Battle of Starokostiantyniv of july 26-28, 1648 – the historical "accoucheuse" of the Pyliavtsi triumph

The purpose of the article is to find out the preconditions, course and consequences of the largest battle in the summer of 1648 between the units of the Polish Crown, on the one hand, and the army of Ukrainian rebels under the command of Cossack Colonel Maksym Kryvonis, on the other, for dominance in the central and western parts of Right-Bank Ukraine. Whereas the Polish side wanted to turn them into a bridgehead(base) for an offensive against Bohdan Khmelnytsky's army, M. Kryvonis, having liberated Bratslav, southern Zhytomyr, and successfully acted in Southeastern Volhynia, aimed to continue his march to Kamianets-Podilskyi and, by capturing it, deprive Poland of its strategic citadel of domination on the Right Bank and Western Ukraine. There is a need to clarify its historical significance for the transformation of the Cossack rebellion into the Ukrainian National Revolution and the creation of optimal conditions for the preparation and conduction of the Battle of Pyliavtsi. The methodological basis was the core ideas of the "Annales" and "New Political History" schools, as well as the principles of historicism, objectivity, and systematicity. The main methods of the study were narrative, reconstructive, comparative, and synchronic. The scientific novelty of the work consists in the fact that for the first time in Ukrainian historiography was made an attempt to reconstruct the preconditions of the Battle of Starokonstantyniv, the course and results, the force ratios of the enemy parties, and the role of B. Khmelnytsky in the successful completion of the Pyliavtsi campaign. Figuratively speaking, the image of the historical accoucheuse of the Pyliavtsi triumph of the rebellious Ukraine was created. Conclusions. The peculiarity of the Battle of Starokonstantyniv, which turned out to be the largest military clash in the summer of 1648, lay in the fact that it was not planned in advance by either the Ukrainian or Polish command, but was the result of a coincidence of 3 indirectly related factors: the Polish commander-in-chief, Prince W. Zasławski, chose Starokonstantyniv as the place of concentration of the Crown of Poland army; the arrival of units of Prince J. Wiśniowiecki and Kyiv voivode J. Tyszkiewicz; M. Kryvonis's attempts to capture the city. In terms of the number of troops involved in the battle, the rebels had a slight advantage, about 26-30 thousand people against about 21.6-23.9 thousand (including 12.4-13 thousand servants), but the quality of military training of special forces was superior to that of the Polish - about 9.2-10.3 thousand soldiers against 5-6 thousand Cossacks. There are 3 phases of the battle. The first (July 26) was characterized by a failed attack ( through M. Kryvonis' ignorance of the fact that about 12.3-14 thousand soldiers of J. Wiśniowiecki and J. Tyszkiewicz had appeared in the enemy camp) of the rebel cavalry, its escape to their own camp and its desperate defense, which prompted I. Vyshnevetskyi to retreat to the wagon. The second phase (July 27) was characterized by the absence of hostilities and the search by both sides for a strategic plan to end the battle. The council of officers, assembled by M. Kryvonis, decided to attack the enemy under the protection of the camp on July 28. The Polish command, frightened by the message of the captured Cossack colonel Poluyan about the hetman's promise to come to the rescue soon (which was not true), given the small number of troops and the lack of prospects for military aid, the lack of food and fodder, and the threat of a local rebellion, decided to send a convoy protected by infantry to Kulchyn on the morning of July 28, leaving dragoons and cavalry to repel the Ukrainian offensive. The third phase (July 28) was characterized by the bloody nature of the battle initiated by M. Kryvonis. Having repulsed the crossing, he moved the cannon camp and at least half of the army across to the right bank of the river Ikopot (the other half continued to cross) and resorted to forming up the available forces to attack under the protection of the camp (in which he concentrated most of the Cossacks), which occupied positions on the right flank. However, the commanders of the regiments formed from the Cossack community on the left flank arbitrarily started an attack on the right wing of the Polish army. This was used by J. Wiśniowiecki, who counterattacked the Ukrainians with the entire cavalry. After bypassing their camp, he struck the center and left wing. Unable to withstand such a force, most of them began to run to the river bank, trying to swim across it, while the smaller part, resisting, retreated to the river crossing, where they joined forces with units that had already crossed and began to dig in. Faced with their strong resistance, the prince retreated and twice unsuccessfully attacked the Ukrainian camp. Realizing that he had no chance of success, he ordered his troops to follow the wagon. Thus, the battlefield was left to M. Kryvonis, who captured Starokostiantyniv and, after crossing the Sluch River, stopped with the wagon near the village Stina, 8.5 km southeast of the city. The peculiarity of the victory was the fact that it was not achieved in the classical way by defeating the enemy forces, but by inducing (in the face of its threat) its escape. The groundlessness of the Polish narrative in historiography (with the exception of M. Rohovych) about the absence of any strategic or even tactical significance of its consequences for both the Ukrainian and Polish sides is convincingly disproven by the following arguments: • The Polish crown lost a strategic opportunity to concentrate its troops near Starokonstantyniv (W. Zasławski was forced to move this place far to the northwest near Hlyniany), and thus take control not only of the territory of Volyn, Podillia, and northern Bratslav, but also of the course of further events in the region; • The success in the battle, as well as M. Kryvonis' sending several regiments to capture Medzhybizh and Bar, caused a powerful explosion of the uprising in Podillia, which was joined by the Levents (the local name for the Opryshky) of Podnistrovia, who blockaded Kamianets-Podilskyi in the last decade of August; • Khmelnytsky's government had the opportunity to successfully complete the troop mobilization, launch an offensive, and take up positions near Pyliavtsi that were strategically advantageous for the chosen tactics of defending the battle. This led to its impressive strategic success, which, unfortunately, was not used by the hetman to create an independent Rus' (Ukrainian) state. In our opinion, there is every reason to consider the Starokonstantinovsk success as a historical accoucheuse of the Pyliavtsi triumph; • The battles of July 26 and 28 demonstrated M. Kryvonis's bright talent as an army organizer and commander, who, perhaps for the first time in Ukrainian military art, realized the need to form and use such independent branches of the Ukrainian army as cavalry and artillery in battles. It is no coincidence that B. Khmelnytsky had a personal dislike for him as a competitor for the hetman's mace, and it was to him that he entrusted the construction of a camp on the left bank of the Ikva (Pylyavka) and appointed him head of its defense. Unfortunately, to this day, historiography has underestimated his outstanding (almost decisive) role in the Pyliavtsi victory.