Together with the yoke, the period of the rule of the Tatar warriors and the payment of tribute ended. The time of pure fencing fights is over as well. Small arms appeared, but they did not come from the east, where gunpowder was invented, which honestly served the Mongol conquests, but from the west. And it was preceded by militant monasticism, which received the blessing of the Catholic Church to seize the eastern lands. Knights in cloaks decorated with crosses appeared on the borders of the Russian land. They carried with them a different order, a different faith and a different way of life.
Western teachers
In 1240 the Swedes undertook a crusade against Russia. Their army on many ships entered the mouth of the Neva and landed troops. Novgorod was left to its own devices. Rus defeated by the Tatars could not provide him with any support. Along the Neva, a Swedish detachment under the command of Jarl (Prince) Birger (the future ruler of Sweden and founder of Stockholm) wanted to sail to Lake Ladoga, occupy Ladoga, and from here along the Volkhov to go to Novgorod. The Swedes were in no hurry with the offensive, which made it possible for Alexander Nevsky to gather a small number of volunteers from Novgorodians and Ladoga residents and, taking his "small squad", to meet the enemy.
There was no time to conduct combat coordination of this army. Therefore, Alexander Nevsky decided to use the skills of warfare, which the locals had long mastered. Namely: a stealthy approach and a quick raid.
The Swedes had a significant advantage in manpower, technical equipment and skills in group fights. They lost only in individual single combat. Therefore, Alexander came up with a daring plan, the idea of which was to minimize the possibility of the Swedes using their advantages and to impose a battle in which the general fight is divided into many individual single combats, essentially hand-to-hand fighting.
Russian troops secretly approached the mouth of Izhora, where the enemies, unaware of their presence, stopped to rest, and on the morning of July 15 they suddenly attacked them. The appearance of the Russian army was unexpected for the Swedes, their boats were on the coast, next to them tents were pitched, in which the squad was located. Only the protection of the Swedes was in gear and ready for battle, the rest did not have time to put on protection and were forced to join the battle unprepared.
The most trained warriors from the squad of the Russian prince coped with the security, and the rest pounced on the Swedes and began to chop them with axes and swords before they had time to take weapons. The Swedes fled, hastily loading some of the dead and wounded onto the ships. The surprise of the attack, well-planned actions and good individual training of the vigilantes helped the Russian soldiers to win this battle. Then there was the Battle of the Ice and other battles in the western direction. Russia has resisted.
Lithuania occupied a special place in relations with Russia. During the Mongol yoke, the principality of Lithuania, having annexed part of the territory of Russia, turned into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Russia.
In 1410, an army of Poles, Russians, Lithuanians and Tatars turned against the Teutonic Order. The order had half the number of warriors, but the knights, chained together with horses in armor and impenetrable for arrows and darts, had a better chance of victory. Russian, Polish and Lithuanian horsemen had only chain mail, reinforced with steel plates. The Tatars, as always, were light.
The battle began at Grunwald on 15 June. The first to attack were the Tatar horsemen, shooting arrows at the dense ranks of the knights. The formation of the order stood, not paying attention to the arrows bouncing off the shiny armor. Having let the Tatars as close as possible, the steel avalanche began to approach them. The Tatars, leaving her, turned to the right. The cavalry of the allied army, which tried to counterattack the knights, was overturned by the blow of the order. The next blow fell on the Russian and Lithuanian regiments. Russia was represented by the Smolensk regiments, which almost all perished in this field, but detained the crusaders. After that, the second line of the united army entered the battle, the attack along which was led by the master of the order himself. She also could not withstand the blow of the crusaders, but behind her was the third line. The crusaders halted in indecision, and at that moment they were struck in the rear by the previously scattered regiments. The knights were surrounded, their formation was broken, and the usual hand-to-hand combat began. The knights were hacked from all sides, dragged from their horses with hooks and finished off with narrow daggers. The Battle of Grunwald became the swan song of chivalry, which lost the battle precisely in hand-to-hand combat. The time had come for small arms and guns; in the new conditions, hand-to-hand combat still had to take its rightful place.
All the best in the western and eastern approaches to hand-to-hand combat, united by our ancestors, was rethought in accordance with Russian tradition.
In renewed Russia
Engulfed in flames of fires, tormented from all sides by enemies, torn apart by the strife of princes and boyars, Russia was irresistibly moving towards autocracy. Persecutions and executions of disagreeable princes and boyars began, at the same time the Tatars, who asked for asylum in Russia, received it on the condition of protection from their fellow tribesmen.
The hand-to-hand combat that arose among the Slavs and the Rus as a way of survival and war has undergone natural selection over the centuries. The primitive methods of offensive and defensive technique using arms, legs and weapons were transformed into uniform techniques. These techniques began to be used for military training.
The descendants of the Rus, who formed the basis of the princely and boyar families, still adhered to the family tradition of transferring military skills in squads, which consisted of "boyar children". Preference was given to melee weapons, and with the advent of firearms, they learned to use them. A fist fight was also a necessary part of the training. The principle “Father could, I can, and the children will be able to” worked flawlessly.
Boyars served as thousand and centurions, receiving "fodder" for this in the form of taxes collected from the population. Landless princes and boyars who came to serve in Moscow, as well as Tatar "princes", began to pry on the old boyars. A cruel "parochial account" flared up. The subject of the dispute was the volosts, who obey whom in the service, and even places, where to whom to sit at the feasts. Fights were a frequent occurrence, the art of fist fighting was used. In these fights, the boyars pounded each other with their fists, dragged by the beards and fought, rolling on the floor.
Fist fights were the favorite pastime of the peasants. Unlike the "fighting slaves" of the boyar and princely squads, who practiced military training, the peasants developed the art of fist fighting as a folk tradition. On Shrovetide, one village went out to another to fight with fists. They fought until they bloody, there were also killed. Fights could take place not only with fists, but also with the use of stakes and other improvised means. In addition to group fights, individual fights were held, in which anyone could show their strength and dexterity.
The court also often boiled down to a duel on fists, despite the fact that Ivan III issued a code of law with written laws, its introduction into the life of the population was slow, and age-old traditions had tremendous power.
Russian soldiers, their training, tactics and equipment have undergone changes. The infantry was still strong in hand-to-hand combat, where they used formation and individual single combats. The latter had a tactical sense, which consisted in creating a temporary slight advantage over the enemy. For example, three to one. With practiced actions, the warriors quickly coped with the enemy fighter, before his comrades could help him.
The strengthening of the autocracy became the reason for the struggle with the boyars and princes. Prince Vasily, who was in Tatar captivity, and then deprived of the boyars of sight, began a struggle with the boyar and princely freedom, taking away their power. He brought the Tatars, who asked for asylum in Russia, closer to him, giving them Gorodets on the Oka as an inheritance. Ivan III continued to strengthen his power and subdued the headstrong Novgorod. A battle took place on the Sheloni River, in which the 40,000-strong Novgorod militia was easily defeated by the 4,000-strong professional and well-trained grand ducal army. Cannons and bombards raised their voices more and more loudly, changing the tactics of war, and with it the requirements for hand-to-hand combat. Having annexed Novgorod, the Grand Duke took away the feeding and estates from the boyars, divided them into parts and distributed them to the “boyar children” in the form of estates. This is how the landowners appeared. The landowner was liable for military service and had to appear at the first request with a horse and in armor. The cost of such a division was the gradual loss of the old system of training a vigilante in hand-to-hand combat, but the general discipline and controllability of the army increased.
The main struggle began under Ivan the Terrible. The tsar, having carried out a reform and prepared an army, declared war on the Kazan Khanate, the apotheosis of which was the storming of Kazan. The complex use of artillery, undermining with the detonation of a powder charge, shooting training of Russian soldiers made it possible to take Kazan. Desperate street fighting has evolved into hand-to-hand combat everywhere. Moreover, they were often preceded by fire from squeaks and samopals, after which there was a rapid rapprochement with the enemy and all available weapons were used.
The Renaissance, which began in Europe, attracted Russia with its achievements. Western gunsmiths and foundry makers were ahead of domestic ones in their development. Attempts to invite them to Russia met with strong resistance from Livonia.
In 1558, the king sent troops to Livonia. The war was going well for Russia until Sweden, Lithuania, Poland and Crimea intervened. Boyar treason also increased. Some of the princes with their squads went over to the side of Lithuania, and the governor of Dorpat, Kurbsky, betrayed the Russian army on Ulla, after which he fled to the enemies, where he led the Lithuanian troops moving towards Polotsk.
The danger of an internal threat forced the king to take drastic measures. After leaving Moscow, he established the oprichnina - a special "courtyard" with his own guard, in which he recruited a thousand oprichniks, the overwhelming majority of whom were rootless people. This army was stationed in the Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda. From this moment, an interesting period begins in the history of Russia and the development of hand-to-hand combat.
Life in the settlement was built according to the monastic rules with a strict and ascetic way of life. The guardsmen wore black monastic clothes and rode around on horses with tied brooms and dog heads. This meant that they would sweep with a broom and gnaw out, like dogs, all the "evil spirits" in Russia.
The tsar tried to make of the guardsmen a semblance of a monastic order. But the oprichnina system had a goal that was not similar to the tasks of the western and eastern militant monastics. Its task was to take power away from a whole class of boyars and princes. For this, special people were needed - disciplined, decisive, courageous, capable of acting with a fist, cold steel and a squeak, while loyal to the king and not connected with the bulk of the princes and boyars, against whom their actions were directed. There were such people, they were few. All of them came from ignorant clans, but had the above abilities. An internal war in the country has begun. Powerful nobles never voluntarily part with wealth and power. Poison and dagger were added to the known types of weapons. Small groups of guardsmen began to quickly and secretly break into the estates of the enemies, carrying out their armed seizures, and then inquest.
The oprichnina became the prototype of the modern special service. Its bright representative, Malyuta Skuratov, with a small stature, was distinguished by outstanding strength and with a blow of his fist could kill a bull (Masutatsu Oyama took years of training to achieve this). It was the guardsmen who developed the skills of hand-to-hand combat, which are necessary when carrying out police events. They also proved themselves worthy in the struggle against the external enemies of Russia. The same Malyuta was in one of the combat regiments and died in battle during the capture of Weissenstein Castle (now Paide in Estonia) on January 1, 1953.
In the Russian Empire
I would like to say a few words about the Cossacks, who had their own traditions, characteristics, habits and rules of hand-to-hand combat. Cossacks, skillful fighters and daring hand-to-hand fighters, were irreplaceable help in military affairs. So, hired during the time of Ivan the Terrible 500 Cossacks led by Ermak managed to conquer the entire Siberian Khanate. Squeaks, cannons and hand-to-hand combat were the main arsenal of Cossack techniques that helped to achieve stunning success.
The beginning of the troubled time, which took place not without the participation of the Cossacks and Poles, left many examples of hand-to-hand combat that took place in the struggle for Russian power, but it had little effect on the development of history, and did not introduce innovations either in general army affairs or in hand-to-hand combat techniques. A peculiar period of stagnation lasted until the reign of Peter I.
Peter, with a penchant for military affairs from childhood, learned javelin throwing, archery and musket shooting while still in the amusing troops. This was the end of his “individual training” as a fighter. The foreigners with whom the Tsar had the opportunity to communicate freely in childhood had a strong influence on him, and he began to create a new army based on the best Western achievements. At the same time, Peter moved away from the template and did not give up all the best that was in our army.
The main formation of the infantry was a deployed formation in 6 ranks. The techniques of fast loading and firing were introduced into combat training, after which a quick rebuilding was carried out. The main armament was a fuse with a baguette and a sword. Small arms were inaccurate, but with massive fire they inflicted significant damage on the enemy. When approaching the enemy, a baguette and a sword were used. Both required specific fencing skills. It was he who was trained in the army, training in hand-to-hand combat in its pure form was not conducted. Working with a sharp baguette demanded special dexterity, and the soldiers' lack of protective equipment forced them to parry enemy blows with weapons or dodge them. At the same time, a purely bayonet battle was effective when the unit was able to keep the formation. But if the formation for some reason crumbled or the battle took place in a narrow space, the tried and tested old skills of hand-to-hand combat were used. It is surprising that in the absence of training in this, the army had skills in hand-to-hand combat. The soldiers recruited from the people were well versed in the traditional techniques of fist and stick fights, which were still in abundance in the Russian countryside.
In the battle of Lesnaya, the main contribution to the victory of the Russian troops was a swift blow with bayonets and swords at the Swedish positions, which grew into a fierce hand-to-hand combat and ended with the victory of the Russians. The famous Battle of Poltava ended in the same way, when the Russian and Swedish troops, having passed the distance of cannon and rifle fire, rushed swiftly towards each other. A hot hand-to-hand fight began to boil. The terrible work of bayonets and sabers, butts, pikes and halberds sows destruction and death around. Units of the “old order” - Cossacks and Kalmyks (irregular troops) - also take part in the battle; their ability to fight in hand-to-hand combat also contributes to victory.
Hand-to-hand combat in sea battles required special skills and abilities. Taking an enemy ship on board did not leave any options for a fight, except for hand-to-hand combat. At the same time, protective equipment was also of little use. When it fell into the water, it worked like a stone around its neck, and pulled to the bottom. Fuzei with baguette did not give the opportunity to turn around on the cramped deck. It remained to use pistols, swords and daggers. This is where skill and audacity were needed.
Russia became an empire that gave birth to new glorious names. Generalissimo Suvorov is one of them. Under Suvorov, the art of hand-to-hand combat was traditionally taken seriously, and the bayonet was respected. Suvorov himself perfectly studied the single training of his era, having passed through the career ladder all the positions of the lower ranks. His main task was to teach what was needed in war. He taught the silence in the formation, the order of fire, the speed of rebuilding and the unrestrained bayonet attack. Under him, the art of bayonet fighting was raised to a height unattainable for foreign armies. A description of the battle with the Turks at the Kinburn Spit has been preserved. The fight turned into hand-to-hand combat. Suvorov was in the forefront, on foot (the horse was wounded). Several Turks rushed at him, but the private of the Shlisselburg regiment, Novikov, shot one, stabbed the other, the rest fled.
During the capture of Ishmael, the battle in many places had a purely hand-to-hand character. Some of the Cossacks were armed with short pikes - the weapon most capable of action in crowded conditions. When they were already climbing the walls, the crowd of Turks from the side rushed to the Cossacks. The lances flew under the blows of the Turkish sabers, and the Cossacks fought with their bare hands. They managed to hold out until the cavalry and the 2nd battalion of the Polotsk Musketeer Regiment came to the rescue.
There was a fierce struggle in the city for every building. With rifles at the ready, the soldiers rushed into battles in the narrow streets. Point-blank shot and bayonet combat. Short Cossack lances cut into enemy flesh. The Danube was red with blood.
The Patriotic War of 1812 led to a partisan struggle against the French conquerors. Regular units and the people's militia often acted together, which contributed to the restoration of folk traditions of hand-to-hand combat in the army.
The entire 19th century passed in continuous wars. Despite the differences in the theaters of operations and the levels of training of opponents, hand-to-hand combat still played a key role in the most fierce battles. In the troops, he was taught as a bayonet or fencing, but this did not change the essence. The appearance in the army of new types of small arms played an important role. The adoption of the Smith and Wesson revolver, the Mosin rifle and its shortened cavalry counterpart, as well as machine guns made a greater revolution in hand-to-hand combat than the past centuries. Hand-to-hand combat was increasingly replaced by close fire or combined with it.
Nevertheless, bayonet attacks and hand-to-hand combat played a key role in the actions of the infantry for a long time.
During the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. the fanaticism of the enemy seemed strange, his indifference to his own life in bayonet attacks and his readiness to die at any moment. Nevertheless, it was in hand-to-hand combat that the greatest advantage of the Russian soldier was. This clearly shows one of the most successful episodes of this war for the Russian army, albeit now little-known episodes of this war - the battle for the Novgorod and Putilov hills. When the Russian units reached the Japanese trenches, hand-to-hand fighting ensued. Lieutenant General Sakharov wrote in a telegram to the main headquarters on October 5, 1904: “The evidence of stubborn bayonet fighting on the hill is obvious. Some of our officers, who set examples and were the first to break into the Japanese trenches, were stabbed to death. The weapons of our dead and the weapons of the Japanese bear traces of desperate hand-to-hand combat."
The battle ended with the victory of the Russian troops. 1,500 bodies of Japanese soldiers and officers were found on the hill. 11 guns and 1 machine gun were captured. Here is such a "cultural exchange" with representatives of martial arts.
