Larger context for LACK in Corpus USbrown_UKbncw/US_brown.txt
By 1783 her legions had managed to annex the Crimea amid scenes of wanton cruelty and now, in this second combat with the Crescent, were aiming at suzerainty over all of the Black Sea's northern shoreline.
Through most of 1787 operations on both sides had been lackadaisical; those of 1788 were going to prove decisive, though many of their details are obscure.
To consolidate what her Navy had won, the Czarina was fortunate that, for the first time in Russian history, her land forces enjoyed absolute unity of command under her favorite Giaour.
Potemkin was directing this conflict on three fronts: in the Caucasus; along the Danube and among the Carpathians, in alliance with the Emperor Joseph's armies; and in the misty marshlands and shallow coastal waters of Nogay Tartary and Taurida, including the Crimean peninsula.
Here the war would flame to its focus, and here Lewis Littlepage had come.
Potemkin's Army of Ekaterinoslav, totaling, it was claimed, 40,000 regular troops and 6,000 irregulars of the Cossack Corps, had invested Islam's principal stronghold on the north shore of the Black Sea, the fortress town of Oczakov, and was preparing to test the Turk by land and sea.