The Mongols in Russia

In my history of the Mongols we have seen how Hulagu beguiled the Assassins and slaughtered them. We have seen also how he ended the Kalifat at Bagdad, showing no more regard for the heir of Mohammed than for the chief of those murderers who held that marvelous mountain-land south of the Caspian. The Kalif of Islam was trampled to death under horse-hoofs. The chief of the Assassins was treated with insult, endured for a time, and then slain like a wild beast.

We are now to consider an expedition planned at that Kurultai held during Ogotai’s election, and see what was done by its leader, an expedition which ruined large portions of Europe as far as the Adriatic, and made Batu, the nephew of Jinghis Khan, supreme lord of them.

The Mongols retreated from all lands west of the Carpathians and confined themselves exclusively to that part of Europe which we know as Russia. The West was too narrow for them, too mountainous, too much diversified, and contained too little pastoral land. It had too much culture, and differed too greatly from that immense open region which stretches from the Dnieper, or more correctly from the Danube, to that vast ocean of water which was later called the Pacific.

This region is made up of those spaces lying north of the Great Wall of China, that largest fence ever reared by man to ward off an enemy, and farther west by the greatest barrier raised upon earth through creation, and also used by man as a line of defense, a fortress of refuge, that unique mountain system extending from Eastern China to Persia, and then, with a break, to the Caspian. From the Caspian westward the immense space is bounded by the Caucasus and the Black Sea, till it reaches the Danube and the mountains just north of that river.

This vast region, or Mongol careering ground as we may call it, began on the east at waters which are really the Pacific, and on the west touched the Danube, which finds its source very near the Rhone and the Rhine, both flowing into the Atlantic, since the North Sea, with its waters, is merely a part of that ocean.

The width of this region extends from the southern boundary just given to the Arctic, or Frozen Ocean. The entire southern part, somewhat less than half of this entire area, was an open, treeless country, grass-growing land and sand plains. All along on the northern side of this southern division were great stretches of grass land, with small groves of trees, from one acre to one hundred in area. Lands of this kind are seen in Siberia to our day. In the center were fruitful spots, deserts and oases. In the east, next to the center, were boundless plains, with a greater proportion of forest toward the distant east and toward the north, but with clear spaces everywhere. On the south, from the Danube to the Chinese Sea, the country was open at all points.

Such was the Mongol careering ground, and after they had overrun Europe to the Adriatic and north of it they retired to the western part of this great open country of Eastern Europe, and made their capital at Sarai, just east of the Volga, and perhaps two hundred miles north of the Caspian.

But before writing of the Mongol invasion of Russia, it will be necessary to give a somewhat detailed history of Russia previous to that event.

It is, of course, not known when the Russians settled in their present territory. In the first half of the ninth century they occupied a large extent of land stretching from the Carpathians to the upper waters of the Don and the Volga, and from the neighborhood of Lake Ladoga to a point about half-way between Kief and the Black Sea. All this population lived in villages which were governed in patriarchal fashion by the heads of families. A number of village communities formed a volost, or district, which was the largest government unit in the country. The size of these volosts varied, according to the convenience or the necessities of the case, but in general they were small. As the Slavs were much attached to their village autonomy, and as there was an inexhaustible supply of land, it was quite impossible for a large community to subdue and absorb a weaker one, for the latter had always the power of removing to some unoccupied district and setting up its little republic in the wilderness.