The situation when the owner was not in the house, and the robbers were actively emptying the cabinets, could not but cause the revival of old problems and the strengthening of centrifugal forces. The Galician boyar opposition gained strength again, which did not come under the blow of the steppe inhabitants and once again decided to isolate itself from the Romanovichs. Returning with their personal squads, the boyars took control of the deserted city and all local industries, including salt, which brought considerable profit. The Bolokhovites took up arms and began to raid the Galicia-Volyn principality in order to loot everything that the Mongols did not have time to take with them. Rostislav Mikhailovich, the son of Mikhail of Chernigov, entered into an alliance with them: he stayed the Galician prince for a few months, if not weeks, but already put forward claims to the city, and in the midst of the Mongol invasion made an unsuccessful campaign against Bakota, and later another, already successful. The crusaders in the north again took control of the city of Dorogochin (Drogichin) and the surrounding area. And this was far from the end: the bishop of Przemysl raised a revolt, the Chernigov boyars settled in Ponizye, the local boyars of a number of lands also showed their disobedience, believing that the power of the Romanovichs was over.
It would be so if the Mongols did the same with the Galicia-Volyn principality as with the other principalities of Rus. Meanwhile, Daniel and Vasilko remained with a fully combat-ready army, control over important cities and communications, and most importantly, sympathy from most of the important urban communities that survived the invasion. After all the devastation and misfortunes suffered at the beginning of 1241, the prince was ready to take the most drastic measures to punish the traitors, and the people forgave him cruelty, perhaps unnecessary. Two boyars who muddied the waters in Ponizye, Dobroslav and Grigory Vasilyevich, were summoned to negotiations in Galich, put in chains and soon died. Hotbeds of separatism were suppressed by force, and the guilty faced severe punishment. After several attempts, the crusaders were expelled from Dorogochin by force, and the townspeople, who opened the gates of the city for them and did not feel any special sympathy for the Romanovichs, suffered a rather harsh punishment: they were evicted to other lands, and the city was re-populated with refugees and migrants from other lands controlled by the Romanovichs.
Having coped with the internal enemy, Daniel took up the external enemy. Such were the prince Rostislav Mikhailovich and his allies, the Bolokhovites. Together, during the second campaign, they were able to occupy Przemysl and Galich, having entered into an alliance with the local boyars and clergy, but with the news that Daniel and Vasilko were already on the way, and with all his considerable army, the prince fled to Hungary. At the same time, Rostislav was very unlucky, in the process of flight he came across the Mongols returning from the European campaign, who gave him an additional bashing. Having dealt with his remaining supporters, the Romanovichs took up the Bolokhovites. They have long interfered with the Galicia-Volyn principality, acting as a small but constantly hostile neighbor. In 1241-42, the Bolokhov issue was resolved once and for all: this land was ruined, people were taken to a full and distributed to the boyars loyal to Daniel in Volyn and Galicia, and refugees from other Russian and Polish lands, who had previously fled under protection of the Romanovichs from the Mongols. The arbitrariness of the Bolokhov land was ended, it was divided between the Romanovichs and the Kiev princes and ceased to be a constant problem for the central government.
The end of the struggle for Galich
The events associated with Rostislav Mikhailovich reminded the Romanovichs that the Mongol-Tatars (Tatar-Mongols?) Can come to the Russian land with war as much as they want, but the strife will still continue until all the applicants are given an exemplary flogging … It was this flogging that the Romanovichs took up after the elimination of the boyar riots and the consequences of the invasion of Batu.
Rostislav Mikhailovich did not stop and continued to claim Galich, while in Hungary. The Hungarians, like the Poles, for some time could not participate in hostilities, trying to recover from the visit of Batu Khan with his nukers, but they did not stop supporting Rostislav. A coalition was formed with the participation of the prince, the boyars who remained loyal to him, who fled from the repressions of the Romanovichs to Hungary, the Krakow prince Boleslav V the Shy, the Hungarian king Bela IV and the dissatisfied communities of the Przemysl land, which remained opposed to the power of Daniel and Vasilko. In 1243, Rostislav, who became a close person to the Hungarian king, married his daughter Anna, which already unequivocally hinted at a future campaign for the Carpathians to the east.
The Romanovichs did not wait for the war to come to them, and were the first to strike. The target was Boleslav the Shy, who fought at that time against Konrad Mazowiecki. Daniel supported the latter, and in 1243-1244 made two campaigns, trying to weaken the Polish prince. This was only partially successful: Lublin was captured, which for a short time entered the state of the Romanovichs. It was also necessary to repel the raids of the Lithuanians twice, but here again the relationship "my brother, my enemy" showed themselves, which more than once showed the Lithuanian-Russian relationship: after fighting for some time and not achieving success, the parties entered into an alliance and at the crucial moment supported each other against the Poles, Hungarians and Crusaders.
In 1244 Rostislav, having gathered his strength, invaded the Galicia-Volyn state and captured Przemysl. However, he did not retain control over the city for long: Daniel soon recaptured it, and the prince fled to Hungary. After a quick regrouping and gathering of all forces in 1245, supporters of Rostislav led by him, as well as the Hungarians and Poles, again invaded there and with the same purpose, also capturing Przemysl and moving on, besieging the city of Yaroslavl. Daniel, having enlisted the support of the Polovtsians, set out to meet the allied army. This year should have decided everything.
During the siege, Rostislav Mikhailovich boasted that he was ready to defeat Daniel and Vasilko with only a dozen people, so insignificant are their forces. On the eve of the battle, he even arranged a knightly tournament (one of the few documented tournaments in Russia), where he dislocated his shoulder, and in the coming battle could no longer fight as skillfully as usual (and Rostislav was just famous as a skillful and capable warrior). Many took this as a bad sign. In the battle that unfolded on August 17, 1245 near Yaroslavl, the allied army of Rostislav, the Hungarians, Poles and rebellious boyars was smashed to smithereens. During the battle, for the first time, the results of the military reforms of Daniel and his son Leo were noticeable: the infantry firmly held the blow, and the army itself actively and accurately maneuvered, which ensured the victory.
Many rebellious boyars were captured and executed. The Poles and Hungarians, after the demonstrative demonstration of the strength of the Romanovichs, who defeated the allied army even without their allies, the Mazovian prince and the Lithuanians of Mindaugas, preferred to go for reconciliation. Rostislav Mikhailovich, despite his bravado, barely escaped from the battlefield and was forced to abandon his claims to Galich. The Galicia-Volyn principality won and after long decades of strife and struggle finally completed its formation as a single and independent state with a strong centralized power of the prince and significant authority among the surrounding states.
Military reforms of Daniel Romanovich
Almost all his life, Daniil Romanovich fought. Most often he won victories, but there were also defeats. The invasion of the Mongols into his state and the need to fight such a serious enemy turned out to be large-scale and painful for him. Fortunately, this prince turned out to be pragmatic and adventurous enough to become a good student in military matters. Moreover, he was able to benefit from his own experience of resistance to the Mongols. Favorable factors were also the military talents of Lev Danilovich, the heir of Daniel, and although the victim, but in general, the preserved wealth of the Galician-Volyn land. As a result, already in 1241, large-scale military reforms began in the Galicia-Volyn principality, which will continue during the reign of Leo and form a very effective and advanced army by the standards of their time, which will become the pride of the Romanovichs until the very end of their existence.
The old army of the Galicia-Volyn principality was not exactly bad, but in the new conditions it was simply not enough. By the 1240s, it was based on the aggregate of the prince's squad and the militia. The squad was supported at the expense of the prince, consisted mainly of heavy cavalry, was his most loyal warriors, but remained very small, reaching several hundred. To her, as a rule, the boyar militia was added: each boyar, like the European feudal lord, at the call of the prince brought with him an armed servant, foot and horse, who formed a "spear". In total, before the invasion of Batu, Daniel had about 2,5-3 thousand permanent troops (up to 300-400 warriors, the rest - the boyar militia). This was enough for solving small tasks, but in the case of large wars, the zemstvo militia was also called up, i.e. city regiments and rural communal warriors. The size of the Romanovich army by 1240, with the full mobilization of forces and means, is estimated by modern historians at about 30 thousand, but this is subject to a short-term convocation, and far from brilliant training and equipment of a significant part of such an army, which is why, in fact, such an army was never called … In most of the battles for his father's inheritance, Daniel hardly had more than 6-8 thousand people.
In the new conditions, as mentioned above, such an army was not enough. It was required to exhibit in the field as many soldiers, foot and horse, as possible. At the same time, the old system for the first time gave a major failure: because of the conflicts between the prince and the boyars, the latter more and more often refused to come when called with their "spears", as a result of which the army not only did not grow, but also decreased. At the same time, the prince remained loyal to the petty boyars, who were relatively poor and unable to independently provide for their military needs. The situation was saved by the fact that Daniel had a lot of land: even in the times of the Commonwealth, the crown lands, the former princes, after some reduction, represented more than 50% of the land fund of the voivodships of the former Galicia-Volyn principality. The option of action was obvious, besides, something similar was already used in neighboring Poland, and therefore, from the beginning of the 1240s, a local army began to form at a rapid pace in the Romanovich state, which made it possible to deploy numerous and fairly well-trained cavalry loyal to the prince in the field. After joining Poland, it is these local boyars who serve in exchange for the right to use the crown land and peasants, will harmoniously join the Polish gentry, having a history close to it, and a socio-economic and political role in the state. True, it was not yet called a local army, but it turned out to be so close in character to what was created in the Moscow principality in the 15th century that this term can be used for simplification.
The infantry also underwent changes. Previously, only city regiments and squads provided more or less combat-ready pawns. By the standards of some Western European countries, this was a lot, but in the realities of Eastern Europe in the middle of the 13th century, this was already not enough. Numerous infantry was required, capable of withstanding the blow of the Mongolian steppe, and perhaps the European knightly cavalry - in general, such an infantry that would appear in the masses in Europe (with the exception of Scandinavia, there is a special case) after 100-200 years. And such an infantry was created! It was based on community relations, multiplied by constant training: the militia units gathered more or less regularly for exercises, on which the prince's treasury spent a huge amount of resources. The militias were recruited from both well-knit urban communities and less organized rural communities (in the latter case, the recruitment took place in geographically close villages, as a result of which the militias, as a rule, were either personally acquainted, or at least had common acquaintances due to their close residence) … After training, such detachments showed, though not outstanding, but sufficient combat capability, discipline and resilience on the battlefield to represent a great force on the battlefield together with the city regiments. The received infantry could already withstand a cavalry strike, as happened in 1257 in the battle of Vladimir-Volynsky. It had not yet become the main force on the battlefield, but at the same time it allowed the cavalry to be completely free, which became a tool for delivering precise, well-defined strikes at the right time and in the right place, while the infantrymen could keep the bulk of the enemy army in front of them by tying him in battle.
The real revolution has taken place in the area of personal protection. Here Daniel and Leo adopted the Chinese and Mongolian experience, thanks to which the steppe people were able to create massive, cheap and quite effective armor. Heavy cavalry began to defend itself with stronger types of chain mail, as well as more massively use scaly and plate armor, which required a significant development of the Galicia-Volyn forges and workshops. The armor acquired high collars, developed plate bracers and a longer chain mail, which began to better protect the legs of the riders. The local cavalry, as a rule, provided themselves with armor themselves, while the pawns received protection at the expense of the princely treasury. For the infantry, armor was even simpler and cheaper, in fact, boiling down to quilts, various "khatagu degel" (roughly and simplistically speaking, this is the Mongolian analogue of quilts with the maximum protection area of a warrior) and helmets, and not always iron ones. By the standards of past times, it was an ersatz, but most of the warriors were protected by it, and such protection left very little open surface of the human body, which provided sufficient protection against Mongol arrows and chopping blows. This played an important role in strengthening the resilience of the infantry. However, horsemen, who could not afford expensive armor planks or chain mail of new designs, did not hesitate to acquire such protection. The horses received protection: under Daniel, partial, and under Leo - already complete, while before that horses received any serious protection quite rarely.
Offensive weapons developed rapidly. First of all, this affected crossbows: realizing their usefulness in the defense of fortresses, the Romanovichs began to arm field armies with them, which allowed the infantry to quite painfully snap back against the well-protected heavy cavalry of the steppe or even the Hungarians with the Poles. Throwing artillery, previously undeveloped, received significant development: the Russians from Southwestern Russia quickly adopted and improved both heavy siege stone throwers and light throwing machines intended for field battles.
The organization of the troops as a whole has noticeably increased, thanks to which it became possible to divide them into separate (independent) detachments and to maneuver them in battle. For the first time, the division into wings and reserves during battles began to be widely used. The Mongols copied the method of carrying out lightning marches: during conflicts with the Poles, the Galician-Volyn army once covered 50 kilometers in a day, along with light throwing artillery, making the enemy horrified at such agility.
Colossal progress was observed in fortification: old wooden fortifications were rapidly replaced by mixed or entirely stone ones, which were too tough for the Mongols in 1241. In strengthening the cities, the Russians comprehended such fanaticism that even neighboring Poles and Hungarians soon began to characterize the Galician-Volyn land as a very protected, real country of fortresses (downright Castilla de la Rus!). In addition to cities, separate "pillars" began to appear: stone towers designed to protect road junctions, approaches to cities, etc. In peacetime, they were road protection points and customs, in wartime they turned into real fortresses. After the departure of the Mongols, they began to be built quite massively, although information has not been preserved about all of them, and in general, we can now observe only two such towers. In the event of an enemy invasion (including the Tatar hordes), such towers, moreover, built on a hill, could be completely impregnable for siege artillery, which made any offensive on the lands of the principality very difficult.
Of course, all these reforms were worth a lot of effort and a significant waste of resources. The state of the Romanovichs at that time literally lived in war; providing troops with new weapons and armor required a whole revolution in handicraft production, which, on the one hand, required a tremendous exertion of forces, and on the other, led to a significant increase in all handicrafts in Southwestern Russia at a time when in the rest of Russia it is most often was in decline. It was necessary to carry out the maximum concentration of all resources and incomes in the princely treasury, which sharply led to a drop in the role of the independent boyars, which lost control over most of the places of "feeding" and henceforth became a service class, wholly dependent on the prince. The treasury of the Romanovichs at this time rarely allowed itself any excesses, the list of third-party expenses was minimized; everything was spent on the maintenance of the most powerful army in Eastern Europe. Thanks to all the measures taken, it was possible to increase the overall combat capability of the troops and, if necessary, to call together a huge number of soldiers. True, most often Daniel and Leo continued to wage wars with limited forces, but at the same time they constantly retained significant reserves and "rear" in case of an unexpected visit of guests to their native lands, while earlier, during large campaigns, the patrimony remained poorly defended.
The Galicia-Volyn army was radically transformed and represented a very serious force on the battlefield, capable of resisting even a much richer Hungary. The very appearance of the army changed: due to the active use of armor of the steppe type in 1253, when Daniel invaded the Czech Republic, the local population mistook the Russian army for the Mongols; Mongols also called the squad of the king of Russia in 1260, when she fought with the Austrians on the side of the Hungarians. There was nothing bad at that time in this: the organic fusion of the military traditions of the steppe people, China and Russia turned out to be extremely effective. Already at the beginning of the XIV century, Vladislav Lokotok, the king of Poland, will write to Pope John XXIII that the Galician-Volyn army is an invincible shield of Europe on the way of the Tatar hordes and should not be underestimated. Taking into account the fact that only it stood between the lands of Lokotok himself and the steppe people, these words deserve attention, and even trust.
It is precisely such a large and effective army that will allow the Romanovichs, after the invasion of Batu, to survive in the difficult political situation that will develop in Eastern Europe after 1241.
