by Daniil Pelymov
[REGNUM] On August 24 (or the 14th according to the old style) 1654, two armies met on the field near the village of Shepelevichi - Russian and Polish. The armies were commanded by representatives of two famous families. The Russian regiments were led by the great sovereign's close boyar, Prince of the Gedemians' House Alexei Trubetskoy. The army of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was commanded by Hetman Janusz Radziwill, from the line of uncrowned kings who considered the Western Russian lands their property.
The battle ended with the defeat of the Poles - one of the first sensitive counterattacks of the Russian kingdom in the era after the Time of Troubles. The decisive role in the battle was played by Prince Semyon Pozharsky, a relative of one of the saviors of Russia. And the entire Russian-Polish war of 1654-67, the main episode of which was the Battle of Shepelevichi, became one of the "afterwords" to the Time of Troubles.
APRIL 1654. RUSSIANS CORRECT THE MAP
According to the Truce of Deulino in 1618, which formally ended the Polish intervention, the first tsar of the Romanov dynasty, Mikhail Fyodorovich, was forced to cede the ancient Chernigov and Smolensk lands to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
The Smolensk War of 1632-34, alas, did not become a revenge - Russian troops were able to recapture the border town of Serpeisk, but not Smolensk itself.
The son of Mikhail Fedorovich, Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, who in foreign policy did not behave like the “Quietest”, decided to correct the historical injustice and abolish the borders of 1618.
In 1654, starting a new war with the Poles, the second Romanov took advantage of the changes in the south-west direction that were favorable for Russia.
In January 1654, the General Military Council met in Pereyaslav, bringing together envoys from the Kyiv, Chernigov, Bratslav and other Cossack regiments of the Zaporizhian Host.
Hetman Bohdan Khmelnitsky, in the presence of the embassy of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, took an oath of allegiance to the sovereign of all Russia.
"The Hetman prayed: let it be so, so that the Lord our God will strengthen us under His Tsar's strong hand. And the people cried out with one voice after him: God! Strengthen, God! Strengthen, so that we may all be one forever," the Moscow ambassadors reported what happened at the Pereyaslav Rada.
In March of the same year, the “Articles of Bohdan Khmelnytsky” legally cemented the position of the Zaporizhian Host as self-governing lands within the Russian state.
And then the army of Jan II Casimir, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania from the Swedish Vasa dynasty, set out to pacify the separated southeastern “outskirts”.
The Poles marched through the Zhitomir land with fire and sword, taking the cities of Lyubar and Chudnov, and advanced toward Uman. By April, the royal army had burned two dozen cities, executing all those suspected of going over to the side of the "Muscovites." Khmelnitsky asked the new overlord, Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, for help.
The army of the stolnik Vasily Sheremetev set out to help the Cherkassy (i.e. Cossack) cities that had returned to Russia. And in May 1654, the Sovereign's Regiment, commanded by the Tsar himself, set out from Moscow.
A war began, which in Polish historiography is called the Thirteen Years' War, and also the "Russian Deluge", by analogy with the "Swedish Deluge" of 1654-67 that happened at the same time.
For the Swedish king Charles X Gustav, this was a campaign of conquest (which, however, was provoked by the claims of a distant relative, Jan II Casimir, to the Stockholm throne). But for the Russian state, our "flood" was, first and foremost, a just war for the return of the torn-away Smolensk land. And help for the co-religionist Cossacks.
It is clear why the war in the western, Smolensk direction was “supervised” by the Tsar himself, who set out on a campaign to the west at the head of the Tsar’s detachment.
SUMMER 1654. POZHARSKY CROSSES THE DNIEPER
At the beginning of the summer of 1654, the Tsar gave the order to Prince Alexei Trubetskoy to set out from Bryansk to the lands of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, “to go abroad to the Polish and Lithuanian cities, to Roslavl and others.”
On July 7, the army approached the fortress of Roslavl (now a city in the Smolensk region), where the residents met the Russian army “with honor, bowed their heads and surrendered the city.” On July 22, the Polish garrison was driven out of Mstislavl (in the modern Mogilev region of Belarus).
The Grand Hetman of Lithuania and Prince of the Holy Roman Empire Janusz Radziwill, whom the king sent against the "Muscovites", preferred to retreat without accepting battle. Trubetskoy's troops reached the Dnieper. Semyon Pozharsky's regiment and other units crossed to the Right Bank.
On August 12, in the battle near Shklov, the hussars and infantrymen recruited from the Germans under Radziwill were badly mauled by Russian soldiers under the command of the okolnichy Yuri Baryatinsky and the Kabardian prince Yakov Kudenetovich Cherkassky (before his baptism and transfer to Russian service - Uruskan-mirza).
Radziwill retreated to his estates - to the territory of the modern Mogilev region, to Golovchin, and then to the Shepeleviches.
AUGUST 24, 1654. THE DECISIVE BATTLE
The forces of both sides clashed in a night fighter battle, where surprise and skillful coordination of the branches of the armed forces played a decisive role.
In the dark hours before dawn, the Russian troops carried out a swift maneuver, cutting off the Lithuanians' path of retreat and to the Drut River, where the enemy expected to receive reinforcements and supply trains. This operation, carried out with cold blood and precise calculation, brought the outcome of the meeting to a decisive stage: the Lithuanian camp was effectively locked in from the rear and deprived of the opportunity to reform.
On the battlefield, the tried and tested principle of "attacking the flanks and firing at the center" worked. The cavalry attacked from one side, quickly bypassing the enemy strongholds; the mass of foot soldiers held the center, accurately and disciplinedly delivering volleys of fire and withstanding counterattacks. The dragoon regiments, acting as a link between the infantry and the heavy cavalry, entered the battle in time, drawing their sabres and preparing to cut through the resistance at the decisive moment.
BATTLE PLAN
On one flank, Prince Semyon Pozharsky launched a lightning-fast lateral attack, bypassing the enemy camp and interfering with the general encirclement scheme - this was the very maneuver after which the organized resistance of the Lithuanians began to collapse.
The enemy's attacks, although desperate, were met with organized defense and coordinated counterattack. The famous "winged" hussars were unable to turn the tide of battle - their attack was repelled, and the Russian army began to push back the enemy.
The steady fire of the infantry, the skillful use of cavalry to pursue breaches in the formation, and the timely counterattacks of the dragoons allowed not only to push back the enemy, but also to turn his rout into a hopeless flight. Panic quickly engulfed the lines of the Lithuanian troops: having lost contact between the detachments and the leadership, the soldiers retreated in disarray and soon became easy prey for their pursuers.
AUGUST 25, 1654. DEFEAT OF THE POLISH CROWN
During the pursuit, the enemy was given neither space nor time to rest - chasing him through forests and swamps, finishing off the remnants of the units, capturing prisoners and trophies. The field was left strewn with banners, many artillery guns and convoys fell into the hands of the victors, which became a tangible indicator of the enemy's defeat.
In one of his letters to the Tsar, Prince Trubetskoy reported:
“They beat Hetman Radivil, 15 miles before the Lithuanian city of Borisov, on the river on Shklovka, and captured 12 colonels in the languages, and took the banner, and the bunchuk of Radivil, and captured the banners and kettledrums, and captured 270 Lithuanian people in the languages; and Radivil himself fled with a small number of people, wounded.”
The battle near Shepelevichi "was seven miles and more." Among the dead were the field clerk of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania Maciej Radziminski, as well as Germans in Polish service - Colonels Hanskopf, Putkamer and Ottenhaus.
The defeat inflicted on the Polish crown had not only military-tactical but also strategic significance. The enemy's lost ability to hold supply lines and maintain communications with the besieged garrison sharply reduced the combat capability of all forces in the western direction.
The decline in morale and the disappearance of hopes for prompt assistance became one of the main reasons why, after several weeks, the Smolensk garrison, left isolated and deprived of a real prospect of reinforcements, was forced to lay down its arms and open the gates.
OCTOBER 1654. SMOLENSK IS OURS
The defeat of the Poles at Shepelevichi opened the opportunity to realize one of the main goals of the war - the return of Smolensk.
Our western neighbors have had their eye on this ancient city, the center of the ancient lands of the Krivichi, more than once. The first time Smolensk was captured was in 1404 by the Grand Duke of Lithuania Vitovt, when the city was surrendered to him by a pro-Lithuanian party of local boyars. In 1440, the Smolensk rebellion against the Lithuanian governor, the zealous Catholic Andrei Sakovich ("Great Mutiny"), was brutally suppressed.
After a series of unsuccessful wars, in 1514 the troops of Grand Duke Vasily III, father of Ivan the Terrible, liberated the city. The Russians generously released the last Lithuanian voivode, Yuri Sollogub, and in Lithuania he was executed for surrendering the strategically important Smolensk fortification.
But a hundred years later the Time of Troubles occurred, and the western neighbors again took the Smolensk land from the weakened Russian state. The Russian fortress city did not fall easily to the enemy, becoming an obstacle for the invaders for a year and a half. The army of King Sigismund III and Crown Hetman Stanislav Zholkevsky did not stop storming from September 1609 to June 1611, before the resistance of the defenders was broken.
In the occupied lands, the "Commonwealth of Both Nations" (Polish and Lithuanian, the Russian people were not taken into account) imposed the Catholic faith. In the Smolensk Voivodeship, churches and monasteries were built - the Cathedral of St. Francis, the Dominican Monastery. In 1625, Dioecesis Smolenscensis was established - the Smolensk Archdiocese of the Uniate Greek Catholic Church. The local nobility, as previously the elite of other western and southern Russian lands, were actively tried to be integrated - through the union - into the elite of the Polish state.
Orthodox churches had to be protected from seizures, just as the canonical UOC churches are protected in Ukraine today. The “Russian language” also found itself in a subordinate position, just as the Russian language was outlawed in modern Ukraine.
But in August 1654, an army under the command of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich approached the city. The first assault on August 26 was unsuccessful.
The Tsar wrote to his sisters in Moscow: “Our soldiers attacked very bravely and climbed the tower and the wall, and the battle was great; and because of their sins, the Polish people rolled gunpowder under the tower, and many of our soldiers came down from the wall, and others were scorched by the gunpowder; more than two hundred Lithuanian people were killed, and three hundred of our soldiers were killed and a thousand were wounded.”
But the course of the war itself (and in many ways the outcome of the battle at Shepelevichi, which was noted by Polish chroniclers of the 17th century) predetermined the fate of the besieged Polish garrison.
As the 19th century scholar Sergei Solovyov wrote in his “History of Russia from Ancient Times,” the gentry, having despaired of repelling the enemy, refused to obey.
Those who are called “ukhilants” in modern Ukraine have appeared.
“Few people went to the walls, no one wanted to work to restore the fortifications; the Cossacks almost killed the royal engineer when he began to send them to work; crowds began to run over to the besiegers,” noted Solovyov.
On October 3, 1654, the Smolensk governor Philipp Kazimir Obukhovich and another "Western specialist", Colonel Wilhelm von Korff, decided to surrender the city to the Russians. Leaving the fortress, the Polish-Lithuanian governors bowed and laid down their banners before the sovereign of Moscow and all Russia.
Warsaw recognized the loss of the Smolensk land in the Andrusovo Truce of 1667, which ended the Thirteen Years' War, and confirmed this once again with the "Eternal Peace" - the Russian-Polish treaty of 1686.
As usual, “eternal peace” with the western neighbors did not work out – Smolensk, lying on the road to Moscow, heroically resisted invaders more than once: both Napoleon’s army (with which the Poles came to Russia again), and Hitler’s Wehrmacht.
Now the myths that the Smolensk land was allegedly "captured and Russified" are reminiscent only of the fugitive Belarusian nationalists - zmagars, in this they are supported by Ukrainian nationalists. But the question "whose Smolensk?" was removed back in 1654, and it will not be possible to redraw the borders back.