It is the spring of the year 1223, in a small wooded village of Zarub, by the banks of the lower
Dnieper. There, surrounded by his retainers, sits the haughty Mstislav III, Grand Prince of Kiev:
a title that had long since ceased to have any real meaning. He looks upon a group of ten envoys,
hardy, irritable men- not unlike the other heathen nomads in appearance. They demand
the swift extradition of Cumans that had fled into his lands. Mstislav scoffs. Who are these
men to make demands of him, the Grand Prince of Kiev? If these ‘Mongols’ wished to make trouble,
then so be it. With a flick of his hand, his Druzhina steps forth, and cuts down the envoys.
It was a dark time for the Rus, but little did they know, it was about to get much, much darker.
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The early stories of the Kievan Rus are almost always overshadowed by what came afterwards:
the arrival of the Mongols. By the year 1223, the great horde of Genghis Khan, a man who
needs no introduction, had exploded out across central Asia, northern China, and Iran. Brilliant
generals Subutai and Jebe made the Cumans the latest victims of the Mongol advance, forcing
them to flee into the lands of the Rus. Ignoring the Mongol warning not to interfere in an affair
that was not theirs, the Grand Prince made the fateful decision to side with his Cuman allies,
arrogantly ordering the execution of the envoys, changing the course of Russian history forever.
On May the 31st, an army of 40,000 made up of the various Rus Princes and their Cuman allies
clashed against a Mongol army less than half its size at the Kalka River. We have covered
this battle in detail in one of our past videos - Subutai exploited the disunity of the Princes
using Mongolian heavy lancers and mounted archers to extremely deadly effect. The
armies of the Rus were ultimately surrounded and massacred. For defying the great Khan,
the Grand Prince Mstislav and other nobles were slowly crushed to death beneath a wooden platform.
Afterwards, Subutai returned back east. However,
now the Mongols had intimate information on the lands, politics, and armies of the Slavs,
and as such, the disunited Principalities of the Rus were living on borrowed time. In 1227,
the great Khan Genghis died and was succeeded by his son, Ögedei. Reinvigorated by new leadership,
the Mongols spent the next few years finishing off the Khwarazmian and Jin Empires. In 1235,
Khan Ögedei convoked a quriltai of his princes and generals and determined that their next
theatre of expansion was in the lands of the Cuman Kipchaks, Volga Bulgars, and of course- the Rus.
The invasion force that was mustered was led by Subutai, the mastermind behind the victory
at Kalka River 12 years earlier, and the up and coming Batu, the grandson of Genghis. By
their side were many other grandsons of Genghis, including Guyuk and Mongke. The reason for such a
star-studded invasion force was simple, as Khan Ogedei’s brother, Chagatai had warned: “There,
at the end of the world, they are hard people. They are people who, when they become angry,
would rather die by their own swords.” The Mongols refused to underestimate the people of the west.
In the autumn of 1236, a 100,000 man army was assembled in the Mongolian heartland, consisting
of an ethnic Mongolian core, and contingents from Uyghurs, Tanguts, Khitans, and Jurchens.
This force was composed predominantly of nomadic horsemen, but also included elements of Chinese
siege engineers to bring the walled cities of Rus to heel. The great horde of Batu and Subutai set
forth and the traditional enemies of the Kievan Rus - the Volga Bulgars and the Cumans, with whom
the Rurikid Princes struggled for centuries - were put beneath the Mongol boot in less than a month.
The Rus principalities were in a terrible position. As we covered in the last episode,
they were notoriously disunited. Prince Mstislav III of Kiev had been influential enough to
stitch together a coalition of Princedoms to fight Subutai’s initial expedition in 1223.
But even this army had fought as separate units loyal to their various Princes,
a drawback that had cost him the battle. Thus, when Batu entered Rus lands,
he saw not a united people standing against him, but a row of dominoes, ready to fall one by one.
In December of 1237, the Mongol horde reached the city of Ryazan,
which although direly outnumbered, resolved to mount resistance against the invaders. It took
only 5 days for the city walls’ to be breached by Chinese catapults. The slaughter that followed was
recorded in the contemporary Chronicle of Novgorod in prose that reflects the horror of the age:
“they likewise killed men, women and children, monks, nuns and priests, some by fire,
some by the sword. They violated nuns and priests’ wives, good women and girls in
the presence of their mothers and sisters’. It should be noted that Yuri Vsevolodovich,
Grand Prince of the great city of Vladimir-Suzdal, stood by and did nothing while Ryazan burned.
While the ruling Prince of Ryazan was killed in the massacre, his brother, Roman Igorevich managed
to escape, fleeing with his Druzhina along the Oka River, doggedly pursued by a contingent of
the Mongol army led by Kolgen, the son of Genghis. It was here that Prince Yuri of Vladimir finally
intervened, deploying a contingent of troops to rescue the fleeing Rus Noble. They made their
stand at the town of Kolomna, where they were defeated and killed. However, in the fighting,
Kolgen was struck down. His death would mark a watershed moment in the Mongol invasion.
Some historians postulate that Grand Prince Yuri had planned to submit to the Great Khan
and his surrender might have inspired other Princes to do the same,
sparing them death and destruction. Now that option was off the table,
as the death of a Genghisid was something that couldn’t go unpunished.
During early 1238, the Mongols campaigned across much of the northern heartland of the Kievan Rus,
committing numerous atrocities across multiple settlements, including the sacking of an
irrelevant little town known as Moscow. The great city of Vladimir-Suzdal was attacked in February,
only to fall 3 days later. Yuri fled north, but was run down by a tumen of
Mongol vassals at the Sit river in an engagement more akin to a slaughter than a pitched battle.
With his death, so too died the hope of any united Russian resistance against the enemy.
Realizing that, Batu Khan split his army up into contingents,
ordering each to wreak havoc across the northern Rus. Over the next few months,
fourteen cities fell and were subsequently subjected to mass murder and destruction.
There were a few key components to the Mongols’ success:
firstly the eastern Slavs had avoided building their settlements on high ground for centuries,
and the flat terrain surrounding their sedentary cities made them easy targets for Mongol siege
weapons. Secondly, Chinese siege engineers used advanced catapults which were extremely
effective in bringing down the timber and earthwork walls of a typical Rus city.
Thirdly, and most importantly, was the constant disunity of the Rus people.
So entangled were they by their rivalries, that they were happy to watch their neighbour
destroyed by the Mongols, only to be surprised when they were struck next.
To cope with this utter destruction, the Rus came to see the Mongols not as just another foe from
the steppe, but as a supernatural punishment from God. Thusly said in the Chronicle of Novgorod:
“God let the pagans on us for our sins. We always turn to evil, like swine ever
wallowing in the filth of sin. And for this we receive every kind of punishment from God,
and the invasion of armed men, too, we accept at God’s command, as punishment for our sins.”
That is not to say that every living Slavic soul in Northern Russia stopped
resisting. One such example is the tale of the 12-year-old Boy-Prince Vasily of Chernigov,
who against all the odds managed to hold out in his capital city of Kozelsk for nearly two months
with only citizen militia, even managing to lead a successful sortie outside of their walls,
where they slaughtered thousands of Mongol troops, destroyed siege equipment, and cut
down the sons of three Mongol commanders. But they could not delay the inevitable. Kozelsk soon fell,
and Vasily was slaughtered alongside every single one of his subjects.
Nevertheless, the child Princes’ valiant defense left such an impact on the Mongols
that they came to call Kozelsk “the evil city,” and none dared mention it in their presence.
Furthermore, Russian folktales are full of defiant, but ultimately doomed attempts to
stymie the Mongol advance. One figure whose story emerged out of the Mongol campaign
is Evpaty Kolovrat, a Rus Bogatyr whose story is the archetypal Rus tale of honourable vengeance.
Evpaty was visiting Chernigov when his hometown of Ryazan was put to the torch
in the winter of 1237. Returning home to see his home a charred husk, and his people dead,
he swore bloody revenge against Batu Khan. Scrounging up a small army of 1,700 survivors, he
pursued the Khan, attacking the hordes’ rearguard and annihilating thousands of Mongol troops.
In response, Batu Khan sent his relative Khostovrul to hunt this mysterious enemy. Evpaty
killed Khostovrul in single combat and then began cutting down the dead generals’ entire retinue
in a blood-drunk fury, before finally being slain from afar by siege-weaponry. As the tale goes,
Batu Khan showed a begrudging admiration for Evpaty’s bravery, and as a sign of respect,
returned the warriors’ bodies to his soldiers and allowed them to return to their homes.
In truth, stories like that of Prince Vasily and Evpaty are romanticized to varying degrees.
Nevertheless, there is at least a kernel of reality in these tales of Russian resistance
against Mongol domination. After all, Kievan Rus was a nation founded by warriors,
so it is not unreasonable to believe that there were brave souls among the eastern
Slavs who were willing to make the Mongols bleed for every inch of land they took.
In the autumn of 1238, Batu withdrew to rest his army, leaving behind the ruined northern Rus.
The grasslands of southern Russia, Ukraine, and the fertile northern coasts along the Black and
Caspian seas remained untrampled for now. Along the Dnieper’s banks stood Kiev, the cultural heart
of the Eastern Slavic world, the mother of cities, an opulent memory of a golden age long past.
After a brief rest Batu Khan’s campaign continued, thundering across the Pontic Steppe.
After subjugating the diverse peoples of the Crimea and campaigning against
the Circassians in the Caucasus, they turned towards the Rus. In March of 1239,
the city of Pereyaslavl was put to the torch. Chernigov was next. Unlike many others,
the men of this city rallied outside the walls to bravely face the Mongols in a pitched battle.
Predictably, they were slaughtered. After this, the walls were breached, and the
general citizenry were subjected to wholesale massacre. Thus, the gateway to Kiev was opened.
The Mongols were fully aware of the cultural significance of Kiev, and the power and prestige
it had radiated for centuries. By this point, Kiev’s Prince, Mikhail of Chernigov
had fled to Hungary, leaving his Voivode, Dmytro, in charge of the defense. The Mongols had sent
envoys demanding submission, but Dmytro had those envoys executed, and, of course, by now,
we all know what that meant. After a brief detour to subdue the Iranian Alani, the Mongols returned
to Kiev in the winter of 1240, crossing the frozen Dnieper and laying siege to the city. The city’s
walls were quickly rendered into rubble by Chinese catapults, and the invaders poured into the city.
Brutal hand-to-hand street fighting occurred and Dmytro was eventually forced to fall back with his
defenders to the Church of the Blessed Virgin, while the civilians took refuge in its walls.
As scores of terrified Kievans climbed onto the Church’s upper balcony to shield themselves
from Mongol arrows, their collective weight strained its infrastructure,
causing the roof to collapse and crush countless souls under its weight. By December 6th,
the struggle was over, and Kiev was in Mongol hands. In a rare act of clemency, Voivoide Dmytro
was spared his life in recognition of his bravery, but the rest of his city was not so lucky. Of a
total population of 50,000, all but 2,000 were massacred. The city itself was put to the torch.
Of some 40 significant landmarks in Kiev, only 6 remained standing after the wrath of Batu.
For centuries since the reign of Prince Yaroslav, the peoples of the Kievan Rus had been divided,
but the idea of a common culture and a common empire remained. Now, with the mother of Rus
cities a smoldering ruin, the nation founded by Rurik was dead. Kievan Rus was no more.
After Batu Khan’s campaign, the northern Rus lands were completely and utterly devastated,
and while the South was not hit as hard, its major power-centers, most notably Kiev,
had been destroyed. Pockets of independent eastern Slavic resistance would struggle on
for the better part of a decade, particularly in the westernmost region of Galicia-Volhynia,
but by 1250, the entire former Kievan Rus was completely under Mongol domination.
The socio-cultural impact that the Mongol Invasion had on the Russian
and greater Eastern Slavic worlds cannot be understated. It would not be inaccurate to
equate it to the fall of the Western Roman Empire to the Germanic tribes.
Before the Mongols, the cities of the Kievan Rus had been a land of Saints and Scholars,
the heirs of a once-united Empire rivaling other civilizations of Europe. Afterwards,
it had all been reduced to smoldering rubble, a pale shadow of the glory that had once been, a
conquered people living under the yoke of foreign warlords they considered to be the scourge of God.
However, among all the wreckage and ruin, a certain settlement remained untouched
by Mongol wrath. It was the oldest of the great Rus cities. In our next episode in this series,
we will explain how Novgorod not only survived the Mongol invasions, but
thrived under the rule of the Khan, and cover the rise of the charismatic Prince Alexander Nevsky,
as he submits himself to eastern overlordship to combat new threats emerging from the Germano-Latin
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