MARK GALEOTTI ILLUSTRATED BY DARREN TAN KULIKOVO 1380 The battle that made Russia CAMPAIGN 332 KULIKOVO 1380 The battle that made Russia MARK GALEOTTI ILLUSTRATED BY DARREN TAN Series Editor Marcus Cowper CONTENTS ORIGINS OF THE CAMPAIGN 5 The Mongol conquest n The rise of Moscow n Dmitry and Mamai n Mamai’s move A note about sources CHRONOLOGY 17 OPPOSING COMMANDERS 18 Rus' commanders n Golden Horde commanders OPPOSING FORCES 23 Dimitry’s army of detachments n The Golden Horde n Logistics OPPOSING PLANS 37 The battlefield n Dmitry’s gamble n Mamai’s hammer THE BATTLE 47 Dmitry across the Don n Over the Don n Readying Mamai’s host n The battle of champions The initial clash n Battle is joined n A bloody afternoon n Ambush! n The rout AFTERMATH 79 Donskoy triumphant n Mamai’s downfall n Moscow burns... n ...But Moscow also triumphs THE BATTLEFIELD TODAY 87 The invisible battlefield n Kulikovo today n A shrine to Russia BIBLIOGRAPHY 94 INDEX 95 N Other Russian territories Muscovite holdings 100 miles 100km 0 0 GRAND PRINCIPALITY OF RYAZAN NOVGOROD REPUBLIC LITHUANIAN LANDS Gorodets Meshchersky Pereyaslavl-Ryazan Tarusa Kozelsk Smolensk Moscow Vladimir Murom Nizhny Novgorod Starodub Suzdal Yurev Dmitrov Rzhev Pereyaslavl Tver Torzhok Volkhov Volga Volga Moskva Oka Dnieper Bezhichi Uglich Beloözero Vologda Rostov Yaroslavl Kostroma Galich Ustyug The Principalities of the Rus’ 5 ‘I want to tell you, brethren, about the battles of the recent war, about how the battle on the Don between Grand Duke Dmitry Ivanovich and all Orthodox Christians and the infidel Mamai and the godless sons of Hagar [Muslims] came about.’ The Tale of the Rout of Mamai On 8 September 2005, Alexy II, 15th Patriarch of Moscow and all the Rus’, and thus primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, declared a jubilee year to commemorate the battle of Kulikovo. Fought against the Mongol-Tatar armies of the Golden Horde exactly 625 years earlier, this was described in the patriarch’s address as the battle that ‘saved the nations of Europe by shielding them from the threat of foreign invasion.’ That might be something of a stretch, given that by this time the Golden Horde was already in decline. It might also appear a strange choice, to honour the 625th anniversary of anything, but the point was to combine these celebrations with those of the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II, another conflict in which the Russians like to feel they saved Europe with their blood and bones. Kulikovo, 1380, and what they call the Great Patriotic War, 1945, are arguably the bookends marking the start and the end – or at least the latest chapter – of Russia’s own history as a great, military nation. The battle of Kulikovo became a powerful symbol of Russian unity and capacity, even if two years later a punitive expedition would see Moscow burned; after all, the legend is often more important than the reality. Dmitry, prince of Moscow, became known as ‘Dmitry Donskoy’ ‘Dmitry of the Don’, for his role in this battle, close to that mighty river’s banks. More generally, it became part of Moscow’s claims to dominate the Rus’, and later part of the Russian nation’s founding myths, of how it freed itself from foreign domination and emerged as a Eurasian power and Europe’s defender alike. THE MONGOL CONQUEST ‘In the same year, for our sins, there came unknown tribes. No one knew who they were, or their origin, faith, or tongue… Only one Russian warrior in ten lived through this battle; in returning to their homelands, many of these were killed by the Cumans for their horses and clothes. In such a way, did God bring confusion upon us, and an endless number of people perished.’ The Novgorod First Chronicle ORIGINS OF THE CAMPAIGN 6 The deep origins of the battle of Kulikovo lie in the Mongols’ conquest of the divided principalities and city states of the Rus’ in the 13th century. At this time, the Rus’, a mix of indigenous Slavic peoples and the Nordic raiders, settlers and conquerors who had intermarried with them, were characterized by a common culture and disunited politics. Principalities were linked by formal allegiances, family loyalties and practical advantages, but there was no overarching political structure. Indeed, princes would often move from rule of one city to another, seeking to find better berths like modern corporate executives headhunted from company to company. ‘Kiev the Golden’ was first of the cities, the cradle of Russian Orthodoxy since its forced conversion from paganism under Grand Prince Vladimir the Great in ad 988. Nonetheless, principalities warred for tribute and precedence, squabbled over trade deals, and turned a blind eye to river piracy and banditry waged against their neighbours. Upon this land of scattered states and cities, divided by deep forests and deeper resentments, came what would become known as the Golden Horde, the western arm of the mighty Mongol Empire. This semi-nomadic confederation would over time ally with and incorporate others, such as the Pechenegs and the Turkic Tatars – hence the near-interchangeability of the terms Mongol, Mongol-Tatar and Tatar in this context – and create an empire that would sweep across Asia, past the Ural Mountains and into Europe. The lands of the Rus’ were simply the next objectives as they pursued what they believed was their divine mission of conquest. The first harbinger was borne by the nomadic Cumans from along the Volga River. Once raiders themselves, they were driven westwards by the Mongol advance, warning the Rus’ that ‘terrible strangers have taken our country, and tomorrow they will take yours if you do not come and help us.’ Concerned at this new and unexpected danger, Princes Mstislav the Bold of Novgorod and Mstislav III of Kiev gathered a force along with their allies from over a dozen This official picture demonstrates the size of the nuclear missile submarine Dmitry Donskoy a powerful asset of the Russian Northern Fleet, photographed here at Severodvinsk. (© Russian ministry of defence) Viktor Vasnetsov’s epic representation of the battle was part of a series of paintings of his, celebrating and often mythologizing key events in Russian history. Here the Russians, with Grand Prince Dmitry at the centre, crash into the Mongol lines. Some of the details are inaccurate, including the reliance on fighting on foot and the rectangular, almost Roman shields of the Russians. However, the helmets and armour are reliable, and note the distinctive Russian berdysh, broad-bladed poleaxe. (Public domain) 7 other cities in 1223. Heading east, they met and were roundly defeated by a Mongol army at Kalka River.1 Nonetheless, what was in fact a mere advance guard of the Horde withdrew, and the Russians told themselves they were safe. They were wrong. In 1236, Batu Khan led a force of some 35,000 cavalry west, crushing the Cumans, Alani and Bulgars before, the next year, moving on into the lands of the Rus’. The conquest that followed was devastating and decisive. First, Batu turned to the cities of Vladimir and Ryazan. When the latter resisted, it was besieged, its walls smashed with catapults over five days, before the city was stormed, and sacked. Most of the population was killed or driven away, such that, in the words of the Russian Primary Chronicle, ‘none were left to groan and cry.’ Kolomna was burnt, and then Vladimir itself fell, Grand Prince Yuri fleeing while his family died as his kremlin (citadel) burned after a siege in which ‘stones fell like rain.’ In 1238, flying columns of Mongol troops took and sacked city after city, with siege engines built by Chinese engineers and soldiers drawn from across their empire. Some cities fought bitterly and were defeated, such as Kozelsk, under seven-year-old Prince Vasily. Its defenders held out for seven bitter weeks (in part aided by the way the spring thaw made the land around swampy and inhospitable) before succumbing.2 Again, the population of the city was killed or enslaved, but Batu was so enraged by this defiance that he forbade any mention of Kozelsk’s name in his presence thereafter. Others learned their lessons quickly. The cosmopolitan trading city of Novgorod offered its surrender with alacrity, pre-empting the usual fire and sword with tribute and fine words. Overall, though, the division of the Rus’ cities would be their undoing; as the epic poem the Lay of Igor’s 1 See David Nicolle and Viacheslav Shpakovsky, Kalka River 1223. 2 See Konstantin Nossov, Medievil Russian Fortresses AD 862–1480. As Russian history increasingly becomes harnessed to the political interests of the state, the conquest of Russia and its subsequent emergence from the so-called ‘Mongol Yoke’ has become used to emphasize the importance of unity, strong government, and constant vigilance. This display at the high-tech new Russia – My History exhibit in Moscow shows the Mongol invasion under the heading ‘Atomization’, making it clear that disunity means defencelessness. (© Mark Galeotti) 8 Campaign put it, ‘princes began to argue about trifles, calling them important matters, and created discord among themselves. The infidels from all lands began to invade the Russian land and to win victory.’ By 1240, Batu’s Mongol-Tatar forces had driven as far as Kiev. It, too, resisted; it too fell, and suffered the murderous consequences. According to accounts of the time, after it was stormed, only 2,000 of its population of 50,000 survived the siege and subsequent sack. The papal envoy Giovanni Di Piano Carpini, who passed six years later, recounted a city still in ruins, the land around strewn with ‘countless skulls and bones of dead men.’ Its Byzantine treasures had been taken, its walls broken, and its position as the unrivalled first city of the principalities of the Rus’ irreparably damaged. The Horde continued into Europe, pushing ever westward. It had reached Hungary and Poland before news of the death of the Great Khan, Ögedei, reached Batu. He was called back to join the discussion about a successor, and his seemingly irresistible advance stalled. In 1259, the Mongol Empire effectively fragmented, and a functionally independent khanate formed that stretched from the lands of the Rus’ to the west, to the Ural Mountains in the east, and down to the Caucasus mountains and the Black Sea to the south. Only in the 16th century did it acquire its modern name of the Golden Horde; at the time it was called a variety of names: the Ulus of Jochi (‘the Realm of Jochi,’ after Genghis Khan’s eldest son), the Kipchak Khanate (after the particular Turkic nomadic tribe which had dominated the steppes east of the Rus’ before being incorporated into the Mongols’ empire) or the Altan Ord. THE RISE OF MOSCOW ‘O lark, summer bird, rise to the blue skies on these joyful days of glory, and look at the mighty city of Moscow, sing glory to the Grand Duke Dmitry Ivanovich and his brother, Prince Vladimir Andreyevich!… Their glory is being sung all over the Russian land: in Moscow, horses are neighing, horns are blaring in Kolomna, drums are thundering in Serpukhov, and Russian banners are lining the shore of the mighty river Don.’ The Zadonshchina What the Mongols had taken, though, they would hold. Cities had been laid waste, new dynasties would rise, and, for over a century, the Russians would be under unquestioned foreign rule, trapped in what Karl Marx called with poetic licence ‘the bloody swamp of Mongol slavery’. The Golden Horde built a capital for itself at Sarai, on the lower Volga River, to which flowed tribute and princes seeking favours, leniency, and legitimation. After all, the Mongols were conquerors rather than administrators, and they chose to rule through local subject princes rather than engage directly in the tedious business of government. This provided an historic opportunity for the Ryurikid dynasty, which held Moscow, then just a small trading town recovering from being sacked and burned during the invasion. While other princely families had been decimated for resisting the Mongols, or else had failed to adapt to the new system, the Ryurikids demonstrated that they understood the power of collaboration. Under successive princes, this dynasty proved to be the Mongols’ most eager, ruthless and efficient agents, maintaining the hated 9 census, raising taxes, and crushing dissent in the Great Khan’s name. In the process, while doing well for him, they did very well for themselves. Prince Ivan I, for example, gained the nickname kalita, ‘moneybags’, for his wealth, wealth he used buying allies and extending Moscow’s influence. Unlike most dynasties of the time, the Ryurikids came to practise primogeniture, the entire estate passing to the eldest son rather than being divided more broadly into numerous appanages – estates spread around all the sons. This helped concentrate the expanding family fortune. It also Few could fully grasp the enormity of the Mongols’ empire at its height. Those such as the trader-explorer Marco Polo, here shown in an excerpt from the 14th-century Catalan Atlas, were often derided for their accounts of its physical scale and military capabilities. (Public domain) This statue clearly shows the typical accoutrements of a high-status Mongol heavy cavalryman. Note the ornate lamellar armour and plumed helmet, as well as the flanged mace, a weapon that often suggested rank. (Creative Commons: A. Omer Karamollaoglu) 10 Caspian Sea Caucasus Mountains Black Sea Baltic Sea Aral Sea Lake Balkhash Mediterranean Sea Euphrates Syr Darya Amu Darya Irtysh Ob Tobol Volga Ural N Dvina Tigris Moscow Constantinople Kiev CRIMEA KHWAREZM SIBERIA BULGARIA IL-KHANID EMPIRE MOLDAVIA ANATOLIA NOVGOROD Sarai (old) Sarai (new) Urgench Itil Caffa Vladimir Suzdal Tver Azov Bulgar Ryazan Chernigov Lvov Kraków Novgorod Pskov Danube Dniester Dnieper W Dvina Don P o l o v t s i a n S t e p p e U r a l M o u n t a i n s N 500 miles 500km 0 0 Rus’ lands under Lithuanian rule Republic of Novgorod Principalities Russian lands White Horde Blue Horde Golden Horde The Golden Horde