The victory of the Polish-Lithuanian army over the Grand Duchy of Moscow at the Battle of Orsha is a triumph of wisdom and cunningness over rashness and, at the same time, of excellent military preparation over the numerical superiority of the opponent. Why did the Muscovite army not prevail, despite its obvious superiority?

King Sigismund I the Old, representative of the Jagiellonian dynasty, was not only the ruler of Poland, but also Grand Duke of Lithuania. The Polish and Lithuanian states had been united by a common ruler for more than 100 years. This situation was called a personal union.

The Grand Duchy of Lithuania stretched to the east of the Polish Kingdom and bordered directly on the Grand Duchy of Moscow.  For strategic reasons, one of the very important centres for both principalities was Smolensk.

Vasily III, the ruler of Moscow, succeeded in conquering this city in 1514. In addition, Maximilian Habsburg, the Roman Emperor of the German nation, offered him an alliance. At the time, the Jagiellonians were competing with the Habsburg dynasty for dominance in Central Europe. Maximilian’s alliance with Vasily was a serious threat to the Polish state.

For the further fate of the war with Moscow, the recovery of Smolensk was crucial. Still in 1514, a Polish-Lithuanian army set off from Vilnius (the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania). It was headed by the Lithuanian Hetman, Prince Konstantin Ostrogski. He commanded a Lithuanian common army of about 15,000, 3,000 infantry from Poland and about 14,000 heavy cavalry. This army of over 30,000 stood at Orsha on 8 September 1514, where a major battle took place with the forces of the Muscovite principality (40-80,000), commanded by Prince Ivan Cheladin.

The Moscow forces started the battle.  They struck at the Polish-Lithuanian right wing and began to the victory in their favour. Seeing this, Prince Ostrogski ordered a fake retreat. The Muscovite soldiers threw into pursuit and fell into a trap. They reached a ravine, failed to hold their ranks and began to break formation and cluster into a disorderly mass. Then Ostrogski’s army began firing on the enemy soldiers with cannons and rifles. A rain of bullets massacred the troops of the Muscovite principality.

Ostrogski, taking advantage of the weakening of his enemies, attacked Cheladin’s army and crushed his troops. The Polish-Lithuanian army was left only to chase the survivors and take captives.

In the rest of the war campaign, however, the Poles and Lithuanians failed to capture Smolensk. Thanks to the victory at Orsha, Maximilian Habsburg’s alliance with Vasily III was weakened. Konstantin Ostrogski was appropriately awarded, and some called him the Scipio of Russia, for his victory.

Since 2017, a Lithuanian-Polish-Ukrainian military brigade, whose headquarters are located in Lublin, has borne his name.