Bendery fortress - one of the oldest buildings in our region, its history is unique. More in the thirteenth century here, from the Black Sea from the Akkerman fortress, along the Dniester River, Genoese ships rose. The Genoese, seafarers and merchants, build a trading post on the high right bank of the river to protect themselves and their goods, and most importantly, the existing crossing.
In 1538 After the fall of Crimea, the Ottoman Empire conquered the Moldavian Principality and, by order of Sultan Suleiman I Kanuni, expanded and rebuilt the Genoese trading post with the help of Italian engineers. By 1541 there is already an 8-tower castle built according to the Western European model. Left-bank fortifications were built, controlling not only the crossing, but also port facilities on the river. In 1584 to protect against the raids of the Cossack, Moldavian and Polish detachments, which caused serious damage to the fortress, on the orders of the Turkish Sultan, the Moldavian ruler Peter Khromoy arrives in the Bendery fortress with a large detachment of builders and proceeds to restore the destroyed fortifications. Also, to protect the citadel from its three sides, a deep ditch was dug, a Watchtower was built, the Lower Fortress with three towers and an additional ditch was being built.
In 1619 Turkey, concerned about the threat of Poland attacking its southern borders in order to seize the Black Sea coast and directly Bendery, is actually laying a new fortress. Castles with high stone walls, which, with the advent of heavy siege artillery, could no longer perform full defensive functions, are being replaced by earthen bastion-type fortresses capable of withstanding powerful artillery. The architect surrounded the urban settlement adjoining the citadel with the Lower Fortress with a wide earthen moat, in which bastions and semi-bastions, as well as artillery platforms, had already been designed. The stone finishing of the moat and fortifications in the moat was finally completed only by 1708. The upper part of the fortress, in terms of its scale and length of fortifications, became for those times a colossal fortification with a total area of almost 70 hectares. and has reached our days in approximately this form. This is how the Turkish traveler Evliya Celebi described her. Charles XII, the Swedish king, who in 1709 fled with the remnants of his army after the defeat near Poltava with Hetman Mazepa and his Cossacks, spent more than three years under the walls of the Bendery fortress. After the death of Ivan Mazepa, Philip Orlik becomes the hetman of the Zaporizhzhya army, who writes the “Pacts and constitutions of the laws and liberties of the Zaporizhzhya Army”, in this document, 77 years before the adoption of the American constitution, power is divided into three branches: legislative, executive and judicial. Karl Friedrich von Munchausen was also part of the Russian troops under the command of Field Marshal Munnich. In the summer of 1738, along the left bank of the Dniester River, the Russian army, which included Munchausen, approached the Bendery fortress. It was over our fortress that the resourceful baron flew on a cannonball, first in Russian, then in Turkish, and returned to the location of the Russian troops. Minih fortress was never able to take. Baron Munchausen subsequently returned to St. Petersburg, from where he soon left for Riga, where he rose to the rank of battalion commander of the Brunswick Cuirassier Regiment. He personally, on guard, met the future Empress Catherine II.
Witnesses three Russo-Turkish wars were the walls of the Bendery fortress. During the Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774) Russian troops under the command of General-in-Chief Pyotr Panin on the night of September 15, 1770 stormed the Bendery fortress. But in 1774 were forced to leave her under a peace treaty concluded in Kyuchuk-Kaynardzhi. The fortress was again occupied by the Turks. During the Russo-Turkish War (1787–1791) Russian troops under the command of G.A. Potemkin in 1789 approached the Bendery fortress. Thanks to the victories of A.V. Suvorov under Rymnik, the surrender of the fortresses Ochakov and Akkerman by the Turks, in response to the ultimatum the fortress November 4, 1789 capitulated. According to the Yassy peace treaty, the right bank of the Dniester with the fortress again departs to Turkey, the Russian troops again leave the Bendery fortress.
AND in 1806When Napoleon occupied the states of Europe without a fight, the corps of the Russian army under the command of General Meyendorff approached the Bendery fortress, with the help of generous gifts and bribery of the seraskir of the Gassan Pasha fortress, Russian troops entered the fortress. December 18, 1806. the sultan declared war on Russia, which lasted until 1812. According to the Bucharest peace treaty, the fortress forever passes to Russia, enters the newly formed region of the Russian Empire - Bessarabia. Ivan Kotlyarevsky, Ukrainian writer who participated in the liberation of the fortress from the Turks, in 1806 described this event in the "Journal of Combat Operations of the Corps of the General of the Cavalry K. Meyendorff."
Russian military engineers are developing a plan to transfer the city from the walls of the fortress to the banks of the Dniester. In fact, a new city is being built. Since 1812 and before the start of the First World War, more than 100 regiments and units of the Russian imperial army were deployed in the fortress and the city, including the 55th Podolsky Infantry Regiment, which had a significant impact on both the look of the city and its history, having stood in the city for more than 30 years.
From that moment on, the Bendery fortress became a strong rear of the Russian army: numerous warehouses of weapons, supplies, and food were built in the fortress. A 1st class hospital is also being built. In 1833 The construction of the fortress church of Alexander Nevsky was completed. For the period from 1822 to 1916. the city and fortress were visited by four Russian emperors: Alexander I in 1822, Nicholas I in 1828, Alexander II in 1861 and in 1871, Nicholas II in 1916. The fortress fell under Romanian occupation twice: after World War I -wars, from 1918 to 1940, and during the Great Patriotic War, from 1941 to 1944. Beginning since 1946 the 2nd separate heavy consolidated pontoon regiment is constantly stationed in the fortress, as well as various units of the Soviet army. It was during this period that the fortress began to be built up with modern buildings.
Since 2008 a systematic reconstruction of this unique monument of medieval fortification architecture has begun.
