Campaign [332] Kulikovo 1380: The Battle That Made Russia by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: new
ISBN: 9781472831217
Amazon: 1472831217
Goodreads: 40046215
Publisher: Osprey Publishing
Published: 2019-02-19T05:00:00+00:00

Ernst Lissner’s 1907 watercolour depicts the legendary scene where Grand Prince Dmitry seeks out the Orthodox monk Sergius of Radonezh for his blessing. (Public domain)

OVER

THE DON

‘By the beginning of the second hour [of daylight], the horns on both sides were getting louder, Tatar and Russian horns were blowing harder. The men-at-arms were not seen yet, for the morning was foggy, but the earth was moving terrifyingly in the east to the sea, and Kulikovo Field was bending towards the Don in the west. The rivers were reaching out of their beds, for never had such numbers of people been in that place.’

The Tale of the Rout of Mamai

The chronicles all assert that, before the battle, early that fateful morning, Dmitry addressed his forces and presented their mission in religious rather than political terms. According to the Novgorod First Chronicle, he told them: ‘brothers, God is our refuge and our strength.’ While perhaps inevitable in chronicles written and kept by religious authorities, this is also likely true. There was then no real sense of Russian nationalism as such; instead, their Orthodox faith was probably the most powerful binding force amongst the disparate contingents. They fought under banners depicting the Virgin Mary – whose feast day was 8 September – and patron saints, notably St George and St Andrew, guardians of Moscow and Russia, respectively. They marched to battle singing hymns and common songs with religious themes. Both because of his genuine faith, a product of Alexei’s tutoring, and also his political instincts, Dmitry had long cultivated his alliance with the Orthodox Church. Having won the blessing of Sergius of Radonezh beforehand, public displays of piety were not just ways to enthuse an army that knew the odds were stacked against it, they were also ways of demonstrating that alliance for future advantage.

As per Dmitry’s plan, his forces formed up on the field in three-line order. The Sentry Regiment stretched a screen of Russian and Mongol-Tatar scouts along the front of the army. The Mongol-Tatar mercenaries were under the governor of Pereyaslavl, Andrei Serkizov, himself of Tatar origins. Indeed, one of the reasons Dmitry had placed his own man, Mikhail Ivanovich Akinfov, in command of the regiment was likely the potentially prickly relations between Serkizov and Prince Semyon Konstantinovich of Obolensk, who led his own personal retinue in the regiment. There were also detachments from Galich and Tarusa, possibly infantry levies, under Mstislav Konstantinovich, prince of Tarusa.

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