Nevertheless, Peter did not give up the campaign. He was told that large supplies had been collected for the Turks and lay without guard on the lower Pruth near its junction with the Danube. As the main Turkish army had crossed the Danube and was marching north up the east bank of the Pruth to meet him, the Tsar decided to cross to the west bank and move south. If he succeeded, he would outflank the Grand Vizier, capture the Turkish supplies and cut the Ottoman army off from its base. To increase the chance of success, Peter detached Ronne with the whole of the Russian cavalry, 12,000 horsemen, to plunge ahead down the west bank of the Pruth into the Ottoman rear, capturing or burning the magazines and storehouses at Braila on the Danube. On June 27, the cavalry rode off, and three days later the infantry crossed the Pruth and began moving south down the west bank in three divisions. The first was led by General Janus, the second by the Tsar and the third by Repnin.
Janus was first to make conctact with the Turks. As the Russians
marched south on the west bank of the Pruth and the Turks advanced north on the opposite bank, the advance guards of the two armies caught sight of each other across the river on July 8. Both, sides were startled to find themselves in such close proximity. When the Grand Vizier was told, he was frightened and his first thought was to retreat. "For as he had never before seen enemy troops and was by nature a great poltroon, he at once conceived himself as lost." wrote Poniatowski, traveling with the Ottoman army. Together, the Tatar Khan Devlet Gerey, Poniatowski and the Aga of the Janissaries steadied his courage, and the next day the Turkish army continued its march northward. Turkish engineers rapidly threw up bridges so that the army could cross back to the western bank to meet its enemy. Peter, learning that the Turks were crossing to his side of the river, immediately ordered Janus to fall back and rejoin the main army.
Peter was holding a position behind a marsh south of Stanilesti, and Janus' tired men fell back into these entrenchments. They got little rest. The following day, a Sunday, the Turks, who had come up quickly behind, launched repeated attacks. Cantemir's Moldavians, despite their inexperience, stood well, and the Russians as a whole held their ground. But the Tsar's urgent messages to Repnin to bring the third division forward to relieve the other two were fruitless. Repnin's men were pinned down by Tatar cavalry at Stanilesti and could advance no farther.
That evening, after a long day of Turkish assaults mounting in strength, and with the Tsar alarmed by the absence of Repnin's men and the lack of provisions, a Russian council of war was held. It had little choice: Retreat was imperative. The withdrawal began during the night and continued through the following morning in the direction of Repnin's division at Stanilesti. The retreat was a nightmare. The Turks pressed closely behind, launching continual attacks on the Russian rear guard. Tatar squadrons galloped in and out among the Russian wagons, and most of the Russian baggage train with the remaining provisions was lost. The Russian infantry was exhausted and preoccupied by thirst. Companies and battalions formed squares and marched in this formation to the riverbank, where, by sections, some drank while others beat off the Tatar horsemen. Only late on Monday afternoon, July 9, was all the Russian infantry reunited at Stanilesti, where on a promontory they began digging shallow trenches to make a stand against the horsemen who swarmed around them.
Before dark, long lines of Turkish infantry including the Janissaries began to arrive, and, in the presence of the Grand Vizier, the Ottoman elite guards launched a major attack on the sketchily constructed Russian camp. Russian discipline held as Peter's men poured heavy fire into the advancing ranks of Janissaries. Its first attack broken, the Turkish infantry fell back and began, in its turn, to throw up a line of entrenchments completely hemming in the Russian camp. The Turkish artillery arrived and the guns were rolled into place in a great crescent; by nightfall, 300 cannon pointed their muzzles at th Russian camp. Thousands of Tatar horsemen, together with Poles and Cossacks provided by Charles, patrolled the opposite riverbank. There was no escape: The Tsar and his army were surrounded.
The strength of the Turks was overwhelming: 120,000 infantry and 80,000 cavalry. Peter's strength was only 38,000 infantry; his cavalry was far to the south with Ronne. He was pinned down against a river and ringed by 300 cannon which could sweep his camp with shot and shell. Most important, his men were so exhausted by hunger and heat that some of them could no longer fight. It was difficult even to draw water from the river; the men sent for the purpose came under intense fire from the Tatar horsemen massed on the opposite bank. His own earthworks were scanty, and one entire section was covered only by the bodies of dead wagon horses and makeshift chevaux de frise. In the center of the camp, a shallow pit had been dug to protect Catherine and her women. Surrounded by wagons and shielded from the sun by an awning, it was a frail barrier against Turkish cannonballs. Inside, Catherine waited calmly, while around her the other women wept.
Peter's situation was impossible. That night he could look out all around him on the thousands of campfires of the huge Ottoman army sparkling in the low-lying hills on both sides of the river as far as the eye could reach. In the morning, when the Turks undoubtedly would attack, he would be doomed. He, the Russian Tsar, the victor of Poltava, would be overwhelmed and perhaps pulled through the streets of Constantinople in a cage. The fruits of twenty years of arduous, colossal toil were about to evaporate in a day. Could it have come to this? Yet, why not? Had not exactly the same thing happened to his enemy Charles? And for an identical reason: Too proud, too sure of his destiny, he had ventured too far onto enemy ground.
Actually, the situation was much worse then Charles' at Perevoluchna. There, the Swedish army had not been surrounded by superior forces, and the King himself had found a way to escape. But here the Turks held every card: They could take the Russian army, the new Tsaritsa and, most important, the man on whom everything else rested, the Tsar himself. What would he have to give up, what huge sacrifices in territory or treasure would Russia have to pay to win his freedom?
There is a story that at this moment the Tsar asked whether Neculce, the commander of the Moldavian troops, could somehow escort Catherine and himself to the Hungarian frontier. Neculce refused, knowing that even if he were somehow able to pass through the surrounding lines, the whole of Moldavia was now swarming with Tatar horsemen. Some have said that this request showed cowardice on Peter's part. But when the battle was lost and the army on the verge of surrender, the chief of state had to think of saving.the nation. Peter knew that at this time he was Russia. He knew what a blow it would be to Russia if, along with the army he had so carefully built, he himself was taken prisoner. In time, the lost army could be replaced—if he was free to do it. But his own loss would be irreparable.
The next morning, Tuesday, the 10th, it should have ended. The
Turkish artillery opened fire and the Russians prepared for a final stand—but the Janissaries did not attack. As a measure of desperation, Peter ordered a sortie, and thousands of weary Russians rose from their trenches and flung themselves on the first lines of Ottoman, inflicting heavy losses before they were forced to retreat. During the sortie, the Russians took prisoners, and from one of these Peter learned that the Janissarie suffered heavily in the previous day's fighting and were disinclined to make another full-scale attack on the Russian lines. At the very least, this might give the Tsar a little maneuverability in negotiating the terms of this surrender.