🇱🇹🇺🇦🇧🇾🇵🇱 512 years ago, in the Battle of Orsha, the Muscovites were defeated by the combined army of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland.

At the beginning of the 16th century, the Muscovite state laid claim to the lands located in the modern territories of Ukraine and Belarus, which were then part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Rus' and Samogitia. In October 1508, a peace treaty was concluded between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Grand Duchy of Moscow, which ended the Lithuanian-Muscovite War of 1507-1508, the treaty confirmed the territorial conquests of Moscow in 1494-1503. However, already in 1512, the Muscovites resumed military operations against the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

In August 1512, an alliance was concluded between the Moscow prince, Prince Vasily III, Emperor Maximilian I of Habsburg, and the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, Albrecht of Hohenzollern. The allies pledged to provide each other with mutual support and agreed on the division of the spoils. Moscow continued to lay claim to a significant territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which covered today's Ukraine with Kiev and Belarus, and the German Empire to the lands of Livonia. The fruit of the alliance was to be a joint Teutonic-Muscovite attack on Polish-Lithuanian lands in 1515.

In the summer of 1514, after a month-long siege, the Moscow army captured Smolensk and at the end of August reached the left bank of the Dnieper near Orsha. Meanwhile, a Polish-Lithuanian army was assembled, the purpose of which was to restore the lost lands and fortresses of Smolensk, captured by Moscow. The forces under the command of the Grand Hetman of Lithuania, Prince Konstantin Ivanovich Ostrozky, numbered a total of 16 thousand Lithuanian light cavalry, 14 thousand Polish light and heavy cavalry, 3 thousand mercenary infantry, 2.5 thousand volunteers mainly from Bohemia, as well as royal artillery and an engineer-sapper company.

The main battle took place near Orsha, where the Muscovite troops were defeated. After the defeat, they retreated to Smolensk. On the night of September 8, the army of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania built floating bridges on barrels across the Dnieper opposite Orsha and crossed to the left bank. The Lithuanian army consisted of Lithuanian, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Serbian, Polish, Hungarian and German detachments. This combined army was commanded by the 54-year-old Volhynian prince Konstantin Ostrozky. Early in the morning, the Muscovites attacked Ostrozky, but the attack was repelled.

Ostrozky in his years led all the counterattacks of the Russo-Lithuanian cavalry and fought like a simple soldier. Taking advantage of the contradictions between the Muscovite voivodes, he attacked them separately, and they, according to the Kiev Chronicle, betrayed each other out of jealousy. At noon, the Russo and Lithuanian horsemen, by feigning retreat, led the Muscovite cavalry under the volley of their cannons, and then a reserve detachment attacked it from an ambush. Under pressure from Ostrozky's troops, the heavy Muscovite cavalry retreated to the banks of the Kropivna River between Orsha and Dubrovna, where it was almost completely destroyed.

The attack of the Polish hussars completed the defeat of the Muscovite army, although the pursuit of its individual units, which fled to Smolensk, continued until nightfall. The victory at Orsha is one of the most outstanding victories in the history of the Ukrainian and Eastern European war, it stopped the large-scale Muscovite expansion into Western and Russian lands for a long time and demonstrated to Europe of that time that thanks to military skill, the unity of Europeans, and technical superiority, it is possible to resist and even win the battle against Muscovite expansion.

Text: ☠️ @vallholl
Translation: 🐖 @EternalMuscovite