Unknown Sources and Archives of Military History: The 1848-1850 Tsarist Campaign Diary from the Romanian Lands in the Russian State Military-Historical Archive in Moscow

The present article approaches the ample Tsarist campaign diary (1,300 folios), describing Moldavia and Wallachia’s 1848-1850 military occupation by the Russian 5th army corps led by general commander Alexander Nikolaevich Lüders, and the protecting power’s armed interventions in Transylvania (1849). The echoes of this long military campaign were feebler at that time, than those of the much- clamored Russian campaign in Hungary (June-August 1849). Ignored so far by the Russian and Romanian historiographies (even if for different reasons), the 1848-1850 occupation of the Romanian Lands is minutely related by an unknown source, recently discovered in the Russian State Military-Historical Archive in Moscow and edited by us. Also analyzed  the difficult conditions of access in the War Archive of  the  former Tsarist Empire, today Eastern Europe’s largest military archive of medieval and modern history.

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