Viacheslav Shpakovsky - Böcker

The Bulgars were a Turkic people who established a state north of the Black Sea.In the late 500s and early 600s AD their state fragmented under pressure from the Khazars; one group moved south into what became Bulgaria, but the rest moved north during the 7th and 8th centuries to the basin of the Volga river. There they remained under Khazar domination until the Khazar Khanate was defeated by Kievan Russia in 965.In the 1220s they managed to maul Genghis Khan’s Mongols, who returned to devastate their towns in revenge. By the 1350s and onwards, they were caught in the middle between the Tatar Golden Horde and the Christian Russian principalities. A new city then rose from the ashes – Kazan, originally called New Bulgar – and the successor Islamic Khanate of Kazan resisted the Russians until falling to Ivan the Terrible in 1552.The dress, armament, armour and fighting methods of the Volga Bulgars during this momentous period are explored in this fully illustrated study.

This book tells the fascinating story of the battle of the Kalka River, the culmination of Ghengis Khan's reconnaissance expedition into Russia of 1221. The consequences for the history of Europe were incalculable. The decisive Mongol victory over a combined Russian and Kipchaq army at the battle of the Kalka River opened up vast regions of Russia and Christian Eastern Europe to Mongol conquest. On orders from Ghengis himself the victorious Mongols returned eastwards, delaying the final cataclysm by a few years. However, the Russians were incapable of strengthening their defences enough to withstand the later attacks. As a result Russia fell under what historians call 'the Mongol yoke' for several centuries. In 1227 Ghengis died but the victory at the Kalka River was followed within 14 years by a Mongol invasion of Eastern Europe and even more disastrous defeats. Only the death of the Ogatai, son and successor of Ghengis, saved Europe from Mongol domination.

"Orientalized" Between the 13th and 15th centuries Russia developed along different lines from the rest of Europe. The Mongol conquest had a profound influence on arms, armour, organization, recruitment and tactics. Russian forces were pitted against late Mongol armies strongly influenced by contact with the Turkish-Islamic world. During the closing decades of this period the rising power of Muscovy, the most "Mongolized" of the Russian principalities, turned the tables and began to dominate the remaining Mongol (Tartar) Khanates. This book reveals how the role of firearms, particularly siege artillery, and the development of distinctive Russian forms of wooden fortifications, often in conjunction with the use of gunpowder artillary, make this period in Russia's military history unique.