User:Segiz/Ayagoz battle

The Ayagoz battle at the end of 1717 is one of the battles in the series of the Kazakh-Dzungar wars.

Historical information
About the Ayagoz battle is known from the report of the Russian envoy to the Kazakh Khanate Boris Bryantsev, who, being in the "Cossack Horde" (Kazakh zhuz) in the winter of 1718, according to several Kazakh participants of the battle, described what happened in the autumn of 1717.

Course of battle
In 1717, a battle took place near the Ayagoz River. The 15,000-strong Kazakh army, marching under the leadership of the khans Kaip and Abulhair, raided the Dzungar nomads, met a small Dzungarian frontier detachment, from 3,000 to 10,000 people, who, For three days, the Kazakh army was detained, and with the help of another, a small (1,500 men) Dzungar detachment that came up on the third day, defeated the Kazakhs. The Kazakh army, despite its overwhelming superiority in numbers and in firearms, did not withstand the Jungar (Zyungar, Kalmyk) “cruel spear strike” —the mounted spear attack and the subsequent hand-to-hand combat — and fled.

Effects
Kaip Khan fled from the battlefield, but was killed at his headquarters, Kart-Abulkhair threw his khanate and left for Bukhara. The Kazakhs immediately lost control over the Sary-Arka (except for a part of the Turgai Valley). In 1717-1718 The Dzungars continued their attack on the territory of the Kazakhs, not meeting any organized resistance.

Leaders and causes of defeat
Analyzing the consequences of the battle, catastrophic for the Kazakhs, and the actions of Abulkhair Khan, which was not affected by this catastrophe, and which continued fighting against Russia in 1717-1917 and even laid siege to Yaitsky town, the local historian Zimanov believes that in the Ayagoz battle the troops were commanded by another Abulhair: Kart-Abulhair and Kaip Khan, both close relatives (possibly children or nephews) Tauke Khan. Following the historian Kushkumbayev, he suggested that the Kazakh army was able to clamp the Dzungar forces in a bend or headland at the confluence of Ayagoz with some tributary or ravine, where they sat down under cover of trees. Perhaps, the Kazakhs began to wait when famine would begin in the army near the Dzungars, but showed carelessness, and unexpectedly attacking the camp besieging the Dzhugarsky reinforcements, they managed to “panicked” with panic and then smash the Kazakh army, which was not ready to repel the attack.

Literature

 * Zimanov M.K. Altai star. In 2 volumes, Almaty 2011. ISBN 9789965214110 [to clarify] (Pages not specified) A. Kushkumbaev. Kazakh military in the 17th — 18th centuries. Almaty: Dayk-Press, 2001. ISBN 9965-441-44-8