Chapter 494: Chapter 488: Relief of Silistra
"Retreat!"
Just when General Schelder believed that Deputy Commander Gorchakov would order him to lead the Second Division of the Polish Corps to fiercely battle the Allied forces opposite, what he received was a command from Deputy Commander Gorchakov to retreat.
This order from the mouth of war faction member Deputy Commander Gorchakov was so contradictory that General Schelder almost thought he had hearing issues.
With an astonished expression on his face, General Schelder cautiously inquired, "If I didn’t hear wrong, Deputy Commander, you just said to retreat?"
Deputy Commander Gorchakov sighed deeply and, with a disappointed tone, responded to General Schelder with a wry smile, "That’s right! Retreat! We no longer have the capital to stay; if we continue to fight, I’m afraid none of us will be able to escape!"
"Deputy Commander, surely it won’t come to that!" General Schelder responded to General Gorchakov with disbelief on his face, "With the troops we have, we can completely..."
Before General Schelder could finish his words, Deputy Commander Gorchakov pointed off into the distance and interrupted, "Can you guarantee that the Allied forces opposite won’t specifically aim at our commanders?"
"I..." General Schelder opened his mouth but couldn’t utter a single word.
The painful lesson of the First Division told General Schelder that if they chose to attack, they would suffer the same fate as the First Division.
It’s certain that the rifles in the hands of the Allied forces have far greater range than theirs.
In a contest between two armies with such a range disparity, it easily turns into one-sided slaughter.
What’s more, these despicable Allied forces specifically target the lower-level commanders of the Russian Empire to kill.
With the collapse of the grassroots command system, soldiers would be like headless flies, not knowing whose orders to follow.
Many historical battles have shown that a disorganized army is no different from a herd of pigs waiting to be slaughtered.
After thinking for a long while, General Schelder finally said, "If we leave just like this, I’m afraid it won’t be easy to explain to Prince Paskievich!"
For Schelder’s concerns, Deputy Commander Gorchakov helplessly shook his head and revealed, "In fact, His Highness Prince never agreed with my action from the beginning. He thought it would be better for our army to retreat across the Danube River as soon as possible! That way, we could rely on favorable terrain and fortifications to counter-attack the Allied forces."
"But wasn’t our mission to occupy the Fortress of Silistra and thus open the way to Varna, and even Constantinople?" General Schelder asked Deputy Commander Gorchakov in confusion.
When Gorchakov heard Schelder’s familiar words, his eyes dimmed, and he showed a mocking expression, saying, "The premise of implementing this strategy is that our army can defeat the Turkish and Allied forces at the Fortress of Silistra! Now, do you really think our army can still defeat them?"
Stopping here, Gorchakov paused, swallowed, and continued, "Rather than letting our army continue here in meaningless battles, it’s better to retreat to the north shore of the Danube sooner and wait for the arrival of the Allied forces. Maybe we will win in the defensive counterattack battle that follows!"
Hearing Deputy Commander Gorchakov’s words devoid of fighting spirit, General Schelder didn’t know how to comfort Gorchakov for a while.
"Since you have decided to withdraw the troops, then I am willing to follow your command!" General Schelder said listlessly, "It’s just that His Majesty the Tsar may..."
General Schelder still remembered the orders given to them by the Tsar’s envoy at the time. Now, not only had they not breached the Fortress of Silistra, but they were also preparing to withdraw.
Tsar Nicholas I, far away in Moscow, might not be willing to listen to their explanations, and it’s likely that Deputy Commander Gorchakov’s position might face major changes.
"It’s best to let nature take its course in such matters!" Gorchakov said to General Schelder in a tone tinged with a hint of relief.
Under Deputy Commander Gorchakov’s orders, the heavily damaged First Division and the intact Second Division of the Polish Corps left the vicinity of the Allied temporary camp, with nearly 28,000 troops returning to the location of the 13th and 14th Corps under the cover of night.
When the two divisions reached their previous station, Deputy Commander Gorchakov immediately went to Paskievich’s tent to find Prince Paskievich.
When Gorchakov arrived at the tent, he was immediately told that Prince Paskievich was still on the front line, so Deputy Commander Gorchakov had to head to the front line besieging the Fortress of Silistra to find Prince Paskievich.
When Gorchakov arrived at the front line, the soldiers of the 13th and 14th Corps were making a fearless charge towards the bastion under the leadership of their officer, General Hilde, determined to capture the Tabia Fortress on this moonlit night.
Meanwhile, the Ottoman Empire was desperately trying to stop the Russian Army from climbing up the bastion with ladders. On the bastion, loaded with grape-shot light artillery, they were shooting with all their might at the densely packed Russian Imperial Army below. Each explosion of grape-shot was bound to injure more than ten people around it.
Blood splattered on the walls of the Tabia Fortress, and white smoke filled the entire battlefield.
Everyone in this brutal meat grinder war was fighting with all their might to win, yet the two armies never reached a turning point in the war.
"Hmm? Why are you here!" Prince Paskievich, overseeing from afar, asked with a surprised expression when he saw Gorchakov approaching.
"Commander, I think... watch out!" Gorchakov was about to say something when a cannonball landed around Gorchakov and Prince Paskievich, prompting Gorchakov to quickly pull Prince Paskievich back.
The anticipated explosion was not loud; the shell that fell around Prince Paskievich was a dud.
Just as Gorchakov breathed a sigh of relief that he and Prince Paskievich could continue to survive on the battlefield, a cannonball fired from the side bastion of Tabia landed among the crowd, this shell hit right beside General Hilde. The grape-shot exploded immediately upon hitting the ground, and the internal lead bullets shot out in all directions.
Unprepared, General Hilde was immediately killed as a lead bullet pierced his skull, and the soldiers around him responsible for protecting him also suffered varying degrees of injury.
The soldier whose thigh bone was shattered by a lead bullet could only lie on the ground and roll back and forth, blood flowing uncontrollably from his thigh.
The death of General Hilde signaled another impending failure of the Russian Imperial Army’s siege of the Silestra Fortress Group, as soldiers of the Russian Empire were desperately retreating.
Prince Paskevich and General Gorchakov were similarly retreating with the main forces.
...
Returning to the camp, Prince Paskevich asked Gorchakov why he came over at this time and told him that he no longer had any troops to spare for him.
"Your Excellency, I am not here to ask for troops, but to beg you to lead us away from here!" Gorchakov pleaded to Prince Paskevich.
Prince Paskevich looked at Gorchakov in bewilderment, not understanding what exactly had happened to make his deputy commander so similar to himself.
"You failed too?" Prince Paskevich asked Gorchakov.
"Yes!" Gorchakov nodded and replied to Prince Paskevich.
"How many dead?" Prince Paskevich continued to ask.
Gorchakov extended five fingers and said plainly to Paskevich, "5000 men!"
"5000 men in one day?!!" Paskevich widened his eyes and raised his voice at Gorchakov.
"Yes!" Gorchakov nodded and added, "Moreover, the First Division’s junior officers suffered heavy casualties, and short-term engagement in high-intensity battles seems difficult."
"What exactly happened?" Prince Paskevich frowned, pressing his temples lightly as he asked Gorchakov.
"Their weapon range is longer than ours!" Gorchakov uttered a simple reason, but the issues behind this were far more complex.
"But even so..." Paskevich muttered half a sentence before abruptly asking, "Where is Brigadier General Orlov now?"
"Brigadier General Orlov has returned to the embrace of Christ!" Gorchakov responded in a sorrowful tone.
"Alas!" Prince Paskevich sighed for Lieutenant General Little Orlov’s death, as he had high hopes for Little Orlov, who now perished on the battlefield.
It truly was fate’s cruel irony.
"Where is the body? Still on the battlefield, or..." Prince Paskevich asked again.
"The body has already been placed in a coffin by me!" Gorchakov replied to Paskevich.
Subsequently, Gorchakov informed Prince Paskevich that the allied forces’ guns could inflict damage from around 500 meters away, with many officers of the First Division being taken out from long distances by the Allied Forces.
Their smoothbore muskets’ range was only about 300 meters (more accurately 260 meters); beyond 300 meters, the accuracy would drastically decrease.
The difference of more than 200 meters was enough for a skilled soldier to fire two rounds. After hearing Gorchakov’s description of the Allied Forces’ lineup and rifles, Paskevich knew that this battle wasn’t Gorchakov’s fault, nor Brigadier General Little Orlov’s.
Had it been him, he would have used the same tactics to attack the allied forces.
After all, faced with the barbed wire entanglements, Paskevich similarly had no better solutions, only the advantage of numbers to clinch victory.
However, the allied forces’ rifle range far exceeded that of the Russian Army, putting their troops at risk of massive combat attrition even before approaching the barbed wire.
Morale plummeted before nearing the barbed wire, not to mention that this Allied Forces targeted their military commanders for killing, making total collapse inevitable.
The best way to describe Prince Paskevich’s current mood would be, "Tired! Let it be destroyed!"
After continuous failures around the Silestra Fortress and the French Temporary Camp, in support of Gorchakov, Prince Paskevich once again convened the surviving generals of the army to discuss whether they should return to the northern bank of the Danube River.
The generals who suffered significant personnel losses unanimously agreed with Prince Paskevich’s proposal.
At one in the morning, under Paskevich’s orders, the Russian Imperial Army packed up their camps, carrying stretchers and torches, and slowly moved north.
Through his binoculars, Musa Pasha inside the city saw the Russian Imperial Army retreating from the Silestra Fortress heading northward like a long dragon. Overcome with zeal, he disregarded Captain Barlet’s objections and ordered the Bashbozuk cavalry within the city to pursue the Russian Army.
Unexpectedly, they fell into an ambush set by the Cossack Cavalry, and the entire force of more than a thousand Bashbozuk cavalry was annihilated.
Musa Pasha in Tabia Fortress, upon hearing this news, was so frightened he nearly fled again.