14 July in military history: Storming of the Bastille, 1789

On the morning of 14 July 1789, crowds in Paris looking for weapons broke into the Hôtel des Invalides. They carried off its muskets, 28,000 by the count of Jules Michelet and Frantz Funck-Brentano, while the historian Jules Flammermont and the Larousse encyclopedia give 32,000 as the number stored there, together with cannon. Then the cry went up to march on the Bastille, the old royal fortress and state prison, where more munitions were kept.¹

The governor, the marquis de Launay, had a small garrison: 82 old soldiers of the Invalides and 32 Swiss of the Salis-Samade regiment, by the count Michelet gives and Flammermont quotes, or 95 and 30 by Funck-Brentano’s. Attackers climbed onto the outer buildings and cut the chains of the first drawbridge, the garrison opened fire, and the fighting in the outer courts went on for hours. In the afternoon French Guards arrived with cannon and trained them on the gates. De Launay thought of blowing up the fortress with its powder, but men of his garrison stopped him, and late in the afternoon the Bastille surrendered; Flammermont puts the moment “Vers cinq heures, plutôt un peu avant qu’après”, “about five o’clock, rather a little before than after” (our translation). Jean Dusaulx, an elector of Paris, printed the count of the besiegers’ losses made for the Commune: 83 killed on the spot, 15 dead of their wounds, 60 wounded and 13 crippled; Flammermont accepts these figures, and Funck-Brentano gives 98 dead.²

De Launay was led toward the Hôtel de Ville and killed on the way, and his head was carried through the streets on a pike; the provost of the merchants, Flesselles, was killed the same day. Inside the fortress the victors found only seven prisoners. Historians have argued about the day ever since. Michelet wrote that “the Bastille was not taken, it must be said, it gave itself up” (our translation). Flammermont replied that the besiegers’ losses showed it was no mere taking of possession but a glorious action of which Paris and France had the right to be proud (our translation), while Funck-Brentano, who catalogued the Bastille’s archives, insisted that the crowd wanted arms, not to free prisoners. Since 1880, 14 July has been France’s national holiday; the Ministry of the Armed Forces says it recalls both the taking of the Bastille and the Fête de la Fédération of 14 July 1790. The wars that followed are told in our article on the French Revolutionary Wars.³

Ivan III moves west

Sigismund von Herberstein, whose Latin account of Muscovy appeared in 1549, writes that Ivan III's daughter Helena had married Alexander on condition that a church of the Russian rite be built in Vilnius, and that Ivan took its neglect as a pretext for war; Stryjkowski names the same grievance. Stryjkowski and the Voskresensk chronicle add that the princes Semen Mozhaisky and Vasily Shemyachich went over to Moscow with their lands, and the historian Mirosław Nagielski that they placed themselves under Ivan's protection.⁴

Herberstein describes three Muscovite armies: one sent south toward the Seversk lands, one west against Toropets and Bieloi, and one between them toward Dorogobuzh and Smolensk. Nagielski gives the same three thrusts. The Moscow chronicles and the separate Typographic chronicle agree that Yakov Zakharyich took Bryansk and Putivl in the south, that the boyar Yuri Zakharyich took Dorogobuzh, and that Prince Daniil Vasilyevich Shchenya came to Yuri's aid with the Tver force when Alexander's lords marched against him.⁵

Kwiatkowski puts the joined Muscovite armies at about 17,000 to 18,000 men when Shchenya took overall command, around 9 or 10 July. Nagielski counts 20,000 men on the whole Smolensk road. The Universal Lithuanian Encyclopedia names Yakov Zakharyin and Shchenya as the commanders at the battle, and Stryjkowski also has "Jaków Zacharinic" at Dorogobuzh; the Moscow chronicles, Nagielski and Kwiatkowski place Yakov in the south and give Dorogobuzh to Yuri.⁶

The battle

The Voskresensk chronicle dates the clash "мѣсяца іюля 14, въ вторникъ, на память святаго Апостола Акилы", "in the month of July, the 14th, on Tuesday, on the feast of the holy Apostle Aquila" (our translation), on Mitkovo field by the little river Vedrosha; the Sofia, Nikon and Lvov chronicles, which share its text, print the same day, weekday and feast. The Typographic chronicle gives 14 July and the feast of Aquila without a weekday, on the river "Verdosha" near Yelnya. Stryjkowski and Marcin Bielski give no day and file the whole war under the year 1499.⁷

Alexander himself followed as far as Borisov, Stryjkowski and Bielski write, while his hetman, Prince Konstanty Ostrogski, led the army on toward Smolensk. Both chroniclers write that a captive warned the Lithuanians that larger Muscovite armies had joined the voevoda at Dorogobuzh and advised them not to fight; Stryjkowski names him Herman and says they had him hanged. Kwiatkowski considers Stryjkowski's report of Herman's capture unreliable. In Herberstein's account, as translated by R. H. Major in 1851, the Lithuanians "gained information from some prisoners respecting the number of the enemy and of their leaders, and entertained great hope of routing them".⁸

Stryjkowski describes a march of two miles through narrow woods and on a marshy road; on open ground the Lithuanians met the Muscovites, "many men fell on both sides" (our translation), and the Muscovites fell back across the Vedrosha. Herberstein, too, has the first Russians driven back across the river; then, in the main battle, "one of the armies which had been placed in ambush, though without the knowledge of many of the Russians, fell suddenly upon the main body of the enemy", and the Lithuanians were routed. The Lithuanian encyclopedia writes that the Muscovite vanguard drew the Lithuanians onto the main force, and Nagielski that the Muscovites went round them. Kwiatkowski reconstructs an ambush regiment under Yuri Koshkin striking the Lithuanian right from the woods, leaving the Lithuanians encircled against the Dnieper.⁹

Stryjkowski explains the rout: the Muscovites saw that no help was coming from the forest, "gdyż było Litwy tylko pułczwarta tysiąca, a Moskwy było czterdzieści tysięcy konnych krom pieszych", "for there were only three and a half thousand Lithuanians and forty thousand Muscovite horse besides foot" (our translation), and they "marvelled at such great Lithuanian courage" (our translation). Bielski, whom Stryjkowski follows at least in the episode of the captive, Kwiatkowski notes, prints the same figures. Kwiatkowski judges the army larger: since Alexander admitted to losing 4,000 men, and assuming losses of at most half, he estimates 8,000 or even 9,000 men under arms. Nagielski also gives 8,000 to 9,000. The Lithuanian encyclopedia writes of ten-odd thousand Lithuanians against a Muscovite main force of about 40,000.¹⁰

Taken alive

The Voskresensk chronicle, in words the Sofia and Nikon chronicles share, calls it "a great battle and an evil slaughter" (our translation) and says the voevodas took alive Prince Konstantin Ostrozhsky, Pan Grigory Ostyukovich, Pan Litavor the marshal "and many others" (our translation). The Lvov chronicle names the last two Yuri Ostyukovich and Ivan Litavor; the Typographic chronicle adds, among others, Nikolai Yuryevich Zinovyevich. Stryjkowski lists Hrehory Stanisławowicz Ościk, the marshal Litowar Chreptowicz, Mikołaj Jurgiewicz Hlebowicz and Mikołaj Zienowicz, as does Kwiatkowski. Nagielski writes instead of Iwan Chreptowicz and Michał Zenowicz. A rider from the battle, Mikhailo Pleshcheev, reached Moscow on 17 July, a Friday, the Moscow chronicles say, "and there was great joy in Moscow" (our translation).¹¹

The Typographic chronicle says the Muscovites "slew countless Lithuanians" (our translation). Kwiatkowski reports three other figures: 8,000 Lithuanians killed in the Russian Sinodalnaya kniga, about 5,000 killed and many captured according to the historian K. V. Bazilevich, and 4,000 men whom Alexander admitted to losing. His own judgement is that probably at least half the Lithuanian army was killed or captured.¹²

A shock for Lithuania

Nagielski calls Vedrosha the first so serious defeat of Lithuanian forces in the field, one that, in the historian Stanisław Herbst's phrase, shook Lithuania's political elite. The Lithuanian encyclopedia calls it Moscow's first major victory of the war. Smolensk held out.¹³

The war ended in 1503 with a truce, agreed on 25 March and signed in Moscow on 28 March for six years by Kwiatkowski’s account, by which Lithuania gave up almost all of the Seversk land and large parts of the Smolensk land. Nagielski lists among the losses Nevel, Velizh, Toropets, Belaya, Dorogobuzh, Bryansk, Starodub, Novgorod and Chernigov. Herberstein writes that Alexander, "who always delighted more in peace than war", gave up all the provinces and forts the Russians had taken.¹⁴

Ostrogski's captivity was hard. Stryjkowski and Bielski write that, as was said, his arms were bound behind him with lead and his legs fettered, and that he had to swear the oath Ivan wanted; Stryjkowski adds that he swore it "z nieprawego serca", "not from an honest heart" (our translation). Herberstein writes that, bound by a very strong oath, he was given great estates but escaped at the first opportunity "through the intricacies of the woods". Kwiatkowski dates the end of his captivity to August or September 1507, and the Lithuanian encyclopedia has him escape from Moscow in 1507. Stryjkowski instead writes that Ostrogski left Moscow in 1508, after seven years of harsh imprisonment. Nagielski writes that in September 1514 Ostrogski led the Lithuanian and Polish relief army that routed a Muscovite army near Orsha, told in our article on Orsha.¹⁵