Salvete Omnes,
re: Cecora-Chocim battles theme as the anniversaries are here-
let us turn our attention to the Ottoman forces that 401 year ago took to the field against the Polish-Lithuanian Crown army that marched into Moldavian territory in September 1620AD.
Faced with the Commonwealth invasion led by grand hetman Stanislaw Zolkiewski the Ottoman Empire command in the region had various types of troops available to them, namely, the imperial troops paid by the state, nobles levy (toprakly) and finally the vassals,allied and tributary troop. The most important allied soldiers were units brought by the Crimean Tatars and steppe Tatars (Nogai, Budjak etc).
The experienced northern Ottoman commander beylerbey of Silistria Iskander (Alexander) Pasha who according to the Turkish sources could have been Hungarian, tall and brave (like Rustam of the ancient fables) shaved his beard in a Bulgarian fashion leaving a big mustache - was to command this rather motley of forces to face the invasion.
Iskander-Pasha was rather quite experienced in warfare against our Polish-Lithuanian armies on this front.
as far as I can gather he might have been one of the lower Ottoman and Tatar commanders led by Ibrahim Pasha, Wali of Silistria, that defeated large Polish-Lithuanian army (large component consisted of winged hussar banners) at Sasowy Rog on July, 19 1612AD;
Iskander Pasha is certainly known as the victorious commander over another Polish-Lithuanian army (that had large contingent of winged hussars) again at Sasowy Rog in Moldavia on August 2, 1616. His command contained Ottoman, Tatar, Moldavian, Wallachian and Transylvanian troops.
In the summer of 1617 he commanded a large (perhaps 40,000 strong) army, but apart form raiding some villages, including burning of Raszkow on the
Polish side of Dniester, there was no large action against the Polish
side recorded. But by standing on the border, i.e, Dniester river, and threatening the Polish-Commonwealth with a savage invasion, this warlike demonstration resulted in a peace treaty of Busza (September 23, 1617), where Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth agreed to stop interfering into the Moldavian, Wallachian and Transylvanian(Bethlen Gabor ) affairs, stop the Zaporozhian Cossack invasion into the Ottoman lands, and return Chocim castle, on the Moldavian side of the Dniester Rive, to the Moldavian principality. The Ottomans were to stop the Tatars from riding into the Commonwealth. Both sides immediately and consequently always failed on the prohibition of riding each other by their proxies.
The 1620 found him rather short of large number of Ottoman troops when compared with 1617 and without any support from Bethen Gabor and other vassals, but the Tatars were present and ready, and he was aided by various Ottoman regional commanders with their very limited troops -
We know that had some jannissaries and sipahi cavalry units, and Ottoman artillery. Probably he had a body guard of chosen troops, including the deliler (deli singular) or guard cavalrymen, and all his Ottoman commanders had such bodyguard troops. Chronicler Naim claimed that Iskander Pasha had only 1000 of his own troops.
Five other sanjaks provide some troops, commanded during the battle by these commanders: Jusuf Pasha beylerbey of Rumelia, Circassian Hussein Pasha, Nikopol Mutasarrif Chyzyr pasha, Vidin Mutasarrif Sarymsak-Terjaki Muhammed Pasha (after the ''Collectanea or the compliation of Ottoman' primary sources translated into Polish by Sekowski, and published in 1824 in Warsaw, Congress Poland)
Crimean Tatar horde units were led by Galga Soltan Devlet Giray, aided by Neberd Giray and varied in number, more about the numbers below.
Uymak(horde) of the Nogai Tatars was commanded by their zealous ghazi warrior and enemy of the Christian foe - Kantemir Murza and his brave sons- Urak Mirza, Selman-shah and Ynayet-Shah and Weli-shah.
Finally there were also Wallachian tributary troops
Period Ottoman Turkish sources claimed that iskander Pasha had less than 10,000 soldiers under his command.
Polish contemporary sources saw various numbers - 10-15,000 Tatars and about 2-300 Ottoman Turks plus Wallachian tributaries.
We should also think that there were camp servants - all professional cavalry and troops had servants, all noble cavalry had armed servants and non combatant retinues, and also led thousandth of animals, spare horses, train and pack animals, and animals for food. Also Ottomans often counted all living beings as the part of the army, but it appears that here they just counted the combatants.
Polish historian Majewski in his book 'Cecora,' p 180, set forth the following numbers for the combined forces commanded by Iskander Pasha:
2000 Ottoman soldiers (imperial?)
2-3000 Nogai Tatars
6-8000 Crimean Tatars. led by
eg Leszek Podhorodecki saw the Iskander Pasha army as:
4-6,000 Ottoma Turks and Wallachians
5,000 Nogai under Kantemir Murza
6-8,000 Crimean Tatars
...
Valete
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