Informowanie o wyprawie wojennej w końcu XVII w. – przypadek Johanna Reyera i kampanii krymskiej 1689 roku
Account of a military expedition at the end of the 17th century – the case of Johann Reyer and the Crimean campaign of 1689

Summary/Abstract: The article pertains to the German-language account of the Russian army’s expe-dition against the Crimean Tatars in the spring of 1689 . The author of this narration was a Prussian diplomat and secret councilor Johann Reyer . In 1688–1689 he traveled to the Moscow court as a prince-elector’s representative . The source and content analysis of the report from the expedition that he provided, based on the original Russian text, enables an exploration of how military events and warfare were perceived and understood at the end of the 17th century . The analysis has showed that Reyer understood and analyzed the war-time events in the same way as the company of the Russian commander-in-chief Vasily V . Golitsyn, by whose members the original Russian account was written . The data which he provided for the prince-elector’s court had some informative potential, but it lacked any analytical purpose of any kind . Therefore, even if among the military men on the Hohenzollern’s duty at the end of the 17th century there were people capable of rational and systematic analysis as well as critical reflection regarding military issues, informants such as Reyer were not able to provide them with data of sufficient quality . Johann Reyer’s case shows that the phenomenon of rationalization regarding military affairs at the end of the 17th century among the elite of Branderburg-Prussia had not yet begun .

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