Russia: Military History and Notable Events

1223 - 1241 - Mongol Invasion of Kievan-Rus (All Facts)

• Conflict in which Batu Khan and the Mongols defeated and conquered the many fragmenting principalities of the namesake state

  • They took Vladimir, Yaroslavl, and Rostov

• War and conquest which ended with the Siege of Kiev, completing the destruction of the Kievan Rus and its fragmented principalities

1240 - Siege of Kiev (All Facts)

• Battle in which Batu Khan and the Mongols defeated the Kievan Rus Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia

1245 - 1618 - Lithuanian-Muscovite Wars (All Facts)

1380 - Battle of Kulikovo (All Facts)

• Battle in which Grand Duke Dmitri Donskoy and his Russian forces defeated Mamai and his Mongolian forces

• Battle that took place on Curlew Field in Tula Province

• Battle in which exhausted Russian soldiers were treated to the novel sight of an entire “unbeatable” Mongol army galloping at speed away from them

• Battle in which Grand Duke Dmitri Donskoy missed the great moment, lying under a tree concussed

• Battle in which Mamai rode against Russia with 30K warriors, including Genoese mercenaries

• Battle during which Mamai forged an alliance with Lithuania, whose armies had been coming the opposite way

• Battle in which Grand Duke Dmitri Donskoy made a forced march to intercept Mamai, then staked everything on an opposed crossing of the Don River, straight into action

• Battle during which Grand Duke Dmitri Donskoy’s secret cavalry reserve swept onto the field to secure victory

• Battle after which Moscow emerged as the focus of Russian opposition to the Mongols after the Tatars were defeated in it

1425 - 1453 - Muscovite War of Succession (All Facts)

• Conflict over the Russian throne and position of the Grand Prince of Moscow

• Conflict of rivalry between Vasily II and Dmitri Shemyaka

  • After Vasily II was captured by Khan Ulag-Mahmed of the Mongolian Empire, he was freed on payment of a huge ransom, and Shemyaka began plotting in earnest

  • Vasily II was arrested and blinded, but again freed

  • This was Shemyaka’s biggest mistake because his cousin raised an army and one year and one day after being blinded returned to Moscow in triumph over Shemyaka, thereafter planning to expand Muscovite territory

• Conflict which ended with the exiling and poisoning of Dmitri Shemyaka

1512 - 1522 - Fourth Lithuanian–Muscovite War / Ten Years’ War (All Facts)

• War in which Vasily III and his Muscovite forces, with the help of Mikhail Glinsky and Lithuanian rebels, defeated Sigismund and his Polish-Lithuanian forces

• War in which Vasily III and his Muscovite forces gained control of Smolensk after two bloody but abortive previous attempts to take it

• War which ended with an armistice conceding control of Smolensk to Vasily III

  • War whose armistice treaty was also a diplomatic coup for Vasily III

1534 - 1537 - Fifth Lithuanian-Muscovite War / War of Starodub (All Facts)

• War in which King Sigismund of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania and his Lithuanian-Polish forces failed to regain Smolensk and lost it to Russia

• War after which Prussia still remained a fief of Poland

1552 - Siege of Kazan / Conquest of Kazan Khanate (All Facts)

• Battle in which Tsar Ivan IV and his Russian forces defeated and conquered the Kazan Khanate and its Tartar forces

• Battle in which Tsar Ivan IV, with a force of 150K men, captured Kazan, the Tartar capital on the Volga River, after using gunpowder to breach the walls

1552 - 1556 - Kazan Rebellion (All Facts)

• (Failed) Revolt of the Kazan Khanate against Ivan IV and the Tsardom of Russia after it had conquered it

1554 - 1556 - Conquest of Astrakhan Khanate (All Facts)

• Battle in which Tsar Ivan IV and his Russian forces defeated and conquered the Astrakhan Khanate and its Tartar forces

1558 - 1583 - Livonian War (All Facts)

• War in which Tsar Ivan IV and his Russian forces were defeated by Poland, Lithuania, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Transylvania, and the namesake confederation

• War which Tsar Ivan IV began due to

  • his ambition to transform Russia, which, at the time, had a rudimentary agriculture and little industry; by taking control of the Baltic and its ports, as they had already become, at the time, important centers of international trade and offered the prospect of benefit from the more advanced western countries of the time

• War in which Tsar Ivan IV

  • sent his troops into the namesake kingdom / confederation in a lightning strike designed to secure the Baltic region for Muscovy (Russia) and give it an outlet to the west

• War in which Tsar IV and his Russian forces

  • seized several large towns and fortresses

  • disputed with one another in Moscow and ultimately destroyed their momentum

  • may have overreached themselves during that period of the Tsar’s imperial expansion, but the Baltic region would have been a considerable prize nonetheless

• War which saw

  • The Siege of Narva

  • The Siege of Pskov

• War during which

  • the namesake Order of Knights managed to improve its military and diplomatic posture, still being the area’s main defense force

  • Riga (modern-day Latvia; of the namesake confederation / order) put itself under the protection of Poland

  • the namesake confederation was partitioned as Sweden and Denmark were poised to take over (modern-day) Estonia and Courland

• War which ended when Russia made peace with Poland gave up its claims to the Baltic state of Livonia

1558 - Siege of Narva (All Facts)

• Battle in which Tsar Ivan IV and his Russian forces defeated the Livonian Confederation and captured the namesake Livonian city (modern-day Estonia) during the Livonian War

1581 - 1582 - Siege of Pskov (All Facts)

• Battle in which the Russian forces defeated the Polish-Lithuanian forces during the Livonian War

1568 - 1570 - First Russo-Ottoman War (All Facts)

• War in which Tsar Ivan IV and his Russian forces defeated Sultan Selim II and his Ottoman forces

• War in which the Ottoman Empire tried but failed to take control of the Astrakhan Khanate region previously controlled, and controlled thereafter, by Russia

• War in which the Ottoman forces failed to take Astrakhan despite hauling their ships over land from the Don River to the Volga River

• War in which the Ottoman forces retreated taking heavy losses and thus allowing the Astrakhan region to remain under the control of Russia

1570 - Massacre of Novgorod (All Facts)

• Incident in which Tsar Ivan IV ordered his Oprichniki of his Oprichnina to sack and destroy the namesake town because he suspected it of betraying Russia (via paranoid claims of treason) and seeking union with Poland

• Incident in which Tsar Ivan IV’s Oprichniki reached the peak of their atrocities as they devastated the namesake town and killed 60K (of their own, Russian) people, many of which were pushed through holes in the ice

1580 - 1778 - Russian Conquest of Siberia (All Facts)

• Series of conflicts in which

  • Yermak Timofeyevich and his 1,500 Cossack mercenaries (hired by the Stroganov family) of Muscovy (Russia) defeated the Kuchum Khan and the Sibir Khanate and the Siberian Tartars and captured the Khanate’s capital of Kashlyk

1598 - 1613 - Time of Troubles (All Facts)

• Period of political instability in Russia following the death of Feodor, the last of the House of Rurik until the transition was complete with the accession of Michael, the first of the House of Romanov

• Period of political instability in Russia which included

  • intrigue involving pretenders to the throne and their revolting (under and after the reign of Boris Godunov)

  • the “Great Famine of 1601”

  • the “Bolotnikov Uprising”

  • the Russo-Polish War of 1609

    • the Siege of Smolensk

• Period of political instability in Russia which saw the short reigns of

  • Boris Godunov

  • Feodor II

  • False Dmitry

  • Vasily IV

  • False Dmitry II

1591 / 1593 - 1606 - Long Turkish War / Thirteen Years’ War / Fifteen Years’ War / Sixth Habsburg-Ottoman War (All Facts)

• War in which Murad III, Mehmed III, and Ahmed and their Ottoman forces fought against Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II and the Habsburgs (Holy Roman Empire and Spain) and their allies; which ended in a stalemate

• War during which Ottoman forces captured the fortress of Raab in Hungary

1596 - Battle of Mezőkeresztes (All Facts)

• Battle in which Mehmed III and his Ottoman forces defeated Sigismund Bathory and his Habsburg forces and allies during the Long Turkish War / Thirteen Years’ War / Fifteen Years’ War / Sixth Habsburg-Ottoman War

• Battle in which Mehmed III

  • was personally responsible for turning the tide of battle, despite a mass desertion by the Ottoman Turkish infantry

  • in one fell swoop, saved a huge swathe of territory for the Ottoman Empire, saving its possessions in Macedonia, Bulgaria, and Hungary despite a string of previous Hungarian military victories

  • tried to follow the “siphahis” when they walked off the battlefield, but his generals held a council of war to persuade him to stay with the rest of his army

• Battle which

  • began badly for the Ottoman forces, when early reverses caused the “sipahis,” the fief-holding backbone of the Ottoman forces, to simply walk off the battlefield

• Battle in which the overconfident Christian Habsburg forces broke rank to plunder the Ottoman Turkish camp, only for the Ottoman cavalry to kill them and take enormous booty including a hundred cannons

• Battle in which 30K Hungarians and Germans died

1596 - Union of Brest / Union of Brest-Litovsk (All Facts)

• Synod which was responsible for the creation of the Ruthenian Uniate Church

• Synod in which the Jesuit Order managed to unite the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches in modern-day Ukraine, a region of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth at the time, after only a year of negotiation

1601 - 1603 - Russian Famine (All Facts)

• Famine which

  • occurred

    • under the regime of Tsar Boris Godunov

  • was the result of

    • a series of disastrously poor harvests

  • reduced men to

    • eating grass

    • eating birch bark

    • cannibalism

  • caused

    • widespread profiteering

    • a sharp increase in the price of bread

    • many landowners to have drove their peasant populations from their estates, unable to feed them

    • the formation of marauding bands of homeless peasants who attacked the granaries of the merchants

• Famine in which

  • 125K people starved to death in Moscow alone

  • whole village populations disappeared

  • government decrees did little to ameliorate the problem

1607 - Bolotnikov Uprising (All Facts)

• Suppressed Peasant Revolt led by the namesake during the Time of Troubles

• Revolt in which the nobles initially supported “False Dmitry” before he was ousted by Tsar Vasily IV, and initially joined the peasants; until, they were alarmed by the size of the movement and betrayed the namesake rebellion leader and had him imprisoned

1609 - 1618 - Russo-Polish War (All Facts)

• War in which King Sigismund III and his Polish-Lithuanian forces defeated Tsar Vasily IV and his Russian and Swedish forces

• War in which King Sigismund III proclaimed that his own son, Ladislaus IV, be the new Tsar of Russia

• War during which the Poles pressed home their advantage by occupying Moscow while the Swedes entered Russia

• War during which the Russians forced the invading Poles to capitulate and, incensed by Polish and Swedish advances into their lands, the Russian people organized against them

  • This operation was undertaken by Kuzma Minin and Dmitry Pozharsky

• War during which Poland had Smolensk in its possession by the end of the “Time of Troubles” and used it as the base for the offensive

  • At one point during the war, this caused serious concern to Tsar Michael, who had been grappling with a host of domestic problems which he inherited when he assumed the throne

  • Somehow, in response to this development, Moscow withstood the assault by the Polish forces

• War which ended with the Truce of Deulino, which was signed after the failure of the offensive which brought Polish troops near Moscow after they ran short of ammunition and provisions and withdrew

1609 - 1611 - Siege of Smolensk (All Facts)

• Battle in which King Sigismund III of Poland-Lithuania and his Polish-Lithuanian and Cossack forces defeated Russia and their combined Russian and Swedish forces in the Russo-Polish War

1610 - 1617 - Ingrian War (All Facts)

• War in which Gustavus Adolphus and his Swedish forces defeated Russia and its forces

• War which ended with the Treaty of Stolbovo

1617 - Treaty of Stolbovo (All Facts)

• Peace Treaty between Russia and Sweden, ending the Ingrian War

• Peace Treaty which effectively ended the occupation of northern Russia by Gustavus Adolphus and his Swedish forces

• Peace Treaty in which

  • Sweden agreed to evacuate Novgorod and other areas of northern Russia

  • Sweden agreed to renounce its claim to the Russian throne

  • Sweden agreed to renounce plans for expansion towards the Whit Sea

  • Russia had to pay an indemnity of 20K silver roubles to Sweden in exchange

  • Sweden retained the southern coast of Finland

  • Sweden retained its contact with its Estonian possessions

  • Russia (Muscovy) was cut off from the Baltic

  • Russia did not get back the towns conquered by Boris Godunov prior to the “Time of Troubles”

1618 - Truce of Deulino (All Facts)

• Peace Treaty signed between Russia and Poland-Lithuania, which ended the Russo-Polish War of 1609

• Peace Treaty in which

  • Poland retained the provinces of Smolensk and Seversk

  • recognized the “election” of Michael Romanov to the throne of the Tsardom of Russia, in succession to Poland-Lithuania’s Ladislaus IV (despite not having yet renounced a claim to that throne which stemmed originally from the “Time of Troubles")