Khotyn Castle - Castles on Waymarking.com

In 1621, 250,000 Muslim Turks began what they hoped would be an Islamic conquest of Europe. Once past Khotyn this Turkish horde would have swarmed down on Vienna, establishing an insurmountable foothold in Europe where they would conquer Germany, France, and eventually England. Europe and America very possibly would have been Islamic today if they had succeeded. But 40,000 Ukrainian Cossacks and 35,000 Polish troops stopped them dead in their tracks here in Khotyn.

The territory where the fortress now lies in ruin was inhabited by Slavic tribes from the 8th – 10th Centuries. In 1002 Vladimir the Great, the first ruler of the Kyivan Rus, founded the town of Khotyn and built a wooden fortress that guarded the two important trade routes – one by land and the other by the Dniester River – that began in the Varangian Kingdom of Scandinavia, passed through the territory of the Kyivan Rus, and ended in the Byzantine capital Constantinople.

As the Kyivan Rus began to break up due to internal feuds, Khotyn became part of one of the first branches called the Terebovlia Principality in the 11th Century. In 1141 Volodymyrko Volodarovych united the competing principalities of Terebovlia, Przemysl, and his own Zvenyhorod and moved his capital to Galych. Khotyn became part of this newly formed Galician Principality. The last heirless Prince of Galicia died in 1199 and the kingdom was merged with the neighboring Principality of Volhynia under Prince Roman the Great. His son, Danylo Romanovich, captured Kyiv in 1239 and defeated the armies of Hungary and Poland by 1245. Thus Pope Innocent IV officially recognized him as the first King of Rus, one of the most powerful states in Eastern Europe. The Khotyn Fortress was rebuilt by Danylo in stone. A piece of that stone wall has been found within the 15th Century walls.

Moldavian Prince Dragos, a vassal to the Kingdom of Hungary, took the fortress in 1340. After 1375 it became the northern fortress of the newly independent Moldavian Principality. During its early years, the Moldavian Principality turned to Poland for protection against Ottoman-controlled Hungary. Polish forces were actually stationed in the fortress from 1450-1455 until Moldavia was forced to begin paying tribute to the Ottoman Turks in 1456.

Stephen III (the Great) inherited the Moldavian crown in 1457 and began to strengthen the independence of Moldavia against Poland, Hungary and the Ottomans. He built new fortresses and expanded the Khotyn Fortress. The courtyard was raised by 30 feet and widened. New walls 20 feet thick and 130 feet high were built. He also added three towers to the fortress. The courtyard was divided in half with one side for the Prince and the other half for the soldiers. A palace was built and the fortress became the residence of the Moldavian princes. He also dug deep basements which served as the soldiers’ barracks. This is basically the structure which is seen today.

The newly constructed fortress was put to its first test in 1476 when it successfully withstood an attack by the Turkish army of Sultan Mehmed II. In 1509 the Polish army came and destroyed the city of Khotyn, but the fortress could not be taken. But luck ran out in 1538 when Moldavia was attacked on all sides simultaneously by the Poles, Turks and Tatars. The fortress was captured by the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania under the leadership of the Grand Crown Hetman Jan Tarnowski. He blew up part of the wall with the Gate Tower, the South-East tower, damaged the South-West tower and destroyed the palace. Repairs were begun by the Poles in 1540. The courtyard was again widened by 75 feet to the south and a new Gate Tower was constructed.

The second half of the 16th Century saw the castle change hands five times between the Poles and Zaporozhian Cossacks ending with the Poles back in control in 1595. In 1600, the Wallachian Prince Michael the Brave, after having just conquered Transylvania, turned his attention on taking Moldavia. Semen Mohyla, the former ruler of Moldavia and Wallachia, and his brother Prince Ieremila Movila of Moldavia, took refuge in the Khotyn Fortress under the protection of the Polish garrison stationed there. Before Michael took the fortress, Mohyla escaped to Poland changing the balance of power again and bringing about the demise of Michael the Brave. The Polish army would return in 1615 and the famous Battle of Khotyn would begin in five more years.

The Turkish sultan began his invasion of Europe in 1620 when he took the city of Khotyn and began the siege of the fortress. The Battle of Khotyn began in September 1621 when 250,000 Turks opened fire on the fortress. The Poles and Cossacks within the walls held them off and the Khotyn Peace Treaty was signed on October 8 saving Europe from the Muslim horde. The treaty recognized the northern border of the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania was the Khotyn Fortress.

The Zaporozhian Cossack Hetman Bogdan Khmelnitsky took the fortress in 1650 only to lose it three years later when the Poles attacked from the Zhvanets Fortress across the river and the Moldavian army attacked from the south. In 1672 an icon in the St. Stephen’s Monastery in Khotyn “wept” just before the Turkish horde returned in force and captured the Khotyn Fortress and then moved on Kamyanetz-Podilsky. The Commonwealth sued for peace and gave all of Podilya to the Turks.

The Turkish control of Podilya was short lived when the Polish Hetman Jan Sobiesky made a daring attack on Khotyn Fortress on November 10, 1673. Twenty thousand Turks were massacred, six thousand drowning in the river as they tried to escape. Ten thousand Turks managed to escape and headed to Kamyanetz-Podilsky only to find the Polish residents had taken that fortress as well and denied them entrance. They wandered along the river until most of them were wiped out by Polish insurgents. This great victory catapulted Jan Sobiesky to the Polish crown. A famine forced the Polish army to leave in 1674 and the region was under constant raid by Tatar hordes. The Turks returned with 100,000 troops in the summer of 1676, but the Poles were again in control by Autumn of that year and would hold on to the fortress until the end of the Polish-Turkish conflict in 1699.

From 1699 – 1713 the Khotyn Fortress was again under the Moldavian Principality which was a vassal of the Ottoman Turks. By 1713, Khotyn Fortress was again under the control of the Ottomans and the outer walls were built to hold tens of thousands of troops. The Turks had dug themselves in but a new conflict would erupt this time with the emerging Russian Empire. In 1739 the Russian defeated 80,000 Turks in the Battle of Stavuchany and then laid siege to Khotyn Fortress which surrendered. The ensuing peace treaty returned the fortress to the Turks.

The Russians would take the fortress again in 1769 and 1788, only to return the fortress to the Turks for a peace treaty. After the Russo-Turkish War (1806-1812), Khotyn Fortress would remain in Russian hands permanently. But the Turks almost completely destroyed the fortress before they retreated. The Church of Oleksandr Nevskiy was built within the fortress territory in 1832 and the fortress was abandoned as a military entity in 1856. But the fortress still did not see peace.

The First World War and the subsequent Russian Civil War was hard on the residents of Khotyn. In 1918, the city was occupied by five different armies: Russia, Ukraine, the Moldovan National Republic, Austria-Hungary and finally Romania. The residents rose up against their Romanian occupiers in 1919 for ten days. The Romanians had regained control by February 1 and a pogrom against the residents began. Every day hundreds of people were taken to the fortress never to be seen again. Romania would hold on to Khotyn until the German forces under Hitler invaded in 1941. By 1944 the Soviet Union had liberated the city and became the new occupiers until Ukraine declared its independence in 1991 at the fall of the Iron Curtain.

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