After the destruction of Vladimir, Rostoff and Suzdal, the whole principality of Vladimir was ravaged. The lands now included in the governments of Vladimir, Yaroslavl, Kostroma, Tver and Moscow, with a part of Novgorod and Vologda, were scenes of ruin and terror. Everywhere the same marks of Mongols. Such noted places as Tver, Torjok, Volokolamsk, Yaroslavl and Mologa were sacked and burned to the ground, as well as villages and settlements beyond reckoning. The Russians looked on this invasion as a testimony of God’s anger, such an evil as a flood or an earthquake, irresistible and almighty. In small villages, when the Mongols appeared, the people grew helpless from terror; those who could escape rushed away to the forests, secreting their property [[238]]in the ground; what remained was left to fire and sword. Such boundless woe had never been witnessed in Russia. The surviving clergy throughout the country called on all to prepare for the last hour.
The Mongols cut people down as a mower cuts grass. When they entered a province, they sent out detachments on every side; like locusts, they destroyed everything utterly. Monasteries and villages they stripped clean of all things that had value. From stores of grain they took what they needed, and burned the remainder, boasting that grass would not grow on their path.
A great thaw saved Northwestern Russia. In the first days of March, the Mongols, when within a hundred versts of Novgorod, became alarmed by the swelling of rivers and turned back. Conducting their countless treasures and urging on long lines of prisoners, they moved swiftly southeastward to grass-growing regions. On the way they came to Koselsk, where they met a most stubborn resistance. A detachment attacked the town for forty-two days, but succeeded in storming the place only after reinforcements had been sent by Batu, who was enraged at this resistance. It was destroyed utterly, but its fame will never die in Russian history.
Before the wooden walls of this city, the Mongols lost four thousand men and three princes. When at last they burst into the town, they were met by old and young, men and women, who rushed at them with knives, axes and other weapons, and fought with desperation from house to house, from street to street. Gradually forced back, they retired into the Kremlin, or fortress, and fought till the last man perished. Vassili, the little prince, who was very young, was drowned, it is said, in the blood of the people.
The Mongols called this town “Mo balig” (town of woe), the same name which they gave Bamian of the Kwarezmian Empire, the place at which Moatagan, one of Jinghis Khan’s grandsons, fell pierced by an arrow, and where the young man’s mother, a daughter of Jinghis, rushed in at the head of ten thousand warriors and left nothing alive, not a man, woman or child, destroying even the dogs and cats, slaying everything in her vengeance.
After Batu had established himself in the steppes of the Volga, he began to build Sarai, the capital of his Horde. He cleared the whole country and drove out the Polovtsi. Kotyan, the Polovtsi [[239]]Khan, took a remnant of his people, forty thousand in number, and settled in Hungary. The king gave him land on condition that he and his tribes became Catholic. The rest of the Polovtsi joined with the Mongols, and from that day they ceased forever as a people in Russia.
Pereyaslavl on the Alta and Chernigoff were doomed now, and all who could leave those two places hurried elsewhere for refuge.
When winter had again frozen the rivers and put snow on the steppe lands, the Mongols set out afresh to capture cities and slaughter new thousands of people. Batu sent a number of his leaders of ten thousand to the north again to search out and finish all places bordering on Vladimir. This work they did thoroughly in December, 1238, and January, 1239. Batu, meanwhile, took Pereyaslavl; destroyed the church of Saint Michael; slew the bishop; killed all who were useless as captives; took whatever belonged to the people and the churches; and moved on Chernigoff. The walls of that city were broken in by hurling stones, each of such weight that five men were needed to lift it. The city was stormed then and burned, the people slain, and every building plundered. One of the younger princes fell with the warriors. The chronicler states that the older princes had fled to Hungary. It is true that Michael’s heir, Rostislav, who had been left by his father in Galitch, and driven thence by Daniel soon after, had gone to marry King Bela’s daughter. Michael, himself, who at this time had taken Yaroslav’s place, in Kief, soon found it impossible to stay there.
When Chernigoff was ruined, Batu commanded his brother to advance upon Kief and make a reconnaissance. From the Chernigoff bank of the Dnieper he saw the mother of cities and wondered at its beauty. Envoys were sent to demand its surrender. The Kief people slew them, and Michael fled from the capital. He went, as he thought, to a safe place, to Hungary, to be present at his son’s wedding. But, learning of the ruin of Chernigoff by the Mongols, Bela would not give his daughter to Rostislav. Michael and his son went then to the Mazovian prince, Konrad.
Bolder than Michael, Rostislav, a Smolensk prince, occupied Kief, now abandoned by others. But Daniel of Galitch would not let Rostislav stay there, and seized for himself the old capital. He did not wait in Kief for Batu; he sent Dmitri, his boyar, to defend [[240]]the city. Daniel left even Volynia and Galitch, and went to Hungary. From there he went to Poland, for Bela himself was struck with such terror that he fled from the Mongols, and knew not where to find refuge.