Our land has experienced many tragic events in its long history. One of the deepest wounds left on the body of the country is the invasion of the Mongol-Tatar army in the distant thirteenth century. Russian warriors fought fiercely, nomads became even more furious. But the forces were unequal. The Battle of the River Sit in 1238 is an attempt to unite the troops of all the principalities in order to repulse the enemy. But this was done, alas, too late. The bitter defeat and enormous losses on the part of the Russian people still had consequences: the Batu horde stopped its advance to the west, not reaching Veliky Novgorod a few miles.
There was a battle on the River Cit on March 4, 1238. From the enemy side, the Tyumen of Burundai stood out, which significantly outnumbered the army of Yuri Vsevolodovich, Vladimir Prince. The Mongols were informed about the number and composition of the Russian regiments by Prince Gleb, a traitor whom almost all his fellow tribesmen had driven out. Therefore, Batu sent about forty thousand of his warriors, who, however, also almost all died in this massacre.
The battle on the River Sit had its own background. After the capture of the city of Vladimir (February 7), Batu sent his horde through Yuryev-Polsky and Pereslavl-Zalessky to Torzhok and Tver. However, he sent part of his army of many thousands under the command of the Temnik Burundai to the possession of the nephews of Prince Yuri Konstantinovich to Sit, where Russian warriors gathered.
For three weeks, the Burundian corps reached the militia, overcoming vast distances (during the same time, the main forces of the invaders went half the way). He approached the City from Uglich and attacked the Russian army, taken by surprise. Non-willing soldiers resisted, but almost all died or were captured.
The battle on the River Cit lasted two days. The first three thousandth watch regiment took the blow on the night of the second of March. The main militia lodged in nearby villages, so the Mongols surrounded all the villages almost simultaneously. On the banks of the river, the remnants of the squad gathered, and they were pushed to the ice from both banks. Under the weight of the armed warriors, the ice broke, and the last defenders of the fatherland fell into the cold water.
And so the heroic battle on the river Sit ended. The map of this battle will help to more vividly present the events of almost eight hundred years ago. Prince Yuri, later ranked among the holy martyrs, died fighting with his soldiers. His head was separated from the body and presented as a gift to Batu Khan. However, such a gift did not make the commander-in-chief very happy: he saw that with each taken city he was losing too many of his troops, so he thought about stopping his campaign on Russian lands.
The battle on the River Sit is a tragic page in our history; it entailed the dependence of the principalities of northeastern Russia on the Golden Horde. The completely devastated Ryazan, Murom, Vladimir, Suzdal, Kozelsk, Torzhok, the burned district villages lost not only the accumulated goods, but also people who either fell in clashes or were driven into slavery. This defeat strengthened the Mongols in the idea that all Russian lands could be captured, so they later embarked on a new campaign in Kiev, Chernihiv and the Galicia-Volyn lands.