[70] About A.D. 465, the Khersonites invoked the protection of the emperors of the East against the Huns. Justinian seized the opportunity to erect the two fortresses of Alouchta and Oursouf, by means of which he subsequently rendered the republic of Kherson tributary to the empire. There still exist at Alouchta three large towers that formed part of the imperial castle.
CHAPTER XL.
RUINS OF SOLDAYA—ROAD TO THEODOSIA—CAFFA—MUSCOVITE VANDALISM—PENINSULA OF KERTCH—PANTICAPEA AND ITS TOMBS.
Leaving my wife to return with Mademoiselle Jacquemart to Oulou Ouzen, I took my way by the lower part of the valley of Soudagh through a labyrinth of vineyards and meadows covered with blossoming peach and apricot trees. Passing the paltry village that has borrowed one of the names of the celebrated Soldaya, we soon arrived at the sea beach at the foot of the triple castle erected by the intrepid Genoese, in 1365, on the site of a city they had just conquered, and which had flourished under the successive dominion of the Greeks, the Komans, and the Tatars.
The origin of Soldaya, or Sougdai, belongs to the most remote periods of Crimean history. In the eighth century it was a bishop's see, and though then dependent on the Greek empire it boasted not the less of its own sovereigns. Four centuries afterwards, in 1204, the Komans, an Asiatic people, expelled from their own territories, and driven westward by the hordes of Genghis Khan, entered the Crimea, where they were the precursors of that terrible Mongol invasion that was soon to overwhelm all the east of Europe. The arrivals of these fugitives was fatal to the Greek settlements; the princes of Soldaya were exterminated, and the victors took possession of their capital. But the Komans did not long enjoy their conquests. Overtaken a second time by the rapid current of the Mongol invasion, they were obliged to abandon the Crimea after thirty years' possession, and seek an asylum in the most western regions of Thrace.
Under the Mongol dominion the Greeks returned to Soldaya, which again became a Christian town, and the most important port of the peninsula. It was tributary, indeed, to the Tatars, but it had a bishop and its own administration.
In the beginning of the fourteenth century, when the Tatars of the Kaptchak adopted the religion of Mahomet, Mussulman fanaticism prevailed for a while in the Crimea, the Christians were expelled from Soldaya and their numerous churches were converted into mosques. But it is a remarkable fact that the word of a pope, John XXII., was of such force in 1323, that Ousbeck Khan allowed the exiles to resume possession of their city with the enjoyment of their ancient privileges.
But twenty years had elapsed when a fresh revolution, occasioned by intestine disorder and dissensions, finally extinguished all trace of the Greek sway in Soldaya. The Genoese, who had for nearly a century been masters of Caffa, incorporated the ancient capital of the Komans with their own territory on the 18th of June, 1365.[71] Then it was that in order to secure their possession of the fertile territory of Soudagh and defend it against the Tatars, the enterprising merchant princes erected, on the most inaccessible rock at the entrance of the valley, that formidable fortress of three stories, crowned by the gigantic Maiden Tower (Kize Kouleh) whence the warders could overlook the fort, the sea, and the adjacent regions.
The Genoese remained in quiet possession of their castle for more than a century; but after the taking of Constantinople by Mahomet II., and the almost immediate destruction of Caffa, the capital of the Crimean colonies, Soldaya, shared the same fate. The Turks laid siege to the fortress in 1475. It made a long and obstinate resistance, and famine alone overcame the valour of the garrison.[72]