The decisive battle of Molodi in 1572 would be a good example of the Russians beating the odds..

This battle was a turning point in the long Russian wars against the Mongols and Tartars.

Although the Russians had stopped paying tribute, and achieved independence, they were still hard pressed and on the defensive for a long time.

In 1507 and 1514 the Tatars raided into Russia. In 1521 the Tatars ravaged the outskirts of Moscow for two weeks with 50,000 men. In about 1533, the Russians built the “Abatis” defensive line south of the Oka river to protect against the Tatars.

Between 1533 and 1547 there were over twenty large Tatar raids on the frontier, some of which breached the Abatis line. In 1555, 1562, 1564, 1565, the Khan led large armies in major raids into Russia.

In 1571, an army 120,000 strong of Crimean Tatars and Ottoman Turks, broke through all the defensive lines and reached Moscow, which was crowded by thousands of refugees fleeing before the Steppe horde. Moscow was burnt to the ground with estimates of 80,000 Russian casualties and 150,000 Russians taken as slaves. At this point, things looked pretty bleak for the Russians. The Tatars, however, returned to the Steppe for the winter, planning to come back the next summer and finish the conquest of Russia once and for all.

Decisive Battle – Molodi, 1572:

In 1572 Devlet Giray, khan of the Crimean horde and his Turkish allies again rode into Russia with 120,000 men. They were met by Prince Mikhail Vorotynsky and Prince Dmitriy Khvorostinin commanding 60,000 Russians at Molodi, about 40 miles south of Moscow.

The Russians had two relatively new factors deployed in this battle. One was large numbers of “Streltzi”, Russia’s first standing army, originating about 1550, armed with matchlock muskets, and deployed at Molodi in large numbers. The Streltzi had also constructed “Gulay Gorod” which were large portable wooden walls with cannon and musket ports, which could be moved by man power and latched together to create a mobile fortress.

The battle lasted for 7 days. The Tatars attacked and destroyed 3,000 Russian troops caught outside the Gulay Gorod, but the rest of the Russians were inside their mobile fort and unleashed a continuous fire while slowly moving the entire fortress in a slow retreat. On day 7, the Tatars launched an all out assault. They tried to drag down or tip over the wooden walls forming the Gulay Gorod, taking massive casualties.

While they were occupied, a large force of Russians exited unobserved out the rear of the fortress, circled round the Tatars, and then the Russians both inside and outside the fort (now pretty desperate due to running low on food and ammunition) launched a two prong charge against the Tatars. The Steppe army was routed with great losses. It is said that only 20,000 Tatars returned to the Crimea.

It took Russia another 200 years to finally eliminate the threat from the steppes, but the battle of Molodi was a decisive turning point when the outnumbered Russians won a great victory and preserved their independence.