The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]

"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.