Since the time of "Ochakov and Crimea", a kind of painful appendix has formed near the southern border of the Taman Peninsula with its cape protruding into the Black Sea, which has caused a lot of trouble for Russian diplomacy and military command.
The Ottoman Empire, which had lost the war, built the Anapa fortress here through the efforts of its Western patrons according to the Kuchuk-Kainardzhiyskiy treatise. By the time the settlers began to improve their lives in the neighborhood - the Cossacks of the Black Sea army. Anapa has turned into a powerful Turkish base on the seashore with a military garrison of 10,000 and an urban population of 30,000. Slave traders who fled from Crimea - Turks and Tatars, local Nogai, Nekrasovites and other motley people - rattled at its bazaars, traded, changed, bought, sold. In the course was a secret and overt speculation in human goods - young girls destined for harems.
And as soon as a new war with Turkey began, considerable efforts were made to destroy the hostile center. However, both campaigns, under the command of Generals Tekkeli and Bibikov, ended in vain. Then the vexed prince Potemkin-Tavrichesky ordered the new commander of the Kuban and Caucasian corps, General IV Gudovich, to take Anapa at any cost and "exterminate this nest of the Turks."
Preparations for the offensive began in January 1791. Only by the beginning of May, Gudovich managed to concentrate 11 infantry battalions, 1900 rangers, 24 cavalry squadrons with 20 guns in the Temizhbek fortification. With them he set out in the direction of Yekaterinodar. On May 24, at the Talyzin crossing, a detachment of Major General Zagryazhsky joined Gudovich's troops. On the way to Anapa itself, even more solid reinforcements from the Crimea arrived in time - 10 cavalry squadrons, 800 rangers, 309 Don Cossacks, who, in addition to guns, had lances and sabers, 14 field guns and 90 assault ladders. This helped to quickly repel the enemy attack from the rear and better prepare for the assault on the fortress.
And the Turks, with the help of French engineers, turned it into an impregnable one. The fortifications were covered with a deep and wide moat with a length of one and a half kilometers, with stone facing. Behind it rose a powerful bulk shaft, in front of which a jagged strip of a palisade stretched. From the sea, the attackers were met by a natural obstacle - steep shores, and the approach of their large ships was hampered by shallow water. There were also the armed feluccas of the Turks from which they fired.
In the fortress, the enemy led to battle 83 cannons and 19 mortars, a Turkish garrison of 10,000 and a detachment of 15,000 Tatars and their fellow believers. The command was carried out by the three-bunchuzhny Mustafa Pasha.
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In order to prevent bloodshed, the Russian command suggested that the Pasha surrender the city and the fortress without a fight. Assessing the situation, he was inclined to accept the terms of the honorable surrender. But the notorious religious sheikh Mansur resolutely opposed, who literally climbed out of his skin to excite and embitter the fanatical masses. A cannon fire struck the Russian troops from the fortress.
Regrouping, Gudovich's troops marched in five columns to assault. And now nothing could contain them. Colonel Samarin's fourth column was the first to break into the rampart and gain a foothold on it. Then the columns of Colonels Keller, Mukhanov, Polikarpov and other detachments of musketeers and dragoons entered into hand-to-hand combat.
For five hours the Turks put up desperate resistance. Smoke, flames, explosions, people screaming everywhere. In the midst of the storming of the fortress, 8 thousand Turkish co-religionists struck from the rear at Zagryazhsky's detachment. It took a lot of effort to throw the enemy into the mountains.
The outcome of the battle was a foregone conclusion. At 8 am on June 22, 1791, the Anapa fortress fell. The losses of the Turks amounted to 8 thousand people killed and wounded, Russian troops captured 95 guns, 130 banners, a lot of ammunition and provisions, 13.5 thousand people were taken prisoner … Including Anapa Pasha Mustafa and Sheikh Mansur. The latter was immediately sent to Petersburg.
The victory came at a high price. Russian troops suffered losses in 930 killed and 1295 wounded. After the fall of Anapa, the Turks burned and destroyed Sudzhuk-Kale (later Novorossiysk arose here), hid in the mountain forests and gorges of the Western Caucasus.
Upon the conclusion of the Yassky peace with Turkey, the Anapa appendix was resurrected as if nothing had happened. England and France made the Turks constantly keep their sharp splinter near the Kuban borders. A year later, the resettlement of the Black Sea Cossacks to the Kuban and Taman began, and in the first place they had a lot of unpleasant affairs with restless neighbors. In April 1807, relations with Turkey were severed, and hostilities resumed. A squadron of the Black Sea Fleet under the command of Rear Admiral S. A. Pustoshkin moved to the Anapa shores from the Crimea. The naval commander presented an ultimatum to surrender the fortress, giving two hours for reflection. The garrison secretly left the fortress, leaning into the mountains … By the government decree of July 4, 1811, Anapa was ranked among the Russian fortresses of the second class. From 1807 to 1812, the commandant of the fortress was Colonel Buchholz, married to a Circassian princess. She spoke Russian well and was now called Ekaterina Mikhailovna. Thanks to this outstanding woman, Anapa maintained good ties with her mountain neighbors for five years.
Alas, the new peace treaty of May 16, 1812 returned Anapa to Turkey again. The rivalry between the two empires in the Caucasus led to the war of 1827-1829. The Russian command sought to quickly return Anapa to its state. Along with the main land and naval forces, four regiments of Black Sea Cossacks, led by the ataman, Hero of the Patriotic War of 1812 A. D. Beskrovny, were thrown into the offensive against the fortress. A brave colonel in a ceremonial uniform and with a saber "For Courage", handed to him by Field Marshal M. I. Kutuzov for the battle at Borodino, in front of the formation of the Black Sea men threw a battle cry:
- Let's expel adversaries from the Anapa limits, we will establish ourselves here forever.
Like all Russian soldiers, the Black Sea people honestly fulfilled their duty. Under their impetuous onslaught, the enemies, pressed against the coastal cliff, in panic jumped into the depths of the sea and found their death there. The Black Sea regiments were awarded battle banners with the inscription "For the difference in the capture of the fortress of Anapa on June 12, 1828".
In 1847, Anapa acquired the status of a port city. With the beginning of the Crimean War of 1853-1856, united squadrons of British, French and Turks appeared in the Black Sea waters. For the Russian troops, the circumstances were unfortunate. On May 17, 1855, they had to leave Novorossiysk, and on May 28, from Anapa.
At the conclusion of the Paris Treaty, Anapa was returned to Russia. But in the Transcaucasus, she lost the city of Kare and the Kars region.
Turkish fortress in Anapa The Turkish protege Sefer-bey delayed the withdrawal of garrison units from the fortress, tried to gain a foothold in it despite the peace treaty. The cleansing of the fortress was entrusted to regular troops, the Black Sea and the Don people. On July 7, 1856, five line battalions, a missile team, three field and mountain batteries, a Don Cossack regiment and an Anapa cavalry squadron, consisting of mountaineers - friends of Russia, approached the Varenikovsky fortification. The self-proclaimed owners of the fortress - Sefer Bey and his henchmen - had to get out of their way. Before their escape, the enemies turned the city into a heap of ruins. Everything was burnt, mutilated, the Orthodox Church was blown up.
During the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878, Anapa was subjected to enemy artillery fire from the sea. But on land, battles for her were no longer tied. Since then, more than one hundred and twenty years, the Anapa "appendix" does not exist either. Only during the 1941-1945 war against the Nazi invaders, the city was temporarily under occupation. But here there were different circumstances and a completely different enemy.