Russia
The Battle of Zorndorf I
Cossacks burn Zorndorf On August 20, the king’s Prussians arrived at the gates of Frankfurt-on-Oder; Fermor was out by Cüstrin with his army. The bluecoats initially moved to Tschicherzig. Frederick reached it on August 16, but Dohna was still out of the vicinity busy in his dealings with the Russians. The grueling pace under the hot summer sun had cost…
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Kuznetsov class
Early in the 1970s the Soviet Navy formulated a requirement for a conventional carrier, and a design bureau was assigned to the project in 1973. The initial sketch suggested a nuclear powered vessel of 75,000 to 80,000 tons equipped with four steam catapults and embarking an air group of seventy…
Navarino Bay 1827
The Great Age of Fighting had then passed its peak, and there would be only one more large sailing fleet battle, the one-sided slaughter of an Egyptian-Turkish squadron by a combined fleet composed of British, French, and Russian warships at Navarino Bay in 1827. The forces were not large: 11…
Grand Duchy of Muscovy
Pomest’e cavalry. In the Muscovite system, servitors (‘‘pomeshchiki’’ or ‘‘pomest’ia’’) held land from the tsar in exchange for a lifetime of military obligation. Such men usually supplied their own mounts and served as the tsarist cavalry. Their numbers grew greatly with acquisition of Novgorod and redistribution of its lands. Still…
Battle of Orsha, 8 September 1514
Unknown painter under influence of Lucas Cranach the Elder, known as “The Master of the Battle of Orsha” The Battle of Orsha took place September 8, 1514, between the forces of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Kingdom of Poland (less than 30,000 troops), under the command of Hetman Konstanty…
BATTLE OF UGRA RIVER
Standing on the Ugra River. 1480. Miniature in Russian chronicle. XVI century. The decisive moment of the defensive campaign led by Ivan III against the horde of Khan Ahmad, in October-November 1480. Relations between the Great Horde and Moscow entered a crisis in the 1470s. Ivan III refused to acknowledge…
The Rus and Vladimir I
By the tenth century the Pechenegs were dominating the steppe. Rus relations with them were complex. On the one hand, trade relations developed between these two peoples, whose economic activities complemented one another. The Rus found the horned cattle, horses, sheep, and other livestock raised by the nomads useful for…