At this moment of the battle, something happened that almost spoiled the success of the whole affair: the troops, having taken possession of the commercial part of the city, indulged in robbery, their ranks were destroyed and disorder began; the Tatars took advantage of this, went on the offensive and their onslaught was so cruel that the disordered regiments were overturned and ran in disarray; Finding no way out, many threw themselves straight off the wall.
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Scientific and Industrial Museum in Kazan.
At that moment, the Terrible Tsar, leaving the church and standing near his banner, ordered his last selected squad to be sent to help. The appearance of these 20 thousand fresh soldiers not only restored order, but also solved the matter. Suppressed by superior forces, the Tatars retreated step by step and, finally, Ediger was taken into his fortified courtyard, where with a small handful of defenders he held out for about 2 more hours; but, finally, this shelter was destroyed, and the intruder rushed to the opposite exit. There, at the Elbugin Gate, the path was cut off by a detachment of Prince Kurbeky.
In the end, only a relatively small number of betraline defenders of Kazan swam across the river; although Kurbeky’s detachment was chasing them, the swampy terrain served them as good protection. b
Kazan was taken. Not a single one of its defenders remained alive. The guards killed all the men, taking captive only women and children. It can be unmistakably said that on this day in Kazan there were more
50 thousand helpless orphans in the most desperate situation; Perhaps this is where the old Russian nickname “Kazan orphan” came from.
Having received joyful news about the capture of the city, the tsar served a prayer service and planted a cross on the spot where the tsar’s banner stood during the last battle.
On the same day, a wooden church was built on this site in the name of Ne-
man-made Savior (later, during the construction of the Kremlin, the church was moved to the place where the Savior Monastery is now). Having given all the treasures of the city, as well as women and children to the army, Toann the Terrible took as a military prize only Tsar Ediger, captured in the after-day battle, with his banners and cannons.
On October 4, when the entire city was cleared of corpses, the tsar chose a place to build the Church of the Annunciation (now the cathedral), and then, having established some order in Kazan, if possible, calming the city and its surroundings and leaving an army of five thousand in it, Toann the Terrible returned to Moscow.
Thus the proud stronghold of the Kazan kingdom fell.
Soon after the conquest of Kazan, an order followed to build a stone fortress (the present-day Kremlin) instead of a wooden one, and then a strong garrison was placed there under the command of the governor, and also the civilian part; The order written by the Terrible Tsar in his own hand was supposed to serve as a guide to the administration of the newly conquered country. To strengthen Christianity, an archbishop's caoedra was established, and in order to reduce the reasons for conflicts between Orthodox and Muslims, the latter were evicted beyond Bulak, where the Tatar settlement that exists to this day was thus formed. The first archbishop of Kazan, Gury, became the main champion of the mental education of the region; The first teachers, spiritual educators and the first schools were monks and monasteries. It was at the monasteries that schools were established for Tatars who wanted to convert to Orthodoxy. Needless to say, the first Russian settlers of Kazan were people of the then military class. In general, one cannot help but say that Toann the Terrible, having conquered the Kazan kingdom, apparently sought not only to pacify and calm the region, but also to turn Kazan into the administrative and spiritual center of the entire middle and lower Volga region.