In the summer of 1735, during their raids into the
Caucasus, the troops of the
Crimean Khan Qaplan repeatedly violated the border with the
Russian Empire, which greatly worried it. Since the army of the
Ottoman Empire was tied up in the war with the
Safavid Iran. The Russians decided to organize a campaign in the Crimea and "eliminate the Tatar threat." On 20 July military cabinet under
Christoph Münnich's command decided to march into Crimea, but in a hurry it was not possible to assemble the planned 56,475 people, besides the
field marshal himself fell ill, so only a part of the troops went – 39,000 – of which more than half were representatives of the
Don Cossacks. The corps' actions were initially successful. Russians rapidly descended down the
Dnieper, heading to Crimea, the most important event was the Battle of the
Konski Vody, where, according to the Russians, 1,200 Tatars died and 47 more were captured, 7 people died on the Russian side and 6 were wounded. Such successes motivated the commander to continue the campaign. However, the first setbacks soon began. The Tatars used
scorched earth tactics, which made it impossible to find
fodder for the horses, which created problems. But the main snag was that the weather deteriorated significantly, some even began to snow, which led to illness in the troops. Leontiev, seeing this, stood at the Gorskie Vody tract on October 10. At the subsequent council, it was decided to start retreating 3 days later. During this period, no one disturbed the Russian Army, and it returned in good order with 9,000 sick soldiers. The campaign against the
Crimean Tatars provoked a violent reaction in
Constantinople, which led to the outbreak of a new war of the Russian-Austrian alliance against the Turks. ==References==