F.W. von Bauer and Russian Mapping of Moldavia and Wallachia

Abstract

During the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774 the advance of G.A. Rumiantsev’s First Army after its great victories at Riabaia Mogila, Larga, and Kagul was slowed by several factors, including the lack of adequate maps of southern Moldavia and Wallachia and the Turkish fortress line along the Danube. This problem was finally addressed by Lt General Friedrich Wilhelm von Bauer (1731–1783), a talented engineer in Russian service, a hero of the Riabaia Mogila and Larga battles, and author of a project to organize a Russian General Staff along Prussian lines. Bauer’s surveying work facilitated the Russians’ successful drive across the Danube in 1773 and this surveying work informed the remarkably detailed map of Moldavia he published in 1775 and 1781. The data he gathered for a similar map of Wallachia was published in his Mémoires historiques et géographiques sur la Valachie, avec un prospectus d’un Atlas géographique et militaire de la derniére guerre entre la Russie et la Porte Ottomanne (1778). Bauer’s work as a geographer and cartographer contributed to European knowledge of the geography and chorography of the Danubian region and illustrated the increasing impact of technicalism upon Russian military development in the eighteenth century.