On March 25, 1238, the troops of the Mongol Khan Batu attacked Kozelsk, located on one of the most important roads of Ancient Rus. However, they failed to conquer it with little blood. According to the chronicles, the invaders were forced to stand under the walls of the fortress for seven weeks, and during its assault they suffered such losses that they renamed Kozelsk the "Evil City". For many years archaeologists could not find the remains of the ancient settlement, and when they found it, it turned out that the historical monument could be destroyed during excavation work. About the feat of the ancient goats and about modern threats to the historical fortifications that detained Batu.
The threat from the east
The idea of conquering Eastern Europe haunted Genghis Khan, but the Mongols could not bring their plan to life for more than ten years. However, in 1220, the Mongol army under the leadership of commanders Jebe and Subedei broke into the vastness of Southeast Europe. In 1223, their army defeated the scattered army of the Russian princes on the Kalka River, but the Mongols at first did not want to deal with the Rostov reinforcements going to the border, and then they were defeated by the Bulgars and fled to Central Asia.
For some time, the troops of Genghis Khan left Russia alone, but in 1237 his grandson Batu moved westward. By the end of the year, the Mongols defeated the Volga Bulgaria, Alans and Polovtsians, conquered the lands of several Finno-Ugric peoples. Then, having collected, according to various estimates, from 100 to 600 thousand soldiers, in the winter of 1237-1238, the Mongol Khan set out on a campaign against the Russians.
Fragment of the diorama "Defense of Old Ryazan".
According to the estimates of demographers, then Russia hypothetically could oppose Batu more than 100 thousand copies. However, most of this army would have been poorly trained and poorly armed militias, and the general consolidation of Russia due to princely strife in those days was in principle impossible.
In just three months, the Mongols, having destroyed dozens of cities, devastated the Ryazan and Vladimir-Suzdal lands, but at the end of February they got stuck for two weeks near Torzhok on the way to Novgorod. Torzhok eventually fell, but either because of muddy roads and a lack of feed for horses, or because of losses, the Mongols did not dare to move further to the north-west - they turned their horses south and reached the lands of the Chernigov-Seversky principality. Bypassing Karachev and Bryansk, the warriors of the steppe went to Kozelsk.
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Most important region
Although Kozelsk itself was a fairly small city, in which no more than 3-4 thousand people lived, its location was considered strategically important. “The road passing between the Middle Dnieper and the Upper Volga region was one of the main“communications”of Ancient Rus. It was a very important region, and Kozelsk was its most important fortress. In order to control Eastern Europe, it had to be taken, Vladimir Petrukhin, doctor of historical sciences, professor at the Russian State Humanitarian University, explained in an interview with RT.
According to the expert, the townspeople found themselves in a dramatic situation. Given the reputation of the Mongols, they realized that no mercy should be expected - they could only choose between slavery and heroic death. The defenders of Kozelsk decided to fight, although they could put up only a few hundred soldiers against the 200,000-strong army of Batu.
The prince in Kozelsk at that time was 12-year-old Vasily, the grandson of Prince Mstislav, who died in 1223 at the hands of the Mongols on Kalka. When the invaders offered the goats to surrender the city voluntarily, they replied to the newcomers from the east: "Our Prince is a baby, but we, as faithful, must die for him in order to leave good glory in the world, and take the crown of immortality behind the grave."
Medieval written sources claim that the defense of Kozelsk from the Mongols became at that time the longest of all cases of defense of Russian cities - it dragged on for seven weeks. Later, for the longest time - about three months - only Kiev was able to hold out in the Mongol siege.
True, today historians question the exact duration of the siege of Kozelsk.
“The fact is that our ideas about how long certain cities held out may not always be correct. The fact that Ryazan held out for five days, I think, is true. And the fact that Vladimir was taken in two days - I think not, - explained in an interview with RT the head of the Center for the History of Ancient Rus of the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Historical Sciences Vladimir Kuchkin. “It’s still unknown about Kozelsk how much it was defended.”
According to the expert, the history of the defense of Kozelsk could have been recorded decades later and embellished in some moments. However, he does not intend to question the bravery and resilience of the goats.
“We can say with confidence that during the defense of Kozelsk its defenders showed rare courage, they cut themselves with the Mongols even with knives - they met hand-to-hand at the closest distance,” said Vladimir Kuchkin.
According to the expert, according to one of the versions, there were frosts in the Kozelsk area at that time and its inhabitants turned their city into an ice fortress, pouring water over the fortifications. According to other versions, it was already warm enough and the Mongols could not approach the walls of the city for a long time because of the rivers and canals with swampy banks surrounding it, and they found a convenient approach only with the help of a traitor from a nearby village.
The Mongols were able to break into the city only after the arrival of reinforcements. According to the chroniclers, the main squad of Kozelsk went outside the city and managed to drive back the enemy, destroying the siege machines and killing about four thousand Mongol soldiers. But this was the last success of the defenders of the city - the participants in the sortie did not return from it. Already in the 19th century, builders discovered 267 human skulls with traces of killing with cold weapons near the city. It is possible that they belonged to the participants of that very last counterattack.
As a result, the city fell. The Mongols killed everyone they could find, including babies.
“Kozelsk was a small fortress. But he greatly delayed the advance of the Mongols. Taking possession of the city was not easy, and it was impossible to leave it in the rear. And this infuriated the invaders very much,”said Vladimir Petrukhin.
After the destruction of Kozelsk, enraged by the forced delay and huge losses, Batu forbade the use of even its very name and ordered to call the fortress taken with such difficulty as the "Evil City".
The yoke was, it is obvious
However, the Mongol invaders showed extreme cruelty, even when they took cities quickly and not as painful for themselves as Kozelsk. Recently popular conspiracy theories that there was allegedly no Mongol invasion at all, or that it was not accompanied by such cruelty, cause confusion among professional historians.
“Contrary to some populist statements that are being heard in our days, the invasion of Batu, without a doubt, took place. Not only Russian sources write about him, but also Polish, German and even French. The Pope and King Henry III of England knew about him. The fact of the war with the Mongols and archaeological data is confirmed. In Ryazan, for example, the remains of people killed by a blow to the skull from behind were found - probably, this is how the prisoners were dealt with. We also find a lot of triangular arrowheads characteristic of the Mongolian army,”says the historian Vladimir Kuchkin.
Pavel Ryzhenko. "Calca".
The scientist noted that by simply checking the pre-Mongolian lists of cities with the lists of the 15th century, one can clearly see that many of them ceased to exist in the 13th century.
“As an archaeologist, I can testify to the fact that about half of the ancient Russian cities ceased to exist after the invasion of Batu, stone construction was curtailed, the old pre-Mongol culture disappeared. The yoke was obvious,”said Vladimir Petrukhin.
Historic monument under threat
Although the defense of Kozelsk is being studied today even at school, until recently no one could say with certainty where the ancient city was. The remains of the legendary fortress have been searched for since the 19th century, but they could not find it. Already at the very beginning of the search, some researchers began to put forward the theory that the settlement destroyed by Batu was restored in a new place, and the old fortress itself is located in a completely different place. In the 1990s, scientists carried out excavations quite actively, but they could not find any finds older than the XIV century.
“The expeditions of the 1990s gave nothing in terms of determining the location of the chronicle Kozelsk. On the basis of this, many scholars argued that there was no city here. But in 2010, the archaeologists finally got lucky - a "living" confirmation of the chronicle events was found (artifacts were found in the very center of modern Kozelsk, where they had not been searched for before. - RT), "the director of the Kozelsk Museum of Local Lore Complex told RT. House of the Tsyplakovs”Ilya Yatsenko.
Having laid pits in the area of the railway embankment, archaeologists discovered eleven fragments of ancient Russian glass bracelets, which were of significant value to our ancestors. It became clear that on the site of modern Kozelsk, an urban settlement did exist.
In 2011, excavations on the territory of a local bakery brought scientists a real scientific wealth: Old Russian braids, beads, spindle whorls, arrowheads. Later, archaeologists found traces of fires in the city, the earliest of which date back to the XII-XIII centuries, and also found the most important thing - the remains of ditches and ramparts. To date, researchers are already confidently saying that Kozelsk did not change its location after the destruction by the Mongols.
“After analyzing the remains of ancient Russian bracelets, scientists came to the curious conclusions that, unlike other cities of Russia, which stood empty for decades, or even disappeared forever, life in Kozelsk after the devastation of Batu was restored very quickly,” Ilya Yatsenko said …
According to the director of the museum complex, ancient Kozelsk is located just under the central part of the modern city: this creates many problems for scientists - it is very difficult to find a place for excavations.
But this does not exhaust the difficulties of researchers of Russian antiquity.
“Our main problem is connected with economic activities on the territory of the monument. Ancient Kozelsk still does not have an official conservation status, and therefore construction and earthworks are carried out in our country without regard to archeology. At one of the recent construction sites, three meters of the cultural layer was dug. I would very much like the status of ancient Kozelsk to be enshrined in law,”the expert complains.
According to Yatsenko, the inhabitants of modern Kozelsk remember the glorious past of their small homeland and tell others about the “evil city”. Commemorative events are timed to coincide with the 780th anniversary of the heroic defense of Kozelsk: an exhibition of archaeological artifacts discovered during excavations is open in the city, children's local history readings and an art seminar are planned, during which artists from different cities will paint views of the city, and then donate their canvases to the museum. And in honor of the celebration of the City Day, a large-scale historical reconstruction of the battle of the Russian squad with the army of Khan Batu will take place.
Svyatoslav Knyazev