# Battle of the Cosmin Forest

The Battle of the Cosmin Forest (1497) (Romanian: bătălia de la Codrii Cosminului; Polish: bitwa pod Koźminem) was fought between the Moldavian Prince, Ștefan cel Mare (Stephen the Great), and King John I of Poland (John I Albert) of the Kingdom of Poland. The battle took place in northern Moldavia, about 50 km north of the-then capital of Suceava (Polish: Suczawa), in the hills between Adâncata (nowadays Hlyboka), situated in the valley of the Siret River, and Cernăuți (nowadays Chernivtsi), situated in the valley of the Prut River, and resulted in a major victory for the Ottomans and their Moldavian vassals.

## Reasons for the war

John I Albert was elected due to his advocacy for an offensive policy against the Ottomans, and he made an alliance with Venice and Hungary for a joint effort against them. Stephen the Great of Moldavia refused to join the alliance fearing that Moldavia would be the main scene of any Polish–Ottoman war. Albert's efforts to displace Stephen led to a quarrel with Ladislas of Hungary who considered Stephen as his vassal. This broke up their recent alliance and as a result, Albert planned on achieving his objectives without any foreign help. After some years of preparation, Albert sent an envoy to Istanbul asking for peace but Bayazid II rejected this and both sides were ready for war by 1497.

## Battle

Albert was able to raise an army of 80,000 men and 200 cannons. In the summer of 1497, he set out planning to reconquer the fortresses on the northern Black Sea coast and take control of Crimea and the Danube Delta, while Stephen the Great of Moldavia was able to secure Ottoman support.
The campaign started on the wrong foot, with John I Albert entering Moldavia at Hotin and - despite sound advice to the contrary - deciding not to take the fortress, but to go straight for the capital city of Suceava. Later, this would prove a fatal mistake: by this time Stephen's scorched earth tactics were already common knowledge, as he had used it successfully several times before against the Hungarians and the Ottomans; yet John I Albert failed to secure his communication lines with Poland. Supply from home proved impossible and the Poles were forced to live off an already depleted land.
After the abortive siege of Suceava (26 September - 16 October) - with the taking of the recently rebuilt and reinforced fortress nowhere in sight (despite having used heavy siege artillery on its walls), and facing famine, disease, bad weather plus the prospect of coming winter - John I Albert was compelled to lift the siege. After some negotiations, the Poles left Suceava on 19 October; apparently Stephen had granted them safe passage on the condition that they return to Poland on the same way they had taken when marching on Suceava and warning that he will not allow another part of his country to be devastated by the Polish troops in their retreat.
John I Albert formally accepted this condition; however, in practice, he decided to retreat on a different and unfamiliar route through Bukovina to Sniatyn, instead of taking the route to Kamieniec Podolski (Camenița) through Hotin (Chocim), knowing fully well that abiding by Stephen's condition would have spelled death for the exhausted and starved Polish troops, as they already had devastated that region on their way to Suceava, in an attempt to keep the army supplied.
However, breaking the arrangement previously agreed upon proved to be the fateful mistake that Stephen was waiting for all along: on 26 October he ambushed the Poles while they were marching on a narrow road passing through a thickly wooded area known as The Cosmin Forest. Thus, John I Albert was unable to deploy his forces, rendering the Polish heavy cavalry completely useless. The several phases of battle lasted for three days, with Stephen routing the invading army, which was forced to flee in disarray, harassed all the way by the forces of the prince. At the same time a Moldavian contingent intercepted on 29 October a hastily assembled Polish relief force and completely annihilated it at Lențești.
Once back in open space, the Poles were able again to take advantage of their heavy cavalry, and that part of the remaining troops which managed to retain a measure of order and discipline succeeded in crossing back into Poland - despite Stephen's last effort to engage the remnants of the king's army in a battle of annihilation when they were trying to ford the Prut river at Cernăuți.

## Aftermath

After the battle, John I Albert hastily returned to Poland (suffering another major defeat on the way where 5,000 Polish soldiers were killed in Bukovina) and built the Kraków Barbican, fearing an attack by the Ottoman Empire after his successive defeats. During this time, the Ottomans and Tatars, with the aid of Stephen of Moldavia, invaded the southeastern corners of Poland. This took place in the spring of 1498: after crossing the Dniestr, the invaders ransacked Red Ruthenia and Podolia, capturing as much as a hundred thousand people and reaching as far as Przeworsk.
The walls of Kraków were strengthened and additional fortifications were built to defend the city in case the Ottomans reached the city.