The Last Frontier of Fire and Sword

The movement of the Crimean Khanate to dispatch troops and generals inevitably attracted the attention of Tsarist Russia. General Nikita Odoyevsky, Prince Yuri Bolyakinski, Chief Naum Vasilyev, General Vasily Buturlin and other Tsarist generals who were stationed at the border all went to Moscow. A letter was sent in a hurry, informing the Crimean Khanate that it was very likely that it would send troops to looting in the near future, and requested Moscow to send reinforcements to support it.

In fact, in nearly two hundred years, Tsarist Russia has already figured out a way to resist the invasion of Crimean Tatars. In order to fight against this group of enemies that come and go like wind, the Russians have built strong fortifications in many cities on the border, and each city is equipped with dozens of guns.

In the field diplomatic war, the Russian army will combine hundreds or thousands of carts to build huge fortresses. These car ramparts and Christina and the others at the Ackerman Wharf are similar to the tanks that defended Akhom Mills. They were joined by a wooden wall on the vehicle. If the construction goes well, the soldiers of the Tsarist Russia can do so in a short period of time. A square wooden ramp with a length of 2,000 meters and a depth of 1,000 meters was built, and the length of the largest wooden ramp even exceeded 10,000 meters. Such fortifications, not to mention Crimean Tatars without firearms, even Poles and Swedes have a headache. The wooden base can be fired with muskets and artillery, and can be chased by cavalry.

Therefore, since the "Isilan Spear" of the Battle of Moloj was broken by Ivan IV, although the Tatars of the Crimean capital still invade the southern frontiers of Tsarist Russia every year, the benefits are getting lower and lower, but the price is higher. It's coming higher. Under normal circumstances, it is not even necessary for Moscow to provide reinforcements. As long as the cities in the southern frontier are strong and clear, the Tatars in Crimea will retreat on their own after they have looted the countryside.

But this year is special. In 1655, Tsarist Russia mobilized 60,000 troops to invade the Republic of Poland. With the deepening of the war and the subsequent dispatch of troops to Riga, the capital of the Kingdom of Sweden, Tsarist Russia has invested more than 100,000 troops in Poland and Sweden. Of these troops, nearly 20,000 were drawn from the southern frontier. And these troops were meant to defend against the invasion of the Tatars. Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich and his generals did not know that this would result in an empty army in the south, but in order to cope with the situation, they could only drink poison to quench their thirst.

Therefore, the fortress of Isium, which originally had 4,000 garrisons, had only 2,000 remaining in the second half of 1656; the important town of Kursk had a total of only 3,300 troops. These limited forces were not even enough to defend a few large cities under the attack of tens of thousands of Tatar cavalry.

All tactics are empty talk without anyone to execute them. Now, for the southern frontiers of Tsarist Russia, people are missing.

But Moscow, which was unable to conjure people in a short period of time, could only order General Nikita Odoyevsky and others to keep the important town in the south and wait for Moscow to draw back its troops from the Polish front.

On March 21, the forward of the Crimean Khanate, 10,000 cavalry led by Bayezid Khan arrived at the front line of the Ishum fortress defended by Nikita Odoyevsky. The forward cavalry is composed of the elite of the Khanate. Although they have a strong front, they do not have artillery. After being stubbornly resisted by the defenders of the Ishum Fortress, Bayezid Khan ordered to stop the frontal attack and instead looted the small town of Liyubojin, leaving nothing but water and soil.

After this, more than ten thousand Tatar cavalry, under the guidance of the Nogai cavalry, turned all the manors and farms around the Ishum fort into a sea of ​​flames. However, the defenders could only watch because of their lack of strength.

On the 28th, Muhammad Glyy led an army to the Ishum fortress. The smoke and dust rolled up by fifty thousand Tatar cavalry obscured the sky, and the green flag that was raised was like a forest beyond the border.

Seeing such a great disparity between the forces of the enemy and ourselves, Nikita Odoyevsky resolutely abandoned the Ishum fortress. On the night when Muhammad Glyy arrived, he led the defenders in the city to break out of the siege and retreated to Kursk. In order to delay the pursuit of the Tatar cavalry, Nikita Odoyevsky ordered the soldiers to open all the four doors of the fortress and lure the Tatar cavalry into the city to plunder. But even so, the two thousand defenders still lost more than half.

The miss of the Ishum fortress opened the door to the southern defense line of Tsarist Russia, and Muhammad Glyi's soldiers pointed directly at Kursk. The connection between Cherkessk and Kursk was also severed and turned into an isolated city.

While Muhammad Glyy, Bayezid and others were advancing, three thousand soldiers and horses led by Chechen were slowly advancing along the coastline.

It’s not that Cheechen was deliberately procrastinating, but that the soldiers of the Free Slave Corps were passively sabotaging their work~www.readwn.com~ because when the Russians in the Free Slave Corps learned that they were going to attack Cherkessk, they started The will is depressed. Although they didn't say anything, Cheerchen knew that they were extremely unwilling to participate in this battle. Because for them, to attack Circsksk is to attack their homeland, to shoot their little father (the Tsar).

This depressed mood is not only shared by the free slaves of Tsarist Russian nationality, but also by Yelishei. On the way, he had to talk to Cheerchen several times, but every time the words came to his lips, he swallowed back again. But from his hesitation, Chechen knew that Yelishei was also unwilling to go to war with the people of his country, especially with the Tatars.

Yelishei's inner entanglement is because he can't let go of his love for Chechen and the others, nor can he let go of his love for the motherland.

Chechen was not a Russian. He could not understand that in the era of great turmoil, when the Tsarist Russians faced the threat of ruining their homeland in front of them, under the call of national heroes such as Minin and Zapolsky, After the outbreak of national cohesion belonging to the "Moscow dimension" (the national identity image of Russia in the chaotic age), the sense of identity and responsibility of all the Tsarist Russians towards the motherland. This is also why in Smolensk, those Tsarist Russian militiamen who were regarded as "gray animals" were able to endure torture, hunger and cold, and braved bullets and bullets to fight desperately. Because they believe that they are not fighting for the noble lords, but for Russia.

In this mood, only the slaves' gratitude for Chelchen's liberation and Stepan Racine's iron vascular bundle are the only ones who maintain the entire free slave army. But the occurrence of an accident made the situation of this already fragile army worse.