Where the Iron Crosses Grow

The Russians were drawn to the Crimea by Tatar raiding, which had swept far and wide across southern Russia since the early 16th century. The Tatars were warlike descendents of the Mongol Golden Horde and closely allied with the Ottoman Empire; they were skillful light cavalrymen and for centuries their economy in the Crimea was based upon the sale of pillaged goods and of Russian captives into slavery. The Crimean city of Caffa (later Feodosiya), became the center of a lucrative slave trade with the Ottoman Empire. In 1571, a large army of Crimean Tatars even raided Moscow and burned much of Tsar Ivan the Terrible’s capital, then took thousands of prisoners back with them.¹ The Crimean Tatars, who held a position of military advantage, also demanded tribute from Ivan the Terrible and were intent upon seizing more Russian land. Although Ivan the Terrible’s army inflicted a severe defeat upon the Crimean Tatars just 40 miles south of Moscow in 1572, this was only a temporary reverse, and Tatar raiders continued to threaten the outskirts of Moscow for another 60 years.

The remote Crimean Peninsula was a natural fortress for Tatar raiding forces, since the only practical invasion route was through the narrow neck of the Perekop Isthmus, just 5½ miles wide. The Crimean Tatars used their plentiful slave labor to build a large fort at Perekop, then supplemented it with a wall across the Perekop Isthmus and dug a 72ft wide and 39ft deep moat in front of it. It was a very strong defensive position, supported by artillery and several forts. Furthermore, the area around the Perekop Isthmus was treeless and devoid of fresh water, which made it difficult for an attacking force to remain long enough to mount a deliberate attack. There were two other lesser land routes into the Crimea, but each was fraught with difficulty. East of Perekop, the Sivash was a shallow, marshy area that was not really sea or land. It could be crossed at two locations – at the even narrower Chongar Peninsula, just half a mile wide, or the 75-mile long Arabat Spit, which was little more than a sandbar. Both routes were easily blocked by small forces; the Tatars built fieldworks at Chongar and a large stone fort to block the southern end of the Arabat Spit. In military terms, the only practical alternative to an assault on the Perekop Isthmus was to land at Kerch, on the eastern end of the Crimea, but Ottoman naval superiority on the Black Sea made this infeasible for two centuries.

Russia, devastated by famine that eliminated nearly one-third of its population during 1601–03, could not immediately respond to aggression from the Crimean Tatars. It was not until May 1689 that Prince Vasily Golitsyn was able to approach Perekop with an army of 117,000 Russian soldiers and plenty of artillery. However, Russian armies lacked the logistical support to operate in such remote, inhospitable terrain, and Golitsyn was compelled to fall back empty-handed.² Tatar raiding from their Crimean stronghold continued, with 15,000 Russian captives taken in 1693 alone.³ Russian tsars became increasingly incensed about eliminating this persistent threat once and for all, but decades passed with no success. Recognizing the deficiency of Russian military training, the tsars were compelled to import foreign military officers to improve the efficiency of Russian armies. One such officer, the German Count Burkhard Christoph von Münnich, led a 62,000-man Russian army in May 1736 that succeeded in storming the heretofore impregnable Tatar Wall at Perekop by use of deception and a night assault. Münnich conducted a feint against one end of the wall, which attracted Tatar attention, while his main body assaulted the other end. The first Russian soldier to reach the top of the Tatar Wall was a 13-year-old nobleman named Vasily Dolgorukov, whom Münnich awarded a field commission. Thereafter, Münnich’s army spread out across the Crimea, destroying a number of towns, before disease and lack of supplies forced a withdrawal.⁴ The Tatar Khan reoccupied the position at Perekop but another Russian army led by the Irish-born Count Peter Lacy outwitted them again by crossing the Sivash in June 1737 and defeating the outflanked Tatar army. Lacy had discovered an important point about the odd terrain of the Crimea – that under the right conditions of wind and tide, the Sivash was briefly fordable. After these defeats, the military power of the Crimean Khanate fell into sharp decline.