On September 21, the Day of Military Glory of Russia is celebrated - the Day of the victory of the Russian regiments led by Grand Duke Dmitry Donskoy over the Mongol-Tatar troops in the Battle of Kulikovo in 1380.
Terrible disasters were brought by the Tatar-Mongol yoke on the Russian land. But in the second half of the 14th century, the collapse of the Golden Horde began, where one of the older emirs, Mamai, became the de facto ruler. At the same time, Russia was in the process of forming a strong centralized state by uniting the Russian lands under the rule of the Moscow principality.
And it is absolutely impossible to overestimate the influence of this victory on the rise of the spirit, moral emancipation, the rise of optimism in the souls of thousands and thousands of Russian people in connection with the aversion of the threat, which seemed to many to be fatal to the world order, which was already unstable at that turbulent time fraught with changes.
Like most other significant events of our past, the battle on the Kulikovo field is surrounded by many textbook legends that sometimes completely supplant real historical knowledge. The recent 600th anniversary undoubtedly aggravated this situation, giving rise to a whole stream of popular pseudo-historical publications, the circulation of which, of course, was many times higher than that of individual serious studies.
The objects of unscrupulous study, as well as deliberate or naive falsification, were also purely specific issues related to the details of the weapons and equipment of Russian soldiers and their opponents. Actually, our review is devoted to the consideration of these problems.
Unfortunately, we have not yet had any serious research on this topic. True, at one time, the study of Russian and Mongolian weapons was the second half. XIV century. our well-known weapons expert A. N. Kirpichnikov was engaged, but he was beaten by an undoubted failure: the extreme, as it seemed to him, the scarcity of archaeological Russian sources of weapons forced him to turn, first of all, to the written sources of the Kulikovo cycle, ignoring the fact that the text of the Legend of The Mamaev Massacre "- its main source - had developed by the beginning of the 16th century, and in the absence of" archaeological "thinking among the people of the Middle Ages, the scribe introduced most of the weapons from contemporary reality, including, for example, squeaky guns. At the same time, Kirpichnikov described Tatar weapons according to I. Plano Karpini, a magnificent, detailed and accurate source … 130 years old from the Battle of Kulikovo.
Russian weapons of the last third of the XIV century. represented by a small number of copies, and images. The main sources come from the northern regions - Novgorod, Pskov. But the center - Moscow, Vladimir, and the east - Pereyaslav Ryazansky (present-day Ryazan), and the west - Minsk, Vitebsk speak of a single military culture; regional differences were manifested only in details (most likely related to sources of imports).
The basis of the Russian army was the squads of princes, which consisted mostly of heavily armed cavalry. The city militia consisted of foot formations. In addition, in a foot battle, no worse than on horseback, the warriors fought. So the ratio of horse and foot in the battle was not constant. Equally poorly differentiated weapons for horsemen and footmen (except for spears).
Rus' offensive weapons included swords, sabers, battle axes, spears and darts, bows and arrows, maces and flails. Swords were predominantly of the common European type - with a blade in the form of an elongated triangle, a sharp stabbing end, with narrow valleys or faceted. The crosshair is long, straight or slightly curved - with the ends down, at the top in the form of a flattened ball. The handle could be single or one and a half length. Some of the swords were undoubtedly imported. Russian sabers of the XIV century. "Alive" are unknown. Presumably, they differed little from the Horde. Imported (or manufactured according to imported models) European infantry bladed weapons - short and medium length: daggers, including long faceted ones - "konchar", long combat knives - "cords". Battle axes are more or less uniform in shape, their surface is often decorated with a pattern. There were also axes-maces - with a massive spherical ear-and-butt part. Axes were worn in special leather cases, sometimes with rich applications.
Spears better reflected the specifics of foot and horse fighting. Nevertheless, spears of the universal type prevailed, with a narrow, flattened-faceted point, often with a faceted sleeve. The special rider's lance had a very narrow, square point in cross-section and a tapered bushing. The horn for foot combat was distinguished by a huge, up to 50 cm long, leaf-shaped tip and a thick short shaft. Darts ("sulitsy") were imported, in particular, from the German states, as well as from the Golden Horde, as reported by "Zadonshchina".
Russian bows were made up of parts - hilts, shoulders and horns, glued together from layers of wood, horns and boiled sinews. The bow was wrapped with a ribbon of birch bark boiled in drying oil. The bow was kept in a leather case. Arrows with faceted or flat tips were worn in a birch bark or leather quiver of the steppe type - in the form of a narrow long box. The quiver was sometimes decorated with rich leather applique.
In the XIV century. the once very popular maces with large faceted thorns are disappearing from the military use of Russia: they are replaced by the six-fighters, beloved by the Horde. Kisteni - combat weights, connected to the handle by a belt or chain, apparently, have not lost their former popularity.
Russian armor of that time consisted of a helmet, shell and shield. There are no written and archaeological data about bracers and greaves, although greaves have undoubtedly been used since the 12th century, as evidenced by the pictorial sources of the 12th-14th centuries.
Russian helmets of the XIV century. known only from images: these are sphero-conical headbands, traditional for Russia, sometimes low and rounded, with a low conical underside. Sometimes more elongated. Helmets are almost always crowned with balls, occasionally the cone converges at the point. Russian helmets of this time did not have any "yalovtsy" - leather triangular flags attached to very long spiers (like the spiers themselves). Their mention in the manuscripts and incunabula "The Legends of the Mamay Massacre" is a sure sign of the date of the text: not earlier than the end of the 15th century, when this decoration appeared on Russian helmets in imitation of the East. The warrior's neck and throat were protected by an aventail, sometimes quilted, made of felt or leather, but usually chain mail. A rectangular headphone could be attached to it at the temples, sometimes two or three - one above the other.
Apparently, imported helmets occupied a significant place in the armament of Russian soldiers. "Zadonshchina" mentions "German helmets": most likely, these were headgears with a low, rounded or pointed dome and rather wide, slightly lowered fields, so popular in Europe among foot soldiers, but sometimes used by horsemen. The princes defended their heads, according to the information of the same “Zadonshchina,” with “Cherkassian helmets”, that is, produced in the lower Dnieper region or in the Kuban region; in any case, these were the products of the masters of the Mamaev ulus of the Golden Horde. Apparently, the high prestige of the Horde armourers (as well as the jewelers - the authors of the "Monomakh hat") did not lose in the eyes of the highest nobility of Russia because of hostile relations with the Horde as a state.
There is much more information about Russian shells of the XIV century. Judging by archaeological, pictorial and written sources, the main types of armor in Russia then were chain mail, lamellar and plate-sewn armor. The chain mail was a more or less long shirt with a slit at the collar and at the hem, weighing from 5 to 10 kg. The rings were made of round wire, but in the XIV century. chain mail, borrowed from the East, begins to spread - from flat rings. Its name - baydana, bodana - goes back to the Arabic-Persian word "bodan" - body, body. Usually chain mail was worn on its own, but noble and wealthy warriors, due to its vulnerability to arrows, pushed chain mail under the shells of other types.
Incomparably more reliable (although about 1.5 times heavier) was the lamellar carapace - made of steel plates interconnected by straps, or braid or cords. The plates were narrow or almost square in shape with a rounded top edge. The protective qualities of lamellar armor, tested experimentally, are exceptionally high, it did not restrain movement. In Russia, he was known for a long time. Even the Slavs borrowed it from the Avars in the 8th-9th centuries. Chain mail spread around the 9th century. from Europe and from the East at the same time. The last - after the X century. - A plate-sewn armor appeared in Russia - made of iron plates, sometimes of a scaly shape, sewn onto a soft - leather or woven - base. This type of shell came to us from Byzantium. In the XIV century. under the Mongolian influence, the plates acquired an almost square shape, they were sewn or riveted to the base by means of paired holes located in one of the upper corners of the plate. Variations in the location and number of plates - to what extent they, like scales, find themselves on top of each other - also determined the qualities of this armor. The more reliable - with more overlap - was both heavier and less flexible.
The Mongol influence was also reflected in the fact that the plates began to be sewn not only from the outside, but also from the inside of the base, so that only rows of rivets were visible from above; the front surface of the base began to be covered with a bright rich fabric - velvet or cloth, or good leather. Often in one Russian armor of the XIV century. several types of armor were combined, for example, a lamellar carapace with a trim on the armholes of the sleeves and a hem (or a separate skirt) made of sewn-on plates, and even under this all was chain mail. At the same time, another, again Mongolian, borrowing came into fashion - a mirror, that is, a steel disk, strongly or slightly convex, attached independently to belts, or sewn or riveted in the middle of the chest part of the shell.
Chain-mail stockings were mainly used as foot protection, which was not very popular in Russia at all. Judging by the images, greaves made of one forged plate, attached to the front on the shins, could also be used. From the Balkans could have come in the last third of the XIV century. the original cover of the upper chest and back, shoulders and neck - lamellar bars with a standing, lamellar collar. The helmets, as well as the armor plates of the nobility, were partially or completely gilded.
No less varied in the era of the Battle of Kulikovo were Russian shields, the production of which, judging by the "Zadonshchina", was famous for Moscow. The shields were round, triangular, teardrop-shaped (moreover, triangular at this time clearly displaced the more archaic teardrop-shaped ones). Sometimes a novelty was used - a shield in the form of an elongated rectangle or a trapezoid with a convex vertical groove along the axis - "paveza".
The overwhelming majority of shit were made of planks, covered with leather and linen, and decorated with patterns. They, as a rule, did not have metal parts, with the exception of rivets that fastened the belt handle system.
Russian shield. Reconstruction by M. Gorelik, master L. Parusnikov.(State Historical Museum)
The squads of the Lithuanian princes - vassals of Demetrius of Moscow - did not differ much from the Russian soldiers in terms of the Central European nature of their weapons. The types of armor and offensive weapons were the same; differed only in the details of the shape of helmets, swords and daggers, the cut of the armor.
For the troops of Mamai, no less unity of weapons can be assumed. This is due to the fact that, contrary to the opinion firmly established in our historiography (rightly not shared by the majority of foreign researchers), in the territories of the Golden Horde, as well as in the western part of the Chzhagatai ulus (Central Asia) and even in the northern territories of Hulaguid Iran - the lands where Chingizids ruled … Having become Muslims, a single organic subculture was formed, part of which was weapons, military clothing and equipment. The presence of identity in no way denied the open nature of the Golden Horde, in particular, culture, with its traditional ties with Italy and the Balkans, Russia and the Carpathian-Danube region on the one hand, with Asia Minor, Iran, Mesopotamia and Egypt - on the other, with China and Eastern Turkestan - from the third. Prestigious things - weapons, jewelry, men's costume strictly followed the general Chingizid fashion (women's costume in traditional society is much more conservative and retains local, local traditions). The protective weapons of the Golden Horde during the Battle of Kulikovo were discussed by us in a separate article. So only the conclusions are worth mentioning here. As for offensive weapons, a little more about them. The overwhelming majority of the Horde army was cavalry. Its core, which usually played a decisive role, was the heavily armed cavalry, which consisted of military servicemen and tribal nobility, its many sons, wealthy militias and warriors. The basis was the personal "guard" of the Lord of the Horde. Numerically, the heavily armed cavalry, of course, was inferior to the medium and lightly armed, but its formations could deliver a decisive blow (as it was, in fact, in almost all countries of Europe, Asia and North Africa). The main weapon of attack of the Horde is rightly considered a bow with arrows. Judging by the sources, the bows were of two types: "Chinese" - large, up to 1, 4 m, with clearly defined and bent from each other handle, shoulders and long, almost straight horns; "Near and Middle Eastern" - no more than 90 cm, segmental, with a slightly pronounced handle and small curved horns. Both types were, like Russian bows, complex and distinguished by exceptional power - a pulling force of up to 60, even 80 or more kg. Long Mongolian arrows with very large tips and red shafts, fired from such bows, flew for almost a kilometer, but at a distance of 100 m or a little more - the limit of aimed fire - they pierced a person through and through, inflicting huge lacerated wounds; equipped with a faceted narrow or chisel-shaped tip, they pierced the plate-sewn armor of not very large thickness. Chain mail served as a very weak defense against them.
The set for shooting (saadak) also included a quiver - a long narrow birch bark box, where the arrows lay with their points upwards (of this type, quivers were richly decorated with bone plates covered with intricate carved patterns), or a flat long leather bag, in which arrows were inserted with their plumage upwards (they are often according to the Central Asian tradition, they were decorated with a leopard's tail, embroidery, plaques). And the bow, also decorated with embroidery, leather appliqués, metal and bone overlays. The quiver on the right, and the bow on the left were attached to a special belt, which is usually according to the old one - since the 6th century. - the steppe tradition was fastened with a hook.
The highest efficiency of the Horde horse archers was associated not only with the weapons of fire, but also with the accuracy of the shooters, as well as with a special combat formation. Ever since Scythian times, horse archers of the steppes, building a rotating ring in front of the enemy, showered him with a cloud of arrows from the position as close as possible and convenient for each shooter. Sigmund Herberstein, ambassador of the Kaiser of the Holy Roman Empire, described this system in great detail - at the beginning of the 16th century. - and noticed that the Muscovites call such a battle formation "dance" (meaning "round dance"). He argued, from the words of Russian interlocutors, that this formation, if it is not disturbed by random disorder, cowardice or a successful blow of the enemy, is completely indestructible. A feature of the Tatar-Mongolian combat shooting was unprecedented accuracy and great destructive power of the firing shells, as a result of which, as all contemporaries noted, there were a lot of killed and wounded from the Horde arrows. There are few arrows in the quivers of the steppe inhabitants - no more than ten; it means they were aiming, to choose from.
After the first, arrows, blow - "sui-ma" - followed by the second "suim" - an attack of heavy and medium-armed cavalry, in which the main weapon was a spear, which until then hung over the right shoulder with the help of two loops - at the shoulder and foot. The spearheads were mostly narrow, faceted, but wider, flattened ones were also used. Sometimes they were also supplied with a hook under the blade for grasping and pushing the enemy off the horse. The shafts under the tip were decorated with a short bunchuk ("bangs") and a narrow vertical flag, from which 1-3 triangular tongues extended.
Darts were used less frequently (although they later became more popular), apparently, between spear fighting and hand-to-hand combat. For the latter, the Horde had two types of weapons - blade and shock.
Swords and sabers belong to the bladed. Swords, strange as it may seem, were used by the Tatar-Mongols until the 15th century. quite often, and the nobility. Their handle differed from the saber in the straightness and shape of the top - in the form of a flattened ball (European-Muslim type) or a horizontal disc (Central Asian type). In terms of quantity, sabers prevailed. In Mongolian times, they become longer, the blades - wider and curved, although there were enough rather narrow, slightly curved ones. A common feature of the Horde sabers was a cross-welded clip with a tongue covering part of the blade. The blades sometimes had a fuller, sometimes, on the contrary, a rhombic section. There is a widening of the blade in the lower third - "elman". North Caucasian blades often have a "bayonet" faceted end. A characteristic Horde saber crosshair - with downward and flattened ends. The handle and scabbard were crowned with pommels in the form of a flattened thimble. The scabbard had clips with rings. The sabers were decorated with carved, engraved and chased metal, sometimes precious, the leather of the scabbard was embroidered with gold thread. Blade belts were decorated more richly, fastened with a buckle.
The Horde, who had fallen from the horse with a saber, jumped to the ground, finished off with a combat knife - long, up to 30-40 cm, with a bone handle, sometimes with a crosshair.
Very popular among the Tatar-Mongols and the warriors of the Horde culture in general were shock weapons - maces and brushes. Maces from the second half of the XIV century. prevailed in the form of pernacha; but often in the form of just an iron ball, or a polyhedron. Brushes were used less frequently. The regional feature of the Bulgar ulus was battle axes, sometimes extremely richly decorated with relief or inlaid patterns.
The overwhelming majority of offensive weapons were undoubtedly produced in the workshops of numerous cities of the Horde, or according to the Horde orders and samples in the Italian colonies and old cities of the Crimea, the centers of the Caucasus. But a lot was bought, it turned out in the form of a tribute.
The defensive weapons of the Horde included helmets, shells, bracers, greaves, necklaces, and shields. Horde helmets from the time of the Kulikov field are usually sphero-conical, less often spherical, with a chain mail aventail, sometimes covering the entire face, except for the eyes. The helmet could have eyebrow cutouts in front, overhead forged "eyebrows", a movable nosepiece - an arrow, disc-shaped earpieces. The helmet was crowned with feathers or a ring with a tied pair of cloth or leather blades - a purely Mongolian decoration. Helmets could have not only chain mail, but also a visor forged in the form of a mask.
The variety of the Horde shells was great. Previously foreign to the Mongols, chain mail was popular - in the form of a shirt or a swing caftan. Quilted carapace was widespread - "khatangu degel" ("strong as steel caftan"; from it Russian tegilyay), cut in the form of a robe with sleeves and blades to the elbow. Often he had metal parts - shoulder pads and, most importantly, a lining of iron plates, sewn on and riveted from the underside; such armor was already expensive and was covered with rich fabrics, on which rows of rivet sockets glittered, often copper, brass, gilded. Sometimes this armor was cut with slits on the sides, supplied with mirrors on the chest and back, long quilted sleeves or shoulders made of narrow steel curved transverse plates riveted on vertical belts, and the same structure with legguards and a cover for the sacrum. Armor made of horizontal strips of metal or hard, thick leather, connected by vertical straps or cords, is called laminar. Such armor was widely used by the Tatar-Mongols as early as the 13th century. The bands of material were richly decorated: metal - with engraving, gilding, inlay; leather - painted, varnished.
Lamellar armor, the original armor of Central Asia (in Mongolian "huyag"), was just as loved by the Horde. In the last third of the XIV century. it was used in combination with others: it was worn over chain mail and "khatangu degel".
The territory of the Golden Horde gives us the earliest examples of armor, which will become dominant in the XV-XVI centuries. in areas from India to Poland, - ring-lamellar. It retains all the high protective and comfortable properties of lamellar armor, but the strength is further increased due to the fact that the plates are not connected by straps or cords, but by iron rings.
Mirrors - large round or steel rectangular plates - were part of another type of armor, or worn on their own - on belts. The upper part of the chest and back was covered with a wide necklace (traditionally Mongolian, Central Asian armor). In the second half of the XIV century. it was made not only from leather or chain mail, but also from large metal plates connected by straps and rings.
A frequent find in mounds and other burials on the territory of the Mamai horde are bracers - folding, made of two unequal lengths of steel halves, connected by loops and belts. The Muslim miniature of the Chiygizid and post-Chingizid states confirms the popularity of this armor in all uluses in the second half of the XIV century. Although they were known to the Mongols in the XIII century. Leggings are not found among the finds, but the miniatures show that they are folding greaves, connected by chain mail weaving with a knee pad and laminar foot cover.
Horde shields were round, up to 90 cm in diameter, flat, made of boards covered with leather, or smaller - 70-60 cm, convex, made of flexible rods laid out in a spiral and connected with a continuous braid of multi-colored threads, forming a pattern. Small - 50 cm - convex shields were made of thick hard painted leather or steel. Shits of all varieties almost always had an "umbon" - a steel hemisphere in the center, and in addition, several small ones. Rod shields were especially popular and appreciated. Due to their exceptional elasticity, they deflected any blow of a blade or mace, and a blow of a spear or arrow was taken on a steel umbon. They also loved them for their availability and bright elegance.
The horses of the Horde men at arms were also often protected by armor. This was the custom of the steppe warriors long before our era and is especially characteristic of Central Asia. Horde horse armor of the last third of the XIV century.consisted of a steel mask, collar and cover of the body to the knees, consisting of several parts, connected by buckles and straps. Horse armor was quilted, rarely chain mail, and more often laminar or lamellar, with plates of steel or no less durable thick hard leather, painted and lacquered. The presence of ring-plate horse armor, which was so popular in the Muslim East in the 15th-17th centuries, in the era of the Kulikov field is still difficult to assume.
As you can see, the weapons of the sides were approximately similar, although the Horde men at arms possessed somewhat more reliable and progressive defensive weapons, especially ring-plate weapons, as well as the protection of horses. There was no Russian military horse armor until the 17th century. The myth about him arose thanks to a horse mask from a nomadic mound (?) Of the XII-XIII centuries. from the collection of the State Historical Museum in Kiev and finds of long spurs of the XIV century. in Novgorod. But dozens of similar masks - there are especially many of them in the Istanbul Military Museum, especially the inscriptions and patterns on them, leave no doubt that the Kiev mask is a product of the masters of Damascus or Cairo of the 15th - early 16th centuries. Long spurs of the European type are not connected at all with horse armor, but with landing on long stirrups and, accordingly, extended legs, so that the heels were far from the horse's belly.
As for some military-technical means of field combat, we can assume crossbows on both sides and easel shields - "chapars" - of which the field fortifications were made up, among the Horde. But, judging by the lyrics, they did not play any special role. Conventional weapons were enough for the Russian troops to defeat the Horde, and in order to put on the battlefield most of the army of the Russian principalities.
In conclusion, it should be said about the composition of the warring parties. In addition to Russian soldiers, Prince Dimitri had Lithuanian warriors of princes Andrei and Dimitri Olgerdovich in his troops, the number of which is unclear - within 1-3 thousand.
More variegated, but not nearly as much as they like to imagine, was the composition of Mamayev's troops. Do not forget that he ruled far from the entire Golden Horde, but only its western part (its capital was by no means Sarai, but a city with a now forgotten name, from which a huge, unexcavated and dying Zaporozhye settlement remained). Most of the troops were cavalry from the nomadic descendants of the Polovtsians and Mongols. The equestrian formations of the Circassians, Kabardians and other Adyghe peoples (Cherkassians) could also be considerable, the cavalry of the Ossetians (Yases) was small in number. More or less serious forces both in the cavalry and in the infantry could have been put forward by the Mordovian and Burtas princes subject to Mamai. Within a few thousand there were detachments of horse and foot "besermen" of Muslim residents of the Golden Horde cities: they generally did not like to fight very much (although, according to the reviews of foreigners-contemporaries, they did not lack courage), and the bulk of the cities of the Golden Horde, and the most populous, was not in the Mamaeva government. Even fewer in the army were skilled and staunch warriors - "Armen", that is, Crimean Armenians, and as for the "Fryaz" - the Italians, the "black (?) Genoese infantry" so beloved by the authors, marching in a thick phalanx, is the fruit of at least least misunderstanding. At the time of the war with the Moscow coalition, Mamai had enmity with the Crimean Genoese - only the Venetians of Tana-Azak (Azov) remained. But there were only a few hundred of them with their wives and children, so these merchants could only give money to hire soldiers. And if we consider that mercenaries in Europe were very expensive and any of the Crimean colonies could contain only a few dozen Italian or even European warriors (usually local nomads carried the guards for a fee), the number of "fries" on the Kulikovo field, if they got there, it was far from reaching a thousand.
It is extremely difficult to judge the total number of forces on both sides. We can only assume with great caution that they were approximately equal and fluctuated between 50-70 thousand (which was a gigantic number for Europe at that time).
