Battle on the Ice

Battle of the Ice
Part of Northern Crusades
Depiction in the illuminated manuscript Life of Alexander Nevsky.
Date April 5, 1242 Location Lake Peipsi-Pihkva, between Estonia and Russia Result Decisive Novgorod victory Significantly hampered crusading activity in the region for another century.
Belligerents
Novgorod Republic Grand Duchy of Vladimir Pskov Republic	Livonian Order Teutonic Order Kingdom of Denmark Dorpat
Commanders and leaders
Prince Alexander Nevsky Grand Duke Andrey Yaroslavich	Prince-Bishop Hermann of Dorpat
Strength
4,000–5,000	4,000
Casualties and losses
No exact figures	Around 400 killed, 20 of them were members of the Order. 50 were captured, 6 of them were members of the Order.

The Battle of the Ice ([Ледовое побоище, Ledovoye poboish'ye] Error: {{Lang-xx}}: text has italic markup (help); German: Schlacht auf dem Eise; Estonian: Jäälahing; Latvian: Ledus kauja), also known as the Battle of Lake Peipus (German: Schlacht auf dem Peipussee; [битва на Чудском озере, bitva na Chudskom ozere] Error: {{Lang-xx}}: text has italic markup (help)), was a battle between the Republic of Novgorod and the Livonian branch of the Teutonic Knights (whose army consisted mostly of Estonians) on April 5, 1242, at Lake Peipus. The battle is notable for its having been fought largely on top of the frozen lake.

The battle was a significant defeat sustained by Roman Catholic crusaders during the Northern Crusades, which were directed against pagans and Eastern Orthodox Christians rather than Muslims in the Holy Land. The crusaders' defeat in the battle ended campaigns against the Orthodox Novgorod Republic and other Russian territories for the next century.

Background

Medieval Livonia.

Hoping to exploit the Russians' weakness in the wake of the Mongol and Swedish invasions, the Teutonic Knights attacked the neighboring Novgorod Republic and occupied Pskov, Izborsk, and Koporye in the autumn of 1240. When they approached Novgorod itself, the local citizens recalled to the city 20-year-old Prince Alexander Nevsky, whom they had banished to Pereslavl earlier that year. During the campaign of 1241, Alexander managed to retake Pskov and Koporye from the crusaders.

The battle

In the spring of 1242, the Teutonic Knights defeated a detachment of Novgorodians about 20 km south of the fortress of Dorpat (Tartu). Led by Prince-Bishop Hermann of Dorpat, the knights and their auxiliary troops of local Ugaunian Estonians then met with Alexander's forces by the narrow strait that connects the northern and southern parts of Lake Peipus (Lake Peipus proper with Lake Pskovskoe) on April 5, 1242. Alexander, intending to fight in a place of his own choosing, retreated in efforts to draw the often over-confident Crusaders to the frozen lake.

The crusader forces likely numbered around 4,000 . Most of them were probably Estonians (Chudes). The Russian force in contrast numbered around 5,000 soldiers: Alexander and his brother Andrei's bodyguards (druzhina), who numbered around 1,000, plus the militia of Novgorod.

According to contemporary Russian chronicles, after hours of hand-to-hand fighting, Alexander ordered the left and right wings of his archers to enter the battle. The knights by this time were exhausted from the constant fighting and struggling with the slippery surface of the frozen lake. The Crusaders started to retreat in disarray deeper onto the ice, and the appearance of the fresh Russian cavalry made them run for their lives. When the knights attempted to rally themselves at the far side of the lake the thin ice started to collapse, under the weight of their heavy armour, and many knights drowned.

File:Teutonic order charge.jpg

Teutonic Knights attacking

Casualties

According to the Novgorod First Chronicle,

Prince Alexander and all the men of Novgorod drew up their forces by the lake, at Uzmen, by the Raven's Rock; and the Germans and the Estonians rode at them, driving themselves like a wedge throughout their army. And there was a great slaughter of Germans and Estonians... they fought with them during the pursuit on the ice seven versts short of the Subol [north-western] shore. And there fell a countless number of Estonians, and 400 of the Germans, and they took fifty with their hands and they took them to Novgorod.

According to the Livonian Order's Livonian Rhymed Chronicle, written years later,

The [Russians] had many archers, and the battle began with their bold assault on the king's men [Danes]. The brothers' banners were soon flying in the midst of the archers, and swords were heard cutting helmets apart. Many from both sides fell dead on the grass. Then the Brothers' army was completely surrounded, for the Russians had so many troops that there were easily sixty men for every one German knight. The Brothers fought well enough, but they were nonetheless cut down. Some of those from Dorpat escaped from the battle, and it was their salvation that they fled. Twenty brothers lay dead and six were captured.

Legacy

File:Battle of the Ice2.jpg

The monument to Alexander Nevsky near Pskov.

Lake Peipsi today from the Estonian shore.

The legacy of the battle, and its decisiveness, rests in that it halted the eastward expansion of the Teutonic Orderand established a permanent border line of the Narva River and Lake Peipus dividing Eastern Orthodoxy from West Catholicism. The knights' defeat at the hands of Alexander's forces prevented the crusaders from retaking Pskov, the linchpin of their eastern crusade. The Novgorodians succeeded in defending Russian territory, and the German crusaders never mounted another serious challenge eastward. Alexander was canonised as a saint in the Russian Orthodox Church in 1574.

Another significant result of The Battle is the term chud, used commonly in North American slang. Although the origins of the term are unclear, It is believed to have been coined by a Military officer in the battle. Alex De Michele, the aforementioned Officer, is believed to be named the first chud.

Controversies

Recently, a revisionist view proposed by historian John I. L. Fennell called into question the glorification of the battle, arguing that it was not as important, nor as large, as has sometimes been portrayed. Fennell claimed that most of the Teutonic Knights were by that time engaged elsewhere in the Baltic, and the aforementioned Livonian Rhymed Chronicle gives the figure of only 20 knights killed, which Fennell argued was "hardly indicative of a major encounter even if we take into consideration epic minimalization of the home-team's side."

Fennell's approach was criticized by Russian historians. It was suggested by many that Fennell distorted the picture by supposedly ignoring many historical facts and sources, while his modelling of events was attacked by nationalists as being in line with the tradition of discrediting the Russian and then Soviet history by Western historians.

Fennell also focused on Alexander Nevsky's (and his father's) policy of enforced cooperation with the Mongols (or Tatars, as they are known in Russia), which the author calls 'accommodation or collaboration' while downplaying the significance of Nevsky's victories on the Neva and on Lake Peipus. In Fennell's view, the 'negative' impact of Nevsky's cooperation with the overpowering Mongols brought much more harm to Russia than would have resulted from the penetration of Russian northwestern borders by the Roman Catholic knights. Such controversial points have been widely criticized in the Russian press, which tend to focus more of its attention on the supposedly 'Western historical' methods used by non-Russian historians in the field of Russian history studies.

Popular culture

The event was glorified in Sergei Eisenstein's nationalistic historical drama film Alexander Nevsky. The movie, bearing propagandist allegories of the Teutonic Knights as Nazi Germans,with the Teutonic infantry wearing modified WWI German Stahlhelm helmets , has created a popular image of the battle often mistaken for the real events. Sergei Prokofiev turned his score for the film into a concert cantata of the same title, the longest movement of which is "The Battle on the Ice".

During World War II, the image of Alexander Nevsky became a national Russian symbol of fighting against German occupation. Today, there exists in Russia an Order of Holy Alexander Nevsky, a medal given for outstanding bravery and excellent service to the country.

Heavy metal band Aria composed a song, "Ballad of the Russian Warrior", for their Hero of Asphalt album in 1987. The song describes the battle from a participant's point of view.

In a 2009 Russian-Canadian-Japanese WWII-related anime, First Squad, the Battle of the Ice plays a vital part of the plot.

Further reading

• Military Heritage did a feature on the Battle of Lake Peipus and the holy Knights Templar and the monastic knighthood Hospitallers (Terry Gore, Military Heritage, August 2005, Volume 7, No. 1, pp. 28 to 33)), ISSN 1524-8666.
• Basil Dmytryshyn, Medieval Russia 900–1700. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973.
• John France, Western Warfare in the Age of the Crusades 1000–1300. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999.
• David Nicolle, Lake Peipus 1242. London: Osprey Publishing, 1996.
• Terrence Wise, The Knights of Christ. London: Osprey Publishing, 1984.
• Kaldalu, Meelis; Toots, Timo, Looking for the Border Island. Tartu: Damtan Publishing, 2005. Contemporary journalistic narrative about Estonian youth attempting to unveil the secret of the Ice Battle. Accessible at http://www.isamaa.ee/zona (password: ma_armastan_sind)