All the most interesting in one magazine. History of Russian fortification Russian fortification

NESTOR BUINITSKY

Nestor Buynitsky was born in St. Petersburg, educated at the Nikolaev Engineering School and the Nikolaev Engineering Academy, after which he was sent as a military engineer to the Osovets fortress, where he participated in the creation of defensive structures for four years. The fortress was built to defend the corridor between the rivers Neman and Vistula - Narew - Bug, with the most important strategic directions of St. Petersburg - Berlin and St. Petersburg - Vienna. During the First World War, the fortress withstood the siege and three assaults of the German troops, including with the use of chemical weapons.

Possessing a certain literary talent, Buinitsky published a lot in the Engineering Journal, Military Collection, Artillery Journal, wrote articles for the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary, Encyclopedia of Military and Naval Sciences, and Military Encyclopedia. In 1893, Buinitsky was appointed as a fortification tutor at his native university, and two years later he defended his dissertation for the title of teacher. In his dissertation, "The Impact of Recent Weapons Innovations on Field Fortification," he addressed many controversial fortification issues.
Buynitsky died on December 4, 1914 in Petrograd. According to one version, he died due to an accident: he was killed at the checkpoint of the Novogeorgievsk fortress by a barrier accidentally lowered on his head. According to others, he was mortally wounded in a car accident.

Osowiec fortress in Poland. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

EDUARD TOTLEBEN

The largest military engineer of his time was born on May 8, 1818 in the Baltic city of Mitava. He began his education in St. Petersburg at the Main Engineering School, which was prevented from finishing by heart disease. Totleben returned to Riga, served in a sapper battalion with the rank of second lieutenant. It was there that Totleben began to conduct experiments with a pipe counter-mine system: for these studies, the engineer was promoted to staff captain.

During the Crimean War, Totleben played a prominent role in organizing the defense of Sevastopol, directing engineering work. The fortifier showed outstanding engineering talent in the construction of fortifications, which did not allow the city to be taken by attack and forced the enemy to go over to the siege. The first bombardment of Sevastopol showed the strength of the Sevastopol fortifications. Attempts to blow up the Sevastopol fortifications ran into a network of mine galleries prepared by the engineer. Totleben was wounded in the leg by a bullet through and through, but, despite his illness, he continued to lead the defensive work until his health deteriorated so much that he was forced to leave Sevastopol.
After the fall of Sevastopol, Totleben, in the rank of Adjutant General, built the fortifications of Nikolaev and improved the defense of Kronstadt. Explanatory note Totleben on the issue of strengthening Nikolaev is one of the most valuable scientific works. The ideas expressed by him here under the recent impression of experienced combat experiences opened a new era in the art of fortification. Totleben departs from tradition and writes about the need to have a system of forts with intermediate artillery positions that must be approached railways and finds out the distribution of all types of weapons and the role of each of them.
In 1863, due to the expected political complications, Totleben was appointed chief engineer to bring the fortresses of Sveaborg, Dinaburg, Kronstadt, Nikolaev, Vyborg into a defensive position and fortification work at the mouths of the Neva and Western Dvina rivers. In 1869, Totleben drafted the fortification of Kyiv, in particular, drafted the Lysogorsky fort.
During the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, Totleben led the successful siege of Plevna, commanded the Ruschuk detachment, and then was appointed commander in chief. At the final stage of the war, he led diplomatic negotiations on the signing of peace, then organized the return of troops to Russia, the evacuation of the wounded and sick. After the end of the war, he was awarded the Order of St. Andrew the First-Called and St. George 2nd degree and received the title of count. The works of Totleben so advanced Russian military engineering that at present the existence of the original Russian fortification school is beyond doubt.
Totleben died in Germany, his grave is located at the Fraternal Cemetery in Sevastopol.

Part of the fortification, Fort Totleben in the Krym fortress, Kerch
Photo: Btxo/Wikimedia Commons

ARKADY TELYAKOVSKY

Russian military engineer, fortifier and honored professor graduated from the Main Engineering School, becoming a military engineer and second lieutenant in 1825. After participating in the Russian-Turkish war, for several decades Telyakovsky taught fortification in various military schools, participated in the construction of fortresses. His main scientific work - "Field Fortification", in which fortification systems are considered in conjunction with tactics and strategy - has been translated into almost all European languages. Telyakovsky's statements about the connection of fortification with military art and artillery, the need to combine fortifications with the terrain and the needs of the troops, the development of new types of defensive structures, the division of engineering work in turn withstood a practical test during the defense of Sevastopol in 1854-1855. Telyakovsky's views on military engineering found numerous supporters and formed the basis for the creation of the Russian school of fortification.

Photo: nplit. en

KARL Schilder

The outstanding inventor and military engineer was born on December 27, 1785 in the Pskov province in the family of a wealthy Riga merchant. After secondary education in Moscow, Schilder went to St. Petersburg, where he began to study fortification. Having interrupted his studies due to participation in the battle of Austerlitz, for which the future engineer was awarded the Order of St. Anna of the 4th degree with the inscription "for courage", Schilder returns to continue his interrupted scientific studies at the Kart Depot, after which his service in the engineering troops begins. In 1810, he, among the best engineering officers, was assigned to the Bobruisk fortress to carry out work on its expansion. Back to top Patriotic War the fortress was almost finished, and withstood the siege of the Poles.
From 1831 to 1854, Schilder was engaged in activities to invent and test various methods of engineering attack and defense. In 1832, he was the first to use a galvanic current to explode gunpowder embedded in the ground. He invented a new anti-mine system based on the principle of laying a pipe in holes drilled in the ground; for the production of these holes, he invented a special drill. For these inventions, Schilder was awarded the rank of Adjutant General in 1833. In 1838, Schilder invented high-explosive rockets of a new design, containing a large amount of gunpowder. He also used electric current to explode underwater mines, inventing a method of laying wires under water, he improved the method of building wineskin bridges. Many of Schilder's inventions were far ahead of his current state of technology, for example, the submarine he invented did not justify, due to the imperfection of technical devices, the hopes placed on it. However, its tests were carried out on August 29, 1834 on the Neva in the presence of Nicholas I. From the submarine under the command of Schilder himself, 4-inch incendiary rockets were launched, which destroyed several training targets - sailing scows at anchor.
At the beginning of the Crimean War, Schilder was mortally wounded. On June 11, 1854, the inventor died in a hospital in the city of Calarasi in Romania. Regarding his death, Emperor Nicholas I wrote: “The loss of Schilder made me extremely upset; there will be no other like it, both in knowledge and in courage.”

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

KARL OPPERMAN

The famous Russian engineer, cartographer and fortifier was born in Darmstadt. Having entered the service in 1779 at the age of 14, Opperman began to advance rapidly and in 1783 he was already an engineer-captain. Having decided to go to the Russian service, he sends a request to accept him into Russian citizenship, to which Empress Catherine II agrees, and in 1783, on October 12, Opperman was admitted to the Corps of Engineers with the rank of lieutenant. In Russia, Opperman first of all diligently set about studying the Russian language, which he subsequently mastered to perfection. With the beginning of the Swedish campaign of 1788, he took part in it, and for the construction of coastal batteries fortifications in a few hours, which contributed to the defeat of the Swedish fleet at the Battle of Rochensalm in 1789, he was promoted to engineer-captains.
In 1795, Opperman developed a project to strengthen the western borders Russian Empire, and in March 1803 he was sent to Finland to bring the border fortresses into a defensive position. Finally, on January 6, 1805, by the highest order of the emperor, he went to Italy with a secret assignment to inspect the French fortresses: a war with Napoleon was supposed. Later, the engineer supervised the construction of the Bobruisk and Dinaburg fortresses. Napoleon's army surrounded and kept Bobruisk in blockade for several months, but thanks to the skillful actions of the Russian garrison and fortifications, they could not take it.
After the end of the war, Opperman was engaged in the organization of the Engineering Department, the formation of sapper and pioneer troops, managed the construction unit for all the fortresses of Russia, and took a great part in the establishment of the main engineering school. In 1829, the engineer developed a project for the restructuring of the Brest Fortress, the construction of which was completed in 1842. In 1941, German troops had to use 1800-kilogram bombs to destroy the fortress.
In 1830, on the way to the Sveaborg fortress, Opperman fell ill with cholera and died. He was buried in St. Petersburg at the Vyborg cholera cemetery, located on the Kulikovo field.


Photo: Wikimedia Commons

HISTORY OF THE RUSSIAN FORTIFICATION

In many European languages, two words are used to designate an urban settlement, which differ both in their semantics and in their meaning. For example, in German there are words stadt and burg, the first of which simply means a city, and the second - a fortress city. Perhaps, among the warlike Germans, not all cities were protected by walls.

But on the lands Ancient Russia everything was different. No settlement could afford to be left unprotected. Therefore, the Russian word “city” means a fenced, that is, fortified, settlement, and no other word for a settlement has arisen in our language. For the words "village", "village", "settlement" appeared much later. The militant Scandinavian Vikings called the Russian land like that - Gardarika - the country of cities, since they did not meet unfortified settlements in it.

What were these ancient Russian castles and what means were used to strengthen them? First, the location. It was supposed to cover the settlement as much as possible from an unexpected attack. The corner was well suited for such purposes - a narrow cape formed at the confluence of two rivers. It’s very good if this cape was also high, like Borovitsky Hill - the oldest location Russian capital. If there was no corner, then just a high hill on the bank of a river or lake would do. Rivers played an important role in the life of the Eastern Slavs. They were convenient roads, sometimes the only ones in the forest area, the abundance of fish played important role in the diet of residents, and how to build a large settlement without a source of fresh water nearby?

Having chosen a convenient place, it was additionally strengthened - the settlement was surrounded by an earthen rampart, on top of which there was a wooden fence. The weakest point of such fortifications was the gate, where a gap remained in the earthen ramparts. Here was located the gate tower - the largest fortification. Sometimes a ditch was dug in front of the shaft, but almost always it was dry (without water), filling with water only during the spring flood.

Almost all the fortifications of Russian cities were built in this form until the fateful XIII century. In large cities - princely capitals - the ramparts were taller and thicker, no longer just earthen embankments, but complex wood-earthen structures, strong enough to survive to this day. The wooden fence turned from a simple palisade into wooden walls made up of log cabins filled with earth. The gate tower became high, and in the richest cities even made of stone. The ruins of such a tower in Kyiv and the whole, albeit slightly rebuilt tower of the Golden Gate in Vladimir, have survived to this day.

Siege equipment in pre-Mongolian Russia was practically unknown. The fortresses were either “taken on board” with a sudden dashing attack, or forced to surrender by a long blockade. But more often than not, they were simply left alone, preferring to resolve military disputes in an open field. Therefore, the appearance in the winter of 1237 of the Mongol army, soldered with iron discipline and armed with Chinese siege technologies, led the country to disaster.

For contemporaries, the main horror of the Batu invasion was not the defeat of Russian troops in field battles (this happened before), but the capture and ruin of hitherto considered impregnable cities. The Mongols acted strictly "according to the textbooks" - throwing machines easily knocked down wooden fences (or their combat move) from the shafts, depriving the defenders of the opportunity to interfere with the preparation of the assault. Under the cover of this shelling, a ditch was filled up with prepared materials, and a high embankment was made to the shaft - it will take. For these works, the labor of unfortunate prisoners, harshly driven by soldiers, was used. Long-range catapults bombarded the city with incendiary projectiles, causing panic among the inhabitants. Having broken through the gaps, the Mongols launched an assault (while again driving prisoners in front of them) and broke into the city. The fences of Russian fortresses with their rare towers and wooden fences on top could not oppose such tactics. It is noteworthy that when the Mongols did not have siege equipment at hand, they preferred either not to get involved with the siege of cities at all (the first campaign against Kyiv or Smolensk), or the siege dragged on for a long time and cost great sacrifices (Torzhok and Kozelsk).

The ruin of the Russian land, the decline of statehood led to the fact that the construction of fortresses in most principalities ceased for a long time. In most cities, they limited themselves to the restoration of old fences, sometimes significantly reducing their perimeter (as in Vladimir on the Klyazma).

The only exception was the city-principality of the north-west of Russia - Mr. Veliky Novgorod and Mr. Pskov. It was on Pskov lands that the first Russian stone fortress, Izborsk, was built in the 13th century. In the XIV century, stone fortresses became much more numerous. Dressed in stone and children of Novgorod and Pskov. The following factors contributed to the development of stone fortification in these areas: firstly, the wealth of Novgorod and Pskov. Horde raids did not penetrate these lands. The location on the trade routes connecting Russia and Europe contributed to the development of crafts and trade. Secondly, the main opponents of Novgorod and Pskov were the European states - the Kingdom of Sweden, the Livonian Order and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Against such an enemy, more serious fortifications were required than traditional wooden fences. And finally, thirdly, close proximity to the northern European states made it easy to borrow stone building technologies, and even invite craftsmen.

Stone fortresses were also built in the southwestern Russian lands, the possessions of the “King of Little Russia” Daniil of Galicia, which was also facilitated by the close relations of his state with Hungary and Polynia. However, already under Daniel's grandchildren, his state was divided among neighbors and no longer played any role in the development of Russia itself.

The first stone fortress in Vladimir Rus was built in 1366-1367 in Moscow. Historians do not know for certain who the masters who developed and implemented the project of the first walls of the Kremlin, built of white stone, were. There is no exact information about the appearance and type of fortifications. The well-known artist Apollinary Mikhailovich Vasnetsov, whose painting-reconstruction "The White Stone Kremlin of Dmitry Donskoy" became a textbook, assumed the participation of Greek masters from the Crimea in the work. Other historians suggest that the master town planners were local.

Already in 1368, the army of the impetuous Lithuanian prince Olgerd appeared under the walls of the newly built fortress. The new fortifications of the Russian capital turned out to be an unpleasant surprise for him. The "malicious" and "evil" Olgerd repeated the raid in 1370, but achieved nothing and preferred to make peace with the future winner on the Kulikovo field.

From a defensive point of view, the first stone fortress of the Moscow Principality turned out to be quite successful - it withstood several sieges, and was taken only once, and even then not by military art, but by the cunning of Khan Tokhtamysh. It is noteworthy that during this unsuccessful siege for the Russians, artillery was used for the first time from the fortress walls. This suggests that the builders of the white-stone Kremlin, whoever they were, were well informed about the latest achievements of European military science and used them in the construction.

However, its, so to speak, operational qualities left much to be desired - the fortress had to be often repaired, and wood was used instead of stone during repairs, as a result, foreign travelers who saw Moscow in the middle of the 15th century describe its citadel as wooden, so little remains of stone the buildings.

However, in other principalities that tried to compete with Moscow for power in North-Eastern Russia, stone fortifications were not built at all. It is known that one of the princes of Tver, not wanting to lag behind Moscow, ordered to coat the wooden walls of his capital with clay and paint them white “under the stone”. But the plaster did not help much from the fire of the squeakers.

In 1485, the Grand Duke of Moscow and All Russia Ivan III was at the zenith of his power. Tver and Novgorod were conquered, Ryazan and Pskov became faithful vassals of Moscow, the Horde invasion was repulsed, and the very nature of relations between Russia and the Horde was radically revised (later historians will call this the fall of the Horde yoke). By the second marriage, Ivan Vasilyevich married the niece of the last Byzantine emperor, Sophia Paleolog (the first marriage of a Russian sovereign with a European princess in 200 years!). Such a sovereign needed a capital befitting him.

For the construction of new walls of Moscow, Italian specialists Aristotle Fioravanti and Pietro Antonio Solari were invited, who began construction. What they built is still one of the symbols of our country, and then it served as a model for the construction of dozens of new Russian fortresses.

From a fortification point of view, the Moscow Kremlin was a fortress of the transitional period. He inherited high walls, defenseless against cannon fire, from medieval fortresses, but the noticeably increased number of towers designed to accommodate strong artillery was a trend of the new time. The large towers placed at the corners of the wall - Vodovzvodnaya, Borovitskaya, Sobakina, Spasskaya, Moskvoretskaya and Taininskaya, together with the Troitskaya gate, made it possible to shoot through the surrounding area from long-range (by the standards of that time, of course) guns. The small towers dividing the walls of the wall played the role of a kind of gunners, designed to repel open assaults. In addition to the walls themselves, Italian engineers built two hydraulic structures - a dam near the Borovitskaya Tower, which dammed the Neglinaya River and a moat filled with water from it on Red Square. Italian architects took part in the construction of several more fortresses of the same type - in Novgorod the Great, in Nizhny Novgorod, Kitay-gorod in Moscow, etc.

Following the model and likeness of the Moscow Kremlin, large-scale construction of stone fortresses in the Russian state began in the 16th century. What individual principalities could not afford, now, thanks to the centralization of management and concentration material resources, became possible. It is noteworthy that the new fortresses were built under the guidance of Russian architects, who in their own way began to develop the ideas laid down by the Italians. As a result, by the end of the century, a peculiar Russian type of stone fortress had developed, which differed markedly from the contemporary European one.

Russian fortresses retained high walls, which began to be used to accommodate light and anti-assault artillery, which was located in three tiers - upper, middle and plantar battles. Such a wall resembled a board battleship and was capable of unleashing hurricane fire on the attackers. Large-caliber artillery was placed in towers, which increased significantly in size, although they did not turn into rondels.

The thickness of the walls has increased significantly, reaching in some cases 8-10 meters of combined stone and brick masonry. To increase strength where there was an opportunity in quality building material granite boulders and blocks were used. Such a width of the wall made it possible in some fortresses (Oreshek, Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery) to place artillery in fact in stone casemates, which was reached in Europe only in the 19th century.

Thus, Russian architects perfected the Italian model they inherited, but they did not demand the latest trends in the development of European fortification.

The concentration of fortification management in the hands of the centralized government made it possible to create not just separate fortresses, but entire systems of fortifications of various levels, capable of providing effective protection of the state's borders. The first such system was the serif lines on the border with the Wild Field, which protected the central territory of the country from the raids of the Crimean nomads. They included a strip of outposts, the security line itself, reinforced with wood-and-earth fortresses, and powerful stone fortresses (Tula, Kolomna, etc.), which served as strongholds for troops deployed on the frontiers.

Russian fortifiers also tried to strengthen the defense of cities by creating a system of auxiliary fortresses around them. So, the capital of the Russian state, in addition to the four belts of the city's own fortifications (Kremlin, Kitay-Gorod, Bely Gorod, Skorodod), was covered from the most dangerous, southern direction by a semi-ring of sentry monasteries. Each of the cloisters was turned into a powerful fortress, and the distance between them made it possible to ensure the defense of the gaps due to artillery fire. Thus, the idea of ​​a fort fortress, which became generally accepted in Europe in the second half of the 19th century, was largely anticipated.

The Russian fortresses of the 16th century turned out to be quite stable and successfully repulsed attacks not only by nomads, but also by European armies. Examples include the successful defense of Pskov in 1581-1582 from the troops of the Polish king Stefan Batory or the almost year-long defense of Smolensk from the troops of the Polish king Sigismund (1609-1611).

The main problem of Russian fortification at this time and throughout the next 17th century was that serfdom in Russia (as well as architecture in general) did not go beyond the craft. Schools did not arise, knowledge did not accumulate, there was no systematic work on the analysis and development of fortification thought. And the architects themselves, including the most prominent of them, such as Fedor Kon, were self-taught, who did not receive a systematic education.

This led to the fact that the 18th century became, in fact, a dead end for the domestic serfdom. After the end of the Time of Troubles, many of the old stone fortresses were put in order and modernized. However, the advantage of the European-type bastion fortification became more and more evident. It was cheaper, faster to build and more efficient. The absence of our own engineering school forced us to constantly invite foreign specialists. Starting from the 50s of the 17th century, the hitherto unknown word "engineer" appeared in Russian documents.

Those who worked in Russia built fortresses in their own way - with earthen fortifications of the bastion type. Thus, the southern part of the Earthen City in Moscow was fortified with bastions. In 1632, the Russian government carried out an interesting experiment - it built an earthen bastion fortress in Rostov the Great according to the design of the Dutch engineer Jan Cornelius van Rodenburg. The meaning of building a modern fortress in a city located far from any external threat remained unknown to posterity. However, they were satisfied with the Dutchman's abilities and sent him to build similar fortifications on the notch lines.

In the south, where the Crimean Tatars, who had practically no artillery, were the main enemy, traditional wooden walls were often installed in the bastion fortresses, which played the role of anti-assault obstacles.

In contrast to the infantry or cavalry, where foreigners were gradually forced out by Russian officers trained in the European manner, the situation in military engineering was different. The fortification of the 17th century was an art that required knowledge of higher mathematics, drawing, the basics of physics and chemistry. There were simply no people in Russia familiar with these sciences at the European level. The lack of educated Russian personnel made it impossible to create their own engineering school. Foreign specialists were invited to the country "on the occasion", either when they themselves offered their services, or when there was an urgent need for them. The lack of own engineering personnel sometimes led to military failures (for example, the attempt to take Riga in 1656 ended in failure), and most importantly, it made the country dependent on the mercy of its neighbors. Realizing Russian problems, in the second half of the 17th century, the Commonwealth and Sweden began to deliberately prevent the arrival of foreign military specialists in our country.

This crisis was resolved only in the era of Peter the Great, who can rightfully be considered the founder of military engineering in Russia. Fortification was one of the favorite hobbies of the reformer king. He carefully studied this area of ​​military affairs and more than once demonstrated his knowledge and practical skills in practice. High qualifications allowed Peter to be more careful in inviting foreign specialists to Russia, which, in turn, led to the appearance in the Russian service of a whole galaxy of leading European military engineers.

But the main merit of Peter the Great was the formation of Russian army special engineering part and the creation of a system for training national engineering personnel. In 1712, the first engineering school was opened in Moscow, which, five years later, transferred its activities to St. Petersburg. In 1722, the Engineering Office was created, thereby military engineers were allocated to a special branch of the army,

And although the projects of the main fortresses built in the reign of the first emperor were carried out mainly by foreign specialists, the construction process itself was already under the control of national personnel,

During the numerous wars of the 18th century, Russian engineers had to besiege enemy fortresses much more often than defend their own. Moreover, not only the Asian and Eastern European powers (Turkey, the Commonwealth), but also Prussia, which had first-class fortresses, turned out to be Russia's opponents.

Own fortification construction did not differ in scope - several fortresses were built in southern Russia (the largest of them is the fortress of St. Dmitry of Rostov - the future Rostov-on-Don) and the border with Sweden was strengthened, where Vyborg and Rochensalm (now the city of Kotka in Finland) became strongholds ).

The geopolitical situation on the western borders of the empire remained calm, so the question of their strengthening was not raised. This continued until a revolutionary fire began to flare up in distant France, which was destined to engulf the whole of Europe,

Here begins the first story, which will be discussed in our book - a story about the construction and defense of the Bobruisk fortress.