The Battle
On October 8, 1480 Akhmat Khan planned to bypass the Oka river from the west and thus avoid Ivan's regiments which were located in Kolomna, Serpukhov and Tarusa. This would allow Akhmat Khan to unite his army with Casimir's. Akhmat Khan's forces approached the Ugra river. The main Russian defense line ran along the Oka from Nizhny Novgorod to Kaluga where to Oka turns from north to east (the Ugra extends this line to the west from Kaluga toward Lithuania). At the Ugra, Akhmat Khan was met by the Russian army under the joint command of Ivan Molodoy (Ivan Junior, Ivan's son) and Andrey Menshoy (Andrey Smaller One, Ivan's brother). Akhmat's attempt to cross the Ugra river was rebuffed in a 4-day battle. The Muscovite chronicle says the Russians succeeded through the use of firearms, of which the Tatars had none.
Read more about this topic: Great Stand On The Ugra River
Famous quotes containing the word battle:
“Forty years after a battle it is easy for a noncombatant to reason about how it ought to have been fought. It is another thing personally and under fire to have to direct the fighting while involved in the obscuring smoke of it.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Above the bayonets, mixed and crossed,
Men saw a gray, gigantic ghost
Receding through the battle cloud,
And heard across the tempest loud
The death cry of a nation lost!”
—Will Henry Thompson (1848–1918)