Igor Sviatoslavich’s campaign against the Cumans

Shortly before, on the Khorol — on 1 March 1185 by the traditional dating, in 1184 by N. G. Berezhkov’s — the princes of Kyiv had routed Konchak, and Igor had been unable to reach their army in time. In late April he set out on a campaign of his own with his brother Vsevolod of Trubchevsk, his nephew Sviatoslav of Rylsk and his son Vladimir of Putivl, together with the Kovui — nomad auxiliaries of the Chernihiv princes — under Olstin Oleksich. As they approached the Donets at evening, Igor saw the sun looking like a crescent moon: it was the eclipse of 1 May 1185. His men took it for an ill omen, but Igor answered that no one knows God’s secrets. After waiting two days at the Oskol for Vsevolod, they moved on towards the Salnitsa, where scouts warned that the Cumans were armed and ready; Igor replied that to turn back without a fight would be a shame worse than death.

On Friday, 10 May, by the river Syuurliy, the Cumans who met them fled after a single volley, and the Rus’ seized their tents and captives. But at dawn on Saturday the Cuman host came on like a forest, and Igor named Konchak, Koza Burnovich and other khans: they had gathered the whole steppe against themselves. Unwilling to abandon the common soldiers, the princes dismounted and fought their way towards the Donets all day and through the night; Igor was wounded in the arm. On Sunday, 12 May, the Kovui broke and fled; Igor, riding after them to bring them back, was captured, and the army was destroyed by the Kayala, a river whose location is still disputed. According to the chronicle, only fifteen men of the Rus’ escaped. Konchak stood surety for his in-law Igor, who was wounded, and the khans went on to raid the Pereiaslav land and the country round Putivl.

Igor’s captivity was light: he could ride and hunt with hawks, guarded by twenty Cumans and attended by his own servants, and had a priest brought from Rus’. With the help of a Cuman named Lavr he escaped one Friday at sunset and walked for eleven days to the town of Donets, then went home and on to Chernihiv and Kyiv; the chronicle gives no date for his flight. His son Vladimir came back with Konchak’s daughter as his wife in 1187 or, by N. G. Berezhkov’s chronology, in 1188. The campaign is the subject of the Tale of Igor’s Campaign, known from a single manuscript acquired by Count A. I. Musin-Pushkin, published in 1800 and destroyed in the Moscow fire of 1812. Most scholars date the poem to soon after the events, often to 1185–1187, since it speaks of Prince Yaroslav Osmomysl of Galicia, who died in 1187, as alive. André Mazon, A. A. Zimin and Edward Keenan argued that it was an 18th-century forgery, but the linguist A. A. Zaliznyak (2004) concluded that a forgery was practically impossible, and the poem’s authenticity is now generally accepted.