Tula

Tula stands on the Upa south of Moscow, at the meeting of the forest country and the routes from the steppe. Its stone kremlin guarded one of the most important approaches to the capital. Beyond its walls grew a town of smiths and gunsmiths, whose skill made Tula a centre of Russian arms manufacture.

The stone kremlin was built between 1514 and 1520 as part of Moscow’s southern defences. In 1552, while Ivan IV was preparing his campaign against Kazan, Crimean Khan Devlet Giray attacked Tula. The garrison and townspeople resisted, and relief forces helped drive the attackers away. The fortress continued to anchor the line of defences that protected the lands north of the steppe. Tula’s ironworking traditions later acquired a new importance. Peter I established a state arms factory here in 1712, drawing on generations of local craftsmen. The factory supplied firearms to the army, and production continued to expand in the eighteenth century. During the war of 1812 the government required large monthly deliveries of muskets, combining factory output with the work of independent craftsmen and repairs of older weapons. The city’s workshops thus served the army long after its walls had ceased to mark the immediate frontier.