The Battle of Zbrazh or the Siege of Zbarazh is the battle of the Zaporizhzhya army under the command of the hetman Bogdan Khmelnytsky and his allies of the Crimean Tatars , led by Khan Islam Girey III with the Polish army surrounded by Zbarazh from June 30 to August 12, 1649 .
| The Battle of Zbarazh | |||
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| The main conflict: the uprising of Khmelnitsky | |||
 Reconstruction of the fortifications of Zbarazh Castle | |||
| date of | June 30 - August 12, 1649 | ||
| A place | Zbarazh , Ternopil region | ||
| Total | Cossacks could not take the fortress | ||
| Opponents | |||
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| Commanders | |||
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| Forces of the parties | |||
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| Losses | |||
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Content
- 1 Background
- 2 Siege Movement
- 3 Consequences
- 4 In culture
Background
After the defeats from the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks in the Bratslavshchyna and Volhynia, the Polish-gentry detachments under the command of Jeremiah Vishnevetsky , numbering up to 15 thousand people, retreated under the protection of the fortifications of Zbarazh. Around the camp, which backed against the walls of the city and the castle, Polish soldiers, as well as Hungarian and German mercenaries poured defense ramparts.
Siege
On the first day of the battle, a Polish convoy was surrounded and about a thousand “servants” were captured. On July 1, Cossack artillery subjected the besieged camp to destructive shelling, to which the Poles responded with volleys of their artillery. On July 3 and 4, attacks of the Polish camp were launched. July 10-14, there was a non-stop cannon and musket fire. On July 20, the Polish army was forced to leave the third, last frontier of defense in front of the castle. The next day, the Cossacks almost managed to break into the camp. On July 27 and 29, new general assaults of the Cossack and Tatar troops took place, but the Polish soldiers were able to repel the attackers, and the Cossacks and Crimeans had to retreat due to serious losses (about two and a half thousand people).
Hunger began in the Polish camp, and the Poles had no chance to break the cordon . The besieged were saved by the approach of the Polish army, led by King Jan II Casimir . Khmelnitsky with a fifty-thousandth army and Crimean Tatars moved towards the thirty-thousandth crown army and defeated it at Zborov , although it suffered heavy losses.
Consequences
At the beginning of August, leaving several regiments at Zbarazh under the command of the punishable hetman I. Charnota, Bogdan Khmelnitsky, at the head of the 50,000th army, together with Islam III Giray moved towards the royal army, which he managed to defeat. After signing the Zborowski Treaty, the siege of the Polish camp was lifted on the night of August 13. The failed capture of the Polish camp negatively affected the development of subsequent events for the Cossacks.
In Culture
The siege of Zbarazh is described in the novel Fire and Sword , the first novel in the historical trilogy of the Polish writer Henryk Sienkiewicz . In 1999, the Polish director Jerzy Hoffmann made a film of the same name based on this novel.