Battle of Kulikovo

On 8 September 1380, on a stretch of open ground near the upper Don, an army gathered by Grand Prince Dmitry of Moscow defeated the forces of Mamai, the warlord who then controlled the western half of the Golden Horde. The victory did not free the Russian principalities from Mongol overlordship, but it became a symbol of Moscow's rise and earned Dmitry the name Donskoy, "of the Don".

After the Mongol invasion of Kievan Rus' in the thirteenth century, the Rus' princes were vassals of the Golden Horde. From 1359, when Khan Berdi Beg was killed, the Horde fell into a long succession struggle. Mamai, a powerful commander but not a descendant of Genghis Khan, ruled the west through puppet khans, and so his authority was always fragile. Meanwhile the Grand Principality of Moscow was growing. Under the young Dmitry, it secured the title of grand prince of Vladimir and forced its rival Tver to submit in 1375.

Open hostility between Dmitry and Mamai began in 1374. Moscow's troops campaigned against the Tatars, and in 1378 a force sent by Mamai was beaten at the Vozha River. At the same time a rival khan, Tokhtamysh, backed by Tamerlane, was taking control of the eastern Horde. In 1380 Mamai decided to lead an army against Moscow in person, arranging an alliance with Jogaila of Lithuania. Prince Oleg of Ryazan, whose capital Mamai had burned in 1378, probably sided with him, though this is disputed.

Dmitry assembled his forces at Kolomna in August, left on 20 August and reached the Don on 6 September. His commanders chose to cross the river before Mamai's allies could arrive, even though this cut off their own retreat. Medieval sources give impossible figures of hundreds of thousands. Modern historians have proposed anything from about 6,000 to 60,000 men for Dmitry, with 15,000 to 20,000 a common recent estimate, and up to 30,000 for Mamai. Neither Jogaila nor Oleg reached the field in time.

Most details come from a later and partly legendary account, the "Tale of the Rout of Mamai". The Russians crossed the Don in fog on the morning of 8 September and drew up near the mouth of the Nepryadva in six regiments, with a reserve hidden in an oak wood. According to tradition, the fighting opened with a duel between Alexander Peresvet and a Tatar champion, in which both men died. A long and bloody melee followed, and the Tatars broke through to the grand prince's banner. At that moment the hidden reserve, led by Vladimir Andreyevich and Dmitry Bobrok, charged into the Horde's flank, and Mamai's army fled. Losses were very heavy on both sides, and Dmitry was found wounded among the dead.

Jogaila turned back when he heard the news. Mamai fled to the Genoese port of Caffa in Crimea, lost his remaining followers to Tokhtamysh and was killed there. Tokhtamysh, now master of a reunited Horde, sacked and burned Moscow in 1382 and forced Dmitry to acknowledge him again as overlord. The tribute relationship continued for another century, ending only after the stand on the Ugra River in 1480.

Kulikovo inspired an unusually large body of medieval literature, from the epic Zadonshchina to the religious "Tale", and later countless paintings. Historians treat these works with caution, since they contradict each other on basic points. The battle nonetheless came to be seen as the moment when Moscow began to lead the Russian lands against the Horde.

Our 1400 map shows the Golden Horde a generation after the battle, and the 1492 map shows Moscow soon after it ended the Horde's overlordship.