The archers took to the field without pikemen.
A fragment of a painting by contemporary artist Vladimir Kireev titled "Wall. Defense of Smolensk."
In the late 1550s, English observers in the retinue of the Muscovy Company's diplomatic missions reported seeing several thousand matchlock-equipped riflemen in formation in Moscow. weapons, and identified them as "arquebusiers." Only these were not arquebusiers. These were the Streltsy—an infantry unit that, by European standards, shouldn't have existed at all: without pikemen, without long spears to protect the archers from cavalry, with a short matchlock arquebus and a broad battle axe slung at the belt. A system that Europe would have considered suicidal worked in Moscow for a century and a half.
Why does Europe need a peak, but Moscow doesn't?
In the Spanish tercio, each company was assigned a strict ratio of combat arms: pikemen, swordsmen, arquebusiers, or musketeers. The proportions varied, but the logic remained ironclad. A pikeman with a five-meter pole was the only one who could hold back the attacking knight., while the shooter leisurely measured out the gunpowder and brought the smoldering fuse to the shelf.
The arquebus took about a minute to load, and even that minute proved critical: during that time, the armored cavalry had time to cross firing range. Without a pikeman, the arquebusier was doomed. Therefore, initially, there were at least three pikemen per arquebusier in a tercio, and only by the end of the 16th century did their proportions even out.
There were no pikemen at all in Moscow. The firearms infantry was built on a different principle, and this principle was dictated by the enemy.
The main enemy dictates the infantry structure
Until the second half of the 16th century, Moscow fought primarily against Tatar cavalry. The nomads didn't attack in a dense formation of men-at-arms—they would envelop them, fire with their bows, disperse, and then reassemble. Against this method, the pike is useless: there's no one to mount it on. However, the ability to fire from behind cover and quickly move that cover across the field is extremely useful.
Cavalry remained the primary arm of the Russian military. Local cavalry, armed with sabers, bows, and spears, decided the outcome of most battles, while infantry played a supporting role. Firearms were assigned to the infantry as an afterthought in this system, and this "secondary" infantry was given a task that infantry in Europe lacked— provide cover fire for the cavalry's actions.
The solution turned out to be un-European. Instead of a pikeman, there was a wooden wall on wheels.
Russian Streltsy were an infantry force of the 16th and 17th centuries, armed with firearms. The author is contemporary artist Andrei Bakulin.
Kazan, 1552. The first battle of the Streltsy
The reputation of the Streltsy army was born near Kazan. In 1550, Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich ordered the recruitment of three thousand arquebusier Streltsy and their settlement in a settlement near Vorobyovy Gory near Moscow. Six orders of 500 men each, led by:
- Grigory Zhelobov-Pushechnikov;
- Matvey Ivanovich Rzhevsky (nicknamed Clerk);
- Ivan Cheremisinov;
- Vasily Pronsky-Funikov;
- Fedor Durasov;
- Yakov Bundov.
There are discrepancies in the spelling of the names in the sources—here is the version according to A.V. Chernov. Two years later, this army first saw action.
Kazan was taken with difficulty. The city was a fortress of the first magnitude even by 16th-century standards, and the defenders had more than just bows and sabers. Firearms were widely used in the Kazan Khanate, and their arsenal was no worse than that of Moscow: light handguns, heavy mounted guns, mattresses firing grapeshot, and heavy cannons for fortress and field use. The citadel housed an armory with gunpowder reserves and a stock of weapons. Taking such a fortress head-on with cavalry was pointless.
"The Storming of Kazan in 1552." Artist: Viktor Bodrov
The Streltsy turned out to be the branch of the military the operation was designed for. They were assigned a task that the Russian infantry hadn't really had a chance to perform before— keep up continuous fire on the defenders of the walls, not allowing them to respond with either bows or arquebuses. The infantry sat in trenches, in ditches, and behind tur—wicker baskets filled with earth. From behind these shelters, the riflemen kept the walls under fire, and artillery The "outfit" hit the fortifications with breaching charges.
The scheme worked. Kazan fell on October 2, 1552, and the Streltsy took on a significant portion of the work of suppressing fire from the walls. This was the first time the new infantry proved its worth. Before Kazan, they had only been trained and paid. After Kazan, they were sent wherever a fortress needed to be taken.
Gulyai-gorod as a prefabricated fortress
While the Streltsy used ground fire under the walls of Kazan, in the open field they needed cover they could carry with them. This cover became walk-city — a mobile field fortification made of tall shields mounted on wheels or runners. The shields were joined together to form a wall, with loopholes in the wall, from which riflemen fired. The structure could be dismantled, transported, and reassembled. Essentially, it was a prefabricated wooden fortress that could be placed where needed and removed when no longer needed.
"The Battle of Molodi. Overcoming" by Viktor Matorin
The Battle of Molodi (July 28 – August 2, 1572) demonstrated the potential of this strategy. The army of the Crimean Khan Devlet Giray I was marching on Moscow and was met approximately 70 miles south of the capital, near the Rozhaika River. A gulyai-gorod was established on a hill, and the Crimean cavalry, in several assaults, broke against the wooden wall. The infantry fired from loopholes, the local cavalry pinned down the enemy in the field, and at the decisive moment on August 2, the Grand Regiment of Prince Mikhail Vorotynsky outflanked the Tatars and struck from the rear simultaneously with the sortie from the gulyai-gorod. The Crimean army was routed.
If a gulyai-gorod wasn't available, a cheaper solution was found. They used half-pikes mounted crosswise on a log to create portable barriers called forges. On Strelnikova Hill during the Second Chigirin Campaign of 1678, the Streltsy set up forges and brought command cannons. It was a 17th-century anti-cavalry hedgehog: a horseman wouldn't attack it, but they could fire from behind the log.
The arquebus is heavier and more powerful than the arquebus.
The gun itself in this design also differed from the European one. Foreigners who saw the arquebus recognized it as an arquebus, and technically they were correct: a smoothbore matchlock muzzle-loading gun. But the numbers differ.
The figures for the Russian arquebus are a composite of historians' data (V. E. Markevich, L. N. Denisova), with variations across samples from different workshops; estimates for the European arquebus are generalized from the literature. There are discrepancies across all parameters in the sources, and the values provided should be understood as average guidelines, not as a tabulated standard.
The discrepancy is easily explained. The barrels were made by different workshops, each using their own templates. The barrels were forge-welded: a strip of iron was rolled around a rod and the seam was forged in the heat of the weld. In the central cities, where the Tsar's Streltsy were stationed, the weapons were heavier and more powerful. In the outskirts, they were lighter and simpler.
The effective range of a heavy arquebus was approximately 100–150 meters, but effective fire against a hardened target was typically conducted from fifty meters or closer. Most models simply lacked sights. The shooter kept the trajectory in mind, and the hit was ensured not by the accuracy of an individual, but by a massive volley from the formation.
Russian streltsy are armed with arquebuses, berdyshes and sabres.
Berdysh is an axe that replaced the pike.
If there is no peak, there must be something else. That “something” became berdysh — a battle axe on a long shaft with a wide, sickle-shaped blade. The shaft reached 170 cm, the blade 30 to 80 cm, depending on the type. It was a hybrid of an axe and a halberd.
Berdysh solved several problems at once:
- Support for the arquebus. When stuck into the ground, it served as a support for the heavy barrel—the same role as a special bipod for a musket in Europe.
- Hand-to-hand weapons. The halberd could be used for both chopping and stabbing.
- Streltsy sign. The berdysh was worn outside of formation, and in the perception of contemporaries, it was this that distinguished the strelets from any other serving infantry.
One object, three functions, and all three are important.
Archaeologist Oleg Dvurechensky has demonstrated in recent works that it was in the Muscovite state that the berdysh became a widespread standard infantry weapon, its design adapted to streltsy tactics. Similar axes were also known in Poland and Scandinavia, but the Russian army made the berdysh a systemic weapon. An interesting detail: one of the first reliable references to berdysh among streltsy soldiers dates back to the defense of Pskov in 1581, and they were used not only on the walls. Texts from the late 16th and early 17th centuries indicate that the berdysh was a sortie weapon—it was carried alongside spears beyond the walls to counterattack the besiegers.
The berdysh became a standard weapon later, in the late 1650s, when regiments and detachments began to be armed with both muskets and berdyshes. Initially, the berdysh was intended to replace the sword or sabre, but after the 1670s, when the treasury became wealthier, strelets often carried both.
A line of three ranks and a leather sling
The Streltsy's firefighting tactics were as follows. The unit formed several ranks, usually three. The first fired a volley and crouched to reload, the second fired over it, and the third prepared. A complete matchlock loading cycle, including all operations, took one to two minutes, longer in unfavorable conditions, and without alternate lines, continuous fire was impossible. The rank, devised for the arquebus, took root in Russia unchanged—what changed was what stood in front of and behind the rank.
The rifleman's equipment was designed with the same engineering calculations as the formation itself. A leather sling was slung over the left shoulder— BerendeykaAttached to it were pre-loaded wooden cases—"chargers"—usually nine to fourteen, each containing measured portions of gunpowder. The shooter didn't pour the charge from the horn, but rather unscrewed the lid of each charger, poured the powder into the barrel, and then picked up the next one. At the bottom of the sling hung a powder flask for the priming powder, a bullet pouch, and a pouch for the match and wads. Everything was within easy reach, all in one motion.
What we see here is engineering hidden in leather and wood. The sling doesn't look complicated, but She saves seconds on each shot, and in formation these seconds add up to the number of volleys before the enemy reaches the halberds.
Steady fire and dagger range
To be deadly, a volley had to be fired at close range. The effective range of a squeaker, fifty meters, was not very long, and the rifleman needed the patience to let the enemy get close. The technique described in the sources was called with persistent fireThe unit held its position behind shields or slingshots, did not open fire prematurely, and fired almost point-blank.
Unlike European musketeers, Russian streltsy were required to combine two skills: firefighting from cover and hand-to-hand combat with a halberd when the enemy finally got close. This required different training and a different mentality—not a specialist in one form of combat, but a generalist capable of switching. Streltsy were recruited for money and a salary, and were housed in settlements; service was professional, not temporary conscription.
The English diplomat Giles Fletcher, who observed the Russian army in 1588, left an expressive remark: the Moscow Streltsy are shooting "not far, but strong" — that is, they aren't known for their long-range shooting, but they strike at close range with almost no misses. Their entire tactics fit into this single formula. Even their nomadic allies turned to the Streltsy for help: Nogai Bey Ismail, in a correspondence with Ivan the Terrible, requested that they send him several dozen Streltsy from the Astrakhan garrison—literally a handful of men, but with a certain reputation.
The streltsy army subsequently developed according to this logic: garrison duty on the southern borders, guarding abatis, sieges, and field battles. Almost none of Ivan the Terrible's major campaigns were completed without streltsy—the Livonian War, the defense against Crimean raids, the capture of Polotsk in 1563, and the Livonian campaign of 1577. Wherever it was necessary to fire from cover and finish the job with hand-to-hand combat, the streltsy proved a key force.
Why the scheme worked while the enemy was working
The Russian infantry system was built for a specific task - stop the steppe cavalry and support our own local cavalryAs long as the Tatars remained the main enemy, the scheme worked flawlessly. Gulyai-gorod was almost invulnerable to Crimean archers. The halberd, as a support and a melee weapon, saved hands and equipment. The heavy arquebus pierced armor where the arquebus could no longer.
Problems arose when the West became the main enemy, rather than the steppe. The Swedish and Polish infantry were structured differently: they had pikemen and linear tactics, and eventually, flintlock muskets with a better rate of fire. The gulyai-gorod performed worse against a regular European army than against Crimea. The berdysh was inferior in field combat against pikemen. It turned out that a scheme designed for one enemy does not transfer well to another., - and this concerned not only tactics, but also technology.
The Russian infantry began to reorganize as early as the 17th century, and this marked a paradoxical turning point. The Russian-style flintlock had been known in Rus' since the late 16th and early 17th centuries, but it was not widely adopted until the Time of Troubles and during the first half of the 17th century—the matchlock musket remained the primary weapon. Moreover, starting in the 1630s, Russia began purchasing matchlock muskets en masse from Europe for the regiments of the "new order," effectively abandoning its own flintlocks for regular field infantry. By the standards of linear technological development, this appears to be a setback, but in reality, it was a pragmatic choice. Throughout the 17th century, the matchlock remained more reliable than almost any flintlock, with the exception of the French battery type, which only arrived in Russia toward the end of the century. A cheap, easy-to-maintain, and reliable mass-produced system proved more important than technologically advanced individual rifles.
Peter the Great disbanded the Streltsy army after the uprisings. But the system, in which infantry was universally armed with firearms and worked in a line, remained—it was simply redesigned according to the Western model. Gulyai-gorod became a thing of the past, along with the steppe threat, and the berdysh, along with the Streltsy.
By the end of Feodor Ivanovich's reign, the Streltsy numbered, according to various estimates, between twelve and twenty thousand. For a century and a half, they remained the primary shock infantry of the Russian state—wherever a fortress needed to be taken with fire from cover and finished off with hand-to-hand combat. Without pikemen, they used a wooden fortress on wheels and a halberd, which combined support, weapon, and service symbol.
Sources and Literature
- Chernov A. V. Armed forces of the Russian state in the 15th–17th centuries. Moscow, 1954.
- Markevich V. E. Handguns. St. Petersburg, 2005 (reprint of the 1937 edition).
- Denisova M. M., Portnov M. E., Denisov E. N. Russian weapons of the 11th–19th centuries. Moscow, 1953.
- Dvurechensky O. V. Cold weapons of the Moscow state of the 15th – early 17th centuries. Moscow, 2015.
- Fletcher J. On the Russian State. Moscow, 2002 (based on the 1591 edition).
- Kurbatov O. A. Military story Russian Troubles beginning of the XVII century. M., 2014.
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