The tribes of the Slavs (in other sources - the Rus), together with the Avars in 626, undertook a grandiose campaign against Constantinople in one-tree boats.
On June 29, 626, the Avar Kagan approached the walls of Constantinople with an army. According to the Easter Chronicle, this was the first Avar detachment, consisting of 30 thousand soldiers. For a long time, the Avars did not start any military actions against the Greeks, although a large allied Persian army was awaiting their start. Most likely, the kagan was expecting the Slavs, and not those who lived on the Balkan Peninsula or beyond the Danube, but the Slavs who arrived on single-tree boats (monoxiles) with their families.
The Slavs who arrived fought both under the walls of Constantinople and at sea. Foot Slavic warriors were armed with spears and dressed in armor. The Slavs sailors had one-tree boats, hollowed out of one tree. On the third of August they moved to the Asian coast to bring the Persians to help, but the next morning they were sunk by the Greeks.
“A day later, that is, July 31, the khan appeared, ready for battle … There he placed his huge crowds, and at other sections of the wall he placed the Slavs so that they could be seen by the townspeople. The battle lasted from dawn until 11 o'clock, and lightly armed footmen fought in the first rows, and heavily armed footmen fought in the second … At night, their one-tree trees unsuccessfully tried to deceive the vigilance of our guards and swim across to the Persians - the Romans drowned and cut all the Slavs in them … Others the Slavs, who in small numbers swam to the place where the camp of the godless khan stood, were killed by his order. Thanks to the intercession of the mistress of our Mother of God, the khagan was defeated by the sea in the blink of an eye … After that he returned to his camp … destroyed the embankment and began to break down the siege towers … But some argue that the whole thing is in the Slavs, who, having seen what was happening, withdrew and left, and that is why the accursed khan was forced to leave with them,”the Easter Chronicle reports.
V. M. Vasnetsov. Fight of the Scythians with the Slavs
Many well-known historians, according to the testimony of J. E. Borovsky, speaking about the siege of Constantinople in 626, they call it "the Russian campaign". This opinion was already expressed by Ioan-ky Galyatovsky, who back in 1665 wrote that Constantinople was saved in 626 from the Russians under the patriarch of Sergius; the famous historian E. Gibbon also considers the Avars allies to be Russians. AND I. Franko, considering the chronicle legend about the founding of Kiev, connected the campaign of the Polyanskiy prince Kyi with the siege of Constantinople in 626. The famous Soviet historian V. V. Mavrodin.
In view of the major military defeat of the Avars, some Slavic tribes were freed from the Avar power.
