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People: John Oxley
Topic: Orsha, Battle of

Orsha, Battle of

Years: 1514 - 1514

The Battle of Orsha is fought on September 8, 1514, between the allied forces of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland, under the command of Hetman Konstanty Ostrogski; and the army of the Grand Duchy of Moscow under Konyushy Ivan Chelyadnin and Kniaz Mikhail Golitsin.

The Battle of Orsha is part of a long series of Muscovite–Lithuanian Wars conducted by Muscovite rulers striving to gather all the former Kievan Rus' lands under their rule.According to Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii by Sigismund von Herberstein, the primary source for information on the battle, the much smaller army of Poland–Lithuania (under thirty thousand men) defeated a force of eighty thousand Muscovite soldiers, capturing their camp and commander.

These numbers and proportions have been disputed by modern historians.

“What experience and history teach is that nations and governments have never learned anything from history."

―Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Lectures (1803)