Light men, and on light steeds, who only drink
The acrid milk of camels, and their wells.
And then a swarm of wandering horse, who come
From far, and a more doubtful service owned—
The Tatars of Ferghana, from the banks
Of the Jaxartes—men with scanty beards,
And close-set skull-caps; and those wilder hordes
Who roam o’er Kipschak and the northern waste.”
The lieutenants of Genghis, Tchep and Subudaï-bagadur, leaders of the invasion, fell upon the princes successively, cut down their small armies, struck terror into the remoter regions of the realm by the renown of the Asiatic conquests, and by the well-nigh incredible devastations made on Russian soil. The report was bruited that the Tatars had closed with the Polovtsui in southeastern Russia. These sent messengers imploring help from the descendants of Vladimir, saying: “The Tatars have taken our country; to-morrow they will take yours.” Scarcely had Mstislaf the Bold, in Galitsch, son of Mstislaf the Brave,[C] summoned Daniel of Volhynia, Mstislaf Romanovitch of Kief, and the other leading princes of the south to arm for the common cause, when the Tatar scouts had wet their horses’ hoofs in the Lower Dnieper. By the Kalka, a small stream coursing to the Sea of Azof, the brave, incautious Russian chivalry came within view of the innumerable mounted barbarians, moving with the speed and the obedience of one man. Mstislaf the Bold, Daniel of Volhynia, and Oleg of Kursk, precipitously urged by their angry contempt of the wild pagans, and by their eagerness to seize the honors of victory, closed with the dark swarms. In the height of battle, the Polovtsui, seized with affright, fell back disorderly upon the Russian ranks, causing disturbance and discomfiture throughout the army. The strange, wild sounds of the foe, the dust and clouds of arrows, added to the confusion, and soon the rout became general. The soldiers fled in terror from horsemen, the like of whom they had never seen, not even among the Petchenegs or the Drevliané; and for the princes nothing remained but instantaneous death, or flight to the Dnieper. Six of them already lay stiff and stark upon the field, amid seventy of their chief boyars, and nine-tenths of the fighting force; for of the one hundred thousand Russians, barely ten thousand escaped alive from the banks of the Kalka. Mstislaf Romanovitch of Kief had not been apprised of the rash advance of the three Princes, and consequently had remained within his earth-works on the bank of the Kalka. Abandoned by the fleeing remnant of the Russian host, he maintained a show of self-defense, until the Tatars made proposals permitting him to retire without molestation, on condition that ransom were paid for himself and his drujina; a condition violated as soon as it was accepted. The drujina were cut down by the sword; the prince with his two sons-in-law was stifled between planks. This day of national ruin closed with a festival held by the invaders over their slain victims.
The realm was silent with terror. Mourning for the fallen brave, burial of the dead, universal dismay followed this onslaught, that had been so sudden, so overwhelming, as to overpower any resolution for further defense. All at once, without notification, the multitudes of the Tatars vanished as swiftly and as mysteriously as they had appeared. One would have said their horses had invisible wings. They had crossed the Ural River, and were reported as beyond the Caspian Sea. They had returned to their late conquered lands of the East, where they remained during thirteen years, strengthening their hold, increasing in boldness, and ever and anon invading China with their cloud-like hordes. The Princes reverted to their usual discords, the Mongols gradually ceased to be talked of, save as a frightful apparition that had disappeared as unaccountably as it had advanced. Yet the sagacious and the learned among the Russians were not without forebodings. A comet had traversed the heavens in 1224, prior to the devouring invasion. Its re-appearance was regarded as a warning, an avant-courier of the Tatars. The chroniclers record with alarm the seasons of scarcity and of pestilence, the conflagrations of towns, and especially the earthquake and sun eclipse of 1230, as portentous omens for the imperiled realm.