9 The Mongol Invasions

Ever since the first millennium before the Common Era and the beginnings, however scanty, of a historical record, the steppe lands of eastern Europe and Ukraine witnessed a repetitive cycle of invasions by pastoral and nomadic warrior peoples from the east—Scythians, Sarmatians, Huns, Avars, Khazars, Magyars, Pechenegs, and Polovtsians, to name only the most important groups.

Originally from Mongolia located on the borders between China and Siberia, the Mongols and several neighboring Turkic tribes were united in 1206 under a local chief named Temujin. This chieftain soon adopted the name Chingiz (sometimes transliterated as Genghis), after which he is remembered in history as Chingiz Khan. Under Chingiz’s direction and during the two decades until his death in 1227, the Mongol armies conquered a vast territory that began in the far east with China and Manchuria on the Pacific coast and that stretched through the steppes and plateaus of Central Asia and northern Persia as far as the Caspian Sea. Although the Great Khan’s armies were led by a Mongol elite, the vast majority of soldiers were actually Tatars (originally from the Mongolo-Chinese borderland) and Turkic peoples that the Mongols picked up during their conquests. The extensive territory brought under Mongol rule ushered in a new order and period of stability and prosperity that came to be known as the Pax Mongolica.

While Chingiz Khan was still alive, a Mongol-led expeditionary force ventured further west beyond the Caspian Sea and passed through the Kuban’ steppe region on its way toward the Polovtsian/Kipchak steppe. Frightened by this new threat from the east, the Polovtsians decided to ally with their long-term enemies in Kievan Rus’. In 1223 a joint Rus’-Polovtsian force set out to stop the invaders, but it was completely routed after three days of battle near the Kalka River just north of the Sea of Azov.

The Rus’ rulers thought that this was an isolated event and, therefore, Kievan life returned to what it had been before. Civil strife between rival Rus’ princes remained the order of the day, so that during the last five years of the era of disintegration (1235-1240) rule over the city of Kiev changed no less than seven times. Meanwhile, the Mongols decided to expand their realm farther westward and in 1236 they returned, this time with a massive military force estimated at between 120,000 and 140,000 troops under the supreme command of Chingiz Khan’s grandson, Khan Batu. After defeating the Volga Bulgars and destroying their state based at the juncture of the Volga and Kama Rivers, the Mongols entered the northern Rus’ principalities of Murom-Riazan’ and Vladimir-Suzdal’. Beginning on December 1237, the city of Riazan’ fell, followed in rapid succession during the first three months of 1238 by Kolomna, Moscow, Vladimir, Suzdal, Iaroslavl, and Tver’.

The Mongols then decided to turn southward and to rest for the next two and a half years on the Steppe of the Kipchaks (from the Turkic name for Polovtsians—Qipçaq). During that period, the Polovtsians were destroyed as a steppe power and its tribes were scattered. Some joined the Mongols; others sought refuge among Kiev’s Turkic allies along the Ros’ River; still others fled westward and crossed the Carpathian Mountains settling in the flatland (puszta) of the northeastern part of the Kingdom of Hungary.

Throughout 1239 the Mongols carried out attacks against the southern Rus’ principalities of Pereiaslav, Novhorod-Sivers’kyi, and Chernihiv (the city of Chernihiv itself fell to them in October). It was not until the end of 1240, however, that the Mongols decided to launch a full-scale invasion. Their main target was the city of Kiev, which fell in December 1240.

Eventually all the Mongol armies converged on Hungary, where they spent the winter of 1241-1242 in the steppelike regions of that country. When, in the spring of 1242, Batu learned of the death of the Great Khan of Mongolia, he set off with his entire armed force to return home. His forces descended the southern bank of the Danube and crossed the steppes of Ukraine, but before Batu went further he established a Mongol administrative outpost of Sarai near the Volga River. Before long Sarai developed into a powerful administrative and commercial center from which the Mongols were to rule their new conquests in eastern Europe.

9.1 Tatars from the Golden Horde leading away captives following an attack against Galicia-Volhynia.