James Baquet

Today’s column is about a battle between two bodies that I had never heard of (and yet it’s important for all that). This is often the case when countries merge, split up, or are overtaken by others.

On one side is the Republic of Novgorod, whose prince, Alexander Nevsky, became the subject of a “historical” drama by the Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein (though he modified the events of the battle significantly). Novgorod, as you probably don’t know (and neither did I), was an East Slavic state that occupied part of today’s Russia and Finland, and stretched from the Baltic Sea in the west to the northern Ural Mountains in the east. It existed from the 12th to the 15th centuries, until it fell to Ivan III, called “the Great,” and became part of what is now Russia.

Meanwhile, the other side of the battle was a bunch of Crusaders. We generally think of the Crusaders as going east to fight the Muslims. But in fact, there was a series of Northern Crusades, mostly in the 12th and 13th centuries, against the pagans around the Baltic Sea, as well as the eastern Slavs who were the “wrong kind” of Christian: They followed Orthodoxy, which did not owe its allegiance to the Pope in Rome.

The reason today’s battle is important is that the Crusaders’ defeat dealt the final blow to this phase of the Northern Crusades. Also, it has a cool name.

About 5,000 men fought under the Prince of Novgorod. An army of roughly 2,600, composed of members of the Livonian Order (a branch of the Teutonic Order), along with men from the Bishopric of Dorpat (a Roman Catholic diocese in what is now Estonia), fought under the Bishop of Dorpat, who was also the prince of the same area.

On April 5, 1242, they met near — and literally on the frozen surface of — Lake Peipus, on the boundary of the modern countries of Estonia and Russia. This unique terrain gives the Battle of Lake Peipus its more common name: the Battle on the Ice.

Outmanned, the Crusaders became exhausted from struggling on the slippery surface, and were soundly defeated. Eisenstein’s film depicts the heavily-armored knights sinking through the surface of the cracking ice — good filmmaking, perhaps, but probably ahistorical.

Vocabulary:

Which words above mean:

1. gave, effected

2. land form

3. not true to the facts

4. strike, damage

5. the forms of Christian belief found in Greece, Russia, etc.

6. changed

7. loyalty, support

8. not offering a good grip

9. borde

10. was beaten (by)