Alexander Nevsky Александр Невский, born May 13, 1221 – died 14 November 1263 (age 42). From 1236 to 1263 he served three times as Grand Duke of Novgorod, in 1246 as Grand Duke of Kiev, in 1252 he was conferred the title of "Great Prince of Vladimir", and in 1547 he became the first saint of the Orthodox Canonization. At the age of 42, he completed a series of successful feats of safeguarding the national unity of the country and resisting foreign aggression three times. In 1942, during the Great Patriotic War, he was named a Russian national hero by Stalin and became one of the greatest leaders in the history of the nation.
Alexander's father Yaroslav II was the ruler of Kiev and Novgorod, but because of his status as the second son, he was supposedly not able to become a ruler, but like many great monarchs in history who opened goldfingers, because of various connections, at the age of 15, he was invited to serve as Grand Duke of the Novgorod Republic. Upon his arrival, the Novgorod Parliament gave him his first novice task of defending against Swedish and Northern Crusader aggression.
Alexander Nevsky
Swedes have been coveting the Neva estuary for a long time, and you ask me why the Swedes want this ordinary-looking estuary so much? Because it makes money... It is an important outlet to the Novgorod-Baltic Sea and the most important area in the north of the "Varangian-Greek trade route". If this place can be pocketed, it will not only be a large amount of trade income, but also establish Sweden's first foothold in Eastern Europe, which will become a springboard for Sweden to expand its influence in Eastern Europe in the future.
The Swedes are not stupid, when Kievan Rus was strong, he stood still, and now the Mongol invasion, the surrender of the Kievan Rus' states in the east, the destruction of the surrender, now is the best time to march!
Alexander learned of the swede marching with a large number of young men (Norway, Finland, Teutonic) and quickly led his troops to intercept it, and the two sides confronted each other at the confluence of the Neva and Irrola rivers. So how did our descendants know about the Battle of the Neva? It is still due to the fact that someone in Novgorod recorded the battle in the chronicle of the country. I will not put the original text, here is only the translation:
"Alas, the Swedes, the Finns, and the Teutonics have come with a mighty army, and they are now stationed near the Neva. Their purpose is to take away all our land! God, you are merciful, please shelter us! We arrived at Lake Ladoga before the enemy could gather our troops, and Alexander was very decisive, and he wanted to strike at the enemy with the help of the people of Novgorod and the Ladoga region and Saint Sophia! In the end, the Swedes were defeated, leaving countless corpses behind and fleeing back to the sea, while our side lost only 20 people or less! Archduke Alexander protected the people of Novgorod and Lake Ladoga, and God and Sophia bless us! "
Battle of the Neva River, later drawn
It was a battle of great disparity between the enemy and the enemy, with the Swedes amassing an army of about 5,000 men, compared to alexander's side with just over 1,400 men. But he did not wait for all the men to arrive, and through careful pre-war analysis and grasp of the enemy's position, on The day of July 15, taking advantage of the fog, began a covert and rapid march. As it turned out, the Swedes were caught off guard, and after a quick and fierce battle, the Swedes finally collapsed, and Alexander won a complete victory with very little loss of his own. It was after this battle that he was awarded the title of "Nevsky", whose real name was Alexander Jaroslawich.
Alexander's prestige grew after the Battle of the Neva, but it corresponded to the increasingly cold and wary attitude of the Novgorod parliament towards him. Parliament began to give him all kinds of obstacles, ostensibly and covertly to exclude him, and later Alexander could not stay any longer, and had to choose to leave Novgorod.
The bitter defeat on the Neva River made the Swedes silently abandon the idea of encroaching on Eastern Europe, but it aroused the desire to fight in another powerful military group, our old friend, the Teutonic Knights. At that time, the Teutonic Knights were in the ascendancy of their careers, and the Northern Crusaders had established themselves in northern Poland and northeastern Lithuania, and were in urgent need of territorial expansion and strength.
Expansion in the name of the infidels became the focus of their current career, but as early as the end of the 10th century, the "great Vladimir" had established Christianity as the state religion of Kievan Rus' and Rus'. Thus, the Teutonic Knights' attack on the Novgorod Republic did not even have a fig leaf for the "crusade against the infidels", and became a naked force of aggression.
The year 1240 was long and harsh for the East Slavic peoples, the Kievan Rus' in the south had been declared extinct, the Novgorod Republic in the north was forced to submit to the Mongols, had just defeated the Northern European invaders, and faced a Germanic attack. (How is this script a little familiar...) Between August and November of that year, the Teutonic Knights marched eastward and invaded the Novgorod Republic, and the Knights soon occupied Pskov, izborsk, and koporye.
From 1239 to 1245, the Great Patriotic War in Novgorod was in the middle of Lake Chude.
The leader of the Order's army at the time was hermann of dorpat, and under his leadership the Order defeated many of the resisting armies along the way, at one point only 35 km from novgorod. At this time, Alexander was still eating hot pot at home, and the nobles and parliaments in Novgorod were so anxious that they had to pull down their faces to ask Alexander to come out of the mountains to fight the invaders. The latter did not hesitate, and began to quickly gather his army and march to the front, and the main forces of the two sides finally confronted each other on the east bank of Chude Lake.
The spring of 1242 was very cold, and the goose feathers snow swirled on people's faces, so sharp that they seemed to cut through the skin. The lights in Alexander Nevsky's tent resembled a tiny firefly in the snowy night. The heavy sheepskin drapery of the tent was pulled apart by a rough hand, and a man slowly stepped out, and he handed two glasses of hot wine to the soldier standing guard in front of the door, who repeatedly expressed gratitude, and the man waved his hand with a tired smile.
Twenty-one-year-old Alexander and his entourage left the camp and headed west, soon reaching the eastern shore of Lake Chude. He thoughtfully looked at the faint visible light of the campfire on the other side and was silent, and in a few moments, Alexander bent down to pick up a stone, and he rounded his arms and smashed the stone into the lake.
The small muffled sound was quickly drowned out in the whimpering and miserable wind and snow.
Then the snow stopped, and in the bright moonlight, Alexander rode around on horseback, carefully observing the terrain on the lake and shore, thinking about the strategy of the next day's battle. It wasn't until the east showed the white of the fish's belly that he hurried back to the barracks.
In the early morning of April 5, 1242, Alexander finally decided to choose the battlefield on the frozen and hard Chud Lake. The soldiers were in their tents making final preparations for battle, the cavalry carried bundles of hay to the stables, some took out whetstones and sharpened their swords, knives and hand axes sharper and sharper, some warriors were oiling the moon blade axe, the noise and whispers of the lock armor and the scale armor were filled with whispers, and many people took out simple crosses and prayed silently.
Dressed in scaly armor, Alexander Nevsky rode slowly on a horse over a glacial lake, behind him about 5,000 muffled breaths. The army on the Novgorod side consisted of three parts, first of all, 1,000 conscripted soldiers of Alexander himself, plus 2,000 infantry supported by Novgorod, 1,400 reinforcements from Finland and the local Ugor tribes (Guslav tribes), plus 600 mixed cavalry with bows and arrows. The combined forces of the Livonian Teutonic Knights opposite were conservatively estimated to be about 2,600 men, consisting of 900 heavily armored knights and 1,700 infantry.
Painted in the late 16th century, a painting depicting the Battle of Glacial Lake
The main infantry of Novgorod was arranged in several rows in the position of the Chinese army, and at Alexander's order, they inserted their shields heavily into the ice to form a shield wall, and sharp spears protruded in the gaps. With a dull sound of trumpets, the knights of the Teutonic Army began to urge their horses forward, gradually increasing their speed, from running from running to galloping, to galloping horses, the snow-white cloaks of the Teutonic knights flying wildly in the wind, and the infantry also attacked forward.
"In the name of the Father!" "God's will!"
The Teutonic Knights' charge was unstoppable, like a puddle of urine in the snow, and the extreme speed and long mounted guns gave the spearmen of the first row a terrible blow. But they did not retreat, and the infantry of the second platoon shouted and went up again, and the archers in the rear of the flank also kept throwing a deadly rain of arrows at the knights. Seeing that they could not expand their gains, the knights had to retreat backwards to make way for the main infantry force.
The knight's front foot had just left, and the rear foot soldiers had arrived, and the main forces of the two sides were entangled and fiercely fought for more than two hours, at this time both sides were exhausted, but they both gritted their teeth and insisted, and the blue-white ice surface was soaked with blood and water. Alexander gritted his teeth under great pressure and insisted on commanding, and when he saw that the last of the enemy's reserves were put into battle, he immediately ordered his reserves and cavalry to detour to the two wings of the ice lake in order to achieve the goal of annihilating the enemy.
Anyone who has played Total War should understand that when two equally powerful troops fight to the point of no physical strength, whose back is attacked first, even the slightest attack, can be a devastating blow to morale. When the Teutonic allies desperately found that their retreat had been sealed, panic swept through the battlefield like a plague, and the victory or defeat was already known. After the battle, only a very small number of Germans escaped, most of whom were killed. The Novgorod Chronicle records that at least 400 Teutonic knights were killed, 50 were captured, and the remaining kills were "countless", while Alexander's side lost only 20.
After that, Alexander led his army to counterattack, and all the way to the loss of land to return to China.
A stamp issued in 1992 to commemorate the 750th anniversary of the Battle of Glacial Lake
The impact of the Battle of Ice Lake was enormous, and it can be said that the victory of this battle saved the last fruits of the East Slavic peoples in the storm. The Northern Crusaders ceased to expand eastward and demarcated a border with the Novgorod Republic. In later generations, the deeds of Alexander Nevsky at the Battle of Chude Lake also inspired the indomitable spirit of the Russian nation in the face of the invasion of a strong enemy, especially in the Great Patriotic War, and the image of Alexander, who also resisted the German invaders, became the confidence and hope of victory in the war.
After solving the strong enemy in the west, Alexander had to face a more severe threat from the east. When the Mongol emissaries came to him with great pride, Alexander chose to bow his head and show his submission and allegiance to the Mongols. In exchange for a more stable political situation in Novgorod, as well as the country's own security. As a sign of sincerity, he personally went to see Battu Khan and expressed his deference. Later, Alexander's brother angered the Great Khan, and he hurried to become a peacemaker, defusing another bloody storm with clever gifts and diplomatic rhetoric. Even in 1259, he did not hesitate to raise his butcher knife against any uprising in his country against the Mongols.
Many later generations considered Alexander's flattering attitude toward the Mongols to be despicable, a humiliating condescension. But it seems to me that Alexander did not allow his country to be destroyed by war, and that the Republic of Novgorod survived peacefully under the threat of the Mongols is in itself an indelible historical merit.
(Many people think of Alexander's actions as capitulationism, but I think it needs to be done on a case-by-case basis, and although Novgorod theoretically became a Vassal of the Mongols, the Mongols actually gave them a high degree of autonomy.) Except for the Mongol envoys who came to collect tribute every three to five years, nothing else had changed. The fact that the Mongols did not want to exterminate their country is something I believe Alexander understood. ）
At the end of 1263, after returning from his official duties in the Golden Horde, Alexander fell ill a few days later and died on 12 November. Subsequently, he was buried in a church in Vladimir. In 1547, he was canonized by the Orthodox Patriarch. After Alexander's death, his second son, Dimitri Alexander, became the leader of the Novgorod Republic. His fourth and youngest son, Daniel Alexander Drovich, was given a humble fief in the border region of the Principality of Vladimir-Suzdal, and the name of this obscure town was Moscow.
The Church of Alexander Nevsky in Bulgaria, the largest Orthodox church in the world, was completed in 1912.