One Minute History - The Battle on the Ice #horsetory
5I’m a sucker for battles with cool names, so you know I have to talk about the Battle on the Ice. On April 5, 1242 an army under Prince Alexander Nevsky of Novgorod fought the Teutonic knights and crusaders of the Livonian Order on the frozen surface of Lake Peipus, which sits on the border of the modern states of Estonia and Russia. Both the Catholic Livonian Order and the Orthodox Republic of Novgorod sought to conquer and convert the pagans of Estonia, and this religious friction led to open war in 1240. Two years later, Alexander Nevsky marched his army to the Livonian border and baited the overconfident crusaders onto the ice of Lake Peipus. After wearing the Livonians down with a pitched battle on the slippery surface of the lake, Nevsky sent in his cavalry to rout the exhausted knights. The Battle on the Ice halted the eastward expansion of Catholicism, and this victory has since come to play a major role in the mythos and propaganda of modern Russia.