All language subtitles for THE GREAT BATTLES OF RUSSIA. CAPTURE OF KAZAN. 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

Summer of 1552 was hot.

Searing sun and deficit of water became the first hard trial

for the huge Russian army which was moving along the endless steppes

towards the enemy capital.

Kazan! A powerful fortress, a stronghold of the Tatar Khans

who had been raiding the Russian lands for many years,

enslaving thousands of people.

A hundred years passed since the Golden Horde’s Yoke had been lifted.

Now, the Russian Tsar Ivan IV was leading his troops to the Volga

to annex an entire khanate – for the very first time in history.

RUSSIA’S GREAT BATTLES

The Seizing of Kazan

The fight with the Kazan Khanate went on for several generations.

The stakes in that game were high:

control over the rich and fertile Northern Volga lands.

Destructive raids of the Tatar cavalry were forcing the Tsar

to keep thousands of soldiers on routes leading to Kazan,

which was exhausting Moscow’s treasury.

The Kazan Khanate was a feudal state

formed after the collapse of the Golden Horde.

In 1438, it became independent.

It occupied the middle flow of the Volga

and almost the entire basin of the Kama Rivers.

The state was ruled by a khan-Genghiside, i.e. descendant of Genghis-khan.

The Khanate was essentially controlling the trade on the Volga River

which was bringing great riches, and was a large centre of slave trade.

We had gates to the Volga – Nizhniy Novgorod, but then, Kazan stood.

The trade, in the widest sense, was only possible via Kazan

where all the trade flows of the region concentrated.

In essence, it was the centre of the world,

and I’m not joking.

The Kazan Fair collected all the goods

from Novgorod and Belozer to Baghdad and Rey.

They collected everything,

and so, Rus wanted those trade gates to be not the Tatar, but Russian.

It would be fine if the Tatars were just sitting there trading.

They would be normal international trade partners but for one factor –

the Osman Empire.

The Turks couldn’t influence our region with their military force

but they spread their influence in a political way.

The Kazan Khanate and the Astrakhan Khanate were first of all

political stronghold of the Islam.

They were supporting the Osman Empire,

providing for its activities on the Volga.

about Kazan had no doubts the powers of Moscow

when the father of Ivan the Terrible, Vasiliy III, was still on the throne.

The Khanate accepted its vassal dependence on Moscow,

and in 1519, Vasiliy III sent his envoy there – Khan Shah-Ali.

Shah-Ali, or Shigaley in Russian, was a Khan descended from Genghis-khan.

He ascended the khan’s throne in Kazan

and was carrying out policy beneficial for Moscow.

In Russia, he got a title of a tsar

and ruled a city of Kasimov, but submitted to the Great Prince of Moscow.

During official ceremonies,

he was standing by the throne of the Russian ruler.

The residents of Kazan wanted the Khan to refuse submission

to the Great Prince of Moscow.

However, Shah-Ali remained loyal to Russia.

In a result of a conspiracy, in 1521 he was dethroned and nearly killed.

The Tatars resumed their raids on the Russian lands.

After the death of Vasiliy III,

his three-year old son Ivan ascended the throne.

When the young prince grew up, he realized that he would have to solve

the Kazan problem which his father had failed to solve.

Ivan IV the Terrible, the Russian Tsar of the Rurik kin.

Formally, he started ruling at the age of three

and was officially proclaimed the Great Prince,

but until 1538 his mother Yelena Glinskaya was occupying the throne.

Later, a government of boyars replaced her.

In 1547, Ivan IV became the first of the Russian rulers

to take a title of a tsar.

The young Tsar had spiritual mentors – priest Sylvester and metropolitan Makariy.

They instilled the feeling of personal responsibility for the country

given to him by God in the young ruler.

It included responsibility for the enslaved Russian Orthodox believers.

Ivan began his first war with Kazan in December of 1547.

He was only 17.

Because the roads were absent, the best season to go to Kazan was winter

when people could move across snow and ice of the frozen rivers.

However, the weather didn’t favour the campaign. There was little snow.

It was raining, and it was extremely hard to move heavy artillery.

The Russian regiments reached Nizhniy Novgorod,

then the island of Robotka, and stopped.

In February, early thaw started, the ice melted,

and the troops were forced to retreat.

After that campaign, the Tsar saw the necessity to reform his army.

In a result of that, he founded the first detachments of the shooters – Streltsy;

their total number amounted to around 3,000 people.

In the 16th – the beginning of the 18th century,

the Streltsy were infantrymen armed with both firearms and cold weapons.

They were the first regular army in Russia.

During the time of peace, they were working in garrisons

and acted as police officers and fire brigadiers in the cities.

For their troops, the siege of Kazan became the first baptizing by fire.

The next campaign began two years later.

In February of 1549, the Russian army reached Kazan,

besieged the city and started constructing the besieging towers.

However, thaw with strong winds and rains began again.

Powser got wet, the troops suffered from serious lack of nourishment.

After standing by the walls of the city for 11 days, the Tsar ordered to retreat.

The first two attempts of Ivan the Terrible to seize Kazan

failed for objective reasons.

First of all, because they were badly prepared.

Now you may take a train or a car and drive to Kazan along a good asphalt road.

In those times, however, it was a quite inaccessible area.

One could walk to Kazan without much difficulty,

but it was quite a challenge a bring

a many-thousand strong army with artillery there…

the army consisting of dozens of people, dozens of servants, infantrymen,

many-ton carts, gigantic cannons and many-kilometre long strings of carts

which had to be not only moved but also guarded.

The logistics was extremely difficult.

As soon as the army got to Kazan, it was cut off from its supply bases

and became completely depended on the food it had brought with it.

On the way back, a military counsel was summoned.

The Tsar, his boyars and war leaders took a decision

to build a stopover base very close to Kazan.

Prince Shigaley pointed the Tsar to a high Round Hill between two rivers –

the Sviyaga and Schuka.

Under the hill, there were bogs

which excluded the possibility of an unexpected attack.

There, in 30 km from Kazan, they decided to build a fortress of Sviyazhsk.

However, it was very difficult to build a fortress before the enemy’s very eyes.

The attacks of the residents of Kazan could disrupt the construction.

The Tsar ordered to build a so called “dismountable town”

in the woods of Uglitch, in a thousand km from Kazan.

Then, its sections were to be sent on the rafts downriver

and assembled under the enemy’s nose.

Ivan the Terrible prepared to his third campaign well.

First of all, he ordered to build is famous Gaff of Sviyazh.

The city parts were transported on rafts when they were ready.

So, the completed town was disassembled,

floated down the river and assembled again.

In one month, it became a powerful fortress

in which the Russians could keep ammunition, food, horse’s food,

spare parts for the cannons, everything up to medicines.

It was very close from Kazan.

The preparation to the military campaign started from the base of Sviyazh,

and it turned out that it was a very sagacious deed.

In summer of 1551, the local tribes of the Cheremis saw a town

which grew in the wild woods as if by magic.

Impressed by the powers of the Russian tsar,

they begged to take them under his hand.

The Cheremis is an ancient name of the Mari people.

They participated actively in the conflict

between the Russian state and the Kazan Khanate.

They used to fight on the side of both the Russian and the Tatar armies.

At the same time with building the fortress,

the Russian units blocked the Vyatka and Kama Rivers

and closed the trade and military routes to Kazan.

The Khan’s government got worried and offered to start the negotiations.

Kazan asked the Tsar to appoint another representative instead of Shigaley.

War leader Semen Mikulinskiy replaced him.

However, he didn’t get to Kazan.

Another anti-Russian rebellion began in the Khanate.

In the course of it, a detachment of the Russian Kazaks and nobles

stationed in the city was killed.

The government of Kazan chose a new ruler

out of the Nogay Horde – Khan Ediger.

A new war was unavoidable.

Khan Ediger was a Genghisside, the last ruler of Kazan.

In 1550, while serving the Russian Tsar,

he himself participated in the siege of Kazan but soon left the service

and joined the Nogay Horde.

From there, in 1552 he received an invitation to ascent the Kazan throne.

On June 16, 1552

the Russian army headed by the Tsar left Moscow.

There were six regiments, heavy besieging artillery,

a couple of vanguard cavalry detachments and two detachments on river boats.

Sviyazhsk built by our military engineers

provided for 50% of success in besieging Kazan.

It’s extremely important to have a base close to the object of attack.

On their way to Sviyazhsk, the troops could get tired.

But there, they could rest for two days,

restore their strength, and then crossed the Volga

and start the siege of Kazan.

After a break, the troops went on.

Only a two days long march separated them from Kazan.

On hearing of the enemy, the Tatars destroyed the bridges,

and the Tsar’s army was delayed for a couple of days.

At last, the soldiers saw Kazan on the other bank of the Volga.

Kazan was a well-defended fortress

in six km from the Volga up the Kazanka River.

In the times of the Khanate, its walls were made out of strong oak logs.

Between the logs, there were stones and sand

which doubled the strength of the fortifications.

The walls were surrounded with a deep ditch 6.5 m wide and 15 m deep.

Cannons stood on walls and towers. The walls had 12 gates.

A modern Kazan Cathedral is a work of the Russian architects.

Noting survived from the ancient khans’ fortress.

On August 23, the Russian troops started surrounding the city from all sides.

Khan Ediger tried to prevent them from doing it.

For two days in a row, the defenders of Kazan were attacking the Russian regiments

but were driven away and had to return under the protection of the city walls.

By August 26th, the fortress was surrounded from all sides.

The nobles’ cavalry and the infantrymen –

the Streltsy - blocked all the roads to the city.

Artillery approached the walls.

Numerous Russian army came up to the walls of Kazan.

The cavalry consisted of the nobles,

nobles’ squires, or servants, and the Kazaks.

The Streltsy made up the infantry.

The engineering works were executed by the so called “working host” –

unarmed workers.

It was the first ever regular army in Rus. Its sprouts, so to say.

There were the Streltsy – four regiments numbering 500 men each.

2,000 of regular infantrymen with firearms.

And the artillerymen, of course.

It was impossible to seize a big city like Kazan without artillery.

That’s why a very powerful row of heavy weapons was brought there,

which at the end of the day broke through Kazan’s walls.

At least, they did help much.

The army of Kazan was much smaller than the Russian.

Khan left lots of warriors behind the walls of the city

to attack the Russian positions from the outside.

They were the Nogay horsemen and the Cheremis cavalry.

The residents of Kazan locked up the foreign traders in the city

essentially forcing them to participate in the defence of the city.

The defenders laid great hopes with the Turks and Armenians in the fortress

for they were known as brilliant artillerymen.

Together with his war leaders, Ivan IV went to the besieged city

to reconnoitre the places convenient for the storm.

The only sight of the Tsar riding around Kazan under the enemy fire

was instilling self-confidence and decisiveness into his soldiers.

Ivan Vasilyevitch started with an offer to the residents to surrender

on very beneficial terms.

He guaranteed them life,

keeping to the local laws and freedom of the Muslim faith.

The Tsar promised not to drive the Tatars away from their land.

He called upon the Tatar Khan to swear his allegiance and start serving Moscow.

Those who decided not to swear allegiance to the Tsar,

would be permitted to leave unhindered with families and servants.

Ivan Vasilyevitch received a proud refusal

and started to prepare for the storm of the fortress.

His army included a group of the military engineers,

most of whom came from Italy.

However, there was a talented Russian specialist

among them too – scribe Ivan Vyrodkov.

Vyrodkov Ivan Grigoryevitch was the first known Russian military engineer

and specialist of fortifications.

He was working at many sieges and constructions of fortresses.

He supervised the construction of the Sviyazh Fortress.

Under the engineers’ supervision, the soldiers started digging the trenches.

To cover from the enemy arrows and bullets,

a wooden fence with gun slots was erected over the trench.

Vyrodkov and the foreign engineers started building the turs –

movable besieging towers higher than the city walls.

A geleopolita, a besieging tower built by Ivan Vyrodkov,

played a huge part in the siege of Kazan.

Such towers are known since the ancient times and were used in the same way

as at the siege of Kazan.

Such a tower had to be much higher

than the fortress’s walls and towers of the city under siege.

From it, the troops could shoot at the walls and behind the walls.

From it, hot iron balls could be shot to cause fires and destruction

and to demoralize the residents of the city and the garrison.

That was the job of the besieging tower built by Vyrodkov.

Around Kazan, artillery was installed

which soon started to shoot at the besieged fortress.

The Russian cannons of Ivan IV were the bronze cannons of different calibre

and used for a variety of purposes.

The largest besieging weapons

were shooting with balls weighting from 6 to 20 pounds.

The Russians also had mortars.

They shot at an angle,

so their shells were falling on the city from above;

therefore, the fortress’s walls couldn’t protect city buildings.

Their calibre amounted to 300-600 mm.

The Russian arsenal also included the tyufyaks –

cannons which shot with buckshot.

The Russian artillery excelled the Tatar considerably.

An Englishman who visited Moscow at the end of 1550-ies wrote:

“Not a single monarch of the Christian world has so many cannons”.

At the military counsel, the war leaders suggested surrounding the city

with a line of trenches of artillery batteries.

The main cannons of the Moscow state, the Tsar’s Great Cannons,

were brought to Kazan, They were the large besieging cannons

which we would now called howitzers.

Such cannons could fire at an angle.

However, even those cannons couldn’t guarantee the penetration of the walls.

The Russian soldiers installed 150 cannons around the city.

The cannons were firing day and night.

Soon the artillery of the Tatars was defeated.

Only the best Kazan shooters were still firing lead from their harquebuses

into the direction of the Tsar’s troops.

A harquebus was a rifle loaded from the barrel

which had to be mounted on a forked frame before firing.

Its calibre was 20 mm.

The rate of fire didn’t exceed one shot in three minutes.

It could pierce any armour from 50 m distance.

However, not the enemy cannons but the attacks of the enemy from the rear

became the real headache for the Russian war leaders.

The Nogay and Cheremis cavalry was trying to seize or destroy the Russian cannons,

and after a short raid they would hide into small forest fortresses.

A large Muslim banner waved by the besieged on the wall of the fortress

acted as a signal for them to start acting.

The residents of Kazan often joined such raiders.

Both the Tsar and his generals knew that they couldn’t fight at two fronts at once.

The people were exhausted by being on alert in case of an unexpected attack

and were bearing unjustified losses.

The Tsar decided to divide his army.

One half was sent to defeat the troops of the Cheremis,

and the other one stayed behind to guard the weapons and the camp.

Prince Milulinskiy and the closest assistant of the Tsar

Prince Gorbatiy-Shuyskiy led the Streltsy and noble cavalry at the enemy.

Gorbatiy-Shuyskiy Alexander Borisovitch, a boyar, a prince,

one of the noble war leaders of Ivan IV,

participant of the battles with the Tatar troops,

in which he distinguished himself with decisiveness and bravery.

He knew the Kazan theatre of war well.

He was also one of the forefathers of the future tsars of the Romanov kin.

During the first battle the Russian war leaders lured the enemy from the ambush

near the Russian besieging fortifications and defeated it completely.

The enemies fled.

About 1,000 of the enemy warriors were taken prisoners.

However, big enemy detachments remained in the woods.

Therefore, the regiment of Gorbatiy-Shuyskiy went to look

for the main forces of the enemy.

The main base of the Tatar and Cheremis cavalry was a small fortress of Arsk,

a fortification standing in place of the modern city of Arsk.

The fortress stood on a high hill surrounded with marches and ditches

and had strong walls with towers and gun slots.

The Russians stood under the fortress’s walls for a couple of days.

Its defenders surrendered only after a powerful artillery barrage.

Nobody could come to Kazan’s rescue but the city didn’t want to surrender.

The residents of the city were fast to close every hole

made by the fire of the Russian cannons with earth and rocks.

The Tsar summoned his engineers.

They suggested a different approach to the problem.

The shooting at the walls from the cannons alone wasn’t enough to win.

The cannons had to fire from above, from high towers right at the city

bypassing its walls.

Besides, the engineers offered to mine the underground passage

through which the residents of Kazan were replenishing their stock of fresh water.

For that, they had to dig a secret underground gallery...

The construction of the tower and digging of the underground tunnels

started in the Russian camp.

The engineering troops which were born

at those times played a huge part in the defence of Kazan.

The city was already cut off from the surrounding world

by trenches which were dug out close to the walls

and where the batteries were standing.

The artillery was supposed to break through the walls

and create an opening in them.

However, the artillery barrage was supplemented

with the mining war, or underground way.

That tradition has roots in the ancient times

though powder hadn’t been invented yet.

Now, it was widely used.

The works were headed by the engineers, as the chronicle tells us.

It’s known that one of them was a Lithuanian

and another one – a West European.

The general supervision of the works

was exercised by Mikhail Ivanovitch Vorotynskiy,

a commander of a large regiment.

At last, everything was ready.

Mikhail Ivanovitch Vorotynskiy

who was the second general of the Large Regiment

was entrusted with the most difficult and dangerous military task.

The infantrymen pushed the constructed besieging towers – turs –

to the walls of the city.

However, they lacked the force.

Then the horsemen assigned to Mikhail Ivanovitch dismounted

and started pushing the movable towers together with the infantry.

They were acting under the cruel enemy fire.

Prince Mikhail Ivanovitch Vorotynskiy, a war leader of the Moscow state,

came from the Rurik kin, Chernigov branch.

In 1572, in a battle of Molody he defeated the army of the Crimean Khan

and rescued Moscow from destruction.

The besieging towers holding the cannons on top

were later named the “battery towers”.

During the siege of Kazan,

the Russian troops used them for the very first time.

Ivan Vyrodkov didn’t only supervise their construction

but also participated in the moving of the main tower

to the walls of the enemy.

The main tower, 13 meters high,

was constructed out of pre-prepared spare parts

in the course of one night.

It held 10 large weapons and 50 mortars

which were shooting at the fortress incessantly.

The residents of Kazan immediately arranged a raid to set the towers on fire.

However, Vorotynskiy’s unit intercepted the attack

and installed the towers in just 100 meters from the fortress’s wall.

Between the towers, the Prince ordered to dig trenches

and to hold ground there at any cost.

The artillery was firing at the walls, towers

and gates from the captured positions.

All nights, the defenders of Kazan tried to drive the Russians

out of the trenches but were thrown away themselves.

The Streltsy stood on the tower above the city wall

and could shoot from harquebuses right at the streets of the city.

However, Kazan was holding on.

It defenders were digging tunnels, jumping out of them at nights,

attacking the Russian positions and opening unexpected fire.

Soon, the Russians managed to blast an underground passage by the Mural Gates

which the besieged were using to go to the river to fetch fresh water.

The gallery collapsed.

Due to the explosion,

a wall of the fortress subsided and fell in one place.

The residents of Kazan tried digging new wells;

however, they only found foul and smelly water in one place.

It later became a cause of diseases...

Vorotynskiy kept moving the turs closer to the walls.

Finally, he placed them right in front of the fortress’s ditch.

The defenders of the city attacked fiercely one time after another

but couldn’t stop the slow advance of the Russian towers.

The residents of Kazan had to destroy the besieging towers – turs – at any cost.

For that, they dug an entire network of underground tunnels

leading from their fortress right up to the towers.

They only had to wait for a suitable moment.

It all happened during lunchtime when many fighters left the front line

to move closer to the field kitchens and away from the shooting.

Suddenly, a crowd of city residents crawled out of the tunnels

and attacked the Russian soldiers who remained by the towers.

It was a critical moment.

If the enemy burnt the besieging fortifications,

it would mean the end of all the hard work and previous efforts.

The Russian war leaders led the counter-attack

inspiring their soldiers.

The battle was awful.

Vorotynskiy received numerous wounds but his strong armour held.

Only one wound was serious – to his face.

War leader Alexey Basmanov came from the Tsar’s regiment.

Plescheyev and his troops managed to drive the residents of Kazan

back behind the walls.

The Russians fought their besieging fortifications off.

The firing at the city continued.

The capture of Kazan depended on underground powder mines.

They were to blast the walls

and open the way for the attacking Streltsy into the city,

and decrease the losses in the course of the storm of fortifications.

The workers who were digging long mining galleries under the ground

were praying to Lord every hour to prevent the residents of Kazan

from hearing them and blowing them all up.

It’s right, the defenders of Kazan dug everywhere

in search of the Russian mining tunnels but failed to find those galleries.

On September 30, the Russian mines installed in different places

exploded simultaneously.

A large section of a wall of Kazan stopped existence,

the earth rampart subsided and fell together with the walls.

The detachments of the Russian war leaders waited for the logs to stop falling,

and rushed to storm the city.

The residents of Kazan, still deafened by the blasts,

let the attackers enter the city.

The gates of Arsk fell; some walls and towers fell too...

Prince Vorotynskiy was the first to ascend the walls of the enemy fortress.

An active storm exhausted the Russian forces,

and they couldn’t continue the assault.

They saw the residents of Kazan bringing logs to close the holes

and constructing a new wall opposite to the gates of Arsk

but couldn’t stop them without any reinforcements.

In the course of two days, Vorotynskiy was holding

the captured positions of the enemy,

expecting a powerful counter-attack to come any minute...

The war leaders didn’t dare give an order

as the disposition for the general storm wasn’t ready.

Without it, the Streltsy of the Large Regiment

could burst into Kazan and remain without the support of the rest of the regiments.

In that case, they would perish without winning over Kazan.

The Russian army was getting ready for a decisive battle.

The soldiers were giving confessions and taking communion.

Meanwhile, the city ditches were filled with brushwood while the artillerymen

were disrupting the restorative works of the residents of Kazan,

destroying the remainders of the walls.

The Tsar spent the night talking to his spiritual father Archpriest Andrey

and in the morning he visited all the regiments delivering

an inspiring speech in front of his warriors:

“My brothers and lords, princes and war leaders,

all big and small children of Rus!

Good time has come to win over the enemy

for its insubordination, meanness and injustice.

Gather your strength and serve God and us,

and suffer for God’s churches and our Orthodoxy,

and demonstrate your courage for our descendants to remember...”

Meanwhile, the Italian engineers at Prince Vorotynskiy’s positions

were supervising a construction of a new tunnel

under the hastily erected fortifications of the residents of Kazan.

Mikhail Ivanovitch put 48 barrels of powder there.

The second tunnel led to the Nogay gates.

At night, the Tsar prayed for the victory.

The very same night, he ordered to have a big mass.

In the early morning, when the mass was coming to an end,

two terrible blasts shook the fortifications.

Battle trumpets sounded. The regiments went into an attack again.

The Tsar put his heavy gilded armour on and mounted his horse.

The Streltsy were moving forward on the right and on the left of him.

In front of them, huge holes blasted by the explosions

were seen in the city walls.

Through them, the Tsar’s infantry was entering the city

as if through open gates.

Prince Vorotynskiy and his soldiers were in the centre of the troops again.

They burst through the defence lines and were engaging in hand-to-hand combat

in the city’s winding narrow streets.

The residents of Kazan were fighting with despair of the losers.

A mine explosion under the dome was a turning point in the seizure of Kazan.

A considerable part of the wall crumbled, it simply flew into the air.

The storming columns of the Moscow soldiers rushed there.

They were first of all the harquebus shooters

and dismounted cavalry.

The blast, the ongoing attack supported by the artillery

and also terrifying street fighting!

Street fights are always cruel.

Moreover, street fights in the medieval times.

I’m sure that a lot of civilians, innocent civilians suffered in them.

It’s too late to justify ourselves, of course.

What had happened, happened.

In narrow streets, it was difficult to fight with spears and sables.

Therefore, the enemies fought with knifes

and strangled each other in hand-to-hand combats.

The hardest struggle took place by the Mural Gates.

In that fight, even dead bodies remained standing, stuck on spears.

The residents of Kazan locked up in their homes,

trying to fight off everybody who tried to burst in.

To inspire his troops and prevent retreat and fleeing,

Ivan Vaslyevitch sat on his horse in the gates to the city.

Vorotynskiy asked for reinforcements again.

The Tsar sent a half of his troops to him, mostly consisting of nobles.

The fresh forces ensured a decisive advantage in numbers for the Russians.

They were pressing the enemy in bloody fights.

The last fire of the enemy resistance was burning by the Khan’s palace.

The final struggle took place by the tall stone mosque.

Imam Kul Sharif who led the Tatar spiritual leaders and his best warriors

were leading its defence.

The massacre there was especially cruel and stubborn.

Kul Sharif died together with all his warriors.

Khan Ediger, his nobles and loyal warriors were fighting in the palace

for another hour and a half.

After that, princes, murzas and the strongest warriors

tried to flee the city.

The Russian army squeezed them from all sides

and didn’t let them exit the gates.

The Tatar warriors were jumping from the city walls into the fields

to take the last, mortal battle there.

Under the strikes of the Russian detachments,

they were slowly retreating.

Some of them found salvation in the woods

but the majority died well before reaching it.

At last, a messenger from Vorotynskiy arrived to Ivan Vasilyevitch:

the city was captured.

The Tsar solemnly led his regiments into the fallen Kazan.

It took the soldiers a few hours to clean the main street of the city of dead bodies.

History kept the words of the Tsar which he said on seeing terrifying ruins:

“In truth, these people, stubborn and not smart, were strong and powerful.

They died on their own will and didn’t submit to my will”.

For the first time in history, the Russian army defeated a khanate

and made it submit to Rus.

Khan Ediger was taken prisoner.

Later he swore his allegiance to the Tsar and was baptized.

Many of his murzes and princes with their families

as well as common residents of Kazan were captured too.

Other residents of the city who were Muslim were repatriated from Kazan

to the banks of Lake Kuban where they founded the Old Tatar suburb of Kazan.

The city was populated by the Christians.

It’s hard to overestimate the capture of Kazan.

First, we opened the entire Volga up to Astrakhan for ourselves.

Later, we captured Astrakhan too.

In that way, the state of Moscow got control over the entire Volga.

We got the transport artery which we had lost long ago,

in the 9th century when Oleg the Prophet quarrelled with the Khazars

who blocked our way to the Volga.

The river was also a very unpleasant hinder for any conqueror,

any raider from the East.

Because a river, especially a river like the Volga,

is a very serious water hazard.

And for us, it became an extremely useful transport artery.

The most important transport artery.

Over 100,000 of the Russian prisoners were freed in Kazan and its suburbs.

Raiders from the East didn’t threaten Russian lands anymore.

Free trade along the entire Volga and widening of the trade connections

with the countries of the Caucasus and East

strengthened the power of the Russian state considerably.

In a political sense,

we opened the gates to the East.

We could go further. The Urals, Siberia and on and on.

This process culminated with our movement eastwards

and founding of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy and Vladivostok.

After seizing Kazan, we became not just a big country

(we weren’t a small state even before it, to tell the truth),

but we became a European Empire.

It happened in 1552.

The seizure of Kazan took place right after the holiday of the Protecting Veil

of the Mother of God.

In homer of that event, one of the main Russian holy places,

an incredibly beautiful Intercession Cathedral was built in Moscow.

Later, it got an unofficial name of St. Basil’s Cathedral.

The many-centuries long conflict between the Russians and the Tatars

was coming to an end.

A long epoch was on the way,

during which the ancient enemies, the Russians and the Tatars,

came to learn how to co-exist peacefully on one land.