On September 6 (August 27), 1689, the Treaty of Nerchinsk was signed - the first peace treaty between Russia and China, the most important historical role of which lies in the fact that for the first time it also defined the state border between the two countries. The conclusion of the Treaty of Nerchinsk put an end to the Russian-Ch'ing conflict, also known as the "Albazin War".
By the second half of the 17th century. the development of Siberia by Russian industrialists and merchants was already in full swing. First of all, they were interested in furs, which were considered an extremely valuable commodity. However, advancing deep into Siberia also required the creation of stationary points where it would be possible to organize food bases for the pioneers. After all, the delivery of food to Siberia at that time was almost impossible. Accordingly, settlements arose, the inhabitants of which were engaged not only in hunting, but also in agriculture. The development of Siberian lands took place. In 1649 the Russians also entered the territory of the Amur region. Representatives of numerous Tungus-Manchu and Mongol peoples lived here - Daurs, Duchers, Goguli, Achan.
Russian detachments began to impose significant tribute on the weak Daurian and Ducher princedoms. The local aborigines could not resist the Russians militarily, so they were forced to pay tribute. But since the peoples of the Amur region were considered tributaries of the powerful Qing Empire, in the end this situation caused a very negative reaction from the Manchu rulers of China. Already in 1651 in Achansk town, which was captured by the Russian detachment of E. P. Khabarov, a Qing punitive detachment was sent under the command of Haise and Sifu. However, the Cossacks managed to defeat the Manchu detachment. The advance of the Russians to the Far East continued. The next two decades went down in the history of the development of Eastern Siberia and the Far East as a period of constant battles between the Russian and Qing troops, in which either the Russians or the Manchus were victorious. Nevertheless, in 1666 the detachment of Nikifor of Chernigov was able to start restoring the Albazin fortress, and in 1670 an embassy was sent to Beijing, which managed to agree with the Manchus about an armistice and an approximate delimitation of "spheres of influence" in the Amur region. At the same time, the Russians refused to invade the Qing lands, and the Manchus - from the invasion of the Russian lands. In 1682, the Albazin voivodeship was officially created, at the head of which was a voivode, the emblem and seal of the voivodeship were adopted. At the same time, the Qing leadership again became concerned with the issue of ousting the Russians from the Amur lands, which the Manchus considered their ancestral possessions. Manchu officials in Pengchun and Lantan led an armed detachment to drive out the Russians.
In November 1682, Lantan with a small reconnaissance detachment visited Albazin, conducting reconnaissance of its fortifications. He explained his presence in the vicinity of the fort to the Russians by hunting deer. Returning, Lantan reported to the leadership that the wooden fortifications of the Albazin fort were weak and there were no special obstacles to the military operation to oust the Russians from there. In March 1683, the Kangxi emperor gave an order to prepare for a military operation in the Amur region. In the years 1683-1684. Manchu detachments periodically raided the vicinity of Albazin, which forced the governor to dismiss a detachment of servicemen from Western Siberia to strengthen the fortress garrison. But given the specifics of the then transport communication, the detachment moved extremely slowly. The Manchus took advantage of this.
At the beginning of the summer of 1685, the Qing army of 3-5 thousand people began to advance towards Albazin. The Manchus moved on ships of the river flotilla along the river. Sungari. Approaching Albazin, the Manchus began building siege structures and placing artillery. By the way, the Qing army, which approached Albazin, was armed with at least 30 cannons. The shelling of the fortress began. The wooden defensive structures of Albazin, which were built with the expectation of protection from the arrows of the local Tungus-Manchu aborigines, could not withstand the artillery fire. At least one hundred people from among the inhabitants of the fortress became victims of the shelling. On the morning of June 16, 1685, the Qing troops began a general assault on the Albazin fortress.
It should be noted here that in Nerchinsk, a detachment of 100 servicemen with 2 cannons was assembled to help the Albazin garrison under the command of the governor Ivan Vlasov. Reinforcements from Western Siberia, led by Athanasius Beyton, were also in a hurry. But by the time of the assault on the fortress, the reinforcements did not have time. In the end, the commander of the Albazin garrison, voivode Alexei Tolbuzin, managed to negotiate with the Manchus about the withdrawal of the Russians from Albazin and the withdrawal to Nerchinsk. On June 20, 1685, the Albazin prison was surrendered. However, the Manchus did not become entrenched in Albazin - and this was their main mistake. Two months later, on August 27, 1685, voivode Tolbuzin returned to Albazin with a detachment of 514 service people and 155 peasants and tradesmen who restored the fortress. The fortress defenses were significantly fortified, already from the calculation so that next time they could withstand artillery shelling. The construction of fortifications was supervised by Athanasius Beyton, a German who converted to Orthodoxy and Russian citizenship.
- The fall of Albazin. Contemporary Chinese artist.
However, the restoration of Albazin was closely watched by the Manchus, whose garrison was located in the not so far away fortress of Aigun. Soon, the Manchu detachments again began to attack the Russian settlers who were cultivating the fields in the vicinity of Albazin. On April 17, 1686, the Kangxi emperor ordered the commander Lantan to take Albazin again, but this time not to leave it, but to turn it into a Manchu fortress. On July 7, 1686, Manchu detachments, delivered by a river flotilla, appeared near Albazin. As in the previous year, the Manchus began shelling the town, but it did not give the desired results - the cannonballs got stuck in the earthen ramparts, prudently built by the defenders of the fortress. However, during one of the attacks, voivode Aleksey Tolbuzin was killed. The siege of the fortress dragged on and the Manchus even erected several dugouts, preparing to starve out the garrison. In October 1686, the Manchus made a new attempt to storm the fortress, but it ended in failure. The siege continued. By this time, about 500 service people and peasants died in the fortress from scurvy, only 150 people remained alive, of which only 45 people were "on their feet". But the garrison was not going to surrender.
When the next Russian embassy arrived in Beijing at the end of October 1686, the emperor agreed to an armistice. On May 6, 1687, the troops of Lantan retreated 4 versts from Albazin, but continued to prevent the Russians from sowing the surrounding fields, since the Manchu command hoped by starvation to get the fortress to surrender from the garrison.
Meanwhile, back on January 26, 1686, after the news of the first siege of Albazin, a "great and plenipotentiary embassy" was sent from Moscow to China. It was led by three officials - the steward Fyodor Golovin (in the photo, the future Field Marshal and the closest associate of Peter the Great), the Irkutsk governor Ivan Vlasov and the clerk Semyon Kornitsky. Fyodor Golovin (1650-1706), who headed the embassy, came from the Khovrins' boyar family - the Golovins, and by the time of the Nerchinsk delegation he was already a fairly experienced statesman. No less sophisticated was Ivan Vlasov, a Greek who took Russian citizenship and from 1674 served as a voivode in various Siberian cities.
Accompanied by a retinue and security, the embassy moved across Russia to China. In the fall of 1688, Golovin's embassy arrived in Nerchinsk, where the Chinese emperor asked for negotiations.
On the Manchu side, an impressive embassy was also formed, headed by Prince Songotu, minister of the imperial court, who was in 1669-1679. regent under the minor Kangxi and the de facto ruler of China, Tong Guegan was the uncle of the emperor and Lantan was a military leader who commanded the siege of Albazin. The head of the embassy, Prince Songotu (1636-1703), was the brother-in-law of the Kangxi Emperor, who was married to the prince's niece. Coming from a noble Manchu family, Songotu received a traditional Chinese education and was a fairly experienced and far-sighted politician. When Emperor Kangxi matured, he removed the regent from power, but continued to treat him with sympathy, and therefore Songotu continued to play an important role in the foreign and domestic policy of the Qing Empire.
Since the Russians did not know the Chinese language, and the Chinese did not know Russian, the negotiations had to be conducted in Latin. To this end, the Russian delegation included an interpreter from Latin, Andrei Belobotsky, and the Manchu delegation included the Spanish Jesuit Thomas Pereira and the French Jesuit Jean-François Gerbillon.
The meeting of the two delegations took place at an agreed place - on a field between the Shilka and Nercheya rivers, at a distance of half a verst from Nerchinsk. The negotiations were held in Latin and began with the fact that the Russian ambassadors complained about the beginning of hostilities by the Manchus without a declaration of war. The Manchu ambassadors retorted that the Russians had arbitrarily built Albazin. At the same time, representatives of the Qing empire emphasized that when Albazin was taken for the first time, the Manchus released the Russians unharmed on the condition that they would not return, but two months later they returned again and rebuilt Albazin.
The Manchu side insisted that the Daurian lands belonged to the Qing empire by ancestral law, since the time of Genghis Khan, who was allegedly the ancestor of the Manchu emperors. In turn, the Russian ambassadors argued that the Daurs had long recognized Russian citizenship, which is confirmed by the payment of yasak to the Russian detachments. Fyodor Golovin's proposal was as follows - to draw the border along the Amur River, so that the left side of the river would go to Russia, and the right side to the Qing empire. However, as the head of the Russian embassy later recalled, the Jesuits-translators, who hated Russia, played a negative role in the negotiation process. They deliberately distorted the meaning of the words of the Chinese leaders and the negotiations, because of this, were almost in jeopardy. Nevertheless, faced with the firm position of the Russians, who did not want to give up Dauria, representatives of the Manchu side proposed to draw the border along the Shilka River to Nerchinsk.
The negotiations lasted two weeks and were carried out in absentia, through translators - the Jesuits and Andrei Belobotsky. In the end, the Russian ambassadors figured out how to act. They bribed the Jesuits by giving them furs and food. In response, the Jesuits promised to communicate all the intentions of the Chinese ambassadors. By this time, an impressive Qing army was concentrated near Nerchinsk, preparing to storm the city, which gave the Manchu embassy additional trump cards. Nevertheless, the ambassadors of the Qing empire proposed to draw the border along the Gorbitsa, Shilka and Argun rivers.
When the Russian side rejected this offer again, the Qing troops prepared for an assault. Then the Russian side received a proposal to make the Albazin fortress a border point, which could have been abandoned by the Russians. But the Manchus again did not agree with the Russian proposal. The Manchus also stressed that the Russian army could not arrive from Moscow to the Amur region in two years, so there was practically nothing to fear from the Qing Empire. In the end, the Russian side agreed with the proposal of the head of the Manchu embassy, Prince Songotu. The last negotiations were held on September 6 (August 27). The text of the treaty was read, after which Fyodor Golovin and Prince Songotu vowed to abide by the concluded treaty, exchanged copies of it and hugged each other as a sign of peace between Russia and the Qing empire. Three days later, the Manchu army and navy retreated from Nerchinsk, and the embassy departed for Beijing. Fyodor Golovin went back to Moscow with the embassy. By the way, Moscow initially expressed dissatisfaction with the results of the negotiations - after all, it was originally supposed to draw the border along the Amur, and the country's authorities did not know the real situation on the border with the Qing empire and overlooked the fact that in the event of a full-fledged confrontation, the Manchus could have destroyed a few Russians detachments in the Amur region.
There were seven articles in the Nerchinsk Treaty. The first article established the border between Russia and the Qing Empire along the Gorbitsa River, the left tributary of the Shilka River. Further, the border went along the Stanovoy ridge, and the lands between the Uda River and the mountains to the north of the Amur remained undivided so far. The second article established the border along the Argun River - from the mouth to the headwaters, Russian territories remained on the left bank of the Argun. In accordance with the third article, the Russians were obliged to leave and destroy the Albazin fortress. In a special additional paragraph, it was emphasized that both sides should not build any structures in the area of the former Albazin. The fourth article emphasized the prohibition of accepting defectors by both sides. In accordance with the fifth article, trade between Russian and Chinese nationals and free movement of all persons were allowed with special travel documents. The sixth article provided for expulsion and punishment for robbery or murder for citizens of Russia or China who crossed the border. The seventh article emphasized the right of the Manchu side to establish border marks on its territory.
The Nerchinsk Treaty became the first example of the streamlining of relations between Russia and China. Subsequently, there was a further delimitation of the borders of the two great states, but the treaty concluded in Nerchinsk, no matter how they relate to it (and its results are still assessed by both Russian and Chinese historians in different ways - both as equal for the parties, and as beneficial exclusively for Chinese side), laid the foundation for the peaceful coexistence of Russia and China.
