Solovyov in Tsarist Russia 1796

Time is limited. Soloviev believes that every minute is precious. He needs to mobilize the 40,000 to 50,000 Russian troops and Serbian volunteers on the front line to distribute the troops reasonably.

In Larissa alone, he has more than 8,000 troops, including the main infantry regiment, so it seems that the fence in Thessaloniki is not very solid.

But the Russian army has a huge psychological advantage, that is, the Turkish army has been defeated repeatedly in battles with them, and it is all-round and without dead ends.

Maybe except for the single duel of cavalry and the encounter of small-scale cavalry units, there is no way that the Turkish army can win.

Therefore, it is only the Turkish cavalry that is more arrogant, after all, it can cause great trouble to the Russian army at the level of cavalry regiments.

But there are not many Turkish cavalry in Thessaloniki, and the troops defending the city are mainly infantry.

Murad Bey's only hope now is to be able to successfully seek help from Constantinople. While the Russian army has not yet completely blocked Thessaloniki and there is still a channel on the sea, he will naturally send an envoy to seek help.

Although the old dock in Thessaloniki is already in a semi-abandoned state, there are always ships here.

The Ottoman Empire's fleet still uses more ancient names, such as "Gallie" to refer to some of their warships. Some of these large ships are equivalent to the battleships of the Russian army, and small ships correspond to frigates.

Perhaps the only thing that this empire has in line with the European powers is its navy, which still has a certain strength, but this navy, which always loses battles, can only play a certain role when it does not have to face the enemy fleet in the Mediterranean like now.

There are indeed some speedboats in the port. If the message is delivered, according to the current wind direction, it will soon be able to reach Gallipoli for help. As long as it enters the waters of the two straits, it will be safe.

However, the ship that Murad Bey was looking forward to and hoping to deliver the message exploded after sailing away from the coast for a while.

The explosion stunned the Turkish officials still on the dock.

"Oh God! What happened?"

Murad Bey said that he had asked for trouble when he took over the position of commander of the Salonika garrison, but when he took office, he could not have imagined that the Russians could make a big detour, come from the west, pass Skopje, and come out of the mountains to surprise him.

In fact, his performance was much better than many Bayi masters. At least he blocked the front of Sofia, forcing Solovyov to give up the shortest route and take into account the movements of Serbia.

But this guy took a detour, and the friendly forces were not prepared, so he, who worked hard, was also unlucky.

When some sailors floated to the beach with wooden boards, the Bey knew what had happened.

"Master, our ship was sailing well when an explosion occurred. We were lucky to be thrown into the sea and survived."

"Do you know the cause of the explosion?"

"It was probably a Russian mine. The sea water here is dark. When our ship approached, it felt like it hit a chain or something else, and it exploded quickly."

What Murad Bey could think of was that Russian engineers had used floating mines to blow up bridges. This was common sense among some Pashas and Beys who knew about military affairs in the Ottoman Empire.

It was not impossible to put it on the sea. It seemed that he was unlucky and became the first to be sacrificed.

A speedboat exploded in the bay. Not only the Turkish army on the dock, but also the Russian army nearby noticed it on the shore.

In fact, it was also the ship that left the port that was unlucky. It encountered a few mines on the channel, and there were big holes on both sides, which blew up everything on the ship that could be exploded.

How could the effect not be obvious?

But that's it. The envoys sent by land always ran out from the place in the woods where the Russian army's defense was slightly relaxed, and came to the palace of Sultan Mahmud.

In Constantinople, Sultan Mahmud has not lived in the Sultan's palace recently, but came to the villa by the sea.

Not only is the environment better here, but it is also more convenient to work and hold meetings. It is a long way to go to the palace to "pay respects" to his adoptive mother, the current queen mother.

But considering that the queen mother has no ability to interfere in politics, at most she has some ability to protect herself. In fact, there are many times when the regime is in the hands of Sultan Mahmud himself.

The situation he saw was not optimistic. The Russian army was now pressing forward from the front, and the main force of Ahmed Pasha's Turkish army was also here. Although the task of resisting the Russian attack was completed, it was unable to fight back.

What's more troublesome is that the Russian army actually had a detachment from near Vidin that crossed the Danube and repeatedly defeated the Turkish army that attacked them, and even went all the way deep. After stationing in Sofia for a period of time, it took a detour to Skopje.

When Sultan Mahmud first received the news, he was somewhat relieved, probably because the frontal defense was effective, so this Russian surprise force had to choose to go west, perhaps to plunder the relatively "rich" towns in the area, after all, there were many "Orthodox Christians" there.

But Sultan Mahmud did not expect that the Macedonian army would actually come out of the mountains, set up an ambush near Vergina and defeat Murad Bey, and then took advantage of the chaos in the Greek peninsula to launch a large-scale attack.

But Thessalonika was completely surrounded by the Russian army, which was unexpected.

It came too fast. Sultan Mahmud was still slowly transferring troops from Asia. By the end of the year, there would probably be a legion that could attack the Russian army in the west.

However, the Russian army moved too fast and even directly surrounded Thessalonika, so he had to consider mobilizing troops.

But how to use these soldiers was still a problem.

He had to call Ahmed Pasha back to discuss how to deal with the enemy.

The Pasha now had the freedom to take a breath. Kamensky was stopped outside several major fortresses by him, which could temporarily guarantee the safety of Constantinople.

But now the Russian army attacked from the west and surrounded Thessalonika. If they occupied this place and marched eastward, some fortresses between Macedonia and Thrace could barely resist the Russian army, but it would also prevent the Turkish army from deploying and making no use of their own military advantage.

He thought about this problem, but the current situation is too bad. Even Sultan Mahmud couldn't find a suitable candidate to be the commander of this Turkish army.

In Constantinople, Ahmed Pasha soon met Grand Vizier Yusuf Pasha.

"You are finally back, Kushid Ahmed. His Majesty the Sultan is waiting for you in the Royal Villa."

"What's the situation? The Russians' progress is getting more and more unexpected. What are they going to do?"

"I think they will come to Constantinople, but if there are only 40,000 people, they don't have enough manpower."

"But everything is possible in war. After all, you are the commander behind me. We have no one available now. If I don't go to Salonika, it will probably be you. But your physical condition."

Yusuf Pasha lost one eye when he was young, so he is a one-eyed dragon, and it is okay to sit in the back as a commander, so it is a bit difficult for him to go to the front line.

If they didn't go, it would probably be Aziz Ahmed Pasha, who was of higher status than Ahmed Pasha, who went.

This Pasha and Ahmed Pasha had always had a bad relationship, and they accused each other of poor command. After all, the Russian army had been chasing them before, and they had been defeated repeatedly. Maybe the situation on Ahmed Pasha's side was better, at least he could maintain the basic front line.

But when the former faced some small Russian troops, he always won some battles by stealing.

Therefore, it seemed to be an acceptable choice for Aziz Ahmed Pasha to go to Thessaloniki.

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As for who would go with him, it would probably be Haji Mustafa, who had defeated the Russian army in an encounter before, and was also a relatively useful general in Ahmed Pasha's hands.

In this environment, it was imperative for the Turkish army to deploy troops.

Several masters who can win battles were summoned to the royal villa today. The young Sultan Mahmud was obviously a little anxious.

"The Russians made rapid progress this time. The damn Dolgoruky family always had people from their family come to Crimea and Greece to make trouble. This time, it was their son-in-law who came."

Other intelligence was not clear, but the Dolgoruky family had always been making military achievements on the Turks. And coincidentally, Solovyov had close relations with the two princes' families who were looking for trouble with His Majesty the Sultan. He was even the grandson-in-law of Prince Krimsky.

It seemed that they were indeed professional counterparts.

"Your Majesty, I think we still need to withdraw troops at this time, but we need to let Murad Bey in Thessaloniki continue to hold out for a while. No matter how strong the Russian army's siege ability is, a city like Thessaloniki has enough food reserves for the army in the city to use for a while, and it is not a problem to hold out for one to two months. Although the Russian army looks powerful, this son-in-law of the Dolgorukov family has defeated our army twice, Mustafa Bey and Musa Pasha were defeated by him, but his troops are limited. If Kamensky goes to Thessaloniki, it may be more troublesome for us, okay. They were trapped in the mountains. "

The Sultan looked at Ahmed Pasha, and Aziz, who was at odds with him, nodded. The Grand Vizier began to speak: "Your Majesty, I think at this time, we should still gather our troops to rescue Thessaloniki. It's just different from the previous times. This time we must send a reliable general as the commander-in-chief, and we can't repeat the mistakes we made in Lom. "

Speaking of this, Mahmud Sultan himself frowned. This Mustafa Bey was missing, and he couldn't find anyone even if he wanted to punish him.

Now with the great defeat, he can only summon a lot of garbage soldiers again to lead a suitable commander.

He looked at the Grand Vizier. This Georgian was blind in one eye, and there was only one of the two Ahmed Pashas who didn't get along with each other. He preferred Aziz Ahmed. He was familiar with Macedonia, and he was familiar with the garrisons in Bursa and Erzurum.

It is currently more convenient for Aziz Ahmed to command these two garrisons, which are mainly guest troops transferred from various places under the command of Ahmed Pasha.

He didn't even discuss it, just looked at Aziz Ahmed Pasha and said, "It seems that you need to go, Aziz Ahmed, but you must be careful this time, the Russians are very cunning."

"Your Majesty, at this time, the more cunning the fox is, the harder it is to hunt. If you believe me, you must at least recruit 80,000 troops, and even need external assistance, such as the British. Although what they did in Alexandria before..."

"I know, Aziz Ahmed, I will summon the British ambassador and ask him if he can send troops to support."

They also regarded the British as a life-saving straw. After all, when Napoleon invaded Egypt before, it was the British who almost trapped him to death.

Then Napoleon ran away, Kleber was assassinated, and the French were finally defeated by the British and Turkish armies.

In this situation, according to past experience, the British can indeed help them resist for a while.

However, whether the British army will come or not, Solovyov made them suffer in Sweden last time, and the British Parliament has been arguing about various affairs recently, so the timeliness of this must be problematic.

No matter how fast the ship runs, it takes time to decide to send troops back and forth.

What's more, the British army has limited troops on the mainland, if the remaining people also join the battle.

Although the French will not come, the United States is a real threat to the colonies. They recently tried to ask General Moreau to come out to command the army, which is also a dangerous signal.

But the Turks have defeated an invading enemy with the help of Britain. Although the two sides fought three years ago, it was a small matter.

As long as someone can resist the Russians, they will definitely give as much as they want.

Moreover, the British in this era are not short of money. On the issue of Spain, they can also come up with a large amount of funds to support the Spanish army, and they have also paid the anti-French alliance before.

Therefore, it is always a reliable teammate.

However, now it is this teammate, and they can only give money, and their army really can't be mobilized.

The Turkish army itself can get a lot of soldiers, but the combat effectiveness of these people has always been a big question mark. The cavalry is too strong, and the infantry is basically garbage. (End of this chapter)