Battle of Orsha - Eve of Battle

Eve of Battle

At the end of 1512, the Grand Duchy of Moscow began a new war for Grand Duchy of Lithuania's Ruthenian lands of present-day Belarus and Ukraine. Albrecht I Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights rebelled and refused to give a vassal pledge to Sigismund I the Old according to the Second Peace of Thorn (1466). Albert I was supported by Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor.

The fortress of Smolensk was then the easternmost outpost of the Grand Duchy and one of the most important strongholds guarding it from the east. It repelled several Russian attacks, but in July 1514 a Russian army besieged and finally captured it. Spurred on by this initial success, the Grand Prince of Moscow Vasili III ordered his forces farther into present-day Belarus, occupying the towns of Krichev, Mstislavl and Dubrovna.

Meanwhile Sigismund the Old gathered some 35,000 troops for war with the eastern neighbor. This army was inferior in numbers, but consisted mostly of well-trained cavalry. The forces of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland placed under the command of Hetman Konstanty Ostrogski included 16,000 of Lithuania cavalry, 14,000 of Polish cavalry (light and heavy), 3,000 of Polish mercenary infantry, and 2,500 volunteers, mostly from Bohemia. Sigismund left 4,000–5,000 men in the town of Barysau, while the main forces, around 30,000, moved on to face the Russians. At the end of August, several skirmishes took place at the crossings of the Berezina, Bobr and Drut Rivers, but the Russian army avoided a major confrontation.

Suffering negligible losses, the Russians advanced to the area between Orsha and Dubrovno on the Krapivna River, where they set up camp. Ivan Chelyadnin, confident that the Lithuanian-Polish forces would have to cross one of the two bridges on the Dnieper River, split his own forces to guard those crossings. However, Ostrogski's army crossed the river farther north via two pontoon bridges. On the night of 7 September, it began preparations for a final battle with the Russians. Hetman Konstantyn Ostrogski placed most of his 16,000 horses from the Grand Duchy in the center, while most of the Polish infantry and the auxiliary troops manned the flanks. The Bohemian and Silesian infantry were deployed in the center of the line, in front of the reserves comprising Lithuanian and Polish cavalry.