Siege of Pskov 1581
Recorded location from Wikidata; battle sites are often approximate.
Key facts
| Year | 1581 | Wikidata P580 (start time) |
|---|---|---|
| Era | Early modern (1500–1799) | derived from year |
| Location | Russia | Natural Earth (modern borders) |
| Continent | Europe | Natural Earth |
| War / conflict | Livonian War | Wikidata P361 |
| Participants | Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Tsardom of Russia | Wikidata P710 |
| Coordinates | 57.8167, 28.3333 | Wikidata P625 |
About the battle
The siege of Pskov, known as the Pskov Defense in Russia (Russian: оборона Пскова), took place between August 1581 and February 1582, when the army of the Polish king and Grand Duke of Lithuania Stephen Báthory laid an unsuccessful siege and successful blockade of the city of Pskov during the final stage of the Livonian War of 1558–1583.
The first detachments of the Polish–Lithuanian army, which in the previous two years captured Polotsk (1579) and Velikiye Luki (1580), appeared at the walls of Pskov on August 18, 1581. This action completely cut off Russian forces from the territory of Livonia. The main invading force (31,000 men, Polish, Lithuanian, Hungarian, Bohemian, Wallachian, and German soldiers) laid siege to the city on August 24–26. Prince Vasili Skopin-Shuisky was nominally in charge of the defense of Pskov, but Prince Ivan Shuisky was the one to actually implement it. The latter had up to 4,000 dvoryane, streltsy, and Cossacks and some 12,000 armed citizens of Pskov and its surroundings at his disposal.
After a two-day shelling of Pskov, the Polish army attacked for the first time on September 8. The Russians repelled the assault, which resulted in heavy Polish losses.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Siege of Pskov (revision 1370744594), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; shortened by selecting paragraphs and trimming at a sentence boundary; formatting and citations removed. No text added.
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Other battles of the Livonian War
- Siege of Narva (1558) 1558
- Battle of Ērģeme 1560
- Siege of Fellin (1560) 1560
- Battle of the Ula 1564
- Siege of Reval (1570–1571) 1570
- Battle of Lode 1573
- Siege of Wesenberg (1574) 1574
- Battles of Wenden (1577–1578) 1578
- Siege of Velikiye Luki 1580
- Siege of Narva (1581) 1581
All 11 battles of the Livonian War →
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