands of time are running out. It remains to be seen just how precarious the foundations of Russian power truly are.

- Kaiser