Moscow-Kazan Wars
The Moscow-Kazan Wars were a series of military clashes between the Kazan Khanate and the Moscow Empire in the 15th and 16th centuries until the capital Kazan was finally captured by the forces of Ivan the Terrible in 1552 .
Wars of Vasily II
In 1438 , a year after the establishment of the Kazan Khanate, the first Khan of Kazan, Olug Moxammat , launched a campaign against Moscow with a large army. Vasily II fled the capital across the Volga , but the Tatars did not continue their venture and turned back after they had sacked the city of Kolomna and its surroundings.
Another conflict arose in 1445. It turned out to be disastrous for Moscow and resulted in a number of changes in Russian foreign policy. Hostilities broke out when Khan Maxmut invaded Russia and captured the strategically important fortress of Nizhny Novgorod . Vasily II gathered an army and defeated the Tatars near Murom and Gorokhovets . Believing that the war was over, he disbanded his army and triumphantly returned to Moscow, where he learned that the Tatars were again besieging Nizhny Novgorod.
A new army was raised and sent to Suzdal , where it allied itself with the troops that Nizhny Novgorod had left to the enemy after the fortress was set on fire. On June 6, 1445, the Russians and the Tatars met at the Battle of Suzdal near the Redeemer Euthymios Monastery . The battle was a great success for the Tatars who captured Vasily II. It took fourteen months and an enormous ransom to free the monarch from captivity.
Wars of Ivan III.
Qasim War (1467-1469)
The fragile peace was broken in 1467 when Grand Duke Ivan the Great decided to support his ally Khan Qasim in his claims to the Tatar throne and to declare war on the ruling Khan Ibrahim . Ivan's army sailed down the Volga with the aim of taking Kazan. However, autumn rains and the impassability hampered the progress of the Russian armed forces. When a frosty winter set in, the Russian generals decided instead to take the Vyatka region, from which robbers repeatedly stalked Moscow's trade routes. The campaign fizzled out due to disagreement among the Russian voivodes , and Udmurtia was devastated instead .
In the following year the Russians continued their Vyatka campaign. They sailed down the Vyatka River and the Kama, pillaging Tatar merchant ships along the way. In response, after the Russians had withdrawn, Ibrahim counterattacked, overran Vyatka and again forced the local residents into subjection.
In 1469 the Russians gathered a much stronger army and sailed along the Oka and Volga via Nizhny Novgorod to Kazan. They devastated the surroundings of Kazan, but refrained from a siege of the city, as the widow of the now deceased Qasim Ivan III. asked to start negotiations with her son Ibrahim. Meanwhile, Russian troops from Yaroslavl and Veliky Ustyug tried in vain to regain the Vyatka region for Moscow. After the negotiations failed, the Russians and the Tatars clashed in two bloody battles, which ended in a draw.
In the autumn of the same year, Ivan III started. a third invasion of the khanate. The Russian voivode , Prince Daniil Cholmski, besieged Kazan and cut off the water supply, which Ibrahim forced to surrender. A peace treaty favorable to Moscow was signed and all Russian prisoners for the past 40 years have been released from Tatar captivity.
Siege of Kazan (1487)
The Vyatka region remained a bone of contention between Kazan and Moscow for the following decades. Shortly before his death in 1478, Ibrahim devastated the region. As revenge, Ivan III sent. Troops to pillage the area around Kazan. Ibrahim's successor was Ilham , while his brother Moxammat Amin fled to Moscow. Ivan III allowed him to settle in kashira and declared his support for claims to the Tatar throne.
In 1487 Iwan intervened in Kazan's domestic politics to replace Ilham with Moxammat Amin. Kholmsky sailed with an army from Nizhny Novgorod to Kazan and besieged it on May 18. On June 9th, the city fell to the Russians. Ilham was sent in chains to Moscow and later exiled to Vologda , while Moxammat Amin was proclaimed the new Khan. In relation to the victorious campaign, Ivan III declared himself. to "Lord of Volga Bulgaria ".
Battles of Arsk (1506)
The last war of the reign of Ivan III. was provoked by Ilham's widow, who married Moxammat Amin and convinced him to declare independence from Moscow, which happened in 1505. The anti-Russian rebellion broke out on St. John's Day when the Tatars massacred all of the Russian merchants and envoys who were present at the annual Kazan fair. A huge army, consisting of Kazan Tatars and Nogai Tatars , moved towards Nizhny Novgorod and besieged the city. However, the city was successfully defended by Lithuanian-Ruthenian archers - prisoners of war who had previously been captured by the Russians in the Battle of the Wedroscha . These archers managed to kill the Khan's brother and upset the Tatar forces. Then the Horde retreated.
Ivan's death delayed further fighting until May 1506, when Prince Fyodor Belsky led the Russian army against Kazan. After the Tatar cavalry attacked his flank on May 22nd, many Russians fled and, according to the chronicle, drowned in Lake Poganoye . Prince Vasili Cholmski, sent to relieve Belski, was able to defeat the Tatars near Arsk on June 22nd. Moxammet withdrew with his troops. However, as the Russians celebrated their victory, he unexpectedly reappeared and inflicted a devastating defeat on them. Although this victory of the Tatars was one of the greatest victories of the last decades, Moxammet asked for peace for unclear reasons and paid Ivan's successor, Vasily III. a war indemnity.
Wars of Vasily III.
A new massacre of Russian merchants and envoys occurred in Kazan in 1521. Vasily III. was so appalled that he subsequently forbade his subordinates from attending the Kazan Fair and instead founded the famous Makaryev Fair in Nizhny Novgorod, which subsequently undermined the economic prosperity of Kazan and contributed to its decline.
Three years later, Prince Ivan Belski led a 150,000-strong Russian army (this number in the Russian army is doubtful, however) against the Tatar capital. The campaign was described in detail by the foreign witness Siegmund von Herberstein . Belski's army spent 20 days on an island off Kazan in anticipation of Russian cavalry. Then news reached the army that the cavalry had been defeated en route and the supply routes on the way had been captured by the Tatars. Although the army was starving, Belski ordered the siege of the city and Tatar ambassadors soon arrived asking for peace. Belski accepted their proposals and returned to Moscow.
In 1530, Belski reappeared before the walls of Kazan. The Khan had in the meantime fortified the capital and surrounded it with a new wall. Nevertheless, the Russians managed to set the city on fire and kill many residents. The Tatar Khan Safa Giray withdrew to Arsk, where the Tatars surrendered and agreed to the future appointment of the Khan from Moscow.
Wars of Ivan IV
Minor border skirmishes continued when Ivan the Terrible was a minor, but both sides avoided an open confrontation between their troops. In 1536 the Russians and Tatars were on the brink of a new war and met near Lyskowo , but a battle was prevented at the last minute. In the following years the khan of the Crimean khanate forged an offensive alliance against Moscow with his relative Safa Giray. When Safa Giray then invaded Moscow in December 1540, the Russians used the Qasim Tatars against him. After his advance was stopped near Murom, Safa Giray was forced to retreat to his own territory.
This withdrawal undermined Safa Giray's authority in Kazan. A pro-Russian party, led by Shahgali , gained enough general support to usurp the throne several times. In 1545 Ivan IV went on an expedition to the Volga, mainly to flex his muscles and show his support for the pro-Russian parties. In the following years, however, there was no decisive turn in Kazan.
In 1551 detailed plans were drawn up in Moscow for the final capture of Kazan. Ivan the Terrible, who had meanwhile proclaimed himself tsar , sent ambassadors to the Nogaier horde to ensure their neutrality. The Udmurts were subjugated and won as allies. The wooden fort of Svyashsk was transported down the Volga to Kazan and erected in front of Kazan. It served as the Russian base for the decisive attack on Kazan in 1552.
Capture of Kazan in 1552
On June 16, 1552 Ivan the Terrible led a large Russian force from Moscow via Kolomna to Tula , where the Crimean Tatars of Khan Devlet I. Giray were defeated after their unsuccessful attempts to take the Tula Kremlin . After that, the army moved east towards Kazan, the siege of which began on August 30th. Under the leadership of the voivode Alexander Gorbaty-Shuiski , the Russians used battering rams , mobile towers, mines and 150 cannons. The city's water supply was blocked and the walls shot down before a final storm began on October 2nd. The city was captured, its fortifications razed to the ground and a large part of the population massacred.
The fall of Kazan was of central importance for the subsequent annexation of the entire area of the central Volga and opened the way for the Russians to Siberia . The Bashkirs accepted Ivan IV supremacy two years later. As a result of the Kazan campaign, the Moscow Empire turned into a multi-ethnic and multi-denominational state. The Tsar celebrated his victory over Kazan by he built several cathedrals with oriental features, including the famous St. Basil's Cathedral on the Red Square in Moscow. The siege of Kazan the theme of the longest epic poem in Russian literature, namely the Rossiade of Mikhail Cheraskow , written in the years 1771 to 1779. A linguistic vestige of the conquest of Kazan is in Russian still widespread expression Kazan orphan ( сирота казанская ) left over from the massacre of the Kazan people.
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- Трофимов В. Поход на Казань, ее осада и взятие в 1552 г. Kazan, 1890.
- Коротов И.А. Иван Грозный. Военная деятельность. Moscow, 1952.
- Казанская история. Moscow-Leningrad, 1954.