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wingsofwrath In reply to cullyferg2010 [2017-12-21 11:55:06 +0000 UTC]

That's exactly it. Of course, they didn't only use them against cavalry, they used them against infantry as well, which is why the siege took so long.
The Turks were well fortified in a number of earthen redoubts situated on the hills around Plevna (now known as Pleven), with unrestricted fields of fire and with trenches in between. They would open fire at long ranges with artillery and their Peabody-Martini single shot rifles and then open up a withering barrage at close range with the Winchesters . In terms of firepower, it was the equivalent of machine-guns during ww1.

Which is why, for example, it took the Romanian Army four bloody assaults and 6 000 casualties to capture the Grivitsa redoubt, and they only did it because in the last assault the commanders decided that stopping to fire was tantamount to suicide, so they ordered a bayonet only assault which carried the day. Interestingly, this also meant that when the Turks launched a counter-attack, the Romanian troops had full ammunition pouches and could repulse it, whereas the Russians, who had taken the Grivitsa redoubt once before and two other redoubts on the Green Hills, had had to abandon them when they run out of ammunition.

Also, it's interesting to note what a Russian painter who was present at the battle made of it - his painting shows the Russians front and centre victoriously capturing the redoubt with Romanian support (the Romanians are on the far left of the image, slightly lagging behind), when in fact, there were two distinct attacks on the redoubt at different dates - one by the Russians alone on July 31 (before the arrival of the Romanian army) led by General Mikhail Skobelev which captured it but then had to withdraw, and one by the Romanians alone on September 11 which captured and held it, the only progress of the Allied army at Plevna before the complete investment of the town which finally starved Osman Pasha and his troops out...

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cullyferg2010 In reply to wingsofwrath [2017-12-21 19:23:01 +0000 UTC]

I remembered reading in 'The American Rifleman' (I'm a Life member of the National Rifle Association) some years back about how the Turks repelled the Russian assault.  The use of the Winchester was so effective in its devastation that the incident drove the European nations to find means to produce a military rifle with a magazine.

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