They accompanied General Prim Colonel Federico Fernández San Román, from the General Staff, Colonel Carlos Detenre and Lieutenant Colonel Agustín Pita del Corro, who acted as his aide-de-camp, and the Marquis of Serravalle, his secretary, were in his mission. All of them arrived in Constantinople in August aboard a French steamer in which Mehmet Ali Pasha, the youngest son of the famous homonymous vali of Egypt, also traveled, who introduced them to a character who would soon join the entourage, Captain Godfrey Rhodes, of the British East India Company, based in Madras. Prim himself invited the Englishman to accompany him on his journey through the East, to which the young officer happily agreed.
The first days of work of the Spanish commission were spent in the comforts of Constantinople. On August 18, Prim and his family visited the Scutari barracks , on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus, which a year later would be housed in the main British rearguard hospital during the Crimean War. The Ottoman generals presented the Spanish with tobacco, coffee, jam and lemonade. Next, they inspected a regiment of foot hunters trained and equipped in Western fashion. More impressive was the visit, on August 22, to the flagship of the Ottoman Navy , the hulking Mahmudiye, a three-deck ship with 126 guns, built in 1829 at the Imperial Arsenal on the Golden Horn. Impressive as it looked, the reign of sailing and wooden vessels was soon to come to an end. final. On November 30, the explosive shells of the Russian Navy would destroy an Ottoman squadron in Sinope (see "The Battle of Sinope" in Awake Ferro Modern History #37) with amazing ease.
Heading to the front of the Danube
On August 28, the Spanish commission left Constantinople for Shumen, in Bulgaria. The Rumelian Army of General Omar Pasha had its base there. . Traveling with Prim and the members of the commission were several Spanish officers who had obtained permission to travel to the Ottoman Empire with freedom of movement:the infantry commanders Luis Escario and Miguel de Trillo y Figueroa, the engineer captain Ramon Méndez de Vigo, and Enrique de Trillo y Figueroa and Fernando Useleti de Ponte, infantry lieutenants. Also accompanying the Count of Reus was the Englishman Rhodes; Giuseppe Govone, a Piedmontese officer who would be Italy's Minister of War between 1869 and 1870; a Turkish officer, Sevet Efendi, as interpreter, and an escort of twelve Ottoman spearmen. Prim's secretary, Serravalle, sailed back with a bulky package of specifications for the Spanish government. The large entourage had thirty-seven servants and fifty-one horses for a trip that was not promised to be easy.
The march took place in four stages:from Constantinople to Adrianople, from there to Philippopolis (Plovdiv), from there to the Sokol monastery, over the Shipka pass, and finally to Shuman. After passing through Çorlu, the procession ran into a party of fifty horsemen from Syria who were also marching towards Shumen. Despite his motley appearance, one of them impressed Prim and the others by doing somersaults and complex turns on his horse. To this corresponded the British Rhodes, who astonished the Syrians with his modern Dean and Adams revolver and its five-bullet drum. It was not an easy journey. In that region, observes the official memory of the trip, "in the summer everything is scorched, and the days are as painful as they can be in the desert regions of Africa, due to the absolute lack of shade and water." In addition, the general's servants, Greeks, were not proficient in setting up the tents, forcing Prim and his officers to take care of the matter.
If something amazed the members of the commission on that journey, it was the lack of crops, despite which they did not lack food:chicken, red wine and melons were basic elements of the diet of the Count of Reus and his company. Nor was there a lack of pleasure:in Adrianople, the Spanish enjoyed a Turkish bath accompanied by a tobacco pipe and a cup of coffee. Then, yes, he continued the march through the rugged terrain of Rumelia. The stop at Philippopolis was also pleasant, but soon after leaving the autumn rains began, which slowed down the march. The muddy roads and the cold forced the commission to stop for a few days as soon as one of its members fell ill. Finally, on September 22, he arrived at Shumen Prim with his "small army of brilliant hostesses", in the words of the Italian Govone.
Omar Pasha, commander of the Rumelian Army, sent an honor guard to receive the commission. The following days, Prim was able to closely study the best Ottoman troops and he noted not only the modernization of the cavalry, artillery and engineering corps, but also the excellent skills of the troops. His memory of his trip reads:
October 8 the Sublime Door notified Omar Pasha of the declaration of war on Russia. Prim and his entourage attended the official ceremony the next day, where, in addition to a solemn proclamation from the sultan, an ulama recited verses from the Koran before 20,000 Ottoman soldiers in formation. The many European officers attached to the General Staff of Omar Pasha kept a prudent distance, "because it was not right for Christians to hear the words of the Prophet who recommended the extermination of the infidels."
On October 27, Omar Pasha's detachment set out for Tutrakan. Prim and his men arrived on the 30th, and the Ottoman commander a day later. On November 1, elements of the Ottoman army crossed the Danube in boats and occupied Ostrov Island . Lieutenant Colonel Agustín Pita del Corro was in the first boat that touched the island and landed with twenty Turkish hunters. At Prim's suggestion, Omar Pachá erected a battery of six cannons there, which on the 4th proved vital. After two battalions of infantry and three companies of hunters crossed the Danube and occupied the pesthouse at Oltenița , a Russian detachment under General Dannenberg launched a strong counterattack. Omar Pachá dispatched reinforcements by boat, to which Colonel Detenre joined to witness the combat on the front line. The battery on the island riddled the Russian troops with shrapnel fire, which ended up beating a retreat. Omar Pasha suggested to Prim, seeing his tactical nose, that he embrace Islam and join the Turkish ranks, where he guaranteed him the rank of ferik (general). The Count of Reus declined the proposal:"Thank you, sir, but I won't change this uniform for any" .
On November 12, the Turkish commander gave the campaign ended and withdrew the army to its winter quarters. The Spanish commission accompanied him to Shumen. Prim made good friends with Omar Pachá. This general came from Croatia and had been a cadet in an Austrian regiment, from which, accused of embezzlement, he had deserted thirty years earlier to begin a brilliant career in the Ottoman Army. On November 24, the commission left for Varna, where it arrived on the 27th and stayed at the residence of the British consul. From there he went to Sofia and later to Constantinople. In the capital of the Empire, Prim had an audience with the sultan, Abdülmecit I, whom he thanked for his hospitality. The Spanish then boarded the steamer Osiris on Christmas Day bound for Marseilles.
General Prim returns to the front lines
The return to France was not the end of the Spanish commission. The Anglo-French declaration of war, added to the political turmoil in Madrid, led to the return to the Ottoman Empire of Prim, San Román, Detenre and Pita del Corro in April 1854. They did so in the French squadron that transferred the body to Varna. Marshal Saint-Arnaud's Expeditionary . On May 1, they made their new entry into Constantinople and, shortly after, left for the Danube front. They were joined by an old friend, Captain Godfrey Rhodes, Dr. Pelltan, a Frenchman and head of medical services in the Rumelian Army, and a curious Polish adventurer, Charles-Edmond Chojecki, an officer in the Egyptian Army – as an autonomous state within the Ottoman Empire, Egypt sent troops to the Balkans. The escort, this time, was under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Rechad Efendi.
Omar Pacha gave Prim a warm welcome at Shumen and his company. At that time, it was experiencing a critical situation, since the numerous Russian forces of Marshal Paskevich , Prince of Warsaw, besieged the strategic Silistra . The situation changed suddenly in June, when Austria, suspicious of the Russian advance in the Balkans, sent an ultimatum to the Tsar. Paskevich abandoned the siege and the Ottomans went on the offensive. Chojecki recounts in his Souvenirs d’un dépaysé a conversation between Prim, Omar Pasha and his second in command, Musir Ismail Pasha. The Ottomans smoked pipes and revealed to Prim the ins and outs of imperial politics. The commander of the Rumelian Army did not hide his disdain for the sultan's ministers and the struggle they waged against each other:
The one from Reus offered his opinion on the situation as more than a mere observer:"the plan is summed up in two words: en Avant! [ahead]". Finally, Omar Pasha and his troops crossed the Danube and clashed with retreating Russian forces at Giurgiu, south of Bucharest. Prim attended the battle, which left four thousand dead on both sides, at the side of the Ottoman commander. The following day, the Count of Reus and San Román collaborated in the fortification of Giurgiu as informal advisers rather than observers. They could not, however, attend the triumphal entry of Omar Pachá in Bucharest. The arrival of a telegram informing about the revolutionary chaos that had broken out in Spain – the so-called Vicalvarada – forced the return, this time definitive, of the commission.
The farewell to the Spaniards was carried out by the sultan himself. Abdülmecit I presented Prim, San Román, Detenre and Pita del Corro with lavishly ornamented sabers and awarded them the regalia and knight grand cross of the Order of the Medjidie. He also gave Prim a magnificent sorrel horse which, unfortunately, he had to sell due to the impossibility of shipping it. The political upheaval in Spain would allow the general to become a deputy for the province of Barcelona for the Progressive Party, which did not prevent him from concluding, with the help of Pita del Corro, the extensive Report on the military trip to the east presented to the Government by S.M. (Madrid, 1855), an invaluable source on the Ottoman Army of the time and the Turkish campaign on the Danube.
Fonts
Chojecki, C. E. (1862):Souvenirs d’un dépaysé . Paris:Michel Levy.
Prim, J. (1855):Memoir on the military trip to the East presented to the Government of S. M . Madrid:Roof Printing House.
Rhodes, G. (1854):A personal narrative of a tour of military inspection in various parts of European Turkey . London:Longman, Brown, Green &Longmans.
Bibliography
Pando Despierto, J. (1987):“Spaniards in the East:Campaigns of the Danube and Crimea”. Magazine of Military History, 62, pp. 93-148.
Further reading
Martínez Antonio, F. J. (2014):General Prim's trip to the East . Madrid:Miraguano Editions.