Siege of Revel (1570-1571)

In 1568, King Johan III ascended the throne of Sweden, who terminated the alliance treaty concluded by King Eric XIV in February 1567 with Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible . The Russian Tsar began to prepare for war with Sweden, for which he concluded an alliance agreement with Denmark and a three-year truce with Poland. The younger brother of Danish King Frederick II, invited to Moscow, Prince Magnus ( Artsimagnus Krestyanovich according to Russian chronicles) accepted the offer to become a vassal (“goldman”) of the Russian tsar and was proclaimed “ king of Livonia ”. The Livonian Germans who were in Russian captivity were released. On June 25, 1570, the Boyar Duma approved the decision to send an army to capture Revel, whose fall would lead to the loss of Estonia by Sweden.

On August 21, 1570, King Magnus with an army of 1,000 hired bollards and Livonian nobles approached Revel. The townspeople of Revel, who in 1561 accepted the citizenship of Sweden, rejected the proposal for surrender sent to them. A long siege began. Opposite the city gate, tours were built from which intensive shelling of the fortress was conducted. However, Magnus’s lack of heavy cannons capable of destroying the stone walls of the city, and the activity of the besieged, daily organized sorties to destroy the siege structures, did not allow the besiegers to succeed.

On October 16, Tsar voivode boyar Ivan Petrovich Hiron-Yakovlev with zemstvo detachments and okolnichny Vasily Ivanovich Umnoi-Kolychev with the guardsmen arrived at Revel. The total number of troops arrived was about 4-5 thousand people. Governors Yakovlev and Kolychev demanded to surrender the city, threatening with cruel punishment for resistance. After the magistrate Revel rejected this demand, the detachments of the guardsmen began to devastate and ruin the Revel neighborhood. King Magnus, realizing that the cruelty of the Russians would deprive him of the support of the Livonian nobles, unsuccessfully tried to convince the allies, which led to a clash with the royal governors. The tsar supported Magnus in this dispute, the chief governors I.P. Yakovlev and V.I.

The hope of the besiegers for winter difficulties for the city’s defenders did not materialize - the Swedish fleet managed to bring reinforcements, food, firewood and ammunition to Revel before the onset of winter.

On January 12, 1571, a new army arrived under Revel under the command of Prince Yuri Tokmakov. A month-and-a-half shelling of the city by “fire nuclei” undertaken since January 16 did not bring any result. During the shootings and attacks of the townspeople, the Russian army lost more than 100 people. The plague epidemic that began in the fall of 1570 in Revel spread to the Russian army, causing him great mortality.

March 16, 1571, standing under Revel "30 weeks without three days", King Magnus and the Russian governors were forced to lift the siege and retreat from Revel.

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