In the spacious valleys of the Don and its tributaries lived the powerful nation of the Polovtsi, who had often bid defiance to the whole strength of Russia. Kothian, their prince, for a short time made vigorous opposition to the march of the conquerors. But, overwhelmed by numbers, he was at length compelled to retreat, and, with his army of forty thousand men, to seek a refuge in Hungary. The country of the Polovtsi
was then abandoned to the Tartars. Having ravaged the central valleys of the Don and the Volga, these demoniac warriors turned their steps again into southern Russia. The inhabitants, frantic with terror, fled from their line of march as lambs fly from wolves. The blasts of their trumpets and the clatter of their horses' hoofs were speedily resounding in the valley of the Dnieper. Soon from the steeples of Kief the banners of the terrible army were seen approaching from the east. They crossed the Dnieper and surrounded the imperial city, which, for some time anticipating the storm, had been making preparation for the most desperate resistance. The ancient annalists say that the noise of their innumerable chariots, the lowing of camels and of the vast herds of cattle which accompanied their march, the neighing of horses and the ferocious cries of the barbarians, created such a clamor that no ordinary voice could be heard in the heart of the city.
The attack was speedily commenced, and the walls were assailed with all the then-known instruments of war. Day and night, without a moment's intermission, the besiegers, like incarnate fiends, plied their works. The Tartars, as ever, were victorious, and Kief, with all its thronging population and all its treasures of wealth, architecture and art, sank in an abyss of flame and blood. It sank to rise no more. Though it has since been partially rebuilt, this ancient capital of the grand princes of Russia, even now presents but the shadow of its pristine splendor.
Onward, still onward, was the cry of the barbarians.
Leaving smoking brands and half-burnt corpses where the imperial city once stood, the insatiable Bati pressed on hundreds of miles further west, assailing, storming, destroying the provinces of Gallicia as far as southern Vladimir within a few leagues of the frontiers of Poland. Russia being thus entirely devastated and at the feet of the conquerors, Bati wheeled his army around toward the south and descended
into Hungary. Novgorod was almost the only important city in Russia which escaped the ravages of this terrible foe.
Bati continued his career of conquest, and, in 1245, was almost undisputed master of Russia, of many of the Polish provinces, of Hungary, Croatia, Servia, Bulgaria on the Danube, Moldavia and Wallachia. He then returned to the Volga and established himself there as permanent monarch over all these subjugated realms. No one dared to resist him. Bati sent a haughty message to the Grand Prince Yaroslaf at northern Vladimir, ordering him to come to his camp on the distant Volga. Yaroslaf, in the position in which he found himself—Russia being exhausted, depopulated, covered with ruins and with graves—did not dare disobey. Accompanied by several of his nobles, he took the weary journey, and humbly presented himself in the tent of the conqueror. Bati compelled the humiliated prince to send his young son, Constantin, to Tartary, to the palace of the grand khan Octai, who was about to celebrate, with his chiefs, the brilliant conquests his army had made in China and Europe. If the statements of the annalists of those days may be credited, so sumptuous a fête the world had never seen before. The guests, assembled in the metropolis of the khan, were innumerable. Yaroslaf was compelled to promise allegiance to the Tartar chieftain, and all the other Russian princes, who had survived the general slaughter, were also forced to pay homage and tribute to Bati.
After two years, the young prince, Constantin, returned from Tartary, and then Yaroslaf himself was ordered, with all his relatives, to go to the capital of this barbaric empire on the banks of the Amour, where the Tartar chiefs were to meet to choose a successor to Octai, who had recently died. With tears the unhappy prince bade adieu to his country, and, traversing vast deserts and immense regions of hills and valleys, he at length reached the metropolis of his cruel masters. Here he successfully defended himself against some accusations
which had been brought against him, and, after a detention of several months, he was permitted to set out on his return. He had proceeded but a few hundred miles on the weary journey when he was taken sick, and died the 20th of September, 1246. The faithful nobles who accompanied him bore his remains to Vladimir, where they were interred.
There was no longer a Russian kingdom. The country had lost its independence; and the Tartar sway, rude, vacillating and awfully cruel, extended from remote China to the shores of the Baltic. The Roman, Grecian and Russian empires thus crumbling, the world was threatened with an universal inundation of barbarism. Russian princes, with more or less power ruled over the serfs who tilled their lands, but there was no recognized head of the once powerful kingdom, and no Russian prince ventured to disobey the commands even of the humblest captain of the Tartar hordes.