Qualla: Battle of Berezan (1788)

Battle of Berezan (1788): Introduction

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

They took the guns first, then turned them around. In the autumn of 1788, the Black Sea Cossacks came at the tiny island of Berezan in their shallow boats, seized the Ottoman cannon that had been meant to keep them out, dragged their own guns up from the water's edge, and began methodically battering the island's fortress from close range. With Russian boats adding their fire from the water, the whole assault was over in a matter of hours. For a fighting community that had lost its homeland and was searching for a new one, it was a hard-won prize at the mouth of the Dnieper.

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Battle of Berezan (1788): A People Between Empires

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Black Sea Cossack Host was a new formation for old warriors. Descended in large part from the Zaporozhian Cossacks whose stronghold had been dissolved a decade earlier, these horsemen and boatmen now fought for the Russian Empire in its latest war against the Ottomans, prowli...

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Battle of Berezan (1788): A Few Hours' Work

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

After the heavy fighting around Ochakov, the small island had been more or less forgotten, which left an opening. The Cossacks struck. They captured the enemy's cannon and swung them against the very fortress they had defended, then hauled ashore their own guns, taken from the bo...

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Battle of Berezan (1788): The Cost and the Memory

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The reckoning, as recorded in Prince Potemkin's report, was lopsided but not bloodless. The Ottoman garrison lost eighty killed and three hundred and twenty taken prisoner. The Cossacks lost twenty-nine men in all, and the accounting names their ranks with a fighting community's ...

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