The Battle of the Young - a detailed description of the course of the battle. Unknown history of Russia: “The Battle of Molodi. Left edge, middle

In terms of its significance, the Battle of Molodi is comparable to Kulikovo and other key battles in Russian history. Victory in the battle allowed Russia to maintain its independence and became a turning point in the confrontation between the Russian kingdom and the Crimean Khanate, which abandoned its claims to the Kazan and Astrakhan khanates and henceforth lost most of its power. The Battle of Molodin is the result of the longest military campaign of Turkish troops in Europe.

The battle took place between July 29 and August 2, 1572, 50 versts south of Moscow, in which Russian troops under the leadership of the governor Prince Mikhail Vorotynsky and the army of the Crimean Khan Devlet I Giray, which included, in addition to the Crimean troops themselves, Turkish and Nogai detachments, came together in battle. Despite the significant numerical superiority, the Turkish-Crimean army was put to flight and almost completely killed.

Background. The campaign of the Crimean Tatars of 1571 and the burning of Moscow

With the support of the Ottoman Empire and in agreement with the newly formed Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Crimean Khan Devlet Giray in May 1571, with an army of 40 thousand, made a devastating campaign against Russian lands. Having bypassed, with the help of defectors, the abatis lines on the southern outskirts of the Russian kingdom (a chain of fortifications called the “belt” Holy Mother of God"), he reached Moscow and set fire to its suburbs. The city, built mainly of wood, was almost completely burned down, with the exception of stone Kremlin. The number of victims and those taken captive is very difficult to determine, but, according to various historians, it is in the tens of thousands. After the fire of Moscow, Ivan IV, who had previously left the city, offered to return the Astrakhan Khanate and was almost ready to negotiate the return of Kazan, and also tore down fortifications in the North Caucasus.

However, Devlet Giray was sure that Rus' would not recover from such a blow and could itself become an easy prey, moreover, famine and a plague epidemic reigned within its borders. In his opinion, all that remained was to strike the final blow. For the entire year after the campaign against Moscow, he was engaged in forming a new, much larger army. The Ottoman Empire provided active support, providing him with several thousand soldiers, including 7 thousand selected Janissaries. He managed to gather about 80 thousand people from the Crimean Tatars and Nogais. Possessing a huge army at that time, Devlet Giray moved towards Moscow. The Crimean Khan repeatedly stated that he was “going to Moscow to rule.” The lands of Muscovite Rus' were already divided in advance between the Crimean Murzas. The invasion of the Crimean army, as well as Batu’s campaigns of conquest, raised the acute question of the existence of an independent Russian state.

Campaign of the Crimean Tatars of 1572

In 1572, the Moscow state was devastated by famine (a consequence of crop failures caused by drought and cold), and the plague epidemic continued. In the Livonian War, the Russian army suffered a heavy defeat near Revel; most of the troops were in the Baltic states and on other western borders. The Russian capital seemed like easy prey to the Crimeans. Its old fortifications were destroyed by fire, and new ones, hastily erected, could not completely replace them. Military failures shook Russian rule in the Volga and Caspian regions.

3a with the backs of the Crimeans stood the largest in Europe military power- Ottoman Empire. In such a situation, the khan hoped not only to tear away the Middle and Southern Volga region from Russia, but also to capture Moscow and thereby restore Rus'’s long-standing dependence on the Tatars. On the eve of the invasion, Devlet I ordered the counties and cities of Russia to be painted between the Murzas. The Turkish Sultan sent a large detachment of Janissaries to Crimea to participate in the conquest of Rus'. Many Adyghe princes from the North Caucasus became allies of the Crimean Khan.

In anticipation of a new invasion, the Russians, by May 1572, had gathered southern border a united oprichnina and zemstvo army of approximately 12,000 nobles, 2,035 archers, and 3,800 Cossacks of Ataman Mikhail Cherkashin. Together with the militias of the northern cities, the army numbered a little more than 20 thousand people. At the head of the army were the governor, Prince Mikhail Ivanovich Vorotynsky, and the oprichnina governor, Prince Dmitry Ivanovich Khvorostinin.

The Crimeans had a numerical superiority on their side. The invasion involved from 40 to 50 thousand horsemen from the Crimean army, the Greater and Lesser Nogai hordes, and up to 7 thousand Turkish Janissaries. Khan had Turkish artillery at his disposal.

The Russian command positioned the main forces near Kolomna, covering the approaches to Moscow from Ryazan. But it also took into account the possibility of a second invasion from the southwest, from the Ugra region. In this case, the command moved the advanced regiment of Prince Khvorostinin to the extreme right flank in Kaluga. Contrary to tradition, the advanced regiment was superior in numbers to the regiment of the right and left hands. Khvorostinin was assigned a mobile river detachment to defend the crossings across the Oka. Ivan the Terrible himself, as last year, left Moscow, this time towards Veliky Novgorod.

The invasion began on July 23, 1572. The mobile Nogai cavalry rushed to Tula and on the third day tried to cross the Oka River above Serpukhov, but was repulsed from the crossing by a Russian guard regiment. Meanwhile, the khan and his entire army reached the main Serpukhov crossings across the Oka. Russian commanders were waiting for the enemy across the Oka River in heavily fortified positions.

Having encountered strong Russian defenses, Devlet I resumed the attack in the area of ​​​​Senkin Ford above Serpukhov. On the night of July 28, the Nogai cavalry dispersed two hundred nobles guarding the ford and captured the crossings. Developing the offensive, the Nogais went far to the north overnight. In the morning, Prince Khvorostinin and the advanced regiment arrived at the crossing point. But, faced with the main forces of the Crimean army, he avoided battle. Soon the regiment right hand tried to intercept the attackers in the upper reaches of the Nara River, but was repulsed. Devlet I Giray went to the rear of the Russian army and began to move unhindered towards Moscow along the Serpukhov road. The rearguards were commanded by the sons of the khan with numerous and selected cavalry. The leading Russian regiment followed the Crimean princes, waiting for an opportune moment.

Before the battle

This time the Khan's campaign was incomparably more serious than an ordinary raid. On July 27, the Crimean-Turkish army approached the Oka and began to cross it in two places - at the confluence of the Lopasny River into it along the Senkin Ford, and upstream from Serpukhov. The first crossing point was guarded by a small guard regiment of “children of the boyars” under the command of Ivan Shuisky, consisting of only 200 soldiers. The Nogai vanguard of the Crimean-Turkish army under the command of Tereberdey-Murza fell upon him. The detachment did not take flight, but entered into an unequal battle, but was scattered, however, managing to inflict great damage on the Crimeans. After this, Tereberdey-Murza’s detachment reached the outskirts of modern Podolsk near the Pakhra River and, having cut all the roads leading to Moscow, stopped waiting for the main forces.

The main positions of the Russian troops were near Serpukhov. Gulyai-Gorod consisted of half-a-log shields the size of a log house wall, mounted on carts, with loopholes for shooting, and arranged in a circle or in a line. Russian soldiers were armed with arquebuses and cannons. To distract, Devlet Giray sent a detachment of two thousand against Serpukhov, while he himself with the main forces crossed the Oka River in a more remote place near the village of Drakino, where he encountered the regiment of governor Nikita Romanovich Odoevsky, who was defeated in a difficult battle. After this, the main army moved towards Moscow, and Vorotynsky, having removed his troops from coastal positions, moved after him. This was a risky tactic, since all hope was placed on the fact that by “grabbing the tail” of the Crimean army, the Russians would force the khan to turn around for battle and not go to defenseless Moscow. However, the alternative was to overtake the Khan along a side route, which had little chance of success. In addition, there was the experience of the previous year, when the governor Ivan Belsky managed to arrive in Moscow before the Crimeans, but could not prevent it from being set on fire.

Strengths of the parties

Devlet Giray: 140 thousand Crimean Tatars, Turkish Janissaries and Nogais
Vorotynsky and Khvorostinin: about 20 thousand archers, Cossacks, noble cavalry and Livonian German servicemen, 7 thousand German mercenaries, about 5 thousand M. Cherkashenin’s Cossacks, as well as possibly a troop army (militia)

Progress of the battle

The battle took place near the village of Molodi, 45 versts from Moscow. The Crimeans could not withstand the blow and fled. Khvorostinin “dominated” the Crimean guard regiment all the way to the Khan’s headquarters. Devlet I was forced to send 12 thousand Crimean and Nogai horsemen to help his sons. The battle grew, and the chief governor, Vorotynsky, in anticipation of an attack, ordered the installation of a mobile fortress - a “walk-city” near Molodya. A large regiment of Russians took refuge behind the walls of the fortress.

The multiple superiority of the enemy forces forced Khvorostinin to retreat. But at the same time he pulled off a brilliant maneuver. His regiment, retreating, carried the Crimeans to the walls of the “walk-city”. Volleys of Russian cannons fired at point-blank range brought devastation to the ranks of the advancing cavalry and forced them to turn back.

During the day, most of the Crimean army stood behind Pakhra, and then turned back to Molodi. The center of the Russian defensive positions was a hill, on top of which stood the “Walk-Gorod”. At the foot of the hill behind the Rozhai River, 3 thousand archers stood to support the governor “on the arquebuses.”

The Crimeans quickly covered the distance from Pakhra to Rozhai and attacked the Russian positions in their entire mass. Every single one of the archers died on the battlefield, but the warriors entrenched in the “walk-city” repelled the cavalry attacks. The attackers suffered heavy losses, but food supplies in the “walk-city” also dried up.

After a two-day lull, Devlet I Giray resumed the assault on the “walk-city” on August 2. Towards the end of the day, when the onslaught began to weaken, Voivode M.I. Vorotynsky with his regiments left the “walk-city” and, moving along the bottom of the ravine behind the fortifications, secretly went to the rear of the attackers. The defense of the “walk-city” was entrusted to Prince D.I. Khvorostinin, who had all the artillery and a small detachment of German mercenaries at his disposal. At the agreed signal, Khvorostinin fired a salvo from all guns, then “climbed out” of the fortress and attacked the enemy. At the same moment, Vorotynsky’s regiments attacked the Crimeans from the rear. The Crimeans could not withstand the blow and began to flee. Many of them were killed and captured. Among those killed was the khan's son. The next day, the Russians continued to pursue the enemy and defeated the rearguards left by the khan on the Oka.

How it was

In 1569, 17,000 selected Janissaries, reinforced by Crimean and Nogai cavalry, moved towards Astrakhan. But the campaign failed: the Turks were unable to bring artillery with them, and they were not used to fighting without guns...

Reconnaissance in force:

In 1571, the Crimean Khan Devlet Giray, in alliance with the Ottoman Empire and the sworn enemy of Rus', the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, at the head of a 40,000-strong army invaded Muscovy. Having bypassed (with the help of traitors) the southern barriers, he reaches Moscow and burns it to the ground.

After such a successful raid by Devlet-Girey and his burning of Moscow, Ivan the Terrible tore and tore, and in Istanbul they rubbed their hands: reconnaissance in force showed that the Russians do not know how to fight, preferring to sit behind the fortress walls. But if the light Tatar cavalry was not capable of taking fortifications, then the experienced Turkish Janissaries were able to do this very well.

Decisive march:

In 1572, Devlet Giray assembled a military force unprecedented at that time - 120,000 people, including 80 thousand Crimeans and Nogais, as well as 7 thousand of the best Turkish Janissaries with dozens of artillery barrels - essentially special forces, elite troops with extensive experience in warfare and capture of fortresses. Going on a campaign, Devlet Giray declared that he was “going to Moscow for the kingdom.” He was not going to fight, but to reign! It never occurred to him that anyone would dare to oppose such a force.

The “division of the skin of the unkilled bear” began in advance: Murzas were appointed to the still Russian cities, governors were appointed to the not yet conquered Russian principalities, Russian land was divided in advance, and merchants received permission for duty-free trade.

All the men of Crimea, young and old, gathered to explore new lands.
A huge army was supposed to enter Russian borders and remain there forever.
And so it happened...

On July 6, 1572, the Crimean Khan Devlet Giray led the Ottoman army to the Oka River, where he came across a twenty-thousand-strong army under the command of Prince Mikhail Vorotynsky.

Devlet Giray did not engage in battle with the Russians, but turned up along the river. Near Senkin Ford, he easily dispersed a detachment of two hundred boyars and, having crossed the river, moved along the Serpukhov road to Moscow.

Decisive Battle:

Oprichnik Dmitry Khvorostinin, who led a detachment of five thousand of Cossacks and boyars, sneaked on the heels of the Tatars and on July 30, 1572 received permission to attack the enemy.

Rushing forward, he trampled the Tatar rearguard into the road dust to death and crashed into the main forces at the Pakhra River. The Tatars, taken aback by such impudence, turned around and rushed at the small detachment of Russians with all their strength. The Russians took to their heels, and the enemies, rushing after them, pursued the guardsmen all the way to the village of Molodi...

And then an unexpected surprise awaited the invaders: the Russian army, deceived on the Oka, was already here. And she didn’t just stand there, but managed to build a walk-city - a mobile fortification made of thick wooden shields. From the cracks between the shields, cannons struck the steppe cavalry, arquebuses thundered from the loopholes cut into the log walls, and a shower of arrows poured over the fortification. A friendly volley swept away the advanced Tatar detachments, like a hand sweeping pawns off a chessboard...

The Tatars mixed up, and Khvorostinin, turning his Cossacks around, rushed into the attack again...

The Ottomans, wave after wave, stormed the fortress that had come from nowhere, but thousands of their cavalry, one after another, fell into a cruel meat grinder and copiously drenched the Russian soil with their blood...

On that day, only the falling darkness stopped the endless murder...
In the morning, the Ottoman army discovered the truth in all its terrifying ugliness: the invaders realized that they had fallen into a trap - the strong walls of Moscow stood ahead along the Serpukhov road, and the escape routes to the steppe were blocked by iron-clad guardsmen and archers. Now for the uninvited guests it was no longer a question of conquering Russia, but of getting back alive...
The Tatars were furious: they were accustomed not to fight with the Russians, but to drive them into slavery. The Ottoman Murzas, who had gathered to rule the new lands, and not die on them, were also not amused.

By the third day, when it became clear that the Russians would rather die on the spot than allow uninvited guests to get away, Devlet Giray ordered his soldiers to dismount and attack the Russians together with the Janissaries. The Tatars understood perfectly well that this time they were not going to rob, but to save their own skin, and they fought like mad dogs. It got to the point that the Crimeans tried to break the hated shields with their hands, and the Janissaries gnawed them with their teeth and chopped them with scimitars. But the Russians were not going to release the eternal robbers into the wild to give them the opportunity to catch their breath and return again. Blood flowed all day, but by evening the walk-town continued to stand in its place.

In the early morning of August 3, 1572, when the Ottoman army launched a decisive attack, Vorotynsky’s regiment and Khvorostinin’s guardsmen completely unexpectedly hit them in the back, and at the same time, a powerful volley from all guns fell from Walk-Gorod on the storming Ottomans.
And what started out as a battle instantly turned into a beating...
Result:
In a field near the village of Molodi, all seven thousand Turkish Janissaries were cut down without a trace.

Not only the son, grandson and son-in-law of Devlet-Girey himself died under Russian sabers near the village of Molodi - there Crimea lost almost its entire combat-ready male population. He was never able to recover from this defeat, which predetermined his entry into the Russian Empire.
Despite the almost fourfold superiority in manpower, almost nothing remained of the Khan’s 120,000-strong army - only 10,000 people returned to Crimea. 110 thousand Crimean-Turkish invaders found their death in Molodi.

The history of that time did not know such a grandiose military disaster. The best army in the world simply ceased to exist...

Let's summarize:
In 1572, not only Russia was saved. In Molodi, all of Europe was saved - after such a defeat, there could no longer be any talk of the Turkish conquest of the continent.
The Battle of Molodi is not only a grandiose milestone in Russian history. The Battle of Molodi is one of the greatest events in European and World history.
Perhaps that is why it was so thoroughly “forgotten” by the Europeans, for whom it is important to show that it was they who defeated the Turks, these “shakers of the Universe,” and not some Russians...
Battle of Molodi? What is this anyway?
Ivan groznyj? We remember something, “tyrant and despot”, it seems...

Speaking of the “bloody tyrant and despot”:

“Complete nonsense” includes “Notes on Russia” by the Englishman Jerome Horsey, which claims that in the winter of 1570 the guardsmen killed 700,000 (seven hundred thousand) inhabitants in Novgorod. How this could happen, with the total population of this city being thirty thousand, no one could explain...
Despite all the efforts, no more than 4,000 deaths can be attributed to the conscience of Ivan the Terrible during all his fifty years of rule.
This is probably a lot, even if we take into account that the majority honestly earned their execution through treason and perjury...

However, in the same years, in neighboring Europe in Paris, more than 3,000 Huguenots were slaughtered in JUST ONE night (!!!), and in the rest of the country - more than 30,000 in two weeks. In England, by order of Henry VIII, 72,000 people were hanged, guilty only of being beggars. In the Netherlands during the revolution, the number of corpses exceeded 100,000...

No, Russia is definitely far from European civilization...

THE FORGOTTEN BATTLE (Battle of Molodi July 29 - August 3, 1572)

The Battle of Molodi (Molodinskaya Battle) is a major battle that took place in 1572 year near Moscow, between Russian troops led by Prince Mikhail Vorotynsky and the Crimean army Khan Devlet I Gerey, which included, in addition to the Crimean troops themselves, Turkish and Nogai detachments. ..

Despite double numerical superiority, 120 The thousand-strong Crimean army was completely defeated and put to flight. Only about 20 thousands of people.
In terms of its significance, the Battle of Molodi was comparable to Kulikovskaya and other key battles in Russian history. It preserved the independence of Russia and became a turning point in the confrontation between the Moscow state and the Crimean Khanate, which abandoned its claims to Kazan and Astrakhan and henceforth lost a significant part of its power...

Prince Vorotynsky managed to impose a protracted battle on Devlet-Girey, depriving him of the benefits of a sudden powerful blow. The troops of the Crimean Khan suffered huge losses (according to some sources, almost 100 thousand people). But the most important thing is the irreparable losses, since the main combat-ready population of Crimea took part in the campaign.

The village of Molodi became a cemetery for a significant part of the men of the Crimean Khanate. The whole flower of the Crimean army, its best warriors, lay down here. The Turkish Janissaries were completely exterminated. After such a brutal blow, the Crimean khans no longer thought about raiding the Russian capital. The Crimean-Turkish aggression against the Russian state was stopped.

“In the summer of 1571, they were expecting a raid by the Crimean Khan Devlet-Girey. But the oprichniki, who were tasked with holding a barrier on the banks of the Oka, for the most part did not go to work: fighting against the Crimean Khan was more dangerous than plundering Novgorod. One of the captured boyar children gave the khan an unknown route to one of the fords on the Oka.

Devlet-Girey managed to bypass the barrier of zemstvo troops and one oprichnina regiment and cross the Oka. Russian troops barely managed to return to Moscow. But Devlet-Girey did not besiege the capital, but set fire to the settlement. The fire spread through the walls. The entire city burned down, and those who took refuge in the Kremlin and in the adjoining fortress of Kitay-Gorod suffocated from the smoke and “fire heat.” Negotiations began, at which Russian diplomats received secret instructions to agree, as a last resort, to abandon Astrakhan. Devlet-Girey also demanded Kazan. In order to finally break the will of Ivan IV, he prepared a raid for the next year.

Ivan IV understood the seriousness of the situation. He decided to put at the head of the troops an experienced commander who had often been in disgrace - Prince Mikhail Ivanovich Vorotynsky. Both zemstvos and guardsmen were subordinate to his command; they were united in service and within each regiment. This united army in the battle near the village of Molodi (50 km south of Moscow) completely defeated the army of Devlet-Girey, which was almost twice its size. The Crimean threat was eliminated for many years.” History of Russia from ancient times to 1861. M., 2000, p. 154

The battle that took place in August 1572 near the village of Molodi, which is about 50 km from Moscow, between Podolsk and Serpukhov, sometimes called "Unknown Borodino". The battle itself and the heroes who participated in it are rarely mentioned in Russian history. Everyone knows the Battle of Kulikovo, as well as the Moscow prince Dmitry, who led the Russian army, and received the nickname Donskoy. Then the hordes of Mamai were defeated, but the next year the Tatars again attacked Moscow and burned it. After the Battle of Molodin, in which the 120,000-strong Crimean-Astrakhan horde was destroyed, Tatar raids on Moscow stopped forever.

IN XVI century Crimean Tatars regularly raided Muscovy. Cities and villages were set on fire, the able-bodied population was driven into captivity. Moreover, the number of captured peasants and townspeople was many times greater than the military losses.

The culmination was 1571, when the army of Khan Devlet-Girey burned Moscow to the ground. People hid in the Kremlin, the Tatars set it on fire too. The entire Moscow River was littered with corpses, the flow stopped... In the next, 1572 Devlet-Girey, like a true Genghisid, was not just going to repeat the raid, he decided to revive Golden Horde, and make Moscow its capital.
Devlet-Girey declared that he was “going to Moscow for the kingdom.” As one of the heroes of the Battle of Molodin, German oprichnik Heinrich Staden, wrote, “the cities and districts of the Russian land were all already assigned and divided among the Murzas who were under the Crimean Tsar; it was determined which one should hold.”
Janissary

On the eve of the invasion

The situation in Russia was difficult. The effects of the devastating invasion of 1571, as well as the plague, were still being felt. The summer of 1572 was dry and hot, horses and cattle died. The Russian regiments experienced serious difficulties in supplying food.

Economic difficulties were intertwined with complex internal political events, accompanied by executions, disgraces, and uprisings of the local feudal nobility that began in the Volga region. In such a difficult situation, preparations were underway in the Russian state to repel a new invasion by Devlet-Girey. On April 1, 1572 it began to operate new system border service, while taking into account the experience of last year’s fight with Devlet-Girey.

Thanks to intelligence, the Russian command was promptly informed about the movement of the 120,000-strong army of Devlet-Girey and his further actions. The construction and improvement of military-defensive structures, primarily located over a long distance along the Oka, proceeded quickly.

Having received news of the impending invasion, Ivan the Terrible fled to Novgorod and wrote a letter from there to Devlet-Girey offering peace in exchange for Kazan and Astrakhan. But it did not satisfy the khan.

Battle of Molodi

In the spring of 1571, the Crimean Khan Divlet Giray, at the head of a 120,000-strong horde, attacked Rus'. Traitor Prince Mstislavsky sent his people to show the khan how to get around the 600-kilometer Zasechnaya line from the west.
The Tatars came from where they were not expected, burned the whole of Moscow to the ground- several hundred thousand people died.

In addition to Moscow, the Crimean Khan ravaged the central regions, massacred 36 cities, collected 100 - the thousandth is full and has gone to Crimea; from the road he sent the king a knife “so that Ivan would kill himself.”

The Crimean invasion was similar to Batu's pogrom; Khan believed that Russia was exhausted and could no longer resist; the Kazan and Astrakhan Tatars rebelled; V 1572 The horde went to Rus' to establish a new yoke - the Khan's Murzas divided cities and uluses among themselves.

Rus' was truly weakened by the 20-year war, famine, plague and the terrible Tatar invasion; Ivan the Terrible managed to collect only 20 -a thousand-strong army.

On July 28, a huge horde crossed the Oka and, throwing back the Russian regiments, rushed to Moscow - however, the Russian army followed, attacking the Tatar rearguards. The Khan was forced to turn back, the masses of Tatars rushed towards the Russian advanced regiment, which took flight, luring the enemies to the fortifications where the archers and guns were located - it was a “walk-city”, a mobile fortress made of wooden shields. Volleys of Russian cannons firing at point-blank range stopped the Tatar cavalry, it retreated, leaving piles of corpses on the field, but the khan again drove his warriors forward.

For almost a week, with breaks to remove corpses, the Tatars stormed the “walk-city” near the village of Molodi, not far from the modern city of Podolsk, dismounted horsemen approached the wooden walls, rocked them - “and here they beat many Tatars and cut off countless hands”.

On August 2, when the onslaught of the Tatars weakened, the Russian regiments left the “walk-city” and attacked the weakened enemy, the horde turned into a stampede, the Tatars were pursued and cut down to the banks of the Oka - the Crimeans had never suffered such a bloody defeat.

The Battle of Molodi was a great victory for the autocracy: only absolute power could gather all forces into one fist and repel a terrible enemy - and it is easy to imagine what would have happened if Russia had been ruled not by a tsar, but by princes and boyars - the times of Batu would have been repeated.

Having suffered a terrible defeat, the Crimeans 20 years they did not dare to show themselves on the Oka; The uprisings of the Kazan and Astrakhan Tatars were suppressed - Russia won the Great War for the Volga region. On the Don and Desna, border fortifications were pushed south to 300 kilometers, at the end of the reign of Ivan the Terrible, Yelets and Voronezh were founded - the development of the richest black earth lands of the Wild Field began.

The victory over the Tatars was achieved to a large extent thanks to arquebuses and cannons - weapons that were brought from the West through the “window to Europe” cut by the tsar. (?) . This window was the port of Narva, and King Sigismund asked the English Queen Elizabeth to stop the arms trade, because “the Moscow sovereign daily increases his power by acquiring items that are brought to Narva.” (?)
V.M. Belotserkovets

Border voivode

The Oka River then served as the main support line, the harsh Russian border against the Crimean invasions. Every year up to 65 thousand warriors who carried out guard duty from early spring until late autumn. According to contemporaries, the river “was fortified for more than 50 miles along the bank: two palisades, four feet high, were built one opposite the other, one at a distance of two feet from the other, and this distance between them was filled with earth dug out behind the rear palisade ... The shooters could thus hide behind both palisades and shoot at the Tatars as they swam across the river.”

The choice of commander-in-chief was difficult: there were few people suitable for this responsible position. In the end, the choice fell on the zemstvo governor Prince Mikhail Ivanovich Vorotynsky- an outstanding military leader, “a strong and courageous man and extremely skilled in regimental arrangements.”

Boyarin Mikhail Ivanovich Vorotynsky (c. 1510-1573), like his father, devoted himself from a young age to military service. In 1536, 25-year-old Prince Mikhail distinguished himself in winter hike Ivan the Terrible against the Swedes, and after some time - in the Kazan campaigns. During the siege of Kazan in 1552, Vorotynsky at a critical moment managed to repel the attack of the city’s defenders, lead the archers and capture the Arsk Tower, and then, at the head of a large regiment, storm the Kremlin. For which he received the honorary title of sovereign servant and governor.

In 1550-1560 M.I. Vorotynsky supervised the construction of defensive structures on the southern borders of the country. Thanks to his efforts, the approaches to Kolomna, Kaluga, Serpukhov and other cities were strengthened. He established a guard service and repelled attacks from the Tatars.

Selfless and devoted friendship to the sovereign did not save the prince from suspicions of treason. In 1562-1566. he suffered humiliation, disgrace, exile, and prison. In those years, Vorotynsky received an offer from the Polish king Sigismund Augustus to go to serve in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. But the prince remained faithful to the sovereign and Russia.

In January-February 1571, service people, boyar children, village residents, and village heads came to Moscow from all border towns. By order of Ivan the Terrible M.I. Vorotynsky was supposed to, having questioned those summoned to the capital, describe from which cities, in which direction and at what distance patrols should be sent, in which places the guards should stand (indicating the territory served by the patrols of each of them), in which places the border heads should be located “for protection from the arrival of military people”, etc.

The result of this work was left by Vorotynsky “Order on village and guard service”. In accordance with it, the border service must do everything possible “to make the outskirts more careful,” so that military people “do not come to the outskirts unknown,” and accustom the guards to constant vigilance.

Another order was issued by M.I. Vorotynsky (February 27, 1571) - on establishing the parking places for stanitsa patrol heads and assigning detachments to them. They can be considered a prototype of domestic military regulations.

Knowing about the upcoming raid of Devlet-Girey, what could the Russian commander oppose to the Tatars? Tsar Ivan, citing the war in Livonia, did not provide him with a sufficiently large army, giving Vorotynsky only the oprichnina regiment; The prince had at his disposal regiments of boyar children, Cossacks, Livonian and German mercenaries. In total, the number of Russian troops was approximately 60 thousand Human.
They went against him 12 tumens, that is, an army twice as large as the Tatars and Turkish Janissaries, who also carried artillery.

The question arose, what tactics to choose in order to not only stop but also defeat the enemy with such small forces? Vorotynsky's leadership talent was manifested not only in the creation of border defenses, but also in the development and implementation of a battle plan. Did another hero of the battle play a crucial role in the latter? Prince Dmitry Khvorostinin.

So, the snow had not yet melted from the banks of the Oka when Vorotynsky began to prepare to meet the enemy. Border posts and abatis were made, Cossack patrols and patrols were constantly running, tracking down the “sakma” (Tatar trace), and forest ambushes were created. Local residents were involved in the defense. But the plan itself was not yet ready. Only general features: drag the enemy into a sticky defensive war, deprive him of maneuverability, confuse him for a while, exhaust his forces, then force him to go to the “walk-city”, where he will give the final battle.

Gulyai-Gorod is a mobile fortress, a mobile fortified point, built from individual wooden walls, which were placed on carts, with loopholes for firing cannons and rifles. It was erected near the Rozaj River and was decisive in the battle. “If the Russians did not have a walk-city, then the Crimean Khan would have beaten us,” recalls Staden, “he would have taken us prisoner and taken everyone bound to the Crimea, and the Russian land would have been his land.”

The most important thing in terms of the upcoming battle is to force Devlet-Girey to go along the Serpukhov road. And any leak of information threatened the failure of the entire battle; in fact, the fate of Russia was being decided. Therefore, the prince kept all the details of the plan in the strictest confidence; even the closest commanders for the time being did not know what their commander was up to.

Start of the battle

Summer has come. At the end of July, the hordes of Devlet-Girey crossed the Oka River just above Serpukhov, in the area of ​​​​Senka Ford. Russian troops occupied positions near Serpukhov, fortifying themselves with the Gulyai-city.

Khan bypassed the main Russian fortifications and rushed towards Moscow. Vorotynsky immediately withdrew from the crossings at Serpukhov and rushed after Devlet-Girey. The advanced regiment under the command of Prince Dmitry Khvorostinin overtook the rearguard of the Khan's army near the village of Molodi. The small village of Molodi at that time was surrounded on all sides by forests. And only in the west, where there were gentle hills, did the men cut down the trees and plow up the land. On the elevated bank of the Rozhai River, at the confluence of Molodka, stood the wooden Church of the Resurrection.

The leading regiment overtook the Crimean rearguard, forced it into battle, attacked and defeated it. But he did not stop there, but pursued the remnants of the defeated rearguard right up to the main forces of the Crimean army. The blow was so strong that the two princes leading the rearguard told the khan that it was necessary to stop the offensive.

The blow was so unexpected and strong that Devlet-Girey stopped his army. He realized that there was a Russian army behind him, which must be destroyed in order to ensure unhindered advance to Moscow. Khan turned back, Devlet-Girey risked getting involved in a protracted battle. Accustomed to solving everything with one swift blow, he was forced to change traditional tactics.

Finding himself face to face with the main forces of the enemy, Khvorostinin avoided the battle and, with an imaginary retreat, began to lure Devlet-Girey to the walk-city, behind which Vorotynsky’s large regiment was already located. The Khan's advanced forces came under crushing fire from cannons and arquebuses. The Tatars retreated with heavy losses. The first part of the plan developed by Vorotynsky was brilliantly implemented. The rapid breakthrough of the Crimeans to Moscow failed, and the khan’s troops entered into a protracted battle.

Everything could have been different if Devlet-Girey had immediately thrown all his forces into the Russian positions. But the khan did not know the true power of Vorotynsky’s regiments and was going to test them. He sent Tereberdey-Murza with two tumens to capture the Russian fortification. They all perished under the walls of the Walking City. Minor skirmishes continued for two more days. During this time, the Cossacks managed to sink Turkish artillery. Vorotynsky was seriously alarmed: what if Devlet-Girey abandoned further hostilities and turned back to start all over again next year? But that did not happen.

Victory

On July 31, a stubborn battle took place. Crimean troops began an assault on the main Russian position, located between the Rozhai and Lopasnya rivers. “The matter was great and the slaughter was great,” the chronicler says about the battle. In front of the Walking Town, the Russians scattered peculiar metal hedgehogs, about which the legs of the Tatar horses broke. Therefore, the rapid onslaught, the main component of the Crimean victories, did not take place. The powerful throw slowed down in front of the Russian fortifications, from where cannonballs, buckshot and bullets rained down. The Tatars continued to attack. Repelling numerous attacks, the Russians launched counterattacks. During one of them, the Cossacks captured the Khan’s chief adviser, Divey-Murza, who led the Crimean troops. The fierce battle continued until the evening, and Vorotynsky had to make great efforts not to introduce the ambush regiment into battle, not to detect it. This regiment was waiting in the wings.

On August 1, both troops were preparing for the decisive battle. Devlet-Girey decided to put an end to the Russians with his main forces. In the Russian camp, supplies of water and food were running out. Despite successful fighting, the situation was very difficult.

The next day a decisive battle took place. The Khan led his army to Gulyai-Gorod. And again he was unable to capture the Russian fortifications on the move. Realizing that infantry was needed to storm the fortress, Devlet-Girey decided to dismount the horsemen and, together with the Janissaries, throw the Tatars on foot to attack.

Once again, an avalanche of Crimeans poured into Russian fortifications.

Prince Khvorostinin led the defenders of the Gulyai-city. Tormented by hunger and thirst, they fought fiercely and fearlessly. They knew what fate awaited them if they were captured. They knew what would happen to their homeland if the Crimeans succeeded in a breakthrough. German mercenaries also fought bravely side by side with the Russians. Heinrich Staden led the artillery of the city.

The khan's troops approached the Russian fortress. The attackers, in rage, even tried to break the wooden shields with their hands. The Russians cut off the tenacious hands of their enemies with swords. The intensity of the battle intensified, and a turning point could occur at any moment. Devlet-Girey was completely absorbed in one goal - to take possession of the Gulyai-city. For this, he brought all his strength into the battle. Meanwhile, Prince Vorotynsky managed to quietly lead his large regiment through a narrow ravine and hit the enemy in the rear. At the same time, Staden fired a volley from all guns, and the defenders of the walk-city, led by Prince Khvorostinin, made a decisive sortie. The warriors of the Crimean Khan could not withstand the blows from both sides and fled. Thus the victory was won!

On the morning of August 3, Devlet-Girey, who had lost his son, grandson and son-in-law in the battle, began a rapid retreat. The Russians were on their heels. The last fierce battle broke out on the banks of the Oka, where the 5,000-strong Crimean rearguard covering the crossing was destroyed.

Prince Vorotynsky managed to impose a protracted battle on Devlet-Girey, depriving him of the benefits of a sudden powerful blow. The troops of the Crimean Khan suffered huge losses (according to some sources, almost 100 thousand people). But the most important thing is the irreparable losses, since the main combat-ready population of Crimea took part in the campaign. The village of Molodi became a cemetery for a significant part of the men of the Crimean Khanate. The whole flower of the Crimean army, its best warriors, lay down here. The Turkish Janissaries were completely exterminated. After such a brutal blow, the Crimean khans no longer thought about raiding the Russian capital. The Crimean-Turkish aggression against the Russian state was stopped.

Laurels for a hero

The history of Russian military affairs was replenished with a victory that was the greatest in the art of maneuver and interaction of military branches. It became one of the most brilliant victories of Russian weapons and promoted Prince Mikhail Vorotynsky to the category of outstanding commanders.

The Battle of Molodin is one of the brightest pages of the heroic past of our homeland. The Battle of Molodin, which lasted several days, in which Russian troops used original tactics, ended in a major victory over the numerically superior forces of Devlet-Girey. The Battle of Molodin had a strong impact on the foreign economic situation of the Russian state, especially on Russian-Crimean and Russian-Turkish relations. Selim's challenging letter, in which the Sultan demanded Astrakhan, Kazan and the vassal submission of Ivan IV, was left unanswered.

Prince Vorotynsky returned to Moscow, where he was given a magnificent meeting. There was less joy on the faces of Muscovites when Tsar Ivan returned to the city. This greatly offended the sovereign, but he did not show it - the time had not yet come. Gossips they added fuel to the fire, calling Vorotynsky an upstart, greatly belittling his participation and importance in the battle. Finally, the prince's servant, who robbed him, denounced his master, accusing him of witchcraft. Since almost a year had passed since the great victory, the tsar ordered the commander to be arrested and subjected to severe torture. Having failed to achieve recognition of witchcraft, Ivan IV ordered the disgraced prince to be exiled to the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery. On the third day of the journey, 63-year-old Mikhail Vorotynsky died. He was buried in the cemetery of the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery.

From that time on, mention of the Battle of Molodin, its significance for Russia, and the very name of Prince Vorotynsky were under a cruel royal ban. Therefore, many of us are much more familiar with Ivan the Terrible’s campaign against Kazan than with the event of 1572 that saved Russia.

But time will put everything in its place.
Heroes will remain heroes...

(Why did they think that Vorotynsky was executed? Only Kurbsky, who had escaped by that time, wrote about this. Russian sources do not talk about this. The name of Mikhail Vorotynsky is not in the synodics of those executed, but his signature is on a document dated 1574... )
Well, about the “window to Europe”, which suddenly supplied guns and squeaks to Rus', it’s not funny.

Tags:

Anonymous

It's painfully ornate and incomprehensible. The archers and guardsmen won. But it turns out main character- author. Good luck, I imagined.

Forbidden Victory

Exactly four hundred and thirty years ago, the greatest battle of Christian civilization took place, which determined the future of the Eurasian continent, if not the entire planet, for many, many centuries to come. Almost two hundred thousand people fought in a bloody six-day battle, proving with their courage and dedication the right to exist for many peoples at once. More than a hundred thousand people paid with their lives to resolve this dispute, and only thanks to the victory of our ancestors we now live in the world that we are accustomed to seeing around us. In this battle, not just the fate of Rus' and the countries of Europe was decided - it was about the fate of the entire European civilization. But ask anyone educated person: What does he know about the battle that took place in 1572? And practically no one except professional historians will be able to answer you a word. Why? Because this victory was won by the “wrong” ruler, the “wrong” army and the “wrong” people. Four centuries have already passed since this victory was simply prohibited.

History as it is

Before talking about the battle itself, we should probably remember what Europe looked like in the little-known 16th century. And since the length of the journal article forces us to be brief, only one thing can be said: in the 16th century, there were no full-fledged states in Europe except the Ottoman Empire. In any case, it makes no sense to even roughly compare the dwarf formations that called themselves kingdoms and counties with this huge empire.

In fact, only frenzied Western European propaganda can explain the fact that we imagine the Turks as dirty, stupid savages, wave after wave rolling over the valiant knightly troops and winning solely due to their numbers. Everything was exactly the opposite: perfectly trained, disciplined, brave Ottoman warriors step by step they pushed back scattered, poorly armed formations, developing more and more “wild” lands for the empire. By the end of the fifteenth century, Bulgaria belonged to them on the European continent, by the beginning of the 16th century - Greece and Serbia, by the middle of the century the border had moved to Vienna, the Turks took Hungary, Moldova, the famous Transylvania under their control, started a war for Malta, devastated the coasts of Spain and Italy .

Firstly, the Turks were not “dirty”. Unlike Europeans, who at that time were unfamiliar with even the basics of personal hygiene, subjects of the Ottoman Empire were obliged, according to the requirements of the Koran, to at least perform ritual ablutions before each prayer.

Secondly, the Turks were true Muslims - that is, people who were initially confident in their spiritual superiority, and therefore extremely tolerant. In the conquered territories, as far as possible, they tried to preserve local customs so as not to destroy existing social relations. The Ottomans were not interested in whether the new subjects were Muslims, or Christians, or Jews, or whether they were Arabs, Greeks, Serbs, Albanians, Italians, Iranians or Tatars. The main thing is that they continue to work quietly and pay taxes regularly.

State system rule was built on a combination of Arab, Seljuk and Byzantine customs and traditions. The most striking example of distinguishing Islamic pragmatism and religious tolerance from European savagery is the story of the 100,000 Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 and willingly accepted into citizenship by Sultan Bayezid. The Catholics received moral satisfaction by dealing with the “killers of Christ,” and the Ottomans received significant revenues to the treasury from new, far from poor, settlers.

Thirdly, the Ottoman Empire was far ahead of its northern neighbors in the technology of producing weapons and armor. It was the Turks, and not the Europeans, who suppressed the enemy with artillery fire, and it was the Ottomans who actively supplied their troops, fortresses and ships with cannon barrels.

As an example of the power of Ottoman weapons, we can cite 20 bombards with a caliber from 60 to 90 centimeters and weighing up to 35 tons, which at the end of the 6th century were put on combat duty in the forts that defended the Dardanelles, and stood there until the beginning of the 20th century! And not just idle ones - at the beginning of the 19th century, in 1807, they quite successfully crushed the brand new English ships Windsor Castle and Active, which were trying to break through the strait.

I repeat: the guns represented a real fighting force even three centuries after their manufacture. In the 16th century, they could easily be considered a real superweapon. And the mentioned bombards were manufactured in the very years when Nicollo Macchiavelli carefully wrote out the following words in his treatise “The Prince”: “It is better to let the enemy blind himself than to search for him, not seeing anything because of the gunpowder smoke.”, denying any benefit from the use of cannons in military campaigns.

Fourthly, the Turks had the most advanced technology for their time regular professional army. Its backbone was the so-called “Janissary Corps”.

In the 16th century, it was almost entirely formed from boys bought or captured, who were legally slaves of the Sultan. All of them underwent high-quality military training, received good weapons and turned into the best infantry that ever existed in Europe and the Mediterranean region. The strength of the corps reached 100,000 people.

In addition, the empire had a completely modern feudal cavalry, which was formed from Sipahov - owners of land plots. Military leaders awarded valiant and worthy soldiers in all newly annexed regions with similar allotments, “timars,” thanks to which the size and combat effectiveness of the army continuously increased.

And if we also remember that the rulers who fell into vassal dependence on the Magnificent Porte were obliged, by order of the Sultan, to bring their armies for general campaigns, it becomes clear that the Ottoman Empire could simultaneously put on the battlefield no less than half a million well-trained warriors - much more than there were troops in all of Europe combined.

In light of all of the above, it becomes clear why, at the mere mention of the Turks, medieval kings broke into a cold sweat, knights grabbed their weapons and turned their heads in fear, and babies in their cradles began to cry and call for their mother.

Any more or less thinking man could confidently predict that in a hundred years the entire inhabited world would belong to the Turkish Sultan, and complain that the advance of the Ottomans to the north was held back not by the courage of the defenders of the Balkans, but by the desire of the Ottomans, first of all, to take possession of the much richer lands of Asia, to conquer the ancient countries of the Middle East. East. And, it must be said, the Ottoman Empire achieved this by expanding its borders from the Caspian Sea, Persia and the Persian Gulf and almost to the Atlantic Ocean itself (the western lands of the empire were modern Algeria).

It is also worth mentioning a very important fact, for some reason unknown to many professional historians: starting from 1475, the Crimean Khanate was part of the Ottoman Empire, the Crimean Khan was appointed and removed by the Sultan's firman, brought his troops on the orders of the Magnificent Porte, or began military operations against one of his neighbors on orders from Istanbul; there was a sultan's governor on the Crimean peninsula, and Turkish garrisons were stationed in several cities.

In addition, the Kazan and Astrakhan Khanates were considered to be located under the aegis of empires, as states of co-religionists, moreover, regularly supplying slaves for numerous military galleys and mines, as well as concubines for harems...

Golden Age of Russia

Oddly enough, few people now imagine what Rus' was like in the 16th century - especially people who have thoroughly studied history high school. I must say that it contains much more fiction than real information, and therefore anyone to modern man You should know a few basic, supporting facts that allow you to understand the worldview of our ancestors.

First of all, In 16th-century Rus', slavery practically did not exist. Every person born in Russian lands was initially free and equal with everyone else.

Serfdom of that time is now called a land lease agreement with all the ensuing consequences: you cannot leave until you have paid the owner of the land for its use. And that's it...
There was no hereditary serfdom (it was introduced by the cathedral code 1649 year), and the son of a serf was a free man until he decided to take a plot of land for himself.

There were no European savages like the nobility’s right to punish and pardon on the first night, or simply driving around with weapons, scaring ordinary citizens and starting quarrels. In the legal code of 1497, only two categories of the population are generally recognized: service people and non-service people. Otherwise, everyone is equal before the law, regardless of origin.

Service in the army was absolutely voluntary, although, of course, hereditary and lifelong. If you want, serve, if you don’t want, don’t serve. Sign the estate over to the treasury, and you’re free. It should be mentioned here that the concept of infantry was completely absent in the Russian army. The warrior went out on a campaign on two or three horses - including the archers, who dismounted only immediately before the battle.

In general, war was a permanent state of the then Rus': its southern and eastern borders were constantly torn by the predatory raids of the Tatars, the western borders were disturbed by the Slavic brothers of the Principality of Lithuania, who for many centuries disputed with Moscow the right of primacy to the heritage of Kievan Rus.

Depending on military successes, the western border constantly moved first in one direction or the other, and eastern neighbors they either pacified or tried to appease with gifts after yet another defeat.

From the south, some protection was provided by the so-called Wild Field - the southern Russian steppes, completely depopulated as a result of continuous raids by the Crimean Tatars. In order to attack Rus', the subjects of the Ottoman Empire needed to make a long journey, and they, being lazy and practical people, preferred to plunder either the tribes of the North Caucasus, or Lithuania and Moldova.

Ivan IV

It is in this Rus', in 1533 year, and the son of Vasily III Ivan reigned.
However, he reigned - that's too strong a word.

At the time of his accession to the throne, Ivan was only three years old, and it would be a stretch to call his childhood happy. At the age of seven, his mother was poisoned, after which the man he considered his father was literally killed before his eyes, his favorite nannies were dispersed, everyone he liked in the slightest was either destroyed or sent out of sight. In the palace he was in a position watchdog: either they were taken out to the chambers, showing the “beloved prince” to the foreigners, or they kicked everyone who felt like it. It got to the point that they forgot to feed the future king for whole days.

Everything was going to the point that before he came of age, he would simply be slaughtered in order to keep him in the country era of anarchy, - however, the sovereign survived. And he not only survived, but became the greatest ruler in the entire history of Rus'.

And what is most striking is that Ivan IV did not become embittered and did not take revenge for past humiliations. His reign turned out to be perhaps the most humane in the entire history of our country.

The last statement is by no means a reservation.

Unfortunately, everything that is usually told about Ivan the Terrible ranges from “complete nonsense” to “outright lies.”
“Complete nonsense” includes the “testimony” of the famous expert on Rus', the Englishman Jerome Horsey, his “Notes on Russia”, which states that in the winter of 1570 the guardsmen killed 700,000 (seven hundred thousand) inhabitants in Novgorod, out of the total population of this city at thirty thousand.

To “outright lies” - evidence of the tsar’s cruelty. For example, looking at the well-known encyclopedia “Brockhaus and Efron”, in the article about Andrei Kurbsky, anyone can read that, angry at the prince, “the Terrible could only cite the fact of betrayal and violation of the kiss of the cross as justification for his rage...”.

What nonsense! That is, the prince betrayed the Fatherland twice, was caught, but was not hanged on an aspen tree, but kissed the cross, swore by Christ God that he would never do it again, was forgiven, betrayed him again... However, despite all this They are trying to blame the tsar not for not punishing the traitor, but for the fact that he continues to hate the degenerate who brings Polish troops to Rus' and sheds the blood of Russian people.

To the deepest regret of the “Ivan-haters,” in the 16th century in Rus' there was a written language, a custom of commemorating the dead and synodniks, which were preserved along with memorial records. Alas, with all the efforts to honor the conscience of Ivan the Terrible for all his fifty years reign no more can be attributed 4000 dead.
This is probably a lot, even if we take into account that the majority honestly earned their execution through treason and perjury.
However, during the same years, in neighboring Europe, more than 3,000 Huguenots were slaughtered in Paris in one night, and in the rest of the country, more than 30,000 were slaughtered in just two weeks.
In England, by order of Henry VIII, 72,000 people were hanged for being beggars.
In the Netherlands during the revolution, the number of corpses exceeded 100,000...
No, Russia is far from European civilization.

By the way, according to the suspicion of many historians, the story about the ruin of Novgorod is blatantly copied from the assault and ruin of Liege by the Burgundians of Charles the Bold in 1468. Moreover, the plagiarists were even too lazy to make allowances for the Russian winter, as a result of which the mythical guardsmen had to ride boats along the Volkhov, which that year, according to the chronicles, froze to the very bottom.

However, even his most fierce haters do not dare to challenge the basic personality traits of Ivan the Terrible, and therefore we know for sure that he was very smart, calculating, malicious, cold-blooded and courageous. The tsar was amazingly well read, had an extensive memory, loved to sing and composed music (his stichera have been preserved and are performed to this day). Ivan IV had an excellent command of the pen, leaving a rich epistolary legacy, and loved to participate in religious debates. The tsar himself handled litigation, worked with documents, and could not stand vile drunkenness.

Having achieved real power, the young, far-sighted and active king immediately began to take measures to reorganize and strengthen the state - both from within and its external borders.

Meeting

The main feature of Ivan the Terrible is his manic passion for firearms.

For the first time in the Russian army, detachments armed with arquebuses appeared - archers, who gradually became the backbone of the army, taking away this rank from the local cavalry. Cannon yards are springing up all over the country, where more and more new barrels are being cast, fortresses are being rebuilt for a fiery battle - their walls are straightened, mattresses and large-caliber squeakers are installed in the towers. The Tsar stocked up gunpowder in all ways: he bought it, installed gunpowder mills, he imposed a saltpeter tax on cities and monasteries. Sometimes this leads to terrifying fires, but Ivan IV is relentless: gunpowder, as much gunpowder as possible!

First task, which is placed in front of an army that is gaining strength - stopping raids from outside Kazansky khanates.

At the same time, the young king is not interested in half measures, he wants to stop the raids once and for all, and for this there is only one way: conquer Kazan and include it in the Muscovite kingdom.

A seventeen-year-old boy went to fight the Tatars. The three-year war ended in failure. But in 1551 year the king appeared under the walls of Kazan again - victory! The Kazan people asked for peace, agreed to all the demands, but, as usual, did not fulfill the terms of peace. However, this time the stupid Russians for some reason did not swallow the insult and next summer, in 1552 year, the banners at the enemy capital were again dissolved.

The news that far in the east the infidels were crushing their co-religionists took Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent by surprise - he had never expected anything like this.

The Sultan gave the order to the Crimean Khan to provide assistance to the Kazan people, and he, hastily gathering 30,000 people, moved to Rus'. The young king, at the head of 15,000 horsemen, rushed towards and completely defeated the uninvited guests. Following the message about the defeat of Devlet Giray, news flew to Istanbul that there was one less khanate in the east.

Before the Sultan had time to digest this pill, they were already telling him about the annexation of another Khanate, the Astrakhan Khanate, to Moscow. It turns out that after the fall of Kazan, Khan Yamgurchey, in a fit of anger, decided to declare war on Russia...

The glory of the conqueror of the khanates brought Ivan IV new, unexpected subjects: hoping for his patronage, the Siberian Khan Ediger and the Circassian princes voluntarily swore allegiance to Moscow. The North Caucasus also came under the rule of the tsar.

Unexpectedly for the whole world - including itself - Russia more than doubled in size in a matter of years, reached the Black Sea and found itself face to face with the huge Ottoman Empire. This could only mean one thing: a terrible, devastating war.

Blood neighbors

The dull naivety of the tsar’s closest advisers, so beloved by modern historians, the so-called “Chosen Rada,” is striking. By their own admission, these clever men repeatedly advised the tsar to attack Crimea and conquer it, like the khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan. Their opinion, by the way, will be shared four centuries later by many modern historians. In order to more clearly understand how stupid such advice is, it is enough to look at the North American continent and ask the first Mexican you meet, even a stoned and uneducated Mexican: is the boorish behavior of the Texans and the military weakness of this state sufficient reason to attack it and return the ancestral Mexican lands?

And they will immediately answer you that you may attack Texas, but you will have to fight with the United States.

In the 16th century, the Ottoman Empire, having weakened its pressure in other directions, could withdraw five times more troops against Moscow than Russia allowed itself to mobilize. The Crimean Khanate alone, whose subjects were not engaged in crafts, agriculture, or trade, was ready, on the orders of the khan, to put its entire male population on horses and repeatedly marched on Rus' with armies of 100-150 thousand people (some historians bring this figure to 200 000). But the Tatars were cowardly robbers, whom troops 3-5 times smaller in number could cope with. It was a completely different matter to meet on the battlefield with the Janissaries and Seljuks, seasoned in battle and accustomed to conquering new lands.

Ivan IV could not afford such a war.

The contact of the borders happened unexpectedly for both countries, and therefore the first contacts between the neighbors turned out to be surprisingly peaceful. The Ottoman Sultan sent a letter to the Russian Tsar in which he friendlyly offered a choice of two possible ways out of the current situation: either Russia grants the Volga robbers - Kazan and Astrakhan - their former independence, or Ivan IV swears allegiance to the Magnificent Porte, becoming part of the Ottoman Empire along with the conquered khanates.

And for the umpteenth time in its centuries-old history, the light burned for a long time in the chambers of the Russian ruler and in painful thoughts The fate of the future Europe was being decided: to be it or not to be?

If the tsar agreed to the Ottoman proposal, he would forever secure the southern borders of the country. The Sultan will no longer allow the Tatars to rob new subjects, and all the predatory aspirations of the Crimea will be directed in the only possible direction: against the eternal enemy of Moscow, the Principality of Lithuania. In this case, the rapid extermination of the enemy and the rise of Russia will become inevitable. But at what cost?..

The king refuses.

Suleiman releases the Crimean thousands, which he used in Moldova and Hungary, and points out to the Crimean Khan Devlet-Girey a new enemy whom he will have to crush: Russia. A long and bloody war begins: the Tatars regularly rush towards Moscow, the Russians are fenced off with a multi-hundred-mile Zasechnaya Line of forest windbreaks, fortresses and earthen ramparts with stakes dug into them. Every year 60-70 thousand soldiers defend this gigantic wall.

It is clear to Ivan the Terrible, and the Sultan has repeatedly confirmed this with his letters: an attack on Crimea will be regarded as a declaration of war on the empire. In the meantime, the Russians endure, the Ottomans also do not begin active military operations, continuing the wars already started in Europe, Africa and Asia.

Now, while the Ottoman Empire's hands are tied with battles in other places, while the Ottomans are not going to fall on Russia with all their might, there is time to accumulate forces, and Ivan IV begins vigorous reforms in the country: first of all, he introduces a regime in the country, which was later called democracy.

Feedings are abolished in the country, the institution of governors appointed by the tsar is replaced by local self-government - zemstvo and provincial elders elected by peasants, artisans and boyars. Moreover, the new regime is being imposed not with stupid stubbornness, as now, but prudently and wisely. The transition to democracy is carried out... for a fee. If you like the governor, live as before. I don’t like it - local residents contribute from 100 to 400 rubles to the treasury and can choose whoever they want as their boss.

The army is being transformed. Having personally participated in several wars and battles, the tsar is well aware of the main problem of the army - localism. The boyars demand appointment to posts according to the merits of their ancestors: if my grandfather commanded a wing of the army, it means that I am entitled to the same post. Even if he is a fool, the milk on his lips may not dry: but still, the post of wing commander is mine! I don’t want to obey the old and experienced prince, because his son walked under the hand of my great-grandfather! This means that it is not I who must obey him, but he who must obey me!

The issue is resolved radically: a new army is being organized in the country, oprichnina . The guardsmen swear allegiance to the sovereign alone, and their career depends only on their personal qualities. It is in the oprichnina that all mercenaries serve: Russia, waging a long and difficult war, is chronically short of warriors, but it has enough gold to hire eternally poor European nobles.

In addition, Ivan IV actively builds parish schools and fortresses, stimulates trade, and purposefully creates a working class: A direct royal decree prohibits the involvement of cultivators in any work related to getting off the ground - workers, not peasants, should work in construction, factories and factories.

Of course, there are many opponents of such rapid transformations in the country.
Just think: a simple rootless landowner like Boriska Godunov can rise to the rank of governor simply because he is brave, smart and honest!
Just think: the king can buy the family estate into the treasury only because the owner doesn’t know his business well and the peasants run away from him!
The guardsmen are hated, vile rumors are spread about them, conspiracies are organized against the tsar - but Ivan the Terrible continues his reforms with a firm hand. It comes to the point that for several years he has to divide the country into two parts: the oprichnina for those who want to live in a new way and the zemstvo for those who want to preserve the old customs. However, in spite of everything, he achieved his goal, turning the ancient Moscow principality into a new, powerful power - the Russian kingdom.

The Empire Strikes

IN 1569 year, the bloody respite, consisting of continuous raids by the Tatar hordes, ended. The Sultan finally found time for Russia.

17,000 selected Janissaries, reinforced by the Crimean and Nogai cavalry, moved towards Astrakhan. The king, still hoping to do without bloodshed, withdrew all the troops from their path, while simultaneously replenishing the fortress with food supplies, gunpowder and cannonballs. The campaign failed: the Turks were unable to bring artillery with them, and they were not used to fighting without guns. In addition, the return journey through the unexpectedly cold winter steppe cost most of the Turks their lives.

A year later, in 1571 year, bypassing Russian fortresses and knocking down the small boyar barriers, Devlet-Girey brought 100,000 horsemen to Moscow, set fire to the city and returned back.

Ivan the Terrible tore and threw. The boyars' heads rolled. Those executed were accused of specific treason: they missed the enemy, they did not report the raid in time.

In Istanbul they rubbed their hands: reconnaissance in force showed that the Russians did not know how to fight, preferring to sit behind the fortress walls. But if the light Tatar cavalry is not capable of taking fortifications, then the experienced Janissaries knew how to uncork them very well.

It was decided to conquer Muscovy, for which Devlet-Girey was assigned 7,000 Janissaries and gunners with several dozen artillery barrels to take the cities. Murzas were appointed in advance to the still Russian cities, governors to the not yet conquered principalities, the land was divided, merchants received permission for duty-free trade. All the men of Crimea, young and old, gathered to explore new lands.

A huge army was supposed to enter Russian borders and remain there forever.

And so it happened...

Battlefield

On July 6, 1572, Devlet-Girey reached the Oka River and came across a 50,000-strong army under the command of the prince Mikhail Vorotynsky(many historians estimate the size of the Russian army at 20,000 people, and the Ottoman army at 80,000) and, laughing at the stupidity of the Russians, turned up along the river. Near Senkin Ford, he easily dispersed a detachment of 200 boyars and, having crossed the river, moved towards Moscow along the Serpukhov road. Vorotynsky hurried after.

With a speed unprecedented in Europe, huge masses of horsemen moved across the Russian expanses - both armies moved lightly, on horseback, not burdened with convoys.

Oprichnik Dmitry Khvorostinin sneaked on the heels of the Tatars to the village of Molodi at the head of a 5,000-strong detachment of Cossacks and boyars, and only here, on July 30, 1572, received permission to attack the enemy.

Rushing forward, he trampled the Tatar rearguard into the road dust and, rushing further, crashed into the main forces at the Pakhra River. Slightly surprised by such impudence, the Tatars turned around and rushed at the small detachment with all their strength. The Russians rushed to their heels - the enemies rushed after them, pursuing the guardsmen all the way to the village of Molodi, and then an unexpected surprise awaited the invaders: the Russian army, deceived on the Oka, was already here. And she didn’t just stand there, but managed to build a walk-city - a mobile fortification made of thick wooden shields. From the cracks between the shields, cannons struck the steppe cavalry, arquebuses thundered from the loopholes cut into the log walls, and a shower of arrows poured over the fortification. A friendly volley swept away the advanced Tatar detachments - as if huge hand I brushed away unnecessary crumbs from the table. The Tatars were mixed up - Khvorostinin turned his soldiers around and rushed into the attack again.

Thousands of horsemen approaching along the road, one after another, fell into a cruel meat grinder. Tired boyars either retreated behind the shields of the walk-city, under the cover of heavy fire, or rushed into more and more attacks. The Ottomans, in a hurry to destroy a fortress that had come from nowhere, rushed to attack wave after wave, abundantly flooding the Russian land with their blood, and only the descending darkness stopped the endless murder.

In the morning, the truth was revealed to the Ottoman army in all its terrifying ugliness: the invaders realized that they had fallen into a trap. Ahead along the Serpukhov road stood the strong walls of Moscow, behind the path to the steppe were fenced off the iron-clad guardsmen and archers. Now for the uninvited guests it was no longer a question of conquering Russia, but of getting back alive.

The next two days were spent trying to scare off the Russians who were blocking the road - the Tatars showered the city with arrows and cannonballs, rushed at it in mounted attacks, hoping to break through the gaps left for the passage of the boyar cavalry. However, by the third day it became clear that the Russians would rather die on the spot than allow the uninvited guests to leave.
On August 2, Devlet-Girey ordered his soldiers to dismount and attack the Russians along with the Janissaries.

The Tatars understood perfectly well that this time they were not going to rob, but to save their own skin, and they fought like rabid dogs. The battle has reached its peak highest voltage. It got to the point that the Crimeans tried to break the hated shields with their hands, and the Janissaries gnawed them with their teeth and chopped them with scimitars. But the Russians were not going to release the eternal robbers into the wild, give them the opportunity to catch their breath and return again. Blood flowed all day - but by evening the walk-town continued to stand in its place.

Hunger was raging in the Russian camp - after all, while chasing the enemy, the boyars and archers thought about weapons, and not about food, simply abandoning the convoy with food and drink supplies. As the chronicles note: “There was a great famine in the regiments for people and horses.” Here it should be admitted that, along with Russian soldiers, German mercenaries suffered thirst and hunger, whom the tsar willingly took as guardsmen. However, the Germans did not complain either, but continued to fight no worse than others.

The Tatars were furious: they were accustomed not to fight with the Russians, but to drive them into slavery. The Ottoman Murzas, who had gathered to rule the new lands, and not die on them, were also not amused. Everyone was eagerly waiting for dawn to deliver the final blow and finally smash the fragile-looking fortification and exterminate the people hiding behind it.

With the onset of dusk, Voivode Vorotynsky took some of the soldiers with him, walked around the enemy camp along the ravine and hid there. And early in the morning, when, after a friendly volley at the attacking Ottomans, the boyars led by Khvorostinin rushed towards them and started a brutal battle, Voivode Vorotynsky unexpectedly struck the enemies in the back. And what started out as a battle instantly turned into a beating.

Arithmetic

Defenders of Moscow on a field near the village of Molodi All the Janissaries and Ottoman Murzas were completely slaughtered, and almost the entire male population of Crimea died. And not only ordinary warriors - the son, grandson and son-in-law of Devlet-Girey himself died under Russian sabers. Having, according to various estimates, either three or four times less strength than the enemy, Russian soldiers forever eliminated the danger emanating from Crimea. No more than 20,000 of the bandits who went on the campaign managed to return alive - and Crimea was never again able to regain its strength.

This was the first major defeat in the entire history of the Ottoman Empire. Having lost almost 20,000 Janissaries and the entire huge army of its satellite on the Russian borders in three years, the Magnificent Porte abandoned hopes of conquering Russia.

The victory of Russian weapons was of great importance for Europe. At the Battle of Molodi, we not only defended our independence, but also deprived the Ottoman Empire of the opportunity to increase its production capacity and army by about a third. In addition, for the huge Ottoman province that could have arisen in place of Russia, there was only one path for further expansion - to the west. Retreating under attacks in the Balkans, Europe would hardly have survived even for several years if the Turkish onslaught had increased even slightly.

The Last Rurikovich

There is only one question left to answer: why don’t they make films about the Battle of Molodi, don’t talk about it in school, and don’t celebrate its anniversary with holidays?

The fact is that the battle that determined the future of the entire European civilization took place during the reign of a king who was not supposed to be not only good, but also simply normal. Ivan the Terrible, the greatest Tsar in the history of Rus', who actually created the country in which we live, took over the reign of the Moscow Principality and left behind Great Russia, was the last of the Rurik family.

After him, the Romanov dynasty ascended the throne - and they did everything possible to belittle the importance of everything done by the previous dynasty and discredit the greatest of its representatives.

According to the highest order, Ivan the Terrible was destined to be bad - and along with his memory, the great victory, achieved with considerable difficulty by our ancestors, was prohibited.

The first of the Romanov dynasty gave the Swedes the coast of the Baltic Sea and access to Lake Ladoga.
His son introduced hereditary serfdom, depriving industry and the Siberian open spaces of free workers and settlers.
Under his great-grandson, the army created by Ivan IV was broken and the industry that supplied weapons to the whole of Europe was destroyed (the Tula-Kamensk factories alone sold to the West up to 600 guns a year, tens of thousands of cannonballs, thousands of grenades, muskets and swords).

Russia was rapidly sliding into an era of degradation.

In 1570, the military party gained the upper hand in Crimea. Russia was devastated by famine and plague. The Tsarist army suffered defeats at Revel and Moscow. The Russian capital seemed an easy prey to the Tatars. Its old fortifications were destroyed by fire, and new ones, hastily erected, could not completely replace them. Military failures shook Russian rule in the Volga and Caspian regions. The Nogai horde finally broke vassal relations with Moscow and joined the anti-Russian coalition. The conquered peoples of the Volga region began to move and tried to overthrow the power of the tsar.
Many Adyghe princes from the North Caucasus became allies of Crimea. Behind the Crimeans stood the largest military power in Europe - the Ottoman Empire. In such a situation, the khan hoped to tear the Middle and Lower Volga regions away from Russia, burn and plunder Moscow. The Sultan sent a special mission to Crimea to participate in the campaign against Rus'.

In anticipation of a new invasion, by May 1572, the Russians had gathered about 12,000 nobles, 2,035 archers and 3,800 Cossacks on the southern border. Together with the militias of the northern cities, the army numbered a little more than 20,000, and with the fighting serfs - more than 30,000 warriors. The Tatars had a numerical superiority. Between 40,000 and 50,000 horsemen from the Crimean, Greater and Lesser Nogai hordes took part in the invasion.

Khan had Turkish artillery at his disposal.
The Russian command positioned the main forces near Kolomna, reliably covering the approaches to Moscow from Ryazan. But it also took into account the possibility of a second invasion of the Tatars from the southwest, from the Ugra region. In this case, the command moved the governor, Prince Dmitry Khvorostinin, with an advanced regiment to the extreme right flank in Kaluga. Contrary to tradition, the advanced regiment was superior in numbers to the regiments of the right and left hands. Khvorostinin was assigned a mobile river detachment to defend the crossings across the Oka.
The Tatars invaded Rus' on July 23, 1572. Their mobile cavalry rushed to Tula and on the third day tried to cross the Oka River above Serpukhov, but was repulsed from the crossing by a Russian guard regiment. Meanwhile, the khan with the entire horde reached the main Serpukhov crossings across the Oka. Russian commanders were waiting for the enemy beyond the Oka River in well-fortified positions.

Having encountered strong Russian defenses, the khan resumed his attack in the area of ​​Senkina Ford above Serpukhov. On the night of July 28, the Nogai cavalry dispersed two hundred nobles guarding the ford and captured the crossings. Developing the offensive, the Nogais went far to the north overnight. In the morning, Khvorostinin and the advanced regiment arrived at the Tatar crossing point. But, faced with the main forces of the Tatars, he avoided battle. Soon the right-hand regiment tried to intercept the Tatars in the upper reaches of the Nara River, but were driven away. Khan Devlet-Girey went to the rear of the Russian army and began to move unhindered towards Moscow along the Serpukhov road. The Tatar rearguards were commanded by the sons of the khan with numerous selected cavalry.

The advanced regiment followed the princes, waiting for a favorable moment. When such a moment came, governor Khvorostinin attacked the Tatars. The battle took place near the village of Molodi, 45 versts from Moscow. The Tatars could not withstand the blow and fled.
Khvorostinin drove the Tatar guard regiment to the Khan's headquarters. To improve the situation, Devlet-Girey was forced to send 12,000 Crimean and Nogai horsemen to help his sons. The battle grew, and the chief governor, Vorotynsky, in anticipation of the Tatars, ordered the installation of a mobile fortress - a “walk-city” near Molodya. The warriors took refuge behind the walls of the fortress, preparing for battle.
The threefold superiority of enemy forces forced Khvorostinin to retreat. But at the same time he pulled off a brilliant maneuver. His regiment, retreating, carried the Tatars to the walls of the “walk-city”. Volleys of Russian cannons fired at point-blank range brought devastation to the ranks of the Tatar cavalry and forced them to turn back.
The defeat at Molodi forced Devlet-Girey to suspend his attack on Moscow.
During the day, the Tatars stood behind Pakhra, waiting for the Russians to approach. But they did not resume attacks. Then the Tatars turned back from Pakhra to Molodi. The governors achieved undeniable success, forcing the khan to move away from Moscow and take the battle at the position they had chosen.

The center of the Russian defensive positions was a hill, on the top of which stood the “walk-city”, surrounded by hastily dug ditches. A large regiment took refuge behind the city walls. The remaining regiments covered his rear and flanks, remaining outside the fortifications. At the foot of the hill, beyond the Rozhai River, 3,000 archers stood to support the governor “on the arquebuses.”
The Tatars quickly covered the distance from Pakhra to Rozhai and attacked the Russian positions in their entire mass. Every single one of the archers died on the battlefield, but the warriors entrenched in the “walk-city” repelled the cavalry attacks with strong cannon and rifle fire.
Concerned about the failure, the main Tatar governor, Divey-Murza, went out on reconnaissance and approached the Russian positions. Here he was captured by the “frisky” boyar children.
The bloody battle continued until the evening of July 30. The Tatar losses were extremely high. The leader of the Nogai cavalry, Tereberdey-Murza, and three noble Crimean Murzas were killed. Having failed to achieve success, the khan stopped his attacks and within two days brought his disorganized army into order.
The Russians won the battle, but success threatened to turn into failure. When the thinned-out regiments took refuge in the “Walk-Gorod,” their food supplies quickly dried up, and in the army “there was great hunger for people and horses.”

After a two-day lull, Devlet-Girey resumed the assault on the “walk-city” on August 2, sending all his horse and foot regiments to it. The attack was led by the Khan’s sons, who received orders to “knock out” Divey-Murza from the Russians at all costs. Despite the losses, the Tatars persistently tried to overthrow the unstable walls of the “walk-city”, “they were taken from the city by the wall with their hands, and then many Tatars were beaten and their hands were cut off countless times.” Towards the end of the day, when the onslaught of the Tatars began to weaken, the Russians undertook a bold maneuver, which decided the outcome of the battle. Voivode Mikhail Vorotynsky with his regiments left the “walk-city” and, moving along the bottom of the ravine behind the fortifications, secretly went to the rear of the Tatars.
The defense of the “walk-city” was entrusted to Prince Dmitry Khvorostinin, who received all the artillery and a small detachment of German mercenaries.

At the agreed signal, Khvorostinin fired a salvo from all guns, then “climbed out” of the fortress and attacked the enemy. At the same moment, Vorotynsky’s regiments fell on the Tatars from the rear. The Tatars could not withstand the sudden blow and began to flee.
Many of them were killed and captured. Among those killed were the son of Khan Devlet-Girey and his grandson. Many noble Crimean and Nogai Murzas fell into the hands of the governors.
The day after the victory, the Russians continued to pursue the enemy and defeated the rearguards left by the khan on the Oka and numbering up to 5,000 horsemen. According to long-established tradition, the glory of the victory over the Tatars is entirely attributed to the chief governor, Prince Mikhail Vorotynsky. Kurbsky praised him, but in restrained terms: “The man is strong and courageous, very skilled in regimental arrangements.” The prince distinguished himself under the walls of Kazan, but he did not have any major independent victories. The appointment of Vorotynsky as commander-in-chief was connected primarily with local laws - the nobility of the governor. The real hero of the Battle of Molodi, it seems, was the young oprichnina governor, Prince Dmitry Khvorostinin, who formally held the post of second governor of the advanced regiment. His exceptional services in the wars with the Tatars were pointed out by an informed contemporary, Giles Fletcher. Two years before the Battle of Molodi, Khvorostinin inflicted a strong defeat on the Crimeans near Ryazan. But his military talent was fully revealed during the war with the Tatars in 1572. It was Khvorostinin who defeated the Tatar rearguards on July 28, and then took command of the “walk-city” during the decisive battle on August 2.
The Battle of Molodi in 1572 is one of the most significant events military history XVI century Having defeated the Tatar horde in an open field, Rus' dealt a crushing blow to the military power of Crimea. The death of the selected Turkish army near Astrakhan in 1569 and the defeat of the Crimean Horde near Moscow in 1572 put a limit to Turkish-Tatar expansion in Eastern Europe.
The victory of the united zemstvo-oprichnina army over the Tatars was brilliant.

When creating this post, photos of the military-historical reconstruction were used. Festival “Battle of Molodinsk”

Commanders Losses

Political situation

Expansion of the Russian state

Soon, however, luck gave way to a series of defeats. In 1569, as a result of the Union of Lublin, the position of the Russian state became more complicated, since it had to withstand the increased strength of its rivals. Taking advantage of the presence of most of the Russian army in the Baltic states, and the tense internal situation associated with the introduction of the oprichnina, the Crimean Khan made numerous raids on the southern borders of Russian lands, including undertaking an unsuccessful campaign against Astrakhan together with the Ottoman army (1569).

Crimean raid on Moscow in 1571

And not a strong cloud has clouded,
and the thunder thundered loudly:
Where is the dog of the Crimean king going?

And to the powerful kingdom of Moscow:
“And now we will go to stone Moscow,
and we’ll go back and take Rezan.”

And how will they be at the Oka River,
and then they will begin to erect white tents.
“And think with your whole mind:

Who should sit with us in stone Moscow,
and to whom we have in Volodymer,
and who should sit with us in Suzdal,

And who will keep Rezan Staraya with us,
and to whom we have in Zvenigorod,
and who should sit with us in Novgorod?”

Divi-Murza's son Ulanovich comes out:
“And you are our sovereign, the Crimean king!
And you, sir, can sit with us in stone Moscow,
And to your son in Volodymer,

And to your nephew in Suzdal,
and to my relatives in Zvenigorod,
and the stable boyar will keep Rezan Staraya,

And for me, sir, perhaps the New City:
I have light-good-days lying there, father,
Divi-Murza son of Ulanovich."

The voice of the Lord will call from heaven:
“You are different, dog, Crimean king!
Do you not know the kingdom?

And there are also Seventy Apostles in Moscow
of the Three Saints,
There is still an Orthodox Tsar in Moscow!”

You ran, dog, Crimean king,
not by the way, not by the road,
not according to the banner, not according to the black!

However, Devlet Giray was sure that Rus' would not recover from such a blow and could itself become an easy prey, moreover, famine and a plague epidemic reigned within its borders. In his opinion, all that remained was to strike the final blow. For the entire year after the campaign against Moscow, he was engaged in forming a new, much larger army. The Ottoman Empire provided active support, providing him with several thousand soldiers, including 7 thousand selected Janissaries. He managed to gather about 80 thousand people from the Crimean Tatars and Nogais. Possessing a huge army at that time, Devlet Giray moved towards Moscow. The Crimean Khan repeatedly stated that “ goes to Moscow for the kingdom" The lands of Muscovite Rus' were already divided in advance among the Crimean Murzas. The invasion of the Crimean army, as well as the aggressive campaigns of Batu, raised an acute question about the existence of an independent Russian state.

On the eve of the battle

In addition to them, Vorotynsky’s forces were joined by a detachment of 7 thousand German mercenaries sent by the tsar, including horse reiters from Rugodiv (Narva) led by captain Jurgen Farensbach (Yuri Franzbekov), as well as Don Cossacks. A hired detachment of a thousand “Kaniv Cherkasy”, that is, Zaporozhye Cossacks, arrived under the command of Mikhail Cherkashenin.

Vorotynsky received instructions from the Tsar on how to behave in case of two scenarios. In case Devlet Giray moved to Moscow and sought battle with the entire Russian army, the governor was obliged to block the old Muravsky Way for the khan and rush to the Zhizdra River. If it became obvious that the Crimeans were interested in the traditional quick raid, robbery and equally quick retreat, Vorotynsky was to set up ambushes and organize “partisan” actions. Ivan the Terrible himself, as last year, left Moscow, this time towards Veliky Novgorod.

To distract, Devlet Giray sent a detachment of two thousand against Serpukhov, while he himself with the main forces crossed the Oka River in a more remote place near the village of Drakino, where he encountered the regiment of governor Nikita Romanovich Odoevsky, who was defeated in a difficult battle. After this, the main army moved towards Moscow, and Vorotynsky, having removed his troops from coastal positions, moved after him. This was a risky strategy: it was assumed that the khan would not want to put his army in “two fires” and, not knowing what the Moscow garrison was, would be forced to first destroy the Russian army “clinging to its tail.” The siege of a well-fortified city, even with a small garrison, but with numerous cannons, is a long undertaking, and the khan could not leave a strong enemy in the rear threatening convoys and small detachments. In addition, there was the experience of the previous year, when the governor Ivan Belsky managed to lock himself in Moscow, but could not prevent the burning of the suburbs.

Troop composition

Russian army

According to the regimental list of the “coastal” regiment of Prince Mikhail Vorotynsky, the Russian army consisted of:

Voivodeship Regiment	Compound	Number
Large regiment:
		Total: 8255 the man and the Cossacks of Mikhail Cherkashenin
Right Hand Regiment:	Regiment of Prince Nikita Romanovich Odoevsky Regiment of Prince Grigory Dolgorukov Sagittarius Cossacks
		Total: 3590
Advanced Regiment:	Regiment of Prince Andrei Petrovich Khovansky Regiment of Prince Dmitry Ivanovich Khvorostinin Regiment of Prince Mikhail Lykov Smolensk, Ryazan and Epifansky archers Cossacks “Vyatchans in cowards to the rivers”
		Total: 4475
Guard Regiment:	Regiment of Prince Ivan Petrovich Shuisky Regiment of Prince Andrei Vasilyevich Repnin Cossacks
		Total: 4670
		Total: 20 034 person and the Cossacks of Mikhail Cherkashenin at the Big Regiment ( 3-5 thousand)

Army of the Crimean Khan

Chronicle sources cite very large numbers when talking about the Crimean army. The Novgorod Second Chronicle writes about 120 thousand, and the Moscow Chronicle even about 150 thousand. According to some historians, the khan's army numbered up to 60 thousand people, of which about 40 thousand were the Crimean army itself, to which were added the Nogai, Circassians and a detachment of Janissaries sent by the Ottoman Sultan.

Progress of the battle

The Crimean army was fairly stretched out, and while its advanced units reached the Pakhra River, the rearguard was only approaching the village of Molodi, located 15 kilometers from it. It was here that he was overtaken by an advance detachment of Russian troops under the leadership of the young oprichnina governor, Prince Dmitry Khvorostinin. A fierce battle broke out, as a result of which the Crimean rearguard was practically destroyed. This happened on July 29.

After this, what Vorotynsky hoped for happened. Having learned about the defeat of the rearguard and fearing for his rear, Devlet Giray deployed his army. Khvorostinin’s detachment encountered the entire Crimean army, and correctly assessing the situation, the young governor lured the enemy with an imaginary retreat to the Gulyai-city, which had already been deployed by this time near Molodya in a convenient location, located on a hill and covered by the Rozhaya River.

In the same Record of the Rank Book about the “coast service” and the reflection of the invasion of the Crimean Tatars in 1572 it is written:

“And the Crimean king sent twelve thousand Nagai and Crimean totars. And the princes from the Tatars’ advanced regiment of the sovereign rushed to the Bolshoi regiment to the walking city, and as they ran through the walking city to the right, and at that time the boyar Prince Mikhail Ivanovich Vorotynsky and his comrades ordered to shoot at the Tatar regiment with all their might. And in that battle many Totars were beaten.”

Aftermath of the battle

After an unsuccessful campaign against the Russian kingdom, Crimea temporarily lost a significant part of its combat-ready male population, since according to customs, almost all combat-ready men were obliged to participate in the Khan’s campaigns. Attacks on Rus' stopped for almost 20 years (until the Crimean campaign against Moscow in 1591). The Ottoman Empire was forced to abandon plans to return the middle and lower Volga region to its sphere of interests, and they were assigned to Moscow.

Devastated by previous Crimean raids of 1566-1571 and natural disasters of the late 1560s, the Russian state, fighting on two fronts, was able to survive and maintain its independence in an extremely critical situation.

Memory

In the 1990s, the museum dedicated to the Battle of Molodi that existed in the village of Molodi was removed from the historical building of the Sokovnin-Golovin-Shuvalov estate built in 1646, all exhibits disappeared without a trace.

Serious research on the topic of the Battle of Molodi began to be undertaken only at the end of the 20th century.

The foundation stone in memory of the victory in the Battle of Molodi was installed in 2002.

In fiction

see also

Notes

1. Storozhenko A.V. Stefan Batory and the Dnieper Cossacks. Kyiv, 1904. P. 34
2. Penskoy V.V. Battle of Molodi July 28 - August 3, 1572 // History of military affairs: research and sources. - St. Petersburg. , 2012. - T. 2. - P. 156. - ISSN 2308-4286.
3. Zenchenko M. Yu. Southern Russian borderland at the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th century. - P.47
4. Documents about the Battle of Molodi // Historical Archive, No. 4. 1959
5. During the retreat, the remnants of the khan's army were attacked by the Zaporozhye Cossacks, and only a small part of the army returned to Crimea. See: Storozhenko A.V. Stefan Batory and the Dnieper Cossacks. - Kyiv, 1904. - P. 34
6. Battle of Molodi (Russian). Retrieved September 15, 2018.
7. “The matter was great and the slaughter was great” (Russian). Archived from the original on September 15, 2018. Retrieved September 15, 2018.
8. Skobelkin O. V. Serving “Germans” in military operations on the territory of the southern frontier (second half of the 16th – early 17th centuries) // Bulletin of Tambov University. Series " Humanitarian sciences" - Tambov: TamSU, 2015.