Why Tamerlane turned back in 1395. History of Russia from Rurik to Putin

Tamerlane (1336-1405) was a Turko-Mongol conqueror whose victories, characterized by acts of inhuman cruelty, made him master of much of Western Asia.

Tamerlane or Timur (Timur-Lang, "Timur the Lame") belonged to the Turkified Mongol clan Barlas, whose representatives, as the Mongol armies advanced westward, settled in the Kashka Valley, near Samarkand. Tamerlane was born near Shakhrisabz on April 9, 1336. This place is located on the territory of modern Uzbekistan between the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers, and at the time of his birth these lands belonged to Chagatai Khan, named after the founder of his clan, the second son of Genghis Khan.

The European version of the name Timur - “Tamerlane” or “Tamberlane” goes back to the Turkic nickname Timur-i-Lenga, which means “Timur the Lame”. Evidence of Timur's lameness was found in 1941 when his grave was opened by a team of Soviet archaeologists led by Mikhail Gerasimov. Traces of two wounds were found on the femur of Timur’s left leg. The reasons for Timur's lameness are interpreted differently in different sources. According to some sources, he began to limp as a child, when he once fell from a horse, and the nickname Timur the Lame Stuck to him thanks to his peers. Other authors claim that Tamerlane's lameness was the result of a battle wound he received in 1362. Historians also disagree on which leg Timur was limping on. However, most historians claim that the conqueror’s sore leg was the left one, which, however, was quite convincingly confirmed by Soviet archaeologists.

In 1346 – 1347 Kazan Khan Chagatai was defeated by the Emir of Kazgan and was killed, as a result of which Central Asia ceased to be part of his khanate. After the death of Kazgan (1358), a period of anarchy followed, and the troops of Tughlaq Timur, ruler of the territories beyond the Syr Darya known as Moghulistan, invaded Transoxiana, first in 1360 and then in 1361 in an attempt to seize power.

Timur declared himself a vassal of Tughlaq Timur and became the ruler of the territory from Shakhrisabz to Karshi. He soon, however, rebelled against the rulers of Moghulistan and formed an alliance with Hussein, the grandson of Kazgan. Together in 1363 they defeated the army of Ilyas-Khoja, the son of Tughlak-Timur. However, around 1370, the allies fell out and Timur, having captured his comrade-in-arms, announced his intention to revive the Mongol Empire. Tamerlane became the sole master of Central Asia, settling in Samarkand and making this city the capital of the new state and his main residence.

Map of Chagatai Khanate

Expansion of the Empire

Tamerlane's first campaigns were directed against Khiva and Mogulistan. And after 1381 he turned his attention to the west, launching expeditions to Iran, Iraq, Asia Minor and Syria.

The rulers of the conquered principalities were unable to effectively resist Timur's well-organized army. Eastern Persia and Khorasan were completely conquered in 1382 - 1385; Fars, Iraq, Armenia and Azerbaijan fell between 1386 and 1394; Georgia and Mesopotamia came under the control of Tamerlane in 1394.

While engaged in the conquest of Asia, Timur did not forget about the fight against the Golden Horde and personally against Khan Tokhtamysh. In 1391, pursuing Tokhtamysh, Timur reached southern Rus', where he defeated the Horde khan. Tokhtamysh's attempt to rectify the situation in 1395 and his invasion of the Caucasus were unsuccessful, and he was finally defeated on the Kura River.

Timur, who had already ravaged Astrakhan and Sarai, was distracted from planning a campaign against Moscow by the powerful Persian uprising, which was subsequently suppressed with the cruelty characteristic of Tamerlane. Throughout Persia, entire cities were destroyed, residents were killed, and their skulls were walled up in the walls of city towers.

Timur defeats the Mamluk Sultan of Egypt Sultan Nasir Adin Faraj

Tamerlane's seven-year campaign

In 1399, Tamerlane invaded India. As a result of the brutal sack of Delhi, 90 elephants were loaded, carrying a variety of cargo - from stones for the construction of a mosque in Samarkand to jewelry. Tamerlane's famous Seven Years' Campaign (1399-1403) began with his campaign in India, during which the conqueror got involved in a confrontation with the two most powerful rulers of Western Asia - the Sultan of Turkey and the Sultan of Egypt.

Syria, then part of Egypt, was completely captured by the spring of 1401. Tamerlane's further path lay to Baghdad, defended by the troops of Sultan Ahmad, who offered stubborn resistance to the conquerors. Baghdad was captured in a successful assault in June 1401. The massacre carried out by Tamerlane in the captured city was terrible. The heads of the murdered townspeople were stacked in 120 towers. Baghdad was completely sacked.

Tamerlane spent the winter of 1401–1402 in Georgia. And already in the spring of 1402 he began an offensive in Anatolia. In the battle of Ankara on July 20, 1402, Tamerlane defeated the army of his main enemy, the Turkish Sultan Bayazid (Bayazet), capturing him himself.

The inhuman imprisonment of Bayazet in an iron cage intended for wild animals has gone down in history forever. However, some researchers argue that the story of the cell is nothing more than the result of a misinterpretation of the historian Arabshah’s record, which, however, does not in any way detract from Tamerlane’s obvious inhuman cruelty towards his defeated opponents.

Timur ended his Seven Years' Campaign by reaching Samarkand in August 1404. However, by the end of the same year, he started an even more ambitious undertaking - a campaign in China, which had gained independence from the Mongols only 30 years earlier. However, his plans to conquer China were not destined to come true - while in Otrar, on the eastern bank of the Syr Darya River (modern South Kazakhstan), Tamerlane became seriously ill and died on February 18, 1405.

Vasily Vasilyevich Vereshchagin. Doors of Timur (Tamerlane). 1872

Tamerlane's legacy

Thanks to his truly remarkable military skill and incredible force of personality, bordering on demonism, Tamerlane was able to create an empire stretching from Russia to India and from the Mediterranean to Mongolia.

Unlike the conquests of Genghis Khan, the conquests of Tamerlane were not aimed at opening new markets or revitalizing trade routes. The goal of all the campaigns of the Iron Lame was the total plunder of the vanquished.

Despite the colossal size of the Timurid empire, it was not destined to last long, because Tamerlane did not bother to create a clear structure of government in the conquered territories; he only destroyed the previously existing order, offering nothing in return.

Although Tamerlane strived to be a good Muslim, he clearly felt no remorse for destroying Muslim cities by massacring their inhabitants. Damascus, Khiva, Baghdad - these ancient centers of Islam forever remembered the cruelty of Timur. The conqueror's ruthless attitude towards the ancient Muslim centers was probably due to his desire to make his own capital, Samarkand, the main city of Islam.

According to a number of modern sources, about 19 million people died at the hands of Tamerlane’s soldiers. Although the number of victims of the conquests of Lame Timur is probably exaggerated, they clearly number in the millions.

In post-Soviet Uzbekistan, Tamerlane was made a national hero. However, residents of such Uzbek cities as Khiva have a very ambivalent attitude towards this undoubtedly great personality - their genetic memory stores memories of his atrocities.

After the devastating campaigns of the Golden Horde khans, the Russian lands were drained of blood. They would not have withstood the impending invasion of Tamerlane. However, it never took place. Let's try to imagine what the results of the Iron Lame's campaign against Rus' could have been.

Tamerlane (Timur in Arabic) was born for conquest. Let's take a look at his banner, inside of which there were three ovals. They say they symbolized the parts of the world that submitted to the conqueror - Europe, Asia and Africa. Of course, it’s said loudly (he never made it to Africa), although Tamerlane’s ambitions and self-confidence cannot be denied.

He defeated the strong armies of the Turkish Sultan Bayazid and the Horde Khan Tokhtamysh, fought in the territories of China, Persia, India and Asia Minor, expanding the borders of his empire from the Caspian to the Arabian Sea. The court chronicler of Tamerlane, Giyassaddin Ali, even claimed that his master reached the lands of the Franks.

Other subjects of Tamerlane flattered him even more, assuring future readers of the chronicles that in his campaign to the north their ruler had reached “the limits of the sixth climate.” According to the ideas of Islamic scientists, the world was divided into seven climates: the first was the equator, the seventh was the pole. The sixth, according to this logic, should have corresponded to the Arctic.

The real picture of Tamerlane's conquests was apparently not so large-scale. However, historians suggest that in the conditions of the war with Tokhtamysh, the Central Asian commander could well have conducted military operations on the lands of the ancient Russian principalities. Intending to destroy the Golden Horde, Tamerlane probably expected to inflict damage on its tributary, Rus'.

To Rus'

Mamai, defeated by Dmitry Donskoy, turned out to be not the last, nor the most terrible enemy of Rus'. In 1382, Moscow was burned by another Horde khan, Tokhtamysh, who again forced the Moscow prince to pay tribute. However, here the Iron Lame entered the political arena, whose plans did not include the revival of the power of the Golden Horde.

In 1388, Tamerlane dealt with the rebellious Khorezm city of Urgench, and two years later he sent his army towards Tokhtamysh. The confrontation between the rulers of the two empires lasted for five years, which was framed by the battles of 1390 and 1395, and in both of them Tamerlane crushed Tokhtamysh.

During the war with the Golden Horde, Tamerlane moved up the Volga and, according to historians, reached present-day Saratov. All along the way, the Horde lands were subjected to devastation and ruin. But did the Central Asian warrior have any intention of moving further into the heart of Russian lands?

Arab chronicles say that Tamerlane went further and invaded the Moscow principality. And he not only invaded, but also plundered Moscow. “There were whole packs of beavers, a countless number of black sables, so many ermines that you couldn’t count them,” the chronicler describes the spoils. The author was especially struck by Russian women, whom he compared to roses.

After the Moscow pogrom, according to an Arab source, the conqueror turned south, plundering cities along the way and destroying non-believers. The final destination of this campaign was the capital of the Horde, Sarai, the chronicler assures.

Historians cast great doubt on the words of the Arab writer, since there are no other sources confirming Tamerlane’s capture of Moscow. The commander really intended to reach the Russian capital, but he never got there, historians are sure.

God's will

Russian chroniclers have their own point of view on these events. They report that the formidable conqueror was stopped by the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God, which was brought to Moscow with a religious procession before the planned campaign of a huge Turkic army. The chronicle says that Tamerlane had a dream in which the Mother of God called on him to leave the Russian land. According to another version, Tamerlane went to Vladimir, but such a vision forced him to turn back.

There is also an Arab legend that says that the Islamic preacher Khizr appeared to Tamerlane and ordered him not to fight, but only to demonstrate his strength. According to legend, Tamerlane threw a two-year-old stallion into the city wall, and when the wall collapsed, the commander shouted so “that the soldiers lost their tongues from fear and a terrible pallor covered their entire faces.”

However, perhaps Arab sources talk about the siege of another Russian city - Yelets, which at that time was the outskirts of the Ryazan lands. Tamerlane's army of thousands easily captured the weakly defended fortress, after which it remained standing in place under the cold autumn rains. Only after two weeks had passed, Tamerlane decided to return the army to Samarkand.

Not for the sake of war

Historians still cannot find an unambiguous explanation for Tamerlane’s act, but they are almost sure that if he decided to go to Rus', the consequences for our state could be catastrophic. Considering the scope and power of Tamerlane’s empire, which was little inferior to the Golden Horde in its heyday, the “great emir” could gather an army of at least 200 thousand people. This is exactly how many, according to Tamerlane himself, took part in the campaign against the Golden Horde.

The Russian state, which had not yet recovered from the Mongol invasion and was mired in civil strife, actually did not have the strength to oppose anything to the armada of the Iron Lame. Tokhtamysh's campaign against Moscow in August 1382, during which the khan was able to ravage the central regions of the great reign without clashing with his united forces and then achieve the renewal of his dependence on the Golden Horde, confirmed the inability of the Russian state to resist large-scale aggression.

The Russian principalities did not threaten Tamerlane's empire in any way, and therefore the commander had no need to carry out punitive campaigns. The only thing he needed was funds to maintain an army of thousands. The Arab chronicler Sharaf ad-Din Yazdi describes the large booty taken by Tamerlane in the Russian lands, but does not report military operations against the local population, although the meaning of his “Book of Victories” (“Zafar-name”) is a description of the exploits of Tamerlane himself and the valor of his warriors .

It can be assumed that Tamerlane’s further campaign against Rus' would have been caused not by the desire to prove his military superiority, but by the intention to obtain rich booty. If the besieged city had not capitulated, the conqueror would probably have treated it as he did with the conquered Urgench - razed it to the ground, and planted the deserted place with barley. The townspeople would most likely have faced the sad fate of the inhabitants of Iranian Isfahan, some of whom were beheaded by Tamerlane’s soldiers, and the other part crushed to death by horses.

The main blow of Tamerlane’s army would have fallen on the rich lands of Moscow and Vladimir, but the rich jackpot in the form of Pskov and Novgorod would hardly have gone to the conqueror. The harsh climate, natural obstacles in the form of forests and swamps would have blocked the path of the Iron Lame army, just as half a century ago they had stopped the advance of the Mongol horde. As a result, the cities of North-Western Rus', given the weakened Principality of Moscow, would probably have quite quickly integrated into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

Shackled by a military campaign in China, Persia, India and Asia Minor, Tamerlane would hardly have kept significant forces in Russian lands. Sooner or later, the united princes would have repulsed the conqueror. Tamerlane was interested in the Great Silk Road, which passed through the southern territories of his empire. It was for the convenience of controlling rich caravans that he destroyed the northern branch of the Silk Road and redirected it through his lands. The greatness and wealth of Samarkand is the best evidence of the success of the commercial enterprise of the “great emir”.

1395 – Invasion of Tamerlane

In the 1360s in Central Asia, Timur (Tamerlane), an outstanding ruler and commander, famous for his lameness, military exploits and incredible cruelty that amazed even his contemporaries, rose to prominence. He created a huge empire and wanted to conquer the whole world. By defeating the Turkish Sultan Bayazid, who was finishing off the once mighty Byzantine Empire, Timur thereby helped Constantinople extend its existence for another half a century. In 1395, on the Terek River, Timur destroyed the army of Khan Tokhtamysh, who then fled to Lithuania. Timur invaded the Tatar steppes, and then the Ryazan lands. With him came a gigantic army of 400,000. Horror gripped Rus', which remembered Batu’s invasion, and now knew that Timur had defeated the Horde king himself! Prince Vasily could not resist the new merciless conqueror. Having captured Yelets, Timur moved towards Moscow, but on August 26 he stopped and, after standing for two weeks, turned south. The day before, Muscovites tried to strengthen their city, began to dig a huge ditch, but they worked in a hurry, thoughtlessly: “And they caused a lot of damage to people: they swept away houses, but did nothing.” We had to rely on a lucky chance or the will of God. And so it happened. Since the “iron lame man” turned back, in Moscow it was believed that Rus' was saved not by the strategic calculations of Timur, who did not want to get stuck in Rus' at the beginning of autumn, but by the famous icon of Our Lady of Vladimir, once brought by Andrei Bogolyubsky from Kyiv. She was urgently taken from Vladimir to Moscow, and just on the same day Timur turned back. People believed that it was their desperate common plea that averted the coming of the terrible conqueror to Rus'.

Y. LOSCHITZ. THE ORTHODOX WORLD AND TAMERLANE

Tamerlane's invasion of Rus' at the end of the 14th century is one of the most poorly studied events in Russian history. First of all, this concerns the historical science of our century. She managed to keep Tamerlane's story locked up, not releasing it - even in summary form - into any of the popular history textbooks. A survey of ten schoolchildren who know something about Batu, Mamai, Grishka Otrepiev and Napoleon, according to Tamerlan, gives a zero result.

This total ignorance of one of the most terrible threats to the existence of the ancient Russian state is explained, however, surprisingly simply...

Tamerlane did not fit into the atheistic concept of the historical process. If we remove from the plot of his invasion the miracle-working associated with the transfer from Vladimir to Moscow of the most revered icon of the Mother of God in Rus', then no Soviet historian could intelligibly explain what exactly prompted the Central Asian commander to abandon an almost free victory, and suddenly and forever take away his darkness from southern Russian lands. After all, it is known that Moscow at that time was not at all ready for a worthy military response. Strategically, it looked even more defenseless than during the attack of Khan Tokhtamysh thirteen years ago. Any purely materialistic explanation of Tamerlane’s antics, who suddenly deigned to spare bloodless Rus', would look pathetic. The principle of mercy was unknown to the most cruel of the commanders known to the world. It would be necessary to look for other, more paltry interpretations of his whim. Didn't he suffer from bouts of delirium tremens long before his death? Did you receive a huge ransom from the Russians? Did you experience a shortage of provisions and fodder? What other twist of existence could determine the twist of his consciousness? Or was Tamerlane the first consistent absurdist in the history of wars? All fortune-telling and fantasies of this kind have no basis in historical sources associated with the suddenly interrupted invasion of Rus', interrupted by the will of the initiator of the most terrible pogrom.

I will give just one example of the research weakness and helplessness of analysis manifested in the interpretation of Tamerlane’s act. This example is especially indicative, since it relates to the last decade of the existence of Soviet historical science. In the comments to “The Tale of Temir Aksak” (“Monuments of literature of Ancient Rus' XI V - mid-XV century.” Moscow, 1981) we read: “In August 1395, Timur unexpectedly went to Yelets, plundered it and, standing near the Don for about two weeks, for unknown reasons, turned back, heading to Crimea. Apparently, assessing the situation quite soberly, Timur did not want to get involved with the rebellious “uluses”. He had just defeated his rival, Tokhtamysh, for the second time and already completely, and continued punitive expeditions across the Tatar lands, subordinating them to his power. The entry into Rus' was a reconnaissance similar to that carried out by Genghis Khan's military leader Sabudai in 1223, giving battle to the Russian and Polovtsian princes on Kalka. Nevertheless, Timur’s decision in Rus' was perceived as God’s intercession and as a miracle.”

The commentator, obviously, does not bother himself at all with documentary evidence of what happened, hoping, it seems, that his interpretation of the event will be taken on faith. Meanwhile, in such an arbitrary and illogical construction, both sides look absurd - both Tamerlane, who on an unexpected whim went out to Yelets and “for unclear reasons” turned back, and Rus', who hastened to interpret this supposedly random, completely unnecessary military demarche of Tamerlane “as God’s intercession and miracle". If the reasons for the conqueror’s departure to Crimea are unclear, then the argument about Timur’s supposedly sober assessment of the situation and his fear of stirring up “rebellious uluses,” by which the commentator means the Russian principalities, is completely groundless. But could the invincible Eastern Tsar, who had just been completely defeated by the uluses under his jurisdiction, chicken out in front of these, not him, but his just completely defeated enemy Tokhtamysh? And could his entry into Rus' only be through reconnaissance? After all, he had just defeated Tokhtamysh not at the head of a small reconnaissance detachment, otherwise he would not have immediately rushed in small numbers to finish off the Golden Horde in the Crimea. No matter how clever the commentator is, he still fails to present Timur’s arrival in Rus' in the form of such a random, unexpected, easy and unnecessary reconnaissance walk. And the Russian side - in the form of fanatical simpletons, who were inflated by the random appearance and inexplicable disappearance of curious Asians to the proportions of “God’s intercession and miracle.”

Those relatively few but reliable historical facts of Tamerlane’s invasion and Russian resistance to it, which are available to a conscientious researcher, confirm both the extreme nature of the threat and the reality of blessed miraculous help.

Medieval biographers and memoirists usually note that Timur, being illiterate, had a remarkably strong and tenacious memory, constantly kept personal readers with him, and knew Turkish and Persian well (Zafar-Name. “Book of Victories”). Judging by the scale of his conquests, Eurasian geography was also one of the well-mastered disciplines. He knew no less about Rus' than about the Caucasus and India, about China and the Middle East.

The Old Russian chronicler, telling about the invasion of Mamai in 1380, gives an interesting detail: Mamai “began to experience from old stories how Tsar Batu captured the Russian land and ruled all the princes as he wanted,” for he, Mamai, “wished to be the second Tsar Batu.” . In accordance with this lust and study of “old stories,” Mamai went to Rus' precisely along the same corridor between the tributaries of the Volga and Don, along which the grandson of Genghis Khan, Batu, once invaded the Ryazan principality.

But in “The Tale of Temir Aksak” this new conqueror is spoken of in almost the same terms as about Mamai in the stories of the Kulikovo cycle: “From then on, the accursed one began to think in his heart of captivating the Russian land, just as before, for Having allowed sins to God, Tsar Batu captured the Russian land, and the proud and fierce Temir Aksak thought the same thing...”

The non-accidentality of this comparison of Tamerlane with Batu is emphasized by the author of the story almost immediately, when describing his half-month stay near Yelets: “Temir Aksak has already been standing in one place for 15 days, thinking, damned, he wants to go to the whole Russian Land, like the second Batu, to ruin peasantry."

The historical analogy with the grandson of Genghis Khan is invariably preserved in many copies and more lengthy editions of the story. “Like the second Batu” Timur is also certified in the “Tale of the Meeting of the miraculous image of our Most Pure Lady Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary...” (in the appendix to Volume II of Nikon’s Chronicle).

Just like Mamai, Timur went to Rus' not at all for reconnaissance purposes, but with the task of a new total conquest of the state, which was clearly leaving the control of the decrepit Golden Horde. The seriousness of his intentions is also evidenced by the nature of the military preparations undertaken by the Russian side. The son of the holy noble prince Dmitry Ivanovich Donskoy, the current autocrat of Rus' Vasily Dmitrievich, gathers an army and militia in Moscow, descends with an army to Kolomna and builds a defense along the northern bank of the Oka. Muscovite Rus', even during the time of Dmitry Donskoy, established reliable steppe reconnaissance on the southern outskirts in case of unexpected raids. Vasily Dmitrievich, of course, would not have started these extraordinary and debilitating military movements for the treasury, in fact, general mobilization, if he had received news from his distant patrols about Tamerlane’s small reconnaissance raid. In addition, Vasily Dmitrievich knew the uninvited guest firsthand. At one time, he had to observe the monstrous growth of the phantasmagoric Tamerlane empire from close range. In 1371, that is, the year of Vasily’s birth, Tamerlane already owned lands from Manchuria to the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea. During his three-year forced stay at the headquarters of Khan Tokhtamysh as a hostage, the eldest son of Dmitry Donskoy witnessed the maturation of discord between Timur and the owner of the Golden Horde. In 1386 - the year of Vasily Dmitrievich's flight from Tokhtamysh's headquarters - Timur penetrates the Caucasus and captures Tiflis. In 1389, when Dmitry Donskoy was dying in Moscow, Tamerlane launched the first of three campaigns against the Golden Horde. On the eve of the invasion of Russian borders, in 1395, the third campaign took place: Timur defeated the army of Tokhtamysh on the Terek, subjected the Golden Horde capital, Sarai-Berke, to terrible plunder, after which this city actually ceased to exist as an imperial metropolis. No matter how strictly our ancient chroniclers treated Temir Aksak, calling him “proud”, “fierce”, “cursed”, we have no right to forget that the same or even stronger epithets were awarded to him during his life and after death by many inveterate enemies of the Ancient Rus' and all the Slavs. In the case of this most cruel of tyrants, Divine Providence decreed that Timur became a true scourge primarily for the states and peoples that oppressed Rus' and, more broadly, the Orthodox Slavs. In the 11th volume of the Nikon Chronicle, immediately after the message about Timur’s victory over Tokhtamysh, we read: “. ..and from there the accursed one was inflamed with rage to go to Rus'; and the king of Tours Baozit in an iron cage with him as leader. And I came near the border of the Ryazan land...”

In this message (it goes through many copies of “The Tale of Temir Aksak”) we are dealing with an interesting anachronism, a gross chronological error, which, it seems to us, was made intentionally. The fact is that in 1395 Tamerlane could not have come to Rus', having in his baggage train a cage with the Turkish Sultan Bayezid, since the Battle of Ankara, as a result of which Bayezid the Lightning was captured by Timur, took place in 1402, that is, seven years later after Timur unexpectedly canceled his invasion of Rus'. Here it is necessary to recall that the captive Sultan is the same Bayezid who received the laurels of the winner on the Kosovo field in 1389, when, as a result of a bloody battle, Sultan Murat, Bayezid’s father, died on the Turkish side, and the Great Martyr Prince Lazar on the Serbian side. Since that time, Bayezid was very successful in the European theater of war: in 1396, he won the famous Battle of Nikopol, defeating the army of the Crusaders. For many years, Bayezid prepared for the capture of the capital of Byzantium, Constantinople. At the same time, the Bulgarian lands were subjected to systematic attacks. In 1393, the Turks took Tarnovo after a three-month siege, putting an end to the Tarnovo and soon the Vidin Bulgarian kingdoms.

The appearance of Timur's hordes in Asia Minor, although not for very long, still stopped the Turkish invasion of the Orthodox and Slavic Balkans. It is significant: the Serbian despot Stefan Lazarevich, the son of Prince Lazar, who was killed on the Kosovo Field, was forced to participate in the Battle of Ankara on the side of Bayazet. But soon after the Battle of Ankara, Stefan - he managed to escape and save part of his army - on the same Kosovo field defeats the Turks, as if creating historical retribution for the first Kosovo, for the death of his parent, for the humiliation of the Serbian land.

These events (primarily the defeat of the Turks near Ankara) were also perceived by the Russian author of “The Tale of Temir Aksak” as retribution, God’s punishment sent to the Ottoman conquerors. That’s why the story, written after Timur’s invasion of Asia Minor, testifies to a completely conscious “mistake” of the author, who put Bayazet in an iron cage back in 1395, so that Tamerlane would bring her to the Russian borders, as if for show: look, they say , on the murderer of the Orthodox despot Lazarus.

March of that same 1402 (when the battle between Timur and Bayezid took place) is marked by a brief article by a Russian chronicler, giving a remarkable generalization of a military and geopolitical nature in its scope: “... a sign appeared in the west, in the evening dawn, a star as great as a spear... Behold, show a sign, before the pagans rose up to fight against each other: the Turks, the Lyakhs, the Ugrians, the Germans, Lithuania, the Czechs, the Horde, the Greeks, the Rus, and many other lands and countries rose up and fought against each other; pestilences have also begun to appear.” (PSRL, vol. 12, p. 187).

There is no exaggeration in this image of widespread discord between peoples: it was an era of truly tectonic shifts on the ethnic map of the Eurasian continent. The era of great battles and invasions (Kulikovo, Kosovo Field, Tokhtamysh’s devastation of Moscow, the Battle of Nikopol, the Battle of Vorskla, Ankara, Grunwald, the Battle of Maritsa, the invasion of Edigei, the Hussite Wars...) covered the living space of most Slavic states and peoples. It deeply shocked the Orthodox world. The result of this era was the collapse of Byzantium and the emergence of a new center of Orthodoxy in Muscovite Rus'.

Yuri LOSCHITZ

Tokhtamysh, fighting with Tamerlane, suffered defeats from him, but continued military operations until the latter launched a large-scale offensive against the ruler of the Horde in 1394. April 15, 1395 on the river. Terek (on the territory of modern North Ossetia) Tamerlane inflicted a major defeat on Tokhtamysh. The Khan fled across the Dnieper and took refuge in the possessions of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Vytautas. Devastating the lands left by Tokhtamysh, Tamerlane approached the possessions of the Russian princes. Having learned about the movement of his troops, Vasily Dimitrievich strengthened Moscow and went with his army to the Oka River to repel the enemy. The Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God was brought from Vladimir to Moscow, before which prayer services were performed. Tamerlane, having ravaged Yelets, did not go to Moscow; the threat of his invasion had passed.

But 2 months later, the Horde prince Yentyak, together with the former Nizhny Novgorod prince Semyon Dmitrievich, attacked Nizhny Novgorod and took it. Vasily Dimitrievich sent troops here under the command of his brother Prince Yuri. Having learned about the approach of the grand ducal army, Yentyak and Semyon fled from Nizhny Novgorod, and Yuri successfully fought in the Horde Middle Volga region for 3 months. The Moscow army got rich booty there, Prince Yuri used part of it for church construction in his specific center of Zvenigorod.

WHY “GO BACK TO YOURSELF”?

Written sources speak rather not of a hostile, but of a neutral attitude of Timur towards the rulers of Moscow and Lithuanian Rus', who since 1395 were not only in a dynastic, but also in a military-political alliance. Both of them - Vasily I Dmitrievich and Vitovt - took the necessary precautions, placing mobilized armies on the border with the Horde - the Moscow prince along the Oka River, and the Lithuanian prince in Smolensk, which he captured. Timur, having stood with his army near Yelets for two weeks, left it on August 26, 1395 and, according to the chronicler, “returned home,” completing the defeat of the Horde cities on the way back. His campaign through the territory of the vital center of the Golden Horde, in its destructive consequences, became a real economic and political disaster for it.

It is very likely that it was during his stay near Yelets that Timur decided not to go to war against Rus', because peaceful relations with potential opponents of the Horde were more consistent with his strategic goal than war. It is difficult to determine exactly when the decision was made to “politically split” the Ulus of Jochi - in the fall of 1395 or earlier, on the eve of the war with the Horde. In any case, it was undoubtedly the result of understanding the experience of the previous (1391) campaign of Amir Timur against Khan Tokhtamysh, which showed the amazing ability of the Horde state to quickly revive in the presence of the autocracy of the khan and enormous material and human resources. It is known, however, that at the beginning of his second anti-Horde campaign, in all likelihood in the first half of 1395, Timur proclaimed Koyrichak-oglan khan of the Golden Horde, but the aristocracy of the western uluses declared Tash-Timur, who managed to escape from the attacks of the troops, their khan Amir Timur... The former Khan Tokhtamysh, who fled from Timur’s army, also began the struggle to regain power in full. Thus, in accordance with the plan of Amir Timur or in addition to it, the political disintegration of the Horde state began again and was very intense immediately after the defeat of Tokhtamysh in the North Caucasus.

History has confirmed the correctness of Amir Timur's political calculations both regarding the political instability of the Horde and its potential opponents. Immediately after the departure of his army from the Upper Don region, the anti-Horde essence of the Lithuanian-Moscow alliance, which lasted about three years, fully manifested itself. Already in the fall of 1395, Moscow troops captured the cities of Bulgar, Zhukotin, Kremenchuk, Kazan in the Horde Volga region and, having conquered the “Tatar land,” returned “with much gain.”

At the same time, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania also entered into a military conflict with the Golden Horde, but the scale, results and, obviously, the goals of its military actions were different. The chronicles of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania report confusingly and unclearly about the first of these: “Grand Duke Vitovt himself went to the Podolsk land, and ordered Prince Skirgail to go from Kyiv to Cherkasy and Zvenigorod. The great prince Skirgailo, by God’s help and the great prince Vitovt, took Cherkasy and Zvenigorod by command and returned to Kiev.” Until recently, historiography was dominated by what was expressed by a historian of the second half of the 16th century. Maciej Stryjkowski's opinion that Skirgail's campaign in Porosie was caused by the reluctance of the previous Kyiv prince to cede this region to him. At present, it can be considered proven that Skirgail’s campaign had a liberation character and was carried out in the southern part of the Kyiv principality, which had been seized by the Horde of Mamai or Tokhtamysh...

Already in 1397, Vitovt led a campaign to the Horde Lower Don and Crimea, which had recently been devastated by Timur’s army, where he forced the powerful Shirin ulus to again recognize Tokhtamysh as khan. In 1398, Vitovt's army reached the mouth of the Dnieper, on the banks of which they built the border castle of St. John (Tavan). The main goal of both campaigns was to restore the shaken political positions of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the south. The achievement of this goal was recorded in a special label, with which the former khan and then-client of Vytautas Tokhtamysh in 1398 renounced in favor of the Grand Duke of Lithuania the supreme rights of the Horde primarily to the Ukrainian lands, “from Kiev, and the Dnieper and to the mouth.”

Vitovt also nurtured more far-reaching plans: relying on Tokhtamysh to make the Golden Horde dependent on his power, and then with its help to overthrow the Grand Duchy of Moscow, the main rival of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Russia and Samogitia in the political unification of the East Slavic lands. These plans, as we know, were dashed by the battle on the banks of the Vorskla in 1399, which turned into a complete defeat for the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the war against the Horde of Timur-Kutluk and Emir Edigei.

MEETING OF THE VLADIMIR ICON OF THE MOTHER OF GOD

More than once, the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God miraculously saved the Russian army from inevitable defeats.

In 1395, Tamerlane with hordes of Tatars entered Russian soil and was approaching Moscow. The number of his troops was many times greater than the Russian squads, their strength and experience were incomparable. The only hope remained in chance and God's help. Then the Grand Duke of Moscow Vasily Dmitrievich sent to Vladimir for the miraculous icon. The journey with the Vladimir Icon from Vladimir to Moscow continued for ten days, people stood on their knees on the sides of the road with the prayer “Mother of God, save the Russian land.” In Moscow, the icon was greeted on August 26: “the whole city came out against the icon to meet it”... At the hour of the meeting of the icon, Tamerlane was sleeping in a tent. The legend says that at that moment he saw in a dream a high mountain, from which saints with golden rods descended to him. Above them in the air, in the radiance of bright rays, stood the “radiant Wife.” Countless darkness of angels with swords surrounded her. In the morning Tamerlane called the wise men. “You won’t be able to deal with them, Tamerlane, this is the Mother of God, the intercessor of the Russians,” the fortune tellers said to the invincible khan. “And Tamerlane fled, driven by the power of the Blessed Virgin”...

Grateful for their liberation, the Russians built the Sretensky Monastery at the meeting place of the icon. After 235 years in Vladimir, the icon of the Mother of God of Vladimir moved to Moscow and was installed in the cathedral built in honor of the Dormition of the Blessed Virgin Mary.