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Directions of attacks of the Polish-Lithuanian troops
Directions of attacks of the Polish-Lithuanian troops
On 8 August 1581, Bathory’s army, whose most effective units comprised mercenaries from all over Europe, began the Pskov campaign. From Zavolochye it passed by Voronich (57° 03′ 21″ N , 28° 52′ 21″ E ) and on August 17 besieged Ostrov (57° 20′ 00″ N , 28° 21′ 00″ E ). The Polish and Hungarian detachments fought three days for the town, which surrendered after the Hungarian artillery breached the wall.
Voronich
Ostrov
Ostrov, ruins
On August 18, Bathory’s advance groups approached Pskov. Stephen’s army was lacking heavy siege artillery. The walls of Pskov were thicker than those of Ostrov and impossible to breach without artillery guns. It was necessary to dig tunnels, try to blast fortifications with gunpowder mines and assault the citadel. Pskov was also short of heavy guns (in 1580, part of the fortress artillery was dismantled by order of Ivan the Terrible). The fate of the city, therefore, was to be decided by ordinary infantry soldiers on both sides.
Pskov
The commanders of the Pskov defence were V. F. Skopin-Shuisky, I. P. Shuisky, N. I. Ochin-Pleshcheyev, A. I. Khvorostinin, V. I. Bakhteyarov-Rostovsky, V. M. Lobanov-Rostovsky. The head of the artillery was Terenti Likhachev, a clerk of the Artillery Chancellery (Pushkarskii prikaz).
In Pskov you can visit several «places of memory» related to the siege of 1581. The royal camp was made south of the town, near the confluence of the Cheryokha and the Velikaya rivers. There was St Panteleimon’s Monastery (Ulitsa Sovetskoi Armii 119, 57.771159, 28.363090), occupied by the Polish army. Today, little is left of the monastery buildings, where restoration works are underway.
From Mirozhskiy monastery (57.805996, 28.328586), situated opposite the Pokrovskaya Tower across the Velikaya River, guns fired at Pskov.
Pskov, view of the Pokrovskaya Tower from the Mirozhsky Monastery
Pskov, view from the Pokrovskaya Tower to the Mirozhsky Monastery
The Church of St Alexis, the Man of God, at Sovetskaya Ulitsa 100 (57° 48′ 15″ N , 28° 20′ 39″ E ) was built in 1540. The Polish king’s field camp was made near its walls, from where the attacks on the Svinusskaya and Pokrovskaya Towers began. The church looks different now, as it was rebuilt in 1688.
The Church of St Alexis, the Man of God. In 1581, the camp of Stefan Batory was located here
The church of St Nicholas the Wonderworker in Lyubyatovo is in Lyubyatovskaya Ulitsa 2 (57.821789, 28.390216). It was rebuilt after the 16th century, but it keeps the legend about the monks carrying the icon of Our Lady against Bathory’s men attacking Lyubyatovsky monastery. Two bullets lodged in the icon. The main place where the dramatic events of the Pskov siege unfolded is the area near Pokrovskaya and Svinusskaya Towers. The Svinusskaya Tower does not survive (the Russian artillery destroyed it after the tower had been taken by the enemy: the «great cannon» Bars (Panther) brought the fire down on it, after that powder kegs were used to blast the tower walls). The Pokrovskaya Tower (Ulitsa Sverdlova 3, 57° 48′ 18″ N , 28° 20′ 01″ E) stands to this day and is a magnificent example of Russian defensive architecture of the 16th century.
View of the Pokrovskaya Tower from the side from which Batory's army attacked
The key memorial places are situated in the courtyard of the Pokrovskaya Tower. This is the cross commemorating the vision of the blacksmith Dorofei. According to the legend, Dorofei saw Virgin Mary with Russian saints — she ascended the Pskov wall near the Pokrovskaya Tower and prayed for the salvation of the city from the foreign invasion. This legend came up in the besieged Pskov in 1581 and inspired vigour in the defenders. Nearby is the double church of the Intercession and the Nativity of the Holy Virgin (Ulitsa Sverdlova 1, 57.805435, 28.334086). This church commemorates the battles at the most dangerous place of Pskov defence — «the breach» («na prolome»).
Memorial crosses near the church «the breach» («na Prolome»)
Bathory’s troops were able to breach the wall, seize the Svinusskaya Tower and storm into Pskov. But the defenders erected the second line of wooden fortifications inside the fortress walls, confronted the enemies and drove them out of the city. Naturally, nothing remained of the breach (in the 16th century they did not make museums of fortress walls, which for the sake of defence had to be quickly repaired). Ulitsa Kalinina is usually demonstrated to tourists as «Bathory’s breach», but it dates back to the 19th century. Only the probable location of the breach can be indicated. We should conclude the story about the Pskov «places of memory» related to the siege of 1581 with the monument to the Pskovians’ heroism. It was raised in 1897 on the old Petrovsky bastion, near the place of the supposed breach. The bastion is considered to be a «common grave» of the Russian warriors who fell defending the town against Stephen Bathory.
Monument to the defenders of Pskov in 1581 on the bastion
A noteworthy «place of memory» of those events is the Pskov-Pechory Monastery (57.810104, 27.614704), where the 16th-century walls and towers survive. It was besieged by European mercenaries from Bathory’s army, but Russian soldiers and the monks, who took arms for the first time in their lives, defeated the military professionals.
There is another interesting monument in Pechory, which can illustrate our story, although it belongs to later times. Ulitsa Verkhovicha 6 is the house (izba) of a Russian strelets (soldier), built in the 1710s–1720s. Strelets’ log houses looked similarly in the 16th century. It gives an idea of how the defenders of the Pskovian land lived.
During the five-month siege, the Pskovians made 46 sorties against the enemy and repulsed 31 enemy attacks (including several major assaults). At that time the whole Pskov area was captured, and almost all Pskov neighbourhoods fell: Velje (56° 58′ 09″ N , 28° 34′ 55″ E), Vybor (57° 13′ 38″ N , 29° 09′ 40″ E), Voronich (57° 03′ 21″ N , 28° 52′ 21″ E ), Ostrov (57° 20′ 00″ N , 28° 21′ 00″ E ), Vrev (57° 15′ 00″ N , 28° 50′ 00″ E), etc. Only the dwellers of Opochka (56° 43′ N , 28° 39′ E) seem to have been able to weather the siege. Polish troops came to the border between the Novgorodian and Pskovian lands near Porkhov (57° 46′ 00″ N , 29° 33′ 00″ E). Only Pskov held out.
Velie
Vybor
Vrev
Krasny
Opochka
The war outcome was decided not on the battlefield, though, but in the izbas where negotiation took place. It was held «at the front line» — in the border zone of the Novgorodian land, which at the time was owned by Ivan the Terrible, and the Pskovian land, seized by Bathory. Instead of the originally intended but destroyed Yam Zapolsky, it took place in the neighbouring village of Kiverova Gorka. In 2010, the expedition of St Petersburg University reconstructed the route taken by the papal legate Antonio Possevino, who acted as mediator between Russia and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Also, the possible locations of Kiverova Gorka were suggested. You can read about it here. Photos of the places along Possevino’s route, which are related to him and the negotiation of 1581–1582 can be found here.
Thanks to the diplomatic effort, the results of the wars fought over Livonia in the late 16th century were less disastrous for Russia, than they could have been. Russia lost Russian Livonia and the Baltic lands it had acquired in 1558–1577, but Stephen Bathory’s forces left the Pskov region, returning all the lands they had seized (except for the town of Velizh (55° 36′ N , 31° 12′ E ), which it was decided to burn so that no one would have it). Given that the Pskovian Land was captured (except for Pskov), Bathory’s army stood at the door of the Novgorodian Land, and Ivan the Terrible had no power to drive them out of the Pskovian Land — that undoubtedly was a success of the 16th-century Russian diplomacy. Prince Dmitry Eletsky, the head of the Russian party at the negotiation, could do what voivodes and commanders were unable to do: he liberated the Pskovian Land without a single shot.
Geopolitically, the loss of Livonia meant that Russia was returning to the position it had before 1558. After 1583, its access to the Baltic Sea was a strip of land between the Strelka River (in the present-day Strelna, St Petersburg) to the mouth of the Neva. However, it was Sweden, not the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, that seized the southern coast of the Gulf of Finland (from Ivangorod to Strelka) «making the best out of others’ victories», while Russia and Poland were at war.
Russia would regain it quickly, though, by the Treaty of Tyavzin in 1595: it would get back Ivangorod and the lands between the Narova and the Neva, and fully restore the situation as it was before 1558. These lands would be lost later, under the Truce of Stolbovo made with Sweden in 1617, as a result of the Time of Troubles. At that time, access to the Baltic Sea would be completely lost, and Peter I would have to cut a ‘window to Europe’ on the banks of the Neva.
Alexander Filjushkin