The boundless steppes of Asia, and the lands lying between the River Ural and the Dnieper, with all their various peoples, were speedily brought under his sway. In the autumn of 1237 the Mongolian catapults had reduced Riazan to a heap of ruins; Moscow perished in the flames; and with the capture of Kieff, then the handsomest and best fortified city of Northern Europe, all Russia sank under the yoke of the Mongols, who ruled her for centuries. Kieff had fallen towards the end of 1240, and Batu had then divided his forces, sending 50,000 men to Poland, where they burnt Cracow and Breslau, and then proceeded to Silesia, where, on April 9th, they defeated an army of Germans, Poles, and Bohemians near Liegnitz; they then devastated Moravia, and entering Hungary on the north-west, presently rejoined Batu, who himself had made a straight line from Kieff for Hungary, entering it, as already said, by the pass of Verecz, on the north-east.
The third division of Mongols had gone south, skirting the eastern Carpathians and entering Transylvania at two different points.
One portion of this division had rejoined Batu at the river Sajó, in time for the pitched battle now imminent.
When first the Hungarian camp was pitched Batu had surveyed it from an eminence with a grim smile of satisfaction.
"There are a good many of them!" he exclaimed, "but they can't get away! They have penned themselves up as if they were so many sheep in a fold!"
With the return of Duke Kálmán after his victory at the bridge, all danger was believed to be over for the night, and save for a few merry-makers, the exultant army slept profoundly. There were few watchers but the King, the Duke, the Archbishop, and the few others gathered in the royal tent.
On the other side of the Sajó a different and wilder scene was being enacted.
The night was dark, but the Mongol camp was brilliantly illuminated by the blaze of a bonfire so huge, that its light shone far and wide.
It was never the Khan's way to extinguish his camp fires; quite the contrary. He wished his enemy to see them, and to suppose that his army was stationary.
Thanks to his innumerable spies, he was well aware of all that had taken place early in the night, and had not been in the least surprised by the recent sortie. It was, in fact, just what he had wished to provoke, by way of diverting the attention of the Hungarians from that which was taking place farther up the river.