By Brian Glyn Williams - The Jamestown Foundation

THE POLISH FRONT
Prior to the Ottoman-Tatar alliance of 1475, the Crimean Khanate was on cordial terms with the Polish-
Lithuanian Commonwealth. In describing this early relationship, Howorth writes Haji Girai was
clearly a protege of the great Lithuanian King Vtut, and on his death in 1430, he was a faithful friend of his
successors Ladislas and Casimir. He did not make peace or war without their knowledge. 80
This changed with the establishment of Ottoman alliance with the Khanate. The Crimean Khans had
previously relied on the Poles for assistance in their struggles on the steppe against the Golden Horde, but
with Ottoman protection this was no longer necessary. In the following centuries, the Crimean Tatars
acted independently in their dealings with Poland. The Crimean Tatars took advantage of this
policy by making frequent incursions into Polish lands for slaves and booty whenever the Polish
government was late in its tribute payments. The Khanate's Polish foreign policy was anything but
consistent during this period and the Tatars often allied themselves with Poland against Russia or vice versa
depending on who was offering the most tribute.
This began to change with the emergence of Moscow as the main threat to Tatar dominance on the steppe in
the sixteenth century. At this time the Crimean Khans began to place more importance on Poland as an ally.
Muhammed Giray in particular made an unsuccessful attempt to alert the Porte of the Russian threat and
form an anti-Russian alliance between the Turks and the Poles in 1521. Sultan Suleiman the
Magnificent, far from listening to the Khan's advice, ordered him to attack Lithuania in order to stop the
Poles from interfering in his Western campaigns.
Although the Ottomans did recognize Poland's potential as a counterweight to Russian expansion in the
seventeenth century, they were initially not on good terms with the Polish state. There were two main
areas of strife between the two states, namely Polish resentment over the Porte's control of Moldavia
(which had been a Polish vassal prior to the great Ottoman expansion) and the raids of Polish Cossacks
into Ottoman territories. The Sultan's government saw the value of the Tatars in dealing with both threats on
this frontier at an early date.
The first joint Ottoman-Tatar campaign against Poland took place soon after the founding of the Tatar-
Ottoman alliance. In 1498, Sultan Bayezid II ordered the Crimean Tatars to assist the frontier
commander, Malkoch-oghlu Bali Beg, in a raid on the eastern Polish provinces of Podolia and Galicia. This
raid was in retaliation for the Polish King, Jan Olbracht's Black Sea expedition in the previous year.
Described as "one of the most far-reaching plans in the history of Poland," the Polish King's plan had
called for the conquest of Muslim territories from the mouth of the Danube to the Crimea itself in order to
break the Ottoman-Tatar barrier which blocked Poland's access to the Black Sea. 81
Although the expedition had been a costly failure, the Sultan was determined to punish the Pole's
temerity with a counter raid of his own. In the spring of 1498, a Tatar force joined the forces of Bali Beg and
laid waste to much of Poland's eastern areas reaching as far as Lemberg in Galicia. 82 A similar campaign
launched in the following year was less successful and met with disaster in a snow storm in the
Carpathian mountains. Memories of the Ottoman-Tatar retreat can still be found in Romanian folk
songs. 83
These two expeditions set a precedent and clearly showed the Ottomans that the Crimean Khanate was in an
ideal position to enforce Ottoman foreign policy on Poland's eastern borders in order to keep the
22