The remarkable success of Mongol armies can no longer be ascribed, as in the past, to overwhelming numbers. It stemmed rather from the effective strategy of the Mongols, their excellence as highly mobile cavalry, their endurance, and their disciplined and co-ordinated manner of fighting assisted by an organization which in certain ways resembled a modern general staff. These assets acquired particular importance because the military forces of the invaded countries, especially in Europe, were frequently cumbersome, undisciplined and unco- ordinated. Espionage, terrorism, and superior siege equipment, borrowed from China and other lands, have also been cited as factors contributing to the amazing spread of Mongol rule. The Mongols held occupied territories with the aid of such devices as newly built roads, a courier system, and a crude census for purposes of taxation.
Batu, a grandson of Jenghiz Khan and a nephew of Ugedey, who succeeded his father Juchi to the greater part of Juchi's empire, directed the Mongol invasion of Europe. He had some 150,000 or 200,000 troops at his disposal and the veteran Subudey to serve as his chief general. The Mongols crossed the Urals in 1236 to attack first the Volga Bulgars. After that, in 1237, they struck at the Russian eastern principality of Riazan, coming unexpectedly from the north. In the Mongol strategy, the conquest of Russia served to secure their flank for a further major invasion of Europe. The Russian princes proved to be disunited and totally unprepared. Characteristically, many of them stayed to protect their own appanages rather than come to the aid of invaded principalities or make any joint effort. Following the defeat of a Russian army, the town of Riazan was besieged and captured after five days of bitter fighting and its entire population massacred. Next, in the winter of 1237/38, the Mongols attacked the Suzdal territory with its capital of Vladimir, the seat of the grand prince. The sequence of desperate fighting and massacre recurred on a larger scale and at many towns, the grand prince himself and his army perishing in the decisive battle near the river Sit. Thus, in a matter of several months, the Mongols succeeded in conquering the strongest section of the country. Furthermore, they attained their objectives by means of a winter campaign, the Mongol cavalry moving with great speed on frozen rivers - the only successful winter invasion of Russia in history. But a spring thaw that made the terrain virtually impassable forced the Mongols to abandon their advance on Novgorod and retreat to the southern steppe. They spent the next year and a half in preparation for a great campaign as well as in devastating and conquering some additional Russian territories, notably that of Chernigov.
The Mongol assault of 1240, continued in 1241 and the first part of 1242, aimed at more than Russia. In fact, it had been preceded by an order to the king of Hungary to submit to the Mongol rule. The Mongols began by invading the Kievan area proper. Overcoming the stubborn defenders, they took Kiev by storm, exterminated the population, and leveled the city. The
same fate befell other towns of the area, whose inhabitants either died or became slaves. After Kiev, the Mongols swept through the southwestern principalities of Galicia and Volynia, laying everything waste. Poland and Hungary came next. One Mongol army defeated the Poles and the Germans, the most important battle taking place at Liegnitz in Silesia in 1241, while another army smashed the Hungarians. Undeterred by the Carpathian mountains, the Mongols occupied the Hungarian plain; their advance guard reached the Adriatic. Whereas campaigning in central Europe presented certain problems to the Mongols, particularly the need to reduce fortresses, many historians believe that only the death of Great Khan Ugedey saved a number of European countries. Concerned with internal Mongol politics, his nephew Batu decided to retrench; and in the spring of 1242 he withdrew his armies to the southern steppe, subjugating Bulgaria, Moldavia, and Wallachia on the way back. Although the Mongols thus retreated to the east, all of Russia, including the northwestern part which escaped direct conquest, remained under their sway.
Batu established his headquarters in the lower Volga area in what became the town of Old Sarai and the capital of the domain known as the Golden Horde. The Golden Horde constituted first a part of the Mongol empire and later, as the central ties weakened, an independent state. A department in Old Sarai, headed by a
In general, although the Mongols interfered little in Russian life, they maintained an effective control over Russia for almost a century and a half, from 1240 to 1380. In 1380 the prince of Moscow Dmitrii succeeded in defeating the Mongols in a major battle on the field of Kulikovo. Although the Mongols managed to stage a comeback, their invincibility had been destroyed and their rule greatly weakened. Still, another century passed before the Mongol yoke was finally overthrown. Only in 1480 Ivan III of Moscow renounced his, and Russian, allegiance to the khan, and the Mongols failed to challenge his action seriously. Later yet, Russia expanded to absorb the successor states to the Golden Horde: the khanate of Kazan in 1552, of Astrakhan in 1556, and, at long last, that of Crimea in 1783.
Thus, the Mongol rule over the Russians lasted, with a greater or a lesser degree of effectiveness, for almost 250 years. There exists, however, no consensus among specialists concerning the role of the Mongols in Russian history. Traditionally Russian historians have paid little attention to the Mongols and their impact on Russia; nevertheless, some of them did stress the destructive and generally negative influence of the Mongol invasion and subjugation. Others virtually dismissed the entire matter as of minor significance in the historical development of their country. While a few earlier scholars held radically different views, a thorough reconsideration of the problem of the Mongols and Russia occurred only in the twentieth century among Russian emigre intellectuals. A new, so- called Eurasian, school proclaimed the fundamental affiliation of Russia with parts of Asia and brought the Mongol period of Russian history to the center of interest. What is more, the Eurasian school interpreted the Mongol impact largely in positive and creative terms. Their views, particularly as expressed in Vernadsky's historical works, have attracted considerable attention.
The destructive and generally negative influence of the Mongols on the course of Russian history has been amply documented. To begin with, the Mongol invasion itself brought wholesale devastation and massacre to Russia. The sources, both Russian and non-Russian, tell, for instance, of a complete extermination of population in such towns as Riazan, Torzhok, and Kozelsk, while in others those who survived the carnage became slaves. A Mongol chronicle states that Batu and his lieutenants destroyed the towns of the Russians and killed or captured all their inhabitants. A papal legate and famous traveler, Archbishop Plano Carpini, who crossed southern Russia in 1245-46 on his way to Mongolia, wrote as follows concerning the Mongol invasion of Russia:
… they went against Russia and enacted a great massacre in the Russian land, they destroyed towns and fortresses and killed people, they besieged Kiev which had been the capital of Russia, and after a long siege they took it and killed the inhabitants of the city; for this reason, when we passed through that land, we found lying in the field countless heads and bones of dead people; for this city had been extremely large and very populous, whereas now it has been reduced to nothing: barely two hundred houses stand there, and those people are held in the harshest slavery.
These and other similar contemporary accounts seem to give a convincing picture of the devastation of the Mongol invasion even if we allow for possible exaggeration.
The Mongol occupation of the southern Russian steppe deprived the
Russians for centuries of much of the best land and contributed to the shift of population, economic activity, and political power to the northeast. It also did much to cut Russia off from Byzantium and in part from the West, and to accentuate the relative isolation of the country typical of the time. It has been suggested that, but for the Mongols, Russia might well have participated in such epochal European developments as the Renaissance and the Reformation. The financial exactions of the Mongols laid a heavy burden on the Russians precisely when their impoverished and dislocated economy was least prepared to bear it. Rebellions against the Mongol taxes led to new repressions and penalties. The entire period, and especially the decades immediately following the Mongol invasion, acquired the character of a grim struggle for survival, with the advanced and elaborate Kievan style of life and
