… And she feeds on fables.
A. S. Pushkin. Boris Godunov
There is also a more voluminous description of the events of 1380, which we find in the so-called "Chronicle of the Battle of Kulikovo", the older lists of which are present in several chronicles: Sofia first, Novgorod fourth, Novgorod fifth, and also in Novgorod Karamzin annals. The description of the war between Prince Dmitry and Mamai is more than lengthy here, so we will limit ourselves to describing only the battle itself:
“And at six o'clock in the afternoon the filthy Ishmaelites appeared in the field - and the field was open and vast. And then the Tatar regiments lined up against the Christians, and the regiments met. And, seeing each other, great forces moved, and the earth hummed, mountains and hills shook from the innumerable multitudes of soldiers. And they drew their weapons - two-edged in their hands. And the eagles flew away, as it is written, - "where there are corpses, there will be gathered eagles." At the appointed hour, Russian and Tatar guard regiments first began to arrive. The great prince himself attacked the first in the guard regiments on the filthy king Calf, called the incarnate devil Mamai. However, shortly thereafter, the prince drove off to the great regiment. And then the great army of Mamaev moved, all the forces of the Tatar. And from our side - the great prince Dmitry Ivanovich with all the Russian princes, having made the regiments, went against the rotten Polovtsi with all his army. And, looking up to heaven with prayer and filled with sorrow, he said in the words of the psalm: "Brothers, God is our refuge and strength." And immediately the two great forces came together for many hours, and covered the shelves a field of ten miles - such were the many soldiers. And there was a fierce and great slaughter, and a fierce battle, and a terrible roar; Since the creation of the world, there has not been such a battle among the Russian great dukes as with this great prince of all Russia. When they fought, from the sixth hour to the ninth, like rain from a cloud, the blood of both Russian sons and the filthy poured out, and countless numbers fell dead on both sides. And a lot of Russia was beaten by the Tatars, and the Tatars - by Russia. And a corpse fell on a corpse, a Tatar body fell on a Christian body; here and there it was possible to see how the Ruthenian pursued the Tatar, and the Tatar pursued the Ruthenian. They came together and mixed, because each wanted to defeat his opponent. And Mamai said to himself: "Our hair is torn out, our eyes do not have time to exude hot tears, our tongues grow stiff, and my larynx dries up, and my heart stops, my loins do not hold me, my knees are weakening, and my hands are numb."
What to say to us, or what to talk about, seeing a vicious death! Some have been hacked with swords, others have been pierced by sulitsa, others have been raised on spears! And despair gripped those Muscovites who had not been to the army. Seeing all this, they were afraid; and, having said goodbye to life, they fled and fled, and did not remember how the martyrs said to each other: “Brothers, let us be patient a little, winter is fierce, but heaven is sweet; and the sword is terrible, but the crown is glorious. And some of the Hagarian sons fled from loud cries, seeing a cruel death.
And after that, at nine o'clock in the afternoon, the Lord looked with merciful eyes at all the Russian princes and at the courageous governors, and at all Christians who dared to stand up for Christianity and were not afraid, as befits glorious soldiers. The pious saw in the ninth hour how the angels, fighting, helped the Christians, and the holy martyrs regiment, and the warrior George, and the glorious Dmitry, and the great princes of the same name - Boris and Gleb. Among them was the voivode of the perfect regiment of heavenly warriors - the Archangel Michael. Two governors saw the regiments of the filthy, and the three-solar regiment, and fiery arrows flying at them; godless Tatars fell, seized by the fear of God, and from Christian weapons. And God raised up the right hand of our prince to overcome foreigners.
And Mamai, trembling in fear and loudly rebelling, exclaimed: “Great is the Christian God and great is his strength! Brothers of the Ishmaelites, lawless Hagarians, run not by the ready roads! " And he himself, turning back, quickly ran to his Horde. And hearing about this, his dark princes and rulers also fled. Seeing this, other foreigners, persecuted by the wrath of God and possessed by fear, from young to old, fled. The Christians, seeing that the Tatars with Mamai ran, chased after them, beating and chopping the rotten without mercy, for God frightened the Tatar regiments with invisible power, and, defeated, they fled. And in pursuit of this, some Tatars fell under the arms of Christians, while others drowned in the river. And they drove them to the river as far as Swords, and there they beat the innumerable numbers of those fleeing. The princes drove the regiments of the Sodomites, beating them up to their camp, and seized great wealth, and all their property, and all the flocks of Sodom."
The "Word on the Life of the Grand Duke Dmitry Ivanovich" says the following: "And having taken Abraham's valor, praying to God and calling for help from St. Peter, the new wonderworker and intercessor of the Russian land, the prince went, like the ancient Yaroslav, to the filthy, evil-minded Mamai, the second Svyatopolk. And I met him in the Tatar field on the Don River. And the shelves came together like strong clouds, and weapons shone like lightning on a rainy day. The warriors fought hand-to-hand, blood flowed through the valleys, and the water of the Don River mixed with blood. And the Tatar heads, like stones, fell, and the corpses of the filthy lay like a chopped oak grove. Many of the faithful saw the angels of God helping Christians. And God helped Prince Dmitry, and his relatives, the holy martyrs Boris and Gleb; and the accursed Mamai ran in front of him. Damned Svyatopolk ran to death, and wicked Mamai died unknown. And Prince Dmitry returned with a great victory, as before Moses, having conquered Amalek. And there was silence in the Russian land. " And all - all other details are missing!"
Grand Duke Dmitry Ivanovich is crossing the Oka with his army. Miniature from "The Tale of the Battle of Kulikovo". XVI century
And only in "The Tale of the Mamayev Massacre" (the latest and at the same time the most extensive!) Monument of the Kulikovo cycle is there not only a detailed story about the victory of Dmitry Donskoy over the wicked "agaryan Mamai" but also … the most fascinating story about the events on the Kulikovo field. But, the fact is that the "Legend …" was written in the 15th century, that is, from 1401 to 1500, that is, in a hundred-year interval, as well as the chronicle story "On the Battle of the Don", relating to 1408 …
The famous historian I. N. Danilevsky in his lecture "Dmitry Donskoy: On the Kulikovo Field and Beyond" reports that it is known in approximately one and a half hundred copies, of which none have preserved the text in its original form. They are usually divided into eight editions: Basic, Chronicle, Distributed, Kiprianovskaya, edition of the chronicler Khvoroetanin; Western Russian processing; the edition, transitional to the Synopsis, and the edition of the Synopsis by Innokenty Gisel. The earliest are the first three of them.
At the same time, the dating of "Legends …" has a scatter in time from the end of the XIV and the first half of the XV century.. and up to the 30-40s. XVI century He considers the dating proposed by V. A. Kuchkin and refined by B. M. Kloss. In accordance with it, the "Legend …" was born not earlier than 1485, but most likely it happened in the second decade of the 16th century.
The army of the Grand Duke Dmitry Ivanovich crosses the Don. Miniature from "The Tale of the Battle of Kulikovo". XVI century
That is, it turns out that in all these editions the same event is described in different ways! Moreover, the author or authors of "The Tale …" made a lot of inaccuracies and mistakes in it. So, in the year of the battle, Gerontius could not be the archbishop of the city of Kolomna, since he took up this post more than seventy years after her. He called a certain Euphimius the archbishop of the city of Novgorod, but at that time there was no such archbishop. The Lithuanian army was commanded by the Grand Duke Olgerd, but he died three years before the Battle of Kulikovo. Temnik Mamai for the author is "tsar", which is completely untrue. Moreover, wanting to show Mamai a pagan (and he was not, for the Horde adopted the Muslim faith even during the reign of Khan Uzbek), he forces him to call not only Mohammed, but also such gods as Perun, Salavat, Rakliy and Khors, which could not be definition.
According to the "Legend", in the midst of the battle, the Tatar regiments strongly pressed the ranks of the Russians. And then Prince Vladimir Andreevich Serpukhovskoy, with pain in his heart watching the death of the "Orthodox army", invited the governor Bobrok to immediately join the battle. Bobrok, on the other hand, began to dissuade the prince from such hasty actions and urge him to wait "for a time like this" when the grace of God would come.
Moreover, in the "Tale …" this is not, but in the Chronicle and Distributed editions Bobrok also accurately defines "time is like":
"… wait for the most hour, in which the grace of God will be."
That is, he knows in advance that this is the "eighth hour" (the eighth hour of the day, according to the then system of calculating hours). And, as Volynets predicted, "the spirit of the south pulling them behind them." It was then and "glorify Bolynets:" … The hour is coming, for the time is approaching … the power of the Holy Spirit helps us "".
By the way, about the headwind blowing in the face of the Russian soldiers, it was written in the late Kiprianov edition of "The Tale …", but nowhere else!
Historian V. N. Rudakov proposed to solve the riddle of the "eighth hour" as follows: it is nothing more than a symbol! He found ancient Russian texts in which the southern spirit is not the wind at all. In particular, in the "Service Menaion" on September 8 there is the following: "The Prophet Habakkuk, seeing with clever eyes, Lord, Your coming. And thus crying out: … God will come from the south. Glory to Thy strength, glory to Thy indulgence. " That is, Bobrok was waiting for God, so he cried out, seeing his sign. Everything is in accordance with the Christian tradition of the time.
And now, again, for a while, let's digress from the text of the "Tale" and remember how many of our readers, for some reason, write in their comments that some Germans rewrote ALL THE CHRONICLES. Well, first of all, they just don't represent the scope of this work. Even if ALL GERMANS who existed at that time (well, say, during the time of the same Lomonosov) in Russia, would have taken up this business, then it would have taken many years. And it was necessary to know Russian perfectly! Its semantics, stylistics, phraseology, turns of speech … And second, but what is the goal? In reality, there could be only one, to belittle the dignity of the Russian people, to deprive it of its glorious past. But … here you have several texts at once, not always and not in all coinciding with each other, with a different number of details. And the question is: where in at least one of them is there a "belittling of national dignity"? On the contrary, from year to year the greatness in the description of the battle only arrived! Or does someone see him in the fact that both the prince and the Russian soldiers are guided by the Lord God? Well, after all, the time was then! A person could not enter the room without making the sign of the cross on icons, swore in the name of the Lord and the saints, fasted regularly, prayed, went to Matins, to Mass, to Vespers … He confessed and received Communion … Such was life, and is it any wonder that all literature those years was imbued with religious pathos. Therefore, people saw “God's regiment in the air,” and even to the robber Thomas Katsibeev, God reveals a “great vision”: “from the east” a cloud (Horde people) appeared. "From the midday country" (i.e.from the south) “two young men came” (meaning Boris and Gleb), who helped the Russian army to defeat the enemy. That is, the main idea of all, without exception, chronicles and other texts of that time is the same: God punishes for sins, but he also forgives. Therefore, pray, fast, obey the prescriptions of the church and you will be rewarded according to your deserts. The grace of God can appear even to robbers.
Moreover, not only the concept of the world as a whole, but also of individual cardinal points in the minds of Russian people of that time, was also closely associated with certain religious dogmas. For example, in Russia there was a relation to the south, as to the "God's chosen" side of the world. For example, one can read in the Old Russian translation of the "Jewish War" by Josephus that the place of the afterlife of blessed souls is blown by a fragrant … southern wind; moreover, in the Russian church there has long been a refrain to the stichera, which is called “God from the South”.
So the mention of the “spirit from the south” in the “Legend of the Mamaev Massacre” for the medieval author and reader had, first of all, a deep symbolic meaning and nothing more, that is, this “event” is not absolutely any historical fact!
Moreover, the very entry of the ambush regiment into battle had nothing to do with what actually happened on the battlefield of Kulikovo. Because if you follow the logic of the author of "The Tale …", then Bobrok Volynsky did not at all choose the moment when the Tatars would expose their flank to the attack of the Russians (as the historian L. G. Beskrovny assumed), or when the sun ceases to shine in the eyes of the Russians (as historian A. N. Kirpichnikov thought for some reason), but he knew exactly the right time. Otherwise, we write that, they say, the experienced voivode Bobrok was expecting a change in the direction of the wind from the oncoming to the passing one, so that it would carry dust in the eyes of the Tatar soldiers, and increase the flight range of the arrows of the Russian soldiers. But, look at the map, good gentlemen, and you will see that the "southern spirit" mentioned in the "Tale" under no circumstances could be useful for the soldiers of Prince Dmitry, because the Russian regiments on the Kulikovo field were advancing in direction from north to south. This means that the south wind could only blow in their faces, and interfere with their advance. Moreover, confusion in this case (not that with the archbishops!) In the use of geographical terms by the author is completely excluded. Because, as the creator of the "Tale" is quite free to navigate in the geographic space of the battlefield. He points out exactly: Mamai came to Russia from the east, the Danube River is located in the west, etc.
Prince Vladimir Andreevich and Dmitry Mikhailovich Bobrok Volynsky in ambush. Facial annalistic set.
That is, quite roughly speaking, the author of "The Tale …" invented this whole episode for moralizing purposes, like many other things, and therefore this very source seems to be the most unreliable. And what did the others who lived after did? Did they compare and review all the sources? No! They took the most effective one and replicated it, which is more interesting, but, of course, no one mentioned its unreliability. By the way, Bobrok himself in 1408 could not say anything about the fact that he "shouted" there, since most likely he died shortly after 1389. There is even such a point of view that he died in the battle on Vorskla.
Battle of Vorskla. Miniature of the 16th century from the Obverse Chronicle Arch.
Now fast forward to 1980 - the anniversary year of the Battle of Kulikovo. It was then that senior lieutenant Dmitry Zenin published an article on this battle in the Tekhnika-Youth magazine. And so, in particular, he tried to prove, which, by the way, is proved by the historian K. Zhukov, that the army of Prince Dmitry could not be as huge as it is described. Since there were no autobahns then, the army walked along narrow roads, breaking them with the hooves of horses. That is, more than two horses could not go in a row, and there were also carts that carried weapons and armor of warriors, as well as provisions. That is, according to his calculations, an army of many thousands, who came to the field from Moscow, would have their "head" already on the field, while the "tail" would have just left the city. Even if it walked several roads and knew exactly where it was going.
Thus, in the "Tale of the Mamayev Massacre" the idea is obvious, which can be traced in all other monuments of the Kulikovo cycle: the defeat of Mamai is nothing more than the victory of the Orthodox faith over the "godless Hagaryans", and it was achieved only thanks to the mercy of God and the intercession of the invisible (and for someone also visible) heavenly forces. This is the beginning of the liberation of the Russian land from the power of the "filthy" (that is, there was something, huh?). After all, it is not for nothing that the text of the Legend began in the main edition with the following words: “… The beginning of the story about how God granted the victory to the sovereign Prince Dmitry Ivanovich after Don over the filthy Mamai and how Orthodox Christianity raised the Russian land and the godless Hagaryan put to shame."
This is how the battle with one of the Golden Horde murzas, even of a non-Chingizid clan, acquired over time the character of the largest battle in the medieval history of Russia. The fact that two years later Tokhtamysh managed, in general, without much difficulty to burn down Moscow, as well as the fact that the Russian lands paid tribute to the Horde then for another 100 years, look insignificant against its background! But the victory, although not so large-scale, certainly was, and in fact, quite a lot of people died in the battle.
conclusions
First conclusion. Information about the Kulikovo battle in the form in which we present it now undoubtedly formed the basis for the emergence of a new self-consciousness of the Russian people. It has not yet been about fighting the Horde. But two important precedents were created at once: the first - "we beat them" and the second - "so it is possible!"
Second conclusion. Since the later editions constantly emphasize that Mamai is the tsar, this indicates the emergence of a third precedent: "tsars can be resisted in a completely legitimate way."
Third conclusion. The victory over "Tsar Mamai" raised the status of the Russian princes (the "Tsar himself was beaten!"). That is, in the perception of those around them, they immediately became equal to kings. This meant the beginning of a new relationship with the Horde and the Horde khans. Thus, all the texts about the Battle of Kulikovo, except for the earliest ones, are nothing more than a good example of information management of society!
P. S. There is also such a "source" as "Zadonshchina", but this is not history, but literature. Bobrok does not appear there, there is no "south wind", and there are 250 thousand Russian soldiers killed there.
