Founded near an important crossing on the middle Dniester River used by the Eastern Slavs, it quickly developed and became a significant defensive and commercial center of the area. In its time, the Khotyn Fortress was one of the strongest fortifications in Eastern Europe. Due to its strategic location, the Fortress and the town came under the control of various states - Kiev Rus, Galicia-Volyn, M
oldovian principality, and the Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian empires. This history is reflected in the variety of its architectural styles, including general European and Ottoman trends of defense architecture, which merged into a unique ethnic form. The 10-11th century settlement had a small fortress with wooden and earthen fortifications. In the 12-13th centuries, when the Fortress was under the Galicia-Volyn principality, the construction of its first stone fortifications took place, on the site of what became the North Tower. This defense style of construction was intended to withstand the attacks of the Mongol Tartars. From second half of the 14th century to the second half of the 15th century, during the reign of Moldovan Leader Stefan III, the Fortress was considerably expanded and rebuilt. Towers were installed as part of the walls, with 3 towers on the south side. Red brick on the West Wall was used to depict Christian decorations, believed to help save the castle from harm. In the summer of 1538, the Polish army, led by Count Tarnowski, encircled the Fortress and dug holes under one of the walls, in an unsuccessful attempt to use explosives to destroy the wall. The failure of this attempt led to a peace agreement. Over the next century, the Fortress came under the control of the Turks, the Cossacks, and the Poles. In 1621, the fortress was under control of the Polish principality. A combined force of 35,000 Poles and Lithuanians, along with 42,000 Cossacks, managed to defeat the 160,000 strong Turkish/Tartar invaders - thus defying the odds of being down by more than 2:1. The Poles are said to have had 38 cannon, while the Turks came with 300 cannon, 4 elephants and 1,000 camels, meant to intimidate the Christian infidels. The Cossacks agreed to join on the side of the Poles in order to fight against the Turkish non-believers and to expand their claims of Cossack rights in Moldova and along the Black Sea. The Polish King verbally agreed to the Cossack proposal presented by Sahayidachny. The Cossacks were under the leadership of Hetman Borodavka, but found his leadership lacking and killed him. The Cossacks arrived in Khotyn 1 September, and were quickly attacked by the Turks and Tartars. The Cossacks were not intimidated by the elephants and camels, but rather maintained silence at the approach of these animals, and then when they were very close, made enough loud noise to scare the animals into retreat. Borodavka’s defensive approach was replaced by Sahayidachny’s offensive approach. The Cossacks made night attacks, using a small number of soldiers while killing many Turks. In daytime attacks, the Cossacks, Poles, and Lithuanians advanced in 4 rows, one behind the other, which gave them the advantage of a constant attacking front line. Although Sahayidachny fell ill from an arrow wound, he persisted in leading the fighters. Almost all the bloody battles in that September were in the Khotyn area. The Turks and Tartars lost about half their forces, but could not take the fortress. On 29 September, peace negotiations began, with the peace treaty signed 9 October. The result was that Poland’s border with Turkey would be along the Dniester River, the Turks and Tartars would not make predatory marches into the territory of the Polish Commonwealth, and the Cossacks would not conduct expeditions against Crimea and Turkey. While the Cossacks had helped save the Polish Commonwealth from defeat and also helped dispel the myth of the invincibility of the Turks, they received no benefits from their victory. Deep disappointment at the duplicity of the Polish government, along with his arrow wound, led to the death of Sahayidachny the next April. For the rest of Europe and Asia, this was a turning point in the history of the Ottoman Empire, which was shown to be less than all powerful. During the rest of the 17th century, the Fortress changed hands between the Polish kings, Turkish lords, and the Cossacks. By the early 18th century, the Turks solidified their hold on the Khotyn Fortress. Assisted by French engineers, the Turks reinforced the Fortress to make it one of the outstanding defensive structures of the Ottoman Empire in Eastern Europe. The Turks built an outer ring wall of earth, wood, and stone, with a dry moat ditch crossed by a wooden draw bridge to the South Entrance Tower. About 20,000 Turks lived within the fortress at that time. There were two mosques, one built outside the walls of the inner fortification, the other being the transformed chapel. The collapsed Southwest Tower was rebuilt. Russian onslaughts against the Fortress were persistent during the 18th century, culminating in the Fortress passing to the Russians at the end of the Russian-Turkish War of 1806-1812. The church of Saint Alexander Nevsky was built in the 1830s, in the typical Orthodox style of the time, for the inhabitants of the Russian garrison. After the Russian defeat in the Crimean War in 1856, the Russian government abolished the status of the Khotyn Fortress as a military facility. After that time, the buildings fell into disrepair. The decay and destruction of the buildings was compounded by actions of the retreating Red Army in 1941. After the Second World War, Ukraine came under the USSR. From the 1960s to the 1980s some restoration work was intermittently begun on the Fortress. In 2000, after the 1991 Declaration of Ukraine’s Independence, Ukraine established the State Historical Architectural Reserve “Khotyn Fortress.” At the 370th anniversary of the Battle of Khotyn, a monument to Hetman Sahayidachny was unveiled on the Fortress grounds. Since then, the Khotyn Fortress has twice been named one of the 7 Wonders of Ukraine.
