CHAPTER X

[Contents]CHAPTER XTHE MONGOL INVASIONAfter Vladimir of Smolensk had perished at the Kalka, Vladimir, son of Rurik, who returned from that disastrous battle, took the Kief throne as the senior prince and favorite cousin of Mystislav, whose support he enjoyed till the death of the latter. But no sooner had Mystislav gone from the world than there rose storms of trouble because of the Kief principality. Vladimir called to mind quickly the offense of Daniel’s father, who had forced the tonsuring of Rurik. And for this act of the dead Roman he went now to take revenge on the living.As Prince of Kief, Vladimir concluded an alliance with Michael of Chernigoff, and both began war against Daniel. They would not let him have Podolia, and were jealous of his claim upon Galitch. Daniel now made an alliance with the Poles, and, since the chief troops brought against him were Polovtsi, Daniel asked Kotyan, who was his wife’s grandfather, to put a stop to the war. “Oh, father,” begged he, “stop this war; take me into thy friendship.” The Khan immediately dropped his allies and made a movement in favor of Daniel, crushing all that he met on his way. Then he vanished, and the war ceased of itself, without much injury to Daniel.Thankful for this service, Daniel made no use of the Poles, and dismissed his ally, who had not lost a warrior. Vladimir, son of Rurik, deserted by the Polovtsi, made peace with Daniel, and soon after begged his aid against Michael. This Michael of Chernigoff, so recently an ally of Vladimir, was now trying to force him from Kief, since he greatly desired that ancient city for his own use.From 1230 to 1240 war raged throughout Galitch and Volynia, Chernigoff, and Kief. More than once did Vladimir flee from Kief[226]to be succeeded by Michael; more than once was Michael deprived of his possessions. All Southern Russia, from the San and the Dniester to the Desna, was the alternate and fleeting possession of Michael and his brothers, or of the men who opposed them, namely, Vladimir and Daniel. Each side had its victory, but each met defeat somewhat later. Daniel brought aid many times to Vladimir. In one of these campaigns the two men crossed the Dnieper and captured Chernigoff; they warred on the Desna, and captured many towns in other places. More than once Michael appeared with his troops on the San and the Dniester. He seized Galitch and left his son and heir, Rostislav, to reign there. At times Michael gave towns to Daniel; at times he drove him unsparingly from Galitch regions. At times one of them fled from the other to Hungary, alternately they were hostile and friendly to each other. Once Daniel and Vladimir were defeated by Michael and the Polovtsi, which he led in. Vladimir was captured by those same Polovtsi and could not, for some time, buy his freedom. On the day that Vladimir was captured a horse was killed under Daniel, who barely escaped with his life from that battle-field. Then again not only did Michael lose Kief and Galitch, he lost Chernigoff also. At last Michael was brought to such straits that he begged for peace earnestly, and made amends to Daniel. “Much have I sinned against thee,” said he. “I have not held to my promises, I have done great harm to thee, but how many times have I wished to act otherwise, though unable, for the faith-breaking boyars of Galitch would never permit me. Now I take oath that with thee I will never have enmity.” So Daniel, with his brother Vassilko, received Michael as a relative.But this happened in 1239, when Michael’s dominions had been turned to a terrible wilderness, and the city of Chernigoff was a ruin. Up to that ghastly period wars and dissensions were constant in Southern Russia. During that troubled time Kief was without a prince really, for it passed from one hand to another so frequently that the interval during which one prince was winning the place from another was often far longer than the time he sat on the throne after winning it. Instead of asking who in that period of unrest ruled Kief, one might better ask who of prominent princes was not its ruler. The same was true of Galitch. It was difficult to say who reigned there.[227]In 1229 some of the Galitch men, faithful to the people, secretly invited Daniel to come and rule in their land. At his approach, boyars favorable to Hungary closed the gates of the city, burned the bridge on the Dniester, and used every possible means to oppose him. But the people from Ushitsa, Bobrok and Pruth regions marched in from all quarters to meet the prince “born to them,” and no party had sufficient power to check them.Daniel, forgetting the king’s opposition, and remembering only his personal kindness, did no harm to Prince Bela, who was Mystislav’s son-in-law. He allowed him to go back to Hungary, and even went with him to the Dniester. The intriguing boyars bowed now before Daniel, and only one of them, Sudislav the Traitor, went with the king’s son. The people threw stones at this boyar, and shouted: “Be off, thou disturber, thou traitor!”The next year, however, a new plot was formed against Daniel, and during the decade setting in with 1230 conspiracies and disturbances did not cease throughout Galitch. The boyars called Daniel prince, but seized for themselves everything in the country. A dissolution of all social bonds and a general decay of loyalty spread with rising rapidity. Formerly only boyars such as Sudislav or Volodislav, called Red Hair, were exalted, but now a great host broke in, boyars of whom no man had heard until that day; notorious were Voldrys and Klimyata, but no one knew of what stock they were. One Dobruslav seized the whole lower country, though he had no more right to it than a robber. At the same time a certain Grigory Vassilevitch took the upper part of Peremysl. A priest’s grandson, one Suditch, plundered actively on every side. Famous also were Lazar Domajiritch and Ivor Molibojitch, two lawless men of low origin. Such boyars “made great disturbance and robbed much,” says the chronicler. And these men were managing the fortunes of Galitch, treating now with Hungarians, now with Poles, and now with Russian princes. From one side they rushed to another, and again turned from that one with offers of service to him who could promise the profit at which they were grasping. In such a condition of Galitch Daniel now lost his heritage, not preserving one foot of land for himself in all that great region, and then again he returned to the throne of his father with apparent security.The Hungarian king, at the advice of boyars, came sometimes[228]himself, and sometimes he sent his sons thither. Bailski, with his brethren, took the side of the boyars and rose up in arms against Daniel. Finally Michael of Chernigoff appeared to take vengeance on Daniel for harassing his land, but, besides this, Michael remembered the offense against his own kinsmen in Galitch, the vile death inflicted by boyars on Igor’s sons. There, on the spot where their blood had been shed in the city of Galitch, he felt it his duty to win back the honor of his family. Hence Galitch was torn into bits and was ruled at short intervals, now by its own men, and now by outsiders. More than once intriguing boyars fell at Daniel’s feet and begged mercy, for the common people adhered to him firmly at all times. At last Bailski ceased his scheming: “I see myself,” said he to Daniel, “that I can be with no one but thee.” And then the Poles made peace with Daniel. Next the Hungarian king, Bela IV, made peace.But each success gained by Daniel was followed by the treason of boyars. Now they conspired to burn him and his brother in their palace; now to assassinate them at table while feasting. And again they roused Bailski against Daniel.Then they summoned in Daniel’s enemies from other regions of Russia, to be followed by renewed inroads of Poles and Hungarians. Michael of Chernigoff once more entered into greater friendship with Hungary than with Daniel. He arranged a marriage of his son, Rostislav, to one of Bela’s many daughters, and maintained a continual alliance with Poland. Such was the state of affairs during the dreadful ten years which succeeded 1230.Yaroslav, son of Big Nest, held Kief as prince in 1237. We know not from whom he received it, but the place fell to him without a struggle. There were two princes then who might have claimed the throne, each insignificant,—Vladimir, son of Rurik, who was still in debt for a part of his ransom to the Polovtsi, and Izyaslav. It may be that Yaroslav took Kief from these men. He left it on hearing that the city of Vladimir was destroyed by the Mongols.Michael of Chernigoff now took Kief, and put his son in Galitch, but in 1239 he left Kief because the Mongols had ruined Pereyaslavl and Chernigoff on the Alta, and were moving against the ancient capital. The Mongols sent envoys to Michael demanding surrender. The Kief people seized those envoys and slew them.[229]Michael fled straightway. Now from Smolensk came Rostislav, son of Mystislav, but he was driven out immediately by Daniel, who had at last won Galitch and mastered it thoroughly. But though Daniel had Kief, he himself did not enter it, but he sent Dmitri, his boyar, to hold the place.Daniel had completely overcome his opponents on every side. He now surpassed all southern princes, and was stronger than his father had ever been, for he had Kief in addition to Galitch and Volynia, but this was in 1239, when the dreadful hour was approaching, and it was too late to enjoy any fruit from the battles and toils which he had passed through. The very next year Kief was turned into “corpses, and ruins and ashes,” and Daniel was soon to receive the Mongol command: “Yield Galitch, and level thy walls in Volynia.”It is remarkable that the Mongol tempest was preceded not only by countless wars and mad quarrels, which produced immense suffering and anguish, but by the appearance of such omens in the sky and such marvels on all sides that ceaseless terror was born of them everywhere.Beginning with 1224, the fateful year of the Kalka disaster, the whole course of nature seemed changed throughout Russia. There was an unheard-of dry season, and a hazy heat with it; pitchy forests were burning and turf swamps were smoking all over the country; birds had not strength to fly, and fell down inanimate. In the autumn appeared a great comet; after sunset it lighted up the whole heavens, extending like a long, awful lance from the west toward the east. There were tales of floods overwhelming distant places. There were reports also of raging fires. Novgorod burned so that the flames crossed the river; all thought the end of the city was before them. In Vladimir there was a fire such as no man remembered. Besides this, there were earthquakes. In Vladimir, during mass, the holy images in churches began to quiver, the walls of the city were trembling. In Kief the stone church of the Holy Virgin sank at the corners. More than once was the sun darkened. Men who knew the movements of heavenly bodies strove to pacify people by explaining that the moon had gone through the sky, stopped in front of the sun, and thus hid it. But the sun was affected in other ways; once, while rising, it was like a small star, and no one could see where its size had gone; then[230]suddenly it appeared in full greatness; another time it sent immense pillars of light through the skies, which were green, blue and purple. Especially terrible was it in Kief; from these pillars of many-colored light a fiery cloud formed, which the wind carried forward till it brooded above the whole city. People fell on their knees and prayed to the Lord to have mercy; they took farewell of one another, feeling sure that the end of all life was then near them. The fiery cloud dropped, moved aside, and fell into the Dnieper, where it vanished without injury to any man. There was terrible famine in places, above all in Novgorod; there were neither dogs nor cats left for food in the city; men killed their own brothers and ate them; then there was pestilence. In Novgorod there were not graveyards to hold all the corpses, and fences were made around new ones, in which forty-two thousand people were buried. In Smolensk they laid out four new graveyards; in two of these sixteen thousand were buried; in the third seven thousand, and in the fourth nine thousand.Confused and scattered stories of a terrible invasion were spread among people. From the East, from the land of the Bulgars of the Volga, came reports of ill-omen, and then the tale of the “Mongol” became universal. “Oh, that is they!” was heard now in all places. “It is they who gave the Russian princes that awful defeat on the Kalka!”But who these pagans were, no man could indicate. According to report, they came of impure races hidden away in unknown regions. It was said that there was a prophecy of old concerning those people which said: “They will come before time ends, and capture all places.”The Mongols burst in from the Trans-Volga regions, through those open spaces called much later on the steppes of Tamboff and Saratoff, and attacked Ryazan boundaries.The Mongol army was enormous for that time. It seemed to the Russians as though a whole people were moving from one part of the earth to the other. This army was led by Batu, the great Jinghis Khan’s grandson, the son of his eldest son, Juchi.In attacking a region the Mongols surrounded it, as beaters surround game in a forest, and moved toward a fixed point of meeting. Batu sent envoys to Ryazan, and with them went an enchantress. The presence of this woman alarmed the Ryazan[231]people greatly. The envoys brought this message: “Give one tenth of everything: one prince in ten; one man in ten of the common people; give every tenth one from black, white, brown, and pied horses; from every kind of beast, give one out of ten; and of all wealth and all products give the tenth part to us.”The princes met, and when they had counseled together they sent back this answer: “When no one of us is living, what is left will belong to you.”The Mongols advanced with fire and sword toward the capital. The time was December, 1237, and January, 1238.To prevent these invaders from entering settled places, the princes marched out to meet them in steppe lands. Flinging themselves on the advancing hordes, they fought with desperate bravery, only to be crushed and destroyed utterly. Ingvar, who was at that time in Chernigoff, with Kolovrat, a voevoda, seeking warriors and imploring the Polovtsi to help him, returned home to a desert. Towns and villages were charred ruins, and contained only corpses which beasts of prey and foul birds were devouring. Dead princes, voevodas and warriors lay in the frozen grass, snow-covered. Only at long intervals appeared people, who had been able to hide in the forest, and who came out now to weep over the ruin of their homes.The Mongols not only surrounded the city of Ryazan with an army, but with a wall as well, and they strengthened this wall in places with firm palisades. This they called “driving the pig in.” Thus they expressed themselves, delighted that no one could escape when the city was taken. After they had finished their wall, they put up rams for battering the city walls in, and prepared ladders for storming.The Ryazan men resisted many days, and fought with desperation. They inflicted great loss on the Mongols, but, as was clear, they were weakening. Since they did not let their weapons go out of their hands, they were sure to be conquered in the end by weariness. The Mongols relieved their own storming parties, they gave those men rest, and sent forward fresh regiments. At last they succeeded in crushing the walls down and firing the city by hurling in heavy stones and blazing substances. On December 21, 1237, they mounted the breaches, and through fire, smoke and slaughter burst into the city.[232]At the same time, in the region about Ryazan, through all villages and monasteries, similar seizures and slaughters were enacted. For the Mongols it was not enough to capture cities and towns; they destroyed all the people from the aged to infants. They amused themselves with inflicting various kinds of cruel death singly; they loved also to kill men in multitudes. Made drunk, as it were, by abundance of bloodshed, they rose to a wild, boundless ecstasy.For many days this rejoicing and slaughter continued. Then groans and wails ceased in the ruined city and its environs, and all was silent. There was no one to wail, no one to groan, since all were lying dead and frozen. When the Mongols had vanished naught remained but blackened stones and charred remnants. Of many towns, cities and villages, nothing was left except stones, and cinders and dead bodies. It might almost be said that the Ryazan principality existed no longer. Those ill-fated princes, when the Mongols appeared on their southern border, sent to beg aid of Prince Yuri of Vladimir, and their relatives in Chernigoff. Kolovrat, who had been sent to Chernigoff, led back some men to the ruins of his birthplace. Amazed and maddened when he saw those ruins, he rushed forward to strike the rear of the Mongols. He overtook them at night, as they were leaving the Ryazan borders. The Mongols were terrified when they saw him. “Are not those the dead of Ryazan,” cried they, “who have risen and come to avenge their own deaths on us?”Those unknown Russians fought like furies. Then, seizing the swords from Mongols slain by them, and dropping their own weapons, they cut and slashed with more fury than ever. There was uproar and chaos in the whole Mongol army. The Mongols succeeded, however, in capturing five of the raging pursuers, whom they took to the Khan, their commander. “Who are ye?” asked the Khan. “Wonder not, O Tsar,” answered they, “that we have strength to fill the cup of death for all Mongols. We are servants of Prince Ingvar; we are of Kolovrat’s regiment, sent to conduct thee and thy warriors with honor. We conduct as many as we are able.”Tavrul, Batu’s brother-in-law, offered to seize Kolovrat. He went out on an unterrified steed against him, but Kolovrat cut the[233]Mongol in two, from his head to the saddle on which he was sitting. Then the Mongols surrounded the handful of heroes, who stood like a fortress, and not one of them yielded. All of those warriors were slain after desperate fighting. The Khan praised the dead men, and gave the five living their freedom. “The Russians know well,” said he, “how to drink the death cup with their princes.”Prince Yuri gave no aid to Ryazan. He said he would move against the enemy in person, and act separately.The Mongols turned now against Yuri. The old road from Ryazan to Vladimir lay through Kolomna and Moscow, in a country comparatively rich and well settled. Yuri sent troops to both cities. To Kolomna he sent his own son Vsevolod, and to Moscow another son, Vladimir, so young that Philip, the voevoda, was attached to his person. Leaving wife and family in Vladimir, confident that they would be safe within its walls, he himself hurried northward to levy warriors, and make ready for action. His nephews from Rostoff and Yaroslavl, the sons of Constantine, hastened to join his forces, and he hoped for the return of his brother, Yaroslav, with regiments from Kief.The Mongols made no useless delay at Kolomna. They slaughtered the inhabitants and burned down the city. One of the Ryazan princes, who had survived, joined at Kolomna the army sent out by Yuri, but in the battle which followed almost immediately every man fell except Yuri’s son. He escaped by fleeing swiftly to Vladimir, to meet a worse death in that doomed city.A fate like that of Kolomna soon struck Moscow; the place was stormed and sacked. Philip was killed, with other defenders, who fell fighting bravely. While the Mongols were dividing the rich spoils and rejoicing, they burned the city. Ordinary prisoners were killed quickly, those of distinction were crucified, flayed alive or burned. Yuri’s son, Vladimir, they took with them. The countless army, that same army of which Arabian historians wrote that on its path “the earth groaned, birds dropped dead, and wild beasts lost their senses,” opened now and moved away in various directions. From these divisions still smaller ones separated and marched off on all roads. They took in towns and settlements as a net gathers fish under water. People fled from cities and villages in crowds. They hid in caves, in dark forests,[234]and in gullies, not knowing how to escape or whither they should go for refuge. Those who were near heard from those who had come from afar that Mongols were everywhere slaying, burning, robbing churches, and cutting down old and young as they traveled. Others were leading a multitude of captives to their camps. It brought terror to look at those captives, barefoot and bloodless.February 3, 1238, the Mongols appeared at Vladimir and surrounded the city. The Vladimir men rejected proposals of surrender, and saw with dismay how the enemy strengthened their camp, and began preparations for storming. Mongol leaders rode round the city and surveyed its defenses. Then, to the amazement of all, an immense crowd of mounted commanders approached the main gate of the city, and asked, “Is Prince Yuri among you?” The people answered with arrows. The commanders replied in the same way, sending each of them an arrow at the crosses on the bell-towers glittering with golden tops in the sunlight. Then they made signs to stop shooting and negotiate. When the Vladimir men desisted, to see what would happen, the Mongols showed Yuri’s young son made prisoner in Moscow, and asked if they knew him. A cry rose. Vsevolod and Mystislav, brothers of the captive, wished to sally forth and save him, but they were held back by the people. All, from the voevoda to the last man in the city, swore to fight while life remained. All declared that they were ready to die for God’s churches, and those simple words were no idle sounds from those people.The bishops of Vladimir counseled every one to prepare for death and the last hour, to have this passing life in their memories no longer; and assured them that Christ would forget no one made worthy through the crown of a martyr. All who heard these words began to work valiantly. From old to young, every man was to fight on the walls, or wherever the need was. All armed themselves for the coming storm and the battle. On the second or third day of the siege, news spread through the city that Suzdal had been taken, that Rostoff had yielded. Men on the walls saw on the Suzdal road Mongol regiments approaching rapidly, and then they saw men, women, monks, nuns and a multitude of people led captive.That day the Mongols worked from early morning till nightfall, pulling up timber, and engines, and planting their wall-crushing[235]instruments. Next morning it appeared that they had not been idle in the night-time. A wooden wall now encircled the city. For the last twenty-four hours no man in Vladimir had slept. No person had undressed for a week past. All knew that their city was doomed. The princes, and Yuri’s whole family, many of the boyars and the people had put on the monk’s habit, making ready for death with great earnestness.On Sunday February 14, 1238, the city was stormed and captured. At daybreak the Mongols were on the walls, and before midday their work was accomplished. They did not occupy all parts immediately, though they broke in at once on many sides,—on the Klyazma, the Lybed, the Golden Gate, and the Valski sides. At one side they made a long mound, traces of which are seen even to our day. They went up along this mound and came down inside the walls on their ladders.The new city was covered with corpses. In the old city there was a stubborn defense and great slaughter. Savage fighting went on outside the walls as well. The Mongols killed every man who tried to escape. Then began the sack of Vladimir. Wherever Mongols entered, they seized what they found; they stripped the churches, taking everything of value; wherever they met with resistance, they brought piles of wood and burned all before them.When the enemy sprang in over the walls every person in Vladimir who could carry a weapon rushed “to drink the cup of death” promptly, knowing well that resistance was fruitless. The young princes, who thought to break through the enemy, were cut to pieces. The voevoda, Pyotr Oslyadukovitch, pressed heavily on the Mongols with his “children,” that is, the whole population of Vladimir, who did not desert him. They fought fiercely on the walls, and at the walls outside the city, and on all streets within it. Blood flowed till midday, and not to win victory, for that, as they knew, was impossible, but to kill as many infidels as they could, and die fighting for the holy Orthodox faith and for their country.The Mongol multitude crushed all before it; numbers conquered everywhere. The new and the old city were taken by assault, and the capital was burning from side to side in one vast conflagration.Yuri’s princess, with her relatives, daughters-in-law and grandchildren,[236]all the wives and daughters of boyars, many of the people and clergy with wives and children, and the bishop himself had taken refuge in the Vladimir cathedral. The smoke and flame of the city’s burning had reached the walls of this edifice, while round about were heard the shouts of the oncoming Mongols. Those inside the building sought safety in the galleries. Suffocating from smoke, they would have gone down again, but there was a dense crowd below pressing upward. The Mongols forced open the door of the cathedral and, rushing in, seized gold and silver, and all the church vessels. They cut and hewed down those persons who had not hidden, and those who were trying to get to the galleries. Then they brought sticks and brushwood, filled the place well with fuel, and set fire to it. Smoke rose in columns within the cathedral. The roar of the burning building and the cries of victory from the wild conquerors were heard in one dull groaning thunder, mingling with the wails, shrieks and prayers of the dying. The bishop blessed all at their parting, crying: “O Lord, stretch thy unseen hands to us, and receive the souls of thy people.” The massive walls of the cathedral did not fall; they withstood the fire and have remained in integrity to our time.The horrors of Ryazan were repeated in Vladimir. Only young women, nuns, and strong laborers were led away captive. The sick, the infirm, the weak and the aged were slaughtered at once, and without mercy. Smoking ruins alone were left of the beautiful city of Vladimir. When the Mongols marched away from the remnant of the capital, there was not a groan, or a cry to be heard from the people, for all who were in that city were lying dead.To overtake Yuri and destroy his forces was no difficult task for the savage invaders. They found him in Yaroslavl regions, on the banks of the Siti. Among other princes was Vassilko, his favorite nephew, a son of Constantine, whom his dying father had asked Yuri to treat as one of his own sons. Crushed by news from Vladimir, Yuri seemed dazed, and repeated unceasingly: “Why am I left, why do I not die with them?” Grief for children and wife was swallowed up in his anguish over the destruction of the city, the people, the bishop, and the clergy. Volunteers who were pouring in brought similar tidings from every part: “The enemy are slaying all people, burning all places; they are everywhere!” Only one thing remained: retreat to the distant north. But from[237]Vologda, and even from Galitch beyond the Volga, came news of the same universal slaughter and destruction. Three thousand men, sent as scouts to the north, returned with these tidings: “The enemy are attacking off there, they are around us far and near, they are everywhere.”Soon the struggle began on the Siti, and became straightway a most terrible massacre. Numbers crushed everything. The Mongols had scarcely begun when they had victory. Those people who were not mortally wounded, and who rose from the battle field, and a few who were unwounded fled, and hid in the forests. Yuri, Grand Prince of Vladimir, lay dead in a great pile of bodies,—his head was not with his body. More terrible still was the death of Vassilko. The young prince was taken alive by the Mongols. Attractive in mind and in person, his men said of him that whoso had served him would not serve another. He pleased also the Mongols. Batu strove to incline him to friendship. “Oh, dark kingdom of vileness,” answered Vassilko, “God has given me into thy hands, but thou canst not separate me from Christians.” He would take neither food nor drink from the pagans. Enraged at his stubbornness, they killed him most cruelly, and threw out his body to be eaten by wild beasts. The corpse of the young prince was found in a forest, under the guidance of a woman who said that she had witnessed his tortures, and Vassilko was buried with Yuri, his uncle. The headless Yuri, as found on the field of battle, was put in a coffin, but afterward the head was discovered and placed with the body, and the two bodies were taken later on to Rostoff for interment.After the destruction of Vladimir, Rostoff and Suzdal, the whole principality of Vladimir was ravaged. The lands now included in the governments of Vladimir, Yaroslavl, Kostroma, Tver and Moscow, with a part of Novgorod and Vologda, were scenes of ruin and terror. Everywhere the same marks of Mongols. Such noted places as Tver, Torjok, Volokolamsk, Yaroslavl and Mologa were sacked and burned to the ground, as well as villages and settlements beyond reckoning. The Russians looked on this invasion as a testimony of God’s anger, such an evil as a flood or an earthquake, irresistible and almighty. In small villages, when the Mongols appeared, the people grew helpless from terror; those who could escape rushed away to the forests, secreting their property[238]in the ground; what remained was left to fire and sword. Such boundless woe had never been witnessed in Russia. The surviving clergy throughout the country called on all to prepare for the last hour.The Mongols cut people down as a mower cuts grass. When they entered a province, they sent out detachments on every side; like locusts, they destroyed everything utterly. Monasteries and villages they stripped clean of all things that had value. From stores of grain they took what they needed, and burned the remainder, boasting that grass would not grow on their path.A great thaw saved Northwestern Russia. In the first days of March, the Mongols, when within a hundred versts of Novgorod, became alarmed by the swelling of rivers and turned back. Conducting their countless treasures and urging on long lines of prisoners, they moved swiftly southeastward to grass-growing regions. On the way they came to Koselsk, where they met a most stubborn resistance. A detachment attacked the town for forty-two days, but succeeded in storming the place only after reinforcements had been sent by Batu, who was enraged at this resistance. It was destroyed utterly, but its fame will never die in Russian history.Before the wooden walls of this city, the Mongols lost four thousand men and three princes. When at last they burst into the town, they were met by old and young, men and women, who rushed at them with knives, axes and other weapons, and fought with desperation from house to house, from street to street. Gradually forced back, they retired into the Kremlin, or fortress, and fought till the last man perished. Vassili, the little prince, who was very young, was drowned, it is said, in the blood of the people.The Mongols called this town “Mo balig” (town of woe), the same name which they gave Bamian of the Kwarezmian Empire, the place at which Moatagan, one of Jinghis Khan’s grandsons, fell pierced by an arrow, and where the young man’s mother, a daughter of Jinghis, rushed in at the head of ten thousand warriors and left nothing alive, not a man, woman or child, destroying even the dogs and cats, slaying everything in her vengeance.After Batu had established himself in the steppes of the Volga, he began to build Sarai, the capital of his Horde. He cleared the whole country and drove out the Polovtsi. Kotyan, the Polovtsi[239]Khan, took a remnant of his people, forty thousand in number, and settled in Hungary. The king gave him land on condition that he and his tribes became Catholic. The rest of the Polovtsi joined with the Mongols, and from that day they ceased forever as a people in Russia.Pereyaslavl on the Alta and Chernigoff were doomed now, and all who could leave those two places hurried elsewhere for refuge.When winter had again frozen the rivers and put snow on the steppe lands, the Mongols set out afresh to capture cities and slaughter new thousands of people. Batu sent a number of his leaders of ten thousand to the north again to search out and finish all places bordering on Vladimir. This work they did thoroughly in December, 1238, and January, 1239. Batu, meanwhile, took Pereyaslavl; destroyed the church of Saint Michael; slew the bishop; killed all who were useless as captives; took whatever belonged to the people and the churches; and moved on Chernigoff. The walls of that city were broken in by hurling stones, each of such weight that five men were needed to lift it. The city was stormed then and burned, the people slain, and every building plundered. One of the younger princes fell with the warriors. The chronicler states that the older princes had fled to Hungary. It is true that Michael’s heir, Rostislav, who had been left by his father in Galitch, and driven thence by Daniel soon after, had gone to marry King Bela’s daughter. Michael, himself, who at this time had taken Yaroslav’s place, in Kief, soon found it impossible to stay there.When Chernigoff was ruined, Batu commanded his brother to advance upon Kief and make a reconnaissance. From the Chernigoff bank of the Dnieper he saw the mother of cities and wondered at its beauty. Envoys were sent to demand its surrender. The Kief people slew them, and Michael fled from the capital. He went, as he thought, to a safe place, to Hungary, to be present at his son’s wedding. But, learning of the ruin of Chernigoff by the Mongols, Bela would not give his daughter to Rostislav. Michael and his son went then to the Mazovian prince, Konrad.Bolder than Michael, Rostislav, a Smolensk prince, occupied Kief, now abandoned by others. But Daniel of Galitch would not let Rostislav stay there, and seized for himself the old capital. He did not wait in Kief for Batu; he sent Dmitri, his boyar, to defend[240]the city. Daniel left even Volynia and Galitch, and went to Hungary. From there he went to Poland, for Bela himself was struck with such terror that he fled from the Mongols, and knew not where to find refuge.In 1239 the whole Russian land, if not yet under Mongols, looked on that doom as inevitable. There was such panic terror that men lost proper use of their faculties. All that interval from December, 1237, when Ryazan was destroyed, till December, 1240, was a time of destruction and captivity, and the end came only when there was nothing to destroy, and all the treasures of Russia were in Mongol hands.For the people these three years were merged in one unit of time, filled with anguish, terror and despair. It might be said that they had lost the sense and the power to count seasons. That Russian land, which in the days of Yaroslav the Lawgiver and Monomach his grandson had so easily overcome its enemies, and which in the days of Big Nest, Monomach’s nephew, in spite of all its divisions and conflicts, still preserved some appearance of oneness, existed no longer.On the San and the Dniester there was the same terror of Mongols as on the Desna and the Dnieper. From the north, from Vladimir, from Novgorod, no regiments appeared, and none were expected; no prince came with help, and no man was looking for him. The whole land was as silent as a grave or a desert. The Mongols had not captured Novgorod, but this was because they considered it as subject to Vladimir. They had been sated with bloodshed, and looked on the Vladimir region as thoroughly subjected. To avoid further evil, Novgorod had to connect itself absolutely with Vladimir, and with it carry the weight of the burden. Besides, the distant north was a country without attraction for Mongols. Beyond Novgorod lived the Chud people (Fins), whose lands extended to the shores of the Frozen Ocean. The Mongols did not consider that Novgorod could be the center of a region dangerous to their dominion, hence they left the old capital of Rurik uninjured. If they had had reason to punish Novgorod they would have razed it as they razed Ryazan and Vladimir.The Kief campaign was undertaken by Batu on a scale that was enormous; with him went his brothers and relatives: Kuyuk, son of the Grand Khan, was there, and Mangu and Baidar, grandsons[241]of Jinghis Khan, also a multitude of famous commanders,—Burundai, Subotai and others. The whole army consisted of more than five hundred thousand men.After finishing with Russia, Batu intended to pass into Hungary and destroy that country. He had sent a demand for obedience already, and a reprimand to the king for receiving Kotyan with his Polovtsi, whom Batu looked on as slaves who had fled from their master.As soon as the Dnieper was frozen, the army passed over. The Mongol warriors were so numerous, the squeaking of their wagons so piercing, the neighing of their horses and the roaring of camels so deafening, that men in the city could not hear, as was declared, what they said to one another. First the attackers surrounded Kief; next they built a wooden wall; then they erected their engines and hurled immense stones at the city walls day and night without ceasing. The mother city was defended bravely by its citizens, but available warriors were few; for so short-sighted had the princes been that even when the enemy was on the march they had continued to struggle for succession. When the Mongols had made sufficient breaches in the walls, they rushed through and began a hand-to-hand struggle. The Kief men fought desperately. From morning till evening the battle raged, but toward night overwhelming numbers conquered, and the Mongols held the walls of the city. That night the Kief men made a new wall in front of the first one, even women and children assisting in building defenses, and next day the battle continued. From every house, church and monastery people came out, and fought to the death in all parts of the city. In the churches, multitudes had gathered, and from the weight of the people and their effects on roofs and in the galleries the walls fell. Many perished in hand-to-hand conflict; others were suffocated with smoke; but none surrendered, for all knew that but one fate awaited them.For several days in succession the slaying of people and the destruction of buildings continued. The Vladimir Church fell; the Sophia Cathedral, built by Yaroslav the Lawgiver, endured best of any; the body of that church remained sound, and there is one uninjured part of the wall, on which is an image of the Virgin, preserved to the present. Of the Catacomb Monastery, the ancient church and walls were destroyed; of the Golden Gate, built by[242]Yaroslav, only ruins remained. The more violently the people defended the remnant of their city, and fought out their last hour, the more joyously did the destroyers carry on the destruction. They slew old men and children to the last one. If in other cities they had taken pleasure in general slaughter and devastation, they took tenfold more pleasure now. The strong places and the sanctuaries of a city were never overthrown with such fury, and never were the Mongols so relentless as in Kief, the city of churches. The destroyers did not spare even tombs; they forced them open, and with their heels crushed the skulls and broke the bones of the ancient princes. The havoc was so great that during the entire fourteenth century which followed, and in the fifteenth century, a large part of the city remained a desert covered with refuse. The remnants of stone buildings which had stood for centuries sank into the ground, dust drifted in over them, and then was concealed all those ruins. Of that Kief which, in the days both of Yaroslav the Lawgiver and Monomach, was compared by travelers with Tsargrad, there remained only the memory. It fell December, 1240, and was never renewed in its former magnificence, even to our day.The defender of Kief, Daniel’s boyar, Dmitri, was brought half alive before Batu, who repeated these words of praise: “The Russians know well how to drink the cup of death.” He gave him his life, and took the hero with him in his campaign against Volynia and Galitch. The boyar, continuing to serve his prince, strove to lead the Khan from ruining Galitch. He advised him to go quickly and take vengeance on the King of Hungary for harboring Kotyan and his Polovtsi, saying: “It is time to go against the Hungarians; unless thou go now they will gather great forces and exclude thee forever. Their land is a strong one.” Thus spoke Dmitri to Batu, while, in mind, he was weeping over Galitch.Batu was the more willing to hurry forward to Hungary, since he had learned that Michael of Chernigoff and Daniel of Galitch had gone to that kingdom. This, however, did not change his plan, though it may have hastened its execution, for the campaign against Galitch and Volynia was notable for swiftness. Batu on his way took through falsehood Ladyjin, a town which fought stubbornly and refused to yield. He promised the people in case they surrendered[243]to spare them and their town. At last they respected his word and surrendered. He slew every man to the last one. Kamenyets he passed, because its position seemed impregnable. Vladimir, the capital of Volynia, he took by assault and spared not one person. Galitch he treated in the same way.Moving from Vladimir of Volynia along the Būg, the Mongols advanced only as far as Brest. There, near the edge of Lithuania, Batu halted. The great swampy forests troubled him and his warriors, and he resolved to turn back. As one more example of cruelty after so many, they destroyed Brest and slew all the people. Then they moved southward.One division of Batu’s army entered Poland in 1240, ravaged the province of Lublin, and returned with great booty to Galitch. The Mongols reappeared in that country, however, in winter, crossing the Vistula on the ice, but after advancing to within a few miles of Cracow, they turned again toward Galitch, loaded with much spoil and driving before them a multitude of captives, among whom were some of the first people of Poland. They were pursued by Volodmir, the governor, who surprised them near Palanietz, and killed many. Discovering how small the attacking party was, the Mongols turned, made a furious charge, and put them to flight; then they continued their march. Soon, however, they reëntered Poland with new forces. The nobility of Sandomir and Cracow assembled their warriors and advanced to meet the oncoming Mongols, but in the conflict which followed, they were defeated with great loss.Boleslav IV at this time occupied the throne of Cracow. Fearing to remain in the citadel, he took refuge with his family in a castle at the foot of the Carpathians, and later on in a monastery in Moravia. Many of the aristocracy of Poland followed his example, escaping to Hungary or Germany; the common people sought refuge in the forests, swamps and mountains. The conquerors entered Cracow, March 24, 1241, and set fire to the city, which they found deserted; then they marched toward Breslau, the capital of Silesia, devastating the region through which they passed.On reaching Breslau, they discovered that it had been reduced to ashes by the inhabitants, who had taken refuge in the citadel with the garrison. The Mongols, after investing the fortress for several days, raised the siege and joined another corps of their[244]army to march with it against the forces assembled near Lignitz, where Henry, Duke of Silesia, was commander of about twenty thousand men. The Mongols were led by a prince (in Polish chronicles called Péta) whose army far outnumbered that of Duke Henry. The defeat of the Poles was complete. Henry fled from the field with but four of his officers; retarded by the fall of his horse, which was wounded, he mounted a second, but was surrounded, captured, and his head cut off. The Polish loss was heavy. It is told that to discover the number of the enemy killed, the Mongols cut an ear from each corpse, and with those ears filled four large sacks.They now moved forward, carrying fire and blood even to the frontiers of Bohemia and Austria. While one part of Péta’s army besieged Olmütz in Moravia, several corps of it plundered and devastated the surrounding region. Sternberg, commander of Olmütz, made a successful sortie from the citadel, killed some three hundred of the enemy, and returned in safety. A few days later the Mongols raised camp and marched toward Hungary to join the great army under Batu. It was evident that they had besieged Olmütz only for the purpose of pillaging the country round it.Before marching into Hungary, Batu had written to King Bela, demanding that he yield obedience to the Mongol sovereign if he wished to save his own life, or the lives of his subjects. Bela paid no heed to this demand, and the only measure of defense he took was to send small detachments to hold the passes of the Carpathians.There was much dissatisfaction with King Bela, for he had no military ability; another cause for the dissatisfaction was that he had received Kotyan, the Polovtsi Khan, and allowed him to settle, with some forty thousand families, in Hungary. The acquisition of this number of subjects increased the power of the king, and the hope of converting the pagans to Christianity gave him pleasure. But these Polovtsi were so displeasing to the people that in 1240 Bela had to convoke an assembly of the clergy, and the nobility of his kingdom as well as the chiefs of the Polovtsi. It was then resolved that the Polovtsi should be dispersed in different provinces, and should be assigned uncultivated districts where they could pasture their flocks and herds. Kotyan was baptized,[245]so also were his chief officers. Still the hatred of the people continued.Batu penetrated into Hungary by the pass called “Gate of Russia,” and was joined by divisions of his army which had been devastating Poland. Thence he marched toward Pest, and, camping half a day’s journey from that city, he ravaged the country. The people, thinking that Kotyan, the Polovtsi Khan, was secretly communicating with Batu, murmured against the king and demanded the death of Kotyan and his men. They attacked Kotyan, who defended himself for a time, but was at last overpowered and killed. This murder only served to increase the woes of Hungary. The report of it spread to the country, and the peasants fell on the Polovtsi and massacred them without mercy. But those who escaped united and later on avenged their people.When the Hungarian army had assembled the king marched out of Pest to meet the Mongols. The result of the conflict was most disastrous for the Hungarians. The king owed his escape to the swiftness of his horse. He took refuge near the Carpathians, where he encountered his son-in-law, who was also seeking an asylum in that country.While these events were passing in the heart of Hungary, Kadan advanced through Transylvania, seizing property, profaning churches, and leading away captives.The Mongols remained inactive during the summer of 1241, but in December of that year a detachment crossed the Danube and pitched their camp near the city of Strigonia, or Gran. The besieged destroyed all that was most valuable, killed their horses, and retired into the stone edifices to defend themselves. The Mongols, furious at loss of plunder, were careful that no person should escape. They seized and burned the principal inhabitants over slow fires, to make them declare where they had hidden their riches.At this moment news came to Batu of the death of Ogotai, the Grand Khan, and with the news an order to return to Mongolia at once.The barbarians had penetrated even into Austria, and a corps advanced to Neustadt near Vienna, but retired on learning of the approach of a large army. After the destruction of Strigonia, Kadan was sent with a detachment against King Bela. Bela,[246]who had taken refuge in Austria, retired with his family to Agram in Croatia, where he remained during the summer. Learning that Kadan was marching toward Agram, he went to Spalato on the Dalmatian coast, and then to Trau. Kadan marched with marvelous rapidity. Halting for a few days at Sirbium River, he assembled the Hungarian prisoners whom he had seized on the march, and had them all put to death. On arriving at Spalato and learning that the king was not there, he advanced at once to the neighborhood of Trau, and camped upon the bank facing the island in the Adriatic where Bela had taken refuge. There the Mongols remained through the month of March, and then, after pillaging Cattaro, Suagio and Drivasto, and killing every man, woman and child who fell into their hands, they returned by way of Herzegovinia and Serbia to join Batu. While on the march Kadan received orders to hasten, as all Mongol princes had been summoned to Mongolia.Daniel and Vassilko, on hearing that Batu had left Hungary, delayed for a time in returning to Russia. They knew not where their families were, or indeed if they were living, and their delight was unbounded on finding them. On the way home from Poland they could not draw near Brest, because of the terrible odor of corpses. Very little remained of the former Vladimir, and the ruined churches were filled with dead bodies.Batu, who had brought terror on all Europe by the destruction wrought in Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Moldavia and certain portions of Poland, was not pleased with those lands. The West was too narrow for a nomad people, and Russia became the real province for Mongols. Hungary and Poland suffered little in comparison. Batu pitched his tents and built Sarai, as has been stated, on the bank of the Lower Volga, from where it was convenient and easy to send troops in every direction, and keep conquered Russia in obedience. The Golden Horde, as thenceforth men called the Khan’s residence in Russia, was noted for wealth even in Batu’s day.Jinghis Khan, who died in 1227, was succeeded by his eldest son Ogotai, who reigned from 1229 to 1241. During that reign, Batu completed his conquest of Russia.Russia, subject now to the Mongol, learned that a new sovereign had appeared in Mongolia, but Batu, the grandson of Jinghis[247]Khan, remained their ruler. To him was given entire control of the “Kipchak Horde,” his possessions extending from a line somewhat east of the Ural Mountains to the Danube. He now counted all the Russian land as his property, and declared to its princes that they might not live on the Khan’s land unless they bowed down to him.Thus began the heavy yoke of the Mongols, which was to last for more than two hundred years.Mongol law touching subjects was brief, being this, in substance,—that not only their families and property, but their lives were entirely at the Khan’s disposition. This law, universal, fundamental, unchangeable, was applied to all conquered regions. It was inevitable to give each year one tenth of the harvest and one tenth of every kind of increase. Every man was liable to military service with the Mongols against whomsoever they might send him. Bashaks were appointed in every large town to see to the accurate fulfilment of these duties, and to keep in obedience both people and princes. At first princes left in power by the Khan were bound to appear at the Horde with yearly tribute; besides they were summoned whenever the need came. They must appear with bending knees, and bowing, and striking the earth with their foreheads. They were forced to give special gifts to the Khan, to his wives and his courtiers.When coming before the Khan, various ceremonies had to be observed. For instance, when entering his tent, each man had to cross the threshold without touching it; if he touched it death was the penalty. But before being admitted to the eyes of the ruler, princes were obliged to go through many trials by wizards. They were forced to bow to fire, to bushes, to the shades of dead Khans; to pass between two fires while the wizards and witches who lighted those fires pronounced incantations.As this bowing to bushes and fire and the shades of dead rulers took place before pictures on felt and on silk, it seemed like bowing to idols. They had also to praise Mongol customs, to drink liquor made of mare’s milk, and eat of Mongol dishes. The least show of repugnance or indifference involved peril. But, since effect was felt keenly by Mongols, kindness and terror alternated. They knew at the Horde who the men were from whom they must withhold honor, and to whom honor ought to be given. Rulers of[248]regions under Mongol dominion, but remote from Sarai and bordering on lands which were free, were received more politely than those who were nearer. The following has been stated by a man who observed the position in Batu’s day: “The Mongols take less tribute from those whose lands are remote from them, and border on others which are free, and from those whom they fear for some reason. They treat those remote subjects more kindly, so that they may not attack, or that others may obey with more willingness.” The cruel and savage Batu was sometimes fond of charming those princes who bowed down before him, and of showing magnanimity in treatment, and at such times he seemed the most kindly host possible.Though all Russia was under the Mongol, the yoke weighed with greatest burden on the lands in the center; that place which was the real heart of Russia, and had formed the principality of Vladimir. It was unspeakably more difficult for Yaroslav to manage than for princes in Volynia and Galitch. After Kief had been swept from the earth, so to speak, or crushed into it, and Batu had shown no wish to take Hungary or Poland, Galitch and Volynia, as being nearest those countries, were in the easiest position of all the principalities in Russia.Batu, in his first campaign, did not touch Smolensk in its western portions, and in the second he did not go beyond Brest in a northern direction. In the princes of Volynia and Galitch he had his last representatives. On the west was the country which for their own reasons the Russians represented to Batu as little dependent on their rule, in fact a foreign region, and purposely they called it not Rus, but Litvá. Thus of all Russian princes, the position of Daniel was most favored with reference to the Mongols. As to his rival in Chernigoff, Prince Michael, his possessions might have been called non-existent. Chernigoff and Kursk were in the worst position possible, because nearest the Mongols. Hence after the conquest, Daniel and Michael were, each in his own way, distinguished beyond other princes in Russia.Daniel knew not from childhood what rest was, and only in years of ripe manhood, after endless toil and great effort, did he secure Volynia and Galitch on the very eve of the Mongol tempest, to appear next in a fateful position from which he found no issue whatever. His principalities, which comprised the borderland of[249]Southwestern Russia in the days of Kief supremacy, were attracted to the ancient capital from the earliest, but as the Russia of Kief times existed no longer, and as Northern Russia had been turned into a Mongol possession, the ruler of Volynia and Galitch had to do one of two things: either compact his lands into a new and special body and stand apart from the rest of Russia,—alone he could not stand, for he would be obliged to associate himself willingly or unwillingly with his western neighbors, the Poles and Hungarians, and, as they were in close connection with the Holy Roman-German Empire, he might not stand apart even from union with that power (he might be forced to join Rome, the Latin communion),—or he had the other issue: to recognize and strengthen the ancient bond of Volynia and Galitch with the remainder of Russia, with that Russia which had begun in Rurik’s day in Novgorod, and which was baptized in the Dnieper under Vladimir. But in this case, he would have to suffer Mongol captivity with it, and sacrifice his own land for the benefit of the common, much suffering country. He would have to cling to the princes of the house of Vladimir, who had been turned into slaves, and bear with them the same bitter burden which they were bearing. His Orthodox feeling forbade him to join Rome and the West. But to join the other Russian princes and the rest of the Russian people in their subjection to the Mongols was also beyond his endurance; his pride could not brook that, so he languished all the rest of his life in a position without escape and without moral refuge.Hungary and Poland, crushed by the Mongol invasion, were saved only because those countries were too narrow for the nomad Mongols, who wanted the freedom of movement and the space which existed in Russia. But the Hungarians and Poles, proud of their safety, though defeated and led away captive in every encounter with Mongols, explained the affair in another way: the West was no longer afraid of a Mongol invasion. Rome, which had tried in the time of Daniel’s father to bring “the kingdom” of Galitch to the Latin religion, did not cease now to point out to Daniel, with pride, the freedom of the West from Mongol subjection, and to promise that if he would obey the True Mother he would have a right to the same freedom. The Pope explained to Daniel that the only means of saving his country from that[250]slavery which had been put on it because of its schism, was “to return” to the bosom of the Mother. He promised in that case the assistance of Poles and Hungarians and the whole Roman Empire, and offered at the same time a crown and a kingly title. Daniel refused the title and the crown, but asked very earnestly for the military assistance. He asked that Germany, Hungary, Bohemia, Poland, and all who obeyed the Holy See, should be roused to a general attack on the pagan Mongols. Rome summoned all nations against the Mongols, and to Daniel came assurance that aid from the West would not be slow in arriving.Of Russian princes Daniel alone reigned a number of years without a summons from Batu to visit the Golden Horde. He had paid no tribute and had not been to the Khan with obeisance. But the promised aid from the West came not, and in 1250 envoys arrived from Batu, who repeated the message sent to other Russian princes: “It is unbecoming to live on the Khan’s land, and not bow down to him.” To this was added: “Give Galitch.”Daniel might give Galitch, withdraw to the depth of Volynia, and be satisfied with half his inheritance; besides the country beyond Brest was unconquered. But after praying earnestly, and counseling with his brother, Daniel said: “I will go to Batu.”When Daniel reached Kief, he saw dreadful misery. He prayed to the Archangel Michael; he implored the monks to pray for him, and then sailed down the river to Pereyaslavl. Hence he went directly along by Mongol stations toward the Golden Horde, and he grieved greatly when he witnessed the pagan ceremonies in the Russian land. In places Orthodox for centuries, men worshiped fire, bowed down to the sun, moon, earth, and dead ancestors. Beyond the Volga and near Sarai, he was troubled still more when he heard how at the Horde they would force him to pagan observances. By that time most other Russian princes had been at the Horde, and the Mongols declared that not one of them had violated the ceremonies established for receptions. One of the officials said to Daniel: “How great is Prince Yaroslav of Vladimir, but no exception was made for him. He bowed to the bushes, and thou wilt bow.” Daniel spat, and said: “The devil speaks through thy lips. God close them to guard me from hearing such utterances.”But Batu, in addition to saving Daniel from all that might seem[251]like the worship of idols, greeted him pleasantly, and with unusual kindness. When the prince, led into the Khan’s tent, bowed in a way that seemed to humiliate him, Batu said: “Daniel, thou wert long in coming, but thou art here and thou hast done well to come. Thou art ours now. Take our drink.” And they brought him a goblet. The prince emptied it and bowed, repeating the commonplace words which all princes uttered on similar occasions: “God gave thee power. I obey thee through God’s will.” He bowed again, and begged to salute the Khan’s consort. “Go,” said Batu, and he added when Daniel was about to leave, “Thou art not accustomed to milk; drink wine.” And when he was taking farewell of the Khan’s wife, they brought a goblet of wine to him from Batu. They detained Daniel at the Horde a shorter time than was usual for princes. After confirming all his rights in Volynia and Galitch, they dismissed him with courtesy.Great was the delight of Daniel’s family when he returned to them unharmed. His success was mentioned on all sides. That summer the King of Hungary sent this message: “Take my daughter for thy son Lev.” The king feared Daniel because he had visited the Horde, and besides, on the San, he had beaten the king’s son-in-law and expelled him from Galitch. When the wedding took place Daniel restored all captive Hungarians. Thus he and the king became friendly. Roman, another son of Daniel, married Gertrude, a daughter of the late Duke of Styria. Roman now claimed Styria as the dowry of Gertrude. The King of Bohemia, whose queen was a daughter of the same duke, also claimed this inheritance.Daniel, with Boleslav of Poland, Bela’s son-in-law, campaigned against the Bohemian king. He did this to make friends in the West, and thus get rid of the Mongols. He tried to induce his western neighbors to join him, and for this purpose he entered their circle of action. But from beginning to end, every promise of aid proved futile,—empty sound, nothing more. The Pope saw very well how fruitless were his efforts. Not only in Germany, but in Hungary and Poland his messages were unheeded. At last Daniel left papal promises unanswered. Then a legate was sent to deliver the crown to him and anoint him king in Western fashion. It was not the first time that they had come to Daniel for this purpose, but he had set them aside with various excuses. For example,[252]he had said earlier to the legate that it was no time for coronation when his lands were in danger,—not a crown did he need, but strong warriors. But now the papal envoy found Daniel at the place and time most convenient for his object, namely, at Cracow, on the way from Bohemia to Galitch, surrounded by his allies after a victory and the capture of a city.He refused this time also, saying: “I am in a foreign land.” But the papal legate, Polish princes, and magnates urged Daniel to take the gift offered. His mother, a Polish princess, insisted also and helped to influence him. “The Pope respects the Greek Church,” said the legate, “and curses all men who offend it. He is about to call a council to unite the two Churches. Aid will come from the Pope very quickly.” The Polish princes promised with every solemnity, and their magnates promised with them, that after Daniel had taken the crown they would march against the Mongols.In 1253, Daniel was crowned in Drogitchin. His subjection to Rome was complete, as it seemed to Polish princes. But, breaking all solemn promises, neither Poles nor Hungarians made a move to march against the Mongols.The following year Batu, who had been watching, and understood perfectly Daniel’s problem, sent an envoy renowned for his keenness, with a command to raze and destroy every fortress in Volynia and Galitch. Never had he commanded the Galitch prince so decisively, as if to show the world that he knew the situation and was master of it. Daniel, understanding well that no opposition could serve him, withdrew to Volynia, and sent Vassilko, his brother, and Lev, his own son, to meet Burundai, the keen envoy. “Raze your fortresses!” said Burundai. And all were destroyed at his order. The walls of Vladimir in Volynia, though of wood, were so strong and immense that there was no chance to tear them down before the coming of the envoy, hence they were burned by Vassilko immediately. Such promptness was praised by Burundai, who even dined with Vassilko on that day. But when this envoy departed, another one came, who said: “Burundai has commanded me to level your entrenchments.” “Accomplish the command,” said Vassilko. Baimur and his men filled every trench, and leveled all the earthworks surrounding the walls of Levoff, a city which Lev himself had founded, and which was called after[253]him. Burundai now ordered both princes to make a campaign with him. Adding to his own men warriors from Volynia and Galitch, he attacked Lithuania; then he took Vassilko against Poland and visited the districts of Sandomir and Lublin.With such a turn of affairs, Daniel had cut off all relations with Rome; he was therefore not a little astonished on receiving a new reprimand from the Pope for his lack of obedience to the Holy See. To this he made no answer.Not loving Galitch, the capital with which were connected so many memories of boundless deceit and disturbance, Daniel founded Holm, a new capital, and built a number of Orthodox churches. Thenceforth he passed his life in sorrow, for his position was one without issue. He was in a charmed circle without power to solve the riddle of his condition; he could look at it with terror, but he could not escape from it. In Holm he died in 1266, and was buried in the church of the Holy Virgin which he had founded. The honor Daniel received from Batu wounded his spirit so that his words touching this were recorded: “Oh, worse than woe is honor coming from Mongols.” A similar blow had he received at Drogitchin, through that gift of a crown bestowed with deceit and in spite of him.[254]

[Contents]CHAPTER XTHE MONGOL INVASIONAfter Vladimir of Smolensk had perished at the Kalka, Vladimir, son of Rurik, who returned from that disastrous battle, took the Kief throne as the senior prince and favorite cousin of Mystislav, whose support he enjoyed till the death of the latter. But no sooner had Mystislav gone from the world than there rose storms of trouble because of the Kief principality. Vladimir called to mind quickly the offense of Daniel’s father, who had forced the tonsuring of Rurik. And for this act of the dead Roman he went now to take revenge on the living.As Prince of Kief, Vladimir concluded an alliance with Michael of Chernigoff, and both began war against Daniel. They would not let him have Podolia, and were jealous of his claim upon Galitch. Daniel now made an alliance with the Poles, and, since the chief troops brought against him were Polovtsi, Daniel asked Kotyan, who was his wife’s grandfather, to put a stop to the war. “Oh, father,” begged he, “stop this war; take me into thy friendship.” The Khan immediately dropped his allies and made a movement in favor of Daniel, crushing all that he met on his way. Then he vanished, and the war ceased of itself, without much injury to Daniel.Thankful for this service, Daniel made no use of the Poles, and dismissed his ally, who had not lost a warrior. Vladimir, son of Rurik, deserted by the Polovtsi, made peace with Daniel, and soon after begged his aid against Michael. This Michael of Chernigoff, so recently an ally of Vladimir, was now trying to force him from Kief, since he greatly desired that ancient city for his own use.From 1230 to 1240 war raged throughout Galitch and Volynia, Chernigoff, and Kief. More than once did Vladimir flee from Kief[226]to be succeeded by Michael; more than once was Michael deprived of his possessions. All Southern Russia, from the San and the Dniester to the Desna, was the alternate and fleeting possession of Michael and his brothers, or of the men who opposed them, namely, Vladimir and Daniel. Each side had its victory, but each met defeat somewhat later. Daniel brought aid many times to Vladimir. In one of these campaigns the two men crossed the Dnieper and captured Chernigoff; they warred on the Desna, and captured many towns in other places. More than once Michael appeared with his troops on the San and the Dniester. He seized Galitch and left his son and heir, Rostislav, to reign there. At times Michael gave towns to Daniel; at times he drove him unsparingly from Galitch regions. At times one of them fled from the other to Hungary, alternately they were hostile and friendly to each other. Once Daniel and Vladimir were defeated by Michael and the Polovtsi, which he led in. Vladimir was captured by those same Polovtsi and could not, for some time, buy his freedom. On the day that Vladimir was captured a horse was killed under Daniel, who barely escaped with his life from that battle-field. Then again not only did Michael lose Kief and Galitch, he lost Chernigoff also. At last Michael was brought to such straits that he begged for peace earnestly, and made amends to Daniel. “Much have I sinned against thee,” said he. “I have not held to my promises, I have done great harm to thee, but how many times have I wished to act otherwise, though unable, for the faith-breaking boyars of Galitch would never permit me. Now I take oath that with thee I will never have enmity.” So Daniel, with his brother Vassilko, received Michael as a relative.But this happened in 1239, when Michael’s dominions had been turned to a terrible wilderness, and the city of Chernigoff was a ruin. Up to that ghastly period wars and dissensions were constant in Southern Russia. During that troubled time Kief was without a prince really, for it passed from one hand to another so frequently that the interval during which one prince was winning the place from another was often far longer than the time he sat on the throne after winning it. Instead of asking who in that period of unrest ruled Kief, one might better ask who of prominent princes was not its ruler. The same was true of Galitch. It was difficult to say who reigned there.[227]In 1229 some of the Galitch men, faithful to the people, secretly invited Daniel to come and rule in their land. At his approach, boyars favorable to Hungary closed the gates of the city, burned the bridge on the Dniester, and used every possible means to oppose him. But the people from Ushitsa, Bobrok and Pruth regions marched in from all quarters to meet the prince “born to them,” and no party had sufficient power to check them.Daniel, forgetting the king’s opposition, and remembering only his personal kindness, did no harm to Prince Bela, who was Mystislav’s son-in-law. He allowed him to go back to Hungary, and even went with him to the Dniester. The intriguing boyars bowed now before Daniel, and only one of them, Sudislav the Traitor, went with the king’s son. The people threw stones at this boyar, and shouted: “Be off, thou disturber, thou traitor!”The next year, however, a new plot was formed against Daniel, and during the decade setting in with 1230 conspiracies and disturbances did not cease throughout Galitch. The boyars called Daniel prince, but seized for themselves everything in the country. A dissolution of all social bonds and a general decay of loyalty spread with rising rapidity. Formerly only boyars such as Sudislav or Volodislav, called Red Hair, were exalted, but now a great host broke in, boyars of whom no man had heard until that day; notorious were Voldrys and Klimyata, but no one knew of what stock they were. One Dobruslav seized the whole lower country, though he had no more right to it than a robber. At the same time a certain Grigory Vassilevitch took the upper part of Peremysl. A priest’s grandson, one Suditch, plundered actively on every side. Famous also were Lazar Domajiritch and Ivor Molibojitch, two lawless men of low origin. Such boyars “made great disturbance and robbed much,” says the chronicler. And these men were managing the fortunes of Galitch, treating now with Hungarians, now with Poles, and now with Russian princes. From one side they rushed to another, and again turned from that one with offers of service to him who could promise the profit at which they were grasping. In such a condition of Galitch Daniel now lost his heritage, not preserving one foot of land for himself in all that great region, and then again he returned to the throne of his father with apparent security.The Hungarian king, at the advice of boyars, came sometimes[228]himself, and sometimes he sent his sons thither. Bailski, with his brethren, took the side of the boyars and rose up in arms against Daniel. Finally Michael of Chernigoff appeared to take vengeance on Daniel for harassing his land, but, besides this, Michael remembered the offense against his own kinsmen in Galitch, the vile death inflicted by boyars on Igor’s sons. There, on the spot where their blood had been shed in the city of Galitch, he felt it his duty to win back the honor of his family. Hence Galitch was torn into bits and was ruled at short intervals, now by its own men, and now by outsiders. More than once intriguing boyars fell at Daniel’s feet and begged mercy, for the common people adhered to him firmly at all times. At last Bailski ceased his scheming: “I see myself,” said he to Daniel, “that I can be with no one but thee.” And then the Poles made peace with Daniel. Next the Hungarian king, Bela IV, made peace.But each success gained by Daniel was followed by the treason of boyars. Now they conspired to burn him and his brother in their palace; now to assassinate them at table while feasting. And again they roused Bailski against Daniel.Then they summoned in Daniel’s enemies from other regions of Russia, to be followed by renewed inroads of Poles and Hungarians. Michael of Chernigoff once more entered into greater friendship with Hungary than with Daniel. He arranged a marriage of his son, Rostislav, to one of Bela’s many daughters, and maintained a continual alliance with Poland. Such was the state of affairs during the dreadful ten years which succeeded 1230.Yaroslav, son of Big Nest, held Kief as prince in 1237. We know not from whom he received it, but the place fell to him without a struggle. There were two princes then who might have claimed the throne, each insignificant,—Vladimir, son of Rurik, who was still in debt for a part of his ransom to the Polovtsi, and Izyaslav. It may be that Yaroslav took Kief from these men. He left it on hearing that the city of Vladimir was destroyed by the Mongols.Michael of Chernigoff now took Kief, and put his son in Galitch, but in 1239 he left Kief because the Mongols had ruined Pereyaslavl and Chernigoff on the Alta, and were moving against the ancient capital. The Mongols sent envoys to Michael demanding surrender. The Kief people seized those envoys and slew them.[229]Michael fled straightway. Now from Smolensk came Rostislav, son of Mystislav, but he was driven out immediately by Daniel, who had at last won Galitch and mastered it thoroughly. But though Daniel had Kief, he himself did not enter it, but he sent Dmitri, his boyar, to hold the place.Daniel had completely overcome his opponents on every side. He now surpassed all southern princes, and was stronger than his father had ever been, for he had Kief in addition to Galitch and Volynia, but this was in 1239, when the dreadful hour was approaching, and it was too late to enjoy any fruit from the battles and toils which he had passed through. The very next year Kief was turned into “corpses, and ruins and ashes,” and Daniel was soon to receive the Mongol command: “Yield Galitch, and level thy walls in Volynia.”It is remarkable that the Mongol tempest was preceded not only by countless wars and mad quarrels, which produced immense suffering and anguish, but by the appearance of such omens in the sky and such marvels on all sides that ceaseless terror was born of them everywhere.Beginning with 1224, the fateful year of the Kalka disaster, the whole course of nature seemed changed throughout Russia. There was an unheard-of dry season, and a hazy heat with it; pitchy forests were burning and turf swamps were smoking all over the country; birds had not strength to fly, and fell down inanimate. In the autumn appeared a great comet; after sunset it lighted up the whole heavens, extending like a long, awful lance from the west toward the east. There were tales of floods overwhelming distant places. There were reports also of raging fires. Novgorod burned so that the flames crossed the river; all thought the end of the city was before them. In Vladimir there was a fire such as no man remembered. Besides this, there were earthquakes. In Vladimir, during mass, the holy images in churches began to quiver, the walls of the city were trembling. In Kief the stone church of the Holy Virgin sank at the corners. More than once was the sun darkened. Men who knew the movements of heavenly bodies strove to pacify people by explaining that the moon had gone through the sky, stopped in front of the sun, and thus hid it. But the sun was affected in other ways; once, while rising, it was like a small star, and no one could see where its size had gone; then[230]suddenly it appeared in full greatness; another time it sent immense pillars of light through the skies, which were green, blue and purple. Especially terrible was it in Kief; from these pillars of many-colored light a fiery cloud formed, which the wind carried forward till it brooded above the whole city. People fell on their knees and prayed to the Lord to have mercy; they took farewell of one another, feeling sure that the end of all life was then near them. The fiery cloud dropped, moved aside, and fell into the Dnieper, where it vanished without injury to any man. There was terrible famine in places, above all in Novgorod; there were neither dogs nor cats left for food in the city; men killed their own brothers and ate them; then there was pestilence. In Novgorod there were not graveyards to hold all the corpses, and fences were made around new ones, in which forty-two thousand people were buried. In Smolensk they laid out four new graveyards; in two of these sixteen thousand were buried; in the third seven thousand, and in the fourth nine thousand.Confused and scattered stories of a terrible invasion were spread among people. From the East, from the land of the Bulgars of the Volga, came reports of ill-omen, and then the tale of the “Mongol” became universal. “Oh, that is they!” was heard now in all places. “It is they who gave the Russian princes that awful defeat on the Kalka!”But who these pagans were, no man could indicate. According to report, they came of impure races hidden away in unknown regions. It was said that there was a prophecy of old concerning those people which said: “They will come before time ends, and capture all places.”The Mongols burst in from the Trans-Volga regions, through those open spaces called much later on the steppes of Tamboff and Saratoff, and attacked Ryazan boundaries.The Mongol army was enormous for that time. It seemed to the Russians as though a whole people were moving from one part of the earth to the other. This army was led by Batu, the great Jinghis Khan’s grandson, the son of his eldest son, Juchi.In attacking a region the Mongols surrounded it, as beaters surround game in a forest, and moved toward a fixed point of meeting. Batu sent envoys to Ryazan, and with them went an enchantress. The presence of this woman alarmed the Ryazan[231]people greatly. The envoys brought this message: “Give one tenth of everything: one prince in ten; one man in ten of the common people; give every tenth one from black, white, brown, and pied horses; from every kind of beast, give one out of ten; and of all wealth and all products give the tenth part to us.”The princes met, and when they had counseled together they sent back this answer: “When no one of us is living, what is left will belong to you.”The Mongols advanced with fire and sword toward the capital. The time was December, 1237, and January, 1238.To prevent these invaders from entering settled places, the princes marched out to meet them in steppe lands. Flinging themselves on the advancing hordes, they fought with desperate bravery, only to be crushed and destroyed utterly. Ingvar, who was at that time in Chernigoff, with Kolovrat, a voevoda, seeking warriors and imploring the Polovtsi to help him, returned home to a desert. Towns and villages were charred ruins, and contained only corpses which beasts of prey and foul birds were devouring. Dead princes, voevodas and warriors lay in the frozen grass, snow-covered. Only at long intervals appeared people, who had been able to hide in the forest, and who came out now to weep over the ruin of their homes.The Mongols not only surrounded the city of Ryazan with an army, but with a wall as well, and they strengthened this wall in places with firm palisades. This they called “driving the pig in.” Thus they expressed themselves, delighted that no one could escape when the city was taken. After they had finished their wall, they put up rams for battering the city walls in, and prepared ladders for storming.The Ryazan men resisted many days, and fought with desperation. They inflicted great loss on the Mongols, but, as was clear, they were weakening. Since they did not let their weapons go out of their hands, they were sure to be conquered in the end by weariness. The Mongols relieved their own storming parties, they gave those men rest, and sent forward fresh regiments. At last they succeeded in crushing the walls down and firing the city by hurling in heavy stones and blazing substances. On December 21, 1237, they mounted the breaches, and through fire, smoke and slaughter burst into the city.[232]At the same time, in the region about Ryazan, through all villages and monasteries, similar seizures and slaughters were enacted. For the Mongols it was not enough to capture cities and towns; they destroyed all the people from the aged to infants. They amused themselves with inflicting various kinds of cruel death singly; they loved also to kill men in multitudes. Made drunk, as it were, by abundance of bloodshed, they rose to a wild, boundless ecstasy.For many days this rejoicing and slaughter continued. Then groans and wails ceased in the ruined city and its environs, and all was silent. There was no one to wail, no one to groan, since all were lying dead and frozen. When the Mongols had vanished naught remained but blackened stones and charred remnants. Of many towns, cities and villages, nothing was left except stones, and cinders and dead bodies. It might almost be said that the Ryazan principality existed no longer. Those ill-fated princes, when the Mongols appeared on their southern border, sent to beg aid of Prince Yuri of Vladimir, and their relatives in Chernigoff. Kolovrat, who had been sent to Chernigoff, led back some men to the ruins of his birthplace. Amazed and maddened when he saw those ruins, he rushed forward to strike the rear of the Mongols. He overtook them at night, as they were leaving the Ryazan borders. The Mongols were terrified when they saw him. “Are not those the dead of Ryazan,” cried they, “who have risen and come to avenge their own deaths on us?”Those unknown Russians fought like furies. Then, seizing the swords from Mongols slain by them, and dropping their own weapons, they cut and slashed with more fury than ever. There was uproar and chaos in the whole Mongol army. The Mongols succeeded, however, in capturing five of the raging pursuers, whom they took to the Khan, their commander. “Who are ye?” asked the Khan. “Wonder not, O Tsar,” answered they, “that we have strength to fill the cup of death for all Mongols. We are servants of Prince Ingvar; we are of Kolovrat’s regiment, sent to conduct thee and thy warriors with honor. We conduct as many as we are able.”Tavrul, Batu’s brother-in-law, offered to seize Kolovrat. He went out on an unterrified steed against him, but Kolovrat cut the[233]Mongol in two, from his head to the saddle on which he was sitting. Then the Mongols surrounded the handful of heroes, who stood like a fortress, and not one of them yielded. All of those warriors were slain after desperate fighting. The Khan praised the dead men, and gave the five living their freedom. “The Russians know well,” said he, “how to drink the death cup with their princes.”Prince Yuri gave no aid to Ryazan. He said he would move against the enemy in person, and act separately.The Mongols turned now against Yuri. The old road from Ryazan to Vladimir lay through Kolomna and Moscow, in a country comparatively rich and well settled. Yuri sent troops to both cities. To Kolomna he sent his own son Vsevolod, and to Moscow another son, Vladimir, so young that Philip, the voevoda, was attached to his person. Leaving wife and family in Vladimir, confident that they would be safe within its walls, he himself hurried northward to levy warriors, and make ready for action. His nephews from Rostoff and Yaroslavl, the sons of Constantine, hastened to join his forces, and he hoped for the return of his brother, Yaroslav, with regiments from Kief.The Mongols made no useless delay at Kolomna. They slaughtered the inhabitants and burned down the city. One of the Ryazan princes, who had survived, joined at Kolomna the army sent out by Yuri, but in the battle which followed almost immediately every man fell except Yuri’s son. He escaped by fleeing swiftly to Vladimir, to meet a worse death in that doomed city.A fate like that of Kolomna soon struck Moscow; the place was stormed and sacked. Philip was killed, with other defenders, who fell fighting bravely. While the Mongols were dividing the rich spoils and rejoicing, they burned the city. Ordinary prisoners were killed quickly, those of distinction were crucified, flayed alive or burned. Yuri’s son, Vladimir, they took with them. The countless army, that same army of which Arabian historians wrote that on its path “the earth groaned, birds dropped dead, and wild beasts lost their senses,” opened now and moved away in various directions. From these divisions still smaller ones separated and marched off on all roads. They took in towns and settlements as a net gathers fish under water. People fled from cities and villages in crowds. They hid in caves, in dark forests,[234]and in gullies, not knowing how to escape or whither they should go for refuge. Those who were near heard from those who had come from afar that Mongols were everywhere slaying, burning, robbing churches, and cutting down old and young as they traveled. Others were leading a multitude of captives to their camps. It brought terror to look at those captives, barefoot and bloodless.February 3, 1238, the Mongols appeared at Vladimir and surrounded the city. The Vladimir men rejected proposals of surrender, and saw with dismay how the enemy strengthened their camp, and began preparations for storming. Mongol leaders rode round the city and surveyed its defenses. Then, to the amazement of all, an immense crowd of mounted commanders approached the main gate of the city, and asked, “Is Prince Yuri among you?” The people answered with arrows. The commanders replied in the same way, sending each of them an arrow at the crosses on the bell-towers glittering with golden tops in the sunlight. Then they made signs to stop shooting and negotiate. When the Vladimir men desisted, to see what would happen, the Mongols showed Yuri’s young son made prisoner in Moscow, and asked if they knew him. A cry rose. Vsevolod and Mystislav, brothers of the captive, wished to sally forth and save him, but they were held back by the people. All, from the voevoda to the last man in the city, swore to fight while life remained. All declared that they were ready to die for God’s churches, and those simple words were no idle sounds from those people.The bishops of Vladimir counseled every one to prepare for death and the last hour, to have this passing life in their memories no longer; and assured them that Christ would forget no one made worthy through the crown of a martyr. All who heard these words began to work valiantly. From old to young, every man was to fight on the walls, or wherever the need was. All armed themselves for the coming storm and the battle. On the second or third day of the siege, news spread through the city that Suzdal had been taken, that Rostoff had yielded. Men on the walls saw on the Suzdal road Mongol regiments approaching rapidly, and then they saw men, women, monks, nuns and a multitude of people led captive.That day the Mongols worked from early morning till nightfall, pulling up timber, and engines, and planting their wall-crushing[235]instruments. Next morning it appeared that they had not been idle in the night-time. A wooden wall now encircled the city. For the last twenty-four hours no man in Vladimir had slept. No person had undressed for a week past. All knew that their city was doomed. The princes, and Yuri’s whole family, many of the boyars and the people had put on the monk’s habit, making ready for death with great earnestness.On Sunday February 14, 1238, the city was stormed and captured. At daybreak the Mongols were on the walls, and before midday their work was accomplished. They did not occupy all parts immediately, though they broke in at once on many sides,—on the Klyazma, the Lybed, the Golden Gate, and the Valski sides. At one side they made a long mound, traces of which are seen even to our day. They went up along this mound and came down inside the walls on their ladders.The new city was covered with corpses. In the old city there was a stubborn defense and great slaughter. Savage fighting went on outside the walls as well. The Mongols killed every man who tried to escape. Then began the sack of Vladimir. Wherever Mongols entered, they seized what they found; they stripped the churches, taking everything of value; wherever they met with resistance, they brought piles of wood and burned all before them.When the enemy sprang in over the walls every person in Vladimir who could carry a weapon rushed “to drink the cup of death” promptly, knowing well that resistance was fruitless. The young princes, who thought to break through the enemy, were cut to pieces. The voevoda, Pyotr Oslyadukovitch, pressed heavily on the Mongols with his “children,” that is, the whole population of Vladimir, who did not desert him. They fought fiercely on the walls, and at the walls outside the city, and on all streets within it. Blood flowed till midday, and not to win victory, for that, as they knew, was impossible, but to kill as many infidels as they could, and die fighting for the holy Orthodox faith and for their country.The Mongol multitude crushed all before it; numbers conquered everywhere. The new and the old city were taken by assault, and the capital was burning from side to side in one vast conflagration.Yuri’s princess, with her relatives, daughters-in-law and grandchildren,[236]all the wives and daughters of boyars, many of the people and clergy with wives and children, and the bishop himself had taken refuge in the Vladimir cathedral. The smoke and flame of the city’s burning had reached the walls of this edifice, while round about were heard the shouts of the oncoming Mongols. Those inside the building sought safety in the galleries. Suffocating from smoke, they would have gone down again, but there was a dense crowd below pressing upward. The Mongols forced open the door of the cathedral and, rushing in, seized gold and silver, and all the church vessels. They cut and hewed down those persons who had not hidden, and those who were trying to get to the galleries. Then they brought sticks and brushwood, filled the place well with fuel, and set fire to it. Smoke rose in columns within the cathedral. The roar of the burning building and the cries of victory from the wild conquerors were heard in one dull groaning thunder, mingling with the wails, shrieks and prayers of the dying. The bishop blessed all at their parting, crying: “O Lord, stretch thy unseen hands to us, and receive the souls of thy people.” The massive walls of the cathedral did not fall; they withstood the fire and have remained in integrity to our time.The horrors of Ryazan were repeated in Vladimir. Only young women, nuns, and strong laborers were led away captive. The sick, the infirm, the weak and the aged were slaughtered at once, and without mercy. Smoking ruins alone were left of the beautiful city of Vladimir. When the Mongols marched away from the remnant of the capital, there was not a groan, or a cry to be heard from the people, for all who were in that city were lying dead.To overtake Yuri and destroy his forces was no difficult task for the savage invaders. They found him in Yaroslavl regions, on the banks of the Siti. Among other princes was Vassilko, his favorite nephew, a son of Constantine, whom his dying father had asked Yuri to treat as one of his own sons. Crushed by news from Vladimir, Yuri seemed dazed, and repeated unceasingly: “Why am I left, why do I not die with them?” Grief for children and wife was swallowed up in his anguish over the destruction of the city, the people, the bishop, and the clergy. Volunteers who were pouring in brought similar tidings from every part: “The enemy are slaying all people, burning all places; they are everywhere!” Only one thing remained: retreat to the distant north. But from[237]Vologda, and even from Galitch beyond the Volga, came news of the same universal slaughter and destruction. Three thousand men, sent as scouts to the north, returned with these tidings: “The enemy are attacking off there, they are around us far and near, they are everywhere.”Soon the struggle began on the Siti, and became straightway a most terrible massacre. Numbers crushed everything. The Mongols had scarcely begun when they had victory. Those people who were not mortally wounded, and who rose from the battle field, and a few who were unwounded fled, and hid in the forests. Yuri, Grand Prince of Vladimir, lay dead in a great pile of bodies,—his head was not with his body. More terrible still was the death of Vassilko. The young prince was taken alive by the Mongols. Attractive in mind and in person, his men said of him that whoso had served him would not serve another. He pleased also the Mongols. Batu strove to incline him to friendship. “Oh, dark kingdom of vileness,” answered Vassilko, “God has given me into thy hands, but thou canst not separate me from Christians.” He would take neither food nor drink from the pagans. Enraged at his stubbornness, they killed him most cruelly, and threw out his body to be eaten by wild beasts. The corpse of the young prince was found in a forest, under the guidance of a woman who said that she had witnessed his tortures, and Vassilko was buried with Yuri, his uncle. The headless Yuri, as found on the field of battle, was put in a coffin, but afterward the head was discovered and placed with the body, and the two bodies were taken later on to Rostoff for interment.After the destruction of Vladimir, Rostoff and Suzdal, the whole principality of Vladimir was ravaged. The lands now included in the governments of Vladimir, Yaroslavl, Kostroma, Tver and Moscow, with a part of Novgorod and Vologda, were scenes of ruin and terror. Everywhere the same marks of Mongols. Such noted places as Tver, Torjok, Volokolamsk, Yaroslavl and Mologa were sacked and burned to the ground, as well as villages and settlements beyond reckoning. The Russians looked on this invasion as a testimony of God’s anger, such an evil as a flood or an earthquake, irresistible and almighty. In small villages, when the Mongols appeared, the people grew helpless from terror; those who could escape rushed away to the forests, secreting their property[238]in the ground; what remained was left to fire and sword. Such boundless woe had never been witnessed in Russia. The surviving clergy throughout the country called on all to prepare for the last hour.The Mongols cut people down as a mower cuts grass. When they entered a province, they sent out detachments on every side; like locusts, they destroyed everything utterly. Monasteries and villages they stripped clean of all things that had value. From stores of grain they took what they needed, and burned the remainder, boasting that grass would not grow on their path.A great thaw saved Northwestern Russia. In the first days of March, the Mongols, when within a hundred versts of Novgorod, became alarmed by the swelling of rivers and turned back. Conducting their countless treasures and urging on long lines of prisoners, they moved swiftly southeastward to grass-growing regions. On the way they came to Koselsk, where they met a most stubborn resistance. A detachment attacked the town for forty-two days, but succeeded in storming the place only after reinforcements had been sent by Batu, who was enraged at this resistance. It was destroyed utterly, but its fame will never die in Russian history.Before the wooden walls of this city, the Mongols lost four thousand men and three princes. When at last they burst into the town, they were met by old and young, men and women, who rushed at them with knives, axes and other weapons, and fought with desperation from house to house, from street to street. Gradually forced back, they retired into the Kremlin, or fortress, and fought till the last man perished. Vassili, the little prince, who was very young, was drowned, it is said, in the blood of the people.The Mongols called this town “Mo balig” (town of woe), the same name which they gave Bamian of the Kwarezmian Empire, the place at which Moatagan, one of Jinghis Khan’s grandsons, fell pierced by an arrow, and where the young man’s mother, a daughter of Jinghis, rushed in at the head of ten thousand warriors and left nothing alive, not a man, woman or child, destroying even the dogs and cats, slaying everything in her vengeance.After Batu had established himself in the steppes of the Volga, he began to build Sarai, the capital of his Horde. He cleared the whole country and drove out the Polovtsi. Kotyan, the Polovtsi[239]Khan, took a remnant of his people, forty thousand in number, and settled in Hungary. The king gave him land on condition that he and his tribes became Catholic. The rest of the Polovtsi joined with the Mongols, and from that day they ceased forever as a people in Russia.Pereyaslavl on the Alta and Chernigoff were doomed now, and all who could leave those two places hurried elsewhere for refuge.When winter had again frozen the rivers and put snow on the steppe lands, the Mongols set out afresh to capture cities and slaughter new thousands of people. Batu sent a number of his leaders of ten thousand to the north again to search out and finish all places bordering on Vladimir. This work they did thoroughly in December, 1238, and January, 1239. Batu, meanwhile, took Pereyaslavl; destroyed the church of Saint Michael; slew the bishop; killed all who were useless as captives; took whatever belonged to the people and the churches; and moved on Chernigoff. The walls of that city were broken in by hurling stones, each of such weight that five men were needed to lift it. The city was stormed then and burned, the people slain, and every building plundered. One of the younger princes fell with the warriors. The chronicler states that the older princes had fled to Hungary. It is true that Michael’s heir, Rostislav, who had been left by his father in Galitch, and driven thence by Daniel soon after, had gone to marry King Bela’s daughter. Michael, himself, who at this time had taken Yaroslav’s place, in Kief, soon found it impossible to stay there.When Chernigoff was ruined, Batu commanded his brother to advance upon Kief and make a reconnaissance. From the Chernigoff bank of the Dnieper he saw the mother of cities and wondered at its beauty. Envoys were sent to demand its surrender. The Kief people slew them, and Michael fled from the capital. He went, as he thought, to a safe place, to Hungary, to be present at his son’s wedding. But, learning of the ruin of Chernigoff by the Mongols, Bela would not give his daughter to Rostislav. Michael and his son went then to the Mazovian prince, Konrad.Bolder than Michael, Rostislav, a Smolensk prince, occupied Kief, now abandoned by others. But Daniel of Galitch would not let Rostislav stay there, and seized for himself the old capital. He did not wait in Kief for Batu; he sent Dmitri, his boyar, to defend[240]the city. Daniel left even Volynia and Galitch, and went to Hungary. From there he went to Poland, for Bela himself was struck with such terror that he fled from the Mongols, and knew not where to find refuge.In 1239 the whole Russian land, if not yet under Mongols, looked on that doom as inevitable. There was such panic terror that men lost proper use of their faculties. All that interval from December, 1237, when Ryazan was destroyed, till December, 1240, was a time of destruction and captivity, and the end came only when there was nothing to destroy, and all the treasures of Russia were in Mongol hands.For the people these three years were merged in one unit of time, filled with anguish, terror and despair. It might be said that they had lost the sense and the power to count seasons. That Russian land, which in the days of Yaroslav the Lawgiver and Monomach his grandson had so easily overcome its enemies, and which in the days of Big Nest, Monomach’s nephew, in spite of all its divisions and conflicts, still preserved some appearance of oneness, existed no longer.On the San and the Dniester there was the same terror of Mongols as on the Desna and the Dnieper. From the north, from Vladimir, from Novgorod, no regiments appeared, and none were expected; no prince came with help, and no man was looking for him. The whole land was as silent as a grave or a desert. The Mongols had not captured Novgorod, but this was because they considered it as subject to Vladimir. They had been sated with bloodshed, and looked on the Vladimir region as thoroughly subjected. To avoid further evil, Novgorod had to connect itself absolutely with Vladimir, and with it carry the weight of the burden. Besides, the distant north was a country without attraction for Mongols. Beyond Novgorod lived the Chud people (Fins), whose lands extended to the shores of the Frozen Ocean. The Mongols did not consider that Novgorod could be the center of a region dangerous to their dominion, hence they left the old capital of Rurik uninjured. If they had had reason to punish Novgorod they would have razed it as they razed Ryazan and Vladimir.The Kief campaign was undertaken by Batu on a scale that was enormous; with him went his brothers and relatives: Kuyuk, son of the Grand Khan, was there, and Mangu and Baidar, grandsons[241]of Jinghis Khan, also a multitude of famous commanders,—Burundai, Subotai and others. The whole army consisted of more than five hundred thousand men.After finishing with Russia, Batu intended to pass into Hungary and destroy that country. He had sent a demand for obedience already, and a reprimand to the king for receiving Kotyan with his Polovtsi, whom Batu looked on as slaves who had fled from their master.As soon as the Dnieper was frozen, the army passed over. The Mongol warriors were so numerous, the squeaking of their wagons so piercing, the neighing of their horses and the roaring of camels so deafening, that men in the city could not hear, as was declared, what they said to one another. First the attackers surrounded Kief; next they built a wooden wall; then they erected their engines and hurled immense stones at the city walls day and night without ceasing. The mother city was defended bravely by its citizens, but available warriors were few; for so short-sighted had the princes been that even when the enemy was on the march they had continued to struggle for succession. When the Mongols had made sufficient breaches in the walls, they rushed through and began a hand-to-hand struggle. The Kief men fought desperately. From morning till evening the battle raged, but toward night overwhelming numbers conquered, and the Mongols held the walls of the city. That night the Kief men made a new wall in front of the first one, even women and children assisting in building defenses, and next day the battle continued. From every house, church and monastery people came out, and fought to the death in all parts of the city. In the churches, multitudes had gathered, and from the weight of the people and their effects on roofs and in the galleries the walls fell. Many perished in hand-to-hand conflict; others were suffocated with smoke; but none surrendered, for all knew that but one fate awaited them.For several days in succession the slaying of people and the destruction of buildings continued. The Vladimir Church fell; the Sophia Cathedral, built by Yaroslav the Lawgiver, endured best of any; the body of that church remained sound, and there is one uninjured part of the wall, on which is an image of the Virgin, preserved to the present. Of the Catacomb Monastery, the ancient church and walls were destroyed; of the Golden Gate, built by[242]Yaroslav, only ruins remained. The more violently the people defended the remnant of their city, and fought out their last hour, the more joyously did the destroyers carry on the destruction. They slew old men and children to the last one. If in other cities they had taken pleasure in general slaughter and devastation, they took tenfold more pleasure now. The strong places and the sanctuaries of a city were never overthrown with such fury, and never were the Mongols so relentless as in Kief, the city of churches. The destroyers did not spare even tombs; they forced them open, and with their heels crushed the skulls and broke the bones of the ancient princes. The havoc was so great that during the entire fourteenth century which followed, and in the fifteenth century, a large part of the city remained a desert covered with refuse. The remnants of stone buildings which had stood for centuries sank into the ground, dust drifted in over them, and then was concealed all those ruins. Of that Kief which, in the days both of Yaroslav the Lawgiver and Monomach, was compared by travelers with Tsargrad, there remained only the memory. It fell December, 1240, and was never renewed in its former magnificence, even to our day.The defender of Kief, Daniel’s boyar, Dmitri, was brought half alive before Batu, who repeated these words of praise: “The Russians know well how to drink the cup of death.” He gave him his life, and took the hero with him in his campaign against Volynia and Galitch. The boyar, continuing to serve his prince, strove to lead the Khan from ruining Galitch. He advised him to go quickly and take vengeance on the King of Hungary for harboring Kotyan and his Polovtsi, saying: “It is time to go against the Hungarians; unless thou go now they will gather great forces and exclude thee forever. Their land is a strong one.” Thus spoke Dmitri to Batu, while, in mind, he was weeping over Galitch.Batu was the more willing to hurry forward to Hungary, since he had learned that Michael of Chernigoff and Daniel of Galitch had gone to that kingdom. This, however, did not change his plan, though it may have hastened its execution, for the campaign against Galitch and Volynia was notable for swiftness. Batu on his way took through falsehood Ladyjin, a town which fought stubbornly and refused to yield. He promised the people in case they surrendered[243]to spare them and their town. At last they respected his word and surrendered. He slew every man to the last one. Kamenyets he passed, because its position seemed impregnable. Vladimir, the capital of Volynia, he took by assault and spared not one person. Galitch he treated in the same way.Moving from Vladimir of Volynia along the Būg, the Mongols advanced only as far as Brest. There, near the edge of Lithuania, Batu halted. The great swampy forests troubled him and his warriors, and he resolved to turn back. As one more example of cruelty after so many, they destroyed Brest and slew all the people. Then they moved southward.One division of Batu’s army entered Poland in 1240, ravaged the province of Lublin, and returned with great booty to Galitch. The Mongols reappeared in that country, however, in winter, crossing the Vistula on the ice, but after advancing to within a few miles of Cracow, they turned again toward Galitch, loaded with much spoil and driving before them a multitude of captives, among whom were some of the first people of Poland. They were pursued by Volodmir, the governor, who surprised them near Palanietz, and killed many. Discovering how small the attacking party was, the Mongols turned, made a furious charge, and put them to flight; then they continued their march. Soon, however, they reëntered Poland with new forces. The nobility of Sandomir and Cracow assembled their warriors and advanced to meet the oncoming Mongols, but in the conflict which followed, they were defeated with great loss.Boleslav IV at this time occupied the throne of Cracow. Fearing to remain in the citadel, he took refuge with his family in a castle at the foot of the Carpathians, and later on in a monastery in Moravia. Many of the aristocracy of Poland followed his example, escaping to Hungary or Germany; the common people sought refuge in the forests, swamps and mountains. The conquerors entered Cracow, March 24, 1241, and set fire to the city, which they found deserted; then they marched toward Breslau, the capital of Silesia, devastating the region through which they passed.On reaching Breslau, they discovered that it had been reduced to ashes by the inhabitants, who had taken refuge in the citadel with the garrison. The Mongols, after investing the fortress for several days, raised the siege and joined another corps of their[244]army to march with it against the forces assembled near Lignitz, where Henry, Duke of Silesia, was commander of about twenty thousand men. The Mongols were led by a prince (in Polish chronicles called Péta) whose army far outnumbered that of Duke Henry. The defeat of the Poles was complete. Henry fled from the field with but four of his officers; retarded by the fall of his horse, which was wounded, he mounted a second, but was surrounded, captured, and his head cut off. The Polish loss was heavy. It is told that to discover the number of the enemy killed, the Mongols cut an ear from each corpse, and with those ears filled four large sacks.They now moved forward, carrying fire and blood even to the frontiers of Bohemia and Austria. While one part of Péta’s army besieged Olmütz in Moravia, several corps of it plundered and devastated the surrounding region. Sternberg, commander of Olmütz, made a successful sortie from the citadel, killed some three hundred of the enemy, and returned in safety. A few days later the Mongols raised camp and marched toward Hungary to join the great army under Batu. It was evident that they had besieged Olmütz only for the purpose of pillaging the country round it.Before marching into Hungary, Batu had written to King Bela, demanding that he yield obedience to the Mongol sovereign if he wished to save his own life, or the lives of his subjects. Bela paid no heed to this demand, and the only measure of defense he took was to send small detachments to hold the passes of the Carpathians.There was much dissatisfaction with King Bela, for he had no military ability; another cause for the dissatisfaction was that he had received Kotyan, the Polovtsi Khan, and allowed him to settle, with some forty thousand families, in Hungary. The acquisition of this number of subjects increased the power of the king, and the hope of converting the pagans to Christianity gave him pleasure. But these Polovtsi were so displeasing to the people that in 1240 Bela had to convoke an assembly of the clergy, and the nobility of his kingdom as well as the chiefs of the Polovtsi. It was then resolved that the Polovtsi should be dispersed in different provinces, and should be assigned uncultivated districts where they could pasture their flocks and herds. Kotyan was baptized,[245]so also were his chief officers. Still the hatred of the people continued.Batu penetrated into Hungary by the pass called “Gate of Russia,” and was joined by divisions of his army which had been devastating Poland. Thence he marched toward Pest, and, camping half a day’s journey from that city, he ravaged the country. The people, thinking that Kotyan, the Polovtsi Khan, was secretly communicating with Batu, murmured against the king and demanded the death of Kotyan and his men. They attacked Kotyan, who defended himself for a time, but was at last overpowered and killed. This murder only served to increase the woes of Hungary. The report of it spread to the country, and the peasants fell on the Polovtsi and massacred them without mercy. But those who escaped united and later on avenged their people.When the Hungarian army had assembled the king marched out of Pest to meet the Mongols. The result of the conflict was most disastrous for the Hungarians. The king owed his escape to the swiftness of his horse. He took refuge near the Carpathians, where he encountered his son-in-law, who was also seeking an asylum in that country.While these events were passing in the heart of Hungary, Kadan advanced through Transylvania, seizing property, profaning churches, and leading away captives.The Mongols remained inactive during the summer of 1241, but in December of that year a detachment crossed the Danube and pitched their camp near the city of Strigonia, or Gran. The besieged destroyed all that was most valuable, killed their horses, and retired into the stone edifices to defend themselves. The Mongols, furious at loss of plunder, were careful that no person should escape. They seized and burned the principal inhabitants over slow fires, to make them declare where they had hidden their riches.At this moment news came to Batu of the death of Ogotai, the Grand Khan, and with the news an order to return to Mongolia at once.The barbarians had penetrated even into Austria, and a corps advanced to Neustadt near Vienna, but retired on learning of the approach of a large army. After the destruction of Strigonia, Kadan was sent with a detachment against King Bela. Bela,[246]who had taken refuge in Austria, retired with his family to Agram in Croatia, where he remained during the summer. Learning that Kadan was marching toward Agram, he went to Spalato on the Dalmatian coast, and then to Trau. Kadan marched with marvelous rapidity. Halting for a few days at Sirbium River, he assembled the Hungarian prisoners whom he had seized on the march, and had them all put to death. On arriving at Spalato and learning that the king was not there, he advanced at once to the neighborhood of Trau, and camped upon the bank facing the island in the Adriatic where Bela had taken refuge. There the Mongols remained through the month of March, and then, after pillaging Cattaro, Suagio and Drivasto, and killing every man, woman and child who fell into their hands, they returned by way of Herzegovinia and Serbia to join Batu. While on the march Kadan received orders to hasten, as all Mongol princes had been summoned to Mongolia.Daniel and Vassilko, on hearing that Batu had left Hungary, delayed for a time in returning to Russia. They knew not where their families were, or indeed if they were living, and their delight was unbounded on finding them. On the way home from Poland they could not draw near Brest, because of the terrible odor of corpses. Very little remained of the former Vladimir, and the ruined churches were filled with dead bodies.Batu, who had brought terror on all Europe by the destruction wrought in Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Moldavia and certain portions of Poland, was not pleased with those lands. The West was too narrow for a nomad people, and Russia became the real province for Mongols. Hungary and Poland suffered little in comparison. Batu pitched his tents and built Sarai, as has been stated, on the bank of the Lower Volga, from where it was convenient and easy to send troops in every direction, and keep conquered Russia in obedience. The Golden Horde, as thenceforth men called the Khan’s residence in Russia, was noted for wealth even in Batu’s day.Jinghis Khan, who died in 1227, was succeeded by his eldest son Ogotai, who reigned from 1229 to 1241. During that reign, Batu completed his conquest of Russia.Russia, subject now to the Mongol, learned that a new sovereign had appeared in Mongolia, but Batu, the grandson of Jinghis[247]Khan, remained their ruler. To him was given entire control of the “Kipchak Horde,” his possessions extending from a line somewhat east of the Ural Mountains to the Danube. He now counted all the Russian land as his property, and declared to its princes that they might not live on the Khan’s land unless they bowed down to him.Thus began the heavy yoke of the Mongols, which was to last for more than two hundred years.Mongol law touching subjects was brief, being this, in substance,—that not only their families and property, but their lives were entirely at the Khan’s disposition. This law, universal, fundamental, unchangeable, was applied to all conquered regions. It was inevitable to give each year one tenth of the harvest and one tenth of every kind of increase. Every man was liable to military service with the Mongols against whomsoever they might send him. Bashaks were appointed in every large town to see to the accurate fulfilment of these duties, and to keep in obedience both people and princes. At first princes left in power by the Khan were bound to appear at the Horde with yearly tribute; besides they were summoned whenever the need came. They must appear with bending knees, and bowing, and striking the earth with their foreheads. They were forced to give special gifts to the Khan, to his wives and his courtiers.When coming before the Khan, various ceremonies had to be observed. For instance, when entering his tent, each man had to cross the threshold without touching it; if he touched it death was the penalty. But before being admitted to the eyes of the ruler, princes were obliged to go through many trials by wizards. They were forced to bow to fire, to bushes, to the shades of dead Khans; to pass between two fires while the wizards and witches who lighted those fires pronounced incantations.As this bowing to bushes and fire and the shades of dead rulers took place before pictures on felt and on silk, it seemed like bowing to idols. They had also to praise Mongol customs, to drink liquor made of mare’s milk, and eat of Mongol dishes. The least show of repugnance or indifference involved peril. But, since effect was felt keenly by Mongols, kindness and terror alternated. They knew at the Horde who the men were from whom they must withhold honor, and to whom honor ought to be given. Rulers of[248]regions under Mongol dominion, but remote from Sarai and bordering on lands which were free, were received more politely than those who were nearer. The following has been stated by a man who observed the position in Batu’s day: “The Mongols take less tribute from those whose lands are remote from them, and border on others which are free, and from those whom they fear for some reason. They treat those remote subjects more kindly, so that they may not attack, or that others may obey with more willingness.” The cruel and savage Batu was sometimes fond of charming those princes who bowed down before him, and of showing magnanimity in treatment, and at such times he seemed the most kindly host possible.Though all Russia was under the Mongol, the yoke weighed with greatest burden on the lands in the center; that place which was the real heart of Russia, and had formed the principality of Vladimir. It was unspeakably more difficult for Yaroslav to manage than for princes in Volynia and Galitch. After Kief had been swept from the earth, so to speak, or crushed into it, and Batu had shown no wish to take Hungary or Poland, Galitch and Volynia, as being nearest those countries, were in the easiest position of all the principalities in Russia.Batu, in his first campaign, did not touch Smolensk in its western portions, and in the second he did not go beyond Brest in a northern direction. In the princes of Volynia and Galitch he had his last representatives. On the west was the country which for their own reasons the Russians represented to Batu as little dependent on their rule, in fact a foreign region, and purposely they called it not Rus, but Litvá. Thus of all Russian princes, the position of Daniel was most favored with reference to the Mongols. As to his rival in Chernigoff, Prince Michael, his possessions might have been called non-existent. Chernigoff and Kursk were in the worst position possible, because nearest the Mongols. Hence after the conquest, Daniel and Michael were, each in his own way, distinguished beyond other princes in Russia.Daniel knew not from childhood what rest was, and only in years of ripe manhood, after endless toil and great effort, did he secure Volynia and Galitch on the very eve of the Mongol tempest, to appear next in a fateful position from which he found no issue whatever. His principalities, which comprised the borderland of[249]Southwestern Russia in the days of Kief supremacy, were attracted to the ancient capital from the earliest, but as the Russia of Kief times existed no longer, and as Northern Russia had been turned into a Mongol possession, the ruler of Volynia and Galitch had to do one of two things: either compact his lands into a new and special body and stand apart from the rest of Russia,—alone he could not stand, for he would be obliged to associate himself willingly or unwillingly with his western neighbors, the Poles and Hungarians, and, as they were in close connection with the Holy Roman-German Empire, he might not stand apart even from union with that power (he might be forced to join Rome, the Latin communion),—or he had the other issue: to recognize and strengthen the ancient bond of Volynia and Galitch with the remainder of Russia, with that Russia which had begun in Rurik’s day in Novgorod, and which was baptized in the Dnieper under Vladimir. But in this case, he would have to suffer Mongol captivity with it, and sacrifice his own land for the benefit of the common, much suffering country. He would have to cling to the princes of the house of Vladimir, who had been turned into slaves, and bear with them the same bitter burden which they were bearing. His Orthodox feeling forbade him to join Rome and the West. But to join the other Russian princes and the rest of the Russian people in their subjection to the Mongols was also beyond his endurance; his pride could not brook that, so he languished all the rest of his life in a position without escape and without moral refuge.Hungary and Poland, crushed by the Mongol invasion, were saved only because those countries were too narrow for the nomad Mongols, who wanted the freedom of movement and the space which existed in Russia. But the Hungarians and Poles, proud of their safety, though defeated and led away captive in every encounter with Mongols, explained the affair in another way: the West was no longer afraid of a Mongol invasion. Rome, which had tried in the time of Daniel’s father to bring “the kingdom” of Galitch to the Latin religion, did not cease now to point out to Daniel, with pride, the freedom of the West from Mongol subjection, and to promise that if he would obey the True Mother he would have a right to the same freedom. The Pope explained to Daniel that the only means of saving his country from that[250]slavery which had been put on it because of its schism, was “to return” to the bosom of the Mother. He promised in that case the assistance of Poles and Hungarians and the whole Roman Empire, and offered at the same time a crown and a kingly title. Daniel refused the title and the crown, but asked very earnestly for the military assistance. He asked that Germany, Hungary, Bohemia, Poland, and all who obeyed the Holy See, should be roused to a general attack on the pagan Mongols. Rome summoned all nations against the Mongols, and to Daniel came assurance that aid from the West would not be slow in arriving.Of Russian princes Daniel alone reigned a number of years without a summons from Batu to visit the Golden Horde. He had paid no tribute and had not been to the Khan with obeisance. But the promised aid from the West came not, and in 1250 envoys arrived from Batu, who repeated the message sent to other Russian princes: “It is unbecoming to live on the Khan’s land, and not bow down to him.” To this was added: “Give Galitch.”Daniel might give Galitch, withdraw to the depth of Volynia, and be satisfied with half his inheritance; besides the country beyond Brest was unconquered. But after praying earnestly, and counseling with his brother, Daniel said: “I will go to Batu.”When Daniel reached Kief, he saw dreadful misery. He prayed to the Archangel Michael; he implored the monks to pray for him, and then sailed down the river to Pereyaslavl. Hence he went directly along by Mongol stations toward the Golden Horde, and he grieved greatly when he witnessed the pagan ceremonies in the Russian land. In places Orthodox for centuries, men worshiped fire, bowed down to the sun, moon, earth, and dead ancestors. Beyond the Volga and near Sarai, he was troubled still more when he heard how at the Horde they would force him to pagan observances. By that time most other Russian princes had been at the Horde, and the Mongols declared that not one of them had violated the ceremonies established for receptions. One of the officials said to Daniel: “How great is Prince Yaroslav of Vladimir, but no exception was made for him. He bowed to the bushes, and thou wilt bow.” Daniel spat, and said: “The devil speaks through thy lips. God close them to guard me from hearing such utterances.”But Batu, in addition to saving Daniel from all that might seem[251]like the worship of idols, greeted him pleasantly, and with unusual kindness. When the prince, led into the Khan’s tent, bowed in a way that seemed to humiliate him, Batu said: “Daniel, thou wert long in coming, but thou art here and thou hast done well to come. Thou art ours now. Take our drink.” And they brought him a goblet. The prince emptied it and bowed, repeating the commonplace words which all princes uttered on similar occasions: “God gave thee power. I obey thee through God’s will.” He bowed again, and begged to salute the Khan’s consort. “Go,” said Batu, and he added when Daniel was about to leave, “Thou art not accustomed to milk; drink wine.” And when he was taking farewell of the Khan’s wife, they brought a goblet of wine to him from Batu. They detained Daniel at the Horde a shorter time than was usual for princes. After confirming all his rights in Volynia and Galitch, they dismissed him with courtesy.Great was the delight of Daniel’s family when he returned to them unharmed. His success was mentioned on all sides. That summer the King of Hungary sent this message: “Take my daughter for thy son Lev.” The king feared Daniel because he had visited the Horde, and besides, on the San, he had beaten the king’s son-in-law and expelled him from Galitch. When the wedding took place Daniel restored all captive Hungarians. Thus he and the king became friendly. Roman, another son of Daniel, married Gertrude, a daughter of the late Duke of Styria. Roman now claimed Styria as the dowry of Gertrude. The King of Bohemia, whose queen was a daughter of the same duke, also claimed this inheritance.Daniel, with Boleslav of Poland, Bela’s son-in-law, campaigned against the Bohemian king. He did this to make friends in the West, and thus get rid of the Mongols. He tried to induce his western neighbors to join him, and for this purpose he entered their circle of action. But from beginning to end, every promise of aid proved futile,—empty sound, nothing more. The Pope saw very well how fruitless were his efforts. Not only in Germany, but in Hungary and Poland his messages were unheeded. At last Daniel left papal promises unanswered. Then a legate was sent to deliver the crown to him and anoint him king in Western fashion. It was not the first time that they had come to Daniel for this purpose, but he had set them aside with various excuses. For example,[252]he had said earlier to the legate that it was no time for coronation when his lands were in danger,—not a crown did he need, but strong warriors. But now the papal envoy found Daniel at the place and time most convenient for his object, namely, at Cracow, on the way from Bohemia to Galitch, surrounded by his allies after a victory and the capture of a city.He refused this time also, saying: “I am in a foreign land.” But the papal legate, Polish princes, and magnates urged Daniel to take the gift offered. His mother, a Polish princess, insisted also and helped to influence him. “The Pope respects the Greek Church,” said the legate, “and curses all men who offend it. He is about to call a council to unite the two Churches. Aid will come from the Pope very quickly.” The Polish princes promised with every solemnity, and their magnates promised with them, that after Daniel had taken the crown they would march against the Mongols.In 1253, Daniel was crowned in Drogitchin. His subjection to Rome was complete, as it seemed to Polish princes. But, breaking all solemn promises, neither Poles nor Hungarians made a move to march against the Mongols.The following year Batu, who had been watching, and understood perfectly Daniel’s problem, sent an envoy renowned for his keenness, with a command to raze and destroy every fortress in Volynia and Galitch. Never had he commanded the Galitch prince so decisively, as if to show the world that he knew the situation and was master of it. Daniel, understanding well that no opposition could serve him, withdrew to Volynia, and sent Vassilko, his brother, and Lev, his own son, to meet Burundai, the keen envoy. “Raze your fortresses!” said Burundai. And all were destroyed at his order. The walls of Vladimir in Volynia, though of wood, were so strong and immense that there was no chance to tear them down before the coming of the envoy, hence they were burned by Vassilko immediately. Such promptness was praised by Burundai, who even dined with Vassilko on that day. But when this envoy departed, another one came, who said: “Burundai has commanded me to level your entrenchments.” “Accomplish the command,” said Vassilko. Baimur and his men filled every trench, and leveled all the earthworks surrounding the walls of Levoff, a city which Lev himself had founded, and which was called after[253]him. Burundai now ordered both princes to make a campaign with him. Adding to his own men warriors from Volynia and Galitch, he attacked Lithuania; then he took Vassilko against Poland and visited the districts of Sandomir and Lublin.With such a turn of affairs, Daniel had cut off all relations with Rome; he was therefore not a little astonished on receiving a new reprimand from the Pope for his lack of obedience to the Holy See. To this he made no answer.Not loving Galitch, the capital with which were connected so many memories of boundless deceit and disturbance, Daniel founded Holm, a new capital, and built a number of Orthodox churches. Thenceforth he passed his life in sorrow, for his position was one without issue. He was in a charmed circle without power to solve the riddle of his condition; he could look at it with terror, but he could not escape from it. In Holm he died in 1266, and was buried in the church of the Holy Virgin which he had founded. The honor Daniel received from Batu wounded his spirit so that his words touching this were recorded: “Oh, worse than woe is honor coming from Mongols.” A similar blow had he received at Drogitchin, through that gift of a crown bestowed with deceit and in spite of him.[254]

CHAPTER XTHE MONGOL INVASION

After Vladimir of Smolensk had perished at the Kalka, Vladimir, son of Rurik, who returned from that disastrous battle, took the Kief throne as the senior prince and favorite cousin of Mystislav, whose support he enjoyed till the death of the latter. But no sooner had Mystislav gone from the world than there rose storms of trouble because of the Kief principality. Vladimir called to mind quickly the offense of Daniel’s father, who had forced the tonsuring of Rurik. And for this act of the dead Roman he went now to take revenge on the living.As Prince of Kief, Vladimir concluded an alliance with Michael of Chernigoff, and both began war against Daniel. They would not let him have Podolia, and were jealous of his claim upon Galitch. Daniel now made an alliance with the Poles, and, since the chief troops brought against him were Polovtsi, Daniel asked Kotyan, who was his wife’s grandfather, to put a stop to the war. “Oh, father,” begged he, “stop this war; take me into thy friendship.” The Khan immediately dropped his allies and made a movement in favor of Daniel, crushing all that he met on his way. Then he vanished, and the war ceased of itself, without much injury to Daniel.Thankful for this service, Daniel made no use of the Poles, and dismissed his ally, who had not lost a warrior. Vladimir, son of Rurik, deserted by the Polovtsi, made peace with Daniel, and soon after begged his aid against Michael. This Michael of Chernigoff, so recently an ally of Vladimir, was now trying to force him from Kief, since he greatly desired that ancient city for his own use.From 1230 to 1240 war raged throughout Galitch and Volynia, Chernigoff, and Kief. More than once did Vladimir flee from Kief[226]to be succeeded by Michael; more than once was Michael deprived of his possessions. All Southern Russia, from the San and the Dniester to the Desna, was the alternate and fleeting possession of Michael and his brothers, or of the men who opposed them, namely, Vladimir and Daniel. Each side had its victory, but each met defeat somewhat later. Daniel brought aid many times to Vladimir. In one of these campaigns the two men crossed the Dnieper and captured Chernigoff; they warred on the Desna, and captured many towns in other places. More than once Michael appeared with his troops on the San and the Dniester. He seized Galitch and left his son and heir, Rostislav, to reign there. At times Michael gave towns to Daniel; at times he drove him unsparingly from Galitch regions. At times one of them fled from the other to Hungary, alternately they were hostile and friendly to each other. Once Daniel and Vladimir were defeated by Michael and the Polovtsi, which he led in. Vladimir was captured by those same Polovtsi and could not, for some time, buy his freedom. On the day that Vladimir was captured a horse was killed under Daniel, who barely escaped with his life from that battle-field. Then again not only did Michael lose Kief and Galitch, he lost Chernigoff also. At last Michael was brought to such straits that he begged for peace earnestly, and made amends to Daniel. “Much have I sinned against thee,” said he. “I have not held to my promises, I have done great harm to thee, but how many times have I wished to act otherwise, though unable, for the faith-breaking boyars of Galitch would never permit me. Now I take oath that with thee I will never have enmity.” So Daniel, with his brother Vassilko, received Michael as a relative.But this happened in 1239, when Michael’s dominions had been turned to a terrible wilderness, and the city of Chernigoff was a ruin. Up to that ghastly period wars and dissensions were constant in Southern Russia. During that troubled time Kief was without a prince really, for it passed from one hand to another so frequently that the interval during which one prince was winning the place from another was often far longer than the time he sat on the throne after winning it. Instead of asking who in that period of unrest ruled Kief, one might better ask who of prominent princes was not its ruler. The same was true of Galitch. It was difficult to say who reigned there.[227]In 1229 some of the Galitch men, faithful to the people, secretly invited Daniel to come and rule in their land. At his approach, boyars favorable to Hungary closed the gates of the city, burned the bridge on the Dniester, and used every possible means to oppose him. But the people from Ushitsa, Bobrok and Pruth regions marched in from all quarters to meet the prince “born to them,” and no party had sufficient power to check them.Daniel, forgetting the king’s opposition, and remembering only his personal kindness, did no harm to Prince Bela, who was Mystislav’s son-in-law. He allowed him to go back to Hungary, and even went with him to the Dniester. The intriguing boyars bowed now before Daniel, and only one of them, Sudislav the Traitor, went with the king’s son. The people threw stones at this boyar, and shouted: “Be off, thou disturber, thou traitor!”The next year, however, a new plot was formed against Daniel, and during the decade setting in with 1230 conspiracies and disturbances did not cease throughout Galitch. The boyars called Daniel prince, but seized for themselves everything in the country. A dissolution of all social bonds and a general decay of loyalty spread with rising rapidity. Formerly only boyars such as Sudislav or Volodislav, called Red Hair, were exalted, but now a great host broke in, boyars of whom no man had heard until that day; notorious were Voldrys and Klimyata, but no one knew of what stock they were. One Dobruslav seized the whole lower country, though he had no more right to it than a robber. At the same time a certain Grigory Vassilevitch took the upper part of Peremysl. A priest’s grandson, one Suditch, plundered actively on every side. Famous also were Lazar Domajiritch and Ivor Molibojitch, two lawless men of low origin. Such boyars “made great disturbance and robbed much,” says the chronicler. And these men were managing the fortunes of Galitch, treating now with Hungarians, now with Poles, and now with Russian princes. From one side they rushed to another, and again turned from that one with offers of service to him who could promise the profit at which they were grasping. In such a condition of Galitch Daniel now lost his heritage, not preserving one foot of land for himself in all that great region, and then again he returned to the throne of his father with apparent security.The Hungarian king, at the advice of boyars, came sometimes[228]himself, and sometimes he sent his sons thither. Bailski, with his brethren, took the side of the boyars and rose up in arms against Daniel. Finally Michael of Chernigoff appeared to take vengeance on Daniel for harassing his land, but, besides this, Michael remembered the offense against his own kinsmen in Galitch, the vile death inflicted by boyars on Igor’s sons. There, on the spot where their blood had been shed in the city of Galitch, he felt it his duty to win back the honor of his family. Hence Galitch was torn into bits and was ruled at short intervals, now by its own men, and now by outsiders. More than once intriguing boyars fell at Daniel’s feet and begged mercy, for the common people adhered to him firmly at all times. At last Bailski ceased his scheming: “I see myself,” said he to Daniel, “that I can be with no one but thee.” And then the Poles made peace with Daniel. Next the Hungarian king, Bela IV, made peace.But each success gained by Daniel was followed by the treason of boyars. Now they conspired to burn him and his brother in their palace; now to assassinate them at table while feasting. And again they roused Bailski against Daniel.Then they summoned in Daniel’s enemies from other regions of Russia, to be followed by renewed inroads of Poles and Hungarians. Michael of Chernigoff once more entered into greater friendship with Hungary than with Daniel. He arranged a marriage of his son, Rostislav, to one of Bela’s many daughters, and maintained a continual alliance with Poland. Such was the state of affairs during the dreadful ten years which succeeded 1230.Yaroslav, son of Big Nest, held Kief as prince in 1237. We know not from whom he received it, but the place fell to him without a struggle. There were two princes then who might have claimed the throne, each insignificant,—Vladimir, son of Rurik, who was still in debt for a part of his ransom to the Polovtsi, and Izyaslav. It may be that Yaroslav took Kief from these men. He left it on hearing that the city of Vladimir was destroyed by the Mongols.Michael of Chernigoff now took Kief, and put his son in Galitch, but in 1239 he left Kief because the Mongols had ruined Pereyaslavl and Chernigoff on the Alta, and were moving against the ancient capital. The Mongols sent envoys to Michael demanding surrender. The Kief people seized those envoys and slew them.[229]Michael fled straightway. Now from Smolensk came Rostislav, son of Mystislav, but he was driven out immediately by Daniel, who had at last won Galitch and mastered it thoroughly. But though Daniel had Kief, he himself did not enter it, but he sent Dmitri, his boyar, to hold the place.Daniel had completely overcome his opponents on every side. He now surpassed all southern princes, and was stronger than his father had ever been, for he had Kief in addition to Galitch and Volynia, but this was in 1239, when the dreadful hour was approaching, and it was too late to enjoy any fruit from the battles and toils which he had passed through. The very next year Kief was turned into “corpses, and ruins and ashes,” and Daniel was soon to receive the Mongol command: “Yield Galitch, and level thy walls in Volynia.”It is remarkable that the Mongol tempest was preceded not only by countless wars and mad quarrels, which produced immense suffering and anguish, but by the appearance of such omens in the sky and such marvels on all sides that ceaseless terror was born of them everywhere.Beginning with 1224, the fateful year of the Kalka disaster, the whole course of nature seemed changed throughout Russia. There was an unheard-of dry season, and a hazy heat with it; pitchy forests were burning and turf swamps were smoking all over the country; birds had not strength to fly, and fell down inanimate. In the autumn appeared a great comet; after sunset it lighted up the whole heavens, extending like a long, awful lance from the west toward the east. There were tales of floods overwhelming distant places. There were reports also of raging fires. Novgorod burned so that the flames crossed the river; all thought the end of the city was before them. In Vladimir there was a fire such as no man remembered. Besides this, there were earthquakes. In Vladimir, during mass, the holy images in churches began to quiver, the walls of the city were trembling. In Kief the stone church of the Holy Virgin sank at the corners. More than once was the sun darkened. Men who knew the movements of heavenly bodies strove to pacify people by explaining that the moon had gone through the sky, stopped in front of the sun, and thus hid it. But the sun was affected in other ways; once, while rising, it was like a small star, and no one could see where its size had gone; then[230]suddenly it appeared in full greatness; another time it sent immense pillars of light through the skies, which were green, blue and purple. Especially terrible was it in Kief; from these pillars of many-colored light a fiery cloud formed, which the wind carried forward till it brooded above the whole city. People fell on their knees and prayed to the Lord to have mercy; they took farewell of one another, feeling sure that the end of all life was then near them. The fiery cloud dropped, moved aside, and fell into the Dnieper, where it vanished without injury to any man. There was terrible famine in places, above all in Novgorod; there were neither dogs nor cats left for food in the city; men killed their own brothers and ate them; then there was pestilence. In Novgorod there were not graveyards to hold all the corpses, and fences were made around new ones, in which forty-two thousand people were buried. In Smolensk they laid out four new graveyards; in two of these sixteen thousand were buried; in the third seven thousand, and in the fourth nine thousand.Confused and scattered stories of a terrible invasion were spread among people. From the East, from the land of the Bulgars of the Volga, came reports of ill-omen, and then the tale of the “Mongol” became universal. “Oh, that is they!” was heard now in all places. “It is they who gave the Russian princes that awful defeat on the Kalka!”But who these pagans were, no man could indicate. According to report, they came of impure races hidden away in unknown regions. It was said that there was a prophecy of old concerning those people which said: “They will come before time ends, and capture all places.”The Mongols burst in from the Trans-Volga regions, through those open spaces called much later on the steppes of Tamboff and Saratoff, and attacked Ryazan boundaries.The Mongol army was enormous for that time. It seemed to the Russians as though a whole people were moving from one part of the earth to the other. This army was led by Batu, the great Jinghis Khan’s grandson, the son of his eldest son, Juchi.In attacking a region the Mongols surrounded it, as beaters surround game in a forest, and moved toward a fixed point of meeting. Batu sent envoys to Ryazan, and with them went an enchantress. The presence of this woman alarmed the Ryazan[231]people greatly. The envoys brought this message: “Give one tenth of everything: one prince in ten; one man in ten of the common people; give every tenth one from black, white, brown, and pied horses; from every kind of beast, give one out of ten; and of all wealth and all products give the tenth part to us.”The princes met, and when they had counseled together they sent back this answer: “When no one of us is living, what is left will belong to you.”The Mongols advanced with fire and sword toward the capital. The time was December, 1237, and January, 1238.To prevent these invaders from entering settled places, the princes marched out to meet them in steppe lands. Flinging themselves on the advancing hordes, they fought with desperate bravery, only to be crushed and destroyed utterly. Ingvar, who was at that time in Chernigoff, with Kolovrat, a voevoda, seeking warriors and imploring the Polovtsi to help him, returned home to a desert. Towns and villages were charred ruins, and contained only corpses which beasts of prey and foul birds were devouring. Dead princes, voevodas and warriors lay in the frozen grass, snow-covered. Only at long intervals appeared people, who had been able to hide in the forest, and who came out now to weep over the ruin of their homes.The Mongols not only surrounded the city of Ryazan with an army, but with a wall as well, and they strengthened this wall in places with firm palisades. This they called “driving the pig in.” Thus they expressed themselves, delighted that no one could escape when the city was taken. After they had finished their wall, they put up rams for battering the city walls in, and prepared ladders for storming.The Ryazan men resisted many days, and fought with desperation. They inflicted great loss on the Mongols, but, as was clear, they were weakening. Since they did not let their weapons go out of their hands, they were sure to be conquered in the end by weariness. The Mongols relieved their own storming parties, they gave those men rest, and sent forward fresh regiments. At last they succeeded in crushing the walls down and firing the city by hurling in heavy stones and blazing substances. On December 21, 1237, they mounted the breaches, and through fire, smoke and slaughter burst into the city.[232]At the same time, in the region about Ryazan, through all villages and monasteries, similar seizures and slaughters were enacted. For the Mongols it was not enough to capture cities and towns; they destroyed all the people from the aged to infants. They amused themselves with inflicting various kinds of cruel death singly; they loved also to kill men in multitudes. Made drunk, as it were, by abundance of bloodshed, they rose to a wild, boundless ecstasy.For many days this rejoicing and slaughter continued. Then groans and wails ceased in the ruined city and its environs, and all was silent. There was no one to wail, no one to groan, since all were lying dead and frozen. When the Mongols had vanished naught remained but blackened stones and charred remnants. Of many towns, cities and villages, nothing was left except stones, and cinders and dead bodies. It might almost be said that the Ryazan principality existed no longer. Those ill-fated princes, when the Mongols appeared on their southern border, sent to beg aid of Prince Yuri of Vladimir, and their relatives in Chernigoff. Kolovrat, who had been sent to Chernigoff, led back some men to the ruins of his birthplace. Amazed and maddened when he saw those ruins, he rushed forward to strike the rear of the Mongols. He overtook them at night, as they were leaving the Ryazan borders. The Mongols were terrified when they saw him. “Are not those the dead of Ryazan,” cried they, “who have risen and come to avenge their own deaths on us?”Those unknown Russians fought like furies. Then, seizing the swords from Mongols slain by them, and dropping their own weapons, they cut and slashed with more fury than ever. There was uproar and chaos in the whole Mongol army. The Mongols succeeded, however, in capturing five of the raging pursuers, whom they took to the Khan, their commander. “Who are ye?” asked the Khan. “Wonder not, O Tsar,” answered they, “that we have strength to fill the cup of death for all Mongols. We are servants of Prince Ingvar; we are of Kolovrat’s regiment, sent to conduct thee and thy warriors with honor. We conduct as many as we are able.”Tavrul, Batu’s brother-in-law, offered to seize Kolovrat. He went out on an unterrified steed against him, but Kolovrat cut the[233]Mongol in two, from his head to the saddle on which he was sitting. Then the Mongols surrounded the handful of heroes, who stood like a fortress, and not one of them yielded. All of those warriors were slain after desperate fighting. The Khan praised the dead men, and gave the five living their freedom. “The Russians know well,” said he, “how to drink the death cup with their princes.”Prince Yuri gave no aid to Ryazan. He said he would move against the enemy in person, and act separately.The Mongols turned now against Yuri. The old road from Ryazan to Vladimir lay through Kolomna and Moscow, in a country comparatively rich and well settled. Yuri sent troops to both cities. To Kolomna he sent his own son Vsevolod, and to Moscow another son, Vladimir, so young that Philip, the voevoda, was attached to his person. Leaving wife and family in Vladimir, confident that they would be safe within its walls, he himself hurried northward to levy warriors, and make ready for action. His nephews from Rostoff and Yaroslavl, the sons of Constantine, hastened to join his forces, and he hoped for the return of his brother, Yaroslav, with regiments from Kief.The Mongols made no useless delay at Kolomna. They slaughtered the inhabitants and burned down the city. One of the Ryazan princes, who had survived, joined at Kolomna the army sent out by Yuri, but in the battle which followed almost immediately every man fell except Yuri’s son. He escaped by fleeing swiftly to Vladimir, to meet a worse death in that doomed city.A fate like that of Kolomna soon struck Moscow; the place was stormed and sacked. Philip was killed, with other defenders, who fell fighting bravely. While the Mongols were dividing the rich spoils and rejoicing, they burned the city. Ordinary prisoners were killed quickly, those of distinction were crucified, flayed alive or burned. Yuri’s son, Vladimir, they took with them. The countless army, that same army of which Arabian historians wrote that on its path “the earth groaned, birds dropped dead, and wild beasts lost their senses,” opened now and moved away in various directions. From these divisions still smaller ones separated and marched off on all roads. They took in towns and settlements as a net gathers fish under water. People fled from cities and villages in crowds. They hid in caves, in dark forests,[234]and in gullies, not knowing how to escape or whither they should go for refuge. Those who were near heard from those who had come from afar that Mongols were everywhere slaying, burning, robbing churches, and cutting down old and young as they traveled. Others were leading a multitude of captives to their camps. It brought terror to look at those captives, barefoot and bloodless.February 3, 1238, the Mongols appeared at Vladimir and surrounded the city. The Vladimir men rejected proposals of surrender, and saw with dismay how the enemy strengthened their camp, and began preparations for storming. Mongol leaders rode round the city and surveyed its defenses. Then, to the amazement of all, an immense crowd of mounted commanders approached the main gate of the city, and asked, “Is Prince Yuri among you?” The people answered with arrows. The commanders replied in the same way, sending each of them an arrow at the crosses on the bell-towers glittering with golden tops in the sunlight. Then they made signs to stop shooting and negotiate. When the Vladimir men desisted, to see what would happen, the Mongols showed Yuri’s young son made prisoner in Moscow, and asked if they knew him. A cry rose. Vsevolod and Mystislav, brothers of the captive, wished to sally forth and save him, but they were held back by the people. All, from the voevoda to the last man in the city, swore to fight while life remained. All declared that they were ready to die for God’s churches, and those simple words were no idle sounds from those people.The bishops of Vladimir counseled every one to prepare for death and the last hour, to have this passing life in their memories no longer; and assured them that Christ would forget no one made worthy through the crown of a martyr. All who heard these words began to work valiantly. From old to young, every man was to fight on the walls, or wherever the need was. All armed themselves for the coming storm and the battle. On the second or third day of the siege, news spread through the city that Suzdal had been taken, that Rostoff had yielded. Men on the walls saw on the Suzdal road Mongol regiments approaching rapidly, and then they saw men, women, monks, nuns and a multitude of people led captive.That day the Mongols worked from early morning till nightfall, pulling up timber, and engines, and planting their wall-crushing[235]instruments. Next morning it appeared that they had not been idle in the night-time. A wooden wall now encircled the city. For the last twenty-four hours no man in Vladimir had slept. No person had undressed for a week past. All knew that their city was doomed. The princes, and Yuri’s whole family, many of the boyars and the people had put on the monk’s habit, making ready for death with great earnestness.On Sunday February 14, 1238, the city was stormed and captured. At daybreak the Mongols were on the walls, and before midday their work was accomplished. They did not occupy all parts immediately, though they broke in at once on many sides,—on the Klyazma, the Lybed, the Golden Gate, and the Valski sides. At one side they made a long mound, traces of which are seen even to our day. They went up along this mound and came down inside the walls on their ladders.The new city was covered with corpses. In the old city there was a stubborn defense and great slaughter. Savage fighting went on outside the walls as well. The Mongols killed every man who tried to escape. Then began the sack of Vladimir. Wherever Mongols entered, they seized what they found; they stripped the churches, taking everything of value; wherever they met with resistance, they brought piles of wood and burned all before them.When the enemy sprang in over the walls every person in Vladimir who could carry a weapon rushed “to drink the cup of death” promptly, knowing well that resistance was fruitless. The young princes, who thought to break through the enemy, were cut to pieces. The voevoda, Pyotr Oslyadukovitch, pressed heavily on the Mongols with his “children,” that is, the whole population of Vladimir, who did not desert him. They fought fiercely on the walls, and at the walls outside the city, and on all streets within it. Blood flowed till midday, and not to win victory, for that, as they knew, was impossible, but to kill as many infidels as they could, and die fighting for the holy Orthodox faith and for their country.The Mongol multitude crushed all before it; numbers conquered everywhere. The new and the old city were taken by assault, and the capital was burning from side to side in one vast conflagration.Yuri’s princess, with her relatives, daughters-in-law and grandchildren,[236]all the wives and daughters of boyars, many of the people and clergy with wives and children, and the bishop himself had taken refuge in the Vladimir cathedral. The smoke and flame of the city’s burning had reached the walls of this edifice, while round about were heard the shouts of the oncoming Mongols. Those inside the building sought safety in the galleries. Suffocating from smoke, they would have gone down again, but there was a dense crowd below pressing upward. The Mongols forced open the door of the cathedral and, rushing in, seized gold and silver, and all the church vessels. They cut and hewed down those persons who had not hidden, and those who were trying to get to the galleries. Then they brought sticks and brushwood, filled the place well with fuel, and set fire to it. Smoke rose in columns within the cathedral. The roar of the burning building and the cries of victory from the wild conquerors were heard in one dull groaning thunder, mingling with the wails, shrieks and prayers of the dying. The bishop blessed all at their parting, crying: “O Lord, stretch thy unseen hands to us, and receive the souls of thy people.” The massive walls of the cathedral did not fall; they withstood the fire and have remained in integrity to our time.The horrors of Ryazan were repeated in Vladimir. Only young women, nuns, and strong laborers were led away captive. The sick, the infirm, the weak and the aged were slaughtered at once, and without mercy. Smoking ruins alone were left of the beautiful city of Vladimir. When the Mongols marched away from the remnant of the capital, there was not a groan, or a cry to be heard from the people, for all who were in that city were lying dead.To overtake Yuri and destroy his forces was no difficult task for the savage invaders. They found him in Yaroslavl regions, on the banks of the Siti. Among other princes was Vassilko, his favorite nephew, a son of Constantine, whom his dying father had asked Yuri to treat as one of his own sons. Crushed by news from Vladimir, Yuri seemed dazed, and repeated unceasingly: “Why am I left, why do I not die with them?” Grief for children and wife was swallowed up in his anguish over the destruction of the city, the people, the bishop, and the clergy. Volunteers who were pouring in brought similar tidings from every part: “The enemy are slaying all people, burning all places; they are everywhere!” Only one thing remained: retreat to the distant north. But from[237]Vologda, and even from Galitch beyond the Volga, came news of the same universal slaughter and destruction. Three thousand men, sent as scouts to the north, returned with these tidings: “The enemy are attacking off there, they are around us far and near, they are everywhere.”Soon the struggle began on the Siti, and became straightway a most terrible massacre. Numbers crushed everything. The Mongols had scarcely begun when they had victory. Those people who were not mortally wounded, and who rose from the battle field, and a few who were unwounded fled, and hid in the forests. Yuri, Grand Prince of Vladimir, lay dead in a great pile of bodies,—his head was not with his body. More terrible still was the death of Vassilko. The young prince was taken alive by the Mongols. Attractive in mind and in person, his men said of him that whoso had served him would not serve another. He pleased also the Mongols. Batu strove to incline him to friendship. “Oh, dark kingdom of vileness,” answered Vassilko, “God has given me into thy hands, but thou canst not separate me from Christians.” He would take neither food nor drink from the pagans. Enraged at his stubbornness, they killed him most cruelly, and threw out his body to be eaten by wild beasts. The corpse of the young prince was found in a forest, under the guidance of a woman who said that she had witnessed his tortures, and Vassilko was buried with Yuri, his uncle. The headless Yuri, as found on the field of battle, was put in a coffin, but afterward the head was discovered and placed with the body, and the two bodies were taken later on to Rostoff for interment.After the destruction of Vladimir, Rostoff and Suzdal, the whole principality of Vladimir was ravaged. The lands now included in the governments of Vladimir, Yaroslavl, Kostroma, Tver and Moscow, with a part of Novgorod and Vologda, were scenes of ruin and terror. Everywhere the same marks of Mongols. Such noted places as Tver, Torjok, Volokolamsk, Yaroslavl and Mologa were sacked and burned to the ground, as well as villages and settlements beyond reckoning. The Russians looked on this invasion as a testimony of God’s anger, such an evil as a flood or an earthquake, irresistible and almighty. In small villages, when the Mongols appeared, the people grew helpless from terror; those who could escape rushed away to the forests, secreting their property[238]in the ground; what remained was left to fire and sword. Such boundless woe had never been witnessed in Russia. The surviving clergy throughout the country called on all to prepare for the last hour.The Mongols cut people down as a mower cuts grass. When they entered a province, they sent out detachments on every side; like locusts, they destroyed everything utterly. Monasteries and villages they stripped clean of all things that had value. From stores of grain they took what they needed, and burned the remainder, boasting that grass would not grow on their path.A great thaw saved Northwestern Russia. In the first days of March, the Mongols, when within a hundred versts of Novgorod, became alarmed by the swelling of rivers and turned back. Conducting their countless treasures and urging on long lines of prisoners, they moved swiftly southeastward to grass-growing regions. On the way they came to Koselsk, where they met a most stubborn resistance. A detachment attacked the town for forty-two days, but succeeded in storming the place only after reinforcements had been sent by Batu, who was enraged at this resistance. It was destroyed utterly, but its fame will never die in Russian history.Before the wooden walls of this city, the Mongols lost four thousand men and three princes. When at last they burst into the town, they were met by old and young, men and women, who rushed at them with knives, axes and other weapons, and fought with desperation from house to house, from street to street. Gradually forced back, they retired into the Kremlin, or fortress, and fought till the last man perished. Vassili, the little prince, who was very young, was drowned, it is said, in the blood of the people.The Mongols called this town “Mo balig” (town of woe), the same name which they gave Bamian of the Kwarezmian Empire, the place at which Moatagan, one of Jinghis Khan’s grandsons, fell pierced by an arrow, and where the young man’s mother, a daughter of Jinghis, rushed in at the head of ten thousand warriors and left nothing alive, not a man, woman or child, destroying even the dogs and cats, slaying everything in her vengeance.After Batu had established himself in the steppes of the Volga, he began to build Sarai, the capital of his Horde. He cleared the whole country and drove out the Polovtsi. Kotyan, the Polovtsi[239]Khan, took a remnant of his people, forty thousand in number, and settled in Hungary. The king gave him land on condition that he and his tribes became Catholic. The rest of the Polovtsi joined with the Mongols, and from that day they ceased forever as a people in Russia.Pereyaslavl on the Alta and Chernigoff were doomed now, and all who could leave those two places hurried elsewhere for refuge.When winter had again frozen the rivers and put snow on the steppe lands, the Mongols set out afresh to capture cities and slaughter new thousands of people. Batu sent a number of his leaders of ten thousand to the north again to search out and finish all places bordering on Vladimir. This work they did thoroughly in December, 1238, and January, 1239. Batu, meanwhile, took Pereyaslavl; destroyed the church of Saint Michael; slew the bishop; killed all who were useless as captives; took whatever belonged to the people and the churches; and moved on Chernigoff. The walls of that city were broken in by hurling stones, each of such weight that five men were needed to lift it. The city was stormed then and burned, the people slain, and every building plundered. One of the younger princes fell with the warriors. The chronicler states that the older princes had fled to Hungary. It is true that Michael’s heir, Rostislav, who had been left by his father in Galitch, and driven thence by Daniel soon after, had gone to marry King Bela’s daughter. Michael, himself, who at this time had taken Yaroslav’s place, in Kief, soon found it impossible to stay there.When Chernigoff was ruined, Batu commanded his brother to advance upon Kief and make a reconnaissance. From the Chernigoff bank of the Dnieper he saw the mother of cities and wondered at its beauty. Envoys were sent to demand its surrender. The Kief people slew them, and Michael fled from the capital. He went, as he thought, to a safe place, to Hungary, to be present at his son’s wedding. But, learning of the ruin of Chernigoff by the Mongols, Bela would not give his daughter to Rostislav. Michael and his son went then to the Mazovian prince, Konrad.Bolder than Michael, Rostislav, a Smolensk prince, occupied Kief, now abandoned by others. But Daniel of Galitch would not let Rostislav stay there, and seized for himself the old capital. He did not wait in Kief for Batu; he sent Dmitri, his boyar, to defend[240]the city. Daniel left even Volynia and Galitch, and went to Hungary. From there he went to Poland, for Bela himself was struck with such terror that he fled from the Mongols, and knew not where to find refuge.In 1239 the whole Russian land, if not yet under Mongols, looked on that doom as inevitable. There was such panic terror that men lost proper use of their faculties. All that interval from December, 1237, when Ryazan was destroyed, till December, 1240, was a time of destruction and captivity, and the end came only when there was nothing to destroy, and all the treasures of Russia were in Mongol hands.For the people these three years were merged in one unit of time, filled with anguish, terror and despair. It might be said that they had lost the sense and the power to count seasons. That Russian land, which in the days of Yaroslav the Lawgiver and Monomach his grandson had so easily overcome its enemies, and which in the days of Big Nest, Monomach’s nephew, in spite of all its divisions and conflicts, still preserved some appearance of oneness, existed no longer.On the San and the Dniester there was the same terror of Mongols as on the Desna and the Dnieper. From the north, from Vladimir, from Novgorod, no regiments appeared, and none were expected; no prince came with help, and no man was looking for him. The whole land was as silent as a grave or a desert. The Mongols had not captured Novgorod, but this was because they considered it as subject to Vladimir. They had been sated with bloodshed, and looked on the Vladimir region as thoroughly subjected. To avoid further evil, Novgorod had to connect itself absolutely with Vladimir, and with it carry the weight of the burden. Besides, the distant north was a country without attraction for Mongols. Beyond Novgorod lived the Chud people (Fins), whose lands extended to the shores of the Frozen Ocean. The Mongols did not consider that Novgorod could be the center of a region dangerous to their dominion, hence they left the old capital of Rurik uninjured. If they had had reason to punish Novgorod they would have razed it as they razed Ryazan and Vladimir.The Kief campaign was undertaken by Batu on a scale that was enormous; with him went his brothers and relatives: Kuyuk, son of the Grand Khan, was there, and Mangu and Baidar, grandsons[241]of Jinghis Khan, also a multitude of famous commanders,—Burundai, Subotai and others. The whole army consisted of more than five hundred thousand men.After finishing with Russia, Batu intended to pass into Hungary and destroy that country. He had sent a demand for obedience already, and a reprimand to the king for receiving Kotyan with his Polovtsi, whom Batu looked on as slaves who had fled from their master.As soon as the Dnieper was frozen, the army passed over. The Mongol warriors were so numerous, the squeaking of their wagons so piercing, the neighing of their horses and the roaring of camels so deafening, that men in the city could not hear, as was declared, what they said to one another. First the attackers surrounded Kief; next they built a wooden wall; then they erected their engines and hurled immense stones at the city walls day and night without ceasing. The mother city was defended bravely by its citizens, but available warriors were few; for so short-sighted had the princes been that even when the enemy was on the march they had continued to struggle for succession. When the Mongols had made sufficient breaches in the walls, they rushed through and began a hand-to-hand struggle. The Kief men fought desperately. From morning till evening the battle raged, but toward night overwhelming numbers conquered, and the Mongols held the walls of the city. That night the Kief men made a new wall in front of the first one, even women and children assisting in building defenses, and next day the battle continued. From every house, church and monastery people came out, and fought to the death in all parts of the city. In the churches, multitudes had gathered, and from the weight of the people and their effects on roofs and in the galleries the walls fell. Many perished in hand-to-hand conflict; others were suffocated with smoke; but none surrendered, for all knew that but one fate awaited them.For several days in succession the slaying of people and the destruction of buildings continued. The Vladimir Church fell; the Sophia Cathedral, built by Yaroslav the Lawgiver, endured best of any; the body of that church remained sound, and there is one uninjured part of the wall, on which is an image of the Virgin, preserved to the present. Of the Catacomb Monastery, the ancient church and walls were destroyed; of the Golden Gate, built by[242]Yaroslav, only ruins remained. The more violently the people defended the remnant of their city, and fought out their last hour, the more joyously did the destroyers carry on the destruction. They slew old men and children to the last one. If in other cities they had taken pleasure in general slaughter and devastation, they took tenfold more pleasure now. The strong places and the sanctuaries of a city were never overthrown with such fury, and never were the Mongols so relentless as in Kief, the city of churches. The destroyers did not spare even tombs; they forced them open, and with their heels crushed the skulls and broke the bones of the ancient princes. The havoc was so great that during the entire fourteenth century which followed, and in the fifteenth century, a large part of the city remained a desert covered with refuse. The remnants of stone buildings which had stood for centuries sank into the ground, dust drifted in over them, and then was concealed all those ruins. Of that Kief which, in the days both of Yaroslav the Lawgiver and Monomach, was compared by travelers with Tsargrad, there remained only the memory. It fell December, 1240, and was never renewed in its former magnificence, even to our day.The defender of Kief, Daniel’s boyar, Dmitri, was brought half alive before Batu, who repeated these words of praise: “The Russians know well how to drink the cup of death.” He gave him his life, and took the hero with him in his campaign against Volynia and Galitch. The boyar, continuing to serve his prince, strove to lead the Khan from ruining Galitch. He advised him to go quickly and take vengeance on the King of Hungary for harboring Kotyan and his Polovtsi, saying: “It is time to go against the Hungarians; unless thou go now they will gather great forces and exclude thee forever. Their land is a strong one.” Thus spoke Dmitri to Batu, while, in mind, he was weeping over Galitch.Batu was the more willing to hurry forward to Hungary, since he had learned that Michael of Chernigoff and Daniel of Galitch had gone to that kingdom. This, however, did not change his plan, though it may have hastened its execution, for the campaign against Galitch and Volynia was notable for swiftness. Batu on his way took through falsehood Ladyjin, a town which fought stubbornly and refused to yield. He promised the people in case they surrendered[243]to spare them and their town. At last they respected his word and surrendered. He slew every man to the last one. Kamenyets he passed, because its position seemed impregnable. Vladimir, the capital of Volynia, he took by assault and spared not one person. Galitch he treated in the same way.Moving from Vladimir of Volynia along the Būg, the Mongols advanced only as far as Brest. There, near the edge of Lithuania, Batu halted. The great swampy forests troubled him and his warriors, and he resolved to turn back. As one more example of cruelty after so many, they destroyed Brest and slew all the people. Then they moved southward.One division of Batu’s army entered Poland in 1240, ravaged the province of Lublin, and returned with great booty to Galitch. The Mongols reappeared in that country, however, in winter, crossing the Vistula on the ice, but after advancing to within a few miles of Cracow, they turned again toward Galitch, loaded with much spoil and driving before them a multitude of captives, among whom were some of the first people of Poland. They were pursued by Volodmir, the governor, who surprised them near Palanietz, and killed many. Discovering how small the attacking party was, the Mongols turned, made a furious charge, and put them to flight; then they continued their march. Soon, however, they reëntered Poland with new forces. The nobility of Sandomir and Cracow assembled their warriors and advanced to meet the oncoming Mongols, but in the conflict which followed, they were defeated with great loss.Boleslav IV at this time occupied the throne of Cracow. Fearing to remain in the citadel, he took refuge with his family in a castle at the foot of the Carpathians, and later on in a monastery in Moravia. Many of the aristocracy of Poland followed his example, escaping to Hungary or Germany; the common people sought refuge in the forests, swamps and mountains. The conquerors entered Cracow, March 24, 1241, and set fire to the city, which they found deserted; then they marched toward Breslau, the capital of Silesia, devastating the region through which they passed.On reaching Breslau, they discovered that it had been reduced to ashes by the inhabitants, who had taken refuge in the citadel with the garrison. The Mongols, after investing the fortress for several days, raised the siege and joined another corps of their[244]army to march with it against the forces assembled near Lignitz, where Henry, Duke of Silesia, was commander of about twenty thousand men. The Mongols were led by a prince (in Polish chronicles called Péta) whose army far outnumbered that of Duke Henry. The defeat of the Poles was complete. Henry fled from the field with but four of his officers; retarded by the fall of his horse, which was wounded, he mounted a second, but was surrounded, captured, and his head cut off. The Polish loss was heavy. It is told that to discover the number of the enemy killed, the Mongols cut an ear from each corpse, and with those ears filled four large sacks.They now moved forward, carrying fire and blood even to the frontiers of Bohemia and Austria. While one part of Péta’s army besieged Olmütz in Moravia, several corps of it plundered and devastated the surrounding region. Sternberg, commander of Olmütz, made a successful sortie from the citadel, killed some three hundred of the enemy, and returned in safety. A few days later the Mongols raised camp and marched toward Hungary to join the great army under Batu. It was evident that they had besieged Olmütz only for the purpose of pillaging the country round it.Before marching into Hungary, Batu had written to King Bela, demanding that he yield obedience to the Mongol sovereign if he wished to save his own life, or the lives of his subjects. Bela paid no heed to this demand, and the only measure of defense he took was to send small detachments to hold the passes of the Carpathians.There was much dissatisfaction with King Bela, for he had no military ability; another cause for the dissatisfaction was that he had received Kotyan, the Polovtsi Khan, and allowed him to settle, with some forty thousand families, in Hungary. The acquisition of this number of subjects increased the power of the king, and the hope of converting the pagans to Christianity gave him pleasure. But these Polovtsi were so displeasing to the people that in 1240 Bela had to convoke an assembly of the clergy, and the nobility of his kingdom as well as the chiefs of the Polovtsi. It was then resolved that the Polovtsi should be dispersed in different provinces, and should be assigned uncultivated districts where they could pasture their flocks and herds. Kotyan was baptized,[245]so also were his chief officers. Still the hatred of the people continued.Batu penetrated into Hungary by the pass called “Gate of Russia,” and was joined by divisions of his army which had been devastating Poland. Thence he marched toward Pest, and, camping half a day’s journey from that city, he ravaged the country. The people, thinking that Kotyan, the Polovtsi Khan, was secretly communicating with Batu, murmured against the king and demanded the death of Kotyan and his men. They attacked Kotyan, who defended himself for a time, but was at last overpowered and killed. This murder only served to increase the woes of Hungary. The report of it spread to the country, and the peasants fell on the Polovtsi and massacred them without mercy. But those who escaped united and later on avenged their people.When the Hungarian army had assembled the king marched out of Pest to meet the Mongols. The result of the conflict was most disastrous for the Hungarians. The king owed his escape to the swiftness of his horse. He took refuge near the Carpathians, where he encountered his son-in-law, who was also seeking an asylum in that country.While these events were passing in the heart of Hungary, Kadan advanced through Transylvania, seizing property, profaning churches, and leading away captives.The Mongols remained inactive during the summer of 1241, but in December of that year a detachment crossed the Danube and pitched their camp near the city of Strigonia, or Gran. The besieged destroyed all that was most valuable, killed their horses, and retired into the stone edifices to defend themselves. The Mongols, furious at loss of plunder, were careful that no person should escape. They seized and burned the principal inhabitants over slow fires, to make them declare where they had hidden their riches.At this moment news came to Batu of the death of Ogotai, the Grand Khan, and with the news an order to return to Mongolia at once.The barbarians had penetrated even into Austria, and a corps advanced to Neustadt near Vienna, but retired on learning of the approach of a large army. After the destruction of Strigonia, Kadan was sent with a detachment against King Bela. Bela,[246]who had taken refuge in Austria, retired with his family to Agram in Croatia, where he remained during the summer. Learning that Kadan was marching toward Agram, he went to Spalato on the Dalmatian coast, and then to Trau. Kadan marched with marvelous rapidity. Halting for a few days at Sirbium River, he assembled the Hungarian prisoners whom he had seized on the march, and had them all put to death. On arriving at Spalato and learning that the king was not there, he advanced at once to the neighborhood of Trau, and camped upon the bank facing the island in the Adriatic where Bela had taken refuge. There the Mongols remained through the month of March, and then, after pillaging Cattaro, Suagio and Drivasto, and killing every man, woman and child who fell into their hands, they returned by way of Herzegovinia and Serbia to join Batu. While on the march Kadan received orders to hasten, as all Mongol princes had been summoned to Mongolia.Daniel and Vassilko, on hearing that Batu had left Hungary, delayed for a time in returning to Russia. They knew not where their families were, or indeed if they were living, and their delight was unbounded on finding them. On the way home from Poland they could not draw near Brest, because of the terrible odor of corpses. Very little remained of the former Vladimir, and the ruined churches were filled with dead bodies.Batu, who had brought terror on all Europe by the destruction wrought in Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Moldavia and certain portions of Poland, was not pleased with those lands. The West was too narrow for a nomad people, and Russia became the real province for Mongols. Hungary and Poland suffered little in comparison. Batu pitched his tents and built Sarai, as has been stated, on the bank of the Lower Volga, from where it was convenient and easy to send troops in every direction, and keep conquered Russia in obedience. The Golden Horde, as thenceforth men called the Khan’s residence in Russia, was noted for wealth even in Batu’s day.Jinghis Khan, who died in 1227, was succeeded by his eldest son Ogotai, who reigned from 1229 to 1241. During that reign, Batu completed his conquest of Russia.Russia, subject now to the Mongol, learned that a new sovereign had appeared in Mongolia, but Batu, the grandson of Jinghis[247]Khan, remained their ruler. To him was given entire control of the “Kipchak Horde,” his possessions extending from a line somewhat east of the Ural Mountains to the Danube. He now counted all the Russian land as his property, and declared to its princes that they might not live on the Khan’s land unless they bowed down to him.Thus began the heavy yoke of the Mongols, which was to last for more than two hundred years.Mongol law touching subjects was brief, being this, in substance,—that not only their families and property, but their lives were entirely at the Khan’s disposition. This law, universal, fundamental, unchangeable, was applied to all conquered regions. It was inevitable to give each year one tenth of the harvest and one tenth of every kind of increase. Every man was liable to military service with the Mongols against whomsoever they might send him. Bashaks were appointed in every large town to see to the accurate fulfilment of these duties, and to keep in obedience both people and princes. At first princes left in power by the Khan were bound to appear at the Horde with yearly tribute; besides they were summoned whenever the need came. They must appear with bending knees, and bowing, and striking the earth with their foreheads. They were forced to give special gifts to the Khan, to his wives and his courtiers.When coming before the Khan, various ceremonies had to be observed. For instance, when entering his tent, each man had to cross the threshold without touching it; if he touched it death was the penalty. But before being admitted to the eyes of the ruler, princes were obliged to go through many trials by wizards. They were forced to bow to fire, to bushes, to the shades of dead Khans; to pass between two fires while the wizards and witches who lighted those fires pronounced incantations.As this bowing to bushes and fire and the shades of dead rulers took place before pictures on felt and on silk, it seemed like bowing to idols. They had also to praise Mongol customs, to drink liquor made of mare’s milk, and eat of Mongol dishes. The least show of repugnance or indifference involved peril. But, since effect was felt keenly by Mongols, kindness and terror alternated. They knew at the Horde who the men were from whom they must withhold honor, and to whom honor ought to be given. Rulers of[248]regions under Mongol dominion, but remote from Sarai and bordering on lands which were free, were received more politely than those who were nearer. The following has been stated by a man who observed the position in Batu’s day: “The Mongols take less tribute from those whose lands are remote from them, and border on others which are free, and from those whom they fear for some reason. They treat those remote subjects more kindly, so that they may not attack, or that others may obey with more willingness.” The cruel and savage Batu was sometimes fond of charming those princes who bowed down before him, and of showing magnanimity in treatment, and at such times he seemed the most kindly host possible.Though all Russia was under the Mongol, the yoke weighed with greatest burden on the lands in the center; that place which was the real heart of Russia, and had formed the principality of Vladimir. It was unspeakably more difficult for Yaroslav to manage than for princes in Volynia and Galitch. After Kief had been swept from the earth, so to speak, or crushed into it, and Batu had shown no wish to take Hungary or Poland, Galitch and Volynia, as being nearest those countries, were in the easiest position of all the principalities in Russia.Batu, in his first campaign, did not touch Smolensk in its western portions, and in the second he did not go beyond Brest in a northern direction. In the princes of Volynia and Galitch he had his last representatives. On the west was the country which for their own reasons the Russians represented to Batu as little dependent on their rule, in fact a foreign region, and purposely they called it not Rus, but Litvá. Thus of all Russian princes, the position of Daniel was most favored with reference to the Mongols. As to his rival in Chernigoff, Prince Michael, his possessions might have been called non-existent. Chernigoff and Kursk were in the worst position possible, because nearest the Mongols. Hence after the conquest, Daniel and Michael were, each in his own way, distinguished beyond other princes in Russia.Daniel knew not from childhood what rest was, and only in years of ripe manhood, after endless toil and great effort, did he secure Volynia and Galitch on the very eve of the Mongol tempest, to appear next in a fateful position from which he found no issue whatever. His principalities, which comprised the borderland of[249]Southwestern Russia in the days of Kief supremacy, were attracted to the ancient capital from the earliest, but as the Russia of Kief times existed no longer, and as Northern Russia had been turned into a Mongol possession, the ruler of Volynia and Galitch had to do one of two things: either compact his lands into a new and special body and stand apart from the rest of Russia,—alone he could not stand, for he would be obliged to associate himself willingly or unwillingly with his western neighbors, the Poles and Hungarians, and, as they were in close connection with the Holy Roman-German Empire, he might not stand apart even from union with that power (he might be forced to join Rome, the Latin communion),—or he had the other issue: to recognize and strengthen the ancient bond of Volynia and Galitch with the remainder of Russia, with that Russia which had begun in Rurik’s day in Novgorod, and which was baptized in the Dnieper under Vladimir. But in this case, he would have to suffer Mongol captivity with it, and sacrifice his own land for the benefit of the common, much suffering country. He would have to cling to the princes of the house of Vladimir, who had been turned into slaves, and bear with them the same bitter burden which they were bearing. His Orthodox feeling forbade him to join Rome and the West. But to join the other Russian princes and the rest of the Russian people in their subjection to the Mongols was also beyond his endurance; his pride could not brook that, so he languished all the rest of his life in a position without escape and without moral refuge.Hungary and Poland, crushed by the Mongol invasion, were saved only because those countries were too narrow for the nomad Mongols, who wanted the freedom of movement and the space which existed in Russia. But the Hungarians and Poles, proud of their safety, though defeated and led away captive in every encounter with Mongols, explained the affair in another way: the West was no longer afraid of a Mongol invasion. Rome, which had tried in the time of Daniel’s father to bring “the kingdom” of Galitch to the Latin religion, did not cease now to point out to Daniel, with pride, the freedom of the West from Mongol subjection, and to promise that if he would obey the True Mother he would have a right to the same freedom. The Pope explained to Daniel that the only means of saving his country from that[250]slavery which had been put on it because of its schism, was “to return” to the bosom of the Mother. He promised in that case the assistance of Poles and Hungarians and the whole Roman Empire, and offered at the same time a crown and a kingly title. Daniel refused the title and the crown, but asked very earnestly for the military assistance. He asked that Germany, Hungary, Bohemia, Poland, and all who obeyed the Holy See, should be roused to a general attack on the pagan Mongols. Rome summoned all nations against the Mongols, and to Daniel came assurance that aid from the West would not be slow in arriving.Of Russian princes Daniel alone reigned a number of years without a summons from Batu to visit the Golden Horde. He had paid no tribute and had not been to the Khan with obeisance. But the promised aid from the West came not, and in 1250 envoys arrived from Batu, who repeated the message sent to other Russian princes: “It is unbecoming to live on the Khan’s land, and not bow down to him.” To this was added: “Give Galitch.”Daniel might give Galitch, withdraw to the depth of Volynia, and be satisfied with half his inheritance; besides the country beyond Brest was unconquered. But after praying earnestly, and counseling with his brother, Daniel said: “I will go to Batu.”When Daniel reached Kief, he saw dreadful misery. He prayed to the Archangel Michael; he implored the monks to pray for him, and then sailed down the river to Pereyaslavl. Hence he went directly along by Mongol stations toward the Golden Horde, and he grieved greatly when he witnessed the pagan ceremonies in the Russian land. In places Orthodox for centuries, men worshiped fire, bowed down to the sun, moon, earth, and dead ancestors. Beyond the Volga and near Sarai, he was troubled still more when he heard how at the Horde they would force him to pagan observances. By that time most other Russian princes had been at the Horde, and the Mongols declared that not one of them had violated the ceremonies established for receptions. One of the officials said to Daniel: “How great is Prince Yaroslav of Vladimir, but no exception was made for him. He bowed to the bushes, and thou wilt bow.” Daniel spat, and said: “The devil speaks through thy lips. God close them to guard me from hearing such utterances.”But Batu, in addition to saving Daniel from all that might seem[251]like the worship of idols, greeted him pleasantly, and with unusual kindness. When the prince, led into the Khan’s tent, bowed in a way that seemed to humiliate him, Batu said: “Daniel, thou wert long in coming, but thou art here and thou hast done well to come. Thou art ours now. Take our drink.” And they brought him a goblet. The prince emptied it and bowed, repeating the commonplace words which all princes uttered on similar occasions: “God gave thee power. I obey thee through God’s will.” He bowed again, and begged to salute the Khan’s consort. “Go,” said Batu, and he added when Daniel was about to leave, “Thou art not accustomed to milk; drink wine.” And when he was taking farewell of the Khan’s wife, they brought a goblet of wine to him from Batu. They detained Daniel at the Horde a shorter time than was usual for princes. After confirming all his rights in Volynia and Galitch, they dismissed him with courtesy.Great was the delight of Daniel’s family when he returned to them unharmed. His success was mentioned on all sides. That summer the King of Hungary sent this message: “Take my daughter for thy son Lev.” The king feared Daniel because he had visited the Horde, and besides, on the San, he had beaten the king’s son-in-law and expelled him from Galitch. When the wedding took place Daniel restored all captive Hungarians. Thus he and the king became friendly. Roman, another son of Daniel, married Gertrude, a daughter of the late Duke of Styria. Roman now claimed Styria as the dowry of Gertrude. The King of Bohemia, whose queen was a daughter of the same duke, also claimed this inheritance.Daniel, with Boleslav of Poland, Bela’s son-in-law, campaigned against the Bohemian king. He did this to make friends in the West, and thus get rid of the Mongols. He tried to induce his western neighbors to join him, and for this purpose he entered their circle of action. But from beginning to end, every promise of aid proved futile,—empty sound, nothing more. The Pope saw very well how fruitless were his efforts. Not only in Germany, but in Hungary and Poland his messages were unheeded. At last Daniel left papal promises unanswered. Then a legate was sent to deliver the crown to him and anoint him king in Western fashion. It was not the first time that they had come to Daniel for this purpose, but he had set them aside with various excuses. For example,[252]he had said earlier to the legate that it was no time for coronation when his lands were in danger,—not a crown did he need, but strong warriors. But now the papal envoy found Daniel at the place and time most convenient for his object, namely, at Cracow, on the way from Bohemia to Galitch, surrounded by his allies after a victory and the capture of a city.He refused this time also, saying: “I am in a foreign land.” But the papal legate, Polish princes, and magnates urged Daniel to take the gift offered. His mother, a Polish princess, insisted also and helped to influence him. “The Pope respects the Greek Church,” said the legate, “and curses all men who offend it. He is about to call a council to unite the two Churches. Aid will come from the Pope very quickly.” The Polish princes promised with every solemnity, and their magnates promised with them, that after Daniel had taken the crown they would march against the Mongols.In 1253, Daniel was crowned in Drogitchin. His subjection to Rome was complete, as it seemed to Polish princes. But, breaking all solemn promises, neither Poles nor Hungarians made a move to march against the Mongols.The following year Batu, who had been watching, and understood perfectly Daniel’s problem, sent an envoy renowned for his keenness, with a command to raze and destroy every fortress in Volynia and Galitch. Never had he commanded the Galitch prince so decisively, as if to show the world that he knew the situation and was master of it. Daniel, understanding well that no opposition could serve him, withdrew to Volynia, and sent Vassilko, his brother, and Lev, his own son, to meet Burundai, the keen envoy. “Raze your fortresses!” said Burundai. And all were destroyed at his order. The walls of Vladimir in Volynia, though of wood, were so strong and immense that there was no chance to tear them down before the coming of the envoy, hence they were burned by Vassilko immediately. Such promptness was praised by Burundai, who even dined with Vassilko on that day. But when this envoy departed, another one came, who said: “Burundai has commanded me to level your entrenchments.” “Accomplish the command,” said Vassilko. Baimur and his men filled every trench, and leveled all the earthworks surrounding the walls of Levoff, a city which Lev himself had founded, and which was called after[253]him. Burundai now ordered both princes to make a campaign with him. Adding to his own men warriors from Volynia and Galitch, he attacked Lithuania; then he took Vassilko against Poland and visited the districts of Sandomir and Lublin.With such a turn of affairs, Daniel had cut off all relations with Rome; he was therefore not a little astonished on receiving a new reprimand from the Pope for his lack of obedience to the Holy See. To this he made no answer.Not loving Galitch, the capital with which were connected so many memories of boundless deceit and disturbance, Daniel founded Holm, a new capital, and built a number of Orthodox churches. Thenceforth he passed his life in sorrow, for his position was one without issue. He was in a charmed circle without power to solve the riddle of his condition; he could look at it with terror, but he could not escape from it. In Holm he died in 1266, and was buried in the church of the Holy Virgin which he had founded. The honor Daniel received from Batu wounded his spirit so that his words touching this were recorded: “Oh, worse than woe is honor coming from Mongols.” A similar blow had he received at Drogitchin, through that gift of a crown bestowed with deceit and in spite of him.[254]

After Vladimir of Smolensk had perished at the Kalka, Vladimir, son of Rurik, who returned from that disastrous battle, took the Kief throne as the senior prince and favorite cousin of Mystislav, whose support he enjoyed till the death of the latter. But no sooner had Mystislav gone from the world than there rose storms of trouble because of the Kief principality. Vladimir called to mind quickly the offense of Daniel’s father, who had forced the tonsuring of Rurik. And for this act of the dead Roman he went now to take revenge on the living.

As Prince of Kief, Vladimir concluded an alliance with Michael of Chernigoff, and both began war against Daniel. They would not let him have Podolia, and were jealous of his claim upon Galitch. Daniel now made an alliance with the Poles, and, since the chief troops brought against him were Polovtsi, Daniel asked Kotyan, who was his wife’s grandfather, to put a stop to the war. “Oh, father,” begged he, “stop this war; take me into thy friendship.” The Khan immediately dropped his allies and made a movement in favor of Daniel, crushing all that he met on his way. Then he vanished, and the war ceased of itself, without much injury to Daniel.

Thankful for this service, Daniel made no use of the Poles, and dismissed his ally, who had not lost a warrior. Vladimir, son of Rurik, deserted by the Polovtsi, made peace with Daniel, and soon after begged his aid against Michael. This Michael of Chernigoff, so recently an ally of Vladimir, was now trying to force him from Kief, since he greatly desired that ancient city for his own use.

From 1230 to 1240 war raged throughout Galitch and Volynia, Chernigoff, and Kief. More than once did Vladimir flee from Kief[226]to be succeeded by Michael; more than once was Michael deprived of his possessions. All Southern Russia, from the San and the Dniester to the Desna, was the alternate and fleeting possession of Michael and his brothers, or of the men who opposed them, namely, Vladimir and Daniel. Each side had its victory, but each met defeat somewhat later. Daniel brought aid many times to Vladimir. In one of these campaigns the two men crossed the Dnieper and captured Chernigoff; they warred on the Desna, and captured many towns in other places. More than once Michael appeared with his troops on the San and the Dniester. He seized Galitch and left his son and heir, Rostislav, to reign there. At times Michael gave towns to Daniel; at times he drove him unsparingly from Galitch regions. At times one of them fled from the other to Hungary, alternately they were hostile and friendly to each other. Once Daniel and Vladimir were defeated by Michael and the Polovtsi, which he led in. Vladimir was captured by those same Polovtsi and could not, for some time, buy his freedom. On the day that Vladimir was captured a horse was killed under Daniel, who barely escaped with his life from that battle-field. Then again not only did Michael lose Kief and Galitch, he lost Chernigoff also. At last Michael was brought to such straits that he begged for peace earnestly, and made amends to Daniel. “Much have I sinned against thee,” said he. “I have not held to my promises, I have done great harm to thee, but how many times have I wished to act otherwise, though unable, for the faith-breaking boyars of Galitch would never permit me. Now I take oath that with thee I will never have enmity.” So Daniel, with his brother Vassilko, received Michael as a relative.

But this happened in 1239, when Michael’s dominions had been turned to a terrible wilderness, and the city of Chernigoff was a ruin. Up to that ghastly period wars and dissensions were constant in Southern Russia. During that troubled time Kief was without a prince really, for it passed from one hand to another so frequently that the interval during which one prince was winning the place from another was often far longer than the time he sat on the throne after winning it. Instead of asking who in that period of unrest ruled Kief, one might better ask who of prominent princes was not its ruler. The same was true of Galitch. It was difficult to say who reigned there.[227]

In 1229 some of the Galitch men, faithful to the people, secretly invited Daniel to come and rule in their land. At his approach, boyars favorable to Hungary closed the gates of the city, burned the bridge on the Dniester, and used every possible means to oppose him. But the people from Ushitsa, Bobrok and Pruth regions marched in from all quarters to meet the prince “born to them,” and no party had sufficient power to check them.

Daniel, forgetting the king’s opposition, and remembering only his personal kindness, did no harm to Prince Bela, who was Mystislav’s son-in-law. He allowed him to go back to Hungary, and even went with him to the Dniester. The intriguing boyars bowed now before Daniel, and only one of them, Sudislav the Traitor, went with the king’s son. The people threw stones at this boyar, and shouted: “Be off, thou disturber, thou traitor!”

The next year, however, a new plot was formed against Daniel, and during the decade setting in with 1230 conspiracies and disturbances did not cease throughout Galitch. The boyars called Daniel prince, but seized for themselves everything in the country. A dissolution of all social bonds and a general decay of loyalty spread with rising rapidity. Formerly only boyars such as Sudislav or Volodislav, called Red Hair, were exalted, but now a great host broke in, boyars of whom no man had heard until that day; notorious were Voldrys and Klimyata, but no one knew of what stock they were. One Dobruslav seized the whole lower country, though he had no more right to it than a robber. At the same time a certain Grigory Vassilevitch took the upper part of Peremysl. A priest’s grandson, one Suditch, plundered actively on every side. Famous also were Lazar Domajiritch and Ivor Molibojitch, two lawless men of low origin. Such boyars “made great disturbance and robbed much,” says the chronicler. And these men were managing the fortunes of Galitch, treating now with Hungarians, now with Poles, and now with Russian princes. From one side they rushed to another, and again turned from that one with offers of service to him who could promise the profit at which they were grasping. In such a condition of Galitch Daniel now lost his heritage, not preserving one foot of land for himself in all that great region, and then again he returned to the throne of his father with apparent security.

The Hungarian king, at the advice of boyars, came sometimes[228]himself, and sometimes he sent his sons thither. Bailski, with his brethren, took the side of the boyars and rose up in arms against Daniel. Finally Michael of Chernigoff appeared to take vengeance on Daniel for harassing his land, but, besides this, Michael remembered the offense against his own kinsmen in Galitch, the vile death inflicted by boyars on Igor’s sons. There, on the spot where their blood had been shed in the city of Galitch, he felt it his duty to win back the honor of his family. Hence Galitch was torn into bits and was ruled at short intervals, now by its own men, and now by outsiders. More than once intriguing boyars fell at Daniel’s feet and begged mercy, for the common people adhered to him firmly at all times. At last Bailski ceased his scheming: “I see myself,” said he to Daniel, “that I can be with no one but thee.” And then the Poles made peace with Daniel. Next the Hungarian king, Bela IV, made peace.

But each success gained by Daniel was followed by the treason of boyars. Now they conspired to burn him and his brother in their palace; now to assassinate them at table while feasting. And again they roused Bailski against Daniel.

Then they summoned in Daniel’s enemies from other regions of Russia, to be followed by renewed inroads of Poles and Hungarians. Michael of Chernigoff once more entered into greater friendship with Hungary than with Daniel. He arranged a marriage of his son, Rostislav, to one of Bela’s many daughters, and maintained a continual alliance with Poland. Such was the state of affairs during the dreadful ten years which succeeded 1230.

Yaroslav, son of Big Nest, held Kief as prince in 1237. We know not from whom he received it, but the place fell to him without a struggle. There were two princes then who might have claimed the throne, each insignificant,—Vladimir, son of Rurik, who was still in debt for a part of his ransom to the Polovtsi, and Izyaslav. It may be that Yaroslav took Kief from these men. He left it on hearing that the city of Vladimir was destroyed by the Mongols.

Michael of Chernigoff now took Kief, and put his son in Galitch, but in 1239 he left Kief because the Mongols had ruined Pereyaslavl and Chernigoff on the Alta, and were moving against the ancient capital. The Mongols sent envoys to Michael demanding surrender. The Kief people seized those envoys and slew them.[229]Michael fled straightway. Now from Smolensk came Rostislav, son of Mystislav, but he was driven out immediately by Daniel, who had at last won Galitch and mastered it thoroughly. But though Daniel had Kief, he himself did not enter it, but he sent Dmitri, his boyar, to hold the place.

Daniel had completely overcome his opponents on every side. He now surpassed all southern princes, and was stronger than his father had ever been, for he had Kief in addition to Galitch and Volynia, but this was in 1239, when the dreadful hour was approaching, and it was too late to enjoy any fruit from the battles and toils which he had passed through. The very next year Kief was turned into “corpses, and ruins and ashes,” and Daniel was soon to receive the Mongol command: “Yield Galitch, and level thy walls in Volynia.”

It is remarkable that the Mongol tempest was preceded not only by countless wars and mad quarrels, which produced immense suffering and anguish, but by the appearance of such omens in the sky and such marvels on all sides that ceaseless terror was born of them everywhere.

Beginning with 1224, the fateful year of the Kalka disaster, the whole course of nature seemed changed throughout Russia. There was an unheard-of dry season, and a hazy heat with it; pitchy forests were burning and turf swamps were smoking all over the country; birds had not strength to fly, and fell down inanimate. In the autumn appeared a great comet; after sunset it lighted up the whole heavens, extending like a long, awful lance from the west toward the east. There were tales of floods overwhelming distant places. There were reports also of raging fires. Novgorod burned so that the flames crossed the river; all thought the end of the city was before them. In Vladimir there was a fire such as no man remembered. Besides this, there were earthquakes. In Vladimir, during mass, the holy images in churches began to quiver, the walls of the city were trembling. In Kief the stone church of the Holy Virgin sank at the corners. More than once was the sun darkened. Men who knew the movements of heavenly bodies strove to pacify people by explaining that the moon had gone through the sky, stopped in front of the sun, and thus hid it. But the sun was affected in other ways; once, while rising, it was like a small star, and no one could see where its size had gone; then[230]suddenly it appeared in full greatness; another time it sent immense pillars of light through the skies, which were green, blue and purple. Especially terrible was it in Kief; from these pillars of many-colored light a fiery cloud formed, which the wind carried forward till it brooded above the whole city. People fell on their knees and prayed to the Lord to have mercy; they took farewell of one another, feeling sure that the end of all life was then near them. The fiery cloud dropped, moved aside, and fell into the Dnieper, where it vanished without injury to any man. There was terrible famine in places, above all in Novgorod; there were neither dogs nor cats left for food in the city; men killed their own brothers and ate them; then there was pestilence. In Novgorod there were not graveyards to hold all the corpses, and fences were made around new ones, in which forty-two thousand people were buried. In Smolensk they laid out four new graveyards; in two of these sixteen thousand were buried; in the third seven thousand, and in the fourth nine thousand.

Confused and scattered stories of a terrible invasion were spread among people. From the East, from the land of the Bulgars of the Volga, came reports of ill-omen, and then the tale of the “Mongol” became universal. “Oh, that is they!” was heard now in all places. “It is they who gave the Russian princes that awful defeat on the Kalka!”

But who these pagans were, no man could indicate. According to report, they came of impure races hidden away in unknown regions. It was said that there was a prophecy of old concerning those people which said: “They will come before time ends, and capture all places.”

The Mongols burst in from the Trans-Volga regions, through those open spaces called much later on the steppes of Tamboff and Saratoff, and attacked Ryazan boundaries.

The Mongol army was enormous for that time. It seemed to the Russians as though a whole people were moving from one part of the earth to the other. This army was led by Batu, the great Jinghis Khan’s grandson, the son of his eldest son, Juchi.

In attacking a region the Mongols surrounded it, as beaters surround game in a forest, and moved toward a fixed point of meeting. Batu sent envoys to Ryazan, and with them went an enchantress. The presence of this woman alarmed the Ryazan[231]people greatly. The envoys brought this message: “Give one tenth of everything: one prince in ten; one man in ten of the common people; give every tenth one from black, white, brown, and pied horses; from every kind of beast, give one out of ten; and of all wealth and all products give the tenth part to us.”

The princes met, and when they had counseled together they sent back this answer: “When no one of us is living, what is left will belong to you.”

The Mongols advanced with fire and sword toward the capital. The time was December, 1237, and January, 1238.

To prevent these invaders from entering settled places, the princes marched out to meet them in steppe lands. Flinging themselves on the advancing hordes, they fought with desperate bravery, only to be crushed and destroyed utterly. Ingvar, who was at that time in Chernigoff, with Kolovrat, a voevoda, seeking warriors and imploring the Polovtsi to help him, returned home to a desert. Towns and villages were charred ruins, and contained only corpses which beasts of prey and foul birds were devouring. Dead princes, voevodas and warriors lay in the frozen grass, snow-covered. Only at long intervals appeared people, who had been able to hide in the forest, and who came out now to weep over the ruin of their homes.

The Mongols not only surrounded the city of Ryazan with an army, but with a wall as well, and they strengthened this wall in places with firm palisades. This they called “driving the pig in.” Thus they expressed themselves, delighted that no one could escape when the city was taken. After they had finished their wall, they put up rams for battering the city walls in, and prepared ladders for storming.

The Ryazan men resisted many days, and fought with desperation. They inflicted great loss on the Mongols, but, as was clear, they were weakening. Since they did not let their weapons go out of their hands, they were sure to be conquered in the end by weariness. The Mongols relieved their own storming parties, they gave those men rest, and sent forward fresh regiments. At last they succeeded in crushing the walls down and firing the city by hurling in heavy stones and blazing substances. On December 21, 1237, they mounted the breaches, and through fire, smoke and slaughter burst into the city.[232]

At the same time, in the region about Ryazan, through all villages and monasteries, similar seizures and slaughters were enacted. For the Mongols it was not enough to capture cities and towns; they destroyed all the people from the aged to infants. They amused themselves with inflicting various kinds of cruel death singly; they loved also to kill men in multitudes. Made drunk, as it were, by abundance of bloodshed, they rose to a wild, boundless ecstasy.

For many days this rejoicing and slaughter continued. Then groans and wails ceased in the ruined city and its environs, and all was silent. There was no one to wail, no one to groan, since all were lying dead and frozen. When the Mongols had vanished naught remained but blackened stones and charred remnants. Of many towns, cities and villages, nothing was left except stones, and cinders and dead bodies. It might almost be said that the Ryazan principality existed no longer. Those ill-fated princes, when the Mongols appeared on their southern border, sent to beg aid of Prince Yuri of Vladimir, and their relatives in Chernigoff. Kolovrat, who had been sent to Chernigoff, led back some men to the ruins of his birthplace. Amazed and maddened when he saw those ruins, he rushed forward to strike the rear of the Mongols. He overtook them at night, as they were leaving the Ryazan borders. The Mongols were terrified when they saw him. “Are not those the dead of Ryazan,” cried they, “who have risen and come to avenge their own deaths on us?”

Those unknown Russians fought like furies. Then, seizing the swords from Mongols slain by them, and dropping their own weapons, they cut and slashed with more fury than ever. There was uproar and chaos in the whole Mongol army. The Mongols succeeded, however, in capturing five of the raging pursuers, whom they took to the Khan, their commander. “Who are ye?” asked the Khan. “Wonder not, O Tsar,” answered they, “that we have strength to fill the cup of death for all Mongols. We are servants of Prince Ingvar; we are of Kolovrat’s regiment, sent to conduct thee and thy warriors with honor. We conduct as many as we are able.”

Tavrul, Batu’s brother-in-law, offered to seize Kolovrat. He went out on an unterrified steed against him, but Kolovrat cut the[233]Mongol in two, from his head to the saddle on which he was sitting. Then the Mongols surrounded the handful of heroes, who stood like a fortress, and not one of them yielded. All of those warriors were slain after desperate fighting. The Khan praised the dead men, and gave the five living their freedom. “The Russians know well,” said he, “how to drink the death cup with their princes.”

Prince Yuri gave no aid to Ryazan. He said he would move against the enemy in person, and act separately.

The Mongols turned now against Yuri. The old road from Ryazan to Vladimir lay through Kolomna and Moscow, in a country comparatively rich and well settled. Yuri sent troops to both cities. To Kolomna he sent his own son Vsevolod, and to Moscow another son, Vladimir, so young that Philip, the voevoda, was attached to his person. Leaving wife and family in Vladimir, confident that they would be safe within its walls, he himself hurried northward to levy warriors, and make ready for action. His nephews from Rostoff and Yaroslavl, the sons of Constantine, hastened to join his forces, and he hoped for the return of his brother, Yaroslav, with regiments from Kief.

The Mongols made no useless delay at Kolomna. They slaughtered the inhabitants and burned down the city. One of the Ryazan princes, who had survived, joined at Kolomna the army sent out by Yuri, but in the battle which followed almost immediately every man fell except Yuri’s son. He escaped by fleeing swiftly to Vladimir, to meet a worse death in that doomed city.

A fate like that of Kolomna soon struck Moscow; the place was stormed and sacked. Philip was killed, with other defenders, who fell fighting bravely. While the Mongols were dividing the rich spoils and rejoicing, they burned the city. Ordinary prisoners were killed quickly, those of distinction were crucified, flayed alive or burned. Yuri’s son, Vladimir, they took with them. The countless army, that same army of which Arabian historians wrote that on its path “the earth groaned, birds dropped dead, and wild beasts lost their senses,” opened now and moved away in various directions. From these divisions still smaller ones separated and marched off on all roads. They took in towns and settlements as a net gathers fish under water. People fled from cities and villages in crowds. They hid in caves, in dark forests,[234]and in gullies, not knowing how to escape or whither they should go for refuge. Those who were near heard from those who had come from afar that Mongols were everywhere slaying, burning, robbing churches, and cutting down old and young as they traveled. Others were leading a multitude of captives to their camps. It brought terror to look at those captives, barefoot and bloodless.

February 3, 1238, the Mongols appeared at Vladimir and surrounded the city. The Vladimir men rejected proposals of surrender, and saw with dismay how the enemy strengthened their camp, and began preparations for storming. Mongol leaders rode round the city and surveyed its defenses. Then, to the amazement of all, an immense crowd of mounted commanders approached the main gate of the city, and asked, “Is Prince Yuri among you?” The people answered with arrows. The commanders replied in the same way, sending each of them an arrow at the crosses on the bell-towers glittering with golden tops in the sunlight. Then they made signs to stop shooting and negotiate. When the Vladimir men desisted, to see what would happen, the Mongols showed Yuri’s young son made prisoner in Moscow, and asked if they knew him. A cry rose. Vsevolod and Mystislav, brothers of the captive, wished to sally forth and save him, but they were held back by the people. All, from the voevoda to the last man in the city, swore to fight while life remained. All declared that they were ready to die for God’s churches, and those simple words were no idle sounds from those people.

The bishops of Vladimir counseled every one to prepare for death and the last hour, to have this passing life in their memories no longer; and assured them that Christ would forget no one made worthy through the crown of a martyr. All who heard these words began to work valiantly. From old to young, every man was to fight on the walls, or wherever the need was. All armed themselves for the coming storm and the battle. On the second or third day of the siege, news spread through the city that Suzdal had been taken, that Rostoff had yielded. Men on the walls saw on the Suzdal road Mongol regiments approaching rapidly, and then they saw men, women, monks, nuns and a multitude of people led captive.

That day the Mongols worked from early morning till nightfall, pulling up timber, and engines, and planting their wall-crushing[235]instruments. Next morning it appeared that they had not been idle in the night-time. A wooden wall now encircled the city. For the last twenty-four hours no man in Vladimir had slept. No person had undressed for a week past. All knew that their city was doomed. The princes, and Yuri’s whole family, many of the boyars and the people had put on the monk’s habit, making ready for death with great earnestness.

On Sunday February 14, 1238, the city was stormed and captured. At daybreak the Mongols were on the walls, and before midday their work was accomplished. They did not occupy all parts immediately, though they broke in at once on many sides,—on the Klyazma, the Lybed, the Golden Gate, and the Valski sides. At one side they made a long mound, traces of which are seen even to our day. They went up along this mound and came down inside the walls on their ladders.

The new city was covered with corpses. In the old city there was a stubborn defense and great slaughter. Savage fighting went on outside the walls as well. The Mongols killed every man who tried to escape. Then began the sack of Vladimir. Wherever Mongols entered, they seized what they found; they stripped the churches, taking everything of value; wherever they met with resistance, they brought piles of wood and burned all before them.

When the enemy sprang in over the walls every person in Vladimir who could carry a weapon rushed “to drink the cup of death” promptly, knowing well that resistance was fruitless. The young princes, who thought to break through the enemy, were cut to pieces. The voevoda, Pyotr Oslyadukovitch, pressed heavily on the Mongols with his “children,” that is, the whole population of Vladimir, who did not desert him. They fought fiercely on the walls, and at the walls outside the city, and on all streets within it. Blood flowed till midday, and not to win victory, for that, as they knew, was impossible, but to kill as many infidels as they could, and die fighting for the holy Orthodox faith and for their country.

The Mongol multitude crushed all before it; numbers conquered everywhere. The new and the old city were taken by assault, and the capital was burning from side to side in one vast conflagration.

Yuri’s princess, with her relatives, daughters-in-law and grandchildren,[236]all the wives and daughters of boyars, many of the people and clergy with wives and children, and the bishop himself had taken refuge in the Vladimir cathedral. The smoke and flame of the city’s burning had reached the walls of this edifice, while round about were heard the shouts of the oncoming Mongols. Those inside the building sought safety in the galleries. Suffocating from smoke, they would have gone down again, but there was a dense crowd below pressing upward. The Mongols forced open the door of the cathedral and, rushing in, seized gold and silver, and all the church vessels. They cut and hewed down those persons who had not hidden, and those who were trying to get to the galleries. Then they brought sticks and brushwood, filled the place well with fuel, and set fire to it. Smoke rose in columns within the cathedral. The roar of the burning building and the cries of victory from the wild conquerors were heard in one dull groaning thunder, mingling with the wails, shrieks and prayers of the dying. The bishop blessed all at their parting, crying: “O Lord, stretch thy unseen hands to us, and receive the souls of thy people.” The massive walls of the cathedral did not fall; they withstood the fire and have remained in integrity to our time.

The horrors of Ryazan were repeated in Vladimir. Only young women, nuns, and strong laborers were led away captive. The sick, the infirm, the weak and the aged were slaughtered at once, and without mercy. Smoking ruins alone were left of the beautiful city of Vladimir. When the Mongols marched away from the remnant of the capital, there was not a groan, or a cry to be heard from the people, for all who were in that city were lying dead.

To overtake Yuri and destroy his forces was no difficult task for the savage invaders. They found him in Yaroslavl regions, on the banks of the Siti. Among other princes was Vassilko, his favorite nephew, a son of Constantine, whom his dying father had asked Yuri to treat as one of his own sons. Crushed by news from Vladimir, Yuri seemed dazed, and repeated unceasingly: “Why am I left, why do I not die with them?” Grief for children and wife was swallowed up in his anguish over the destruction of the city, the people, the bishop, and the clergy. Volunteers who were pouring in brought similar tidings from every part: “The enemy are slaying all people, burning all places; they are everywhere!” Only one thing remained: retreat to the distant north. But from[237]Vologda, and even from Galitch beyond the Volga, came news of the same universal slaughter and destruction. Three thousand men, sent as scouts to the north, returned with these tidings: “The enemy are attacking off there, they are around us far and near, they are everywhere.”

Soon the struggle began on the Siti, and became straightway a most terrible massacre. Numbers crushed everything. The Mongols had scarcely begun when they had victory. Those people who were not mortally wounded, and who rose from the battle field, and a few who were unwounded fled, and hid in the forests. Yuri, Grand Prince of Vladimir, lay dead in a great pile of bodies,—his head was not with his body. More terrible still was the death of Vassilko. The young prince was taken alive by the Mongols. Attractive in mind and in person, his men said of him that whoso had served him would not serve another. He pleased also the Mongols. Batu strove to incline him to friendship. “Oh, dark kingdom of vileness,” answered Vassilko, “God has given me into thy hands, but thou canst not separate me from Christians.” He would take neither food nor drink from the pagans. Enraged at his stubbornness, they killed him most cruelly, and threw out his body to be eaten by wild beasts. The corpse of the young prince was found in a forest, under the guidance of a woman who said that she had witnessed his tortures, and Vassilko was buried with Yuri, his uncle. The headless Yuri, as found on the field of battle, was put in a coffin, but afterward the head was discovered and placed with the body, and the two bodies were taken later on to Rostoff for interment.

After the destruction of Vladimir, Rostoff and Suzdal, the whole principality of Vladimir was ravaged. The lands now included in the governments of Vladimir, Yaroslavl, Kostroma, Tver and Moscow, with a part of Novgorod and Vologda, were scenes of ruin and terror. Everywhere the same marks of Mongols. Such noted places as Tver, Torjok, Volokolamsk, Yaroslavl and Mologa were sacked and burned to the ground, as well as villages and settlements beyond reckoning. The Russians looked on this invasion as a testimony of God’s anger, such an evil as a flood or an earthquake, irresistible and almighty. In small villages, when the Mongols appeared, the people grew helpless from terror; those who could escape rushed away to the forests, secreting their property[238]in the ground; what remained was left to fire and sword. Such boundless woe had never been witnessed in Russia. The surviving clergy throughout the country called on all to prepare for the last hour.

The Mongols cut people down as a mower cuts grass. When they entered a province, they sent out detachments on every side; like locusts, they destroyed everything utterly. Monasteries and villages they stripped clean of all things that had value. From stores of grain they took what they needed, and burned the remainder, boasting that grass would not grow on their path.

A great thaw saved Northwestern Russia. In the first days of March, the Mongols, when within a hundred versts of Novgorod, became alarmed by the swelling of rivers and turned back. Conducting their countless treasures and urging on long lines of prisoners, they moved swiftly southeastward to grass-growing regions. On the way they came to Koselsk, where they met a most stubborn resistance. A detachment attacked the town for forty-two days, but succeeded in storming the place only after reinforcements had been sent by Batu, who was enraged at this resistance. It was destroyed utterly, but its fame will never die in Russian history.

Before the wooden walls of this city, the Mongols lost four thousand men and three princes. When at last they burst into the town, they were met by old and young, men and women, who rushed at them with knives, axes and other weapons, and fought with desperation from house to house, from street to street. Gradually forced back, they retired into the Kremlin, or fortress, and fought till the last man perished. Vassili, the little prince, who was very young, was drowned, it is said, in the blood of the people.

The Mongols called this town “Mo balig” (town of woe), the same name which they gave Bamian of the Kwarezmian Empire, the place at which Moatagan, one of Jinghis Khan’s grandsons, fell pierced by an arrow, and where the young man’s mother, a daughter of Jinghis, rushed in at the head of ten thousand warriors and left nothing alive, not a man, woman or child, destroying even the dogs and cats, slaying everything in her vengeance.

After Batu had established himself in the steppes of the Volga, he began to build Sarai, the capital of his Horde. He cleared the whole country and drove out the Polovtsi. Kotyan, the Polovtsi[239]Khan, took a remnant of his people, forty thousand in number, and settled in Hungary. The king gave him land on condition that he and his tribes became Catholic. The rest of the Polovtsi joined with the Mongols, and from that day they ceased forever as a people in Russia.

Pereyaslavl on the Alta and Chernigoff were doomed now, and all who could leave those two places hurried elsewhere for refuge.

When winter had again frozen the rivers and put snow on the steppe lands, the Mongols set out afresh to capture cities and slaughter new thousands of people. Batu sent a number of his leaders of ten thousand to the north again to search out and finish all places bordering on Vladimir. This work they did thoroughly in December, 1238, and January, 1239. Batu, meanwhile, took Pereyaslavl; destroyed the church of Saint Michael; slew the bishop; killed all who were useless as captives; took whatever belonged to the people and the churches; and moved on Chernigoff. The walls of that city were broken in by hurling stones, each of such weight that five men were needed to lift it. The city was stormed then and burned, the people slain, and every building plundered. One of the younger princes fell with the warriors. The chronicler states that the older princes had fled to Hungary. It is true that Michael’s heir, Rostislav, who had been left by his father in Galitch, and driven thence by Daniel soon after, had gone to marry King Bela’s daughter. Michael, himself, who at this time had taken Yaroslav’s place, in Kief, soon found it impossible to stay there.

When Chernigoff was ruined, Batu commanded his brother to advance upon Kief and make a reconnaissance. From the Chernigoff bank of the Dnieper he saw the mother of cities and wondered at its beauty. Envoys were sent to demand its surrender. The Kief people slew them, and Michael fled from the capital. He went, as he thought, to a safe place, to Hungary, to be present at his son’s wedding. But, learning of the ruin of Chernigoff by the Mongols, Bela would not give his daughter to Rostislav. Michael and his son went then to the Mazovian prince, Konrad.

Bolder than Michael, Rostislav, a Smolensk prince, occupied Kief, now abandoned by others. But Daniel of Galitch would not let Rostislav stay there, and seized for himself the old capital. He did not wait in Kief for Batu; he sent Dmitri, his boyar, to defend[240]the city. Daniel left even Volynia and Galitch, and went to Hungary. From there he went to Poland, for Bela himself was struck with such terror that he fled from the Mongols, and knew not where to find refuge.

In 1239 the whole Russian land, if not yet under Mongols, looked on that doom as inevitable. There was such panic terror that men lost proper use of their faculties. All that interval from December, 1237, when Ryazan was destroyed, till December, 1240, was a time of destruction and captivity, and the end came only when there was nothing to destroy, and all the treasures of Russia were in Mongol hands.

For the people these three years were merged in one unit of time, filled with anguish, terror and despair. It might be said that they had lost the sense and the power to count seasons. That Russian land, which in the days of Yaroslav the Lawgiver and Monomach his grandson had so easily overcome its enemies, and which in the days of Big Nest, Monomach’s nephew, in spite of all its divisions and conflicts, still preserved some appearance of oneness, existed no longer.

On the San and the Dniester there was the same terror of Mongols as on the Desna and the Dnieper. From the north, from Vladimir, from Novgorod, no regiments appeared, and none were expected; no prince came with help, and no man was looking for him. The whole land was as silent as a grave or a desert. The Mongols had not captured Novgorod, but this was because they considered it as subject to Vladimir. They had been sated with bloodshed, and looked on the Vladimir region as thoroughly subjected. To avoid further evil, Novgorod had to connect itself absolutely with Vladimir, and with it carry the weight of the burden. Besides, the distant north was a country without attraction for Mongols. Beyond Novgorod lived the Chud people (Fins), whose lands extended to the shores of the Frozen Ocean. The Mongols did not consider that Novgorod could be the center of a region dangerous to their dominion, hence they left the old capital of Rurik uninjured. If they had had reason to punish Novgorod they would have razed it as they razed Ryazan and Vladimir.

The Kief campaign was undertaken by Batu on a scale that was enormous; with him went his brothers and relatives: Kuyuk, son of the Grand Khan, was there, and Mangu and Baidar, grandsons[241]of Jinghis Khan, also a multitude of famous commanders,—Burundai, Subotai and others. The whole army consisted of more than five hundred thousand men.

After finishing with Russia, Batu intended to pass into Hungary and destroy that country. He had sent a demand for obedience already, and a reprimand to the king for receiving Kotyan with his Polovtsi, whom Batu looked on as slaves who had fled from their master.

As soon as the Dnieper was frozen, the army passed over. The Mongol warriors were so numerous, the squeaking of their wagons so piercing, the neighing of their horses and the roaring of camels so deafening, that men in the city could not hear, as was declared, what they said to one another. First the attackers surrounded Kief; next they built a wooden wall; then they erected their engines and hurled immense stones at the city walls day and night without ceasing. The mother city was defended bravely by its citizens, but available warriors were few; for so short-sighted had the princes been that even when the enemy was on the march they had continued to struggle for succession. When the Mongols had made sufficient breaches in the walls, they rushed through and began a hand-to-hand struggle. The Kief men fought desperately. From morning till evening the battle raged, but toward night overwhelming numbers conquered, and the Mongols held the walls of the city. That night the Kief men made a new wall in front of the first one, even women and children assisting in building defenses, and next day the battle continued. From every house, church and monastery people came out, and fought to the death in all parts of the city. In the churches, multitudes had gathered, and from the weight of the people and their effects on roofs and in the galleries the walls fell. Many perished in hand-to-hand conflict; others were suffocated with smoke; but none surrendered, for all knew that but one fate awaited them.

For several days in succession the slaying of people and the destruction of buildings continued. The Vladimir Church fell; the Sophia Cathedral, built by Yaroslav the Lawgiver, endured best of any; the body of that church remained sound, and there is one uninjured part of the wall, on which is an image of the Virgin, preserved to the present. Of the Catacomb Monastery, the ancient church and walls were destroyed; of the Golden Gate, built by[242]Yaroslav, only ruins remained. The more violently the people defended the remnant of their city, and fought out their last hour, the more joyously did the destroyers carry on the destruction. They slew old men and children to the last one. If in other cities they had taken pleasure in general slaughter and devastation, they took tenfold more pleasure now. The strong places and the sanctuaries of a city were never overthrown with such fury, and never were the Mongols so relentless as in Kief, the city of churches. The destroyers did not spare even tombs; they forced them open, and with their heels crushed the skulls and broke the bones of the ancient princes. The havoc was so great that during the entire fourteenth century which followed, and in the fifteenth century, a large part of the city remained a desert covered with refuse. The remnants of stone buildings which had stood for centuries sank into the ground, dust drifted in over them, and then was concealed all those ruins. Of that Kief which, in the days both of Yaroslav the Lawgiver and Monomach, was compared by travelers with Tsargrad, there remained only the memory. It fell December, 1240, and was never renewed in its former magnificence, even to our day.

The defender of Kief, Daniel’s boyar, Dmitri, was brought half alive before Batu, who repeated these words of praise: “The Russians know well how to drink the cup of death.” He gave him his life, and took the hero with him in his campaign against Volynia and Galitch. The boyar, continuing to serve his prince, strove to lead the Khan from ruining Galitch. He advised him to go quickly and take vengeance on the King of Hungary for harboring Kotyan and his Polovtsi, saying: “It is time to go against the Hungarians; unless thou go now they will gather great forces and exclude thee forever. Their land is a strong one.” Thus spoke Dmitri to Batu, while, in mind, he was weeping over Galitch.

Batu was the more willing to hurry forward to Hungary, since he had learned that Michael of Chernigoff and Daniel of Galitch had gone to that kingdom. This, however, did not change his plan, though it may have hastened its execution, for the campaign against Galitch and Volynia was notable for swiftness. Batu on his way took through falsehood Ladyjin, a town which fought stubbornly and refused to yield. He promised the people in case they surrendered[243]to spare them and their town. At last they respected his word and surrendered. He slew every man to the last one. Kamenyets he passed, because its position seemed impregnable. Vladimir, the capital of Volynia, he took by assault and spared not one person. Galitch he treated in the same way.

Moving from Vladimir of Volynia along the Būg, the Mongols advanced only as far as Brest. There, near the edge of Lithuania, Batu halted. The great swampy forests troubled him and his warriors, and he resolved to turn back. As one more example of cruelty after so many, they destroyed Brest and slew all the people. Then they moved southward.

One division of Batu’s army entered Poland in 1240, ravaged the province of Lublin, and returned with great booty to Galitch. The Mongols reappeared in that country, however, in winter, crossing the Vistula on the ice, but after advancing to within a few miles of Cracow, they turned again toward Galitch, loaded with much spoil and driving before them a multitude of captives, among whom were some of the first people of Poland. They were pursued by Volodmir, the governor, who surprised them near Palanietz, and killed many. Discovering how small the attacking party was, the Mongols turned, made a furious charge, and put them to flight; then they continued their march. Soon, however, they reëntered Poland with new forces. The nobility of Sandomir and Cracow assembled their warriors and advanced to meet the oncoming Mongols, but in the conflict which followed, they were defeated with great loss.

Boleslav IV at this time occupied the throne of Cracow. Fearing to remain in the citadel, he took refuge with his family in a castle at the foot of the Carpathians, and later on in a monastery in Moravia. Many of the aristocracy of Poland followed his example, escaping to Hungary or Germany; the common people sought refuge in the forests, swamps and mountains. The conquerors entered Cracow, March 24, 1241, and set fire to the city, which they found deserted; then they marched toward Breslau, the capital of Silesia, devastating the region through which they passed.

On reaching Breslau, they discovered that it had been reduced to ashes by the inhabitants, who had taken refuge in the citadel with the garrison. The Mongols, after investing the fortress for several days, raised the siege and joined another corps of their[244]army to march with it against the forces assembled near Lignitz, where Henry, Duke of Silesia, was commander of about twenty thousand men. The Mongols were led by a prince (in Polish chronicles called Péta) whose army far outnumbered that of Duke Henry. The defeat of the Poles was complete. Henry fled from the field with but four of his officers; retarded by the fall of his horse, which was wounded, he mounted a second, but was surrounded, captured, and his head cut off. The Polish loss was heavy. It is told that to discover the number of the enemy killed, the Mongols cut an ear from each corpse, and with those ears filled four large sacks.

They now moved forward, carrying fire and blood even to the frontiers of Bohemia and Austria. While one part of Péta’s army besieged Olmütz in Moravia, several corps of it plundered and devastated the surrounding region. Sternberg, commander of Olmütz, made a successful sortie from the citadel, killed some three hundred of the enemy, and returned in safety. A few days later the Mongols raised camp and marched toward Hungary to join the great army under Batu. It was evident that they had besieged Olmütz only for the purpose of pillaging the country round it.

Before marching into Hungary, Batu had written to King Bela, demanding that he yield obedience to the Mongol sovereign if he wished to save his own life, or the lives of his subjects. Bela paid no heed to this demand, and the only measure of defense he took was to send small detachments to hold the passes of the Carpathians.

There was much dissatisfaction with King Bela, for he had no military ability; another cause for the dissatisfaction was that he had received Kotyan, the Polovtsi Khan, and allowed him to settle, with some forty thousand families, in Hungary. The acquisition of this number of subjects increased the power of the king, and the hope of converting the pagans to Christianity gave him pleasure. But these Polovtsi were so displeasing to the people that in 1240 Bela had to convoke an assembly of the clergy, and the nobility of his kingdom as well as the chiefs of the Polovtsi. It was then resolved that the Polovtsi should be dispersed in different provinces, and should be assigned uncultivated districts where they could pasture their flocks and herds. Kotyan was baptized,[245]so also were his chief officers. Still the hatred of the people continued.

Batu penetrated into Hungary by the pass called “Gate of Russia,” and was joined by divisions of his army which had been devastating Poland. Thence he marched toward Pest, and, camping half a day’s journey from that city, he ravaged the country. The people, thinking that Kotyan, the Polovtsi Khan, was secretly communicating with Batu, murmured against the king and demanded the death of Kotyan and his men. They attacked Kotyan, who defended himself for a time, but was at last overpowered and killed. This murder only served to increase the woes of Hungary. The report of it spread to the country, and the peasants fell on the Polovtsi and massacred them without mercy. But those who escaped united and later on avenged their people.

When the Hungarian army had assembled the king marched out of Pest to meet the Mongols. The result of the conflict was most disastrous for the Hungarians. The king owed his escape to the swiftness of his horse. He took refuge near the Carpathians, where he encountered his son-in-law, who was also seeking an asylum in that country.

While these events were passing in the heart of Hungary, Kadan advanced through Transylvania, seizing property, profaning churches, and leading away captives.

The Mongols remained inactive during the summer of 1241, but in December of that year a detachment crossed the Danube and pitched their camp near the city of Strigonia, or Gran. The besieged destroyed all that was most valuable, killed their horses, and retired into the stone edifices to defend themselves. The Mongols, furious at loss of plunder, were careful that no person should escape. They seized and burned the principal inhabitants over slow fires, to make them declare where they had hidden their riches.

At this moment news came to Batu of the death of Ogotai, the Grand Khan, and with the news an order to return to Mongolia at once.

The barbarians had penetrated even into Austria, and a corps advanced to Neustadt near Vienna, but retired on learning of the approach of a large army. After the destruction of Strigonia, Kadan was sent with a detachment against King Bela. Bela,[246]who had taken refuge in Austria, retired with his family to Agram in Croatia, where he remained during the summer. Learning that Kadan was marching toward Agram, he went to Spalato on the Dalmatian coast, and then to Trau. Kadan marched with marvelous rapidity. Halting for a few days at Sirbium River, he assembled the Hungarian prisoners whom he had seized on the march, and had them all put to death. On arriving at Spalato and learning that the king was not there, he advanced at once to the neighborhood of Trau, and camped upon the bank facing the island in the Adriatic where Bela had taken refuge. There the Mongols remained through the month of March, and then, after pillaging Cattaro, Suagio and Drivasto, and killing every man, woman and child who fell into their hands, they returned by way of Herzegovinia and Serbia to join Batu. While on the march Kadan received orders to hasten, as all Mongol princes had been summoned to Mongolia.

Daniel and Vassilko, on hearing that Batu had left Hungary, delayed for a time in returning to Russia. They knew not where their families were, or indeed if they were living, and their delight was unbounded on finding them. On the way home from Poland they could not draw near Brest, because of the terrible odor of corpses. Very little remained of the former Vladimir, and the ruined churches were filled with dead bodies.

Batu, who had brought terror on all Europe by the destruction wrought in Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Moldavia and certain portions of Poland, was not pleased with those lands. The West was too narrow for a nomad people, and Russia became the real province for Mongols. Hungary and Poland suffered little in comparison. Batu pitched his tents and built Sarai, as has been stated, on the bank of the Lower Volga, from where it was convenient and easy to send troops in every direction, and keep conquered Russia in obedience. The Golden Horde, as thenceforth men called the Khan’s residence in Russia, was noted for wealth even in Batu’s day.

Jinghis Khan, who died in 1227, was succeeded by his eldest son Ogotai, who reigned from 1229 to 1241. During that reign, Batu completed his conquest of Russia.

Russia, subject now to the Mongol, learned that a new sovereign had appeared in Mongolia, but Batu, the grandson of Jinghis[247]Khan, remained their ruler. To him was given entire control of the “Kipchak Horde,” his possessions extending from a line somewhat east of the Ural Mountains to the Danube. He now counted all the Russian land as his property, and declared to its princes that they might not live on the Khan’s land unless they bowed down to him.

Thus began the heavy yoke of the Mongols, which was to last for more than two hundred years.

Mongol law touching subjects was brief, being this, in substance,—that not only their families and property, but their lives were entirely at the Khan’s disposition. This law, universal, fundamental, unchangeable, was applied to all conquered regions. It was inevitable to give each year one tenth of the harvest and one tenth of every kind of increase. Every man was liable to military service with the Mongols against whomsoever they might send him. Bashaks were appointed in every large town to see to the accurate fulfilment of these duties, and to keep in obedience both people and princes. At first princes left in power by the Khan were bound to appear at the Horde with yearly tribute; besides they were summoned whenever the need came. They must appear with bending knees, and bowing, and striking the earth with their foreheads. They were forced to give special gifts to the Khan, to his wives and his courtiers.

When coming before the Khan, various ceremonies had to be observed. For instance, when entering his tent, each man had to cross the threshold without touching it; if he touched it death was the penalty. But before being admitted to the eyes of the ruler, princes were obliged to go through many trials by wizards. They were forced to bow to fire, to bushes, to the shades of dead Khans; to pass between two fires while the wizards and witches who lighted those fires pronounced incantations.

As this bowing to bushes and fire and the shades of dead rulers took place before pictures on felt and on silk, it seemed like bowing to idols. They had also to praise Mongol customs, to drink liquor made of mare’s milk, and eat of Mongol dishes. The least show of repugnance or indifference involved peril. But, since effect was felt keenly by Mongols, kindness and terror alternated. They knew at the Horde who the men were from whom they must withhold honor, and to whom honor ought to be given. Rulers of[248]regions under Mongol dominion, but remote from Sarai and bordering on lands which were free, were received more politely than those who were nearer. The following has been stated by a man who observed the position in Batu’s day: “The Mongols take less tribute from those whose lands are remote from them, and border on others which are free, and from those whom they fear for some reason. They treat those remote subjects more kindly, so that they may not attack, or that others may obey with more willingness.” The cruel and savage Batu was sometimes fond of charming those princes who bowed down before him, and of showing magnanimity in treatment, and at such times he seemed the most kindly host possible.

Though all Russia was under the Mongol, the yoke weighed with greatest burden on the lands in the center; that place which was the real heart of Russia, and had formed the principality of Vladimir. It was unspeakably more difficult for Yaroslav to manage than for princes in Volynia and Galitch. After Kief had been swept from the earth, so to speak, or crushed into it, and Batu had shown no wish to take Hungary or Poland, Galitch and Volynia, as being nearest those countries, were in the easiest position of all the principalities in Russia.

Batu, in his first campaign, did not touch Smolensk in its western portions, and in the second he did not go beyond Brest in a northern direction. In the princes of Volynia and Galitch he had his last representatives. On the west was the country which for their own reasons the Russians represented to Batu as little dependent on their rule, in fact a foreign region, and purposely they called it not Rus, but Litvá. Thus of all Russian princes, the position of Daniel was most favored with reference to the Mongols. As to his rival in Chernigoff, Prince Michael, his possessions might have been called non-existent. Chernigoff and Kursk were in the worst position possible, because nearest the Mongols. Hence after the conquest, Daniel and Michael were, each in his own way, distinguished beyond other princes in Russia.

Daniel knew not from childhood what rest was, and only in years of ripe manhood, after endless toil and great effort, did he secure Volynia and Galitch on the very eve of the Mongol tempest, to appear next in a fateful position from which he found no issue whatever. His principalities, which comprised the borderland of[249]Southwestern Russia in the days of Kief supremacy, were attracted to the ancient capital from the earliest, but as the Russia of Kief times existed no longer, and as Northern Russia had been turned into a Mongol possession, the ruler of Volynia and Galitch had to do one of two things: either compact his lands into a new and special body and stand apart from the rest of Russia,—alone he could not stand, for he would be obliged to associate himself willingly or unwillingly with his western neighbors, the Poles and Hungarians, and, as they were in close connection with the Holy Roman-German Empire, he might not stand apart even from union with that power (he might be forced to join Rome, the Latin communion),—or he had the other issue: to recognize and strengthen the ancient bond of Volynia and Galitch with the remainder of Russia, with that Russia which had begun in Rurik’s day in Novgorod, and which was baptized in the Dnieper under Vladimir. But in this case, he would have to suffer Mongol captivity with it, and sacrifice his own land for the benefit of the common, much suffering country. He would have to cling to the princes of the house of Vladimir, who had been turned into slaves, and bear with them the same bitter burden which they were bearing. His Orthodox feeling forbade him to join Rome and the West. But to join the other Russian princes and the rest of the Russian people in their subjection to the Mongols was also beyond his endurance; his pride could not brook that, so he languished all the rest of his life in a position without escape and without moral refuge.

Hungary and Poland, crushed by the Mongol invasion, were saved only because those countries were too narrow for the nomad Mongols, who wanted the freedom of movement and the space which existed in Russia. But the Hungarians and Poles, proud of their safety, though defeated and led away captive in every encounter with Mongols, explained the affair in another way: the West was no longer afraid of a Mongol invasion. Rome, which had tried in the time of Daniel’s father to bring “the kingdom” of Galitch to the Latin religion, did not cease now to point out to Daniel, with pride, the freedom of the West from Mongol subjection, and to promise that if he would obey the True Mother he would have a right to the same freedom. The Pope explained to Daniel that the only means of saving his country from that[250]slavery which had been put on it because of its schism, was “to return” to the bosom of the Mother. He promised in that case the assistance of Poles and Hungarians and the whole Roman Empire, and offered at the same time a crown and a kingly title. Daniel refused the title and the crown, but asked very earnestly for the military assistance. He asked that Germany, Hungary, Bohemia, Poland, and all who obeyed the Holy See, should be roused to a general attack on the pagan Mongols. Rome summoned all nations against the Mongols, and to Daniel came assurance that aid from the West would not be slow in arriving.

Of Russian princes Daniel alone reigned a number of years without a summons from Batu to visit the Golden Horde. He had paid no tribute and had not been to the Khan with obeisance. But the promised aid from the West came not, and in 1250 envoys arrived from Batu, who repeated the message sent to other Russian princes: “It is unbecoming to live on the Khan’s land, and not bow down to him.” To this was added: “Give Galitch.”

Daniel might give Galitch, withdraw to the depth of Volynia, and be satisfied with half his inheritance; besides the country beyond Brest was unconquered. But after praying earnestly, and counseling with his brother, Daniel said: “I will go to Batu.”

When Daniel reached Kief, he saw dreadful misery. He prayed to the Archangel Michael; he implored the monks to pray for him, and then sailed down the river to Pereyaslavl. Hence he went directly along by Mongol stations toward the Golden Horde, and he grieved greatly when he witnessed the pagan ceremonies in the Russian land. In places Orthodox for centuries, men worshiped fire, bowed down to the sun, moon, earth, and dead ancestors. Beyond the Volga and near Sarai, he was troubled still more when he heard how at the Horde they would force him to pagan observances. By that time most other Russian princes had been at the Horde, and the Mongols declared that not one of them had violated the ceremonies established for receptions. One of the officials said to Daniel: “How great is Prince Yaroslav of Vladimir, but no exception was made for him. He bowed to the bushes, and thou wilt bow.” Daniel spat, and said: “The devil speaks through thy lips. God close them to guard me from hearing such utterances.”

But Batu, in addition to saving Daniel from all that might seem[251]like the worship of idols, greeted him pleasantly, and with unusual kindness. When the prince, led into the Khan’s tent, bowed in a way that seemed to humiliate him, Batu said: “Daniel, thou wert long in coming, but thou art here and thou hast done well to come. Thou art ours now. Take our drink.” And they brought him a goblet. The prince emptied it and bowed, repeating the commonplace words which all princes uttered on similar occasions: “God gave thee power. I obey thee through God’s will.” He bowed again, and begged to salute the Khan’s consort. “Go,” said Batu, and he added when Daniel was about to leave, “Thou art not accustomed to milk; drink wine.” And when he was taking farewell of the Khan’s wife, they brought a goblet of wine to him from Batu. They detained Daniel at the Horde a shorter time than was usual for princes. After confirming all his rights in Volynia and Galitch, they dismissed him with courtesy.

Great was the delight of Daniel’s family when he returned to them unharmed. His success was mentioned on all sides. That summer the King of Hungary sent this message: “Take my daughter for thy son Lev.” The king feared Daniel because he had visited the Horde, and besides, on the San, he had beaten the king’s son-in-law and expelled him from Galitch. When the wedding took place Daniel restored all captive Hungarians. Thus he and the king became friendly. Roman, another son of Daniel, married Gertrude, a daughter of the late Duke of Styria. Roman now claimed Styria as the dowry of Gertrude. The King of Bohemia, whose queen was a daughter of the same duke, also claimed this inheritance.

Daniel, with Boleslav of Poland, Bela’s son-in-law, campaigned against the Bohemian king. He did this to make friends in the West, and thus get rid of the Mongols. He tried to induce his western neighbors to join him, and for this purpose he entered their circle of action. But from beginning to end, every promise of aid proved futile,—empty sound, nothing more. The Pope saw very well how fruitless were his efforts. Not only in Germany, but in Hungary and Poland his messages were unheeded. At last Daniel left papal promises unanswered. Then a legate was sent to deliver the crown to him and anoint him king in Western fashion. It was not the first time that they had come to Daniel for this purpose, but he had set them aside with various excuses. For example,[252]he had said earlier to the legate that it was no time for coronation when his lands were in danger,—not a crown did he need, but strong warriors. But now the papal envoy found Daniel at the place and time most convenient for his object, namely, at Cracow, on the way from Bohemia to Galitch, surrounded by his allies after a victory and the capture of a city.

He refused this time also, saying: “I am in a foreign land.” But the papal legate, Polish princes, and magnates urged Daniel to take the gift offered. His mother, a Polish princess, insisted also and helped to influence him. “The Pope respects the Greek Church,” said the legate, “and curses all men who offend it. He is about to call a council to unite the two Churches. Aid will come from the Pope very quickly.” The Polish princes promised with every solemnity, and their magnates promised with them, that after Daniel had taken the crown they would march against the Mongols.

In 1253, Daniel was crowned in Drogitchin. His subjection to Rome was complete, as it seemed to Polish princes. But, breaking all solemn promises, neither Poles nor Hungarians made a move to march against the Mongols.

The following year Batu, who had been watching, and understood perfectly Daniel’s problem, sent an envoy renowned for his keenness, with a command to raze and destroy every fortress in Volynia and Galitch. Never had he commanded the Galitch prince so decisively, as if to show the world that he knew the situation and was master of it. Daniel, understanding well that no opposition could serve him, withdrew to Volynia, and sent Vassilko, his brother, and Lev, his own son, to meet Burundai, the keen envoy. “Raze your fortresses!” said Burundai. And all were destroyed at his order. The walls of Vladimir in Volynia, though of wood, were so strong and immense that there was no chance to tear them down before the coming of the envoy, hence they were burned by Vassilko immediately. Such promptness was praised by Burundai, who even dined with Vassilko on that day. But when this envoy departed, another one came, who said: “Burundai has commanded me to level your entrenchments.” “Accomplish the command,” said Vassilko. Baimur and his men filled every trench, and leveled all the earthworks surrounding the walls of Levoff, a city which Lev himself had founded, and which was called after[253]him. Burundai now ordered both princes to make a campaign with him. Adding to his own men warriors from Volynia and Galitch, he attacked Lithuania; then he took Vassilko against Poland and visited the districts of Sandomir and Lublin.

With such a turn of affairs, Daniel had cut off all relations with Rome; he was therefore not a little astonished on receiving a new reprimand from the Pope for his lack of obedience to the Holy See. To this he made no answer.

Not loving Galitch, the capital with which were connected so many memories of boundless deceit and disturbance, Daniel founded Holm, a new capital, and built a number of Orthodox churches. Thenceforth he passed his life in sorrow, for his position was one without issue. He was in a charmed circle without power to solve the riddle of his condition; he could look at it with terror, but he could not escape from it. In Holm he died in 1266, and was buried in the church of the Holy Virgin which he had founded. The honor Daniel received from Batu wounded his spirit so that his words touching this were recorded: “Oh, worse than woe is honor coming from Mongols.” A similar blow had he received at Drogitchin, through that gift of a crown bestowed with deceit and in spite of him.[254]

Back to IndexNext