türkçe links to original Turkish article
(Hürryet Newspaper, 11 April 2022)
Russian siege of İzmail in 1790.
The Russian massacre
of civilians in Bucha, Ukraine, called to mind
another Russian massacre 232
years ago when about 20,000 people were
slaughtered in the city of İsmail, now İzmail,
in southern Ukraine. At
that time,
İsmail was part of the Ottoman Empire.
Russian Foreign
Intelligence Chief Sergey Narishkin spoke with pride
about the seizure of İsmail,
explaining at an exhibition that a Russian
soldier-artist went to İsmail, painted
the Ottoman fortifications and
terrain and passed his pictures on to Russian
intelligence.
The city of İsmail
was founded along the Danube River and the Black
Sea shore in the 1480s, when
the Black Sea was a “Turkish lake”.
According
to the Turkish traveler Evliya Çelebi, the city’s name came
from Captain Ismail
Bey, who seized the area in 1484.
Another legend
has it that the name came from “İsmail Baba”, an Islamic
lodge shaikh.
The city prospered and became
a target for Russian and Cossack
marauders, so strong fortifications were built
to fend off the attackers.
Along with
Moslem Turks, the city’s population was made up of
Russians, Greeks, Armenians
and Bulgarians.
With the start of
wars between the Russian and Ottomans, İsmail was
caught in the middle of the
fighting. The Russians occupied İsmail
in
1770 but it was returned to the Ottomans with the Treaty of Küçük
Kaynarca
four years later. The fortifications
were strengthened and
more Ottoman soldiers were sent there. Nevertheless, Russian attacks
continued and
in 1790 İsmail was surrounded by a Russian force under
General Kutuzov. Cezayirli Hasan Paşa, famous for raising
lions, was
forced to flee from İsmail. (General Kutuzov was the character in
Lord
Byron’s book ‘Don Juan’ who joins the Russian Army and fights for the
conquest of İsmail.)
When the Russians
entered the city they took no pity on civilians,
slaughtering some 20,000 of
them. Some of the city’s citizens jumped
into the Danube to escape but drowned instead. The Russians lost many
of their own, as
well. A number of Christians were taken
to Moscow as
prisoners. The fall of the city
was a surprise to Istanbul and with the
Treaty of Yaş in 1792, İsmail was
returned to the Ottomans. However,
another war in 1809 resulted in İsmail again being occupied by the
Russians and
this was finalized by an agreement between Russia and
the Ottoman Empire in
1812.
...in happier times.
Intelligence Chief
Narishkin gained notoriety recently when he was
criticized by President Putin
on TV. In 2019, Narishkin had spoken
about the siege of İsmail with great pride at a conference on intelligence
at
the Russian Historical Society in Moscow, noting how the paintings
of a young
lieutenant named Sergeyev had made the siege a success
because of the detail
his pictures provided about the Ottoman
fortifications and the city’s
terrain. Narishkin stated that “the Ottomans
didn't suspect him at all. He drew the views of the city in great detail
that
showed Ottoman defense weaknesses and the lay of the land. Then
he provided
these paintings to Russian intelligence.”
