The Giants of Russian Literature: The Greatest Russian Novels, Stories, Plays, Folk Tales & Legends. Максим Горький
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slaughter. This was in the month of December, but, undeterred by the snow which choked the forest roads and filled the valleys, Batu turned north towards Souzdal, leaving behind him a banquet of frozen corpses for the wolves and foxes, ravens and vultures. Moskva, Tver, Souzdal, and Vladimir fell one by one into the power of the Mongols and experienced their cruel fury. Feb. 1238In the latter city perished Vsevolod and Mstislav, sons of Urii, who had retreated to the banks of the Sit, where he turned to bay against the ravagers of his province. Here, on the 3rd March, was fought a battle big with importance for Russia, the West fighting against the East, the forest-lands against the steppe, Christianity against Shamanism. Urii had deferred the decisive moment too long, and paid with his life the penalty of his mistake; his disheartened soldiers broke before the overwhelming numbers of the Mongols, and left them undisputed masters of the Grand Principality. The East had won. Not for many a long century, if ever, would Russia shake off the Oriental influences which the Mongol victory imposed upon her. From her history the shadow of the Horde, one is tempted to forebode, in the words of Poe, “shall be lifted nevermore.”
The Bishop of Rostov, haunting the scene of desolation, found the headless body of the Grand Prince, and conveyed it to the church of the Virgin at that town, where it was afterwards joined by its recovered head and interred, together with the corpse of Vassilko Konstantinovitch, who also fell on that fatal field. The triumphant Mongol host marched towards Novgorod, but turned aside on seeing the fastnesses of swamp and lakelet with which that town was girdled, and to which it owed its safety. Less fortunate were Volok-Lamskie, Torjhok, and Kozelsk, which drooped one by one before the blight of conquest and devastation. To the latter town, which resisted the enemy for two months and slew of them four thousand, the Mongols gave the name of “the evil city.” Vasili, its defending kniaz, fighting to the last, was said to have been drowned in blood—an end worthy of the war-lusting vikings of the twilight past.
Careful not to leave a foe behind him, Batu withdrew his forces to the basin of the Don, to hunt out the Kumans once more from their hiding-places, and to rest his warriors and their horses in the steppe-lands to which they were accustomed. Yaroslav seized this opportunity to hasten from Kiev to the evacuated Souzdalian province, of which desolated region he was now sovereign. To him fell the task of restoring order to a distracted country and courage to an affrighted people. Despite the terror which loomed in the deserts near the Don, he was able to give his attention to the succour of Smolensk, over-run by the Lit’uanians, whom he brilliantly defeated. In the south, far from making common cause against the national enemy, or seeking to revenge the cruelties which had been meted out to so many of the Russian cities and towns, the Romanovitch and Olgovitch princes renewed their private feuds and fief-grabbings. Mikhail of Tchernigov and Galitz left the latter province in the keeping of his son Rostislav, while he seized on Kiev, vacated by the new Prince of Souzdal-Vladimir. While Rostislav and his boyarins were absent on an expedition against the Lit’uanians, the ever-imminent Daniel made the inevitable eagle-pounce on Galitz, and despite the opposition of its bishop, was received with acclamation by the people, who buzzed around him, in the words of the Chronicle, “as bees swarm about their queen.”
Meanwhile, in the deserts of Astrakhan, Kotian, the old Polovtzi Khan, had been defeated by the Mongols, and fled, he and his, along the wild steppe country till he came to the Karpathian range and sought refuge in the Hungarian kingdom. Russia no longer offered a safe retreat. Swiftly and remorselessly the death-dealing Horde bore down on the middle provinces, and throughout the length and breadth of the land bishops and priests and people knelt in agonised supplication to their all-powerful God to deliver them from their savage enemies. From cathedral, church, and roadside shrine wails the pitiful litany, “Save us from the infidels!” Candles burn and incense swings, and anguish-stricken hearts yearn out their prayer, “Save us from the infidels!” Call Him louder. Perchance He sleepeth.
Tchernigov and Péréyaslavl experienced the common fate, the general ruin; town and country alike suffered the affliction of fire and sword and rapine. Shuddering villagers, lying awake around their flickering hearths at night, would hear the uneasy barking of their watch-dogs, scenting or seeing something not yet palpable to human senses; and later the house-pigeons would fly far and wildly over a landscape lit up by a glow that was not the dawn.
After a short respite, while the destroyers had turned aside again to the deserts of the Don, Central Russia once more became the scene of their ravaging. It was now the turn of Kiev to become the miserable victim of their attentions. Around the mother of Russian cities (a very Niobe under present circumstances), the sacred site of the tombs and relics of the grand old princes, the resting-place of “all the glories,” gathered a host that blackened the face of the country for miles round. Batu himself, Mengu and Kujuk, sons of Ogatai (the Grand Khan), and five other princes of the family of Jingis, came to help the city on the Dniepr to its doom. Mikhail of Tchernigov fled to Hungary on the approach of the enemy, and even the daring Daniel Romanovitch preferred not to shut himself up like a trapped rat in Kiev or Galitz, and sought refuge with King Bela, leaving, however, in the former town his voevoda Dimitri to direct the defence. Happy had it been for the inhabitants had they all fled from the death-trap. Within the walls men could scarce hear themselves speak for the floating din of creaking carts, bellowing oxen, groaning camels, neighing and stamping horses, and yelling Mongols which resounded on all sides. 1240Against the Polish gate day and night the battering-rams crashed and splintered, till a breach was effected by which the besiegers entered. S. Sofia had become the last refuge of the defenders, but the roof, crowded with fugitives, gave way beneath the pressure, and forestalled the vengeance of the Mongols. Men, women, and infants, houses, churches, tombs, and shrines became a prey to the children of the desert, a vast hecatomb to grace the funeral pyre of the old Russia. The famous monastery of Petcherski, where the monk Nestor wrote his Chronicle, shared the general destruction, and from amid its crashing ruins the pagans seized the massive gold cross which had adorned its cupola.
From this victory the Horde pressed on through Volhynia and Galicia; Vladimir, Galitz, and other Red Russian towns fell beneath their attack, and then the conquering host branched off into two divisions; one, under the command of Batu, invaded Hungary; the other, led by Baidar and Kaidu (sons of Jagatai), carried desolation into the Polish provinces. The storm, sack, and burning of Lublin, Zawikhost, Sendomir, and Krakow, and the ravaging of the province of Breslau led up to the pitched battle of Liegnitz, where the might of Poland measured itself in desperate struggle with the Mongol wave. On the Christian side stood Duke Henry II. of Silesia; Boleslav, son of the Markgraf of Moravia; Miecislav, Duke of Ratibor; and Poppon d’Osterna, Provincial Master (in Prussia) of the Teutonic Order. Outnumbered by the Mongols, the Poles fought valiantly and with effect, till at last their spirit failed them; the great Tuk banner, lurid with flaring naphtha, and decorated with two gleaming sheep bones, transversely crossed, seemed to reproduce, amid unholy goblin flames, their own mystic symbol. The powers of darkness and the seething masses of human foes were too formidable a combination to fight against, and the chivalry of Poland broke and fled. Duke Henry on that awful night fought savagely as he fled, but was torn down at length by his untiring pursuers. Many a count and palatine shared his fate; from every corpse the savage victors cut an ear, and nine sacks full were sent to the Grand Khan, together with the head of Duke Henry, as a record of the slain.38 In tracing the Mongol march of devastation through Silesia, Moravia, and Transylvania into Hungary, it is only necessary to observe that wholesale slaughter, destruction, and sweeping victory continued to characterise the advance of the Horde.39 In Hungary men had awaited with cold and anxious hearts the onfall of the Mongols. Had they not heard with sorrow and foreboding at Christmas-tide last year the doleful intelligence of the fall of Kiev? And the wild stories of each fresh batch of fugitives—Kumans, Russians, Poles, Silesians—increased the terror of the Mongol name and brought their armies nearer. The King rallied his nobles round him (none too well-affected though they were) in a determined effort to stem this swarthy torrent that threatened to submerge the country. The prelates of the realm, good old fighting churchmen as they were, led their vassals in person to the fight. On the field of Mohi (name strangely like that of the other fatal battle in their history), on the banks of the Sajó, the cross of S. Stefan went down before the yak-tailed Tuk, and the nomad warriors triumphed over