Battle of Brest
Russian weaponry from the 14th to the second half of the 17th century. A warrior in a bakhterets and a shishak with a spruce truncheon. Historical Description of clothing and weapons of Russian troops, edited by A.V. Viskovatov, Part 1. St. Petersburg, 1841-1862.
General situation
At the end of July 1655, Russian troops under the command of Prince Yakov Cherkassky and the acting hetman Ivan Zolotarenko took the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Vilnius (Battle of Vilnius).
On August 9, Russian troops captured Kovno. On August 4, Tsar Alexei I arrived in Vilnius. On August 29, Russian troops captured Grodno. Zolotarenko's Cossacks crossed the Neman and devastated the area around Brest.
In the southern direction, the tsarist regiments of Vasily Buturlin and Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky successfully advanced in Galicia, defeated Hetman Potocki, and besieged Lviv and Lublin in the autumn. Only the invasion of the Crimean Khan's horde prevented the enemy from being finished off.Battle for Lviv).
It seemed that the only thing left to do was finish off the Polish lords, especially given the victorious Swedish invasion of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Russia had essentially already won the war. The Russian army had recaptured all of White and Lithuanian Rus', including its capital, and had routed and dispersed the main forces of the Polish-Lithuanian army.
Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich had no intention of ceding the original Russian lands. He viewed them not as trophies, but as the return of the original Russian lands to the Russian state. In addition to his existing titles, Alexei Mikhailovich assumed the title of "Sovereign of Polotsk and Mstislav," and after the capture of other Lithuanian cities, "Grand Duke of Lithuania, White Russia, Volyn, and Podolsk." Nikon, the head of the church, began to style himself the Patriarch of "Great, Little, and White Rus'."
Between Sweden and Russia
The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was falling apart. Many Polish and Lithuanian magnates saw the Swedish invaders as saviors from the "Muscovites." The Protestant Grand Hetman of Lithuania, Janusz Radziwiłł, defected to the Swedish King Charles X Gustav.
On September 20, he concluded the so-called Union of Kėidani with the Swedish king in Kėidani—an agreement by which the Grand Duchy of Lithuania seceded from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and entered into a confederative union with Sweden. The Swedish king became Grand Duke of Lithuania, and Radziwiłł remained the de facto leader of Lithuania. The system of government in the Grand Duchy was to remain unchanged, with neither legislation nor judicial systems being changed.
A significant portion of the Lithuanian nobility did not support Radziwiłł's idea, and many of his supporters abandoned him. The Lithuanian lords, led by the Vitebsk voivode Paweł Jan Sapieha, refused to support Radziwiłł's pro-Swedish policy and began to form a confederation against him. The Lithuanian Field Hetman, Vincent Gąsiewski, who initially signed the Kėdanyi Union of Sweden and Lithuania, soon renounced it. He began to consider an alliance between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Russia against Sweden.
The Russian government also attempted to win over the Lithuanian nobility. A pro-Russian party emerged, begging Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich to save the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, promising to elect him King of Poland.
In the autumn of 1655, the nobleman Vasily Likharev was sent to Hetman Radziwill's camp with a proposal to submit to the Tsar's rule. The Hetman declared that, on behalf of the magnates and gentry, he had appealed to the Swedish king to accept "us as subjects" and had received a positive response.
Likharev held a meeting with Gonsevsky, who reported that many nobles did not want to submit to the Swedish crown. He proposed that the Russians make peace with King Jan Casimir and not trust the Swedes, who, in his words, "by destroying the king, would truly encroach upon the sovereign's land..."
Moscow had to choose a side. Either make a sharp turn, reconcile with the already collapsed Poland, and ally with it against Sweden (they had no desire to fight the belligerent Swedes), or join forces with the Swedes to finish off the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. But then loomed the clear prospect of war with Sweden, which had developed a "good appetite." The Tsar and the boyars weighed the pros and cons. The Ambassadorial Prikaz, led by the experienced Almaz (Erofei) Ivanov, conducted negotiations, stalling for time. The Polish lords courted the Tsar, making many promises and using cunning. They even promised the Polish throne.
But the Swedes weren't friends either. Provocations and clashes between Russian and Swedish forces occurred on the front lines. Charles tempted them with an alliance, but he was blatantly lying. He wanted the Polish-Lithuanian lords to recapture White Rus' and Smolensk from the Russians. Swedish ambassadors arrived to Khmelnytsky, offering to break the alliance with the tsar, to come under the Swedish king's rule, and promising all of Little Russia and Galicia. Moscow knew about this secret diplomacy.
Fyodor Rtishchev was sent to Gonsevsky with a notice of agreement to conduct peace negotiations and a list of articles discussing land concessions, monetary compensation from Lithuania, and the choice of a location for the congress of ambassadors. However, after crossing the Neman, Rtishchev was soon arrested as a suspicious character. Fyodor Mikhailovich was saved by the royal charter he had with him, proving that he was an envoy of the Tsar of Moscow.
Rtishchev had to negotiate with Paweł Sapieha, who was in Brest, as Gąsiewski had by then been taken into custody by order of Radziwiłł for his pro-Russian stance. Sapieha, elected by the gentry as the new Grand Hetman of Lithuania, recognized the new title of the Russian Tsar, adding the words "of both Little and White Russia." In early November, Rtishchev arrived in Smolensk, where the Tsar was staying at the time.
Paweł Jan Sapieha (1609–1665) was a statesman and military leader of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. He was a member of the Sapieha clan, one of the richest and most influential families in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. He was Grand Master of the Lithuanian Convoy (1638), Grand Undertow of Lithuania (1645), Voivode of Vitebsk (1646–1656), Grand Hetman of Lithuania (1656–1665), and Voivode of Vilnius (1656–1665). French engraver Pierre Landry
Urusov's Lithuanian campaign
Even before Rtishchev's mission was completed, on September 14, 1655, the commanders of the Yertaul Regiment (Yertaul, or yartaul—light cavalry advance, reconnaissance, and guard detachment), Voivodes Semyon Urusov and Yuri Baryatinsky (the future conqueror of Stepan Razin), received orders to begin a campaign in Lithuania. The prince was to march "straight beyond the Neman River to Brest and other cities," and if all went well, upon reaching the Lithuanian border, the prince was to "conquer... crown (Polish) cities and towns."
Given the enemy's complete rout, the Russian command did not expect serious resistance, and only a portion of the troops stationed in the Kovno region (approximately 4) participated in the campaign. There was also hope that the regiment would be supported by some of the local gentry.
On October 30, the Yertaul Regiment of Princes Urusov and Baryatinsky, near the town of Belye Peski, 150 miles from Brest, defeated the Lithuanian detachment (militia of the Lida, Grodno and Volkovysk districts) of Colonel Yakub Theodore Kuntsevich, after which he accepted Russian citizenship.
By November 1655, Prince Urusov's troops had reached the Brest region. Confident that he would meet no resistance, since Sapieha had already sworn allegiance to the tsar before Rtishchev, Urusov advanced on Brest with part of his detachment.
Battle of Verkhovichi
The Lithuanian hetman commanded over 7 men. Just before Brest, on November 11, during negotiations, Sapieha attacked Urusov "on the Brest field." The light cavalry failed to prepare for battle and was scattered by the enemy cavalry.
Sapieha's troops "cut down hundreds of the sovereign's cavalry on the right side, and hundreds on the left fled, and... the sovereign's banner and... the infantry abandoned. And about twenty nobles, yasauly, and standard-bearers remained. And I (Urusov)... stood with those nobles among the infantry. And when the Lithuanians began to cut down the infantry, and to ride around me... then my comrade, Prince Yury, galloped up to meet me, and we... retreated to the line. And Colonel Martyn took aim with cannon fire and repelled the Polish people. And then... a few nobles, having made their stand, galloped upon the Polish people and killed them, many Polish people, and captured five prisoners."
The prince and his troops retreated beyond the Western Bug River, but Lithuanian troops attacked again and drove out Urusov's detachment. The Russians retreated 25 miles from Brest, to the village of Verkhovichi. The Polish-Lithuanian forces continued their advance, blockading Urusov's regiment—"they took away both roads and water," and the Russian troops "stood besieged on horseback for two days and two nights."
The Hetman proposed to capitulate: hand over all prisoners, hand over banners and drums, leave firearms weapon and cannons, and to pay compensation for the losses. The Russians refused. On November 17, Sapieha's troops launched an assault:
And Pavel Sapieha started a battle and ordered the cannons to be fired at the Tsar’s banner and at us, and their cavalry companies began to ride down, and their infantry began to advance in hundreds, and a battle began.
However, the Russians suddenly counterattacked. Urusov's Novgorod regiment routed the enemy infantry, and Voivode Baryatinsky routed the Hetman's hussars. Stunned by the enemy's sudden, furious attack, which swept away their vanguard, the Lithuanian army broke into disarray and fled.
Urusov wrote to the Tsar:
"And my comrade, Prince Yury, and your sovereign's men, cut them down and chased them six versts from Brest... And Sapieha himself, sir, was knocked off his horse, and the footman fell into the swamp by nightfall, and his brother, Jan Sapieha, the deputy headman of Molchevsky, was killed, and the hussars, sir, and the winger infantry, with the frontiersmen and the gunners, cut them all down. And, sir, four cannons, which they had, and their ammunition, and twenty-eight banners, and thirty-six kettledrums and drums, and, sir, Colonel Stanislav Lipnitsky, their councilman Adam Stabrovsky, and Prince Alexander Polubensky, and Ivan Saltykov with fifty comrades were captured in the battle.
Urusov's regiment, having successfully completed a reconnaissance raid, retreated north. On November 26, as Urusov's detachment was moving north, Kuntsevich and his captains met with the voivode and swore allegiance to the tsar. During the campaign, the nobility of the Grodno, Slonim, Novogrudok, Lida, Volkovysk, Oshmyany, and Troki districts swore allegiance. The nobility converged on Vilnius and swore allegiance to the tsar there.
Overall, the 1655 campaign ended with a decisive victory for the Russian army. The main forces of the Polish-Lithuanian army were defeated and scattered, and almost all of Lithuanian and White Rus' was liberated.
However, due to Sweden's entry into the war with Poland, hostilities between Russian and Polish forces were suspended. Negotiations began, which culminated in a truce.
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