All language subtitles for THE GREAT BATTLES OF RUSSIA. ICE BATTLE. Documentary Film. English Subtitles. Russian History

With the Financial Support of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation

The Russian Military and Historical Society

The First Channel

Year 1240 was coming to an end.

Only three years passed since the hordes of Batiy,

the Mongol Khan, invaded the Ancient Rus.

The armies of the Russian princedoms were defeated by the numerous Mongolian host.

Ryazan, Vladimir, Kiev and Chernigov fell.

No less dangerous enemy was threatening the northern cities of Rus –

Novgorod, Pskov, and Polotsk.

The knights of the German Livonian Order moved towards Rus.

The residents of Novgorod had only one hope –

to beg the Prince of Vladimir Yaroslav Vsevolodovitch for help.

Ambassadors from Novgorod went to Vladimir...

RUSSIA’S GREAT BATTLES

The Battle on the Ice

On arriving in Vladimir, the ambassadors of Novgorod were shocked.

The sight they saw was awful.

The foreigners realized what a Mongol invasion meant.

The main thing was, the majority of the residents had left the city.

Emptiness of the streets of the medieval city which used to be so full of life,

bustle and trade, was unusual and suggested an idea of some sorrow

that had befallen the city...

The city started to restore just recently.

Carpenters were working on the sites of fires.

In the Prince’s palace, the artisans were banging their axes.

However, the ambassadors were apprehensive.

Did they come so far for nothing? Will they get help here?

The residents of Vladimir looked like they could use some help themselves.

However, they couldn’t just go away.

The ambassadors from Novgorod bowed their heads

in front of the Prince of Vladimir Yaroslav Vsevolodovitch.

Yaroslav Vsevolodivitch, Prince, a son of Vsevolod-the Big Nest.

He ascended the throne after the death of his brother Yuriy

in a battle with the Horde and was forced to recognize the authority of the Khan.

He was developing diplomatic relations with the Mongols, and for that,

he visited Batiy at the Golden Horde.

He had a few sons, among them –

Alexander nicknamed Nevskiy (“of the Neva”).

The ambassadors from Novgorod asked to send Prince’s son Alexander

and his army to their rescue.

If they had at least one chance

to solve the problem in a different way, they would have never come to the Prince.

The relations of Novgorod and Yaroslav

and his son Alexander weren’t the best.

Alexander Nevskiy, the second of Yaroslav’s sons.

At the age of 7, he together with his 9-year old brother Fedor

was left in Novgorod as an official representative of their father.

During the hunger revolts, the residents of Novgorod

attempted to murder the young princes, but failed.

That was the first offence

that Alexander took from the ungrateful residents of Novgorod.

Alexander realized long ago: a republic based on popular assemblies,

like Novgorod, would never accept the full authority of a Prince.

The lands of Novgorod were rich but changeable.

One might hold on to power there only with plain force.

Novgorod Velikiy (the Great) was a capital of the Novgorod boyar republic.

It had trade relations with other Russian princedoms, Europe and the Volga states.

Here, not the princes but the popular assembly was the highest body of power,

and it elected the ruler.

The residents often invited princes from the other cities,

but only as the heads of the army and the supreme judges.

A prince who agreed to rule in Novgorod knew

that he could be dismissed at any moment.

However, the city paid well for the services – both him and his army.

That’s why even those war leaders who had been driven away from Novgorod,

always returned if they got a new invitation.

Novgorod was the main trade gates of Rus – not only of its north-west,

but of the entire Rus.

Novgorod provided for the transit trade on the Baltics.

That was the reason why Yaroslav was always ready to come to Novgorod’s rescue

despite their difficult relationship and possibly even dislike to one another –

just because he benefited from it.

Even if their economic interests didn’t coincide!

We know of cases when the Great Princes of Vladimir

declared economic blockade against Novgorod.

They were in essence starving its residents out.

However, there are no doubts that the Prince wouldn’t hesitate to help it

in case of an external threat and a risk of losing those trade gates.

The Great Prince would definitely agree to help Novgorod out.

Yaroslav never refused to come to Novgorod’s rescue.

When the German knights seized a town of Yuryev in the lands of Novgorod,

the Prince sent his regiments there.

The German knights mobilized the volunteers and went out to meet to Russians.

By the Omovzha River, they attacked Yaroslav’s positions.

For the 14-year old Alexander, it was the very first battle.

The knight Order of Sword-Bearers was founded in 1202

and was officially called “The Brothers of the Christ’s Army”.

Its distinctive mark was a red sword with a cross on a white coat.

In the course of the battle, the German knights,

clad in their heavy armour,

retreated towards the ice of the frozen river.

The thin ice started to crack, and many horse riders drowned.

Yaroslav enjoyed complete victory.

Despite that, the residents of Novgorod felt the authority of the Prince

as a burden and asked him to leave the city

so that they could resume self-governance.

It’s incredible, but Yaroslav agreed to rule Novgorod

and defend it from its enemies four times, and four times he was leaving it,

unable to come to terms with the city’s free spirit.

Now, Novgorod was begging for help again.

However, they were inviting not Yaroslav.

“Prince, give us your son! We want Alexander to be our Prince”.

Alexander knew the nature of Novgorod no worse than his father.

In 1236, when he was 16, he became a ruler of Novgorod

and built a row of fortresses around it.

There, he engaged into a battle that would later give him a nickname “Nevskiy”.

In summer of 1240, the Swedish squadron under the command of Birger Magnusson,

a son-in-law of the Swedish King Eric XI, and war leader Ulf Fase

entered the mouth of the Neva.

The Swedes wanted to build a fortress there

to conquer the neighbouring lands – first of all, the Russian Ladoga.

The Swedes behaved with self-confidence, and even sent Alexander a message:

“If you can, defend yourself,

for I’m already here, plundering your lands”.

On finding out about the invasion,

the young Prince decided not to wait for help

from Vladimir and to answer the cheeky letter on his own.

Before the battle, Alexander came to St. Sophia’s Church.

He prayed and then addressed his host which gathered by the cathedral:

“God is not in the force but in truth. Some came with weapons,

and some came on horseback; but we were calling our God’s name.

They were defeated and fell, and we survived and are standing strong”.

Alexander attacked the Swedes on Sunday 15, around 10 a.m.

Alexander Nevskiy was first of all a military man –

not a knight but a military man.

He saw an enemy. He saw a target.

What target? To win, why else do people engage in wars?

Therefore, he ignored all that knights’ bullshit when a knight says

to his adversary: “Handsome army, please defend yourself”.

Alexander Nevskiy attached the sleeping enemy camp with three columns

in the early morning.

Of course, there were guards there.

I am not inclined to think of the Swedes as of stupid or bad warriors.

Still, they had to deal with an attack from three sides.

Our troops from Novgorod and Pereyaslavl burst into the Swedish camp

and started a massacre there.

Of course, we have no means of knowing how it was happening in reality.

The Swedes escaped in their ships.

The enemy bore great losses –

the entire shore near the landing place was covered with dead bodies.

That victory gave Alexander

a nickname of “Nevskiy” after his death.

Alexander didn’t expect the popular assembly of Novgorod to drive him,

its recent saviour, out of the city together with his wife and a newborn son.

The differences between the princes and the residents of Novgorod were numerous.

The city residents were used to drafting their own laws,

the rules of trade and duties.

However, when a prince came to rule the city,

he was usually amending the established customs,

demanding wages for his army

and collecting duties for the needs of defence.

The arguments often led to conflicts.

In any other city, a prince could execute the squabblers

or drive them out of the city.

Not in Novgorod, though.

He had either to give in to the prejudice of his authority or leave the city.

That was the usual practice. The prince couldn’t stay in Novgorod for too long.

We don’t know any prince who ruled Novgorod

for any continuous period of time.

Moreover, if the ruler of Novgorod was successful and strong,

he was definitely “shown the way”.

To “show the way” essentially meant

to terminate the contract with him and send him home.

The city was doing it just because a prince could concentrate too much power,

and it constituted a threat to the republican way of governance.

Therefore, the interested party was making sure the prince couldn’t concentrate

too much power in his hands.

To prevent that, a simple remedy was used:

the residents didn’t fight him in Novgorod, they were driving him out of it.

Now, when the ambassadors came to beg for the military help again,

Yaroslav said that his son didn’t want to talk to them,

so they could go back home.

However, the residents of Novgorod

didn’t give up and explained their plight.

The German knights were threatening Novgorod again.

The remainders of the Order of Sword-Bearers

joined the powerful Teutonic Order.

The Teutonic Order was founded in 1198.

It consisted of experienced knights

who took part in the hostilities in the Holy land in Palestine.

By mid-30ies of the 13th century, the Teutonic Order had conquered Prussia,

a huge territory in Northern Europe, and built a series of powerful castles there.

After the Order of Sword-Bearers joined the Teutons in Eastern Baltics,

a powerful military state as formed under the name of the Livonian Order.

The entire force of the Catholic knights moved from the Baltics to Rus.

The ambassadors from Novgorod said that first,

the lands of Pskov came under the attack.

The enemies seized and burnt the city of Izborsk and killed its entire garrison.

The army of Pskov which was sent to fight the knights, was defeated,

and the enemy host besieged Pskov.

The enemies failed to seize the city, but they burnt its suburbs.

The Kremlin of Pskov remained standing,

but the Germans continued to besiege the city.

The surrender of Pskov wasn’t usual

from the point of view of a modern person.

The thing is, the residents of Pskov weren’t united

in their attitude towards the Livonian Order.

They traded with it,

and when they were in a state of truce, they didn’t argue

what way of believing in Christ was righter –

of the Catholic knights or the Orthodox residents of Pskov.

They even held joint military campaigns against the pagans –

the Yotvingians and Lithuanians.

Therefore, the Livonian Order wasn’t something entirely stranger

and hostile for Pskov.

That was the reason why Tverdila Ivankovitch,

the leader of supporters of Pskov’s independence,

surrendered the city to the knights without a battle.

He believed that in that way,

Pskov could throw off the heavy hand of Novgorod Velikiy.

However, not all residents of Pskov agreed with their leader.

So, he offered a compromise to those who locked up in the city Kremlin –

those who didn’t want to tear connections to Novgorod could take their families

and go along the banks of the Ulmen and Volkhov to Novgorod Velikiy.

Those for whom Pskov was dearer, could submit and stay.

The migrants came to Novgorod with the news

that the Livonian knights were ruling Pskov.

The Germans left a regiment of knights in Pskov;

soon, the garrison of Pskov started attacking the lands of Novgorod.

The enemies seized the Russian town of Tyosov,

and constructed a fortress of Koporye by the Gulf of Finland.

The enemy cavalry was attacking the Russian trade people

in just 30 versts from Novgorod itself.

That was when the residents of Novgorod

came to beg the Great Prince Yaroslav of support.

Yaroslav was struggling to hold on to his power

under the pressure of the Golden Horde.

However, if the Germans seized the northern cities,

he would get a dangerous enemy in the west too.

Under the blows from two sides – of the Germans in the west

and the Mongol in the east, both the remainders of the Russians princedoms

and Rus as a state could perish.

He had to stop the Germans.

However, Alexander refused to return to Novgorod.

He considered the residents of Novgorod ungrateful and unreliable as allies.

Yaroslav sympathized with his son,

but he couldn’t throw Novgorod to the wolves.

The Great Prince found a way out.

He sent his other son to Novgorod – Prince Andrey.

Andrey Yaroslavovitch, the third son out of 8 sons of Yaroslav Vsevolodovitch,

a younger brother of Alexander Nevskiy,

the future Prince of Suzdal and Great Prince of Vladimir.

He participated in the Battle on the Ice.

His direct descendants were the kin of the Shuyskiys.

The ambassadors of Novgorod were going back home unsatisfied.

Instead of Alexander who had already proved himself as a great war leader

in a battle with the Swedes, they were bringing Andrey,

a prince who was brave but young and unexperienced.

Andrey came to Novgorod with his army but nobody dared stand under his banner.

The residents of Novgorod were afraid that the young prince

would lead them to defeat and deprive of the last hope.

Meanwhile, each day was bringing one alarming news after another;

the regiments of the Baltic tribes of the Aestis joined the Germans.

They were attacking the lands of Novgorod and stealing cattle.

The peasants were simply scared to go out into the fields.

The residents of Novgorod sent ambassadors to Vladimir again

with a strict instruction to bring Alexander Yaroslavovitch back...

at any cost.

The Great Prince Yaroslav Vsevolodovitch decided to talk to his son himself.

He summoned Alexander and called upon him to forget all offences.

“A prince has to serve God and people not in return for his subjects’ gratitude

but to protect them from sorrow and defend his land.

That duty isn’t preconditioned either by gratitude or slander.

Christ was suffering, and what are human sufferings compared to those of God?

We can’t throw Novgorod to the wolves; they are our brothers,

the Russian people, Orthodox, just like us.

Beside, the defeat of Novgorod today is our defeat tomorrow”.

So, Alexander went to Novgorod...

Year 1241 was coming to an end when Alexander and his army entered the city.

The crowd of residents gathered to welcome him.

The residents of city were full of hope;

the chronicles record that “the residents of Novgorod were elated”.

The Prince was acting fast, for he knew: his victory depended on his speed.

Soldiers from the neighbouring towns and villages were gathering in the city,

and soon, the army went out of it.

Alexander seized the fortress of Koporye

built by the Germans and drove the enemy garrison out of there.

Soon, a part of army of Vladimir and Suzdal arrive from Yaroslav

headed by Alexander’s brother Andrey, and their joint forces went to Pskov.

The garrison of Pskov consisted of the Germans and the warriors of the Chud.

The Chud was the Novgorod name for the Aesti and other Finnish tribes

who resided in the Baltic lands.

The Aesti constituted a numerous reserve of the German knights’ army.

They actively participated in the hostilities

against Rus and often attacked the lands of Novgorod.

It didn’t take much time to seize Pskov.

A part of the garrison was killed, and the prisoners were sent to Novgorod.

The lands of Pskov and Novgorod were cleansed of the enemy,

and in spring of 1242, Alexander entered the enemy territory.

The Russian army marched into the lands of the Chud.

As the chronicle says, Alexander’s host went “into a wild” and “in collection”.

It means that the Russian army dispersed.

Its small detachments were plundering the lands and settlements of the enemy,

stealing cattle and taking people prisoners.

It was a lightning-fast assault.

They entered the enemy territory fast, without any preparation.

We have two exact mentions about that in the chronicles.

They used right terms for those.

They say that Nevskiy sent his army “into the wild” and “in collection”.

“Wild” essentially means directs robbery.

It means he was plundering the enemy territory.

The “collection” is almost the say. We may call it “foraging” now.

The soldiers were collection food for themselves and the horses –

with force, as was always the case on the enemy territories.

Attacking the enemy lands, Alexander demonstrated:

for each attack, a punishment would come.

Plundering would come for plundering, and death for death.

Alexander’s regiments were moving fast, striking blows here and there.

The Prince knew that the Germans

started to mobilize the regiments for a counter-attack.

From liberated Pskov,

Prince Alexander Yaroslavovitch started sending units

to the side of the Aesti, behind Lake Peipus.

It was a territory which submitted to the Bishop of Derpt.

Derpt was an ancient Russian town of Yuryev, modern Tartu.

It was founded by Yaroslav the Wise himself.

Twenty years ago, the Aestis lived there,

and the residents of Novgorod were fighting the local knights

not willing to submit to them, but it so happened that Yuryev became Derpt again.

Now, migrants from Germany populated the city.

Naturally, Bishop and the knights who lived on Bishop’s lands

didn’t want to go anywhere and to cede them;

however, raids of Alexander’s warriors were bringing them to ruin.

That was why the Bishop of Derpt decided to strike a counter-blow.

He mobilized the knights who lived on his territory

and gathered voluntary host out of the Aestis.

We suppose, though it’s very difficult to check,

that he could also ask Denmark for help.

Some twenty years ago,

Denmark occupied the north of Estonia on the shores of the Gulf of Finland

where it started to build Revel (modern Tallinn).

In this way or another,

the army was gathered for a campaign against the cheeky Russian prince.

The hastily mobilized army went out of Derpt against Alexander.

It’s still unknown who was heading the army of the knights.

A small vanguard regiment of the Russian troops led by the Russian war leaders

Kerbet and Domash Tverdislavovitch,

a brother of the Novgorod war leader, met that army.

The battle ended in tragedy for the Russian regiment.

A part of the warriors opposed the enemy and attempted to restrain its advance.

However, the forces were uneven.

The entire regiment together with Domash Tverdislavovitch was killed...

The second group fled the pursue

in a hope to warn Alexander about the imminent danger.

On finding out about the attack of the knights,

the Prince ordered to gather all his regiments into one first.

He dispatched the messengers with an order to everybody

to immediately return under the main banner.

The time was of the essence.

The groups of the soldiers were arriving from all sides –

the soldiers were hurrying their horses.

Alexander retreated to Pskov

to gather all the forces together and prepare for a battle.

The German troops were almost breathing down the Russians’ necks;

they were trying to catch up with them, drive them away from their territory,

deprive them of their loot and prisoners.

Alexander stopped by Lake Peipus which was covered with ice.

Where did the battle take place?

Why was it called the “Ice Battle” before revolution and in the Soviet times?

I shall remind you that April 5 is spring,

and in those times springs used to start earlier and faster than now.

The earth, released from snow and ice,

became crumbly and boggy.

Cavalry couldn’t fight on it.

Let me also remind you that the knights

and the troops of Alexander and his brother Andrey were fighting on horseback.

Therefore, they needed ground

on which the horses had no trouble riding –

either ice or frozen earth by the very shore,

covered with snow and partially with ice.

It is well known that peoples of Northern Europe, the Baltic Sea basin,

Norwegians and Danish often fought each other on the ice.

Therefore, there is nothing weird in the fact

that the Russians chose such ground for the battle.

I personally visited Samalva,

the bank of the lake where we believe the battle had taken place.

We have enough of reasons to believe that the battle took place

not in the middle of the lake, of course, and not directly on the ice,

like in Eisenstein’s great movie, but on the bank bound with snow and ice.

The chronicle says that “last year grass poked from under the snow”.

On the ice, there could be no “last year grass”.

In the evening before the great battle

Alexander listened to the reports of his scouts, checked the guards

and pondered on the strategy of the future battle.

The Prince knew that a victory in that battle would teach the Germans

not to attack for long.

He had to eliminate the German threat with one decisive blow.

There and now! On the eve of the battle, he prayed:

“Judge, Lord, and decide if I’m right to win...”

In the morning of April 5, 1242

Alexander lined his troops up on the ice of Lake Peipus.

We don’t know. Maybe there was ice there.

However, we still don’t know the exact place of the battle.

All archaeological expeditions which had been carried on there,

reported that they had pinpointed the place of the battle.

However, the objective data are absent.

The objective data are discoveries of objects of mass armament,

probably the remainders of the dead warriors.

But no, they are absent.

We don’t know anything concrete about the place of the battle.

The information from the chronicle is very vague.

The army of the Livonian Order stood opposite to the Novgorod host.

No more than a few hundred steps separated the first two rows...

Many myths exist about the Battle on the Ice.

According to one of the, forces comparable to the armies of the Great Patriotic War

met on Lake Peipus.

However, the majority of the researchers believes

that the Germans had about 35-45 knights, about 100 squires

and a few hundred of warriors of the Chud tribe.

Novgorod sent around 100 people of the volunteer army

and about 500 soldiers of the city regiment.

How many warriors did fight in the battle of April 5, 1242

on the border of the lands of Pskov and the Order?

According to the researchers’ estimates,

there were about 400 soldiers on horseback there.

With them, there were 700 infantrymen out of Estonians

who were following them.

From Novgorod,

Alexander Yaroslavovitch and his brother Andrey

were likely to have got around 300 soldiers each.

Plus, 1,000-1,500 of infantrymen from the voluntary army of Novgorod.

Is it much or little? By medieval counts, that was enough.

In the medieval ages, the might of the cavalry

was in most cases determined by the number of the knights’ cavalry.

For a couple of centuries, a heavily armed warrior on a horseback

played a part of a real tank on the battlefield.

A knight of the Teutonic Order wore a metallic helmet

resembling a bucket or a pot.

His body was protected by an aketon,

a quilted jacket worn under the armour, and a long-sleeved chain of armour.

A horse rider was armed with a heavy spear and a sword.

The knights chose only the strongest and the sturdiest of horses.

The horse was protected with a thick quilted cover.

A knight in such armour and on a strong horse was invincible

and terrifying for the infantry.

The heavily-armoured knights were followed by cavalrymen

who didn’t have such powerful armour and weapons:

sword-bearers, mercenaries, rich residents of Derpt.

Contrary to the established opinion, a Russian voluntary warrior

and a boyar from Novgorod had no worse armour and weapons than the knights.

A cavalryman of the heavy cavalry wore either a lamellar shell or a chain mail.

On the head, he had a helmet with a half-mask and a barmitsa –

a chain mail fastened to the lower part of the helmet.

It protected the warrior’s back of the head, ears, neck, shoulders

and sometimes chin too.

A warrior was armed with a shield, a sword, a spear

and sometimes also a club, a bow with arrows or a battle axe.

His weapons and armour weighted much more than those of the German knight.

In a battle, a Russian cavalryman carried 30 and more kg of metal on himself

which turned him into a live tank, as the Order knights.

The Russian warriors used the spears and swords, like the knights.

It was extremely difficult

to counter the battering attack of the knights’ cavalry.

However, after it the warriors had to fight hand-to hand, and there,

good skills of using a sword, an axe and a club gave extreme advantages.

The warriors of Novgorod and Pskov were rich and well-armed people.

A lot of residents of Novgorod were good shooters.

It was difficult to hit a knight galloping on a horse with an arrow.

However, a horse itself was a great target for an experienced shooter.

The Russian infantrymen were good at fighting,

and there were no chance people in the army.

The knights were lining up in a rectangular,

or wedge battle order called the Great Pig.

The best knights of the wedge that was acting as a battering ram

lined up in five rows.

The first included 7-9 knights on the horses.

The last one consisted of 11-13 knights.

The complete number of the heavily armoured horse riders of the wedge

amounted to 35-65 people.

The rows were lined up in a way

so that each of them added two knights at the flanks.

In that way, each last warrior could defend and cover for the warrior

standing in front of him.

Due to that, the wedge was almost invincible.

The rhymed chronicles tell us that 35 knights came there.

It’s clear that each of the knights had 2-3 squires

and the Estonian mercenaries.

They constituted the so called “Chud without number”

mentioned in the Russian chronicles.

It’s possible that the German professional warriors numbered around 120-150 people.

Plus 300-500 of mercenaries. They were the light cavalry.

They didn’t have heavy cavalry at all.

All that horde descended on the battlefield

were the forces of Novgorod were lined up.

The main part of the troops consisting of a few dozens of rows

followed the wedge.

They included the soldiers on the horses and the battle servants of the knights.

The majority of them were shooters, crossbow archers and squires.

It was extremely difficult to stop a column of the knights

that had gained speed.

However, it had its shortcoming – inability to manoeuvre.

Alexander was watching the enemy amidst of his troops.

Those 150 people were a deadly battle machine.

An army could lose a battle to it even if it outnumbered it three to five times.

The knights on the horses could simply crush the soldiers under the hoofs.

That’s why Nevskiy sent his archers, his shooters to meet the attackers.

Alexander threw the shooters under the horses’ hoofs for a reason.

They were practically doomed.

However, thanks to them the main forces

of the Russian army could gain a decisive advantage.

At first step by step, and then gaining speed,

the horsemen approached the Russian rows.

When the German wedge had gained high speed,

the Russian warriors heard the deafening clanging of the steel machine.

The ice of Lake Peipus was shaking and droning

from the hoofs of the heavy horses.

The battle began...

The first strike of the knight’s column was terrible.

Dozens of the soldiers were crushed by the horses’ hoofs

or stubbed with spears and fell on the ground dead

during the very first minutes of the battle.

The army of Novgorod got cut in the middle as if with a steel wedge.

The soldiers retreated bearing huge losses.

They were fighting back feverishly, shooting arrows at the enemy

but couldn’t contain the might of its attacking wedge.

The Aestis who were accompanying the Germans

rushed into the hole made by the knights.

The knights won the first stage of the battle.

However, they failed to scare or disperse the Russians.

The Prince’s regiment was standing in the rear.

While the vanguard units of the knights were bursting though the lines,

the Prince’s warriors stood their ground awaiting his order.

On moving deeper into the lines of the Russians,

the knights were losing their speed.

The horsemen threw away heavy spears, useless in the hand—to-hand combat,

and took out their swords.

They were still moving forward, but with difficulty and slowly.

Tired horses were neighing.

Each meter was exhausting the knights’ wedge more and more.

The Russian cavalry didn’t bulge.

The knights approached the Russian cavalry

but couldn’t go any further.

The battering strength of the Germans was exhausted.

That was when Alexander rose his hand.

“Forward march for the sake of God’s Great Novgorod!”

Gaining speed, a part of the Russian cavalry moved forward to meet the knights.

The other attacked the left and right wings of the enemy troops.

In a medieval battle, encirclement meant death.

Over 20 knights were killed or were taken prisoners.

It means that two thirds of the army perished.

The victory was fast and complete.

Despite the fact that the modern history school textbooks tell us

about thousands of soldiers,

sometimes decreasing the number to 300, 400

or 500 people from one side, and 600-700 from the other,

it still seems so little for us.

We need to forget all our ideas of what a lot is and what little is.

The attack mixed the lines of the enemy.

The Aestis who were defending the German wedge from the sides,

threw their weapons and ran away.

The flanks of the knights’ line became bare.

“The battle was cruel, and the sounds of breaking spears were heard,

as well as the clanging of the swords, and it seemed that the frozen lake moved,

and the ice wasn’t seen for it got red from blood”.

This was how the terrible massacre on the ice of Lake Peipus

will later be described by the author of the Life of Alexander Nevskiy.

The exact number of people who died on the ice of Lake Peipus is unknown.

According to the Russian sources, 400 German warriors died,

and another 50 were taken prisoner.

The chronicle says that “the Germans were mostly killed

while the Chud were pursued for seven versts”.

The German sources tell us about the death and captivity

of 26 German knights - brothers of the Order.

The documents don’t mention

the number of the common soldiers who died in the battle.

The victory was complete.

The cavalry was riding back after pursuing the enemy.

The soldiers were helping the wounded and collecting the bodies of the perished.

The prisoners were made to run the ice barefooted.

First Pskov, and then Novgorod met Alexander and his army.

Silver coins flew under their horses’ hoofs.

The gilded domes of the Cathedral of St. Sophia of Novgorod shone festively.

The outcome was incredible.

With his victory,

Alexander Yaroslavovitch provided for a generation of peaceful life.

The Germans didn’t engage in wars with Novgorod for over 15 years.

The harshest and the most large-scaled conflict between them

started anew only in the 60ies of the 13th century, 20 years later.

A peaceful generation!

God, they only killed 20 Germans, and ensured peace for 20 years!

Of course, it was a great victory.

Alexander Nevskiy proved himself to be not only a great war leader,

though undoubtedly he was one, but a great politician too.

The battle on Lake Peipus, which was also called the Battle of the Ice,

decided the outcome of the long war.

The Germans sent an embassy to Novgorod headed by Andreas von Stirland

who signed a peace treaty, in which he officially denounced any claims

to Pskov, Tyosov and Koporye.

Rus didn’t lose a single piece of land.

Alexander returned to Vladimir.

In some time, he will ascend the throne of the Great Prince

after his father’s death.

Time will demand other heroic deeds from him.

The military campaigns will be replaced with political conflicts with the Horde

and diplomatic squabbles with his compatriots – the Russian princes.

Meanwhile, he was riding through villages and towns plundered by the Mongols.

Rus was weakened by the attacks of the Khans,

that’s why many considered it to be easy prey.

However, after the Battle on the Ice Alexander knew:

it retained its strength enough to bury any hasty conquerors.

He was certain that the turn of the Mongols and Tatars was coming...