by Dmitry Gubin
[REGNUM] 330 years ago, on July 29, 1696, the Russian army, supported by a newly created navy, stormed the Turkish fortress of Azov at the mouth of the Don River. The Azov "victory" was Peter the Great's first major victory. It became a landmark event in the history of Russia's advance south and its emergence as a great maritime power.
The “beginning of Peter’s glorious deeds” was also the beginning of Russia’s return to the Azov and Black Sea regions.
Ancient Rus' was a Black Sea power. Princes Askold and Dir, Oleg, and Igor led campaigns against Constantinople. Arab geographers and travelers of the 10th and 11th centuries called the Black Sea "Bahr al-Rus"—the Russian Sea. The same term appears in our Tale of Bygone Years: "The Dnieper flows into the Pontic Sea; this sea is known as the Russian Sea."
In the 10th–11th centuries, the Russian city of Tmutarakan stood on the site of today's Taman; its princes controlled the shores of the Azov and Black Seas and the mouth of the Kuban.
But the invasions of the steppe dwellers - the Pechenegs and Polovtsians, and then the Tatar-Mongol conquest cut Rus' off from the Azov and Black Sea regions, which became the Wild Field for centuries.
A remnant of the Golden Horde—the ulus of the Crimean Khans—became the main threat to the Russian lands from the south. Since 1478, the Crimean Khanate had been "protected" by a powerful overlord, the Ottoman Empire. Even earlier, in 1471, the Turks built the fortress of Azak (or Azau in Tatar) near the destroyed Genoese colony of Tana.
In the following centuries, the fortress was not only an Ottoman stronghold at the mouth of the Don, but also a major center of the slave trade. Captive Russians, victims of Crimean Tatar raids on the Muscovite state, were brought here.
Adding to the humiliation was the fact that the grand dukes, and then the tsars of all Rus', until the end of the 17th century paid "pominki" (commemorations) to Bakhchisarai—tribute in money and furs, as if the Tatar yoke had never disappeared. The presence of the Sultan's troops on the Don was the key to this order. The Rurik dynasty, and then the first Romanovs, understood this problem but delayed its resolution for decades.
The first campaign against Azov was a grassroots initiative. In 1637, Don Cossacks serving Tsar Mikhail Feodorovich gathered in a military circle and decided to march against Azov. They requested assistance from the Zaporozhian Cossacks (this was 16 years before the Pereyaslav Council, which formalized the transfer of the Zaporozhian Host to Moscow).
Four and a half thousand Cossacks, merchants, and shipwrights, gathered. A little later, a thousand Zaporozhian Cossacks arrived. Mikhail Tatarinov was elected as the campaign's ataman. Tsar Mikhail was informed of this, as well as of the decision to march "against the infidels," after the fact. A letter was sent to Moscow, beginning: "We, your serfs, having conferred among ourselves, have gone to Azov, because… they, the people of Azov,… were plotting against us."
On April 21, the siege of the Turkish citadel began. But the tsar did not appreciate this "independent action," and not out of cowardice—the country had only just recovered from the severe Time of Troubles, and the war with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth for Smolensk had ended unsuccessfully (Russia recaptured the ancient city permanently under the second tsar of the Romanov dynasty, Alexei Mikhailovich ). In the 1630s, the Russian Tsardom would not have been able to sustain a large-scale clash with Sultan Murad IV.
But the Cossacks acted decisively, and the Ottomans delayed their military expedition. Tsar Mikhail sent aid—gunpowder, cannons, and the royal banner—as a sign that the Cossack campaign was sanctioned by Moscow. On July 16, the Tsar was informed of the capture of the fortress and the liberation of two thousand Orthodox slaves.
The Cossacks held out in the fortress until 1642, but were forced to surrender Azov to the Turks and Crimean Tatars—at that time, Russia was still unable to resist Ottoman hegemony.
The next attempt to break through to the Black Sea was undertaken under Mikhail Fedorovich's grandsons, Ivan and Peter Alekseevich, whose elder sister, Sophia, governed in their stead. Her government, having completed the annexation of Little Russia and Kiev, became deeply involved in international politics.
Even before Peter became the sole Tsar, Russia began to enter the "concert of European powers." Moscow joined the anti-Turkish coalition, becoming an ally of the Habsburgs and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
In Europe, that war is remembered for the defense of Vienna and the capture of Belgrade. The Russian portion of the campaign is less well-known, although Sophia's favorite, Prince Vasily Golitsyn, defeated the Turks and Tatars in the Black Sea region. His campaigns led to the realization that the Wilderness is not the most convenient place for troop movements; natural conditions are far more dangerous for an army than Tatar cavalry and Turkish infantry.
When Tsar Peter was freed from his sister's care, he decided to lead his troops not along the Dnieper and the bare steppe, like Golitsyn, but along the Don, toward Azov. In 1695, the first assault was attempted. Soldiers from the Preobrazhensky and Semyonovsky regiments and about a thousand Don Cossacks took part of the fortifications and even broke into the city—but due to the lack of coordination among the Russian troops, the garrison commander, Hasan Arslan Bey, was unable to repel them.
Preparing for the next attempt, the tsar decided that the problem could not be solved without a navy. To this end, construction of galleys, following the Dutch model, began in Voronezh.
Tambov, Valuyki, and Voronezh were designated assembly points for the Russian troops. Thanks to the detailed diary of General Patrick Gordon, we can trace the entire route from Voronezh and the village of Cherkasskaya to Azov. The Tsar himself traveled most rapidly on the galley "Principium," entrusting command to experienced commanders Gordon and the boyar Alexei Shein.
At the mouth of the Don, the Cossacks burned Turkish ships carrying weapons, cloth, and provisions for Azov. The lower ranks then asked their superiors to begin fortification work. On June 6, Russian warships, one of which carried the monarch, sailed through the channels for the first time to the Sea of Azov.
The Russian army was lucky: the Turks left the fortifications they had built the previous year untouched. This significantly eased preparations for the siege.
All attempts by the Turks and Tatars to attack the besiegers' camp from the sea and the steppe were unsuccessful.
Russian galleys blocked the coast, and the Ottoman fleet was unable to assist Azov. The fortress's fate was sealed. "Victoria" was the fruit of the coordinated efforts of several forces: Franz Lefort's naval detachment, the land regiments of the great boyar Shein (under whose command were Generals Gordon and Avtonom Golovin ), Zaporozhian Cossacks loyal to the tsar, and the Kalmyk cavalry.
On July 29, the remnants of the Turkish garrison—approximately 3,700 cavalrymen—surrendered. The following day, the Lyutik fortress, located on the northern fortifications and forming a single fortification system with Azov, also surrendered.
Peter ordered Azov to be made a Russian city and the mosques to be converted into churches. The tsar chose a nearby location for the navy's base—on Cape Tagany, where Taganrog was founded two years later.
On July 14, 1700, the Russian Tsardom and the Ottoman Empire concluded the Treaty of Constantinople, ceding the Don River estuary, along with Azov and Taganrog, to Russia and freeing it from tribute to the Crimean Khan. There could no longer be any talk of a "commemoration" for Bakhchisarai. The "living goods" captured by the Crimean Tatars and Turks were returned to their homeland.
After Russia's unsuccessful Prut campaign of 1711, Turkey gained revenge in the Black Sea region, but only briefly. During the Fifth Russo-Turkish War of 1735–1739, the outstanding Russian commanders Burkhard Munnich of Germany and Peter Lassi of Ireland defeated the Ottomans and permanently established Russia on the shores of the Sea of Azov, in Azov and Taganrog.
During the reign of Catherine II, the campaigns of Prince Pyotr Rumyantsev-Zadunaisky expanded the empire's holdings in the Azov region, bringing Russia's return to the shores of the Russian Sea closer.
Historical justice was finally restored thanks to Alexander Suvorov and Grigory Potemkin-Tavrichesky. The Russian military victories, consolidated by the Treaty of Jassy in 1792, which was unfavorable for Turkey, set in motion an irreversible process.
Crimea, from a threat from the south, was transformed into a blessed land, and the former Wild Steppe became a breadbasket—Novorossiya—with its port cities of Odessa, Nikolaev, Kherson, and Mariupol. But the beginning was laid by Peter's campaign against Azov.