Battle of Mush – Interesting fact. Being the first in world martial arts, the principle of “APPROACH SEPARATELY, FIGHT TOGETHER” was applied in the heroic Battle of Mush.

For the first time in world martial arts, by applying the principle of “APPROACH SEPARATELY, FIGHT TOGETHER”, Bagrat Bagratuni confronted the commander of the enemy army with such an insoluble tactical problem that he would not have been able to find a solution.

In ancient and medieval times, it was customary throughout the world to unite all forces before engaging in a decisive battle. This aspiration had a simple explanation: in conditions of imperfect telecommunications, it was often not only difficult, but simply impossible to organize the interaction of military units operating at considerable distances from each other and even deprived of the possibility of maintaining visual contact. To understand what kind of courage it took for an Armenian commander to implement such an innovation, let us note that the principle of “moving separately, fighting together” after the Battle of Mush was applied more than 9 centuries later, during the Russo-Turkish War of 1768-1774. In July 1770, near the Larga River, a 20,000-strong Russian army, led by the talented military reformer P. Rumyantsev, attacked a 100,000-strong Turkish army from several directions and defeated it. Even in the conditions of the 18th century, the application of this principle was so unusual that despite having a huge army, the Turkish side was unable to take any action. Another century later, during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, the French army was defeated at Sedan on the same principle. This principle is widely used nowadays.