Viborg Bang
The Vyborg Bang (Swedish: Viborgska Smällen, Finnish: Viipurin pamaus), as it is traditionally called in Swedish historiography, was a possibly fictional explosion which occurred at Vyborg Castle (now in Russia but then part of Finland within the wider Kingdom of Sweden) in November 1495, during an assault on the castle by forces of the Grand Duchy of Moscow as part of the Russo Swedish War of 1495-7.
According to traditional Swedish accounts of the siege, the commander of the Swedish garrison, Knut Jönsson Posse, rigged one of the castle's gunpowder magazines to explode and then deliberately weakened the defences in that sector in order to encourage the Russians to attack. When the Muscovites duly stormed the weakened area of the walls, Porse detonated the magazine, causing a massive explosion which killed a large number of the Russian soldiers and caused the rest to flee in terror as they believed the Swedish commander must be in league with the Devil. If the story is true, it would be an early instance of the use of explosive mines in European siege warfare.
However, Porse's letters reporting on his successful defence of Vyborg make no reference to any such ploy, or indeed to a major explosion at all, and nor does the near-contemporary Sture Chronicle (Sturekrönikan) in its account of the war.[1]
The first depiction of an explosion in connection with the Siege of Vyborg occurs in Olaus Magnus's famous map the Carta Marina, which dates to 1539. However, in his later Historia om de nordiska folken, Olaus gives a different explanation for the repulse of the Russians, claiming that the garrison instead scared the attackers off by dropping animals into a dark hole, causing them to howl in terror.
See also
References
- ^ Gustav Klemming, ed. (1867). Svenska Medeltidens Rim-Krönikor, Volume II. Stockholm. pp. 125–6.
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