Many have heard this phrase, but, to my surprise, even in the Far East, the history of the largest fortified settlement of Russian pioneers on the Amur in the 17th century is known to relatively few. Or maybe they heard and forgot. I myself, to confess, am not a great specialist in this layer of development of the region, besides, I have not actually been to the Amur Region, where the Albazinskaya fortress once stood (except for two trips through it by train). However, I came across very interesting photographs of a mock-up reconstruction of the prison, created by the famous Khabarovsk architect and historian N.P. Kradin. Nikolai Petrovich was guided by the description of the fortress, compiled in 1684 and miraculously preserved in the archives of the Academy of Sciences, and relied on archaeological research data.
First of all, I want to recall the historical background of those years - the events associated with the foundation, life and death of the Albazinsky prison. In my story, I will use materials from the article by Alexander Rudolfovich Artemyev “New materials on the heroic defense of the Albazinsky prison in 1685 and 1686-1687” and several photographs of the author.

Albazin was first mentioned in 1650, when a detachment of the Russian pioneer Yerofey Pavlovich Khabarov occupied the town of the Daurian prince Albaza on the upper Amur, whose name later gave the name to the prison. Leaving the town in June of the following year, Khabarov burned it down. Later, with his cruel actions on the Amur, he set against himself not only the natives of the region, but also the participants in the campaign, after which he was recalled from Dauria.
The creative stage in the history of Russian Albazin began only in 1665-1666, when a group of 84 Cossacks headed by N.R. Chernigov. The Cossacks set up a prison on the site of the Albazinsky settlement and took over the functions of collecting yasak from the local population. They regularly transported the entire collected yasak through Nerchinsk to Moscow.

The fortress received its first baptism of fire in the summer of 1670, when it was besieged by the Manchus. Little is known about this attack. It is only known that the Manchus sailed to the fortress on ships, and later a cavalry army approached the fortress by land. The besiegers built an earthen rampart near the prison. The seriousness of their intentions was obvious, and they hastened to report to Moscow that Albazin had fallen. Nevertheless, the prison survived.
In 1682 it had already become the center of an independent county. By this time, the Amur region, where arable farming was successfully developing, was gradually turning into a real breadbasket for the population of Transbaikalia. From the confluence of the Shilka and Argun down the Amur to the mouth of the Zeya River and along the Zeya itself, there were more than twenty Russian agricultural settlements - settlements, yasak winter quarters and prisons.
At the beginning of the same decade, the Manchu government of the Qing Empire began to prepare for aggression in the Russian Amur region. The presence of Russian pioneers in the region deprived the Manchus of sources of valuable furs and prevented the capture of the local population. The Daurian and Evenki princes - Gantimur, Tuidohun, Baodai and Wen-du - voluntarily went over with their people to the Russians, and the Manchus, not without reason, feared that other tribes would follow their example, not only on the left bank and upper Amur, but also on its right bank .
At the beginning of 1683, in order to strengthen the defense capability of the Trans-Baikal and Daurian prisons, the Yakut, Irkutsk, Ilimsk, Nerchinsk and Albazinsky counties were united into the Yenisei category and placed under the control of the Yenisei governor. According to the sovereign's decree, it was ordered to recruit in Tobolsk and other cities "mounted and foot Cossacks and archers, and from their children and brothers and nephews, select willing 500 people and send them to Yeniseisk ... give them 50 rubles per person and a squeaker to rise." However, a detachment led by the Yenisei boyar son Athanasius von Beyton set out for Dauria only in the autumn of 1684.

Meanwhile, even the previous summer, Albazin servicemen and industrial people cut down a new prison, enclosing a territory much larger than before with walls. A detailed description of the prison, compiled in 1684 by the governor A.L. Tolbuzin, it was on its basis that the appearance of the fortress was recreated.
The new walls had a height of 5.3 meters and were covered with a double board with battlements. The northern wall of the prison was 85 meters long and ended with a square (6.4 x 6.4 m) corner tower, excavated by archaeologists in 1989-1990. The eastern wall was divided by a travel tower (8.5 x 8.5 m) into segments of 46 and 37 meters. The southern one also had a travel tower, but already round, which divided the wall into segments of 32 and 43 m. The western, coastal, 97-meter-long wall included two towers built back in the 1960s. Under these towers there were huts for amanats (hostages), under which yasak was collected.
In the northwestern corner of the prison there was a "state court for the arrival of governors and clerks." Further in the inventory, it is noted that “gorodni were cut down along the prison on three sides.” At one time it was believed that the wall was formed by tightly adjoining log cabins. Meanwhile, during archaeological excavations, it was found that the walls of the prison had a structure in the form of a tyn - logs vertically dug into the ground close to each other. Apparently, A.D. When compiling the inventory, Tolbuzin made a mistake, naming the tynovye walls he called gorodny. This is confirmed by the further text of the inventory, which speaks of the construction on the inside of the fort of a wattle fence arshin wide (0.71 m) and a sazhen high (2.13 m), and on it - "polatey" (combat passages), from which the access to loopholes.
By the way, historians encountered a similar mistake when studying Mangazeya: according to the Painted List of 1625-1626, the city wall consisted of gorodens, and during archaeological research, taras were discovered - two parallel walls with cuts.

The design features of the Albazinsky prison to some extent predetermined its fate. On June 12, 1685, a Manchurian army of more than 10 thousand people with two hundred guns laid siege to Albazin. On June 16, a decisive assault on the city was undertaken. The cores of the Manchu cannons easily pierced the walls and towers of the prison. Nevertheless, having lost 100 out of 450 men, the Albazians, who had at their disposal only three guns and about 300 squeakers, fought off the attack. After that, the attackers overlaid the walls of the city with brushwood and set it on fire. The fiery arrows of the Manchus burned the barns and the church, the stocks of gunpowder and lead were running out. Voevoda A.L. Tolbuzin was forced to begin negotiations on surrender.

The reason for such a rapid fall of Albazin was the construction of its walls not from gorodens, but in the form of a tyn. Such walls reliably protected the pioneers from the arrows of "non-peaceful" foreigners, whom the Russian population encountered in Siberia and the Far East, but they could not resist artillery fire.
Under the terms of the surrender, the surviving Albazins freely left for Nerchinsk, where they arrived on July 10 "naked and barefoot and hungry", and already on July 15 the governor sent a detachment of 70 Cossacks to reconnaissance on the Albazin ashes. Having found out that the Chinese had left, he sent a detachment there, which finally arrived in Nerchinsk, under the command of the Cossack head, Lieutenant A.I. Bayton, and then A.L. Tolbuzin with Albazins. They were ordered to build a new prison or city. The prison was erected in the same place, and before the frosts they managed to build "an earthen city four fathoms wide and one and a half fathoms high". In June 1686, the construction of a new fortress was basically completed, and only the towers could not be covered, because on July 7 (according to Chinese sources - July 8) the Manchus again besieged the city.

The third siege of Albazin lasted five months. During it, 826 defenders of the fortress successfully resisted the 6.5 thousand enemy army. The Manchus surrounded the Russian fortification with an earthen rampart, and to the north of the prison they erected a 15-meter-high peal, from which, under the leadership of 20 Jesuit Dutch, they continuously fired cannons at the city. On the south side, they tried to build a tower for the same purpose, but the Albazians burned the first of them, and destroyed the second by digging. Reciprocal digs under the city of the Manchus were not successful. Five times the Albazins made sorties from the besieged fortress. The last one was especially successful on August 16, when the Albazians tried to destroy the enemy's northern battery. On the fifth day of the siege, governor A.L. Tolbuzin was mortally wounded, and Beiton took command of the prison.

On November 30, 1686, the Manchu governors received an order from the Chinese emperor to lift the siege. The formal reason for this was the arrival of messengers from Moscow in Beijing with the news from the departure of the Russian embassy to the Amur region, headed by the roundabout F.A. Golovin for peace talks. However, no less significant reason for this decision was the difficult situation in which the besiegers found themselves. Cut off from supply bases, they lost more than 1,500 people in December to attacks, hunger and disease. The Manchus could not fulfill the order of the emperor, since the ice had already bound their ships. The siege actually continued, because the Russians were not allowed to leave the fortress. Only in May of the following year, when the ice melted on the Amur, the Manchus retreated from the city, but they did not go far. The army was stationed four versts from Albazin to prevent the townspeople from sowing bread. By this time, the enemy had lost 2,500 "military men" and many auxiliary workers.
And yet the situation of the besieged Albazins was much more difficult. By December, only 150 remained. Only 30 men and 15 teenagers could carry out guard duty, the rest were weakened from wounds and scurvy. Despite this, Bayton refused to let the Manchu doctors into the fortress. On Easter, he sent a pood of wheat cake to the astonished Chinese governors, which they "received with honor." By May 1687, only 66 people survived in Albazin. Beyton did not dare to bury the bodies of the fallen Albazians without a funeral service. On this occasion, he wrote to the Nerchinsk governor I.E. Vlasov: “And those dead people are buried in the city in a winter hut on top of the earth without a funeral service until your consideration. And now I live with the Cossacks in every stinking satiety.
Bayton failed to bury the fallen Albazians in a worthy manner near the Church of the Resurrection, where a cemetery was located in the prison. Terrible evidence of the most difficult siege of Albazin was discovered during the archaeological research of the prison. In 1991, along the edge of the river cliff of the settlement, archaeologists found, and in 1992 studied a small (3 x 6 m) semi-dugout, which turned into a mass grave for the defenders of the fortress. In its corner, a well-preserved brick oven measuring 1.5 x 2 m, the rest of the room was occupied by neatly stacked bodies of explorers. Among the 57 buried were women and children. Arrowheads were found between the remains of two Albazians, several more people died from lead bullets. With the remains, more than 20 bronze and silver pectoral crosses were found, which made up the largest collection of these items in the Far East to date.

On August 29, 1689, a Russian-Chinese treaty was signed in Nerchinsk, according to which the border between the two states was drawn along the Gorbitsa River, which flows into the Shilka from the north. The Albazinsky prison turned out to be outside the Russian territory and was subject to destruction, and its inhabitants - to resettlement. The government of Princess Sophia decided to give up Albazin and the Amur region in order to conclude a peace treaty with the Manchu government of the Qing Empire.
On August 31, the head of the Russian embassy in China, F.A. Golovin sent Beyton a decree on the abandonment and ruin of Albazin, and on September 5, the Manchu embassy arrived at the fortress. The servants, in front of the eyes of the ambassadors and governor, burned the wooden buildings of the prison and dug out the rampart. After that, they went to Nerchinsk on boats provided by the Manchus.
Almost nothing remains of the Albazin fortifications of the last period of its existence. And the Russians returned to these shores again only in the middle of the 19th century. Today, near the place where the heroic fortress stood, there is a small village of Albazino.

I want to supplement the text with a few more illustrations and details.

Here are photographs taken by archaeologists in the early 1990s during the excavations of the Albazinsky prison. Here you can see the remains of the base of the corner tower. This and the next two pictures were taken by me from here.

Remains of the tynovy wall. It should be noted that very little remains of the fortifications of the last period of the existence of the fortress - the zeal of von Beyton affected the destruction of the fortress so that the Manchus could not use it.

The dugout (semi-dugout) mentioned in the text, which became a mass grave for more than fifty fallen defenders.

This is how the Dutchman N. Witsen depicted the siege of the fortress in 1686-1687. Either he saw the prison with his own eyes as part of the Manchurian army, or he drew from the words of eyewitnesses. One way or another, but in the drawing dated 1692, the southeastern corner of the fortress has the shape of an almost classical bastion. This is an argument in favor of the version that before the third siege, the builders of the fortress used the achievements of European fortification art, which allowed them to withstand many times superior forces.

And another painting, this time by a contemporary Chinese artist. The file was sent to me by Nikolai Petrovich Kradin, who photographed the canvas hanging in the Harbin Museum. The picture shows how the Manchus take Russian Albazins into captivity. This episode took place in 1685, when 45 either Cossacks or simply peasants sought refuge in a besieged fortress, but were intercepted by the enemy. The captives were taken to Beijing, where they founded a small Russian colony. As I read, their descendants have even retained the Orthodox faith to this day, but, of course, in other respects they are real Chinese.

The Great Russian resettlement to the Far East (as well as the Ukrainian one, by the way) followed exclusively in the footsteps and notches of the Cossacks. Why it happened in this way is easy to understand: there are no empty territories on Earth, and in order to “master” something, it was necessary to “conquer” it initially.

In the era of the transformation of the kingdom of Muscovy, by European standards, into a major European power, the Russian autocracy had neither the skills nor the mechanisms for the total mobilization of the Russian population of the central regions of the country to achieve any major foreign policy tasks. The complete absence in the Russian ruling environment, up to the era of Peter I, of habits and mechanisms for the general mobilization of their own people was soon convincingly proved by the long-term, lost Livonian War in the final and the subsequent hard times of the Time of Troubles. Meanwhile, the territorial expansion of Muscovite Rus, starting from the 16th century, proceeded at a high pace.

Only between the middle of the 16th century and the end of the 17th century did Muscovite Russia, on average, annually (150 years in a row!) acquire land equal in area to modern Holland. By the beginning of the 16th century, the Muscovite state was equal in area to the rest of Europe, and Western Siberia, annexed by Ataman Yermak, was twice the size of Europe. By the middle of the 17th century, Muscovy - without political paroxysms and the monstrous military efforts of Peter I, in fact without any special financial and material investments - became the largest state in the world.

Who, then, produced this colossal in extent, never, after Genghis Khan and Timur, a territorial increment that was no longer repeated in the world?

Campaign of Perfiliev and Khabarov

In 1946, in the old Cossack village of Maksimikha Barguzinsky aimag of the Buryat ASSR, Soviet ethnographers recorded the following from the words of an old-timer Fyodor Gorbunov: “Perfiliev comes from Cossacks and was a Cossack himself. All the early centurions, Pentecostals, governors and atamans came from the Don. Before they came to Siberia, they first walked along the Don, the Volga and the Urals. Then, when they heard that it was possible to go to Siberia, they went from the Urals through the Ob to the Yenisei. On the Yenisei they had their main stop, here was the largest stockade.<...>The governor lived in the prison - the most important of the Cossacks, whom the tsar himself appointed to this post. The governor accepted all the Cossacks, made detachments of them, then sent them to the Lena, the Angara, the Amur and other rivers.

The study of the process of development of Siberia and the Far East by the Slavs convinces: such a super-mobilization ethno-social breakthrough, which the Cossacks made to the east of Eurasia, was only within their power (among European peoples). Only the Cossacks - the ethnic group of Slavic samurai, a people for whom the ideals of human dignity, spiritual freedom, national and social mutual support were not something abstract and distant, but a fact of their everyday reality - could accomplish this feat.

The mentioned Cossack Perfilyev is none other than the famous Cossack ataman Maxim Perfilyev, who was not only a talented military leader, but also a skilled diplomat, for he was fluent in Tatar, Evenki, Mongolian and Chinese. In 1618-1627, Perfilyev annexed the lands along the Upper Tunguska, Lena and Vitim to Moscow Russia, took the royal yasak from the natives with weapons or diplomacy. He built several fortified fortresses - ostrogs, including the famous Bratsk ostrog (now the city of Bratsk). In 1638, long before Yerofey Khabarov, ataman Perfilyev went to the Amur - "to collect de Daurian lands."

Muscovite Rus, that is, the Russian state before Peter I, very carefully, deliberately cautiously responded to any initiatives for its territorial expansion. Such initiatives came mainly from the Cossacks. In 1638, the Cossacks stormed the strategically important Turkish fortress of Azov at the mouth of the Don. In the summer and autumn of 1641, they heroically withstood a more than three-month siege, which went down in military history as the "Seat of Azov". All this time, until the middle of 1642, the Cossacks tirelessly offered Moscow to take Azov "under its own hand", thus securing huge territories in the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov and the mouth of the Don for the Romanov dynasty. Moscow thought for a very long time, deliberated for a very long time, but in the end abandoned Azov. The second time, and at the cost of significant Russian losses, only Peter I managed to take Azov.

Moscow behaved just as cautiously and thoughtfully in the events of the Pereyaslav Rada, when practically without any special military efforts - on the sabers of the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks - the Left-Bank Ukraine was brought to Tsar Alexei the Quietest.

In a similar style, the policy of Muscovite Russia was implemented in Siberia and the Far East. It seemed that the lands beyond the Urals were for Muscovy a kind of "suitcase without a handle." The absence of a well-thought-out strategic line entailed spontaneity, inconsistency, and even inconsistency of actions.

Albazin. Source: 2x2.su

For the first time, the absence of a clear firm line of Moscow in the implementation of policy in the Asian East was clearly manifested in the events related to the Albazinsky Voivodeship.

In 1651, Erofei Khabarov took the fortified village of the Daurian prince Albaza, located on the Amur near the confluence of the Shilka and Argun rivers. Now the village of Albazino, Amur Region, is located in this place. Khabarov decided to establish a permanent fortress-fortress in this place. Despite the lack of people in the detachment, he left 50 Cossacks in Albazin and went further down the Amur. Albazin had an exceptionally advantageous strategic location in the upper reaches of the Amur, but despite this factor, the fortress did not receive any real help from Muscovy - neither people nor powder "potion". As a result, the constant attacks of the Manchus from China forced the Cossacks in 1658 not only to leave Albazin, but even to leave all the villages and fortresses founded to the west of the prison.

Raid of Nicephorus of Chernigov

The next arrival of Muscovite Rus on the Amur was again provided by the ethnic energy of the Cossacks. This return was ensured by Nicephorus of Chernigov, the brightest representative of the Cossack ethnic group of the middle of the 17th century. As part of the army of the Zaporozhian Sich, he fought against Muscovy on the side of the Poles in the Smolensk War (1632-1634). He was wounded, fell into Russian captivity, and in 1638 was exiled to Siberia, to the city of Yeniseisk.

Having wandered around all the Siberian prisons, Nikifor Chernigov eventually ended up in the farthest corner of the Russian ecumene - in Ilimsk on the Lena. Here the Cossack raised an uprising and personally killed the Ilim governor Lavrenty Obukhov, a pathological sadist and bribe taker. Realizing that now only the executioner's ax could be guaranteed from the Moscow Tsar, Nikifor Chernigov, at the head of a detachment of 84 rebellious Cossacks, went to the Amur region, where he again built the Albazin fortress. A talented administrator and diplomat, Nikifor Chernigov established a Cossack republic in Albazin similar to the Zaporizhzhya Sich, founded several new Russian villages around the fortress, and began to regularly collect yasak from the surrounding natives.

The Moscow administration turned a blind eye to the strengthening of the Albazin Cossack Republic, successfully ruled by a rebel sentenced to death. Of course, the tsarist governors in Siberia could organize a punitive campaign against Albazin, but, apparently, they did not really want to fight the Cossacks due to the strengthening of the Chinese Qing empire beyond the Amur.

The case was decided by a rich yasak, which the far-sighted Cossack Nikifor began to regularly send to Moscow. However, Nikifor of Chernigov had no other way but to try to make peace with Moscow: the stocks of gunpowder captured in Ilimsk were running out, and the onslaught of the Manchus from China was intensifying. Apparently, with the mediation of churchmen, the conflict was finally settled: in 1672, the Cossack Nikifor was forgiven and received the title of Albazin's clerk, but the Cossack republic, which swore allegiance to the Moscow Tsar, was officially abolished.

The last glorious deed of the Zaporizhian Cossack Nikifor in Albazin was his long-range military raid in 1675 along the right bank of the Argun and Amur, that is, already on the Chinese emperor’s own lands, in order to free the Slavs and Daurians captured by the Manchus. The main problem of Albazin was the catastrophic shortage of people, without whom it was impossible to either protect the Russian lands along the Amur or ensure their economic development. The Cossack Nicephorus of Chernigov understood well the complexity of the situation and, to the best of his ability, tried to correct it.

Muscovite Rus was apparently much less worried about the problems of defending the region: the country quickly followed the path of the final general enslavement of the peasants, after which no significant resettlement of Russian people in Asian Ukraine, of course, became impossible. As a result, from 1675 to 1680, only one royal convoy came to Albazin: it carried gunpowder, lead, some seed grain, and only six new male settlers. It seemed that the tsarist administration was more concerned not with the obvious military preparations of Qing China, but with the personal status of Nicephorus of Chernigov, which in Moscow was seen as too significant for the former rebel.

At the end of 1678, under the plausible pretext of introducing the Cossack Nikifor to Tsar Fyodor Alekseevich, he was lured from Albazin to Moscow, where, after almost two years of ordeals, on orders (analogue of today's ministries), this most experienced military man and diplomat was assigned to Krasnoyarsk as "boyar children", that is, for an honorable slow fading from melancholy and idleness.

Chinese rebuff to Cossack expansion

Immediately after the departure of Nikifor of Chernigov to Moscow, Grigory Lonshakov was appointed clerk in his place. An experienced mining engineer and a good diplomat, Lonshakov, however, did not have any serious military and administrative experience.

If the strengthening of the influence of Muscovite Russia in the region in these years depended only on the personal initiative of a few Cossacks and the arrival of rare convoys with military equipment in the region, then the strengthening of the Chinese Qing empire on the right bank of the Amur was of a systematic, strategically meaningful nature.

In 1679, the Qing emperor Kangxi, an intelligent politician and a skilled administrator, gently removed his relative Prince Songgotu from power and took control of China completely into his own hands. Difficult times were coming for the presence of Muscovy on the Amur - Kangxi was a strong-willed, decisive and consistent supporter of the expulsion of Russian people from the Amur. Having strengthened the internal position of Manchuria and secured the military support of the Mongols, Emperor Kangxi in September 1682 organized a reconnaissance raid by dignitaries (fudutuns) Langtan and Pengchun to Albazin. The extreme importance of the upcoming event was already emphasized by the fact that the reconnaissance mission was personally headed by Lantan, the future head of the expeditionary army.

The motivation for the unexpected appearance of a high-ranking Chinese governor near the Russian strategic fortress was obscenely simple, for it was clearly counting on simpletons: Lantan announced to the Russian border guards that he was hunting deer and inadvertently got lost. If the Zaporozhye Cossack Nikifor had been the Russian clerk in Albazin, it is very likely that this “hunt” of Lantan would have been either fruitless for him, or even the last. But the Cossack Nikifor at that time was wasting time aimlessly on an honorable retirement in Krasnoyarsk, and the confused Muscovites, instead of immediately sending the uninvited guest across the Amur, called Lantan to Albazin, where they met with a truly Russian scale.

When Lantan finally got ready to leave, Lonshakov's Russian clerks presented the Chinese with a valuable gift. Naive people did not suspect that their main "gift" was already in Lantan's marching pack: the Chinese intelligence officer had a full opportunity not only to inspect, but even to sketch the fortifications of Albazin.

The ethnopolitical naivete of the Great Russian clerks resulted in a sharp acceleration of China's military preparations. Based on the results of his "hunting" reconnaissance raid, Lantan drew up a detailed plan for a military expedition against Albazin, whose dilapidated wooden fortifications the Chinese assessed as "extremely weak, as if gnawed by a hungry donkey."

The Chinese implemented their plan to oust the Slavs from the Amur systematically and consistently. On the Sungari, the largest tributary of the right bank of the Amur, a river flotilla was being built, which was supposed to deliver the expeditionary force and artillery under the walls of Albazin. Here, in the state warehouses, a three-year supply of food was collected so that the Chinese army during the military campaign would not need anything.

In 1683, the “deer hunter” Lantan advanced along with the river flotilla to the Amur and, near the mouth of the Zeya, forced the surrender of a large Cossack detachment of Grigory Mylnik, who was carrying military equipment and provisions for the Dolonsky and Selemdzhinsky prisons. With the loss of this detachment, the Muscovites lost not just 70 people of the armed reserve, they lost any opportunity to show military initiative in the upcoming war. The Albazin fortress lost its defensive foreground, since the Dolonsky and Selemdzhinsky prisons had to be left without a fight: it was impossible to keep these fortresses without a supply of gunpowder and lead, without the necessary provisions.

The only remaining fortress of the Albazinsky defensive foreground - Verkhnezeya - was surrounded by a Chinese expeditionary detachment and defended itself heroically. But what could 20 Cossacks in a dilapidated fortress do against 400 selected Manchu soldiers? Nevertheless, the Upper Zeya Cossacks managed to hold out for almost half a year and only in February 1684 capitulated.

The military operations of the Kangxi emperor, about which the yasak Tungus warned the Muscovites in the winter of 1682, of course, took the tsarist government by surprise. The age-old trend of Russian foreign policy in the East - ignoring "inconvenient" facts, ingratiating friendly gestures and talking about peace - did not take shape yesterday, Muscovite Russia already clearly marked this sad trend.

With the outbreak of hostilities, the assault began: what they had not done in years and decades, they tried to do in one or two months. The miner Lonshakov was immediately dismissed, there was no time for silver. The hereditary Tobolsk Cossack Alexei Tolbuzin, an energetic, intelligent person, was sent to Albazin as governor. Since in the decades that have passed since the raid of Yerofey Khabarov, a meaningful resettlement policy has not been launched, the “military rank of people” had to be collected literally one by one throughout Siberia. By the beginning of the assault on Albazin by Chinese troops, these people, of course, did not have time.

Lantan meanwhile did not doze off. At the beginning of the summer of 1685, a 3,000-strong expeditionary force of China on the ships of a military flotilla advanced from the Aigun Chinese fortress to Albazin. Eight hundred selected Manchurian cavalry marched along the shore. For the Great Russians and Cossacks, who settled in the dilapidated fortress walls, the moment of truth has come. The forces of the parties were simply incomparable: for 450 Cossacks of the Albazin garrison there were at least three thousand Chinese infantrymen (5 thousand according to Russian data, which are most likely overestimated).

In incredible haste, clutching at everything at once, Tolbuzin's clerks could not evacuate Russian peasants from the surrounding villages to Albazin in time: the Manchu cavalry, walking along the shore, captured more than 150 fugitives who did not have time to hide in the fortress. When approaching Albazin, the Lantan flotilla fired cannons at rafts with Russian fugitives who were sailing to Albazin from the upper reaches of the Amur. According to Chinese data, 40 people were taken prisoner from the rafts.

In the Nerchinsk jail, the voevoda Ivan Vlasov hastily gathered about hundred soldiers, mainly from peasants, whose military qualities were, to put it mildly, dubious. Somewhere managed to find two guns. However, even this ridiculous, in comparison with the scale of the Chinese invasion, military assistance got stuck on the way to Albazin.

Battle for Albazin

On June 12, 1685, the Chinese expeditionary force landed at Albazin. The methodical bombardment of the fortress from the so-called "drag" cannons began. The Albazin fortress walls fully justified Lantan's pejorative assessment in terms of "being gnawed by a hungry donkey": Chinese cannonballs sometimes pierced through the fortress, breaking through both opposite walls at the same time. The bombing lasted three days and was very effective: more than 100 people were killed, food barns were completely burned down, one of the three fortress cannons was broken.

In the early morning of June 16, in the early morning fog, war drums unexpectedly roared and the rhythmic, mournful ringing of cymbals rang out: it was the Chinese who attacked from all sides simultaneously. Furiously brandishing huge shining sabers, the vanguard of the Chinese infantry, made up of shaven-headed heroes of two meters in height, rushed to the walls of the fortress with a wild battle cry. The Chinese Fusiliers, arranged in a special order, with coordinated volleys of their fuzes, supported the "barrage" in front of the guards.

It seemed that nothing could save the defenders of Albazin from mass extermination. Nothing but Cossack courage and a swampy swampy moat in front of the walls of the fortress. This was just the case when the laxity of the Moscow boyars played a good service. The defensive ditch of Albazin had not been cleaned for years, it was completely silted up and, at first glance, seemed dry, which is why the Chinese did not prepare siege bridges in advance.

In the fury of the assault, the shaven-headed guards rushed across the ditch and were immediately bogged down to the waist. The Cossacks took advantage of this, point-blank shooting at the crowded mass of human bodies. A small detachment of Donets and Cossacks of 26 people under the command of the centurion Stefan Boyko rushed over the wall with daggers in an attempt to capture the main standard of the advancing guards. Almost all of the Cossacks died (only four people survived), they did not capture the standard, but they paved a whole street of shaven-headed corpses to the standard.

As a result of all these circumstances, the Chinese plan for a one-time assault was thwarted, the struggle for the walls broke up into several centers. Governor Tolbuzin brilliantly took advantage of this circumstance, skillfully transferring Cossacks and "all ranks of Russian people" from one place of breakthrough to another.

We must pay tribute to the Chinese: they stubbornly, even fanatically, regardless of losses, stormed Albazin all day. It was not until 10 pm that the Kangxi soldiers retreated to their camp. Their losses were monstrous: Langtan lost more than 400 soldiers killed and wounded.

The next day, the stubborn Lantan gave the order to prepare a new assault. The Chinese began to cut down the surrounding forest and fill up the moat with tree trunks. They worked without hindrance, since the defenders of Albazin practically ran out of gunpowder.

Under these conditions, voivode Tolbuzin proved to be a skillful and strong-willed diplomat: he managed to negotiate with Lantan on the withdrawal of the garrison of the fortress and all Russian people towards Nerchinsk, that is, where the Cossack militia actively gathered and was already part of the ready. The Chinese insisted on the departure of the Albazin Cossacks to the north, towards Yakutsk, which guaranteed to lead to additional casualties and deprived the Cossacks of any chance to continue resistance. At a key moment in the negotiations, Tolbuzin "turned the chessboard": he told Lantan that either the road to Nerchinsk was open or the Cossacks would continue to resist. Lantan agreed.

On June 26, 1685, the Cossacks and Russian peasants left the fortress and moved westward in military march formation. To the military honor of the Kangxi officers, the Chinese kept their word - the path to Nerchinsk was open, the Chinese did not attack and did not even line up in battle formations. After the departure of Tolbuzin, Lantan partly blew up, and partly tore down the fortifications of Albazin. Then he retreated to the rear of the Aigun fortress.

In early July, all the forces of the Trans-Baikal Cossacks and the Russian militia, with a total number of about 1200 people, finally united in Nerchinsk. Feeling the real military force at hand, the courageous Tolbuzin assembled the Military Circle, on which the Cossacks unanimously refused to "make victory glory for themselves from Albazin."

Here, in Nerchinsk, Tolbuzin found himself a reliable comrade-in-arms. It was the German Athanasius Beiton, baptized into Orthodoxy, a man of exceptional courage and great will. Beiton brought Don Cossacks and Russian peasants from Western Siberia to Nerchinsk, and until Tolbuzin's death he remained his most reliable support.

On August 27, 1685, Cossack plows again approached the blown up walls of Albazin. This time, the military forces of the governor Tolbuzin were more or less tangible: 714 Cossacks (of which 200 were mounted) and 155 Russian fishermen and peasants who wished to return to the Amur. By hard work, these people managed to restore the fortress before the first snow. Ahead of them was a terrible war of attrition with the best troops of the Qing Empire, and behind them there was nothing but vast, desert Siberia and distant Moscow, in and around which at that time they were beheading many hundreds of faithful Russian people who were accused of church "split".

October 5th, 2017

"Traveler, bring the message to our citizens in Lakodaemon that, having fulfilled the covenant of Sparta, here we have perished with our bones." These proud words are carved on a huge stone placed on a hill at the entrance to the Thermopylae Gorge in Greece. Here in September 480 BC. e. there was a famous battle of three hundred Spartans under the command of King Leonidas with the Persian army of Xerxes. The heroes died every single one, but they provided much-needed time to unite the detachments of the Greek city-states into a single army.

The Cossacks in the Far East also have their own Thermopylae. This is the Albazinsky prison, the defense of which in 1685 and 1686 will forever remain one of the most heroic pages in the history of Russia. Just like the Spartans of Leonid, the Cossacks managed, at the cost of incredible efforts and sacrifices, to keep their most important strategic line on the Amur. And, like the Spartans, they were betrayed.

"According to the Cossack painting, like Kromy, erected ..."

As already mentioned in the article "", immediately after returning to Albazin, Ataman Alexei Tolbuzin began to restore the Albazin prison with all his energy. The new structure was based not on the old Moscow or Siberian experience of fortification, based on the use of wooden structures, but on the Cossack, Don one. In the official “fairy tale” sent to Moscow, the Nerchinsk voivode Ivan Vlasov wrote: “The Albazin prison will be made good, it will be erected according to the Cossack painting, like Kromy ...” In the mouth of the Muscovite voivode, the mention that Albazin was built ”sounds like a verdict of the guaranteed impregnability of the new fortress: in 1685, the serving “sovereign serfs” remembered, of course, the inglorious siege of the fortress of Krom in the Time of Troubles, which was successfully defended by the Don ataman Andrei Korela for six months.

Cossack fortresses differed not in the height of the walls, but in the wide use of land for the purposes of fortification - this feature of the Cossack fortification directly copied the experience of ancient Roman military camps. The Cossacks dug deep ditches, the earth from which spilled out onto wide lattice log cabins from large tree trunks, as a result, a relatively low shaft with a wide upper platform was obtained, along which even small cannons could be moved. This design of the Cossack fortresses provided the ability to quickly move the available forces of the defenders (of which the Cossacks never had an abundance) to the most threatened, fraught with a breakthrough direction of the assault. In addition, the cores easily stuck in the ground, and the land thrown out by the explosion of a land mine had practically no damaging effect.

The new Albazin fortress became, apparently, the most powerful fortification in the upper reaches of the Amur, even Aigun, the main Chinese outpost in the region, was inferior to Albazin. However, Albazin also had his "Achilles' heel" - the lack of artillery: there were only eight old copper cannons and three light squeaks in the fortress, which somehow "survived" in Nerchinsk from the time of Yerofei Khabarov. In the desperate hustle and bustle of preparing for the invasion, the Chinese were dragged to Albazin and a heavy mortar that fired pood cannonballs. This cannon, throwing cannonballs along a high parabola, would be invaluable for the attackers, but completely useless in defense. In addition, with its huge caliber, the mortar literally “ate” scarce gunpowder.

Cossack German

The main defensive resource of Albazin was, no doubt, people. Ordinary people - Don, Tobolsk and Transbaikal Cossacks - quite consciously and without any administrative coercion returned to Albazin after their courageous and decisive ataman Tolbuzin. “Father Lexiy” himself did not know, he seemed to be tired. There was a feeling that he appeared everywhere at the same time: on the pier under construction, on the observation tower, in deep powder magazines specially dug at the base of the shafts, near artillery crews.

Another very valuable figure in the coming strategic battle between Muscovy and China was the German Athanasius Beyton, the brilliant military genius of Albazin. Being a Prussian officer, Bayton entered the Russian army in 1654 and immediately took part in the outbreak of the Russian-Polish war of 1654-1667. Even before graduation, he was transferred to serve in Tomsk, where, among other foreign officers, he trained Great Russian reiters for the emerging regiments of the "new order".

In Tomsk in 1665, Bayton married a Cossack woman and, like any German who has lived in Russia for a long time, became quite sincerely Russified. He converted to the Cossacks, converted to Orthodoxy and, for his merits, was transferred to Moscow for promotion to "boyar children." However, in the musty semi-Byzantine palaces of what was then Moscow, the “Cossack German” Athanasius seemed incredibly sad, and he filed a petition for a transfer to Yeniseisk - an unprecedented case for the Great Russian nobility proper.

In Siberia, Bayton had to participate in many Cossack raids against the Dzungars and the Yenisei Kirghiz, and in all campaigns the German proved to be an excellent commander and an excellent comrade. Small in stature, with a mustache drooping in the Zaporozhian manner, in a blue Cossack chekman and a shaggy hat, the German Beyton practically did not differ in appearance from the Cossacks around him. This difference was visible and audible only in battle: instead of a Cossack saber, the German preferred a heavy Prussian broadsword, and instead of a wolf howl, familiar to attacking Cossacks, he fiercely shouted "Mein Gott!" Friendly relations were established between the voivode Tolbuzin and Beyton. For both, the main motive for their activities was not personal ambition or enrichment, but military success in the fight against China.

Cossacks and Chinese: a struggle of will

The revival of Albazin happened so quickly that at the headquarters of the Aigun grouping of the Chinese army, at first they did not want to believe the testimonies of the scouts. Then irritation came: the Cossacks were accused of treachery. The annoyance of the Chinese military leaders was all the stronger because the Kangxi Emperor had already been informed of the complete victory over the "mi-hou" [literal translation from Chinese: "people with monkey-like faces." - N. L.].

The hatred of the Chinese for the Cossacks of Albazin also increased from the fact that, unlike in previous years, the Cossacks under the command of Beiton were clearly trying to seize the military initiative. On October 2, 1685, on the distant approaches to Albazin (on the so-called Levkaev meadow, in the area of ​​​​modern Blagoveshchensk), a Cossack hundred killed a Chinese border patrol of 27 people. In response, on October 14, the Manchurian Kangxi cavalry attacked and burned Pokrovskaya Sloboda, partly killing and partly capturing the Russian settler peasants. Beiton's Cossacks gave chase, but the Manchus managed to escape to the right bank of the Amur, which the Cossacks were prevented from crossing by the ice drift. However, already in early November, on the first ice, Beyton crossed the Amur and destroyed the Chinese siding at the site of the village of Monastyrshchina burned by the Manchus. In early December, the Cossacks successfully attacked the Manchurian village of Esuli on the Chinese bank of the Amur, burned it, and, taking prisoners, safely left for Albazin.

In response, the Chinese made a daring raid right in the heart of Albazin: just 10 miles from the fortress, they completely burned the Russian village of Bolshaya Zaimka. This audacity inflamed the Cossacks, and they decided to respond in such a way as to forever discourage the Chinese from “making searches” for Albazin. It was decided to strike directly at the strategic deployment center of the Aigun group of Kangxi troops at the Huma military camp, which served as the main base for raids by Chinese troops up the Amur.

In the early morning of February 24, a regular Manchu patrol went outside the walls of Huma to build. Before the Manchus had time to mount their horses, a coordinated aimed salvo was heard from the slope of the nearest hill: eight cavalrymen were killed on the spot. Following this, from a side hollow adjacent to the fortress, with a furious wolf howl, the Cossack "special forces" rushed to Khuma: on foot, specially selected scouts armed with daggers and pistols. The Manchus tried to escape through the gates of the fortress, but no such luck: the horses, frightened by the howl of wolves, broke off their bridles, rushed to freedom, trampled the fallen riders. Not even a few minutes had passed, and the gates of Huma were already wide open by the scouts who had captured them. The Manchurian garrison inside the fortress tried to recapture the gates, but it was too late - two hundred Beiton Cossacks flew into them on frosty horses. The felling has gone. Its result was forty Manchu corpses, a dozen prisoners and the burned to the ground Huma. Bayton lost seven men.

New battle for Albazin

The burning of Huma shocked the cabinet of Emperor Kangxi: it became clear that a new large-scale military expedition against Albazin was indispensable. The experienced strategist Kangxi decided not to rush, but then solve the problem once and for all: the Cossacks had to be driven out not only from the Amur, but from Transbaikalia in general. The secret office of the emperor, having received this instruction, soon prepared a detailed military-strategic report: a kind of Chinese plan "Barbarossa".

According to this plan, the Chinese army was to hit Albazin with all its might. At the same time, the Mongols allied with China, acting along the eastern tip of Lake Baikal, were supposed to cut off all Russian communications leading to Nerchinsk, the main military base of the Muscovites in Transbaikalia. Then, with concentric attacks by the Chinese from the east, and the Mongols from the west, Nerchinsk was to be captured and destroyed along with the surrounding Russian population. The strategic outcome of the campaign was to be a complete cleansing of Transbaikalia from the Russians - the combined Mongol-Chinese army, according to the plans of Kangxi, went to Baikal, where a powerful military fort was to be built.

Langtan, the commander-in-chief of the expeditionary corps, having entered into personal submission to the Kangxi Emperor, began hostilities on June 11, 1686. The forces of the Chinese army were considerable: 3,000 selected Manchurian cavalry and 4,500 Chinese infantrymen with 40 guns and 150 warships and cargo ships.

On July 9, 1686, the Chinese army approached Albazin. The Cossacks were already waiting for her: the entire Russian population of the surrounding villages was hidden behind the walls in time, and the fields that were already growing were burned.

Slowly dispersing, Langtan's army gradually surrounded the fortress. Chinese ships approached the new, well-cut pier. Lantan, satisfactorily surveying his military armada from his horse, did not suspect resistance. How later he regretted his carelessness!

The gates of Albazin suddenly burst open, and out of them, down the steep slope of the Amur coast, rushed five hundred "Cossack people" armed to the teeth. Their blow was terrible: the Chinese infantrymen, who did not have time to reorganize from marching to siege order, were crushed, panic began. Drenched from head to toe in the blood of others and their own, tirelessly smashing the crazed enemy with daggers, the Cossacks stubbornly broke through to the shore - to where Chinese ships with weapons and provisions were moored. Another onslaught, and they broke into the pier - the nearby Chinese ships blazed - just the very ones on which there was food for the Chinese army. It seemed that the defeat of Lantan's army was close: only one strike by three or four hundred Cossacks on the flank of the actually overturned Chinese army could solve the whole thing. Alas, voivode Tolbuzin did not even have one reserve hundred - hello to the courtiers of Muscovy - decades of mediocre resettlement policy once again fully demonstrated their fruits.

A flank attack by the Cossacks could not have taken place, but the Manchurian cavalry managed to inflict it, having approached the battlefield in time. To the credit of the Cossack German Beyton, he was waiting for this blow: the rapidly reorganized flank hundred hit the Manchus and ensured that the Cossacks retreated to the fortress in full order.

Langtan was terribly annoyed by what had happened, moreover, he immediately faced the problem of food supply for the army. In a rage, the commander Kangxi ordered the execution of the commanders of those Chinese formations that fled. However, in the future, the practice of the “punishing sword” had to be abandoned: on July 13, Beyton repeated the sortie from Albazin with almost the same result: the Chinese ran again, the Manchus again managed to stop the advancing Cossacks with a flank attack. Lantanya became completely clear Albazin's main weakness: the lack of the required number of defenders. Realizing this, the commander Kangxi proceeded to a methodical siege of the fortress.

Trial of Pale Death

Initially, the Chinese commander ordered a massive bombardment of the fortress from all the barrels of "cart artillery". There was a lot of shooting, but the fortress, built according to Cossack technology, withstood all the shelling. True, after two months of methodical shelling, the Albazin garrison suffered a really heavy loss: on September 13, the Chinese core tore off the leg above the knee of the governor Alexei Tolbuzin. The Tobolsk chieftain died four days later from pain shock and great blood loss. The "Cossack German" Bayton was very sad about the loss of a comrade. Later, he sincerely writes in his report: “We drank the same bloody cup with the deceased, with Alexei Larionovich, and he chose heavenly joy for himself, and left us in sorrow.”

Having burned enough on Albazin, Lantan in the 20th of September 1686 decided to persuade the garrison to surrender. The command of the fortress with the released Russian prisoner Fedorov received a letter: “You don’t make big forces angry, rather surrender ... And if this doesn’t happen, we won’t part for good.” Beiton answered with a firm refusal and mockingly released three captured Manchus behind the walls of the fortress: they say, for one Russian, I will give three of your “Bogdoists”.

Lantan took the hint and immediately sent troops to storm Albazin. The assault went on continuously with all the forces of the Chinese army for five days (!) and did not give the attackers any results. Then, until the beginning of October, the commander Kangxi twice more raised his troops to storm the Cossack Thermopylae - and again to no avail. Moreover, in response to the assaults, the Cossacks switched to sorties. As a result of the most effective of them, the fifth in a row, artillery depots were blown up and the food grain delivered from the lower reaches of the Amur burned again.

As a result, by mid-October, the position of the Lantan expeditionary army became very complicated. Only irretrievable losses in manpower amounted to more than 1,500 people, ammunition was running out, food rations per soldier were reduced four times. The resistance of the Cossacks in Albazin was so stunningly effective that the personal office of Emperor Kangxi was forced to issue a special circular for foreign ambassadors explaining the failures on the Amur. The “explanation” was drawn up, of course, taking into account the Chinese mentality: “The Russians in Albazin stand to the death, because they have no choice. All of them are criminals sentenced to death and unable to return to their homeland.”

In early November 1686, Lantan ordered the cessation of all active operations against Albazin and the beginning of a "silent" siege. The Chinese commander would not have taken this rash decision, perhaps, if he knew that out of 826 defenders of the fortress, only 150 people survived, and the entire central square of the fortress was turned into a cemetery. Scurvy was rampant in Albazin - the Cossacks suffered all the main losses not from the bullets of the Chinese, but from the “pale death” and related diseases. Bayton himself, due to swollen, ulcerated legs, could hardly move on crutches.

However, in the Chinese military camp, the situation was little better. Already in December, as a result of Cossack raids, Lantan had practically run out of food - the Chinese army began to look like a crowd of emaciated people who could hardly hold weapons. Lantan also could not retreat from Albazin: the ships of the Chinese flotilla froze into the Amur, and the Manchurian horses were either eaten or died from lack of fodder. In severe frosts, a march of extremely exhausted people, more than 500 km long, to the Esuli fort burned by the Cossacks could become a death sentence for the entire Chinese army.

In the current situation, if the Muscovite administration in Transbaikalia had at least some available military forces, one strike by a military detachment of 200-300 people would be enough to put an end to the entire Chinese expeditionary force once and for all.

Military results of the Cossack Thermopylae

Information about the military embarrassment of the Chinese expeditionary army in the Amur region has finally become the property of the diplomatic circles of Asian and European countries. The Qing Empire, in order to maintain political prestige, refused to withdraw its troops from the Amur, although an epidemic covered the exhausted soldiers of the expeditionary force: in January-February 1687, the Chinese lost more than a thousand soldiers from diseases alone. Nevertheless, Lantan, having not received an order to retreat, clenched his teeth, continued the "deaf" siege of Albazin. However, at the beginning of 1687, the Cossack fortress was probably defended not by people, but by the unbroken spirit of the heroes who died here: only 66 defenders remained in Albazin, of which only nineteen Cossacks could hold weapons.

Langtan received the order to completely lift the siege only at the beginning of May 1687. A discordant crowd of human shadows, in which one could hardly recognize the furious Manchu warriors, slowly stretched down the Amur. Far from Albazin, this army could not retreat: already after ten miles the Chinese set up a camp in which the Kangxi soldiers put themselves in order until the end of August. Only on August 30, the miserable remnants of Lantan's corps set sail on ships towards Aigun. The invasion ended in failure.

As a result of the Albazin Thermopylae, the influence of the Qing Empire in the Amur basin became illusory. Success near Albazin was not the only one. The Cossacks of the Yakutsk Voivodeship severely suppressed the Tungus uprising, inspired by Chinese emissaries. Pursuing the Tungus, the Cossacks discovered a large Chinese detachment in the area of ​​​​the Tungir portage and completely destroyed it. The Cossacks of Nerchinsk utterly defeated the Mungal khans - allies of Kangxi. Having lost several thousand horsemen, the Mungals (Mongols) unconditionally withdrew from the war, and now there was no question of any concentric attack on Nerchinsk from two sides. In Yeniseisk, a 4,000-strong Cossack-Russian army was prepared to be sent to the Amur. It seemed that Muscovite Russia forever came into possession of the richest lands along the Amur. Alas, it only seemed...

Tough negotiations

On July 20, 1689, Russian-Chinese peace negotiations began in Nerchinsk. From the side of the Muscovites they were led by Fyodor Golovin, later a well-known figure in the "Petrov's nest". Golovin was the most typical representative of the Moscow elite of the pre-Petrine era, the era of the destruction of the Great Russian national identity as a result of the destructive reforms of Patriarch Nikon. Sharp mind, but unprincipled, monstrously resourceful, but strong-willed, easily "stepping over the heads" for his personal career, Fyodor Golovin could successfully fulfill his diplomatic mission in Nerchinsk if the ax of unconditional royal will hung over him. Alas, this will was not felt in Nerchinsk: in Moscow, the final act of the struggle between Tsarina Sofya Alekseevna and young Peter I for power was unfolding. Golovin was left, essentially, to his own devices, and disposed of this position with obvious benefit to himself.

From the Chinese side, the diplomatic mission was headed by the commander of the imperial guard, Prince Songgotu. The delegation included Lantan, already known to us, as well as two Jesuit translators: the Spaniard Thomas Pereira and the Frenchman Jean-Francois Gerbillon.

The negotiations were not easy. The main stumbling block was, of course, Albazin. The Chinese demanded the unconditional destruction of these Cossack Thermopylae. Fyodor Golovin was ready to recognize China's sovereignty over the lower reaches of the Amur, but on the condition that the border between Russia and China along Albazin be preserved. The instruction received by Golovin in the Muscovy Ambassadorial Order clearly demanded the preservation of Albazin as the eastern military outpost of Russia. There was a moment when Prince Songgotu tried to “turn the chessboard”: he began to threaten immediate war, since the Qing ambassadors arrived in Nerchinsk, accompanied by an army of 15 thousand people and a special artillery regiment. Golovin, who did not bother to bring military forces to Nerchinsk in advance, could rely only on a consolidated corps of Russian archers, Cossacks and Tungus, with a total number of no more than three thousand people. Nevertheless, in this case, Golovin showed determination: he announced to Songgot his agreement to break off negotiations and began defiantly fortifying the walls of Nerchinsk.

Songgotu, seeing the determination of the Russians to fight, returned to the negotiations. The Chinese prince simply could not do otherwise, because on the eve he received a clear instruction from the emperor himself, where Kangxi ordered to significantly moderate territorial claims against the Russians. “If Nerchinsk is made a border, then the Russian envoys,” Kangxi wrote, “will have nowhere to stop, and this will make communication difficult ... Aigun can be made a border.”

The Chinese fort Aigun was located more than 500 km east of Albazin, which means that the Chinese were ready not only to put up with the existence of Albazin, but even to transfer a huge strip of land to the east of the fortress to the Muscovites.

Such pliability of Kangxi was, of course, not accidental. Albazin was not taken, the walls of the fortress were strengthened. It became very restless on the Mongolian-Chinese border: yesterday's allies were clearly preparing for a war with China. However, the most disturbing development was the powerful invasion of the Dzungars into the western provinces of the Qing. The Supreme Khan of the Dzungars, Galdan, persistently offered Moscow Russia a joint military intervention in China. Kangxi had no illusions about whether Fyodor Golovin knew about these initiatives of the Dzungar Khan. Golovin, of course, knew about this. I knew ... - and surrendered Albazin!

Betrayed and forgotten

How this happened is still not clear to any historian in the world. How could one agree to the total destruction of a fortress that was not occupied by the enemy, while at the same time transferring over 1 million square kilometers to him free of charge? With the painting by Fyodor Golovin on the Nerchinsk Treaty, Muscovite Russia lost almost the entire Amur basin, conquered by the Cossacks, up to the Pacific coast. The strategically important heights of the Greater and Lesser Khingan were lost. And with the loss of the fertile lands of the Middle Amur plains, Russia automatically lost the grain (that is, food) self-sufficiency of Transbaikalia and Eastern Siberia. Now every kilogram of grain had to be transported to Nerchinsk or Yakutsk not from a distance of 700-800 km, but from the Urals and Western Siberia, that is, a distance of 3.5-4 thousand kilometers!

When Fyodor Golovin returned to Moscow, he did not try to explain to Tsar Peter I how it was possible, in exceptionally favorable foreign policy conditions, to lose at the negotiating table what was reliably protected by Cossack steadfastness in a bloody struggle. The complete liquidation of a large gold treasury, which was issued to him in the Ambassadorial order for the needs of bribing foreign ambassadors, as well as "less thieves and charming people", Golovin explained by the need ... to bribe Jesuit translators. It was only thanks to this generous bribe that the damned Catholics agreed to help the Muscovite, finally, to persuade the hard-nosed, absolutely unbending “Bogdoists”.

The famous Russian proverb that if you are not caught, then you are not a thief, was born, no doubt, in the gloomy corridors of Muscovy's orders. Fedor Golovin was not caught by the hand. The first of the great Russian boyars, having cut off his beard and lit a smelly pipe, he made a brilliant career under Peter I. To whom the bribe for the surrender and destruction of Albazin was paid - Golovin or the Jesuits of the Songgotu mission - will forever remain a mystery. However, common sense cannot remain beyond the bounds of time: why pay, when, according to the instructions of Emperor Kangxi, the Songgotu mission was to transfer not only Albazin, but almost the entire middle Amur to the possession of Russia ?!

There is an old Cossack legend about how Yesaul Beyton said goodbye to Albazin. Having received a monstrous order from Fyodor Golovin, in which it was ordered "... to destroy the city of Albazin, and to dig out the shaft without a trace, and to bring the service people with their wives and children and with all their stomachs to Nerchinsk," Bayton gathered the Cossacks on the banks of the Amur. He convinced them for a long time that it was necessary to leave, that no real forces had come from Muscovy all the time after the siege, that the Chinese would return anyway and there would be cutting again, there would be blood. The Cossacks stubbornly argued, refused to leave. Then Bayton, in a rage, pulled out his heavy broadsword from the scabbard and with the words: “We should not be in Albazin - how can this broadsword not float up!” - threw the weapon at Cupid. And here, oh wonder! The broadsword, supported by a powerful whirlpool, suddenly floated up with the handle up - as if in the form of a cross - and, sparkling with a gilded stripe in the sun, slowly, very slowly sank to the bottom ...

After the departure of the Cossacks from Albazin, the Russian people were able to re-enter the high banks of the Amur only two hundred years later - in the second half of the 19th century.

In the Thermopylae Gorge, already 60 years after the death of three hundred Spartans, a stern, beautiful in its courageous simplicity monument was erected. In the small village of Albazino, Amur Region, which is slowly dying away like thousands of other villages in Russia, there is still no monument to the fallen Cossacks.

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BAMIZhT - a branch of the Far East State University of Transportation in the city of Tynda

on national history

Topic: "Defense of the Albazin Fortress"

Completed by: Garipov Andrey Rashidovich

KT13-IKT(BT)OS-653

Checked by: Bilyak Olga Vladimirova

Introduction

2. Defense of Albazin

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

Relevance of the topic

In the history of the formation of the Russian state, the development of the lands of the Far East was of great importance. The history of the development of the Far East is, first of all, the history of travels and exploits of Russian explorers, it is the history of the courage and courage of the Russian people. Among the thousands of Russians who made their way and settled in the new expanses of the Russian state, many talented, enterprising people stood out who made geographical discoveries. These people strengthened themselves throughout the entire northeast of Asia, reached the shores of the Pacific Ocean, spreading the influence of Russia in the Amur region. In less than a hundred years, the state border of the country was moved from the Urals to the shores of the Pacific Ocean.

Objective

To study the history of the Far East, the history of the beginning of relations between China and Russia.

A bright page in the history of Russian-Chinese relations, a symbol of the inflexibility of the Russian spirit and Russian military strength.

A very special, exceptional place in the history of the development of the Amur region is occupied by the activities of E.P. Khabarov, whose campaigns to the Amur lasted for 9 years from 1649 to 1658. As a result of these campaigns, the Karen Amur population accepted Russian citizenship. Russian prisons, fortresses appeared there, and among them Albazinsky (1651). Later, the Albazinsky district was formed in the Amur region. It, along with the Nerchinsk district, became the main center of Russian activity on the Amur.

Albazinsky district quickly took a leading position, and in the 70s of the XVII century became the center of supply for Transbaikalia and other regions of Eastern Siberia.

However, the process of development of the region was interrupted due to the aggression of the Qing Empire. From the beginning of the 80s of the 17th century, the Manchus entered into open conflict with the Russian state. Military operations were conducted in Transbaikalia and on the Amur. Russia was not going to cede the Far Eastern borders. The Qing rulers had been preparing a major military operation against the Albazin fortress for several years. Along with the heroic defense of Albazin (in 1685-1686), attempts were made to resolve the issue through negotiations. And not being able to transfer large military forces to the Amur region, Russia was forced to sign the Nerchinsk Treaty (August 27, 1689). According to the territorial articles, Russian subjects left the left bank of the Amur region. The exact border between the two states was not established. The huge region, which had been successfully developed for almost 40 years, turned into a deserted strip that belonged to no one. And the long-term defense of the Albazin fortress has forever gone down in the history of the heroic deeds of the Russian people.

Russia managed to defend the right to Transbaikalia and the coast of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk. In the 18th century, Okhotsk was the main Pacific port of the country. The development of the northern shores of the Pacific Ocean, the exploration of the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin prepared the foundations for the return of the Amur region.

1. The return of the Albazin fortress

The arrival in Nerchinsk in mid-July 1685 of the surviving defenders of Albazin marked the beginning of a new stage in the development of military-political relations between Qing China and Russia. Already in mid-July 1685, the Nerchinsk governor I.E. Vlasov sent 70 Cossacks on a reconnaissance search down the Shilka on five plows, led by foreman Y. Telitsyn. He was ordered to find out the situation in the area of ​​the Albazin fortress. The detachment found out that the Manchu troops urgently left Albazin in connection with the uprising in China and the need to pacify it, the only garrison left by the Qing was located in Aigun and consisted of 500 people.

On August 7, Y. Telitsyn returned to Nerchinsk and reported everything, convincing the governor I.E. Vlasov in the reality of plans for the return of Albazin.

Initially, it was required to build a "small fortress" and stock up as much grain as possible to provide troops in the upcoming inevitable clashes with the Qing. For these purposes, a cavalry detachment of 198 people was sent from Nerchinsk, followed by a detachment consisting of 123 Albazins and 193 Nerchinsk Cossacks down the Amur. In total, according to Vlasov, 514 "military people" and 155 "industrial people" were sent to Albazin. On August 27, 1685, both detachments reached the ruins of the Albazin fortress. By the beginning of 1686, there were already 725 people in Albazin, and 440 people in Nerchinsk and the prisons closest to it. In total, thus, by 1686, over a thousand "military men" were drawn up for the defense of the Amur region.

By the end of 1685, the Russians managed to harvest the bulk of the harvest from more than a thousand acres. At the same time, timber was being harvested for the construction of a new Russian prison, which was located on the old site of the Albazin fortress.

The fortress was built in the form of a rectangle stretched along the Amur. The fortress walls were erected from logs in two rows, between which the earth was filled up, as a result of which the width of the defensive structures reached 8-8.5 meters. The walls of the fortress reached a height of 3 meters - the Cossacks did not manage to raise the walls higher due to the onset of cold weather. The wall along the Amur coast was reinforced with a tower to prevent enemy ships from approaching the fortress itself.

Figure 1 (View of the Albazin fortress, 1685)

The Manchu authorities in Aigun soon learned about the occupation of Albazin by Russian troops and the return of the population there. However, when this was reported to Emperor Kangxi, he did not believe his commander Sabs and sent people to reconnoiter the situation in Albazin. Already in the autumn of 1685, I.E. Vlasov was informed about the activity of enemy reconnaissance - in the vicinity of Albazin. On October 2, the Russian guard entered into battle with a large detachment of the enemy. A Cossack detachment of 100 people who came to the rescue could not catch up with the Manchus and returned back. Two weeks later, on October 14, the Manchus crossed the Amur, attacked Pokrovskaya Sloboda, killed and captured part of the population, and burned the grain reserves. A detachment that approached a few days later from Albazin could not pursue the enemy who had gone beyond the Amur because of the ice drift. In early November, a detachment of 200 Cossacks overtook the Manchus at the Monastyrskaya Zaimka, defeated them and captured a herd of horses. In December 1685, it became known about the intention of the Manchu command in the summer of 1686 to besiege the newly erected Albazin fortress.

2. Defense of Albazin

On April 17, 1686, Emperor Kangxi ordered a new campaign against Albazin with the aim of "exterminating" the Russians. In early July 1686, the Manchurian army approached Albazin, stopping 5 miles from the Russian fortress. The population managed to hide in the fortress. Work on its strengthening by this time were almost completed. The artillery of the fortress consisted of a mortar, 8 copper cannons and 3 squeakers; more than 112 pounds of gunpowder and 60 pounds of lead were stored in the powder cellar. Flour from the harvest of 1685 should have been enough for almost two years. In total, 826 people gathered in the Albazin fortress at that time, who made up the garrison of the fortress defenders.

The siege army of the Manchus numbered up to 5 thousand people with 40 guns. Before the siege of the fortress, the Manchus sent a letter to Albazin with a released prisoner demanding to leave the Amur and surrender the city of Albazin. However, all attempts by the Manchus to shake the steadfastness of the defenders were in vain. As during the first siege, the Manchus immediately tried to cut off Albazin from Nerchinsk and placed their ships above the fortress in order to prevent the reinforcements from approaching.

On July 7, 1686, a long and exhausting siege of the Russian Albazin by the Manchus began. A week after the start of the siege, the Manchus launched an attack from the riverine and northern sides, and an assault on the fortress began. The failure to take Albazin on the move forced the Manchu command to begin a long siege of the Russian fortress. To this end, they erected their own earthen defensive ramparts about 400 meters from Albazin and on the opposite bank of the Amur, placed their guns on them and began systematic shelling of the fortress. The army of the besiegers was housed in yurts in three hastily built fortified towns.

On the fifth day of the fighting, the governor of the fortress A.L. Tolbuzin was seriously wounded and died four days later. Afanasy Beyton took command of the Albazin fortress.

Stubborn fighting continued day and night. During three successful sorties, the Russian defenders of the fortress killed one and a half hundred enemy soldiers, about 200 more Manchu soldiers died from the fire of Russian artillery. The losses of the Russian garrison by this time amounted to 21 people who died in sorties, 40 people who died from the fire of the Manchurian artillery and 40 people who died from scurvy. The Manchus were forced to admit the steadfastness of the Russian defense and the failure of the assault.

August 19 Nerchinsky governor I.E. Vlasov, who did not have complete information about the situation near Albazin, sent a detachment with 70 Cossacks to reconnaissance from Nerchinsk near Albazin. The detachment managed to secretly approach Albazin, where 20 Cossacks and peasants joined him, who did not have time to hide in the prison before the Manchus approached.

Upon the return of the detachment to Nerchinsk on September 26, the governor I.E. Vlasov, it was reported that the Russian garrison defended stubbornly and in an organized manner and needed reinforcements in the face of the enemy's absolute superiority in forces and means. No further information about Albazin was received by Nerchinsk until the beginning of November.

After the failure of the first assault, the Manchus intensified their work on the construction of defenses. Near Albazin, four fortified towns were already built, where the main forces of the Manchu troops were located in yurts and dugouts. Above the fortress behind the Amur, a camp was built, fortified with a rampart.

On September 1, the Manchus launched a new decisive assault on the fortress, which, however, again ended in failure for them. They tried to blow up the ramparts, starting to build a tunnel for this purpose, which was discovered and destroyed during the sortie by the Cossacks.

In October, by the beginning of the ice drift, the Manchus took their ships to the backwaters, which A. Beiton took advantage of. During the ice drift, on the night of October 12, three Cossacks managed to get out of Albazin and sail on a boat. By November 10, they reached Nerchinsk and reported on the state of the fortress and its defenders.

Until October, the Albazin garrison made sorties five times, destroyed up to 150 enemy soldiers and lost 65 people. There was enough food in the fortress, but there was a shortage of water, fuel and antiscorbutic drugs: 50 people had already died of scurvy by that time.

In October 1686, the last fierce assault on Albazin began. The entire army was thrown into the attack, the number of which had increased by that time to 10 thousand people. The Manchus built two "wood" shafts of "tar" and raw wood, which they wanted to bring under the very walls of the fortress, and then set on fire. The Cossacks burned one of them during a sortie, and under the second one they dug a tunnel and blew it up. At the same time, the Manchus tried to fill up the shaft with firewood from the catapults. Firewood turned out to be very useful for the besieged, who suffered greatly from the lack of fuel. In view of the approaching winter in the last battle, the Manchus wanted to break Albazin's resistance at all costs, and the besieged, in turn, sought to break the siege. By December 1686, Albazin continued to stubbornly defend himself, although a significant part of his garrison died in October - November. More than a hundred people were killed on sorties and during the bombing, more than 500 people died of scurvy. 150 people survived.

The siege of Albazin, which lasted almost half a year, turned out to be unsuccessful for the Manchu troops. The Russian garrison, despite the difficulties and hardships of the siege, defended fiercely. As a result, the Manchus were forced to abandon forceful methods of action and negotiate. The difficulties faced by the Manchu government in its actions in the Amur region forced it to establish diplomatic contacts with the Russian government.

On May 6, 1687, after lengthy diplomatic negotiations, the Manchurian army retreated 3-4 versts down the Amur and stopped in the area of ​​the Russian village of Ozernaya. Before the retreat, the Manchus destroyed all their defensive structures and devices near Albazin, and immediately began building defensive fortifications in a new place. On August 30, 1687, the Manchu army left their fortified camp and headed for the mouth of the Zeya River. The enemy retreated from the Russian fortress.

Military-political relations between the two countries have entered the stage of diplomatic agreements.

The heroic five-month defense cost the lives of the vast majority of Albazin's defenders. One letter from 1689 lists the survivors of 7 "old" Albazin Cossacks and 90 Cossacks who came to Albazin in 1685.

On August 31, 1689, a decree was issued - "to destroy the built city of Albazin without a trace, and henceforth, on both sides, there will be no fortress or dwelling in it."

Conclusion

The heroic defense of Albazin became a bright page in the history of Russian-Chinese relations and became a symbol of the inflexibility of the Russian spirit and Russian military strength. The lessons of Albazin, the main of which was the impossibility of defeating the Russians by military means, were remembered in Beijing forever. Albazin Russian China fortress

The military-political relations between China and Russia, regardless of the political changes that took place in them over the next more than three centuries, have since been built taking into account the lessons and experience of military operations near Albazin in the second half of the 17th century.

Figure 2 (Illustration from the article "Albazin siege: Cossacks against the Chinese" by Nikolai Lysenko)

Bibliography

1. "The development of the Russian people of the Far East" Alekseev A.I., Morozov B.N.. Moscow. 1989

2. “Slavic Encyclopedia. XVII century. Moscow, Olma-Press. 2004

3. Site "Russian planet". http://rusplt.ru

4. Website "Wikipedia". http://en.wikipedia.org

5. Site "Russian National Philosophy". http://www.chrono.ru

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A white mist floated across the Amur. He enveloped the black waters, forests and mountains drowned in it. The sky has merged with the earth, neither the moon nor the stars are visible.

It is not without reason that the "God's eyes" looked at Albazin for so long from the other side of the Amur. They secretly crossed the Amur and set fire to the fields of the Albazins in the autumn night, and stole a lot of cattle. Many Cossacks were completely impoverished. Yarofey Saburov's temples were covered with snow powder.

The Albazin fortress fell silent, hid in the fog. The Cossack stood on the watchtower. The Albazians slept anxiously.

Yarofey Saburov did not sleep, Stepanida did not sleep. She got up from the couch, dragging her fur coat by the sleeve, went to the window:

Utreet, Yarofeyushka.

Until the morning before, then the fogs float over the Amur ...

Stepanida sat down on the couch. In the burner there is darkness, dampness, the smell of tar. Stepanida sighed.

The zhonka of the Cossack Sidorka Stolbov said something bad, she says: the townspeople, de from the yasash Tungus, heard: the army of the Manchus is going to Albazin, that army is many, on foot and on horseback.

If that army comes, it would not break on the horns - so I dare! ..

Many armies, Yarofeyushka, they say, truly! ..

Saburov waved his hand and went out into the yard.

The dawn dawned...

Albazin woke up. The gates creaked, the people fussed.

Disturbing news, like bees, sting the Albazians mercilessly. The day started off hectic.

The Albazians were waiting for the Manchu raids.

A few days passed, two Manchurian horsemen galloped up to Albazin. They called Yarofei to leave the fortress on the hill. Yarofei with a small guard of Cossacks left the fortress. Horsemen said:

Behind the mountain are three important messengers of the great Bogdykhan. They need to speak, and they want to see the chief governor of the fortress.

Saburov, fearing slyness and trickery, did not go to the negotiation speeches, he sent five Cossacks-watchmen under the command of foreman Maxim Yushkov. The Cossacks did not return.

The news of the arrival of the Manchus on the Amur reached the Nerchinsk prison. The new governor, Alexei Morozov, fearing the defeat of the Albazin fortress and the Manchu campaign against Nerchinsk, sent two Cossacks to China for negotiations. In China, they received them kindly and did not keep them for long. The Cossacks returned to Nerchinsk three months later. The chief commander of the frontier rati, in the name of the Bogdykhan, demanded: immediately demolish the Albazin fortress, the Russians leave the Amur.

The Cossacks said to the governor:

The Chinese Bogdykhan gathered a lot of military force, and he sends it to demolish the Albazin fortress and the Nerchinsk prison. Ahead of that Chinese army are the warriors of the Yellow Banner - the robber Manchus, behind them - the black Mongols and Daurians.

The governor wrote to the tsar in Moscow:

“... It is impossible for me, your serf, to defend your, great sovereign, prisons with small force. Industrial people and the Cossacks of the Nerchinsk prison do not have good self-propelled guns, and from the former governor in the treasury of rifle self-propelled guns there are thin, rusty, unfit for battle. But there are no gunsmiths in prison, except for Kuzemka Fedorov, and he is decrepit and blind and not suitable for that gunsmithing.

Without waiting for a reciprocal letter from the tsar, the voivode decided to ward off the attack of the Manchus, made concessions and ordered the prisons, which were set up on the Zeya River in winter, to be burned, and the Cossacks to go to the Albazins. Bogdykhan considered this a small tribute, and the winter passed without a war.

As before, Albazin stood firmly on the Amur. The Albazians lived freely, they did not obey the Nerchinsk jail and did not send gifts of the guilty. The Nerchinsk governor decided to go to Albazin himself, in order to bring the recalcitrant Cossacks under his strong hand.

The governor has arrived. He gathered the Cossack circle, spoke proudly, demanded obedience from the Albazians and the issuance of the sable treasury in full. The voivode did not meet Yarofey Saburov: he sailed away on five planks with Albazians on a small military campaign down the Amur to explore the lands and collect yasak.

The Albazins did not give the voivode a treasury, they reproached him for the insults of the former voivode, complained about the hardships of military life. Then the voivode pulled out the royal gracious charter from the pocket of his fur coat, and read it loudly and distinctly.

The Albazins joyfully swore for Albazin to fight to the death and stand with a firm foot on the Amur River.

And when the governor said that he brought the Albazin Cossacks a royal salary of five hundred rubles in silver, the Cossacks were alarmed.

Why five hundred? The king sent us two thousand!

Give, governor, our salary in full!

We won't let you out of Albazin!

The governor refused the sable treasury, he wanted to leave Albazin, but the Cossacks did not let him.

The governor sat locked up for three days.

He borrowed five hundred rubles from the Albazin merchants, distributed them to the Albazins, and swore to send the second thousand with messengers.

The governor left angry and offended. The Albazians did not give him the sable treasury, the authorities did not fully recognize him. On the way, the governor met yasash Evenks, he told them:

From now on, don’t go to the Albazin prison and don’t give them yasak. Bring it to Nerchinsk. Cossacks in Albazin live like thieves.

Trouble befell Yarofey Saburov during the campaign. At the turn of the river, the planks of Yarofey crashed into a large Manchurian fleet. The Manchu ships tightly surrounded the planks of Yarofey, nailed them to a steep cape and anchored, blocking the way.

Soon a large pointed boat swam up; a chief in a long blue robe, with a sword at his belt. His interpreter shouted:

What kind of people are you? Why are you driving boats on foreign water? And who is the main boyar with you?

Yarofey Saburov cheated:

We sail for fishing. In the leaders we have Grishka Lotoshnikov. The Manchu chief did not suspect that he was talking to Yarofey Saburov, whose courage and severity he had known for a long time. He called the Russian leader for negotiations. Yarofei, recognizing the Manchu in the chief, did not go to these formal speeches, but sent foreman Grishka Lotoshnikov and five Cossacks.

A night and a day passed, Saburov's envoys did not return.

The sharp-nosed boat of the Manchu chief swam up again, and in it the interpreters. They shouted at each other:

Your people could not resist the torture, they gave out secrets.

You are thieves and robbers! On a foreign land you run worse than wolves!

The interpreters showed expensive gifts, boasted of them and incited the Cossacks to leave Russia and go to the service of the Bogdykhan.

Your gifts are scarce, the Cossacks answered.

The interpreters diligently showed by laying out on board the boat: boots, cloth, damask and much more. The interpreters said:

You, Cossacks, will receive great awards and honors.

Only three Cossacks were seduced by these speeches, the rest refused. The Manchus were angry. Two more large boats with warriors sailed up, they threatened, cursed, and immediately, for warning, sank one Saburovsky plank. The Cossacks sitting on it barely escaped.

At night, Saburov and forty of his Cossacks secretly fell into the water, swam to the shore, climbed out onto a sandy ravine and fled through the forest. The Manchus gave chase. Many Cossacks in the forests were caught and killed. Saburov with great suffering with nine Cossacks barely reached Albazin.

Saburov understood: the Bogdykhan was leading a large army, and Albazin, with his small number of people and with a small number of guns, could not resist. Saburov cursed the Albazins for their rudeness and insults that they did to the new Nerchinsk governor.

Immediately, Saburov sent a speedy messenger to Nerchinsk, called the Albazin literates - the priest Gavrila and the son of the townsman merchant Zykov. For two nights they scribbled letters and a small sheet of the governor. After listening to what was written, Yarofey shook his head:

Your writing is not easy. It is necessary that the voivode understand firmly what threats fell on the Russian borders on the Amur, what an ambulance is needed.

Feathers creaked again.

Saburov spoke, and the son of a townsman merchant wrote:

“... And the Bogdykhan from the Amur River decided to drive the Russians out without fail. Fortress Albazin, which was erected by our labors, to burn, but we, the Cossacks, to chop, drown, lead out ... There are many hosts, both on foot, and on horseback, and on ships. The Manchus are leading it. Against such a rati, with our small population, without lead and gunpowder, one cannot resist. The Manchus will beat us, they will drive us from our Amur borders.

Forget the grievances, father voivode, that the Albazin Cossacks inflicted on you in a fever and drunkenness. They sent ambulance support, especially fire equipment: guns, self-propelled guns, gunpowder and lead ... "

At night, the messenger rode off to Nerchinsk.

Bogdykhanov's advisers were preparing a quick march to the Amur.

At the beginning of summer, Grishka Lotoshnikov arrived in Albazin from China with the Cossacks. The Manchus took him to the city of Naun, released him, handing him a list of bogdykhans. Bogdykhan threatened to demolish Albazin and Nerchinsk, demanded that Albazin be handed over without bloodshed, to receive mercy and a salary from him.

The Albazins got excited, listening to the letter of the Bogdykhan:

Scripture is deceptive! We don't believe him! One God is free and Russia is great. Let's serve her!

We will not abandon the Albazin sable treasury. How much gunpowder is enough, we will stand!

Our blood fortress, we will not leave it to death!

In less than a month, an Albazin killed by an arrow was found near the townsmen's meadows. The arrow was examined, it was a Manchu product. The next morning they picked up three more slain Albazins. Frightened Evenks came running and told Saburov that they had seen the enemy army. Warriors with pikes are coming - that is the head army, called "The first hundred pikes of the invincible Manchus." A lot of warriors follow her.

The tsar learned about the campaign of the Manchus and Daurians against the Amur late: from the distant Siberian prisons to Moscow, messengers traveled at a fast pace for six months or more. They reached Tobolsk with great suffering. Often, misfortunes awaited them on the way: non-peaceful nomads offended, a fierce beast attacked and lost their lives, getting lost in the taiga wilds.

Voevodas gathered troops from Siberian fortresses and prisons in order to send them to help Albazin and thereby defend the Russian borders in the east.

Collected slowly. Many heard about the freedom of the Albazins, the offense of the Nerchinsk governor was the reason for this.

Saburovskie scouts daily brought news one another more terrible. Scout Streshnev made his way through the swamps and reeds to the very camp of the head rati - "One Hundred Peaks of the Invincible Manchus." He returned and said to Saburov:

The army goes to Albazin a lot. Like locusts stuck to the banks of the Amur. Horsemen ride in a crowd, footmen go in schools of a hundred warriors, small ships sail nine in a row, large goose, one after another.

Saburov asked:

Did you see the guns? Big, small?

The cannons were put on the ships, and all of them were large, I didn’t see any small ones.

Are many people carrying supplies or traveling light?

Stocks are great. Besides the warriors, Chinese working people are riding: bridges are being built, ships are being pulled, many are carrying burdens on their shoulders. The Manchurian watchers urge them on with sticks and pikes.

Saburov in Albazin had two hundred warriors, glorious in battle, while the townspeople, plowed peasants and other stray people - four hundred. Gunpowder, lead, axes, he drank so little that every soldier did not have enough.

It was a sultry summer.

At noon, vigilantly looking around the surroundings, the sentry Cossack saw the first Manchurian horsemen. Ten horsemen in blue coats, with pikes and bows, rode up the hill. One of them looked at Albazin for a long time through a long pipe. Before the sentinel Cossack had time to sound the alarm, the enemy horsemen, turning their horses, galloped back.

The sky turned gray from the east. Taiga was enveloped in a yellow cloud of dust, the wind carried the dust to the Amur. The yellow haze thickened, approached; there was a smell of bitter smoke, horse sweat, there was a clatter, a rumble, a clang. Putting his hand to his eyes, Saburov peered into the dusty haze. A thud was heard close by. The Manchurian cavalry flew up the mountain. A smooth palisade peak, like a sharp reed, grew on the mountain, the wind swayed the yellow banner, the horses beat their hooves on the loose sand.

On the Amur, small boats appeared from behind the island, followed by large warships. Saburov descended from the tent tower, raised the Cossacks, ordered them to strictly carry guards, to hammer the gates tightly. He selected six Cossacks, sent them through the scaffolds to the fortress walls to run to the townsmen's huts, they set fire to the barns with straw of the Cossacks of the Zaznamovs, huts, the church, the tavern and other buildings were doused with tar and also set on fire.

The Albazin bell rang. Flames rushed to the sky, brown smoke eclipsed the surroundings. Cupid turned purple, red splashes blazed over the water surface, rushing from coast to coast. A fiery wave rolled across the grass, rolled towards the forest, leaving behind gray ash and black coals ... The huts writhed in the fire, crackled, the church became like a huge burning candle, flame and smoke soared into the sky. And when the church collapsed, a cloud of sparks flew up and fell on Amur. Albanians were baptized.

The head army of the Manchus could not approach the fortress that day. It seemed to them that the Albazins set fire to both the township buildings and the fortress.

The night brightened. At dawn, Saburov went to the gunners, self-punchers, secret watchers. Sticking his head into the black crack of the crawler, he shouted:

Pushkars!

What do you want?

Hit the crowd! Don't waste gunpowder!

The gunners were brave:

Hey, Yarofei, let's hit it, the enemies will imagine the heavens with a sheepskin! ..

Saburov climbed the hipped towers:

Self-pickers! In vain do not indulge in fire! Beat to death!

They answered him:

Let's do it, Yarofey! We won't offend guests!

Near the eastern climbs, in deep pits, pitchers boiled siege pitch; right there, the wives twisted tight bundles of straw, they were pitched and piled in a pile, so that in the siege the Cossacks could, having set fire to them, throw those bundles, fighting off the enemy with fire.

Yarofei laughed:

Zhonki, what expensive gifts they have prepared!

That, Yarofey, small gifts, so that they do not complain about the junk! Stepanida answered.

The day has passed. Bogdykhanov's troops were camped, the soldiers looked around. When the smoke cleared, they were surprised to see the fortress. The fortress stood like a gray cliff: huge, formidable, deaf ... Saburov managed to equip and send messengers to Nerchinsk again at night to tell about the trouble and ask for help.

The sun threw its first light beam, flashed pink spots on the towers of the fortress wall. The sentinel Cossack gave a sign: a Russian Cossack was walking through the rampart to the fortress gates. Yarofey recognized him as an Albazin. The Manchus took him prisoner last summer. The Cossack was let into the fortress through a secret hole. The yellow-faced Cossack, exhausted, silently took out a narrow pipe from his bosom and handed it to Saburov. It was the second Bogdykhanov leaf, a formidable leaf, written in three languages: Manchurian, Chinese and Russian. The Chinese Bogdykhan, calling Yarofei Saburov Yalo-fei and the Albazin governor, commanded not to shed blood, to clean the Amur River quietly and never set foot on those lines. The bogdykhan promised honors, rewards, and favors... “If Yalo-fei,” it was written on the sheet, “stands across the will and starts a fight, the Bogdykhan’s warriors will burn the fortress, beat people and drown Yalo-fei in the Amur.”

The messenger spoke about the forces of the army, gathered at the behest of the Bogdykhan from many places. He said to Yarofey Saburov:

There is a host of warriors and on ships, and with a quick step on horseback, and on foot. The Bogdykhanov governor, the malevolent Manchu, intends to demolish Albazin and thereby fulfill the will of the ruler of the Chinese kingdom.

Yarofey Saburov asked:

And how many ships are there, both on foot and on horseback?

They sail on a hundred ships, fifty soldiers per ship, and more than a thousand horsemen, and countless footmen. There are eight long-range guns with them and ten small ones. In addition, a thousand working people are coming; they make fortifications, dig ditches, pull ships with a tow line.

The Bogdykhanov army was ten times the strength of the Albazins. The Manchus brought back cannons worked out by the Jesuits, with cannonballs of fifteen and twenty pounds. However, the warriors went with bows, pikes and even knives, only the Manchus had fire squeaks, and even then not all of them.

The sky cleared, shone milky white. The sun was beating down.

The Manchurian ships sailed to Albazin, anchored, the soldiers went ashore, washed and bathed. By evening, they fired from all the guns at once. The ship's cannons vied with each other for five days. In many places, the thick logs of the fortress and embankments collapsed, and the watchtower and barn were damaged.

Saburov with a handful of brave Cossacks rushed about the fortress towers. They cut off logs, put up supports, dug in, alerted. Saburov, sweaty, blackened from the earth, got excited:

Store, Cossacks, fire supplies. Not otherwise, by the evening the infantry will attack.

Dirty, bloody Albazians answered from the tent platforms, from loopholes and climbs:

We are impoverished, Yarofei, with gunpowder! How?

Zhonki! Saburov shouted.

From the underground chambers, pits, manholes, wives ran out. Saburov waved his sinewy hand:

It is necessary, zhonki, to collect stones! Twist fire sheaves from straw! .. Gunpowder and lead are running out!

All night long the fortress was preparing to break the siege.

In the morning the Manchus fired their cannons and showered the Albazians with a needle rain of arrows. The Cossacks suffered losses. A grave was hastily dug, the fallen were buried in a Christian way.

The head of the Yellow Banner, seeing the confusion in the fortress and a small retreat, ordered a stone to be fired from the squeaker, and with it a sheet written in Manchu. He demanded to surrender the fortress without a fight, boasted of his military strength and reserves, laughed at Saburov, calling him a short hare. Albazins who surrendered to the mercy of the bogdykhan were promised expensive gifts: satin dresses, Chinese silk caftans, patterned boots, and much more. When priest Gavrila read this letter, the Cossacks taunted:

We know those gifts from Bogdykhanov! ..

Bogdykhan forgot to name the most expensive gifts: a silk loop and an executioner's hatchet!

Not a single Albazin succumbed to those Bogdykhanov gifts and flattering promises. But among the townspeople, a reckless man was found, a servant of a merchant. At night, hiding like a thief, he ran away with his wife through a secret hole into the enemy camp.

The next morning, Saburov shouted from the tent tower for all the Albazians to hear:

And if we catch the fugitives, the traitors, we will not kill them, but we will burn them on fire, so that we will burn that treachery out of them completely! ..

The head of the Yellow Banner, without waiting for an answer from Saburov, decided to attack the fortress. His warriors rushed to the attack, but suffered losses and retreated. Cannons struck again, iron arrows shot up, fire, etched with snake venom. Albazin women with youngsters ran around the fortress square, burying themselves and bending down, throwing poisonous and fire arrows with sand.

By evening, the fighting had subsided.

Saburov looked at the distance from the watchtower: the Bogdykhan's army is everywhere, there is no end in sight. He thought ruefully: “Fire reserves are decreasing. There are few warriors, the losses are so great. Many brave Cossacks, old veterans, comrades-in-arms fell.

Saburov descended from the tower, hid in the crawl space, sat down on the sand, and pressed his rough palms over his head. Sat for a long time. Above him - the sky is dressed in blue, frequent stars wink, the moon floats lazily, looking at the earth with a yellow eye ... Manchu warriors burned fires, horses neighed, human din echoed across the Amur.

That night, Saburov's cunning and terrible thoughts ripened. He decided to save people from inevitable death. Thinking like this: “If only people were alive, it would be possible to build a fortress again...”

At night, the Albazins set fire to the fortress and fled through secret crawls and tunnels.

Saburov looked at the fortress from the mountain. She stood alone, forlorn, the scorched towers were smoking...

It was a pity for Saburov's building, he gritted his teeth, proudly said:

Let the wounded Cossacks, the sick, and the women with babies go through the taiga through the ridges to Nerchinsk. Let the rest of the warriors go down to the valley.

About three hundred Cossacks and townspeople gathered. With them at night, Saburov bypassed the enemy camp with forests, windbreaks, swamps in order to rush at the head army of the Manchus from the bypass side and throw it into the Amur from the steep bank.

Yarofei did not take Stepanida on that campaign. No matter how the woman begged, Yarofei answered:

It is unsuitable for women to go into an open bloody battle ...

Stepanida did not calm down at that. As soon as Yarofey disappeared with the Albazins, she gathered the Cossack chicks in a circle.

Zhonki! Our men, not sparing their heads, go into an unequal battle, and we, like mice in cowardice, run?

What kind of help from women? - the old woman Silantikha interrupted Stepanida.

Help is great. I dare, zhonki: burying ourselves in the forest, we will go around the fortress, we will leave the mountain, spreading the banner in the wind. From that, the enemies will be alarmed and they will lead the military force against us.

Oh, Stepanida, from that woman's campaign, apart from shame, there will be no other.

They will beat us, take us prisoner...

Your idea, Stepanida, is worthless...

She again fervently urged:

There will be no battle, the forest guarantees that, in the forest, zhonki, let's bury ourselves. Yarofey with the Cossacks will break the stubborn: he will strike from the side. We will create deceit and distraction.

Zhonki Stepanida cursed. But she did not let up, she gathered twenty-five young women on that woman's campaign. The rest didn't go.

During the night a storm came up and poured rain. Muddy streams rushed from the mountains, rivers overflowed, mountain streams clogged.

Zhonki reached the mountain where the fortress stood. They were surprised: the fortress darkened with a cliff. The fire did not burn her, the rain protected her. That is why the Manchu commanders did not understand Saburov’s tricks, sent envoys to the fortress with a threat: “If you don’t give up without a fight, you will be burned by fire, chopped with sabers.”

The messengers returned without entering the fortress. The head of the Yellow Banner, knowing that the fire reserves in his army had noticeably diminished, ordered to stop firing from the cannons.

I decided to go to the fortress with full force: on foot and on horseback.

All day Bogdykhan's army prepared for the siege. Zhonki went to the mountain, raised the banners. The Manchurian soldiers were surprised where the Russians came from, and went to attack that mountain.

It got dark, the forests turned black, Amur fell silent. At this time, Saburov struck; a sudden raid alarmed the troops of the Manchu camp. It seemed to them: an innumerable force of Russians attacked from two sides. In that night battle, a lot of Manchus and Daurians were killed, a lot of them drowned in the black waters of the Amur. Many and dashing Albazins fell. A small group escaped with Saburov: sixty Cossacks and nine wives. After that fight, Yarofei Saburov became ill; a Daurian archer knocked out his left eye. Tying the bloody hollow with a rag, Yarofey angrily said to the Cossacks:

By the grace of God, the hands are intact. My eye is small for the bogdykhan ... I see his vile army with one eye ...

The mountain, where Stepanida with brave zhonki deceived the Manchu military commanders and led the army away, was called by the Cossacks Stepanidina outpost.

And this name of the mountain has been preserved forever.

The Albazin Fortress was completely demolished by the Bogdykhan's army and retreated. The Albazians, having reached the Shilka River, met the Russian army in three hundred and fifty self-propelled guns, with cannons and fire supplies. An army under the command of Afanasy Baidonov from Nerchinsk went to the aid of the Albazins. That help was one day late.

Afanasy Baidonov reproached Saburov: he abandoned the fortress in vain. Another Russian army of five hundred self-propelled guns is coming to Albazin, with lengthy cannons, rich in both lead and gunpowder. And the Cossacks decided to return, drive out the uninvited guests from Albazin and again gain a foothold at the borders.

Afanasy Baydonov sent watchmen to learn everything about the enemy and his plans. The watchmen returned without finding even a trace of the enemy. The watchers said about the fortress:

And that fortress in the world was gone... Black coals and ashes lie.

The Russians returned to Albazin and really found not a fortress, but ruins sticking out, smoke and coals. The Manchus burned the fortress. Food reserves that the Albazins hid in hidden pits were found and looted. Only bread remained in the distant fields: the enemy did not have time to burn these fields.

Putting up guards and patrols, Afanasy Baydonov sent half of the people to diligently gather bread from the fields, and the other began to erect a new Albazin. Afanasy Baidonov is a famous Russian master of fortress building. New Albazin, he began to build skillfully, so that he was impregnable neither from the field, nor from the Amur.

By late autumn, a new mighty fortress had grown on the Albazin ashes. And inside it - military and master's cages, climbs, pits and other necessary buildings and military tricks.

The Nerchinsk governor Aleksey Morozov arrived in Albazin on a sleigh road, read the second royal letter of favors and awards to the Albazins. He shamed the voivode of the Albazians for past sins, but he gave out a salary in full. Saburov did not take that royal salary, he told the Cossacks to tell the governor: “Yarofei had two eyes, he was left alone; there were two rulers: the Lord in heaven and the king on earth, but one god remained ... "

The governor considered Yarofey's speeches to be rebellious, but he was afraid to deal with him. The Saburov Cossacks walked around frowning, complaining about the hard life.

It seemed to them that even now the voivode did not give out all his salary, he concealed a lot. The old Albazin Soboliny Uncle pounded on the ground with a crutch, incited the Cossacks with a sharp word:

Cossacks, the tsar's salary is so small because the governor gave the Nerchinsk Cossacks the silver that was given to the Albazins.

Having heard about those speeches, the voivode galloped away, ordering Afanasy Baydonov to put Yarofey Saburov under strict supervision, and to inform about the vile self-will of the Albazins with a secret letter.

Only the order of the governor remained empty.

Afanasy Baidonov fell in love with Yarofey. He saw in the brave Cossack ataman both a mature mind and military ingenuity. Afanasy Baydonov told the Cossacks:

Yarofei is experienced in military affairs, the ataman is brave. Russia worthy husband ... And Yarofey fell in love with Afanasy Baydonov - a wise ruler,

a great master in fortification, a brave and firm warrior. Since then, it has become customary in free Albazin as follows: Afanasy Baidonov and Yarofei Saburov became the rulers of the fortress.

Soon a township settlement grew up around the new Albazin. The townspeople - plowed peasants, forest industrialists, hunters and other alien people - rebuilt the huts along the mountain, called "Stepanidina Zastava".

Again, news flew like a bird along the Amur River about the return of the Russians, about their impregnable fortress, about the strength that no force could break.