The Battle of Zhovti Vody was the first major battle of the Khmelnytsky Uprising of 1648-1657, fought between an invading Polish-Lithuanian army led by Stefan Potocki and a Tatar-Cossack army led by Tugay Bey and Bohdan Khmelnytsky.
Khmelnytsky, who had launched a Cossack rebellion due to both his people's and his own oppression at the hands of Polish magnates, allied himself with the Tatars of Crimea, as he believed that the combination of Cossack infantry with Tatar cavalry could help fight off Poland-Lithuania's superior hussars. In preparation for an open rebellion, Khmelnytsky and the other heads of the Zaporizhian Sich had the Cosscaks who remained loyal to the crown, such as Ivan Barabash, executed, while receiving mutinying Cossacks into the Zaporizhian army.
The Poles made the first move of the war, with the Registered Costack Great Hetman Mikolaj Potocki sending his son Stefan Potocki with his army against Khmelnytsky's Brotherhood of Tatars. The two armies met at Zhovti Vody in present-day Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, and the Zaporizhians and Tatars formed a defensive wall of cannon-equipped wagons. The wagons were moved to make way for the Cossack riflemen once the Polish hussars slowly began their advance, and the first wave of hussars was repelled by the riflemen and by a charge of the Cossack peasants, who wielded lances and unhorsed several of the hussars. The Poles drew back, and the Crimean khan Tugay Bey was initially angered that Khmelnytsky's men had not charged the enemy; Khmelnytsky sated Bey's anger by giving him the hussars his army had taken prisoner. Overnight, a rainstorm muddied the ground, and, the next day, the second charge of the Polish hussars was foiled by the mud, which caused the charge to fall apart, and enabled the Cossacks to surge forward and massacre the struggling Polish cavalrymen. The Polish artillery initially held the Cossacks at bay, but the Cossacks stormed the artillery mound and repelled the Poles. Over the course of the ensuing weeks-long battle between the two armies, 4,700 Registered Cossacks in Poland's service switched sides and joined Khmelnytsky. The Polish army was annihilated while attempting to retreat, only days before reinforcements were to arrive.
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