Prut River Campaign when the King of Sweden sought refuge in the Ottoman lands to protect him from Russia

November 20 marks the 311th anniversary of the Ottoman-Russian war known as the Prut River Campaign, during which the Ottomans managed to win and retake the Azov fortress from Russia after besieging the Russian tsar and his soldiers and pushing him to surrender.

The Ottoman Empire was one of the largest countries in the world, and its existence lasted 622 years, during which it expanded its hegemony over vast areas over the continents of the ancient world. During the centuries of their rule, the Ottomans fought hundreds of wars, the results of which varied according to the strength of the Ottoman Empire.

During the period of the decline of the Ottoman Empire, wars with Tsarist Russia in particular emerged, as the conflict between the two parties spanned for nearly 4 centuries, including the Prut campaign war, which had very important results, because the Ottomans then almost captured the Russian Tsar.

The Prut River campaign was one of the most important Turkish-Russian wars during which the Ottoman Empire managed to achieve victory over the Tsar of Russia and his soldiers by imposing a siege on their camp and forcing them to surrender and making generous concessions to the Turks, as well as strengthening Turkish-Swedish relations after the safe return of the King of Sweden to his country.

The road to Prut

Perhaps one of the most important reasons that led the two parties to the war was the Russian desire to control lands overlooking the warm seas represented in the Baltic Sea in the north and the Black Sea controlled by the Ottomans in the south. The weakest in the conflict when compared to the Ottoman Empire, and accordingly, a long and difficult conflict began between 1700 and 1721 called the “Great Northern Wars” between Tsarist Russia on one side, and Sweden and Poland on the other.

For increased warnings and incitement, the Swedish Emperor Charles XII organized a military campaign in 1709 to invade the Ukrainian lands from which Tsarist Russia was ruling, but he received a humiliating defeat from the Russian armies led by Peter I in the Battle of Poltava in the summer of 1709, which prompted him and his retinue to flee to Bender Castle. In the Ottoman principality of Moldavia.

The Ottoman Sultan Ahmed III refused the continuing Russian demands to evacuate Charles, which prompted the Russian Tsar Peter I to send a section of Russian soldiers to the Ottoman lands, and the Russian army remained at the Prut River separating Romania and Moldavia, which prompted the Ottoman Sultan to declare war on Russia on November 20 November 1710. However, some historians believe that the actual reason was the desire of the Ottomans to recover the Azov fortress from Russia.

The drums of war are beating on the banks of the Prut River

Simultaneously with these events, he came to the position of Grand Vizier, a thug Muhammed Pasha, and had to deal with two important and closely related issues, such as providing safety to Charles, the King of Sweden who had taken refuge in him, who was only 21 years old, and the second being to restore the relations that It deteriorated due to Russia's non-compliance with peace terms.

Subsequently, the Grand Vizier, the thug Muhammad Pasha, led an Ottoman army of 120,000 soldiers, and crossed the Prut River in eastern Europe, where the Russian army led by Peter the Great was waiting for him.

During the siege, the Ottoman army could capture the Russian tsar himself and perhaps eliminate the tsarist empire permanently, but the Ottoman army leadership was not ready to attack the Russian army, and contented itself with forcing the tsar and his soldiers to surrender and make generous concessions to the Turks.

Treaty of Surrender

In light of the siege of the Ottomans and news of the formation of a new alliance to attack the besieged Russian army, the Russian Tsar Peter the Great agreed to surrender on July 22, 1711, so he sent his delegate to Baltaji Muhammad Pasha to discuss the terms of the armistice and the size of the concessions they would offer.

With the signing of the Treaty of Prut, the Azov Castle and its surroundings were returned to the Ottomans after they had lost it in the war of 1696 and were forced to formally cede it during the 1700 Treaty of Istanbul.

As a result of this victory, and while the Russians made pledges not to interfere in the affairs of the Caucasus and fuel religious conflict there, and to keep their danger away from the Black Sea, hopes were raised to restore the lands lost in the last war, as well as to strengthen relations with the Swedish kingdom