Everyone is well aware of the victory won by the united squads of Prince Dmitry Donskoy on the Kulikovo field in 1380. However, not everyone knows that it was preceded by another battle, which went down in history as the battle on the Vozha River, and covered Russian weapons with no less glory. It took place two years earlier, and was the first major defeat of the Golden Horde, dispelling the myth of its invincibility.
Internal problems of the Golden Horde
By this time, the once united Horde, gathered into a powerful fist by its founder Genghis Khan, was going through a process of internal strife and civil strife. After the assassination of Khan Berdibek in 1358, several dozen applicants fought for the right to have supreme power.
Most close to achieving the goal was Mamai - the son-in-law of the murdered ruler, but, not being a Genghisid - a direct descendant of Genghis Khan, he did not have the right to become the ruler of the Horde, and skillfully promoted his protege Abdullah to the highest position, whose pedigree met all the requirements.
Victory over Bulgars
In the spring of 1376, Moscow Prince Dmitry Ivanovich, usingweakening the Golden Horde, caused by the turmoil mentioned above, sent his squad led by the governor D. M. Bobrik-Volynsky to the middle Volga. There, his army, having defeated the Bulgars, who were proteges of Mamai, took a significant ransom from them, amounting to 5 thousand rubles, and, in addition, replaced the local customs officers with the people of the prince.
The news of this infuriated Mamai. On his orders, one of the Tatar commanders named Arab Shah ruined the Novosilsk principality, located in the upper reaches of the Oka and Don, and then, having defeated the Russian squads on the Pyan River, continued on his way to Ryazan and Nizhny Novgorod.
A ridiculous defeat
This defeat of the Russian troops is rarely mentioned in popular historical literature. The reason for this is not only the tragedy of the event that cost the lives of several thousand warriors, but mainly the absurdity of which it was a consequence. According to the chroniclers, this was the case.
Due to the fact that the news of the approach of the enemy was received long before his appearance, in Nizhny Novgorod it was possible to form and send to meet him a large well-armed army, under the command of the Moscow prince Dmitry Ivanovich himself. However, the days passed, and the enemy did not appear. Not wanting to waste time, the prince returned to Moscow, and entrusted the command to the young prince Ivan, the son of the ruler of Nizhny Novgorod.
Prince Ivan led the army entrusted to him to the banks of the Pyana River, and began to wait for the enemy, about whomstill nothing was heard. Boredom and idleness reigned in the camp, which, as you know, is the mother of all vices. Everyone began to pass the time in their own way.
Someone went to hunt in the nearby forests, someone catches songbirds, and the vast majority of warriors indulged in the most unrestrained drunkenness. It was this, as the ancient author shamefully admits, that caused the bloody battle that the Tatars suddenly appeared on the river bank.
Another campaign of the Horde
Mamai, encouraged by such a successful start of hostilities, two years later moved an army of many thousands under the command of an experienced commander Begich against the Moscow prince himself. The battle on the Vozha River in 1378 became for him a very sad result of this campaign. Wanting to raise his prestige, he almost lost it.
The Vozha River, which is the right tributary of the Oka, flows in the Ryazan region, and has a very small length, barely more than a hundred kilometers. It is known that in the area where the main forces of the Tatars approached it in early August, there was only one ford that allowed them to cross to the opposite bank, but, approaching it, the Horde stumbled upon a dense defensive barrier, set up in advance by the Russian troops.
The military trick of Prince Dmitry
According to the chroniclers, the battle on the Vozha River had a favorable outcome for the Russians, largely due to the skillful tactical actions taken by Prince Dmitry Ivanovich, who personally took overcommand. Taking advantage of the fact that Begich did not dare to take active steps to seize the crossing for several days, he withdrew his troops to a considerable distance, as if giving the coast to the enemy. At the same time, the prince placed his own forces in the form of an arc with flanks protruding forward.
This was a trick the Tatars fell for. Having crossed the river, and moving forward, they found themselves surrounded on three sides. Historians rightly note the fact that the battle on the Vozha River in 1378 demonstrated the ability of Prince Dmitry to use the surrounding landscape to his advantage. He then brilliantly demonstrated the same quality at the Kulikovo field.
The defeat of the Tatar army
The Vozha River (Ryazan region) in the place where the battle took place, flowed between hilly banks, cut at the same time by deep ravines. Dmitry Ivanovich, having withdrawn the squad from the river, lured the enemy just to such a site where his main striking force - the cavalry - could not rush forward with a powerful onslaught. As a result, her attack was repulsed, which allowed the Russians to launch a counteroffensive.
The Horde fled, and many of them died, since the Vozha River, which was behind them, in this case, was a natural obstacle to retreat. In the ensuing ruthless felling of the fleeing enemy, almost the entire command of the Horde forces, including Begich himself, died ingloriously.
The complete destruction of all the Tatars was prevented only by the falling night. When, with the onset of dawn, the Vozha River emerged from the morning fog, not a single Horde was visible either on its right or on its left bank. Everyone who was lucky enough to stay alive fled under the cover of darkness. The victors' loot was only their hastily abandoned convoy.
Results of the battle
The defeat of the Horde troops on the Vozha River had a number of important historical consequences. The main one was that this first major victory of the troops of North-Western Russia over the Horde helped raise the morale of the people. She showed that the enemy, who has ruled with impunity in the Russian lands for almost a century and a half, can be beaten, and eventually expelled from the borders of the Motherland. In this sense, the Vozha River was the starting point from which the process began, the result of which was the overthrow of the Tatar-Mongol yoke.
Besides, the events described above became in many ways fatal for the main enemy of Russia - Khan Mamai. After the defeat of the troops sent by him in 1378, the khan began to quickly lose authority in the Horde, giving way to a younger and stronger competitor, Takhtamysh. Wanting to rectify the situation and preserve the power that was slipping out of his hands, Mamai undertook a successful campaign against the Ryazan principality the following year, but already in 1380 he was finally defeated by Dmitry Donskoy in the famous battle on the Kulikovo field.
