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