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Forgotten battle

The Aug. 12, 1399, Battle of the Vorskla River caused significant changes in European history
21 July, 00:00

This year Poltava oblast, all of Ukraine, and the rest of the interested international community of nations mark two significant anniversaries: the brilliant Ukrainian-born writer Nikolai Gogol’s 200th birth anniversary and the 300th anniversary of the Battle of Poltava that had a drastic impact on the course of European history. A lot has been done and is still being done in Ukraine in general and Poltava oblast in particular to worthily celebrate these dates. However, it would be sad if these landmark dates totally eclipsed yet another one.

August 12, 2009, will mark the 610th anniversary of the Battle of the Vorskla River, one of the biggest in the Middle Ages, which is fleetingly mentioned in most historical publications (especially under the Soviets). One finds a couple of lines about this event in the two-volume course of lectures Istoria Ukrainy (History of Ukraine, Kyiv, Lybid, 1991) that read: “Vytautas aimed to squeeze the Tatars from the Prychornomorie Region, but suffered a defeat in a battle with the Tatar army at the Vorskla River on Aug. 12, 1399.”

Academician B.A. Rybakov in his college history textbook Istoria SSSR s drevneishikh vremen do kontsa XVIII v. (History of the USSR since Ancient Times until the 18th Century, Moscow, 1983) has this to say on the subject: “In 1399 Edigu defeated Duke Vytautas of Lithuania in a battle at the river Vorskla” (p. 145).

Progressive Ukrainian historians, such as N. Polonska-Vasylenko, I. Krypiakevych, D. Doroshenko, etc., offer equally brief accounts of this event. Likewise, little attention is paid to it in the textbook Istoria Ukrainy (History of Ukraine, Kyiv, Alternatyva, 1997). Even Volodymyr Lytvyn’s 3-volume History of Ukraine (Kyiv, Alternatyva, 2003) has a single paragraph dedicated to the events of 1399. The Ukrainian history reference source Shliakhamy vikiv (Along the Roads of Centuries, compiled by M. Kotliar, S. Kulchytsky, Kyiv, 1993) does not mention this battle in the body of the text, even in the synchronized table. Another such source, edited by R.D. Liakh (Donetsk, 2004) reads: “The Ukrainian-Lithuanian army suffered a shattering defeat at the hands of Khan Temur’s 100,000-strong army.” What does Temur have to do with it?

In 1999 the 600th anniversary of the Battle of the Vorskla River passed practically unnoticed, save for some articles carried by local newspapers.

We know about the 300 hundred Spartans and the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC, Alexander Nevsky and his victory in the Battle of the Ice (a.k.a. the Battle of Lake Peipus), the Battle of Kulikovo, then the Battle of Poltava in 1709, and many other well-known battles. Why do we know so little about the Battle of the Vorskla River in 1399, considering that it was a battle between the allied forces led by Vytautas against the Golden Horde in the Poltava region? Why is our memory so defective? To quote a rhetorical question asked by a well-known writer and politician in one of his radio appearances, “How can we as a nation be this way?” Indeed, why has so little attention been paid to this period in our history? Why are there no systematic archaeological studies? Why don’t we know the exact site of this battle? Historians are split on this issue.

THE BATTLE’S HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

This battle took place 150 years after the onslaught of the Golden Horde and Batu Khan’s disastrous invasion of Kyivan Rus’, 19 days after the Battle of Kulikovo, and 11 years prior to the Battle of Grunwald. I might as well point out that in terms of the size the 1399 battle matched that of Kulikovo (some researchers believe that more men were involved in 1399), and that it was three times larger in scope than the 1410 Battle of Grunwald, according to the Polish historian Stefan M. Kuczy ski.

In other words, at least 100,000 men were on each side at the Vorskla River in 1399. By way of comparison during the Battle of Poltava, Peter I’s army numbered 40,000 men, some 8,000 Cossacks under Skoropadsky’s command, about 30,000 Kalmyk cavalry, while Charles XII’s army numbered some 28,000, among whom there were actually about 17,000 battle-worthy Swedish soldiers.

To have a better idea about the role and place of this battle in our history, I suggest that we go back several decades from this date. After the Horde’s invasion in 1238–40 and the subsequent ruination, Old Rus’ ceased to exist; its territory was under the aggressor’s control. For a long while most of Rus’ territories went into decay and the populace had to pay tribute to the Horde’s khans. After more than 100 years the southern part of Rus’ wrested itself out of the Horde’s yoke only to find itself under the rule of the Lithuanian dynasty.

The annexation of southwestern Rus’ territories turned out to be a complicated process, considering the existence of long and stable peaceful contacts rooted in common economic and political interests, marriages, and alliances between certain Rus’ princely homes, as well as the existing practice of converting the Lithuanian dynasties into the Eastern Orthodox faith. Of course, there were armed conflicts—something to be expected of the period of feudal wars between princes and the gradual overcoming of feudal division.

The Lithuanian Duchy’s advance into the southern territories of Rus’ may have been coordinated with the Golden Horde. If so, their annexation took place on contractual terms, thus setting up a condominium of sorts between the Horde and Lithuania, asserting their rule over these ducal lands.

Soviet historians mostly focused on the process of the evolution of Muscovy when referring to the 14th century and “forgot” to mention that Gediminas, and especially his successors to the throne of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, were acquiring the predominantly Rus’ nature. In fact, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania essentially pursued a program aimed at restoring Kyivan Rus’ original integrity. In fact, the grand duchy had embarked on a course aimed at uniting the lands of Rus’. This policy was implemented with marked insistence and consistency by Grand Duke Algirdas (1345–77).

Having annexed the territories of southwestern and eastern Rus’, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania turned into a major feudal polity with the predominantly Ruthenian populace. For a while it was larger than the Grand Principality of Volodymyr. The territories of Rus’, with their superior culture and laws, made a great impact on the duchy’s political and public life. Ruthenian was the official language used in the official documents and legislation rooted in the Ruskaia pravda (Rus’ Truth) code.

O. Yefimenko, a noted female historian in pre-Bolshevik Russia, wrote: “Algirdas was the one to make the Rus’ element predominant in the Lithuanian state… In this state its original, underpinning Lithuanian element was almost lost in the Rus’ folk element, even in terms of size and territory, let alone culture: more than nine-tenth of the territory was inhabited by Ruthenians.”

A DANGEROUS ENEMY

The Golden Horde got stronger under Khan Edigu, and in the 1390s it was increasingly active in counteracting the consolidation of southwestern and western Rus’ and tried to weaken the Duchy. Grand Duke Vytautas wanted to weaken the Golden Horde’s influence without forming an alliance with Muscovy, in order to eventually become the sole ruler of Eastern Europe.

In 1397 and 1398, he carried out successful military campaigns down the Don and Dnipro. His army captured several thousand Horde men and a large amount of cattle and also devastated a number of settlements, forcing the bulk of the Horde’s troops to retreat to the Crimea and the Kuban. Vytautas’ success was helped by the feud between the military leaders of the Horde, most significantly between Khan Tokhtamysh and Emir Edigu as the leading contestants.

In 1395 the troops of the formidable Central Asian ruler Timur (a.k.a. Tamerlane) dealt a devastating blow to those of Tokhtamysh in the Battle of the Terek River. Tokhtamysh fled to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Vytautas allowed him and his family to settle in Kyiv, because he wanted to use Tokhtamysh in the implementation of his political plans. Vytautas aimed to unite all of Rus’ lands under his reign, so he was seeking allies against the Muscovite prince and Timur’s proteges, the Horde’s khans Temur Qutlugh and Edigu. According to a chronicler, Vytautas and Tokhtamysh “agreed between themselves that Tokhtamysh would rule the Horde, Sarai [Berke], the Bulgars, Astrakhan, Azov, and the Yaik [Ural River] Horde, and that Vytautas would rule Moscow, the Great Principality of Novgorod, and Pskov,” i.e., getting control over all of Rus’. Vytautas refused to comply with Edigu’s demand to hand over to him his enemy Tokhtamysh and started getting his troops prepared for a new campaign against the Golden Horde.

In 1398 Tokhtamysh and Vytautas formed a military alliance against their domestic and foreign rivals. Tokhtamysh undertook to help Vytautas conquer Muscovy and the rest of Rus’ southeastern territories. Grand Duke Vytautas was also authorized by Khan Tokhtamysh to annex the Ukrainian and Belarusian lands. This was an especially important fact in the relationships between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Horde, yet Tokhtamysh’s actions should not be regarded as the abandonment of the Horde’s traditional tactic of fueling the fire of feud between the principalities of Rus’ while maintaining some kind of balance so as to keep the seized lands under control. Most likely, this was an ad hoc compromise reached between the ruler of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Rus’ and a claimant to the Horde’s throne. And so neither Tokhtamysh, nor the actual ruler of the Horde, Edigu, changed their policies with regard to the Russian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian lands.

Vytautas started on his crucial campaign against the Golden Horde in the summer of 1399 after prolonged preparations. Chroniclers agree that a huge army was amassed, including Lithuanian regiments, Tatar units under Tokhtamysh’s command, some 500 Crusaders, 400 men from Poland, and a unit of the ruler of Wallachia.

However, the bulk of this army consisted of the militia made up of officers and men from the Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Russian lands, commanded by Prince Borys of Kyiv, the princes of Volhynia, Prince Andrei Algirdaitis of Polotsk, his brother Prince Dmitry of Bryansk, Prince Gleb of Smolensk, etc. Chroniclers mention the presence of fifty Rus’ princes amongst the troops under Vytautas’ command, including Dmitry Donskoy’s Voivode Dmitry Bobrok-Volynsky and the brothers Andrei and Dmitry Algirdaitis (also known as Andrei of Polotsk and Demetrius I Starshy—Ed.).

Historians also point out the discrepancies in the aims of Vytautas and Dmitry Donskoy. Whereas the Muscovite prince confronted Mamai’s forces to prevent an invasion of Rus’, Vytautas attacked the Golden Horde to overthrow Timur and establish Tokhtamysh as its sole ruler. On the one hand, this event demonstrated a shift in the alignment of forces between the Horde and the lands of Rus’, marking a decline in the Horde’s control over Rus’, as well as a decline of its image on the Eastern European arena. On the other hand, the offensive operations for the sake of Tokhtamysh, or mostly for his benefit, could not match the inspirational patriotic objectives that spurred on the Muscovite troops. Losing the Battle of Kulikovo would have caused irreparable damage or probably the demise of the northeastern territories of Rus’. The troops under Vytautas’ command were heterogeneous, not united by a common goal, and not trained to act together. They faced the army of the Golden Horde that had not as yet lost anything in terms of combat potential and ability.

Meanwhile, large-scale preparations were also underway in the enemy’s camp. A huge Horde army was put together in over a year’s time, slowly but surely moving its units to the borders of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. This army also included men sent by all vassal princes of Eastern Rus’. At this juncture Edigu dispatched envoys to Vilnius to once again suggest that Vytautas surrender Tokhtamysh. Vytautas’ reply was resolute: “I shall not hand over Prince Tokhtamysh and I also want to meet Khan Temur Qutlugh in person.”

In the spring of 1399 a large Horde army deployed in the southern steppes of what is now Left-Bank Ukraine. Some estimates that are not even closely comprehensive put its size at 100,000 men.

That same spring Vytautas visited Kyiv, which was accepting regiments from various principalities. In early July Vytautas’ army left Kyiv and headed south, following the left bank of the Dnipro. After his military campaigns against the Horde in 1397 and 1398, Vytautas allowed several thousand Tatars to settle in his lands, including a special regiment under Tokhtamysh’s command. Rus’ and Lithuanian chronicles do not specify how many men Vytautas had under his command, yet considering the fact that Dmitry Donskoy could mobilize 100,000 men on a comparatively smaller territory, Vytautas, as the ruler of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, would have been able to put together a considerably larger army that would match the Horde’s forces in size.

In late July Vytautas’ army reached the lower reaches of the Vorskla River and stopped on its right bank. The Horde’s men would soon appear on the opposite bank.

“SUBMIT TO ME”

The Battle of the Vorskla River was preceded by negotiations between the warring parties. According to the Nikon Chronicle, Temur Qutlugh was scared by the strength of the army under Vytautas’ command and sent envoys who conveyed this message: “Why are you against me in arms? I haven’t taken any of your lands, towns, or villages.” To this Vytautas replied: “Our Lord God has put all these lands under my rule. Submit to me, too, and you will be my son and I will be your father; you shall pay me all duties every year.”

Considering that this dialog did take place, Temur Qutlugh must have been taken aback by Vytautas’ message: no one had ever used such language and demonstrated such confidence in one’s own strength against a single khan of the Horde. As it was, Temur Qutlugh protracted the talks, waiting for Edigu to step in.

Meanwhile, Vytautas voiced demands that were even more insulting to the Horde. He wanted every coin minted by the Horde to have a clear-cut brand of the Lithuanian Duke. Temur Qutlugh did not have the guts to challenge Vytautas in the field, so he pretended to meet all of Vytautas’ requirements. But then Edigu came, bringing with him several thousand men of the Horde. He talked Temur Qutlugh into changing his attitude and then took over command of the Golden Horde troops.

According to the Nikon Chronicle, he resolutely rejected Vytautas’ insulting demands and came up with his ones that were equally humiliating: “You took our khan as your son; this was your right because you are old and he is young, but I am your senior, so you should be my son, pay all tributes every summer, and have my brand on every Lithuanian coin.”

This was, of course, a challenge that could only be met with bloodshed. What followed was the major medieval Battle of the Vorskla River that took place on Aug. 12, 1399, in the course of which Vytautas and his allies suffered a shattering defeat.

Vytautas’ regiments were the first to attack Edigu’s troops. Vytautas employed artillery, harquebuses, and crossbows. His regiments’ first attack could be regarded as successful. Edigu’s cavalry were forced to retreat. This success, however, proved illusory. The Horde, true to its tactic, lured the enemy into pursuing its troops in a feigned retreat. Chroniclers used eyewitness accounts to describe Vytautas’s initial advance as successful, but it was most likely Edigu’s deceptive retreat because very soon Temur Qutlugh’s cavalry units appeared, having encircled Vytautas’s troops on the flanks and in the rear.

What followed was a shattering defeat of the Lithuanian army. Tokhtamysh was the first to flee the battlefield and in the course of his retreat did a lot of damage to the Lithuanian Duchy and the populace. Vytautas’s men “fought the heathens with valor,” a chronicler wrote, but the Grand Duke’s army was destroyed: “Then the Tatars seized the carts with forged wheels, steel helmets, cannons, harquebuses, crossbows, and a great many other valuable things, including gold and silver vessels.” Vytautas and Tokhtamysh managed to escape with a handful of men, while thousands of the Lithuanian duke’s officers and men died on the banks of the Vorskla River and were eventually buried in huge common and individual graves. Among the victims of the Vorskla Battle were the heroes of the Battle of Kulikovo, Andrei of Polotsk and Demetrius I Starshy and Dmitry Donskoy’s Voivode Dmitry Bobrok-Volynsky. Chroniclers are divided on the exact figure, referring to 20-50 Lithuanian and Rus’ princes. The Nikon Chronicle mentions 74 (most likely including Polish, Wallachian, and other princes).

CONSEQUENCES

While pursuing what was left of Vytautas’s army, the Horde plundered Ukraine. Its units reached as far as southern Volhynia. The Ukrainian populace rose in arms to protect their land, so the enemy never conquered Kamianets-Podilsky, Kremenets, Lutsk, and a number of other cities. The bulk of the Horde troops, commanded by the heavily wounded Temur Qutlugh, emerged in front of Kyiv. They seized the city’s lower district, Podil, and razed it to the ground. However, the residents of Kyiv and neighboring villages were inside the Kyiv fortress and Monastery of the Caves and effectively beat off the Tatar attacks.

Failing to seize Kyiv, the enemy retreated after receiving “3,000 gold coins” from its residents. A chronicler wrote: “And then [the Tatar] ruler Temur Qutlugh went away from Kyiv, after collecting 3,000 Lithuanian silver rubles worth of ransom, and proceeded to conquer Lithuanian lands, reaching as far as Velikie Luki (now in Russia—Ed.).”

Until late fall the Horde kept plundering towns and villages in Podniprovia, Podillia, Bratslavshchyna, and Volhynia. After reaching as far as Lutsk, the Horde’s troops turned in the direction of Prychornomorie and Caspian steppe.

S.M. Soloviev, a noted Russian historian, wrote in his Istoria gosudarstva Rossiiskogo (History of the Russian State) that he was pleased by the defeat of Vytautas’s army by the Golden Horde, yet for the populace of Left-Bank Ukraine it was a disaster at the time, matching the one sustained when Kyivan Rus’ was invaded by Batu Khan.

The scope of the Battle of the Vorskla River, in which so many good men of Lithuania and Rus’ perished, reminds one of the Battle of the Kalka River in 1223, when so many warriors of Rus’ died. This analogy appears relevant, in that in both cases the Tatars did not directly threaten southern Rus’. During the Kalka Battle, the Rus’ princes fought on the Kipchak Khan Koten’s side, whereas during the Battle of the Vorskla River the troops under the command of Vytautas defended the Golden Horde’s dissident Khan Tokhtamysh.

Losing the Battle of the Vorskla River was more than a military defeat for Vytautas. Ludwik Kolankowski, a noted Polish historian, wrote that “the dreams of Jogaila and Vytautas about getting all of Rus’, all Eastern Europe united within the Lithuanian state were drowned in rivers of blood.”

BATTLEFIELD SITE

Centuries after the 1399 Vorskla Battle historians are still divided as to where exactly this battle took place. Historians from what would become Poltava oblast under the Soviets, among them L.V. Padalka, believe that this battle took place down the Vorskla River, in the vicinity of the current villages of Kyshenky and Orlyk in Kobeliaky raion, also near what was known as Kytaihorod, beyond the Vorskla River, on the road to Tsarychanka, close to the Krasna Hora Ravine, where Vytautas’ army was allegedly destroyed.

The contemporary Poltava historian V.N. Zhuk, however, believes that it was the route followed by Tokhtamysh’s troops after sustaining a shattering defeat by his fellow Tatars, near his encampment. Zhuk further suggests that these remote historical events are reflected in the place name of Takhtaulove, a village located in what is now Poltava raion, and that it actually means “the village of Tokhtamysh.”

This version, however, raises serious doubts: such complex place names could have hardly existed in the 14th–15th centuries as they started being used in the 20th century, under the Soviets (e.g., kolkhoz, raikom, Komsomol, Dniprohes, etc.). Our forefathers had no such practice. It is further assumed that Pobyvanka, a village located near the ravine, owes its name to the site of the 1399 Vorskla Battle. The noted Swedish historian Gustaf Adlerfelt wrote that the 1709 Battle of Poltava took place precisely where Vytautas’ army had been defeated. The ravine and the village of Pobyvanka are right beside the site of the Battle of Poltava.

Zhuk believes that the first round of the Vorskla Battle took place right there, not far from the stream crossing once used by the Pechenegs, Polovtsians, and later by Crimean Tatars, and Peter I’s troops in 1709. After Vytautas sustained the devastating blow, his ally Tokhtamysh fled. A part of Vytautas’s army could retreat and depend on the friendly fortresses’ supporting fire up the Vorskla River. In fact, most of Vytautas’ remaining forces deployed in Velyki Budyshchi, Opishnia, and Bilsk. The Bilsk fortress alone could accommodate up to 50,000 cavalrymen behind its high ramparts.

Zhuk writes: “The great battle between the troops of Vytautas and the hordes of Temur Qutlugh and Edigu took place on a field near the ancient fortified city of Opishnia, beyond the Vorskla River and what was then the natural boundary line between [the Grand Duchy of] Lithuania and [Kyivan] Rus’.”

Other place names reminiscent of this tragic event are Lykhachivka, a village in Kotelva raion, and the nearby Vitova mohyla burial mound. The latter could be the simplified vernacular equivalent of the Burial Mound of Vytautas. Zhuk surmises that this burial mound contains the remains of a great many officers and men under Vytautas’ command and his allies, while the remainder of the Lithuanian army was destroyed by the walls and inside the Bilsk fortress.

Indeed, there are numerous Scythian burial mounds in the ravines of Skorobir, Osniahy, Saranchove Pole, in the vicinity of Bilsk’s ancient settlement. Dr. B.A. Shramko, Ph.D. in Archaeology, believes that this is a Scythian settlement, namely the legendary city of Gelonus (Helonus), where huge burial mounds existed until the end of the 18th century and where visitors found human bones, skulls, and what was left of ancient weapons.

Regrettably, the saltpeter business that had thrived in what is now Poltava oblast for three centuries used primarily the earth that was in mounds, ramparts, and burial sites, thus destroying most of the historic sites. Even so, before the beginning of the 20th century, there was a large number of ancient graves, occupying an area of more than 50 hectares in the vicinity of the Skorobir Ravine, near the village of Holubove. This prompted the historian L.V. Padalko to assume that here was the place where the troops of Vytautas had suffered their final defeat.

Zhuk’s assumption concerning the site of the 1399 Vorskla Battle is hard to prove or refute because, regrettably, there have been no targeted archaeological studies. In other words, we have no reliable data to say yes or no. Regarding the Vitova Grave, there are sources that say that this burial mound dates back to 6-5 century BC. It is 4.3 meters in height, 60 meters in diameter, and rectangular. It initially had a 2.8–4.9-meter timber roofing and ranks with the richest burial sites that contain the remains of nobility dating back to the Scythian tilling forest-steppe period in the area.

This burial mound was studied by I.A. Zaretrsky in 1888, and no finds relating to the 1399 battle were produced.

The assumption that the great battle, or its second round, between the forces of Vytautas and the Horde took place near Opishnia beyond the Vorskla River is questionable, primarily in terms of geography. The thing is that the ravine and the village of Pobyvanka (allegedly the site of the first round of the battle) are on the right bank of the Vorskla. In other words, during the battle at Opishnia both adversaries would have had to cross the river to reach its left bank and cover some 40 kilometers. Something easier said than done, especially for Vytautas and his army while having to retreat with lots of carts, horses, and auxiliary personnel.

Zhuk deserves credit for attracting public attention to this historic event, although her research betrays certain minor slips. Poltava’s journalist V.I. Posukhov voiced a reasonable proposal: “On August 12, marking the 600th anniversary of this battle, people should gather at the Vitova Grave to share knowledge, viewpoints, and creative achievements and, according to ancient rites, have a funeral feast, paying homage to all those who were killed in action.”

Poltava residents are interested in the fact that their territory has been twice the epicenter of events that produced a noticeable impact on European history; that this land has seenf battles whose outcome would influence the combatant countries and peoples. They say that there must be no conditional mood in historical analysis, but the thought is still stirring imagination: our victory in at least one of these battles would have changed the European geopolitical map.

These historical events have made Poltava, the Vorskla River, and a number of towns and villages (such as Pobyvanka, Velyki Budyshcha, Zinkiv, Hadiach, Opishnia, Stari Sanzhary, and Perevolochna) known far beyond Ukraine.

The colossal Battle of the Vorskla River in 1399 marked an event that should be further studied by historians in order to establish the historical truth and ascertain the location of the battlefield, so we can pay homage to our fearless forefathers.

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