Nicholas Repnin - Military Career

Military Career

Repnin resigned his post to lead troops against the Ottoman Empire in the Russo-Turkish War. At the head of an independent command in Moldavia and Wallachia, he prevented a large Ottoman army from crossing the Pruth (1770), distinguished himself at the actions of Larga and Kagul, and captured Izmail and Kilia. In 1771 he received the supreme command in Wallachia and occupied Bucharest. A quarrel with the commander-in-chief, Rumyantsev, then induced him to send in his resignation, but in 1774 he participated in the capture of Silistria and in the negotiations which led to the peace of Kuchuk-Kainarji. In 1775-76 Repnin and his factotum, Yakov Bulgakov, represented Russian interests at the Porte.

On the outbreak of the War of the Bavarian Succession he led 30,000 men to Breslau, and at the subsequent congress of Teschen, where he was Russian plenipotentiary, compelled Austria to make peace with Prussia.

During the second Turkish war (1787-92) Repnin was, after Alexander Suvorov, the most successful of the Russian commanders. He defeated the Ottomans at Salcia, captured the whole camp of the seraskier, Hassan Pasha, shut him up in Izmail, and was preparing to reduce the place when he was forbidden to do so by Grigori Alexandrovich Potemkin (1789). On the retirement of Potemkin in 1791, Repnin succeeded him as commander-in-chief, and immediately routed the grand vizier at Măcin, a victory which compelled the Ottomans to accept the truce of Galaţi (31 July 1791).