The Battle of the Alta and the Kyiv uprising

Under 1068 the Primary Chronicle tells how ‘a multitude of Cumans’ came into the Rus’ land and how the three Yaroslavichi went out against them on the Alta near Pereiaslav: ‘in the night they went against each other’, and the Rus’ princes fled. It was one of the largest Cuman invasions of Rus’. The chronicler saw the defeat as God’s punishment: the year before, Iziaslav and his brothers, having sworn on the cross, had seized Vseslav of Polotsk at a parley on the Rsha near Smolensk and imprisoned him in Kyiv.

Iziaslav and Vsevolod fled to Kyiv, Sviatoslav to Chernihiv. The Kyivans who had escaped gathered a veche in the market place and sent to the prince: ‘The Cumans have scattered over the whole land; give us, prince, weapons and horses, and we will fight them again.’ Iziaslav refused. The crowd turned against the voivode Kosnyachko and then divided: one half went to the prince’s court, the other to the prison, and on 15 September they freed Vseslav and acclaimed him in the middle of the princely court, which was plundered of its gold and silver. Iziaslav fled to Poland. On 1 November Sviatoslav, with 3,000 men, defeated 12,000 Cumans — the chronicle’s figures — near Snovsk and captured their prince.

Vseslav ruled Kyiv for seven months. In 1069 Iziaslav returned with the Polish duke Bolesław II; Vseslav, who had marched out to meet them, slipped away by night from Belgorod to Polotsk, and on 2 May Iziaslav was back on his throne. His son Mstislav, sent ahead, killed seventy of those who had freed Vseslav and blinded others, and Iziaslav moved the market, where the veche used to gather, up onto the hill.