In the mid 13th century, the land that had
once been the mighty Kievan Rus was a smoldering husk, its cities and villages burnt down,
its people slaughtered under a hail of Mongol arrows. However, one of them - the oldest Rus city,
Novgorod the Great, was a world away from the devastation. Its walls still stood firm, the bells of the
Nereditsa Church still tolled, and its streets were abustle with lively commerce. In this video, we will explore how a free
Republic caught between Mongol hordes to the east, and Catholic crusaders to the west,
would scheme, bargain, and fight to survive. It is really weird that so many common day
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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 [paypus] 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. By spring, they had begun pursuing Nevsky’s
army northwards. In April of 1242, the opposing armies met
upon the frozen surface of lake Peipus. Novgorod forces numbered some 5,000, while
the Crusader alliance totalled at around 2,600. The Catholics may have been outnumbered, but
it was Nevsky who was outgunned. Apart from the Princes’ druzhina and a contingent
of allied Turkic horse-archers, the Rus army was predominantly the poorly equipped, poorly
trained militia raised from Novgorod’s general citizenry. Furthermore, the Crusader army had something
the Rus did not, heavy cavalry. Nevsky was direly aware of the fact that,
in the hands of a capable commander, a single deadly charge from a few hundred mounted knights
could rout his entire army in minutes. Nevertheless, against all the odds, the Novgorod
militia held the line against the couched lances of the black cross, allowing Nevsky
to successfully pull off a pincer move with his horse archer and druzhina units, driving
the Knights and their allies off the field. The day had been seized by the East Slavs. 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. We’ll continue this series in the coming
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