Colonel Karyagin's campaign against the Persians in 1805 does not resemble real military history. It looks like the prequel to "300 Spartans" (40,000 Persians, 500 Russians, ravines, bayonet attacks, "This is crazy! - No, this is the 17th Jaeger Regiment!"). The golden, platinum page of Russian history, combining the slaughter of madness with the highest tactical skill, delightful cunning and stunning Russian arrogance. But first things first.
In 1805, the Russian Empire fought with France as part of the Third Coalition, and fought unsuccessfully. France had Napoleon, and we had the Austrians, whose military glory had long faded by that time, and the British, who never had a normal ground army. Both those and others behaved like complete losers and even the great Kutuzov, with all the power of his genius, could not switch the TV channel "Fail by Fail". Meanwhile, in the south of Russia, the Persian Baba Khan, who was hummingly reading reports about our European defeats, had an Ideyka. Baba Khan stopped purring and again went to Russia, hoping to pay for the defeats of the previous year, 1804. The moment was chosen extremely well - because of the usual staging of the familiar drama "The crowd of so-called crooked allies and Russia, which is again trying to save everyone",Petersburg could not send a single extra soldier to the Caucasus, despite the fact that there were from 8,000 to 10,000 soldiers in the entire Caucasus. Therefore, upon learning that 40,000 Persian troops under the command of Crown Prince Abbas Mirza (I would like to think that he moved on a huge golden platform, with a bunch of freaks, freaks and concubines on golden chains, just like Xerxes), Prince Tsitsianov sent all the help he could send. All 493 soldiers and officers with two guns, the superhero Karyagin, the superhero Kotlyarevsky (about which there is a separate story) and the Russian military spirit. You know Azerbaijan, right? Bottom left), where Major Lisanevich was with 6 companies of rangers, 40,000 Persian troops are under the command of Crown Prince Abbas Mirza (I would like to think that he moved on a huge golden platform, with a bunch of freaks, freaks and concubines on golden chains, just like Xerxes), Prince Tsitsianov sent all the help he could send. All 493 soldiers and officers with two guns, the superhero Karyagin, the superhero Kotlyarevsky (about which there is a separate story) and the Russian military spirit. You know Azerbaijan, right? Bottom left), where Major Lisanevich was with 6 companies of rangers, 40,000 Persian troops are under the command of Crown Prince Abbas Mirza (I would like to think that he moved on a huge golden platform, with a bunch of freaks, freaks and concubines on golden chains, just like Xerxes), Prince Tsitsianov sent all the help he could send. All 493 soldiers and officers with two guns, the superhero Karyagin, the superhero Kotlyarevsky (about which there is a separate story) and the Russian military spirit.which he could only send. All 493 soldiers and officers with two guns, the superhero Karyagin, the superhero Kotlyarevsky (about which there is a separate story) and the Russian military spirit.which he could only send. All 493 soldiers and officers with two guns, the superhero Karyagin, the superhero Kotlyarevsky (about which there is a separate story) and the Russian military spirit.
They did not manage to reach Shushi, the Persians intercepted ours along the road, near the Shah-Bulakh river, on June 24. Persian avant-garde. Modest 10,000 people. Not at all perplexed (at that time in the Caucasus, battles with less than tenfold superiority of the enemy were not counted as battles and were officially reported as "exercises in conditions close to combat"), Karyagin built an army in squares and repelled the fruitless attacks of the Persian cavalry all day until the Persians were left with only scraps. Then he walked another 14 versts and set up a fortified camp, the so-called wagenburg or, in Russian, gulyai-gorod, when the line of defense was built up of wagons (given the Caucasian off-road and the missing supply network, the troops had to carry significant supplies with them). The Persians continued their attacks in the evening and fruitlessly stormed the camp until nightfall,after which they made a forced break to clear the piles of Persian bodies, funeral, crying and writing postcards to the families of the victims. By the morning, having read the manual "Military art for dummies" sent by express mail ("If the enemy has strengthened and this enemy is Russian, do not try to attack him head-on, even if you are 40,000, and his 400"), the Persians began to bombard our walk - the city with artillery, trying to prevent our troops from reaching the river and replenish water supplies. In response, the Russians made a sortie, made their way to the Persian battery and blew it up to hell, dropping the remnants of the cannons into the river, presumably with malicious obscene inscriptions. However, this did not save the situation. After fighting for another day, Karyagin began to suspect that he would not be able to kill the entire Persian army with 300 Russians. Besides,problems began inside the camp - Lieutenant Lysenko and six more traitors ran over to the Persians, the next day 19 hippies joined them - thus, our losses from cowardly pacifists began to exceed losses from inept Persian attacks. Thirst, again. Heat. Bullets. And 40,000 Persians around. It's uncomfortable.
At the officers' council two options were proposed: or we all stay here and die, who is for? Nobody. Or we are going to break through the Persian encirclement, after which we STORM a nearby fortress, while the Persians are catching up with us, and we are already in the fortress. It 'warm over there. Good. And flies don't bite. The only problem is that we are no longer even 300 Russian Spartans, but in the region of 200, and there are still tens of thousands of them and they are watching over us, and it will all look like a Left 4 Dead game, where a tiny squad of survivors is a rod and a rod of crowds of brutal zombies … Everyone loved Left 4 Dead already in 1805, so they decided to break through. At night. Having cut the Persian sentries and trying not to breathe, the Russian participants of the program "Staying Alive When You Can't Stay Alive" almost got out of the encirclement, but stumbled upon a Persian patrol. The chase began, the shootout, then the chase againthen ours finally broke away from the Mahmuds in the dark-dark Caucasian forest and went to the fortress named after the nearby river Shakh-Bulakh. By that time, a golden aura of the end was shining around the remaining participants in the mad marathon "Fight as much as you can" (I remind you that it was already the FOURTH day of continuous battles, sorties, duels with bayonets and night hide and seek in the forests), a golden aura of the end was shining, so Karyagin simply smashed Shakh-Bulakh's gates with a cannon core, after which wearily asked the small Persian garrison: “Guys, look at us. Do you really want to try? Is that true? " The guys got the hint and fled. In the process of the run, two khans were killed, the Russians barely had time to repair the gate, when the main Persian forces appeared, worried about the loss of their beloved Russian detachment. But that was not the end. Not even the beginning of the end. After an inventory of the property remaining in the fortress, it turned out that there was no food. And that the convoy with food had to be abandoned during the breakout from the encirclement, so there was nothing to eat. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Karyagin went out to the troops again:
- Friends, I know that this is not madness, not Sparta, and generally not something for which human words were invented. Of the already miserable 493 people, 175 of us remained, almost all of them were injured, dehydrated, exhausted, and extremely tired. No food. No wagon train. Kernels and cartridges are running out. And besides, right in front of our gates sits the heir to the Persian throne, Abbas Mirza, who has already tried several times to take us by storm. Hear the grunting of his pet freaks and the laughter of his concubines? It is he who waits until we die, hoping that hunger will do what 40,000 Persians could not do. But we will not die. You will not die. I, Colonel Karyagin, forbid you to die. I order you to take up all the impudence that you have, because tonight we leave the fortress and break through to ANOTHER FORTRESS, WHICH WILL TAKE AN STORM AGAIN, WITH ALL THE PERSIAN ARMY ON SHOULDERS. And also freaks and concubines. This is not a Hollywood action movie. This is not an epic. This is a Russian story, chicks, and you are its main characters. Place sentries on the walls, which will call each other all night, creating the feeling that we are in a fortress. We set out as soon as it's dark enough!
It is said that there was once an angel in Heaven who was in charge of monitoring impossibility. On July 7 at 22:00, when Karyagin set out from the fortress to storm the next, even greater fortress, this angel died of bewilderment. It is important to understand that by July 7, the detachment had been fighting continuously for the 13th day and was not so much in the “terminators are coming” state, as in the state of “extremely desperate people, on only anger and strength of mind, move in the Heart of Darkness of this crazy, impossible incredible, unthinkable campaign. With cannons, with carts of the wounded, it was not a walk with backpacks, but a big and heavy movement. Karyagin slipped out of the fortress like a night ghost, like a bat, like a creature from That, Forbidden Side - and therefore even the soldiers who remained to call each other on the walls managed to escape from the Persians and catch up with the detachment, although they were already preparing to die,realizing the absolute mortality of their task. But the Peak of Madness, Courage and Spirit was still ahead.
Moving through the darkness, darkness, pain, hunger and thirst, a detachment of Russian … soldiers? Ghosts? Saints of War? collided with a moat through which it was impossible to ferry cannons, and without cannons the assault on the next, even better fortified fortress of Mukhrata, had neither sense nor chance. There was no forest nearby to fill the ditch, there was no time to look for a forest - the Persians could overtake at any moment. Four Russian soldiers - one of them was Gavrila Sidorov, the names of the others, unfortunately, I could not find - silently jumped into the moat. And they went to bed. Like logs. No bravado, no talk, no everything. We jumped down and lay down. The heavy cannons drove straight for them. Under the crunch of bones. Barely suppressed moans of pain. Even more crunch. Dry and loud, like a rifle shot, crackle. Red splattered on the dirty, heavy gun carriage. Russian red.
Franz Roubaud, The Living Bridge, 1892
Promotional video:
Only two rose from the moat. Silently.
On July 8, the detachment entered Kasapet, for the first time in many days ate and drank normally, and moved on to the Mukhrat fortress. Three miles away from her, a detachment of a little more than a hundred people attacked several thousand Persian horsemen, who managed to break through to the guns and capture them. In vain. As one of the officers recalled: "Karyagin shouted:" Guys, go ahead, save the guns! " Everyone rushed like lions …”. Apparently, the soldiers remembered at what price they got these guns. Red, this time Persian, sprinkled on the carriages, and it sprinkled and poured and poured over the carriages, and the earth around the carriages, and carts, and uniforms, and guns, and sabers, and poured and poured and poured until then, until the Persians fled in panic, and failed to break the resistance of hundreds of ours. Hundreds of Russians. Hundreds of Russians, Russians like you, who now despise their people, their Russian name,the Russian nation and Russian history, and allowing themselves to silently watch as the state rotted and collapsed, created by such a feat, such superhuman tension, such pain and such courage. Lying in a moat of apathetic pleasures, so that the guns of hedonism, entertainment and cowardice walk and walk along you, crushing your fragile fearful skulls with their wheels of laughing abomination.
Mukhrat was taken easily, and the next day, July 9, Prince Tsitsianov, having received a report from Karyagin, immediately set out to meet the Persian army with 2300 soldiers and 10 guns. On July 15, Tsitsianov defeated and drove out the Persians, and then joined the remnants of the troops of Colonel Karyagin.
Karyagin received a golden sword for this campaign, all officers and soldiers - awards and salaries, Gavrila Sidorov silently lay down in the moat - a monument at the regiment's headquarters, and we all learned a lesson. Moat lesson. A lesson in silence. Crunch lesson. Lesson in red. And the next time you are required to do something in the name of Russia and comrades, and your heart is seized by apathy and petty nasty fear of a typical child of Russia in the Kali Yuga era, actions, shocks, struggle, life, death, then remember this moat.
Author: Egor Prosvirnin