By Brian Glyn Williams - The Jamestown Foundation

claims that the Tatars were usually given freedom to act independently against their traditional enemies. 62 The
Khan's independent raids were of great assistance to the Ottomans and one raid in particular, against
the Zaporozhian Cossacks, prevented this host from participating in a crusade against the Turks
organized in 1594. 63
By the end of the seventeenth century, the threat of Cossack raids had begun to diminish as the Russian
government began to strengthen its control over the various hosts and put an end to their independent
activities. The Cossacks, however, found plenty of use for their martial skills in Russia's armies which soon
proved to be more of threat to the Turco-Tatar alliance than the Cossacks had ever been. The Russians
had gained a fair amount of control over their southern borders by the late seventeenth century and,
although the Tatars did continue to make slave raids into Russian territory as late as the reign of Catherine the
Great, the days of the great slave raids had most definitely come to a close.
By establishing forts at strategic locations, elaborate patrol patterns, wooden palisades, improved alarm
systems and Cossack defense units, the Russians could finally say that they had begun to gain sufficient control
of their southern borders to prevent the Tatars from moving freely through Russian territory on their
own missions, or at the bidding of the Sultan. By the end of the century, the Russians were actually able to
move out on to the steppe and bring war to the Tatars' own doorstep.
During the reign of Peter the Great, two Russian armies attempted to move out across the steppe and strike
directly at the Khanate. In the first invasion, a Russian army of 100,000 men found the way to the Crimea
blocked by steppe fires set by the Khan's riders and was forced to retreat, losing 45,000 men in the process. 64 A
second attempt succeeded in reaching the Crimea and defeating a Tatar force but it too was forced to
retreat for want of supplies.
The Crimean leaders could not but have noticed that the Khanate had been saved on both occasions by
the harsh conditions of the steppe as much as their own martial abilities. Although the Khanate
emerged relatively unscathed from both encounters, a strong warning had been sent to the Crimean
Tatars. If she so wanted, Russia could carry the war to the Tatars in a way previously unimagined.
In 1696, the most telling sign of the Tatars' declining military superiority occurred. Peter the Great
succeeded in conquering the Ottoman fortress of Azov and, in the process, separating the Crimean
Khanate from its possessions on the Taman peninsula in the Caucasus. According to Henry Howorth, Peter
would have conquered Azov in an attack during the previous year if a Tatar contingent, under Kaplan
Giray, had not successfully stormed the Russians' entrenchments and defeated Peter's forces. 65
The loss of Azov was only a temporary setback and, in the Pruth Campaign of 1711, the Crimean Khan,
Devlet Giray III, joined the Ottomans in defeating a Russian invasion force in Moldavia. This disastrous
invasion was launched with the aim freeing Moldavia from Turkish rule. The Russians were initially
successful and, with Moldavian assistance, they were able to move deep into Ottoman territory meeting little
resistance.
In May, however, an Ottoman army lead by the Grand Vezir Baltajai Mehemed Pasha stumbled into
the Russian force and heavy fighting commenced. Massie claims that the Grand Vezir lost his courage
during this fighting and would have withdrawn from the battle at an early stage had the Crimean Khan not
steadied his nerves. 66 His encouragement paid off and, in the ensuing struggle, the Russians were defeated
and forced to retreat to Jassy, the Moldavian capital.
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