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Editor says, what if Peter the Great had been captured by the Ottomans? Please note that the opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of the author(s). This story was published in the August 2012 edition of Changing the Times Magazine.
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In 1711, on this day Russian troops under command of Peter the Great and Boris Sheremetev attempted to invade Moldavia with the aid of Moldavian ruler Dimitrie Cantemir but were surrounded, defeated and captured1 by the Ottoman troops under Grand Vizier Baltaci Mehmet Pasha, in a decisive battle at Stănileşti.
Peter the Great captured by the OttomansThe outcome was a bitter sweet personal victory for Charles XII of Sweden. Defeated by the Tsar at Poltava, he escaped from the battlefield to the court of the Ottoman Sultan Ahmed III, whom he persuaded to declare war and then force the punitive Treaty of the Pruth upon the Russians.
And perhaps Russian overconfidence had grown out of the victory at Poltava, because the Pruth River Campaign was an unmitigated disaster for Peter. He miscalculated both the strength of the Ottoman army and the support he would get both from the Romanian principalities and the Orthodox subjects living in regions under direct Ottoman administration. Worse, his military plans were based upon the interception of the Ottoman army before it had crossed the Danube, but once he had failed to do that his position became rapidly untenable. The immediate consequence was the prolonged existence of the Crimean Khanate however the real question was whether Russian influence could be kept out of the Balkans during the nineteenth century.
Entry posted by Todayinah Editor
© Alternate Historian, 2004-.Story Tags
Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Generals Source: Wikipedia Labels: Peter the Great, Battle at Stănileşti, Ottoman, Russia, Boris Sheremetev. Editor says, in reality he was not captured [1]. This article we repurpose content from Total Warfare Centre and Wikipedia which reports ~ Turkish historians have traditionally argued that Baltac? Mehmet Pasha made an important strategic mistake by signing the treaty with relatively easy terms for the Russians. Since Peter himself was commanding the Russian army, and had Baltaci Mehmet Pasha not accepted Peter's peace proposal and pursued to capture him as a prisoner instead, the course of history could have changed. Without Peter, Russia would have hardly become an imperial power, and the future arch-enemy of the Ottoman State in the Balkans, the Black Sea basin and the Caucasus.
~ Perhaps, but it should be remembered that Russia was still a very big country by this time, and would have recovered in a few years, while the Turks were in a state of inexorable decline. Perhaps the next Czar would have had to face renewed pressure from Sweden. Nevertheless, a thirst for vengeance and a desire for a warm water port would have pushed the Russians south again. And it should be recalled that the Turks were only very rarely successful in battle after 1683.
~ Peter in Turkey would have been interesting, particularly if he charmed his captors. He could be quite charismatic when he wanted to be.
~ If the Ahmed III or the more powerful members of his court pumped Peter for information then they too would send people westward and start thinking about clearing out the dead wood. That being said, the critical matter would be getting the Balkans under de facto control (as opposed to leaving them in the hands of everything from hereditary tax collectors to bandit lords) before the 1800s
~ I like this idea of Peter influencing the Ottomans into reform and overhaul. Russia and the Turks even as friends, perhaps.
© Today in Alternate History, 2013-. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
