Battle of Drokov

The Battle of Drokov or the Battle of the Iput River is a battle of the Russian-Polish war of 1654-1667 , which occurred on March 11 (21), 1664 .

Having been defeated in the Battle of Pirogov , King Jan II Casimir decided to end his campaign for the Dnieper . The Polish army, led by Stanislav Pototsky and Stefan Charnetskiy, retreated through the Right-Bank Ukraine , while the Lithuanian army and the king went through Starodub to the north-west to Mogilev , who was threatened by the Novgorod regiment of Prince Ivan Khovansky . In Karachev there was a Russian army led by Jacob Cherkassky , who began to move across the Lithuanians, trying to block their path near the Iput River.

The Lithuanians were the first to reach Iputa, but because of the panic that seized them at the crossing from the approach of the Russian cavalry regiments, headed by the princes I. S. Prozorovsky and Yu. N. Baryatinsky, they threw most of the wagon train. To search and collect carts, on the orders of the hetman Mikhail Pats , Colonel Christian Ludwig Kalkstein was left with a dragoon regiment, on which Russian horse regiments fell. Despite the desperate resistance, Kalkstein’s regiment was completely killed or captured. Among the prisoners was Kalkstein himself with a number of other officers. Having learned from Kalkstein that the Lithuanian artillery had not yet had time to move far, the Russian cavalry, leaving the infantry, set off in pursuit and caught up with the Lithuanians. However, in the forests, having failed to overcome the resistance of the infantry guarding the artillery, the cavalry was forced to turn back.

Thus, the Lithuanians managed to preserve artillery, but a significant part of the convoy was lost.