Russian history is iconic, whether it is the
rise of Stalin, the doom of the Romanovs, or the tyranny of Ivan the Terrible. Despite this, the earliest origins of this
massive nation are often neglected. In this series, we will go back to a time
before the Soviets and Tsars. A time of mighty Viking Princes, hardy Slavic
tribesmen, nomadic hordes from the steppe. Welcome to our documentary on where it all
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network of goods, but even the wealthiest among them didn’t have a way to get the
tasty Japanese snacks. The sponsor of our video Bokksu can give you
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through Japan! For millennia, the grassy plains of the Ukraine
and Southern Russia - the Ponto-Caspian Steppe had been inhabited by a diverse cast of hardy
nomadic people thriving along the Don, Dnieper and Volga rivers. The first written accounts of this land dates
back to classical antiquity of the 7th century BC. During this time, the Steppe was dominated
by various tribes of Iranian origin, the most prominent being the Scythians and Sarmatians. The Ancient Greeks, who had a smattering of
cities along the shore of the Black Sea, recorded stories about the nomads lived to the north. Herodotus relates a tale that the Scythians
were born of a union of the demigod Hercules and a Serpent-Woman. Meanwhile, the Sarmatians were known for the
legendary strength of their women, and therefore were considered a product of a mixing between
the Scythians and mythical Amazonian warriors. More historically reliable accounts describe
these Iranic pastoralists as a sturdy people, who lived and died upon the backs of their
steeds, subsisting on horse milk and meat, while enjoying the pleasures of psychoactive
herbs and undiluted wines. For centuries, their domination of the steppe
would be near unchallenged, but further to the north, a young and ambitious tribe was
finding its bearings. These, of course, were the Slavs. The true origins of the Slavs are shrouded
in mystery. The earliest written accounts of their existence
come from Roman sources. In the first century AD, the Senator and Historian
Tacitus described a tribe he called the “Venedi”, a people who lived primarily along the Vistula
river. Tacitus noted that they built homes, carried
shields, and fought unmounted, distinguishing them from their nomadic Sarmatian neighbours. Dismissed as yet another barbarian people
by the classical civilizations, the Venedi were most likely the progenitors of all of
today’s Slavic nations. For centuries these Proto-Slavs were hemmed
in by their powerful Celtic and Germanic neighbours to the West, and Scytho-Sarmatians to the
South. This changed between the 4th and 6th centuries
as great migration took place, with the Huns and various Germanic peoples migrating into
the borders of the collapsing Western Roman Empire. Broadly speaking, this enormous shift migration
allowed the early Slavs to expand beyond their original homeland in all directions. By then the Venedi had diffused into numerous
distinct branching tribes. Some tribes crossed the Danube into Eastern
Roman territory, seizing lands for themselves in the Balkans and becoming the forebears
of the South Slavs. Some tribes ventured westward into the domain
of the Avars. There they carved a home for themselves and
became the eventual predecessors of the Western Slavs. Most important to our story are the tribes
whose went eastwards into modern Ukraine. The Scythians and Sarmatians, who for centuries
had dominated the steppe, were weakened by centuries of war with the Goths, Romans and
Huns. The Proto-Slavs sunk their roots into this
unstable region, eventually assimilating the last remnants of these ancient peoples. While we know little of this eastern migration,
it is evident that in the following decades, Slavic peoples would continue to expand across
much of modern Ukraine, Belarus and central-western Russia, intermixing with various clans of
indigenous Finno-Ugrics and Baltic peoples, the ancestral cousins of Lithuanians, Latvians,
Estonians and Finns. By 750AD, the Eastern Slavs occupied land
from Lake Ladoga in the North, to the coast of the Black Sea. While they shared a common language and culture,
the Eastern Slavs were not politically united, divided into many tribes that operated on
complex kinship ties. They tended to avoid the high ground, settling
along rivers and lakes where water was abundant. There they built Strongholds with enclosed
earth and timber ramparts, wooden walls and an external ditch. These bastions were often surrounded by various
peripheral villages which provided grain and livestock. Not much is known about the native religion
of the early Slavs, other than that they held to a pantheon of Gods resembling those of
their Indo-European cousins. The most well attested to of these is Perun,
their God supreme, wielder of thunder and lord of the sky. His eternal foe was Veles, ruler of the underworld,
associated with magic, shamanism and sorcery. There were of course many other deities, embodying
fertility, fire, and the passing seasons, among other things. Pagan Slavs saw their Gods as tied intrinsically
with the untamed wilderness in which they lived, and built their shrines in Oaken groves. It should be noted that early Slavic society
is reconstructed primarily through later Christian writers, who looked upon their pagan forebears
with disdain. Nevertheless, some information can be parsed
from the sources available to us. For example, the law of hospitality was the
most sacred of rites to tribal Slavs. All guests were cherished without exception,
and any tribe who mistreated an itinerant traveler would be attacked by neighbouring
tribes for their dishonour. War was not uncommon, both with the Balts
and Finns and amongst the Slavs. They avoided pitched battles, instead fighting
in dense woodlands with ample cover, while using short iron spears, heavy wooden shields,
and bows nocked with poison-tipped arrows. The lives of the early eastern Slavs was decentralized
and chaotic, yet there was order and harmony through the shared customs. Nonetheless, things were soon to change, as
new arrivals came from the north, on the decks of dragon-headed longboats. At the turn of the 9th century, the Scandinavian
peninsula had a burgeoning population. In a cold, mountainous climate, good farmland
was a rarity. This pushed the Norsemen to sail from their
homes seeking new lands. Generally speaking, the Danes went westwards,
where they became known to the English and French as Vikings. The Swedes, however, ventured to the east,
where they quickly discovered the mighty rivers spanning down the continental mainland. By sailing down the crucial waterways of Eastern
Europe, the Norsemen became deeply engaged in the trade networks that had existed in
the region for centuries. At the confluence of the Kama and Volga they
encountered Bulgars, with whom they traded furs, wax and honey in exchange for silver. Occasionally they rowed further upriver and
traded with the Khazars, whose control over the steppe had granted them rule over an incredibly
wealthy land of diverse peoples, including many Slavic tribes. Meanwhile, those who sailed up the Dnieper
soon found themselves in the Black Sea, and before long, the Eastern Roman capital of
Constantinople. They called this splendorous place “Miklagard”,
literally meaning “the Great City”. In early June of 860, the Byzantine Emperor
Michael III moved out with his army from Constantinople towards the frontline with the Abbasid Caliphate. The mighty Byzantine fleet also followed and
the capital was left almost defenseless with only a small garrison remaining in Constantinople
as the Byzantine leadership did not expect any attack. Chronicles describing the following events
generally agree that the Rus fleet under the leadership of Varangian warlords Askold and
Dir entered the Bosphorus on 18 June 860. Modern historians argue that the Rus knew
how defenseless Constantinople was, as they already had developed relations with the Arab
Caliphate and as the time frame and distance since the day of the departure of the emperor
Michael III from the capital was sufficient for the Arab intelligence to inform the Rus. The Greek sources mention 200 Rus ships, while
the Venetian John the Deacon claims 360 ships. The sources do not state the exact number
of land troops the Rus had, but since the average Viking ships of the era had the capacity
to between 30 and 80 men comfortably on its board, depending on size, the conservative
estimate of 40 men per ship leads to the estimate of 8000 men. Askold and Dir’s men met no resistance as
they landed on the shore and started pillaging the unprotected suburbs of Constantinople. Many were killed and taken as hostages. Then the Rus fleet moved to the Marmara Sea
and attacked the Princes’ Islands. Again the residents were slaughtered, monasteries,
palaces, and other places carrying riches were plundered. The residents inside the walls were in fear
as they had nobody to defend them. There is no definitive conclusion regarding
whether the Rus attempted to take the city walls and capture Constantinople. As the Byzantine lacked forces to offer any
effective resistance the Patriarch Photius called the city dwellers to pray to Holy Mary,
the protector of the city and ordered to hang her banner on the city walls. On 4 August 860, the Rus ended the siege,
boarded their ships and left the area with major spoils. The latter part of the description of the
Rus attack on Constantinople has another version glorifying the emperor and the divine intervention,
which saved the city from the barbarians. According to this version, Michael III quickly
returned to the city after receiving information on the Rus attack and joined Patriarch Photius
in prayers and after hanging off the Holy Mary banner, the storm which scattered the
Rus fleet took place eventually leading to the withdrawal of Askald and Dir in panic. Photius does not mention anything regarding
Michael’s arrival and a miracle saving in his writings, as these details were added
later by the chronicle of Simeon Logophet. The Romans were made to accept the Varangians
as partners in commerce, making them wealthy with silks and wine. War and trade helped the Norsemen prosper,
and that wealth meant they were there to stay. Of course, plying down the great rivers meant
that the Norsemen inevitably passed through the Slavic territory. The Slavs called them “Varangians” or
“Rus”, terms likely derived from the old Norse words meaning “pledged companions”
and “the people who row”. Initial interactions between them were hostile,
as the Norsemen often raided Slavic villages, exacting tribute and taking slaves to trade
in southern markets. Within a few decades, the Scandinavians dominated
not only the Slavs, but Finns and Balts as well. It would be this intersection of cultures
that would give rise to the first united ruling dynasty in Russian History, the Rurikids. Before we explain the rise of the Rurikids,
we should note that much of early Russian history is known through The Primary Chronicle,
written in the year 1113 AD by a monk Nestor. While his works are considered the most valuable
source of knowledge on this era, the legitimacy of his work is often called into question
by modern historians. Still, the Primary Chronicle presents the
only complete story moving forward, and its tale will be the one presented by us. According to Nestor, the Slavs, Finns and
Balts revolted against their Scandinavian masters at some point before 860AD, driving
them back across the northern sea. Evidently, the Norsemen had been something
of a stabilizing force in the region, for once they had been expelled, the Slavic tribes
quickly devolved back into habitual warfare with themselves and their neighbours. The chronicle had this to say: “There was
no law among them, but tribe rose against tribe. Discord thus ensued among them, and they began
to war against one another. They said to themselves: ‘let us seek a
prince who may rule over us and judge us according to the law’. They went overseas to the Varangian Russes,
and said to the people of Rus: ‘Our whole land is great and rich, but there is no order
in it. Come to reign and rule over us.” The Prince invited by the Slavs was named
Rurik. Promptly accepting their offer, he settled
amongst his new people in 862. Rurik established his capital on the Volkhov
river, likely on the site of an older Slavic stronghold. His city soon grew to become a prosperous
hub of river-bound trade, and became known to the Slavs as Novgorod. For seventeen years, Prince Rurik worked to
stabilize his realm, establishing laws and formal tributary rulership over the many native
tribes of the region. He died in 879, leaving his realm to his kinsman
Oleg. By all accounts, Oleg was the classic embodiment
of a Viking warrior, an ambitious Prince who sought to expand his lands through conquest. To that end, he turned his gaze upon the great
Khaganate to the south. Ruling the crossroads of an international
trading hub, the Khazars were naturally tolerant of the many tribes and religions in their
domain. In one of history’s more peculiar twists,
the Turkic rulers had even converted to Judaism. Among their tributary subjects were the majority
of the Eastern Slavic tribes in the South. For centuries the Khazars prospered in their
steppe land. Oleg, however, was not a foe to be trifled
with. He had all the tribes of the north united
under him, and commanded a vast army comprised of Norse, Finnic and Slavic warriors. According to Nestor, Oleg sailed his army
up the Dnieper river in 882, seizing the towns of Smolensk and Lyubech en route. Before long, they arrived upon the wooded
hills of Kiev, an ancient outpost most likely founded by Eastern Slavic migrants as early
as the 5th century. By the time of Oleg’s arrival, Kiev was
a vassal of the Khazars, and ruled by the Norse Warlords Askold and Dir, who evidently
were the ones behind the Varangian attack on Byzantium back in 860. Oleg is said to have confronted his fellow
Norse rulers, decrying them boldly, saying “You are not princes, nor even of princely
stock, but I am of princely birth!” Askold and Dir were promptly slain, and Oleg
took firm control of Kiev. He was quick to see the value of this town,
Kiev was surrounded by fertile soil, and its position along the Dnieper River gave it the
potential to be a heart of trade and commerce. Oleg declared himself the Prince of Kiev,
and decided it would be from there he would rule the rest of his realm. Soon he ventured on, wresting more Slavic
tribes from Khazar control. By 885, the Prince had united the vast majority
of the Eastern Slavs under his rule. It is here that the Kievan Rus was born, a
nation that would survive for three centuries and grow to become among the most prosperous
in Medieval Europe. Kiev was its grand capital, from which the
descendants of Rurik and Oleg ruled as Princes of the Rurikid dynasty. While ‘Rus’ originally referred to the
nation’s ruling Scandinavian elite, in time, all the tribes of the Kievan realm, whether
Slavic or Nordic, simply came to be known as people of the Rus. Through fate and conquest, the Rurikid Princes
had given their names to the land, which Russia, the land of the Rus, retains to this day. The early Kievan Rus was in function a tributary
Empire, comprised of internally autonomous tribes and towns, all under the suzerainty
of the Grand Prince of the Rurikid dynasty, who was based in the prosperous trading city
of Kiev. Each tribe within was ruled independently,
paying a tribute to Kiev, and joined their armies to the Grand Prince in times of war. The tribes received protection from the Grand
Prince’s druzhina, an elite retinue of warriors who kept order across the realm. Culturally, the Early Kievan state was an
ethnic and linguistic smorgasbord. The Rurikid Princes and their druzhina were
most likely predominantly Scandinavian, although a skilled warrior from any origin could join
the Princes’ retinue. The majority of peoples in Rus lands were
the Eastern Slavs, who spoke Old East Slavic language, from which modern Russian, Ukrainian
and Belarussian stem. Other peoples in the Kievan Rus included the
Finno-Ugric and Baltic speaking tribes in the North, and likely some Turkic peoples
from former Khazaria. Religion across the realm was a diverse spectrum:
The Pagan Slavs continued to worship Perun and Volos in their oaken groves, while the
Scandinavian elites retained aspects of their own pantheons of Thor, Odin and Loki. One of the most famous living accounts of
Norse religious rites comes from the Arab traveller Ibn Fadlan, whose journey up the
Volga River in 922 brought him into an encounter with a boisterous tribe of Varangian Norsemen. Fadlan watched in fascination and horror as
the body of a great Viking chieftain was laid in his longship alongside a slave girl, who
had volunteered to be ritually sacrificed. The boat and all the precious personal belongings
it carried were thus set alight in a great bonfire, and the souls within committed to
Valhalla. This funerary practice was probably unique
to the Kievan Vikings, and deviated from the Scandinavian rites. However, it is a testament that some form
of Norse paganism thrived among the warrior-caste of the Kievan realm. The Rurikid Princes remained fiercely warlike
throughout most of their early history, seeking to become rich through plunder and tribute. To them, the ultimate prize would always be
the most splendorous land on the far end of the Black Sea. To that end, they turned the dragonhead prows
of their longboats towards Constantinople, the place they simply called “The Great
City” - Miklagard. Norse raiders had failed to take Constantinople
in 860, but now they were unified under the Rurikids, they could muster a larger and more
organized invasion force. The second Rus attack on Constantinople also
has dubious details, since the Byzantine sources do not directly mention anything regarding
the event and all descriptions of the attack are in the early Russian sources, including
the Russian primary chronicle. According to the Laurentian and Hypatian redactions
of the Chronicle, in 907 the Varangian prince, Oleg of Novgorod, who had been able to put
several Slavic, Turkic, Finnish-Ugric peoples including Chuds, Polyanians, Croats, Merians,
Tivercians under his control, moved towards Constantinople. Oleg’s army consisted of 2000 ships each
containing 40 men, which sailed from the Dnieper into the Black Sea, and an unknown number
of horsemen, who traveled on horseback from the Rus territories towards Constantinople. Thus, according to the Russian Primary Chronicle,
Oleg had 80k men in his army, excluding the cavalry. This is a truly astonishingly high number
for its era, especially for the Rus, who were just consolidating at the time as a state
and the regional force. The Novgorod Chronicle mentions 100-200 ships,
which would make the army size 4000-8000 men, a much more plausible figure. Then the Russian Primary Chronicle describes
Oleg’s army reaching Constantinople. The Byzantine locked the Golden Horn strait
with the chain preventing the Rus fleet from passing into the Marmara Sea. Instead, Oleg and his men disembarked on the
shore and proceeded to loot and pillage the suburbs of the city, murdering and capturing
the Byzantine subjects in the process without any resistance from the imperial forces. The reason for lack of resistance is not described
and it is peculiar that one of the strongest naval forces of the time, the Byzantine fleet
did not oppose Oleg’s ships. After looting and pillaging, Oleg commanded
his men to make wheels which they attached to the ships, and ordered them to be moved
against the city. The Byzantine became worried and asked Oleg
to cease hostilities and offered tribute in exchange. Oleg accepted and his troops stopped. During the negotiations, the Byzantines offered
Oleg wine, but the latter refused to drink fearing the poison. This certainly flared the tempers, and eventually,
the Byzantines accepted Oleg’s demand to pay 12 gold pieces per each Rus soldier as
an annual tribute. Oleg’s attack was concluded by a treaty
between the Rus and the Byzantine, which is reflected in the Byzantine sources. With that, Oleg returned home. Additionally, the Rus had won trading concessions
with the Roman Emperor, which boded well for the long term economic prosperity of the Kievan
realm. It is notable that the Rus ambassadors, who
bore Scandinavian names such as Farulf, Hrollaf, and Stemir, swore to uphold this agreement
by swearing upon the Slavic Gods, which suggests that Slavic and Norse customs had already
begun to blend. Oleg died in 912, succeeded by Igor, the son
of Rurik himself. The Young Prince was met with adversity at
the very beginning of his reign. Troublesome Slavic Drevlians, refused to pay
him tribute. Igor, however, possessed the iron will of
his Rurikid bloodline, and was able to crush them in battle, imposing a harsher annual
tribute upon them. Having proven himself, Igor kept the peace
in his realm for a time. Like his predecessors before him, he began
to dream about the Byzantine wealth. In May of 941, Igor embarked on yet another
campaign against the Byzantine Empire, as, according to the Russian historians, the Byzantines
stopped paying the annual tribute agreed upon following the victorious raid of Oleg in 907
and because Igor wanted personal glory akin to that gained Oleg. The Khazar sources also mention that the Kievan
Rus was forced to attack the Byzantine Empire as a clause of their agreement following the
Khazar victory over the Rus, but it is disputed. Sources differ on how big Igor’s army and
fleet were. Russian chronicles refer to the Byzantine
sources of Theophanes Continuatus and George Hamartolos and mention a fantastic number
of 10000 ships. Since the ordinary ships used by the Rus could
have 40 persons aboard, then the Kievan Rus army could have had 400k men, which is an
absurdly high number for the age. The bishop Luitprand of Cremona, who visited
Constantinople a few years after the Kievan Rus raid, wrote that the Rus had more than
1000 ships during their raid, based on the words of the witnesses. The Byzantine historian Leon Grammatikos writes
about a 10000 strong Rus army, which is more plausible given the previous Rus raids and
the size of armies in the Medieval period. 10k army would fit in 250 Rus vessels, which
is also a more plausible number. Igor’s fleet moved from Kyiv and in three
weeks it was on the shores of Bulgaria, where it was joined by the fleet of the Rus, which
traveled from the Eastern Crimea or Tavrida, as it was called by the Byzantines. Just like in the previous raids, the Kievan
Rus chose the time when the Byzantine fleet was fighting the Arab attacks against its
Mediterranean islands. But this time the Byzantine Empire was aware
of the attack. According to Basil the Younger, the Byzantine
vassals in Kherson in modern day South Ukraine and Bulgarians, who enjoyed peaceful relations
with Constantinople, informed them of an imminent Rus raid. On the 11th of June the Rus reached the shores
of Constantinople and set camp near the city. The sources do not mention any incidents of
looting, pillaging of the outskirts of the city, which happened during the previous raids. Some historians claim that it might be due
to Igor hoping that a mere sight of his army might be enough for Emperor Romanus I to agree
to his terms. But instead Romanus I ordered to repair the
out-of-order dromons remaining in the harbour and arm them with siphons, weapons spewing
fire. The command of some 15 old dromons was given
to the court chamberlain Theophanes. He ordered his fleet to move to the Golden
Horn harbour and wait for the Rus fleet. Igor ordered the Kievan fleet to advance towards
the Byzantine fleet, since the sight of 15 old ships did not cause any concern to him. Once the Rus fleet was close to the Faros
Lighthouse, Theophanes ordered an attack. According to Luitprand, Igor ordered his men
not to kill his foes and capture them alive, which might have been an attempt to use the
Byzantine prisoners as a bargaining chip. Theophanes' ship continued to advance towards
the Rus with his other ships coming close behind him. Rus' ships surrounded Theophanes and it was
then, when he ordered to use the Greek fire on them. Chaos ensued. Numerous Rus ships caught fire and Kievan
warriors threw themselves out to save themselves from fire, but their heavy armour drowned
them. The rest of Theophanes’s fleet joined and
further devastated Igor’s fleet. While the majority of the Kievan fleet was
destroyed, the Tavric Rus fleet remained in the shallow waters on the shore of Anatolia,
where large dromons could not move. Captured Rus soldiers were publicly beheaded. From then on the remainder of the Rus army
was divided into two independent parts. The Kievan army under Igor’s command landed
on the European side of the Bosphorus and destroyed the village called Stenon. But Igor did not have enough men to develop
his advance and retreated to Crimea by July. The second part of the Rus army, the Tavric
Rus fleet was pinned down by Theophanes fleet in the shallow waters on the shore of Bithynia. In the summer they landed and proceeded to
loot, pillage and murder in retribution for the Greek fire attack. The Empire did not have an army in the region
and was hastily gathering one to defeat the Tavric Rus. The Tavric Rus were able to move as far as
Nicomedia and Paphlagonia in the East, but were harassed by the units of Bardas Phocas
until a larger Byzantine army under John Kurkas pushed the Rus to the shore inflicting heavy
damage. The sources are quiet regarding the strength
of the army. By September the Rus were running low on provisions
and in the act of desperation boarded their ships and tried to escape the fleet of Theophanes. But again the Greek fire was too much for
the Tavric Rus fleet and the majority of it was destroyed. That would be the last Kievan Rus attack on
Constantinople. Igor returned home and began mustering a far
larger army than before, made up of the combined tribes of the Rus, and by 944 was ready to
attack the Imperial city. Hearing of the imminent arrival of this armada,
Emperor Romanos I capitulated, giving up yet more precious gifts in tribute, while offering
more concessions to Rus merchants. It should be noted that both Rus-Byzantine
treaties are full of very specific trading stipulations, tariffs and customs laws. This emphasizes that the Rus Princes were
also merchants at heart. However, the Prince’s druzhina had long
been dissatisfied with their pay, and beseeched Igor to take more wealth from his subjects,
saying: “Come with us, prince, to collect tribute, and you will gain and so will we!” Igor agreed, and to that end, rode to the
land of his least favourite subjects, the ever troublesome Drevlians. The Grand Prince had already collected tribute
from the Drevlians once that year already, and his return for more made evident that
the Drevlians had had enough of Rurikid tyranny. They poured out of their city, killed the
Princes’ retinue and took him captive. Igor was then executed in a gruesome fashion. The Kievan Princes’ unceremonious death
would lead to the rise of his widow - Princess Olga. Despite being around 25 years old, Olga had
a Varangian spirit, iron-willed and cunning as a fox. Her revenge, recorded in the Primary Chronicle,
has since become the stuff of legend. The Drevlians now had their own designs on
the Kievan throne, emboldened by their murder of the Grand Prince, they sent envoys to Kiev,
with a proposal to Olga: We slew your husband because he plundered us like a wolf. Our Princes are good and have preserved the
land of the Drevlians. So we come to you, requesting you to marry
our prince Mal”. The Princess knew that marrying the Drevlian
prince wasn’t an option, firstly because he would surely murder her infant son Sviatoslav,
and secondly because the vengeance burned in her heart. Nevertheless, playing the role of the timid
maiden, she feigned eagerness to accept the offer. The next day, she had the Drevlian emissaries
carried to her Palace in their boat under the guise of honouring them, only to have
the boat thrown into a ditch, and the emissaries buried alive. Olga followed up this ruthless deception with
another, sending a messenger to Drevlians, she claimed she would happily marry their
Prince Mal, if only they would send her an honour guard of their best soldiers, so she
could be escorted in a manner befitting a princess. A contingent of elite warriors were sent to
Kiev and once more, Olga welcomed them with feigned hospitality, allowing them the honour
of using her own bathhouse. When the honour guard entered the sauna to
wash, Olga had the doors barred and the building set aflame. Olga then travelled to Drevlian lands with
a small retinue of loyal warriors. Upon arrival, she managed to convince the
Drevlians that their emissaries and honour guard were on their way and were not not in
fact dead. A great feast was held in her honour. As the sun set and the crowd grew drunk with
mead, Olga gave her cue and her warriors massacred over 5,000 Drevlian. Soon, Olga returned with a massive army to
finish the job, town after town in Drevlian lands fell, until she reached their capital
in Korosten. Knowing that cunning, not brute strength,
was the key into the city, Olga offered an olive branch of mercy:“At this time you
have neither honey nor furs, so I have a small request to make. Give me three pigeons and three sparrows from
each household. I do not wish to lay a heavy tribute on you
as my husband did.” The people of Korosten were overjoyed and
eagerly fulfilled the Princess’ will. Unfortunately for them, the fires of Olgas’
vengeance had not dimmed. She had her soldiers attach to each bird a
small piece of sulfur wrapped in cloth and tied to a fuse. When night fell, she ordered the fuses to
be lit, and the birds to be set free. Flying back over Korosten with their tailfeathers
alight, the sparrows and pigeons set the entire town aflame. Panicked and broken, the people of Korosten
fled their city, only to be captured beyond the walls by Olgas’ soldiers, slaughtered
or enslaved. Princess Olga proved to be more than just
a mass murderer. For many years after her annihilation of the
Drevlians she proved to be an effective, well respected head of state, ruling the Kievan
Rus as regent on behalf of her young son Sviatoslav. She proactively built settlements in the northern
regions of her realm, while ending the ever-hated tribute system, replacing it with a better
regulated system of taxation. An adept diplomat, she cultivated good relations
with trading partners, the most important of all being Eastern Rome. In the year 957, she sent off for Constantinople
on a diplomatic mission to treat with Emperor Constantine VII. There, she accepted the Christian Orthodox
faith and was baptised. We don’t know what Olgas’ motivation was,
but it probably was done for political and economic gain. She made a piecemeal attempt to encourage
Christianity in her realm, having churches built throughout her realm, but her subjects
largely clung to their polytheistic faiths. Whatever gains Christianity made were further
rolled back in 964, when Olgas’ regency ended, and the young firebrand Prince Sviatoslav
took the Kievan throne. In mannerism and dress, Sviatoslav resembled
more his Slavic and Turkic subjects than his Scandinavian ancestors, the legacy of a hundred
years of Norse assimilation into the culture of their subjects. By all accounts, Sviatoslav’s violent childhood
had made him cold and ruthless. He rejected his mother’s faith, believing
that converting to Christianity would lose him the respect of the pagan warriors he rode
with, and remained devout to the Slavic pantheon. Sviatoslavs’ reign would be defined by constant,
unending conquests. While his mother continued to run the realm’s
bureaucratic matters, the young Prince spent his days riding with his loyal Druzhina, raiding
and pillaging neighbouring nations. Sviatoslav and his warriors travelled without
tents, wagons or kettles. They lived rough off the land, taking what
they needed to survive by right of pillage, or by hunting wild game. In popular legend, he was compared to a snow
leopard, for he moved lightly, and struck quickly. The Young Prince’s first target of major
conquest was the land of the Jewish Turkic Lords. He and his warriors fanned out over the Eurasian
steppe, town by town, tribe by tribe, forcing the peoples of Khazaria submit themselves
to the rule of the Rus, or be annihilated. Sviatoslav employed Turkic mercenaries from
other tribes using their mastery of mounted combat to counter the equally skilled Khazar
horse archers. In 965, Rus warriors stormed and annihilated
the incredibly prosperous trading cities of Sarkel and Kirch. This was functionally the end of the Khazars,
crippled beyond repair, and their Empire would never recover. The final death blow came in 969, when their
capital at Atil was destroyed. A year prior to this, Eastern Roman envoys
had approached the Rus Prince with an offer. In return for a hefty tribute of 15,000 pounds
of Gold, Sviatoslav was asked to participate in a joint invasion of the enemy of the Romans,
the mighty Danubian Bulgars. Seeing an opportunity for wealth, war and
glory, Sviatoslav eagerly accepted the Roman tribute and mustered a 60,000 strong army
of Norsemen, Slavs, and Pecheneg mercenaries. Like his ancestors, he struck like a lightning
bolt from heaven, annihilating the armies of Bulgar Khan Boris II, and quickly conquering
the entirety of Northern Bulgaria. Emperor John Tzimiskes now realized he’d
made a deal with the devil. Sviatoslav was becoming far too powerful,
and his marauding army would likely not stop in Bulgaria, but could pillage its way to
the very gates of Constantinople itself. Knowing that Kiev was largely undefended,
the Romans bribed the Pechenegs to betray Sviatoslav and lay siege to the city. The Pechenegs proved unscrupulous in the face
of Roman gold, and promptly thundered into the Kievan heartland, laying siege to the
Rurikid capital. Now an elderly woman, Olga was nonetheless
able to lead her men and hold out against the Turkic horde until Sviatoslav could return
with his army, driving the Pechenegs back to their steppe homeland. Olga died of illness soon after the siege,
and was buried quietly on consecrated ground as Christian tradition demanded. In death, she was canonised as St. Olga, with
the epithet: “equal to the Apostles”. To this day, she is revered by the Orthodox
Church. Meanwhile, the Romans, not content with poking
the bear only once, demanded that all territory won by the Rus in Bulgaria had to be surrendered
to the Emperor in Constantinople, as Sviatoslav had invaded Bulgaria on their behalf. Sviatoslav refused and launched an invasion
of Byzantium with a massive army of Norsemen, Slavs, Magyars, and contingents of loyal Pechenegs
and Bulgars. The Rus coalition smashed against the gates
of Adrianople, but were defeated by a Roman counteroffensive at the battle of Arcadiopolis
in 970. The Rurikid Prince was forced to retreat to
Dorostolon, where he held out against the Romans for 65 days, but cut off and surrounded,
was eventually forced to make peace with them, relinquishing his conquests. Fearing that the truce with Sviatoslav would
not endure, the Byzantine emperor induced the Pecheneg Khan, Kurya, to kill the Rus
Prince before he reached Kiev. Sure enough, while attempting to cross the
cataphracts on the isle of Khortitsa, he and his retinue were beset upon by a hail of Turkic
arrows. Sviatoslav was killed in the ambush, and according
to legend, his skull was turned into a drinking vessel for the Pecheneg Khan. Upon Prince Sviatoslav’s demise in 972,
Rus was divided between his sons. The eldest - Yaropolk, ruled from the traditional
capital of Kiev. The middle child, Oleg, ruled the rich land
of the Drevlians, a tribe that had been thoroughly brought to heel by his grandmother Olga. Finally, the youngest of the three, Vladimir,
ruled from the northern capital of Novgorod. The bastard son of a slave, he was overshadowed
by his two half-brothers. Each of them were under the influence of the
lesser lords - the Boyars. For instance, Vladimir’s domain was administered
by his maternal uncle, the ambitious Dobrynya, while Yaropolk’s realm was run by one of
Sviatoslav’s veterans, the Norse warlord Sveinaldr. With three puppeteered by ambitious men, the
Kievan state was a powder keg just waiting to be lit. According to legend, that spark came sometime
in 974, when the son of Sveinaldr, Lyut wandered into the land of the Drevlians on a hunting
trip and was discovered by Oleg, who demanded to know who had the nerve to poach game from
his forest. Lyut introduced himself as the son of Sveinaldr,
and was promptly executed by Oleg. We can assume this was done at the behest
of his own scheming boyars. Back in Kiev, Sveinaldr was furious about
the death of his son, and put immense pressure upon Yaropolk to make war upon Oleg. The Norse Regent was motivated both by vengeance,
and the prospect of controlling the rich Drevlian forest. Initially hesitant, Yaropolk was eventually
cowed to Sveinaldr’s will, and in 976 marched his armies into Drevlian territory. Oleg’s forces were handily crushed by Sveinaldr. The prince fled with his army to the town
of Ovruch, where in a frantic panic they trampled one another to get over the narrow drawbridge
and behind the safety of the town walls. Yaropolk and Sveinaldr arrived a day later
and demanded that Ovrush surrender Prince Oleg. Instead, the townsfolk pointed to their external
moat. It was revealed that in the panic, Oleg, like
many of his men, had been pushed off the drawbridge, where he had drowned in the muddy waters below. According to legend, Yaropolk, ordered his
brother’s corpse to be dragged from the mire and laid atop a clean rug. Weeping heavily, he addressed Sveinaldr. “Rejoice now, your wish is fulfilled.” In Novgorod, Prince Vladimir received the
news of what had transpired. Advised that Yaropolk would likely attack
him next, he fled to Norway to seek refuge with his relative, King Haakon Sigurdsson. Taking advantage of this flight, Yaropolk
installed loyal boyars in Novgorod, effectively seizing control of the entire Kievan Rus. Vladimir, however, was not idle in his exile. Proving charismatic, the youth recruited an
army of warriors in Norway and sailed back to Novgorod with his Vikings, kicking out
Yaropolk’s boyars and sending a message: “Vladimir is marching against you. Prepare for war.” Before his southward march, Vladimir wanted
to secure an alliance with the powerful Ragnvald, the Viking ruler of the Polotsk tribe, who
lived in modern Belarus. The Prince sought a marriage with Ragnvald’s
daughter, Ragnhild, but was rebuked with disgust, as the latter claimed that she would never
marry the bastard son of a slave. This rejection infuriated Vladimir and his
uncle Dobrynya, whose sister was the very slave in question. The prince gathered his Viking mercenaries
and all the Slavic tribes of the north, conquered Polotsk, slew Ragnvald and took Ragnhild by
right of conquest. Vladimir then commenced his southwards campaign
upon Yaropolk. His armies soon overran the tribes of the
south, forcing the Prince of Kiev to flee to the town of Rodnia, pursued doggedly by
his vengeful younger brother. On June 11th of 978, Yaropolk gave up the
fight, emerging from the city gates to make peace with his brother. Instead, he was cut down by Vladimir’s Norse
soldiers. The interregnum was over, and Vladimir now
entered Kiev as the Grand Prince of Rus. Vladimir chose to commemorate his triumph
over his older brother by reinforcing polytheism in his realm, uniting his followers by erecting
not only Slavic, but also Norse, Finnic and even Iranian gods on the hilltop above Kiev. Reportedly, the new Grand Prince was the archetypal
heathen warlord. He feasted and feuded freely, while indulging
in the company of five wives and over 800 concubines, many of whom he’d seized forcefully
and enslaved. He was even known to engage in bloody rituals
involving human sacrifice. Whether this portrait of a ruthless barbarian
king is true, or the biased invention of later Christian chroniclers we may never know. Like his father, Vladimir spent a good chunk
of his early reign making war. In 981, his armies seized much of Red Ruthenia,
forming a borderland between the Rus and the powerful Piast Kings of Poland. This would be the first conflict of significance
between the proto-Russians and their western Slavic cousins, but as many are aware, far
from the last. In the following years, Vladimir would suppress
rebellions of his subject tribes, the Vyatichi and the Radimichians. He then turned his armies eastwards to the
Volga Bulgars, defeating them in battle and making them subservient to him. Still somewhat under the influence of his
uncle, Vladimir had grown into a ruler to be reckoned with. Yet throughout his early successes, the specter
of faith hung over him. We must now jump back in time, and discuss
the spread of monotheism in the east. The conversion of Olga in the 950s had been
the Rus peoples’ first real introduction to Christianity. However, the influence of the monotheistic
faiths had been making gains in the states surrounding Rus for decades before that. The Latins and Greeks of the Frankish and
Byzantine Empires, along with the Muslims of the Persianized Abbasid Caliphate, were
wealthy, powerful bearers of noble cultural legacies. As such, formerly animist and pagan peoples
from central Europe to the eastern Steppe began converting to their monotheistic faiths
to earn themselves a legitimate place in the political world of these economic and cultural
heavyweights. The Khazars had been among the first to follow
this trend. Before their destruction at the hands of Prince
Sviatoslav, their ruling elite had adopted Judaism, the oldest of the Abrahamic faiths. Meanwhile their neighbours, the Volga Bulgar
tribes, had converted to Islam in 922, seeking closer ties to their crucial trading partners
in Abbasid Baghdad. Christianity had begun making headway in the
860s, when two missionary brothers, Cyril and Methodius, set out from their native Byzantium
to spread the Orthodox Christian rite to the Slavic peoples. They travelled to the lands of Great Moravia,
where they learned the local western Slavic language, and created for it a written script
based on Greek letters, known as Glagolitic. Using their new alphabet as a cornerstone,
they standardized many western Slavic dialects into old Church Slavonic, which became their
new liturgical language. Now able to attend Church services in a tongue
familiar to them, the Western Slavs were Christianized. The Catholic rite eventually prevailed in
Moravia, but Slavonic Christianity found success elsewhere. The Danubian Bulgars had converted to Greek
Orthodox Christianity in 864 but didn’t want to become too culturally dependent on
their long-time Byzantine rivals. As a result, they welcomed the disciples of
Cyril and Methodius into their lands, adopting the Slavonic church tongue over Byzantine
Greek as the official language of their people, which is one of the reasons why arguably Turkic
Bulgarians speak a Slavic tongue today. Furthermore, the Bulgars streamlined the unwieldy
Glagolitic into something easier - this Cyrillic alphabet named posthumously after Cyril. Prince Vladimir was slowly realizing that
when his Grandmother Olga had converted decades earlier, it had not been an admission of weakness,
but an act of cunning. War brought glory to the Rus, but trade and
commerce was the lifeblood of the realm. The Princes of Kiev had maintained trade relations
with their neighbours, but in order to deepen their ties with the wealthiest realms of Eurasia,
they needed monotheism. Once more, it is Nestor’s chronicle that
tells the legend of Vladimir’s conversion. In 987, the Grand Prince had envoys sent to
learn about Judaism, Islam, Latin Christianity and Greek Christianity, to choose which faith
would be the best fit for his people. Vladimir was unimpressed by Judaism, pithily
asking why a people exiled from their homeland could be a model to follow. Islam did not make a great impression either,
as rather than venturing to the splenderous city of Baghdad, the Rus envoys learned about
the faith from the Muslims of Volga Bulgaria, remarking: “there is no gladness among them;
only sorrow and a great stench; their religion is not a good one.” Upon learning that Islam prohibited the consumption
of alcohol, Vladimir remarked: “Drinking is the joy of the Rus, we cannot exist without
that pleasure”. Meanwhile, the Rus emissaries who had travelled
to the western lands of the Franks proclaimed that their Churches were unimpressive, and
that their Latin rites were ‘without beauty’. Only in the Eastern Roman Empire did the envoys
find joy. In Constantinople, they bore witness to the
full splendor of Orthodox ritual within the opulence of the Hagia Sophia. Upon their return, they said to their Prince:
“We no longer knew whether we were in heaven or on earth, nor such beauty, and we know
not how to tell of it.” Vladimir was sold upon the path of Byzantine
Christianity, and the future of the Rus people was decided. Despite these colourful anecdotes, the real
reason for Vladimir’s choice was most likely a matter of pragmatism. Of all the lands his envoys went to, Eastern
Rome was the closest and richest, and furthermore, the expeditions of Igor and Oleg had already
secured them a working, if rocky, relationship with the Greeks. Therefore, Vladimir stood to gain more politically
and economically by choosing Eastern Orthodox Christianity over Islam, Judaism, or the Latin
rite. The Grand Prince was still a warrior at heart,
and wanted to convert on his own terms. To that end, he marched southwards with his
army and took the Byzantine city of Chersonesus on the tip of the Crimea. From that position of power, he made a bold
offer to Byzantine Emperor Basil II: “I have learned that you have an unmarried sister,
if you will not give her to me, I shall do to Constantinople the very same as with Chersonesus.” To the Eastern Romans, it was nigh unheard
of for a Byzantine Princess to be married off to some marauding northern Barbarian. However, Basil was busy dealing with insurrection
in his Empire, fighting the rebellious general Bardas Phokas. He was in no position to open another front
against the Rus. It was a decidedly better option to make an
ally of them. Thus, the Roman Emperor agreed to give up
his sister on two caveats. First, that Vladimir would send military aid
to help him crush Phokas’ rebellion, and second, that the Rus Prince would convert
to Orthodox Christianity, which he wanted to do anyway. In 988, the deal was struck. Vladimir was baptized in Chersonesus, renouncing
his many consorts and marrying Princess Anna. He then went home, returning the town to the
Greeks. True to his word, Vladimir sent a force of
6,000 Norse warriors across the Bosphorus, where they crushed Phokas’ insurrection. So impressed were the Byzantines by these
northern warriors, that Varangian mercenaries would become the principal honour guard of
the Eastern Roman Emperors for centuries to come. Meanwhile, Vladimir’s first order of business
was to have his sons and Boyars baptized, and he managed that with little difficulty. Next, he smashed the idols upon the hills
above Kiev, which he himself had erected barely ten years prior. On every street of the capital, town criers
declared that by decree of the Prince, every man, woman and child was to come to the banks
of the river, where they would all be christened in a mass baptism. Some went willingly, while some were coerced
by threats of violence. Whatever the method, the people of Kiev were
all baptized in the waters of the Dnieper. Originally distressed at being forced to marry
a violent, barbarian brute, Princess Anna came to see in herself a holy duty. Throughout her reign as Grand Princess, she
served as the principal religious advisor for her husband, and founded several churches. The Slavs called her “Czarina,” due to
her Imperial heritage, and she soon became beloved among them. Indeed, Christianity soon spread beyond the
heartlands of Kiev and into every corner of the Rus realm. The Greeks loaned Vladimir many architects,
who built Byzantine-style churches where shrines to Perun, Veles and Stribog once stood. Meanwhile, the Danuabian Bulgars sent their
clergymen north as well. The peoples of the Rus soon came to favour
the liturgy of the Bulgarians, whose Old Church Slavonic was much more closely related to
their old East Slavic tongue than new testament Greek. Along with Church Slavonic came the spread
of the Cyrillic alphabet, which remains in use in Russia and beyond today. This mass conversion was not entirely peaceful,
as many still clung to the old gods. In Novgorod, the elderly Dobrynya spread the
Christian faith, as per his nephew’s will. However, he was attacked by a violent pagan
mob, which set fire to his home and killed his wife. In the end, the old regent forced the city
to convert by fire and sword. Pockets of the Rus undoubtedly clung on to
the old ways for a time, but by the end of Vladimir’s reign, all major cities and centers
of commerce became Christian by persuasion or force. The rest of Prince Vladimir’s reign passed
relatively uneventfully. For nearly two decades, the Rus maintained
a stable peace with all their neighbours. The lone exception being the Turkic Pechenegs,
whose horse archers semi-regularly raided Kievan lands. In response, Vladimir had a network of fortresses
built upon the rivers bordering the eastern steppes to fend off their incursions. This would simply be the latest chapter of
a long struggle between Rus and the steppe peoples on their periphery. In his later years, Vladimir was said to be
a kindly ruler. In accordance with Christian precepts, he
provided charity to the poor and sick, and made efforts to travel to the more isolated
areas in his realm, listening to the petitions of those who otherwise would never have gotten
to meet him. He passed away from natural causes in 1015
leaving behind a massively different country to the one he had inherited 30 years earlier. No longer was the Rus a land of warlords and
tribesmen. It was now a veritable Christian Empire, competing
toe to toe with the successors of Greeks and Romans in economic and cultural influence. The Grand Prince Vladimir had had many wives,
and through them, many sons - some more beloved than others. The most ambitious of these sons was Sviatopolk,
the product of a forced union between Vladimir and a Greek Nun. Sviatopolk had never felt his father’s love,
having been married off to the daughter of a Polish Duke Bolesław as a youth, and sent
off to vegetate in backwater Turov. He had attempted to rebel against Vladimir
as a young man, only to end up in prison. However, he was soon released, and upon hearing
about his fathers’ death, immediately bee-lined it to Kiev to claim the throne, which he did
in late 1015. Sviatopolk soon found that he did not have
the support of the Kievites, who preferred his half-brothers, Boris and Gleb, who ruled
the towns of Rostov and Murom respectively, had always been the favourite children of
Vladimir - likely to Sviatopolk’s bubbling resentment. Boris had always been assumed to be the heir
apparent of the Kievan Rus, thus when Sviatopolk took the capital, his boyars urged him to
expel the usurper and take his rightful place on the Kievan throne. The Prince of Rostov declined, and replied
benignly: "If any man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar, be it not
for me to raise my hand against him. Now that my father has passed away, let him
take the place of my father in my heart." One would imagine that this would soothe the
usurpers’ paranoia, but Sviatopolk sent his boyars, who caught Boris, brutally stabbing
him and all his servants to death. According to legend, Boris knew his murderers
were coming, but had sent his soldiers away, accepting his fate to prevent bloodshed. The executors then caught up with Prince Gleb
on the River Smyadyn. It would be Gleb’s own cook, bribed heavily,
who would slit his throat. For these murders, Sviatopolk would earn himself
the chilling epithet: The Accursed. Like his uncle Yaropolk before him, Sviatopolk
had eliminated his brothers and seized control over the Kievan Realm. But just like Yaropolk, he had not accounted
for the old capital of Novgorod, and the young Prince who reigned there. Prince Yaroslav was one of the youngest children
of the late Vladimir, probably born of Ragnhild - the Polotsk Princess who Vladimir had taken
at the beginning of his reign. The young Prince spent his early years cultivating
the skills needed to be a decisive leader, maintaining relations with his relatives in
Scandinavia, whose sagas referred to him as Jarisleif the Lame, likely due to permanent
limp he had received from an arrow wound in his youth, an indication that he was experienced
in battle. Indeed, Yaroslav wasn’t afraid to assert
himself: during the tail end of Vladimir’s reign, he had refused to pay tribute, and
a war between father and son was only subverted by Vladimir’s death. Yaroslav was shrewd enough to realize that
he too would soon be under threat. In a turn of events eerily similar to his
father’s rise to power 35 years earlier, the young Prince of Novgorod marched against
his kinslaying brother with a force of northern Slavic levies and Viking mercenaries. Sviatopolk rallied his forces and hired a
mercenary army of Pecheneg riders. The two armies met near Lyubech. Neither side dared to cross the Dnieper, and
for weeks they stared at one another. At some point during the stand-off, Sviatopolk’s
men began taunting Yaropolk for his disability, and calling his men carpenters, not warriors:
“when we defeat you, we will make you build us a mansion!” Deeply angered, Yaroslavs’ soldiers poured
across the river and crushed the southerners in a vicious melee. Yaroslav then marched into Kiev, declaring
himself the new Grand Prince of all the Rus, while Sviatopolk fled west. Sviatopolk had powerful allies in Poland,
and his father-in-law was now the King. With Bolesław’ support, and German and
Hungarian mercenaries, the Accursed Prince returned, seizing Kiev and forcing Yaroslav
back into Novgorod. A brutal civil war would continue for another
year, before Yaroslav finally defeated Sviatopolk in a battle at the Alta River in 1019. Sviatopolk died of illness while retreating
back to Poland, and Yaroslav re-entered Kiev, declaring himself the Grand Prince
The Kievan Rus that Yaroslav had taken control of was a vastly different land to the one
his father had inherited. Gone was the loose tributary confederacy of
old, replaced by a centralized Christian Empire. Yaroslav knew he could not rule his realm
as a Rurikid warlord, so he set about becoming a just monarch, ruling upon the pillars of
theology, learning, and law. The old ways of rugged pagan justice were
no longer suited for a Christian ruler, so Yaroslav oversaw the composition of the first
codex of Rus laws. The death penalty became rarer, and punishments
became grounded in standardized fines, imprisonment, and confiscation. The legal groundwork laid by Yaroslav would
become known as the Russkaya Pravda - the Russian Justice - and served as the basis
of Rus law for centuries. Yaroslav also promoted literacy among his
boyars, educating their children to read, write, and appreciate the finer points of
Biblical scripture. He built schools across his realm, and allocated
large funds for the copying of manuscripts, which was an extremely costly endeavor at
the time. His reign saw the opening of the first Rus
monasteries, while Kiev soon became one of the largest cities in Europe, a hub of international
trade and higher learning rivaling the powerhouses of Constantinople and Baghdad. Despite this, Yaroslav’s reign was still
defined by civil war and external conquests. In 1024, his half-brother, Prince Mstislav
of Tmutarakan, took advantage of his absence to launch an invasion. While Mstislav was unable to breach the walls
of the capital, he managed to subjugate the hinterlands around it, moving his power base
to Chernigov, a prosperous town right on Kiev’s doorstep. The Grand Prince retaliated, assisted by Norsemen
sent by King Anund Jakob of Sweden: he struck fiercely at Chernigov, but was decisively
beaten by Mstislav’s army. As a result, Yaroslav was forced to relinquish
a good chunk of his realm left of the Dnieper to his Half-Brother. Thankfully, Yaroslav was soon able to turn
his fortunes around by establishing a working relationship with Mstislav despite their recent
conflict. Together, they launched a campaign against
the Poles in 1030, retaking the Cherven cities, which had been conquered by King Bolesław
during his alliance with Sviatopolk. Yaroslav would later establish peace with
King Casimir the Restorer by marrying off his sister, Maria Dobroniega, to the Polish
Monarch in 1043. Relations between the most powerful nations
of Eastern and Western Slavs would remain stable for a time. Back in 1036, Mstislav had fallen sick while
on a hunting trip, and died. Taking advantage of his untimely demise, Yaroslav
was able to reinstate control over the entirety of the Rus realm; not that he had much time
to rest on his laurels, as the Rus capital of Kiev stood as a monument of opulence, tempting
any war-like peoples to try and seize its riches. In 1036, it would be the traditional frenemies
of the Rus, the Pecheneg horde, that galloped out of their steppelands to besiege the grand
capital, just as they had a half a century earlier. Yaroslav was in Novgorod when he heard the
news. One can only imagine the fury he must have
felt. Enough was enough - the Pechenegs had been
a thorn in the side of the Rus for too long. Yaroslav immediately rode south, forming an
army made up of the men of Novgorod, Kiev, and a large contingent of Varangians, meeting
the foe outside the walls of Kiev, the where two armies clashed. After a grueling struggle, the Turkic horde
was crushed and routed. So decisive was this victory that from this
point forward, the Pechenegs never again appeared as a significant player in Rus history. To commemorate his triumph, Prince Yaroslav
commissioned the construction of the crown jewel of Kiev: St. Sophia’s cathedral. Yaroslav also undertook many outwards campaigns
at the expense of the Lithuanians, Estonians, and Karelian Finns. At the end of his conquests, he had expanded
the borders of the Kievan Rus significantly, turning it into a true Empire. On top of his military triumphs, the Grand
Prince had also expanded the diplomatic reach of the Kievan Rus further than ever before
through a series of marriage pacts. On top of marrying his sister to the King
of Poland, his son Vsevolod was married to Emperor Constantine IX’s daughter Anastasia,
and he bequeathed his three daughters respectively to Henry I of France, Andrew I of Hungary,
and the famous adventurer King: Harald Hardrada of Norway. These alliances enriched the Rus by deepening
their trading ties to Western Europe, integrating the Kievan Realm into the wider Christian
world. However, as the Grand Prince grew old and
weak, he began to fear for the future of his realm. The elderly Yaroslav had seven sons, and he
soon realized that upon his death, they would fight an endless string of civil wars. In an attempt to prevent this, Yaroslav divided
the Kievan Rus among his sons, giving each one a piece of his realm to rule autonomously. In practice, his eldest son Iziaslav Yaroslavich
was the heir apparent to the throne of the Grand Prince, but in practice, he was equal
in power to his brothers, the Princes of Chernigov, Pereyaslav Novgorod, Volhyn, Smolensk and
Turov. Yaroslav begged his sons to get along, and
act in the common interest of the realm. In 1054, he passed away, and the golden age
of the Kievan Rus came to an end. The first existential threat to Rus unity
came in the form of thundering hooves from the steppe. Yaroslav had crushed the Pechenegs, but all
this had accomplished was to leave their southern grasslands open for their fiercer, more numerous
cousins. The Cumans were much like other Turkic peoples
- excellent horse-archers, bellicose to a fault. The Rus called them Polovtsy, from the Slavic
“Pole” - “field”, although there are other etymological explanations. They called themselves Kipchaks, and the land
they took over Desht-i Kipchak. By 1061 the Cumans had entered the Ponto-Caspian
steppe and seven years later they decisively crushed the Rus armies of Kiev, Chernigov
and Pereyaslavl at the Alta River. This allowed them to establish dominion over
much of the Southern Grasslands, choking off the Rus’ access to the upper Don, Volga,
and Dnieper rivers, crucial trade routes they had relied on for generations. After the battle, rebellions and civil wars
erupted across the realm, and a popular uprising forced Iziaslav to flee to Poland. A year later, he returned to Kiev with the
help of the Polish army, but in 1078 he was finally killed in battle by his nephews. In theory, this shouldn’t have crippled
the realm. Turkic raiders and civil war were nothing
new to the Rus. Vladimir and Yaroslav had dealt with both
in their time, and preserved the integrity of their realm. This time, however, there would be no great
Prince to lead the Rus back to glory. Other external factors led to the political
and economic stagnation of the Kievan realm. Back in 1054, the Christian World was divided
by the Great Schism, when the Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople officially cut ties with
the Catholic Pope in Rome and as fellow Orthodox the Rus sided with the patriarch. As a result, the trading ties that Yaroslav
had once cultivated with Western Europe declined - the Latin World came to see the Rus as heretics. Byzantium was not the powerful ally it once
was either. In 1071, the Eastern Romans found themselves
rocked to their core, when a series of civil wars following a devastating invasion of Seljuk
Turks saw them lose most of their territory. Between that, and the Cumans cutting off the
most prosperous river trade routes, the flow of wealth into Rus lands decreased significantly. Overall, Rus was becoming increasingly isolated. The branches of the Rurikid family became
more numerous, and since Kiev was not nearly the hub of international trade it once was,
these lesser Princes began to identify themselves with regional interests rather than with the
Rus state as a whole. As Kiev declined, the functionally autonomous
Principalities and Republics of Vladimir-Suzdal, Novgorod, and Halych-Volhynia became the main
powerhouses in the East Slavic world. This tide of fragmentation would be stymied
by Vladimir Monomakh, the last truly great Prince of the Kievan Rus. He managed to somewhat unite the increasingly
disparate Rus Princes back under Kievan primacy in 1095, and even managed to briefly turn
the tide against the Cumans in a pair of victories against one of their most powerful Khans,
Boniak, in 1107 and 1114. Monomakh’s reign would prove the exception
to the rule, however. The reign of his son, Prince Mstislav Vladimirovich,
would be a grim return to form, seeing constant wars with Cumans, Estonians, Lithuanians,
and rebellious Rurikid Princedoms. By the time of his death in 1132, people still
paid lip service to Kiev, but the reality was that the unity of the Rus was dead. Despite all their troubles, their darkest
days were yet to come. 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. 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. The Cumans under Khan Khoten and the Rus host
led by Prince of Kiev Mstislav, Prince of Chernigov Mstislav, Prince of Galicia Mstislav,
and Prince of Volhynia Danilo united their forces and marched against the Mongols. On the 15th of May 1223 they arrived on Khortytsia
Island on the River Dnieper. Other sources find it tactically illogical
to gather so many people on a small island and argue that the actual rallying point was
on the western bank of the river. The sources drastically differ on the number
of men which the coalition forces had, ranging from 8 thousand to 80 thousand. The Mongols knew about the whereabouts of
the opposing force and sent three envoys to deliver the message that the Mongols did not
seek to fight the Rus and were only after the Cumans, who had inflicted so much suffering
on the Rus too. The Rus princes decided to kill the Mongol
envoys, which was a grave violation of Mongol Yasa. Soon another group of Mongol envoys were sent,
who just communicated to the Rus that now the sides would have to fight and it was not
the Mongols’ fault. Soon the coalition forces became aware of
the Mongol outposts on the eastern bank of Dnieper. Young prince Danilo rushed to view the Mongol
horse archers, who he thought were poorly armed and equipped and were relatively small
in numbers. Danilo informed the council of princes about
this and urged to attack. The decision was made and the Prince of Galicia
Mstislav the Bold crossed the river to attack the Mongol outpost together with the Cuman
forces. The surprise attack completely overwhelmed
the Mongol forces on the spot, majority were massacred, while a small group together with
the commander of the group fled eastwards towards the main group of the Mongol army. The leader of this group was a commander named
Gemya Beg and his men tried to save him from being slain by hiding him in a Cuman kurgan. Historian Stephen Pow suggests based on circumstantial
and linguistic arguments that Gemya Beg was actually Jebe. The Cumans were able to find him and killed
him afterwards. Rus were able to capture some of the Mongol
supplies, including cattle, while following them. At the time the Rus princes did not have any
centralized command and the military decisions were made by a council. Despite the reservations of the Prince Mstislav
of Kiev, the decision was to pursue the fleeing Mongols. This pursuit went on for 8 or 9 days with
the Cumans together with Galicians and Volhynians leading it with the rest of the Galicians
under the command of Mstislav the Bold behind them, followed by the army of Chernigov and
finally the Kievan troops commanded by Mstislav Mstislavovich in the rear. Finally the Mongol forces turned around and
made a stand at the Kalka River. It is not known whether this was fleeing from
numerically overwhelming force or a masterful bait to deceive the Rus-Cuman coalition into
pursuing them to ground more favourable for Mongols and creating an illusion of weakness
of the Mongol army. It is also not entirely clear where the river
Kalka is, but it is thought to be the river Kalmius which flows into the Sea of Azov near
the modern-day Ukrainian city of Mariupol. For a few days the council of princes argued
about the battle plan, but lacking central command they failed to come to an agreement
and each prince would decide what to do, which would prove to be a serious blow for the Rus-Cuman
coalition. The Mongol Army consisted of three groups
with Subutai leading the center, Jebe heading the right flank, while Tsugir Khan and Teshi
Khan were on the left flank together with Brodniki. Brodnik means either “people of the ford”
or “vagabonds” in Russian, and probably refers to the warriors that joined Subutai
during his campaign, possibly in the North Caucasus. The Mongol soldiers were all cavalry with
Brodniki and other auxiliary units possibly infantry. Subutai’s cavalry units had 500 men with
5 rows of 100 riders in all of the units. The first two rows consisted of heavy cavalryman
armed with swords. The rear three rows consisted of light cavalry
armed with bows. The Cuman army was made of almost entirely
light horse archers. The Rus army also employed horse archers due
to its experience of steppe warfare, along with having heavily armoured cavalry akin
to the Western European armies. The most elite troops would be separate bodyguard
detachments. The Battle of Kalka river took place on 31
May 1223. At first in the morning the Rus-Cuman emerged
victorious against the vanguard of the Mongol Army, which was significantly ahead of the
bulk of the Mongol forces, after Mstislav the Bold and Danilo of Galicia and the Cumans
under Khan Khotan crossed the river and attacked it, while the Chernigov forces were still
crossing the river and the Kievan army camping on the western shore of the river. Khan Khotan continued the pursuit forming
the vanguard with Volhynian and Galicians forces right behind them. Mongol heavy cavalry attacked the Cuman army
and defeated them very quickly. After that they attacked the Volhynians with
a heavy barrage of bows followed by the heavy cavalry attack. Prince Mstislav of Lutsk tried to help, but
this was not enough as the Volhynians were also defeated. Cumans and Volhynians had to flee the battlefield
and ran towards the river, where Mstislav of Galicia was preparing his troops for the
battle at the time when the Chernigov army was still in the process of crossing Kalka. The fleeing coalition troops were followed
by Mongol cavalry archers. The panic of the fleeing soldiers who ran
through the rest of the coalition troops caused panic among their midst. Mstislav of Galicians tried to offer resistance,
but since the battle formations were already disrupted, he was soon surrounded by the Mongol
group having a significant numerical advantage. Soon they started fleeing under the furious
barrage of Mongol bows. Seeing the collapse of the Rus-Cuman army
Mstislav of Kiev ordered his men inside the camp, which was hastily fortified with carts
and other objects suitable for this. Tsugir Khan and Teshi Khan were ordered to
siege the Kievan camp, while the rest of the Mongol army pursued the fleeing Rus princes
and inflicted heavy damage on them too. Kievans were in a dire situation as the Mongols
constantly shot bows at them leading to heavy losses. They resisted until running out of drinking
water, when the Brodniki leader Polskinia negotiated surrender with Mstislav of Kiev
in exchange for ransom. Kievans accepted, the siege was over, but
Mongols went against their promise, massacred many men, while imprisoning the princes and
later executing them during the Mongol feast as a reprisal for killing their envoys. The exact number of losses on the sides is
unclear, but sources tell about how only 1 out of 10 of the Rus men returned from the
war. 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. We must rewind the clock a few centuries to
contextualize the city of Novgorod’s rise to prominence as an autonomous power in the
pre-Mongol era. As you may recall from our previous episodes,
Novgorod was the original capital of the Rus, founded by the Rurik around 860. Even after Rurik’s successor Oleg moved
the capital to Kiev, Novgorod remained influential. The people of Novgorod had always been free-willed,
so when the Kievan Rus began splintering in the early 12th century, the old Northern Capital
emerged as one of the most dynamic independent powers. Novgorod ruled over a prosperous trading Empire,
with the city itself serving as a central hub of international commerce
This Novgorodian state had a unique system of government as it was not a hereditary monarchy,
but a republic since 1136, when the powerful merchant-lords of Novgorod, backed by the
general citizenry, overthrew Prince Vsevolod of Pskov. Legislative power in Novgorod was controlled
by the veche, a form of public assembly consisting of nobles, clergy, merchants, and commoners. Novgorod still had a Prince, but he had to
be elected by the council, and could be fired, if necessary. That is not to say that the Novgorodian Princes
became meaningless figureheads. In fact, a particular Prince would soon emerge
as one of Medieval Rus’ greatest military leaders, and to many, the saviour of the Rus
culture and faith. In the year 1220, a boy known as Alexander
was born to the Vsevolodovich dynasty, who ruled Pereslavl and later, Vladimir. The young princeling likely spent his childhood
years learning to fight and lead men. It was probably due to this pedigree that
in 1236, his father dropped him off in Novgorod, and the city council elected him to be their
Prince, beseeching the young noble to take charge of the city’s military affairs. This was an incredibly tall order for a 16-year-old,
as the city was in crisis. To the east, the unstoppable horde of Batu
Khan was thundering across the Rus heartland and it would only be a matter of time before
the Mongols would come to Novgorod. In the west, the situation was just as volatile,
as starting in the 12th century, various Latin Christian powers had made headways into Northern
Europe. The Vikings of Scandinavia abandoned their
old gods by the mid-1100s, and became more or less Christianized, which allowed them
to expand under the pretext of holy crusade. The Kingdom of Sweden, in particular, began
making ingresses into Finland claiming it is converting the pagans of the region to
Christianity, and by 1216, the Pope had recognized Swedish suzerainty over Finland. This expansion put Sweden on a collision course
with Novgorod, who had economic and territorial interests in Karelia. The Catholic and Orthodox Churches had finally
begun to overlap in the north. Both sides desired land and power, and considered
the other to be heretics, so the potential for war was brewing. According to the Chronicle of Novgorod, in
the summer of 1240, a Swedish army led by Bishop of Finland Thomas sailed up the Gulf
of Finland in their longboats. They then proceeded into Neva river with the
aim of seizing control over Lake Ladoga, and from there, striking at the city of Novgorod
itself. As the story goes, Prince Alexander wasted
no time in rallying his druzhina and confronting the Swedish host on the Neva, decisively routing
the western invaders. It should be noted that the battle at the
Neva is never described in Swedish sources and this has led some scholars to question
if the battle at the Neva even happened in the first place. However, most agree, it was likely an impromptu
border skirmish, rather than a full-scale invasion. Whatever the case, the young Prince Alexander
had won his first military victory at the age of 19 and received his sobriquet: Nevsky. Alexander's success had made him some enemies
as well, particularly the Boyars and Merchants of Novgorod, who believed that his war jeopardized
the delicate trade relations in the region. Soon, the political situation deteriorated
to the point where Nevsky and his soldiers left the city. This was bad timing indeed, for the Swedes
were not the only Catholics who had ambitions to take Novgorod territory. It is now we move our focus south to the dense
forests of the Baltic rim. Much like Finland and Karelia, this region
was one of the last holdouts of Paganism in Europe. The ancestors of the modern Lithuanians, Latvians,
and Estonians had been fighting a losing war against German and Danish invaders, who sought
to convert them to Latin Christianity by force. By 1228, much of the Baltic shore had been
subdued by German Catholics, except for the Estonian coast, which became Danish. This land became known as Terra Mariana, the
land of the virgin Mary. It was an unstable colonial frontier, divided
into several bishoprics directly sworn to the Pope in Rome, but still inhabited by Baltic
peoples who continued to resist Catholic overlordship through guerilla warfare. Throughout all this turmoil, a pair of Knightly
orders rose as the apex predators of the northeast. In Latvia and its environs, the Livonian Brothers
of the Sword were dominant. At the same time, directly to their south,
the Teutonic Order waged a bloody crusade against the Pagans of Old Prussia, establishing
control over the region. However, the balance of power was soon to
shift. In 1236, with the backing of the Papacy, the
Brothers of the Sword launched an expedition across the Daugava river to subdue and convert
the Lithuanians. However, Lithuanian tribes took advantage
of the swampy forests of their homeland, ambushed the Knights, and annihilated their invasion
force. So crushing was this defeat to the Brothers
of the Sword, that their remaining members had to join the Teutonic Order. Now rebranded as the Livonian Order, they
quickly rebuilt themselves into a powerful autonomous chapter of the Teutons and this
allowed them to wage a more effective war upon the indigenous pagans. By 1240, the Livonian Knights had established
firm control on land as far east as Lake Peipus and now they neighbored the Novgorod Republic. Once more, Catholic and Orthodox spheres of
influence crashed together in northern Europe. The council of Novgorod was initially divided
on how to deal with the ever-encroaching Crusaders. Initially, Slavic merchants prospered as trading
partners with the Germans and Scandinavians, and intermarriage between the Rus and newcomer
nobility was not uncommon. These ties to the west had been why Nevsky
was forced into exile after his victory at the Neva. After all, what merchant would allow a glory-seeking
Prince to chase off their best customers? However, relations between east and west had
begun to sour from 1224 when the Livonian Knights took Tartu, a city that Novgorod considered
to be within its political orbit. The Crusaders also ramped up their efforts
to convince the Novgorod aristocracy to convert to Latin Christianity, which irritated the
Slavs, for whom their Orthodoxy was the heart of their society. As diplomacy deteriorated, the German Knights
began to gaze greedily at the wealth of Novgorod, which, in their eyes, was a fair target as
non-Catholics. Around the year 1240, Pope Gregory IX finally
authorized a crusade against Novgorod. Hoping that the Republic would be too preoccupied
dealing with the Mongols to the east to defend. That same year, the Livonian knights stormed
the outpost of Koporye, conquering it with little resistance. They established a permanent garrison and
began the construction of a stone castle, which made it evident to the people of Novgorod
that the Knights had come to conquer. Now in crisis mode, the veche of Novgorod
turned back to the prince they had just exiled, begging him to return. Nevsky obliged, making haste for the northern
capital. By the time he arrived, the Crusaders had
taken Novgorod’s sister-city and breadbasket Pskov. In the hands of an occupying force, it was
a dagger pointed at the heart of the capital itself. Alexander knew that he had not a moment to
waste and, in the autumn of 1241, he struck back, storming Koporye’s brand new castle
and capturing it swiftly. In the spring of 1242, he joined with the
forces of his brother Andrey and thundered into Pskov, retaking the city with little
effort, likely because the Teutonic Knights were preoccupied fighting the Mongols in Hungary
at the time. Nevsky’s swift military successes can likely
be attributed to his druzhina, the archetypal elite warrior retinue that had been a staple
of Rus Princes for centuries. Nevsky’s force traveled light, taking towns
and castles before their Crusader enemy had a chance to respond, a manner of warfare akin
to his pagan ancestor Sviatoslav the Snow Leopard, three centuries prior. Following these successes, Nevsky mustered
up a citizen militia to supplement his Druzhina’s limited numbers, and launched an offensive
raid into Catholic Estonia, breaking his army off into contingents to raid and pillage the
countryside. This was a mistake, for he had overextended
his forces, and the Teutons and their Estonian allies managed to ambush and destroy one of
the Rus raiding parties in an ambush on a river crossing southwest of Tartu. Nevsky decided to cut his losses, and orchestrated
a careful retreat. Meanwhile, the Crusaders had been hastily
assembling an army for a second invasion into Rus lands. Led by Bishop Hermann of Dorpat, it consisted
of a core of Knights, alongside an allied contingent of Danish soldiers and native Baltic
auxiliaries, mostly Estonians, and by spring they began pursuing Aleksandr Nevsky northwards. The latter found out about this and retreated
to the Lake Peipus, or Chud as it is called in Russian, waiting for the coalition forces
to arrive at the battle scene. Here we need to make a disclaimer about significant
differences in the sources about the battle in connection with such essential issues as
the numbers, the place of the battle, the battle formations, and whether the ice played
any role in the battle at all. We know that the battle between Novgorod and
the Livonian Order took place on 5 April 1242, however, historians still dispute whether
it actually happened on the ice of Lake Peipus or not. We will describe the most popular and accepted
account of the battle, which is especially propagated by mainstream Russian historiography. We will also describe the accounts of primary
sources, which dispute these claims. According to the generally accepted account
of the events in Russian historiography, Aleksandr Nevsky was able to lure the overconfident
Livonian Army, which also consisted of heavily armoured knights, onto the frozen surface
of Lake Peipus. Based on the expedition conducted by G.Karavayev
in 1958-66 it was determined that the battle took place near the modern Teploe Lake and
the Raven Rock, which was the intersection of the old road to Pskov (via ice) and Novgorod
on 5 April 1242. The I Novgorod Chronicle also mentions the
Raven Rock as the place of the battle. Here is the first point of dispute. Livonian Rhymed Chronicle, which was written
in the late 13th century, some 50 years after the battle, by a German author can be considered
as one of the primary sources for the description of the battle. According to it, “many from both sides fell
dead on the grass” and there is no mention of ice. Historian Igor Kleinenberg claims the grass
to be a turn of phrase while Karavayev argues that it refers to reeds in the shallow waters
of the lake, where the battle took place. The Laurentian Chronicle by the Orthodox monk
Laurentius, written 130 years after the battle states that the battle took place on the Lake,
but there is no mention of ice. The second point of dispute is the numbers
the sides had. The problem is that the primary sources provide
only numbers of the fallen, which we are going to discuss later, but nothing regarding the
numbers at the start of the battle. Hence, even Russian historians dispute the
numbers. According to the Big Russian Encyclopedia,
the Livonian Order and its allies had 7k cavalrymen, including 1000 knights and numerous Estonian
and knecht infantrymen. Russian historians Scherbakov and Dzys claim
a very small number - 700-750 for Livonians and 1700-2000 for the Russians. A military historian Razin estimated 10-12k
for the Livonian Order and 15-17k for the Novgorodian side. Strokov and Kirpichnikov propose around 30-35k
combined men. Based on medieval warfare and battles where
the sides took part around the same time period, the British historian David Nicolle estimates
that 2600 men fought on the Livonian side and 5000 on the Novgorodian side. The third point of contention is the battle
formation and the course of the battle itself. According to the accepted Russian historiography,
the Crusader army used the variation of the board snout tactic. This tactic had the most experienced heavy
armoured knights in the vanguard in an arrow formation, while the infantry consisting of
Estonians and knechts was behind them. The width of each row would be 10-12 cavalrymen
or infantrymen. Each row had cavalrymen protecting the flanks. This tactic aimed to attack the very center
of the enemy with force and cause the disruption of the central ranks eventually leading to
a victory. Nevsky’s army had a more traditional formation
with the army divided into the left flank, center, and right flanks with archers in the
vanguard. Cavalry was placed in the flanks, while the
Novgorodian militia was in the center. The biggest difference is that cavalry was
usually placed in the center, but since Aleksandr Nevsky somehow knew about the Crusader’s
tactic he placed the cavalry to the flanks with an aim to later encircle the narrow formation
of the Livonian Order. Nevsky himself waited in an ambush with a
group of his elite bodyguard forces somewhere to the left flank of his army. The battle started with a barrage of arrows
made by the Rus archers on the Livonian knights. Livonian knights charged forward onto the
Rus center. It managed to push back the center consisting
of relatively inexperienced Novgorodian militia, but ultimately it was able to keep its formation
and held up its own for almost two hours, when Nevsky ordered his left and right flanks
to attack the Livonian flanks, while his group came out of the ambush and attacked the Crusaders’
rear. The Rus emerged victorious and chased the
fleeing enemy for 8 kilometers throughout the frozen lake. Let us look at the primary sources again to
see if their details corroborate what was described above. Livonian Rhymed Chronicle does not mention
much in connection with the battle formation and the battle itself. It claims that the Novgorodians had many archers
and had a 60 to 1 advantage. They attacked the Crusaders, who valiantly
resisted, but in the end, the numerical superiority of the Rus proved to be decisive as they were
able to surround the Livonians. The number is probably an exaggeration to
whitewash the defeat suffered by the Crusaders. Livonian Rhymed Chronicle mentions that “Twenty
Brothers lay dead and six were captured” The Laurentian chronicle does not provide
much detail about the battle, merely implying the Rus victory and capture of “many prisoners”. The same with the Suzdal Chronicle, which
mentions the victory of Alexander and the chase across the ice for 8 kilometers. The I Novgorod Chronicle mentions that “the
Germans and Chuds (Estonians) rode at the Rus driving themselves like a wedge through
their army”, which might be a reference to the boar snout tactic. It also states that the Rus won the victory
and chased the Livonians for 8 kilometers until the Subol shore of he Lake Peipus. In connection with the casualties, the chronicle
states the following: “There fell a countless number of Chuds, and of the Germans 400. They captured 50 and brought to Novgorod”. None of the primary sources state anything
regarding the Rus losses. And it is necessary to note that the information
provided by Livonian Rhymed Chronicle and the Novgorod chronicle regarding the Crusader
losses do not necessarily contradict each other, as it is possible that the Livonian
Rhymed Chronicle provided the information only on the losses of Livonian knights, while
the Novgorod chronicle could have described all of the losses suffered by the whole enemy
host, albeit with an exaggeration. The rest of the battle details had been added
later by the Russian historians, as some claim that the details of the Battle of Wesenberg
of 1268, which was also fought between Novgorod and the Livonian Order, were later incorporated
into the description of the Battle on the Ice. This conflict, later immortalized as “the
battle on the ice”, was a watershed moment in the relationship between Medieval Rus and
Catholic Europe. A permanent border between Novgorod and the
Crusader states was established along Lake Peipus and the Narva River, and never again
would the Teutons or their allies make serious ingress into Rus territories. For his victory, Alexander Nevsky earned immortality,
known by all future generations of East Slavs as a saint who saved the Orthodox Christianity. Now, let us move back to the east, and address
the Chingisid shaped elephant in the room. While all this Crusader business had been
happening, the Mongols had been ravaging their way through the Northeastern Rus Principalities. Nevsky’s solution for the Mongol problem
was simple: Surrender. While other Rus cities mounted futile resistance
against Batu Khan, Nevsky instead sent envoys, preemptively capitulating before the Mongols
even reached his city, and accepting the Chingisid Khans as his lawful overlords. Because Novgorod had surrendered so quickly
and willingly, it was spared the destruction that other influential Rus cities were subjected
to. Why was Nevsky so willing to capitulate to
the Mongols, but so insistent on fighting the Crusaders tooth and nail? The answer was simple. To those who showed proper obedience, the
Mongols ruled with a light touch. They had no interest in influencing their
subjects' religion, culture, or prevailing system of government, so long as they paid
tribute without issue, and allowed the Mongol Khans to confirm their leaders. Contrast this to the Crusaders, who had every
intention of forcefully eradicating Orthodox Christianity, and one can begin to see why
the Novgorodians preferred a Steppe Warlord to a German Bishop. Nevsky spent the rest of his life as a loyal
vassal of the Great Khan, making many trips to the Mongol capitals of Sarai and Karakorum
to pay his respects. The ruler of Novgorod used his submission
to the Mongols as a key to political advancement. Indeed, the Mongol Khan bestowed upon him
the title of Grand Prince of Kiev in 1246. Of course, in the aftermath of the Mongol
conquests, Kiev was a shell of its former self, but the title itself still held significant
symbolic power and gave him an edge over other Rus princes who now competed for the Khan’s
favour. Alexander would only continue to grow more
and more influential under the Mongol wing. In 1252, his brother Andrey reigned as the
Prince of Vladimir. However, when Khan Mongke ascended as ruler
of the Mongol Empire, Andrey refused to travel to Karakorum to have his Princeship confirmed. As a result, the Golden Horde launched a punitive
expedition into Vladimir, chasing Andrey out of his lands and forcing him into exile in
Sweden. In his place, Nevsky was confirmed as the
Mongol-appointed Prince of Vladimir, as a reward for his continued loyalty. Nevsky paid off the confidence the Mongols
showed him in dividends, defending their authority whenever the need arose. In 1259, when the citizenry of Novgorod revolted
and refused to pay tribute to the Khans, Nevsky marched into the city with soldiers, forcing
his own people to obey their Mongol masters by force of arms. Nevsky died in 1263, taken by illness while
journeying home from one of his trips to pay homage to the Khan in Sarai. The Rus he left behind was a complex one. On one hand, invaders from the west were defeated,
their religion saved in the process. On the other, it had been utterly ravaged
by Mongols, becoming subjects of a foreign Empire. The legacies of St. Olga, Vladimir the Great,
and Yaroslav the Wise remained in the form of their faith, culture, and identity they
had helped build. But as the various Rus Princes slowly reconsolidated
their lands and power under the watchful eye of Mongol overlordship, it became clear that
the age of the Kievan Rus was long behind them, and a new era had begun in what would
become Russia. The new season in our series on the history
of Russia is on the way so make sure you are subscribed and have pressed the bell button. Please, consider liking, commenting, and sharing
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Hello /u/raskingballs,
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This amazing montage was my first intro about Ukraine history (ENG CC).
As an European, it amazes me how little (if anything) we learn in school about the history of our neighbors. Not only we could learn from past mistakes, but we could know and understand each other better if proper values of truth, freedom and respect would be instilled in education. So much horror and suffering could be avoided.
That's a good one from them, to save for later.
Thanks.
Saving to my files. Thanks for sharing.