Alexander Nevsky's famous battles may be smaller than the legend suggests
Alexander Nevsky is celebrated as the prince who beat Swedes on the Neva and German knights on a frozen lake, a saint, a hero of a 1938 film. Yet no Swedish source mentions his great river battle, and some historians argue his real legacy was helping entrench Mongol rule over Russia.
Born on 13 May 1221 in Pereslavl-Zalessky, Alexander was a son of Grand Prince Yaroslav II and grandson of Vsevolod the Big Nest. In 1236 the trading republic of Novgorod accepted him as its prince, a post approved by the city assembly, which wanted his troops. When his father left in 1238 to deal with the Mongol invasion of the northeast, the teenager began ruling on his own.
On 15 July 1240 his small force surprised a Swedish-led army where the Izhora meets the Neva. The fight was later treated as a national turning point, and in the 15th century it earned him the name Nevsky, of the Neva. But it appears only in two thin Russian accounts and may have been one of many border skirmishes, inflated later. Wary of his growing power, Novgorod expelled him within months, then recalled him in 1241 when Livonian crusaders pushed east.
On 5 April 1242, on frozen Lake Peipus, his men defeated Livonian heavy cavalry in the Battle on the Ice, and the Germans soon handed back occupied Russian land. Soviet historians hailed it as saving Russians from German domination; sceptics note that one contemporary chronicle made his brother Andrey the hero. Alexander also secured Novgorod's first treaty with Norway in 1251 and fought the Swedes again in 1256.
Toward the Mongols he was loyal. In 1252 he became Grand Prince of Vladimir after his brother Andrey's defiance of the khan ended in exile, and in 1259 he forced Novgorod to pay the Golden Horde tribute it had refused. One historian dated the start of the Tatar yoke to that betrayal of his brothers rather than to the invasion itself. He died on 14 November 1263, was made a saint in 1547, and his image was later used by Peter the Great and by Soviet wartime propaganda.
Source: Alexander Nevsky
