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Title:       Russia Conquered By The Tartar Hordes
Author:      Rambaud, Alfred

Russia Conquered By The Tartar Hordes

Alexander Nevski Saves The Remnant Of His People, A.D. 1224-1262

     Russia was for centuries the chief power of the Slavic race.  On its
plains and amid the neighboring lands they established a civilization and went
through a development not unlike those which transformed Western Europe during
the Middle Ages.  Slavonia, like Gaul, had received Roman civilization and
Christianity from the South.  The Northmen had brought her an organization
which recalls that of the Germans; and under Yaroslaff, 1016-1054, like the
West under Charlemagne, she had enjoyed a certain semblance of unity, while
she was afterward dismembered and divided like France in feudal times.

[See Christianity In Russia]

     The Tartars seem to have been a tribe of the great Mongol race.  They
conquered Northern China and Central Asia, and after forty years of struggle
were united with other Mongol tribes into one nation by Genghis Khan.  His
lieutenants subdued a multitude of Turkish peoples, passed the Caspian Sea by
its southern shore, invaded Georgia and the Caucasus, and entered upon the
southern steppes of Russia, where they came in contact with the Polovtsi, also
a Mongol race, the hereditary enemies of the Russians proper.

     This summary by the distinguished French academician, M. Rambaud - our
leading authority in Russian history with its related studies - presents, with
sufficient clearness, the character and tendency of Russia in the thirteenth
century, when she was invaded and subjugated by Asiatic hordes.

     The Polovtsi asked the Christian princes for help against the Mongols and
Turks, who were their brothers by a common origin.  "They have taken our
country," said they to the descendants of St. Vladimir; "to-morrow they will
take yours." Mstislaf the Bold, then Prince of Galitch, persuaded all the
dynasties of Southern Russia to take up arms against the Tartars: his nephew
Daniel, Prince of Volhynia, Mstislaf Romanovitch, Grand Prince of Kiev, Oleg
of Kursk, Mstislaf of Tchernigof, Vladimir of Smolensk, and Vsevolod, for a
short time Prince of Novgorod, ^1 responded to his appeal.

[Footnote 1: Novgorod was for centuries the chief commercial city of Russia.
It was an independent republic, holding sway over extensive territories around
the Baltic Sea.]

     To cement his alliance with the Russians, Basti, Khan of the Polovtsi,
embraced orthodoxy.  The Russian army had already arrived on the Lower
Dnieper, when the Tartar ambassadors made their appearance.  "We have come, by
God's command, against our slaves and grooms, the accursed Polovtsi.  Be at
peace with us; we have no quarrel with you." The Russians, with the
promptitude and thoughtlessness that characterized the men of that time, put
the ambassadors to death.  They then went farther into the steppe, and
encountered the Asiatic hordes on the Kalka, a small river running into the
Sea of Azov.

     The Russian chivalry, on this memorable day, showed the same disordered
and the same ill-advised eagerness as the French chivalry at the opening of
the English wars.  Mstislaf the Bold, Daniel of Galitch, and Oleg of Kursk
were the first to rush into the midst of the infidels, without waiting for the
princes of Kiev, and even without giving them warning, in order to gain for
themselves the honors of victory.  In the middle of the combat, the Polovtsi
were seized with a panic and fell back on the Russian ranks, thus throwing
them into disorder.  The rout became general, and the leaders spurred on their
steeds in hopes of reaching the Dnieper.

     Six princes and seventy of the chief boyars or voievodes remained on the
field of battle.  It was the Crecy and Poitiers of the Russian chivalry.
Hardly a tenth of the army escaped; the Kievians alone left ten thousand dead.
The Grand Prince of Kiev, however, Mstislaf Romanovitch, still occupied a
fortified camp on the banks of the Kalka.  Abandoned by the rest of the army,
he tried to defend himself.  The Tartars offered to make terms; he might
retire on payment of a ransom for himself and his droujina.  He capitulated,
and the conditions were broken.  His guard was massacred, and he and his two
sons-in-law were stifled under planks.  The Tartars held their festival over
the inanimate bodies, 1224.

     After this thunderbolt, which struck terror into the whole of Russia, the
Tartars paused and returned to the East.  Nothing more was heard of them.
Thirteen years passed, during which the princes reverted to their perpetual
discords.  Those in the northeast had given no help to the Russians of the
Dnieper; perhaps the grand prince George II of Suzdal ^1 may have rejoiced
over the humiliation of the Kievians and Galicians.  The Mongols were
forgotten; the chronicles, however, are filled with fatal presages: in the
midst of scarcity, famine and pestilence, of incendiaries in the towns and
calamities of all sorts, they remark on the comet of 1224, the earthquake, and
eclipse of the sun of 1230.

[Footnote 1: Suzdal was at this time the principal state of Central Russia,
with a capital of the same name.]

     The Tartars were busy finishing the conquest of China, but presently one
of the sons of Genghis, Ugudei, sent his nephew Batu to the West.  As the
reflux of the Polovtsi had announced the invasion of 1224, that of the Saxin
nomads, related to the Khirghiz who took refuge on the lands of the Bulgarians
of the Volga, warned men of a new irruption of the Tartars, and indicated its
direction.  It was no longer South Russia, but Sozdalian Russia, that was
threatened.  In 1237 Batu conquered the Great City, capital of the
half-civilized Bulgars, who were, like the Polovtsi, ancient enemies of
Russia, and who were to be included in her ruin.  Bolgary was given up to the
flames, and her inhabitants were put to the sword.  The Tartars next plunged
into the deep forests of the Volga, and sent a sorcerer and two officers as
envoys to the princes of Riazan.  The three princes of Riazan, those of
Pronsk, Kolomna, Moscow, and Murom, advanced to meet them.

     "If you want peace," said the Tartars, "give us the tenth of your goods."

     "When we are dead," replied the Russian princes, "you can have the
whole."

     Though abandoned by the princes of Tchernigoff and the grand prince
George II, of whom they had implored help, the dynasty of Riazan accepted the
unequal struggle.  They were completely crushed; nearly all their princes
remained on the field of battle.  Legend has embellished their fall.  It is
told how Feodor preferred to die rather than see his young wife, Euphrasia,
the spoil of Batu; and how, on learning his fate, she threw herself and her
son from the window of the terem.  Oleg the Handsome, found still alive on the
battle-field, repelled the caresses, the attention, and religion of the Khan,
and was cut in pieces.  Riazan was immediately taken by assault, sacked, and
burned.  All the towns of the principality suffered the same fate.

     It was now the turn of the Grand Prince, for the Russia of the northeast
had not even the honor of falling in a great battle like the Russia of the
southwest, united for once against the common enemy.  The Suzdalian army,
commanded by a son of George II, was beaten on the day of Kolomna, on the Oka.
The Tartars burned Moscow, then besieged Vladimir, the royal city, which
George II had abandoned to seek for help in the North.  His two sons were
charged with the defence of the capital.  Princes and boyars, feeling there
was no alternative but death or servitude, prepared to die.  The princesses
and all the nobles prayed Bishop Metrophanes to give them the tonsure; and
when the Tartars rushed into the town by all its gates, the vanquished retired
into the cathedral, where they perished, men and women, in a general
conflagration.  Suzdal, Rostoff, Yaroslavl, fourteen towns, and a multitude of
villages in the grand principality were also given over to the flames, 1238.
The Tartars then went to seek the Grand Prince, who was encamped on the Sit,
almost on the frontier of the possessions of Novgorod.

     George II could neither avenge his people nor his family.  After the
battle, the Bishop of Rostoff found his headless corpse.  His nephew,
Vassilko, who was taken prisoner, was stabbed for refusing to serve Batu. The
immense Tartar army, after having sacked Tver, took Torjok; there "the Russian
heads fell beneath the sword of the Tartars as grass beneath the scythe." The
territory of Novgorod was invaded; the great republic trembled, but the deep
forests and the swollen rivers delayed Batu.  The invading flood reached the
Cross of Ignatius, about fifty miles from Novgorod, then returned to the
southeast.  On the way the small town of Kozelsk (near Kaluga) checked the
Tartars for so long, and inflicted on them so much loss, that it was called by
them the "wicked town." Its population was exterminated, and the prince
Vassili, still a child, was "drowned in blood."

     The two following years, 1239-1240, were spent by the Tartars in ravaging
Southern Russia.  They burned Pereiaslaf and Tchernigoff, defended with
desperation by its princes.  Next Mangu, grandson of Genghis Khan, marched
against the famous town of Kiev, whose name resounded through the East and in
the books of the Arab writers.  From the left bank of the Dnieper, the
barbarian admired the great city on the heights of the right bank, towering
over the wide river with her white walls and towers adorned by Byzantine
artists, and innumerable churches with cupolas of gold and silver. Mangu
proposed capitulation to the Kievians; the fate of Riazan, of Tchernigof, of
Vladimir, the capitals of powerful states, announced to them the lot that
awaited them in case of refusal, yet the Kievians dared to massacre the envoys
of the Khan.  Michael, their Grand Prince, fled; his rival, Daniel of Galitch,
did not care to remain.

     On hearing the report of Mangu, Batu came to assault Kiev with the bulk
of his army.  The grinding of the wooden chariots, the bellowings of the
buffaloes, the cries of the camels, the neighing of the horses, the howlings
of the Tartars rendered it impossible, says the annalist, to hear your own
voice in the town.  The Tartars assailed the Polish Gate and knocked down the
walls with a battering-ram.  The Kievians, supported by the brave Dmitri, a
Galician boyar, defended the fallen ramparts till the end of the day, then
retreated to the Church of the Dime, which they surrounded by a palisade. The
last defenders of Kiev found themselves grouped around the tomb of Yaroslaff.
Next day they perished.  The Khan gave the boyar his life, but the "Mother of
Russian cities" was sacked.  The pillage was most terrible. Even the tombs
were not respected.  All that remains of the Church of the Dime is a few
fragments of mosaic in the Museum at Kiev.  St. Sophia and the Monastery of
the Catacombs were delivered up to be plundered, 1240.

     Volhynia and Galicia still remained, but their princes could not defend
them, and Russia found herself, with the exception of Novgorod and the
northwest country, under the Tartar yoke.  The princes had fled or were dead;
hundreds of thousands of Russians were dragged into captivity.  Men saw the
wives of boyars, "who had never known work, who a short time ago had been
clothed in rich garments, adorned with jewels and collars of gold, surrounded
with slaves, now reduced to be themselves the slaves of barbarians and their
wives, turning the wheel of the mill and preparing their coarse food."

     If we look for the causes which rendered the defeat of the brave Russian
nation so complete, we may, with Karamsin, indicate the following: 1. Though
the Tartars were not more advanced, from a military point of view, than the
Russians, who had made war in Greece and in the West against the most warlike
and civilized people of Europe, yet they had an enormous superiority of
numbers.  Batu probably had with him five hundred thousand warriors.  2. This
immense army moved like one man; it could successively annihilate the
droujinas of the princes, or the militia of the towns, which only presented
themselves successively to its blows.  The Tartars had found Russia divided
against herself.  3. Even though Russia had wished to form a confederation,
the sudden irruptions of an army entirely composed of horsemen did not leave
her time.  4. In the tribes ruled by Batu, every man was a soldier; in Russia
the nobles and citizens alone bore arms: the peasants, who formed the bulk of
the population, allowed themselves to be stabbed or bound without resistance.
5. It was not by a weak nation that Russia was conquered.  The Tartar-Mongols,
under Genghis Khan, had filled the East with the glory of their name, and
subdued nearly all Asia.  They arrived, proud of their exploits, animated by
the recollection of a hundred victories, and reinforced by numerous peoples
whom they had vanquished, and hurried with them to the West.

     When the princes of Galitch, of Volhynia, and of Kiev arrived as
fugitives in Poland and Hungary, Europe was terror-stricken.  The Pope, whose
support had been claimed by the Prince of Galitch, summoned Christendom to
arms.  Louis IX prepared for a crusade.  Frederic II, as emperor, wrote to the
sovereigns of the West: "This is the moment to open the eyes of body and soul,
now that the brave princes on whom we reckoned are dead or in slavery." The
Tartars invaded Hungary, gave battle to the Poles in Liegnitz in Silesia, had
their progress a long while arrested by the courageous defence of Olmutz in
Moravia, by the Tcheque voievode Yaroslaff, and stopped finally, learning that
a large army, commanded by the King of Bohemia and the dukes of Austria and
Carinthia, was approaching.  The news of the death of Oktai, second Emperor of
all the Tartars, in China, recalled Batu from the West, and during the long
march from Germany his army necessarily diminished in number.

     The Tartars were no longer in the vast plains of Asia and Eastern Europe,
but in a broken hilly country, bristling with fortresses, defended by a
population more dense and a chivalry more numerous than those in Russia.

     To sum up, all the fury of the Mongol tempest spent itself on the
Salvonic race.  It was the Russians who fought at the Kalka, at Kolomna, at
the Sit; the Poles and Silesians at Liegnitz; the Bohemians and Moravians at
Olmutz.  The Germans suffered nothing from the invasion of the Mongols but the
fear of it.  It exhausted itself principally on those plains of Russia which
seem a continuation of the steppes of Asia.  Only in Russian history did the
invasion produce great results.

     Batu built on one of the arms of the Lower Volga a city called Sarai (the
Castle), which became the capital of a powerful Tartar empire, the "Golden
Horde," extending from the Ural and Caspian to the mouth of the Danube.  The
Golden Horde was formed not only of Tartar-Mongols or Nogais, who even now
survive in the Northern Crimea, but particularly of the remains of ancient
nomads, such as the Patzinaks and Polovtsi, whose descendants seem to be the
present Kalmucks and Bashkirs; of Turkish tribes tending to become sedentary,
like the Tartars of Astrakhan in the present day; and of the Finnish
populations already established in the country, and which mixed with the
invaders.

     Oktai, Kuluk, and Mangu, the first three successors of Genghis Khan,
elected by all the Mongol princes, took the title of "great khans," and the
Golden Horde recognized their authority; but under his fourth successor,
Kublai, who usurped the throne and established himself in China, this bond of
vassalage was broken.  The Golden Horde became an independent state, 1260.
United and powerful under the terrible Batu, who died in 1255, it fell to
pieces under his successors; but in the fourteenth century the khan Uzbeck
reunited it anew, and gave the Horde a second period of prosperity.  The
Tartars, who were pagans when they entered Russia, embraced, about 1272, the
faith of Islam, and became its most formidable apostles.

     Meanwhile Yaroslaff, brother of the grand prince George II, was his
successor in Suzdal.  Yaroslaff, 1238-1246, found his inheritance in the most
deplorable condition.  The towns and villages were burned, the country and
roads covered with unburied corpses; the survivors hid themselves in the
woods.  He recalled the fugitives and began to rebuild.  Batu, who had
completed the devastation of South Russia, summoned Yaroslaff to do him homage
at Sarai, on the Volga.  Yaroslaff was received there with distinction.  Batu
confirmed his title of grand prince, but invited him to go in person to the
Great Khan, supreme chief of the Mongol nation, who lived on the banks of the
river Sakhalian or Amur.  To do this was to cross the whole of Russia and
Asia.  Yaroslaff bent his knees to the new master of the world, Oktai,
succeeded in refuting the accusations brought against him by a Russian boyar,
and obtained a new confirmation of his title.  On his return he died in the
desert of exhaustion, and his faithful servants brought his body back to
Vladimir.  His son Andrew succeeded him in Suzdal, 1246-1252.  His other son,
Alexander, reigned at Novgorod the Great.

     Alexander was as brave as he was intelligent.  He was the hero of the
North, and yet he forced himself to accept the necessary humiliations of his
terrible situation.  In his youth we see him fighting with all the enemies of
Novgorod, Livonian knights and Tchuds, Swedes and Finns.  The Novgorodians
found themselves at issue with the Scandinavians on the subject of their
possessions on the Neva and the Gulf of Finland.  As they had helped the
natives to resist the Latin faith, King John obtained the promise of Gregory
IX that a crusade, with plenary indulgences, should be preached against the
Great Republic and her proteges, the pagans of the Baltic.  His son-in-law,
Birger, with an army of Scandinavians, Finns, and western crusaders, took the
command of the forces, and sent word to the Prince of Novgorod: "Defend
yourself if you can; know that I am already in your provinces." The Russians
on their side, feeling they were fighting for orthodoxy, opposed the Latin
crusade with a Greek one.

     Alexander humbled himself in St. Sophia, received the benediction of the
archbishop Spiridion, and addressed a energetic harangue to his warriors.  He
had no time to await reenforcements from Suzdal.  He attacked the Swedish
camp, which was situated on the Ijora, one of the southern affluents of the
Neva, which has given its name to Ingria.  Alexander won a brilliant victory,
which gained him his surname of Nevski, and the honor of becoming, under Peter
the Great, the second conqueror of the Swedes, one of the patrons of St.
Petersburg.  By the orders of his great successor his bones repose in the
monastery of Alexander Nevski.

     The battle of the Neva was preserved in a dramatic legend.  An Ingrian
chief told Alexander how, in the eve of the combat, he had seen a mysterious
bark, manned by two warriors with shining brows, glide through the night. They
were Boris and Gleb, who came to the rescue of their young kinsman. Other
accounts have preserved to us the individual exploits of the Russian heroes -
Gabriel, Skylaf of Novgorod, James of Polotsk, Sabas, who threw down the tent
of Birger, and Alexander Nevski himself, who with a stroke of the lance
"imprinted his seal on his face," 1240.  Notwithstanding the triumph of such a
service, Alexander and the Novgorodians could not agree; a short time after,
he retired to Pereiaslavl-Zaliesski.  The proud republicans soon had reason to
regret the exile of this second Camillus.  The Order of the Swordbearers, the
indefatigable enemy of orthodoxy, took Pskof, their ally; the Germans imposed
tribute on the Vojans, vassals of Novgorod, constructed the fortress of
Koporie on her territory of the Neva, took the Russian town of Tessof in
Esthonia, and pillaged the merchants of Novgorod within seventeen miles of
their ramparts.  During this time the Tchuds and the Lithuanians captured the
peasants, and the cattle of the citizens.  At last Alexander allowed himself
to be touched by the prayers of the archbishop and the people, assembled an
army, expelled the Germans from Koporie, and next from Pskof, hanged as
traitors the captive Vojans and Tchuds, and put to death six knights who fell
into his hands.

     This war between the two races and two religions was cruel and pitiless.
The rights of nations were hardly recognized.  More than once Germans and
Russians slew the ambassadors of the other side.  Alexander Nevski finally
gave battle to the Livonian knights on the ice of Lake Peipus, killed four
hundred of them, took fifty prisoners, and exterminated a multitude of Tchuds.
Such was the "Battle of the Ice," 1242.  He returned in triumph to Novgorod,
dragging with him his prisoners in armor of iron.  The grand master expected
to see Alexander at the gates of Riga, and implored help of Denmark. The
Prince of Novgorod, satisfied with having delivered Pskof, concluded peace,
recovered certain districts, and consented to the exchange of prisoners.  At
this time Innocent IV, deceived by false information, addressed a bull to
Alexander, as a devoted son' of the Church, assuring him that his father
Yaroslaff, while dying among the Horde, had desired to submit himself to the
throne of St. Peter.  Two cardinals brought him this letter from the Pope,
1251.

     It is this hero of the Neva and Lake Peipus, this vanquisher of the
Scandinavians and Livonian knights, that we are presently to see grovelling at
the feet of a barbarian.  Alexander Nevski had understood that, in presence of
this immense and brutal force of the Mongols, all resistance was madness, all
pride ruin.  To brave them was to complete the overthrow of Russia.  His
conduct may not have been chivalrous, but it was wise and humane.  Alexander
disdained to play the hero at the expense of his people, like his brother
Andrew of Suzdal, who was immediately obliged to fly, abandoning his country
to the vengeance of the Tartars.  The Prince of Novgorod was the only prince
in Russia who had kept his independence, but he knew Batu's hands could extend
as far as the Ilmen.  "God has subjected many peoples to me," wrote the
barbarian to him: "will you alone refuse to recognize my power?  If you wish
to keep your land, come to me; you will see the splendor and the glory of my
sway." Then Alexander went to Sarai with his brother Andrew, who disputed the
grand principality of Vladimir with his uncle Sviatoslaf.  Batu declared that
fame had not exaggerated the merit of Alexander, that he far excelled the
common run of Russian princes.  He enjoined the two brothers to show
themselves, like their father Yaroslaff, at the Great Horde; they returned
from it in 1257.  Kuiuk had confirmed the one in the possession of Vladimir,
and the other in that of Novgorod, adding to it all South Russia and Kiev.

     The year 1260 put the patience of Alexander and his politic obedience to
the Tartars to the proof.  Ulavtchi, to whom the khan Berkai had confided the
affairs of Russia, demanded that Novgorod should submit to the census and pay
tribute.  It was the hero of the Neva that was charged with the humiliating
and dangerous mission of persuading Novgorod.  When the possadnik uttered in
the vetche the doctrine that it was necessary to submit to the strongest, the
people raised a terrible cry and murdered the possadnik.  Vassili himself, the
son of Alexander, declared against a father "who brought servitude to
freemen," and retired to the Pskovians.  It needed a soul of iron temper to
resist the universal disapprobation, and counsel the Novgorodians to the
commission of the cowardly though necessary act.  Alexander arrested his son,
and punished the boyars who had led him into the revolt with death or
mutilation.  The vetche had decided to refuse the tribute, and send back the
Mongol ambassadors with presents.

     However, on the rumor of the approach of the Tartars, they repented, and
Alexander could announce to the enemy that Novgorod submitted to the census.
But when they saw the officers of the Khan at work, the population revolted
again, and the Prince, was obliged to keep guard on the officers night and
day.  In vain the boyars advised the citizens to give in: assembled around St.
Sophia, the people declared they would die for liberty and honor. Alexander
then threatened to quit the city with his men and abandon it to the vengeance
of the Khan.  This menace conquered the pride of the Novgorodians. The Mongols
and their agents might go, register in hand, from house to house in the
humiliated and silent city to make the list of the inhabitants.  "The boyars,"
says Karamsin, "might yet be vain of their rank and their riches, but the
simple citizens had lost with their national honor their most precious
possession," 1260.

     In Suzdal also Alexander found himself in the presence of insolent
victors and exasperated subjects.  In 1262 the inhabitants of Vladimir, of
Suzdal, of Rostof, rose against the collectors of the Tartar impost.  The
people of Yaroslavl slew a renegade named Zozimus, a former monk, who had
become a Moslem fanatic.  Terrible reprisals were sure to follow.  Alexander
set out with presents for the Horde at the risk of leaving his head there. He
had likewise to excuse himself for having refused a body of auxiliary Russians
to the Mongols, wishing at least to spare the blood and religious scruples of
his subjects.  It is a remarkable fact that over the most profound
humiliations of the Russian nationality the contemporary history always throws
a ray of glory.

     At the moment that Alexander went to prostrate himself at Sarai, the
Suzdalian army, united to that of Novgorod, and commanded by his son Dmitri,
defeated the Livonian knights and took Dorpat by assault.  The khan Berkai
gave Alexander a kind greeting, accepted his explanations, dispensed with the
promised contingent, but kept him for a year near his court.  The health of
Alexander broke down; he died on his return before reaching Vladimir.  When
the news arrived at this capital, the metropolitan Cyril, who was finishing
the liturgy, turned toward the faithful and said, "Learn, my dear children,
that the Sun of Russia is set, is dead."

     "We are lost," cried the people, breaking forth into sobs.  Alexander, by
this policy of resignation, which his chivalrous heroism does not permit us to
despise, had secured some repose for exhausted Russia.  By his victories over
his enemies of the West he had given her some glory, and hindered her from
despairing under the most crushing tyranny, material and moral, which a
European people had ever suffered.