Battle of Lipitsa

[4] The precise causes of the conflict are unknown; the 16th-century Nikon Chronicle claims Vsevolod disinherited his eldest Konstantin in favour of Yuri, but the older and more reliable Laurentian Codex doesn't mention this, so that this story could be a later interpolation.

[5] The war of succession broke out when Vsevolod the Big Nest died (15 April 1212), and his sons – the Vsevolodovichi – quarrelled over the inheritance.

[1][3] Although Yuri had been the son-in-law of the Olgovichi Kievan grand prince Vsevolod Chermnyi, the latter was dethroned by the Rostislavichi of Smolensk and also died in August 1212.

[6] Apart from the Suzdalian patrimonium, they sought to regain their lost control over the Novgorod Republic, where the Rostislavichi prince Mstislav Mstislavich reigned from 1210 to 1215.

The survivors reported to Yaroslav who then attacked towns along the Volga before turning back to muster forces from Novgorod and then joining Yuri and Sviatoslav at Pereislavl.

[8] The location of the battlefield was a matter of some contention until 1808, when a peasant woman from Lykovo near Yuriev-Polsky on the river Koloksha (a tributary of the Klyazma) discovered an old gilded helmet with an image of St. Theodore, the patron saint of Yaroslav Vsevolodovich.

Actor Nikolai Cherkasov, when playing the part of Yaroslav's son Alexander Nevsky in the eponymous film, wore a replica of this helmet.