Escalation in Old Russian
The Battle of Kalka in 1223 was the beginning of Batu Khan’s full-scale invasion fifteen years later. There is a stereotypical perception of the Mongol army as a horde of Asian barbarians who defeated their enemies with numbers, cruelty, and treachery. And it moves around the world like a natural disaster or a swarm of locusts.
The Mongols really corresponded to all the negative ideas about the “barbarians” in everything (especially in ethics), except for the military-political organization. In this respect, they were precisely the Russians and other opponents of the Mongols.
The Horde was distinguished by discipline unprecedented in the Middle Ages. There was a khan headed by the temnik hierarchy. (under the command of 10 thousand soldiers), thousand and centurion. The supreme commanders of the pack might plot and sometimes sabotage orders, but they never lived their lives without regard for command. The task of the temniks and thousands was not to ride a dashing horse and lead by example, like the Russian princes, but to stay behind and lead the war. Khan and his subordinates acted extremely rationally in other respects as well; for example, they were engaged in reconnaissance and regularly resorted to diplomacy, but in a very specific way. All the words of the Mongol ambassadors were lies, with the sole purpose of breaking enemy alliances and weakening resistance during a future conquest.
Pre-Chronicle Miniature depicting the battle at Kalka
Electronic encyclopedia and library Runiverse
The diplomatic campaign also preceded the Battle of Kalka. When the Mongol army crossed the Caucasus and occupied the lands of the Polovtsians, their khan Kotyan, who managed to be baptized and was an active participant in princely civil strife, turned to Russia for help. His message was: simple: “Today they took our land, but tomorrow those who come will take yours.”.
These words have been uttered hundreds of times throughout human history, before and after Kotian, and the typical response to them has been blithe indifference. However, the leader of the Southern Russian princes, Mstislav Udatny, responded to the call and began to form an “anti-Mongol coalition”. He managed to persuade the Kiev prince Mstislav the Elder and Mstislav Svyatoslavich of Chernigov to create a joint army.
The Mongols, as always, tried to destroy this coalition. The envoys appeared before the princes and they Message It was as typical of history as Kotyan’s call:
“We heard that you went against us by listening to the Polovtsians, but we did not touch your lands, cities or villages; They did not go against you, but by the will of God they went against the slaves and sons-in-law of the Polovtsians. You make peace with us; If they run to you, drive them away from you and take their wealth; We heard that they did a lot of harm to you too; That’s why we beat them.”
The text of the message looks convincing and testifies to the Mongols’ good knowledge of the history and politics of Russia. Despite this, the princely coalition did not respond to the Mongols, merely executing their envoys, just as the Spartans and Athenians had done to Persian envoys a millennium and a half before them.
Sometimes There is a statement in historical publications that this was a recklessly provocative step and escalation, after which the Mongols considered it their duty to take revenge. This comment completely ignores historical context: Before and after the Battle of Kalka, not a single person managed to persuade the Mongols not to attack with well-chosen rhetoric. Even if war had been avoided that year, it is difficult to imagine a scenario in which the Mongols conquered the Cuman steppes and then held a “conference” about sharing the world with Russia as a reward against the Russians. good-natured and common-sense people.
Mongolian deception tactics
At the end of March 1223, the congress of the “coalition” princes made the following decision: to collect all detachments near the city of Zaruba by Easter (located on the Dnieper, 80 km below Kiev) and start walking on the moors. Modern historian Andrey Astaikin evaluates The total number of Russian troops is 15-20 thousand people, but he admits that there may be up to 30 thousand people in them.
It was the largest army in pre-Mongol Russian history, consisting of well-armed warriors in heavy armor and possibly mustered militia. But no matter how many there were, they were just as stupid.
There was no strict unity of command and uniform tactics among the squads, and organization was reduced to simply advancing towards the enemy in relative order. Thousands of Polovtsian soldiers helped the Russians. Little is known about their numbers, but it can be assumed that their command was even worse than that of the Russians.
There is no exact information about the size of the herd, but historians believe it was approximately equal to or slightly inferior to the coalition. A significant numerical superiority of the Russian-Polovtsian troops is excluded, if only because the army would not enter into battle according to the tactics adopted. In addition, a crushing defeat often meant irreversible death for a nomad herd.
Italian traveler Plano Carpini left Detailed description of Mongol tactics:
“And if they see what they (the enemies) cannot do) After winning, they retreat to their own territory, and they do this for the sake of deception, so that the enemies can follow them to the places where they set up an ambush; and if the enemy pursue them to the said ambush, they surround them, and thus wound and kill them. Likewise, if they see that they are facing a large army, they will retreat from it, sometimes for a distance of one or two days… If they see that they cannot do this, they will retreat for ten or twelve days. daily journey. Sometimes they stay in a safe place until the enemy’s army is divided, and then they come secretly… And if by chance the opponents fight successfully, the Tatars open a way for them to escape, and they escape as soon as possible. They begin to run away and become separated from each other, they are pursued, and in their flight they kill more than they would in battle.”
How did the Russians fall into enemy hands?
The Battle of Kalka took place exactly according to the Mongol plan. Archaeologists have not been able to find the place where the incident took place, but many historians believe that Kalköy is referred to in the sources as the Kalchik River and that the battle took place between the villages of Rozovka, 40-50 kilometers northwest of modern Mariupol. Temryuk and Maloyanisol.
Before the main battle on May 31, the Russian princes managed to win several minor skirmishes with the Mongol vanguard. This was part of the Mongols’ plan: harmless archery attacks from long range followed by flight seemed to be the success of the Russians, which calmed their alertness and forced them to pursue the enemy. This continued for about two weeks. In addition, the princes managed to quarrel among themselves (in the chronicles there is not a single clue about the reason for this), and when the battle began, Mstislav Udatny with his squad was on the eastern bank of the Kalka, and Mstislav the Old was across two rivers on the western bank of the Karatysh. The first divided his army further, sending the Polovtsy forward “as guards”. In total, according to the chronicles, at least four components of different forces can be distinguished: the Kiev group, the Chernigov group, the Galicia-Volyn group and the Polovtsy.
So a large army was dispersed over an area of more than 20 kilometers and had lost visual contact between its troops, making numbers less important. If the total forces of the parties were initially approximately equal, now the number of each part of the Mongol army was three to four times greater.
Drawing NA Koshelev / “Military Encyclopedia of ID Sytin”
Thus, the outcome of the battle was already determined in the order, and the Mongols skillfully took advantage of this. Suddenly stopping their “flight”, they turned back and with a concentrated blow defeated the Polovtsian advanced detachment and drove its remnants towards the Galicia-Volyn group, consisting of Mstislav Udatny and Daniil Galitsky. The fleeing allies crushed the Russian battle formations, which became easy prey for the Mongols. At one point Mstislav Chernigovsky tried to come to the aid of the forces on the east bank with his regiments, but the passage was blocked by troops fleeing the battlefield.
All this time Mstislav the Elder was in the camp and was in no hurry to help the allies. As a result, the remnants of the Galicia-Volyn group fled by boats, and the Chernigovians retreated north under constant attacks from the Mongols, suffering huge losses and losing their prince. Finally, the Mongols began to besiege the Kiev camp, which, due to indiscretion, was poorly fortified and had no access to water. The siege lasted three days, after which negotiations began. They were led from the Mongols by the governor Ploskynya, a representative of the Brodniks, a Slavic people living in the lower reaches of the Dnieper.
It was then that one of the most famous events in Ancient Russian history took place. Ploskynya swore on the cross that if the Russian army surrendered, his life would be spared and he would be allowed to leave in exchange for a ransom. However, the Mongols attacked the unarmed Russians who had left the camp, killing most of them and using the survivors, together with the princes, as “foundations” for a wooden platform on which they held a victory banquet. The prisoners were placed under the planks and crushed by the victors.
Presumably this defeat prevented the Russian principalities from forming any anti-Mongol coalition during the main invasion in 1237–1241. The Mongols, on the other hand, realized the weaknesses of the Russians and gathered a tremendous amount of intelligence information to aid their conquest.
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Source: Gazeta
Barbara Dickson is a seasoned writer for “Social Bites”. She keeps readers informed on the latest news and trends, providing in-depth coverage and analysis on a variety of topics.