Why, having withstood the heroic siege of Albazin, Russia in 1689 gave the Amur region to China
"Traveler, bring the message to our citizens in Lacodemona that, having fulfilled the covenant of Sparta, here we have perished with bones." These proud words are carved into a huge stone set on a hill at the entrance to the Thermopylae Gorge in Greece. Here in September 480 BC. NS. the famous battle of three hundred Spartans under the command of King Leonidas with the Persian army of Xerxes took place. The heroes perished every single one, but provided much-needed time to unite the troops of the Greek city-states into a single army.
The Cossacks in the Far East also have their Thermopylae. This is the Albazin prison, the defense of which in 1685 and 1686 will forever remain one of the most heroic pages in the history of Russia. Just like the Spartans of Leonidas, the Cossacks managed, at the cost of incredible efforts and sacrifices, to keep their most important strategic line on the Amur. And, like the Spartans, they were betrayed.
According to the Cossack painting, like Kroma, they will be erected …
As already mentioned in the article "Albazin siege: Cossacks against the Chinese", immediately after returning to Albazin, Ataman Alexei Tolbuzin began to restore the Albazin prison with all his energy. The new building was based not on the old Moscow or Siberian fortification experience, based on the use of wooden structures, but on the Cossack, Don one. In the official "fairy tale" sent to Moscow, the Nerchinsk voivode Ivan Vlasov wrote: "The Albazin prison is being made good, after the Cossack painting, like Kromy, they have been erected …" as a verdict of the guaranteed inaccessibility of the new fortress: in 1685, the service "sovereign lackeys" remembered, of course, the infamous for the Moscow army siege of the fortress of Kroma in the Time of Troubles, which was successfully defended by the Don ataman Andrei Korela for six months.
Cossack fortresses were distinguished not by the height of the walls, but by their wide use for the purposes of fortification of the land - this feature of the Cossack fortification directly copied the experience of ancient Roman military camps. The Cossacks dug deep ditches, the earth from which poured out onto wide lattice log cabins from large tree trunks, as a result, a relatively low rampart with a wide upper platform was obtained, along which even small guns could be moved. This design of the Cossack fortresses made it possible to quickly move the available forces of the defenders (of which the Cossacks never had an abundance) to the most threatened, fraught with a breakthrough, directions of the assault. In addition, the cores were easily stuck in the ground, and the earth thrown out by the explosion of a land mine had practically no damaging effect.
The new Albazin fortress became, apparently, the most powerful fortification in the upper reaches of the Amur, even Aigun - the main Chinese outpost in the region - was inferior to Albazin. However, Albazin also had his "Achilles' heel" - a lack of artillery: there were only eight old copper cannons in the fortress and three lightweight squeaks, which somehow "survived" in Nerchinsk since the time of Erofei Khabarov. In a desperate bustle of preparations for the invasion, the Chinese were dragged to Albazin and a heavy mortar, which was firing pound cannonballs. This weapon, which throws cannonballs in a high parabola, would be invaluable to the assault, but completely useless in defense. In addition, with its huge caliber, the mortar literally "ate" the scarce gunpowder.
Cossack German
The main defensive resource of Albazin was undoubtedly people. Ordinary people - Don, Tobolsk and Trans-Baikal Cossacks - quite deliberately and without any administrative coercion returned to Albazin after their courageous and resolute chieftain Tolbuzin. Himself "Batko Lexiy" did not know, seemed tired. There was a feeling that he was appearing everywhere at the same time: on the pier under construction, on the observation tower, in deep powder magazines specially dug at the base of the shafts, at the artillery crews.
Albazin fortress. Reconstruction and layout: Nikolay Kradin
Another very valuable figure in the coming strategic battle between Muscovy and China was the German Athanasius Beyton, the brilliant military genius of Albazin. As a Prussian officer, Beighton joined the Russian army in 1654 and immediately took part in the outbreak of the Russian-Polish war of 1654-1667. Even before graduation, he was transferred to service in Tomsk, where, along with other foreign officers, he trained Great Russian reiters for the emerging regiments of the “new order”.
In Tomsk in 1665, Beyton married a Cossack woman and, like any German living in Russia for a long time, became completely Russified. He turned to the Cossacks, converted to Orthodoxy, and for his merits was transferred to Moscow for promotion to the “boyar children”. However, in the musty semi-Byzantine palaces of the then Moscow, the “Cossack German” Athanasius seemed incredibly sad, and he filed a petition for transfer to Yeniseisk - an unprecedented case for the Great Russian nobility proper.
In Siberia, Beyton had to participate in many Cossack raids against the Dzungars and the Yenisei Kirghiz, and in all the campaigns the German proved himself to be an excellent commander and an excellent comrade. Small in stature, with a mustache drooping in the Zaporozhye manner, in a blue Cossack chekmen and a shaggy hat, the German Beyton practically did not differ in appearance from the Cossacks who surrounded him. This difference was visible and audible only in battle: instead of the Cossack saber, the German preferred a heavy Prussian broadsword, and instead of the wolf howl, which was customary for the attacking Cossacks, he shouted furiously "Mein Gott!" Friendly relations were established between the governor Tolbuzin and Beyton. For both, the main motivation for their activities was not personal ambition or enrichment, but military success in the fight against China.
Cossacks and Chinese: the struggle of will
The rebirth of Albazin happened so quickly that the headquarters of the Aigun grouping of the Chinese army at first did not want to believe the testimony of the scouts. Then irritation came: the Cossacks were accused of treachery. The irritation of the Chinese commanders was all the more intense because the Kangxi Emperor had already been informed of the complete victory over the "mi-hou" [literal translation from Chinese: "people with faces like monkeys." - N. L.].
The hatred of the Chinese towards Albazin's Cossacks grew also from the fact that, unlike in previous years, the Cossacks under Beyton's command were clearly trying to seize the military initiative. On October 2, 1685, at the distant approaches to Albazin (on the so-called Levkaev meadow, in the area of modern Blagoveshchensk), a Cossack hundred interrupted a Chinese border patrol of 27 people. In response, on October 14, the Kangxi Manchu cavalry attacked and burned the Pokrovskaya Sloboda, partly interrupting and partly capturing the Russian peasant settlers. Beyton's Cossacks rushed in pursuit, but the Manchus managed to escape to the right bank of the Amur, which the Cossacks were prevented from crossing by the ice drift that had begun. However, already at the beginning of November, on the first ice, Beyton crossed the Amur and destroyed a Chinese patrol at the site of the Monastyrshchina village burned down by the Manchus. In early December, the Cossacks successfully attacked the Manchu village of Esuli on the Chinese bank of the Amur, burned it down, and, taking prisoners, safely left for Albazin.
In response, the Chinese made a daring raid right into the heart of Albazin: just 10 versts from the fortress, they completely burned the Russian village of Bolshaya Zaimka. This insolence inflamed the Cossacks, and they decided to respond in such a way as to forever discourage the Chinese from "searching" for Albazin. It was decided to strike directly at the center of the strategic deployment of the Aigun group of Kangxi troops at the Huma military camp, which served as the main base for the Chinese troops' raids up the Amur.
In the early morning of February 24, a regular Manchu patrol went beyond the walls of Khuma to form. No sooner had the Manchus got on their horses than an agreed targeted salvo was heard from the slope of the nearest hill: eight cavalrymen were killed on the spot. Following this, from a side ravine adjacent to the fortress, with a furious wolf howl, Cossack "special forces" rushed to Huma: footmen, specially selected scouts, armed with daggers and pistols. The Manchus tried to escape through the gates of the fortress, but that was not the case: the horses, frightened by the howl of a wolf, broke off the bridles, torn free, trampled on the fallen horsemen. In less than a few minutes, the gates of Huma were already wide open by the plastuns who had captured them. The Manchu garrison inside the fortress tried to beat off the gates, but it was too late - two hundred Beyton Cossacks flew into them on frosty horses. The wheelhouse went. It resulted in forty Manchu corpses, a dozen prisoners and Huma burned to the ground. Beighton lost seven people.
New battle for Albazin
The burning of Huma shocked the cabinet of the Kangxi Emperor: it became clear that a new large-scale military expedition against Albazin was indispensable. The experienced strategist Kangxi decided not to rush, but then to solve the problem once and for all: the Cossacks had to be driven out not only from the Amur, but also from Transbaikalia in general. The secret office of the emperor, having received this instruction, soon prepared a detailed military-strategic report: a kind of Chinese plan "Barbarossa".
According to this plan, the Chinese army was to strike at Albazin with all its might. At the same time, the Mongols allied to China, operating along the eastern end of Lake Baikal, had to cut off all Russian communications leading to Nerchinsk, the main military base of the Muscovites in Transbaikalia. Then, by concentric attacks of the Chinese from the east, and the Mongols from the west, Nerchinsk must be captured and destroyed along with the surrounding Russian population. The strategic result of the campaign was to be a complete cleansing of Transbaikalia from the Russians - the combined Mongol-Chinese army, according to Kangxi's plans, went to Lake Baikal, where a powerful military fort was to be built.
Lantan, the commander-in-chief of the expeditionary force, having entered the personal subordination of the Kangxi emperor, began hostilities on June 11, 1686. The strength of the Chinese army was considerable: 3,000 selected Manchu cavalrymen and 4,500 Chinese infantrymen with 40 guns and 150 military and cargo ships.
Siege of Albazin. Chinese drawing of the late 17th century. From the collection of the Library of Congress
On July 9, 1686, the Chinese army approached Albazin. The Cossacks were already waiting for her: the entire Russian population of the surrounding villages was sheltered behind the walls in time, and the already spike fields were burned.
Slowly dispersing, the Lantan army gradually surrounded the fortress. Chinese ships approached the new, perfectly cut down pier. Lantan, contentedly observing his military armada from his horse, did not suspect resistance. How he later regretted his carelessness!
Albazin's gates suddenly opened, and from them, down the steep slope of the Amur coast, rushed five hundred "Cossack people" armed to the teeth. Their blow was terrible: the Chinese infantrymen, who did not have time to reorganize from the marching order to the siege, were crushed, and panic began. Flooded from head to foot with someone else's and their own blood, tirelessly striking the maddened enemy with daggers, the Cossacks stubbornly broke through to the shore - to the place where Chinese ships with weapons and provisions were moored. Another onslaught, and they burst onto the pier - the nearby Chinese ships burst into flames - exactly those on which there was food for the Chinese army. It seemed that the defeat of the Lantan army was close: only one strike of three or four hundred Cossacks on the flank of the actually overturned Chinese army could solve the whole matter. Alas, the governor Tolbuzin did not even have one reserve hundred - hello to the courtiers of Muscovy - the decades of the mediocre resettlement policy once again fully demonstrated their fruits.
A flank strike by the Cossacks could not occur, but the Manchu cavalrymen, who arrived at the battle site in time, managed to inflict it. To the credit of the Cossack German Beyton, he was waiting for this blow: the quickly rebuilt flanking hundred struck a meeting with the Manchus and ensured the complete order of the Cossacks' withdrawal to the fortress.
Lantan was terribly annoyed by what had happened, moreover, the problem of food supply for the army immediately arose in front of him. In a rage, the Kangxi commander ordered the execution of the commanders of those Chinese formations who fled. However, in the future, the practice of the "punishing sword" had to be abandoned: on July 13, Beyton repeated the sortie from Albazin with practically the same result: the Chinese fled again, the Manchus again managed to stop the advancing Cossacks with a flank blow. The main weakness of Albazin became completely clear to Lantany: the lack of the required number of defenders. Realizing this, the Kangxi commander proceeded to a methodical siege of the fortress.
Trial by the Pale Death
Initially, the Chinese commander ordered to proceed to a massive bombardment of the fortress from all the barrels of the "scrap artillery". There was a lot of shooting, but the fortress, built according to the Cossack technology, withstood all the shelling. True, after two months of methodical shelling, the Albazin garrison suffered a really heavy loss: on September 13, a Chinese cannonball tore off a leg above the knee of voivode Alexei Tolbuzin. The Tobolsk chieftain died from painful shock and great blood loss four days later. "Cossack German" Beyton was very sad about the loss of a friend. Later, he sincerely wrote in his report: "We drank the same blood cup with the deceased, with Alexei Larionovich, and he chose heavenly joy for himself, and left us in sorrow."
Having hit enough of Albazin, Lantan in the 20th of September 1686 decided to persuade the garrison to surrender. The command of the fortress with the released Russian prisoner Fyodorov was given a letter: "You do not anger the great forces, rather surrender … And if it does not, we will not disperse in any way." Beyton replied with a firm refusal and, with a mockery, dismissed three captured Manchus behind the walls of the fortress: they say, for one Russian, three of your "Bogdoytsy" will give.
Lantan took the hint and immediately sent troops to storm Albazin. The assault went on continuously with all the forces of the Chinese army for five days (!) And did not give the attackers any results. Then, before the beginning of October, the Kangxi commander twice raised his troops to storm the Cossack Thermopylae - and again to no avail. Moreover, in response to the assaults, the Cossacks switched to sorties. As a result of the most effective of them, the fifth in a row, artillery depots were blown up and food grain delivered from the lower reaches of the Amur was again burnt.
As a result, by mid-October the position of the Lantan Expeditionary Army became very complicated. Only irrecoverable losses in manpower amounted to more than 1,500 people, ammunition was running out, the food ration for one soldier was reduced by four times. The resistance of the Cossacks in Albazin was so overwhelmingly effective that the personal office of the Kangxi Emperor was forced to issue a special circular for foreign ambassadors explaining the failures on the Amur. The “Explanation” was, of course, compiled taking into account the Chinese mentality: “The Russians in Albazin are facing their deaths, since they have no choice. All of them are criminals sentenced to death who have no opportunity to return to their homeland."
Collection of items from the excavations of the Albazin fort. Photo: Vladimir Tarabashchuk
At the beginning of November 1686, Lantan gave an order to end all active operations against Albazin and to begin a "deep" siege. The Chinese commander would not have made, perhaps, this rash decision, if he knew that out of 826 defenders of the fortress, only 150 people remained alive, and the entire central square of the fortress was turned into a cemetery. In Albazin scurvy raged - all the main losses the Cossacks suffered not from the bullets of the Chinese, but from the "pale death" and the diseases associated with it. Beighton himself, due to swollen ulcerated legs, could hardly walk on crutches.
However, the situation in the Chinese military camp was not much better. Already in December, as a result of the Cossack sorties, Lantan practically ran out of food - the Chinese army began to resemble a crowd of emaciated people who were hardly able to hold weapons. Lantan also could not retreat from Albazin: the ships of the Chinese flotilla froze into the Amur, and the Manchu horses were either eaten or died from lack of forage. In severe frosts, a foot march of extremely emaciated people, more than 500 km long, to the Esuli fort burned by the Cossacks could become a death sentence for the entire Chinese army.
In this situation, if the Muscovite administration in Transbaikalia had at least some available military forces, one blow of a military detachment of 200-300 people would be enough to end the entire Chinese expeditionary corps once and for all.
War results of the Cossack Thermopylae
Information about the military embarrassment of the Chinese expeditionary army in the Amur region finally became the property of the diplomatic circles of the countries of Asia and Europe. The Qing Empire, in order to preserve its political prestige, refused to withdraw its troops from the Amur, although the exhausted soldiers of the expeditionary corps were covered by an epidemic: in January-February 1687, the Chinese lost more than a thousand soldiers from diseases alone. Nevertheless, Lantan, having not received an order to retreat, gritting his teeth, continued the "dull" siege of Albazin. However, the Cossack fortress at the beginning of 1687 was probably no longer defended by people, but by the unbroken spirit of the heroes who died here: only 66 defenders remained in Albazin, of whom only nineteen Cossacks could hold weapons.
Lantan received the order to completely lift the siege only at the beginning of May 1687. A disjointed crowd of human shadows, in which one could hardly recognize the furious Manchu warriors, slowly stretched downstream of the Amur. This army could not move far from Albazin: after ten versts the Chinese set up a camp in which the Kangxi soldiers put themselves in order until the end of August. Only on August 30, the pitiful remnants of the Lantan corps sailed on ships towards Aigun. The invasion ended in failure.
As a result of the Albazin Thermopylae, the influence of the Qing Empire in the Amur basin became ghostly. Success at Albazin was not the only one. The Cossacks of the Yakut Voivodeship harshly suppressed the Tungus uprising, inspired by Chinese emissaries. Pursuing the Tungus, the Cossacks found a large Chinese detachment in the area of the Tungirsk port and completely destroyed it. The Cossacks of Nerchinsk utterly defeated the Mungal khans, the allies of Kangxi. Having lost several thousand horsemen, the Mungals (Mongols) unconditionally withdrew from the war, and now there could be no talk of any concentric attack on Nerchinsk from both sides. In Yeniseisk, a four-thousand Cossack-Russian army was prepared to be sent to the Amur. It seemed that Muscovy Russia forever came into the possession of the richest lands along the Amur. Alas, it only seemed …
Tough negotiations
On July 20, 1689, Russian-Chinese peace negotiations began in Nerchinsk. From the side of the Muscovites, they were led by Fyodor Golovin, a later famous figure in the “Petrov's nest”. Golovin was a typical representative of the Moscow elite of the pre-Petrine era - the era of the breakdown of the Great Russian national identity as a result of the destructive reforms of Patriarch Nikon. A sharp mind, but unprincipled, monstrously resourceful, but strong-willed, easily "walking over the heads" for his personal career, Fyodor Golovin could successfully fulfill his diplomatic mission in Nerchinsk, if the ax of the unconditional tsarist will hung over him. Alas, this will was not felt in Nerchinsk: in Moscow, the final act of the struggle between Tsarina Sofya Alekseevna and young Peter I for power was unfolding. Golovin was essentially left to himself and disposed of this situation with obvious benefit for himself.
From the Chinese side, the diplomatic mission was headed by the commander of the emperor's guard, Prince Songotu. The delegation included Lantagne, already known to us, as well as two Jesuit translators: the Spaniard Thomas Pereira and the Frenchman Jean-Francois Gerbillon.
The negotiations were not easy. The main stumbling block was, of course, Albazin. The Chinese demanded the unconditional destruction of these Cossack Thermopylae. Fyodor Golovin was ready to recognize the sovereignty of China over the lower reaches of the Amur, but on condition that the border between Russia and China along Albazin was preserved. The instruction received by Golovin in the Ambassadorial Order of Muscovy clearly demanded the preservation of Albazin as an eastern military outpost of Russia. There was a moment when Prince Songotu tried to "turn the chessboard": he began to threaten an immediate war - fortunately, the Qing ambassadors arrived in Nerchinsk, accompanied by an army of 15 thousand people and a special artillery regiment. Golovin, who did not bother to bring up military forces to Nerchinsk in advance, could only rely on a consolidated corps of Russian archers, Cossacks and Tungus, with a total number of no more than three thousand people. Nevertheless, in this case, Golovin showed determination: he told Songotu about his agreement to break off the negotiations and began to defiantly strengthen the walls of Nerchinsk.
Fedor Golovin. Reproduction of an engraving by P. Schenk
Songotu, seeing the determination of the Russians to fight, returned to negotiations. The Chinese prince simply could not do otherwise, because the day before he received clear instructions from the emperor himself, where Kangxi ordered to significantly moderate territorial claims to the Russians. "If we make Nerchinsk a border, then the Russian envoys," wrote Kangxi, "will have nowhere to stop, and this will complicate communication … You can make Aigun a border."
The Chinese fort Aigun was located more than 500 km east of Albazin, which means that the Chinese were ready not only to accept the existence of Albazin, but even to transfer to the Muscovites a huge strip of land to the east of the fortress.
Kangxi's pliability was, of course, not accidental. Albazin was not taken, the walls of the fortress were fortified. The Mongol-Chinese border became very restless: yesterday's allies were clearly preparing for a war with China. Most alarming, however, was the powerful invasion of the western Qing provinces by the Dzungars. The Supreme Khan of the Dzungars, Galdan, persistently suggested that Muscovite Rus' joint military intervention in China. Kangxi had no illusions as to whether Fedor Golovin knew about these initiatives of the Dzungar Khan. Golovin, of course, knew about this. Knew … - and passed Albazin!
Betrayed and forgotten
How this happened is still not clear to any historian in the world. How could one agree to the total destruction of the fortress not occupied by the enemy, while transferring over 1 million square kilometers to him free of charge? With the painting by Fyodor Golovin on the Treaty of Nerchinsk, Muscovite Rus lost almost the entire Amur basin, conquered by the Cossacks, right down to the Pacific coast. The strategically important heights of the Big and Small Khingan were lost. And with the loss of fertile lands of the middle Amur plains, Russia automatically lost the grain (that is, food) self-sufficiency of Transbaikalia and Eastern Siberia. Now every kilogram of grain had to be transported to Nerchinsk or Yakutsk not from a distance of 700-800 km, but from the Urals and Western Siberia, that is, at a distance of 3, 5-4 thousand kilometers!
When Fyodor Golovin returned to Moscow, he did not try to explain to Tsar Peter I how, in extremely favorable foreign policy conditions, it was possible to lose at the negotiating table what was reliably protected by Cossack steadfastness in a bloody struggle. Golovin explained the complete liquidation of the large gold treasury, which was issued to him in the Ambassadorial order for the needs of bribing foreign ambassadors, as well as "thieves and charming people," by the need … to bribe the Jesuit translators. Only thanks to this generous bribe, the damned Catholics agreed to help the Muscovite, finally, to persuade the stubborn, absolutely unbending "Bogdoytsy".
The famous Russian proverb that if you are not caught is not a thief, was born, no doubt, in the gloomy corridors of Muscovy orders. Fyodor Golovin was not caught by the hand. The first of the great Russian boyars, having cut off his beard and lighting a stinking pipe, he made a brilliant career under Peter I. Who was given a bribe for surrendering and destroying Albazin - Golovin or still the Jesuits of the Songotu mission - will forever remain a mystery. However, common sense cannot remain beyond the bounds of time: why was it necessary to pay when, according to the instructions of the Kangxi Emperor, the Songotu mission was to transfer not only Albazin, but almost the entire middle Cupid to the possession of Russia ?!
There is an old Cossack legend about how Esaul Beyton said goodbye to Albazin. Having received the monstrous order of Fyodor Golovin, which instructed "… to destroy the city of Albazin, and to unearth the rampart, and to take the servants with their wives and children and with all their bellies to Nerchinsk", Beyton gathered the Cossacks on the banks of the Amur. For a long time he tried to convince them that it was necessary to leave, that real forces from Muscovy had not arrived for the whole time after the siege, that the Chinese would return anyway and there would be cutting again, there would be blood. The Cossacks argued stubbornly, refused to leave. Then Beyton in a rage drew his heavy sword from its scabbard and with the words: "We should not be in Albazin - how can this sword not float!" - threw the weapon at Cupid. And then, oh miracle! The broadsword, supported by a powerful whirlpool, suddenly floated up with its handle - as if in the form of a cross - and, sparkling with a gilded stripe in the sun, slowly, very slowly, sank to the bottom …
After the departure of the Cossacks from Albazin, the Russian people were able to re-emerge on the high banks of the Amur only two hundred years later - in the second half of the 19th century.
In the Thermopylae Gorge, 60 years after the death of three hundred Spartans, a stern monument, beautiful in its courageous simplicity, was erected. In the small village of Albazino in the Amur Region, which is as slowly fading away as thousands of other villages in Russia, there is still no monument to the fallen Cossacks.
