On 27 January 1527 (a Julian date, since the Gregorian calendar did not yet exist), the army of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania under Grand Hetman Konstanty Ostrogski overtook a Crimean Tatar raiding force near Olshanitsa, south of Kyiv, and routed it in a sudden attack. The battle was the last great victory of a commander whom 16th-century chroniclers compared to Hannibal, and a heavy defeat for the Crimean Khanate in the lands of the Grand Duchy.
A winter raid
In the early 16th century the Crimean Khanate launched regular slave raids into the southern lands of Poland and Lithuania. Late in 1526 a large raiding army struck into the lands of the Grand Duchy. The Lithuanian encyclopedia VLE describes Tatar raiders plundering what is now Ukraine and southern Belarus from the end of December 1526; the Vytautas Magnus University article dates the invasion to the autumn of 1526 and says the Tatars reached Polesia.1
Ostrogski had been Grand Hetman of Lithuania since 1497. He was already famous for his victory over Muscovy at Orsha in 1514, told in our article on the Battle of Orsha. The Encyclopedia of Ukraine notes that the chronicler Maciej Stryjkowski called him a “second Hannibal”. With Ostrogski rode Jerzy Radziwiłł, Field Hetman of Lithuania.2
The battle
Ostrogski's army pursued the raiders and caught them near Olshanitsa, on the morning of 27 January according to an article published by Vytautas Magnus University. The VLE gives the Lithuanian force as about 7,000 cavalry and the Tatars as more than ten thousand, while the same university article cites contemporary estimates of 20,000 to 30,000 Tatars and stresses that the figures vary. A sudden attack broke the Tatar army and most of it was destroyed. The university article adds that fighting continued on 28 January.3
The exact battlefield is not certain. The VLE places it on the Olshanitsa, a tributary of the Dnieper about 30 km southeast of Kyiv, while the university article locates the encounter on the upper course of the Vilshanka river near the village of Mala Vilshanka.4
Captives and prisoners
The numbers attached to the victory are large and uncertain. The Vytautas Magnus University article says Ostrogski freed 40,000 to 80,000 captives the Tatars were driving south. The Encyclopedia of Ukraine gives a different detail, that 25,000 Tatars were taken prisoner and settled near Ostroh. Neither figure can be checked against a single reliable count, and both should be read as the estimates of chroniclers and later historians.5
The victory was widely publicized. Justus Ludwik Decjusz (Decius) wrote about the battle, and the historian Dariusz Milewski, writing in Codrul Cosminului in 2019, has studied how Decjusz, Bielski, Stryjkowski and other 16th-century authors presented Ostrogski as a model victorious commander.6
Aftermath
According to the VLE, the defeat, together with other factors, left the Crimean Khanate unable to mount strong raids into the Grand Duchy for some time afterward. Olshanitsa was also Ostrogski's last great victory. He died in Vilnius on 10 August 1530 and was buried in the Kyiv Cave Monastery. A memorial sign to the battle was put up at Mala Vilshanka in 2008. For other victories of Polish and Lithuanian arms against stronger enemies, see Polish victories against the odds.7
