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Empire of Russia from the Remotest Periods to the Present Time

CHAPTER VII. THE SWAY OF THE TARTAR PRINCES. From 1238 to 1304. Retreat of Georges II.—Desolating March of the Tartars.—Capture of Vladimir.—Fall of Moscow.—Utter Defeat of Georges.—Conflict at Torjek.—March of the Tartars Toward the South.—Subjugation of the Polovtsi.—Capture of Kief.—Humiliation of Yaroslaf.—Overthrow of the Russian Kingdom.—Haughtiness of the Tartars.—Reign of Alexander.—Succession of Yaroslaf.—The Reign of Vassuli.—State of Christianity.—Infamy of André.—Struggles with Dmitri.—Independence of the Principalities.—Death of André.   The king, Georges, fled from Moscow before it was invested by the enemy, leaving its defense to two of his sons. Retiring, in a panic, to the remote northern province of Yaroslaf, he encamped, with a small force, upon one of the tributaries of the Mologa, and sent earnest entreaties to numerous princes to hasten, with all the forces they could raise, and join his army. The Tartars from Moscow marched north-west some one hundred and fifty miles to the imperial city of Vladimir. They appeared before its walls on the 2d of February. On the evening of the 6th the battering rams and ladders were prepared, and it was evident that the storming of the city was soon to begin. The citizens, conscious that nothing awaited them but death or endless slavery, with one accord resolved to sell their lives as dearly as possible. Accompanied by their wives and their children, they assembled in the churches, partook of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, implored Heaven's blessing upon them, and then husbands, brothers, fathers, took affecting leave of their families and repaired to the walls for the deadly strife. Early on the morning of the 7th the assault commenced. The impetuosity of the onset was irresistible. In a few moments the walls were scaled, the streets flooded with the foe, the pavements covered with the dead, and the city on fire in an hundred places. The conquerors did not wish to encumber themselves with captives. All were slain. Laden with booty and crimsoned with the blood of their foes, the victors dispersed in every direction, burning and destroying, but encountering no resistance. During the month they took fourteen cities, slaying all the inhabitants but such as they reserved for slaves. The monarch, Georges, was still upon the banks of the Sité, near where it empties into the Mologa, when he heard the tidings of the destruction of Moscow and Vladimir, and of the massacre of his wife and his children. His eyes filled with tears, and in the anguish of his spirit he prayed that God would enable him to exemplify the patience of Job. Adversity develops the energies of noble spirits. Georges rallied his troops and made a desperate onset upon the foe as they approached his camp. It was the morning of the 4th of March. But again the battle was disastrous to Russia. Mogol numbers triumphed over Russian valor, and the king and nearly all his army were slain. Some days after the battle the bishop of Rostof traversed the field, covered with the bodies of the dead. There he discovered the corpse of the monarch, which he recognized by the clothes. The head had been severed from the body. The bishop removed the gory trunk of the prince and gave it respectful burial in the church of Notre Dame at Rostof. The head was subsequently found and deposited in the coffin with the body. The conquerors, continuing their march westerly one hundred and fifty miles, burning and destroying as they went, reached the populous city of Torjek. The despairing inhabitants for fifteen days beat off the assailants. The city then fell; its ruin was entire. The dwellings became but the funeral pyres for the bodies of the slain. The army of Bati then continued its march to lake Seliger, the source of the Volga, within one hundred miles of the great city of Novgorod. "Villages disappeared," write the ancient annalists, "and the heads of the Russians fell under the swords of the Tartars as the grass falls before the scythe." Instead of pressing on to Novgorod, for some unknown reason Bati turned south, and, marching two hundred miles, laid siege to the strong fortress of Kozelsk, in the principality of Kalouga. The garrison, warned of the advance of the foe, made the most heroic resistance. For four weeks they held their assailants at bay, banking every effort of the vast numbers who encompassed them. A more determined and heroic defense was never made. At last the fortress fell, and not one soul escaped the exterminating sword. Bati, now satiated with carnage, retired, with his army, to the banks of the Don. Yaroslaf, prince of Kief, and brother of Georges II., hoping that the dreadful storm had passed away, hastened to the smouldering ruins of Vladimir to take the title and the shadowy authority of Grand Prince. Never before were more conspicuously seen the energies of a noble soul. At first it seemed that his reign could be extended only over gory corpses and smouldering ruins. Undismayed by the magnitude of the disaster, he consecrated all the activity of his genius and the loftiness of his spirit to the regeneration of the desolated land. In the spacious valleys of the Don and its tributaries lived the powerful nation of the Polovtsi, who had often bid defiance to the whole strength of Russia. Kothian, their prince, for a short time made vigorous opposition to the march of the conquerors. But, overwhelmed by numbers, he was at length compelled to retreat, and, with his army of forty thousand men, to seek a refuge in Hungary. The country of the Polovtsi was then abandoned to the Tartars. Having ravaged the central valleys of the Don and the Volga, these demoniac warriors turned their steps again into southern Russia. The inhabitants, frantic with terror, fled from their line of march as lambs fly from wolves. The blasts of their trumpets and the clatter of their horses' hoofs were speedily resounding in the valley of the Dnieper. Soon from the steeples of Kief the banners of the terrible army were seen approaching from the east. They crossed the Dnieper and surrounded the imperial city, which, for some time anticipating the storm, had been making preparation for the most desperate resistance. The ancient annalists say that the noise of their innumerable chariots, the lowing of camels and of the vast herds of cattle which accompanied their march, the neighing of horses and the ferocious cries of the barbarians, created such a clamor that no ordinary voice could be heard in the heart of the city. The attack was speedily commenced, and the walls were assailed with all the then-known instruments of war. Day and night, without a moment's intermission, the besiegers, like incarnate fiends, plied their works. The Tartars, as ever, were victorious, and Kief, with all its thronging population and all its treasures of wealth, architecture and art, sank in an abyss of flame and blood. It sank to rise no more. Though it has since been partially rebuilt, this ancient capital of the grand princes of Russia, even now presents but the shadow of its pristine splendor. Onward, still onward, was the cry of the barbarians. Leaving smoking brands and half-burnt corpses where the imperial city once stood, the insatiable Bati pressed on hundreds of miles further west, assailing, storming, destroying the provinces of Gallicia as far as southern Vladimir within a few leagues of the frontiers of Poland. Russia being thus entirely devastated and at the feet of the conquerors, Bati wheeled his army around toward the south and descended into Hungary. Novgorod was almost the only important city in Russia which escaped the ravages of this terrible foe. Bati continued his career of conquest, and, in 1245, was almost undisputed master of Russia, of many of the Polish provinces, of Hungary, Croatia, Servia, Bulgaria on the Danube, Moldavia and Wallachia. He then returned to the Volga and established himself there as permanent monarch over all these subjugated realms. No one dared to resist him. Bati sent a haughty message to the Grand Prince Yaroslaf at northern Vladimir, ordering him to come to his camp on the distant Volga. Yaroslaf, in the position in which he found himself—Russia being exhausted, depopulated, covered with ruins and with graves—did not dare disobey. Accompanied by several of his nobles, he took the weary journey, and humbly presented himself in the tent of the conqueror. Bati compelled the humiliated prince to send his young son, Constantin, to Tartary, to the palace of the grand khan Octai, who was about to celebrate, with his chiefs, the brilliant conquests his army had made in China and Europe. If the statements of the annalists of those days may be credited, so sumptuous a fête the world had never seen before. The guests, assembled in the metropolis of the khan, were innumerable. Yaroslaf was compelled to promise allegiance to the Tartar chieftain, and all the other Russian princes, who had survived the general slaughter, were also forced to pay homage and tribute to Bati. After two years, the young prince, Constantin, returned from Tartary, and then Yaroslaf himself was ordered, with all his relatives, to go to the capital of this barbaric empire on the banks of the Amour, where the Tartar chiefs were to meet to choose a successor to Octai, who had recently died. With tears the unhappy prince bade adieu to his country, and, traversing vast deserts and immense regions of hills and valleys, he at length reached the metropolis of his cruel masters. Here he successfully defended himself against some accusations which had been brought against him, and, after a detention of several months, he was permitted to set out on his return. He had proceeded but a few hundred miles on the weary journey when he was taken sick, and died the 20th of September, 1246. The faithful nobles who accompanied him bore his remains to Vladimir, where they were interred. There was no longer a Russian kingdom. The country had lost its independence; and the Tartar sway, rude, vacillating and awfully cruel, extended from remote China to the shores of the Baltic. The Roman, Grecian and Russian empires thus crumbling, the world was threatened with an universal inundation of barbarism. Russian princes, with more or less power ruled over the serfs who tilled their lands, but there was no recognized head of the once powerful kingdom, and no Russian prince ventured to disobey the commands even of the humblest captain of the Tartar hordes. While affairs were in this deplorable state, a Russian prince, Daniel, of Gallicia, engaged secretly, but with great vigor, in the attempt to secure the coöperation of the rest of Europe to emancipate Russia from the Tartar yoke. Greece, overawed by the barbarians, did not dare to make any hostile movement against them. Daniel turned to Rome, and promised the pope, Innocent IV., that Russia should return to the Roman church, and would march under the papal flag if the pope would rouse Christian Europe against the Tartars. The pope eagerly embraced these offers, pronounced Daniel to be King of Russia, and sent the papal legate to appoint Roman bishops over the Greek church. At the same time he wished to crown Daniel with regal splendor. "I have need," exclaimed the prince, "of an army, not of a crown. A crown is but a childish ornament when the yoke of the barbarian is galling our necks." Daniel at length consented, for the sake of its moral influence, to be crowned king, and the pope issued his letters calling upon the faithful to unite under the banners of the cross, to drive the barbarians from Europe. This union, however, accomplished but little, as the pope was only anxious to bring the Greek church under the sway of Rome, and Daniel sought only military aid to expel the Tartars; each endeavoring to surrender as little and to gain as much as possible. One of the Christian nobles endeavored to persuade Mangou, a Tartar chieftain, of the superiority of the Christian religion. The pagan replied; "We are not ignorant that there is a God; and we love him with all our heart. There are more ways of salvation than there are fingers on your hands. If God has given you the Bible, he has given us our wise men (Magi). But you do not obey the precepts of your Bible, while we are perfectly obedient to the instructions of our Magi, and never think of disputing their authority." The pride of these Tartar conquerors may be inferred from the following letter, sent by the great khan to Louis, King of France: "In the name of God, the all powerful, I command you, King Louis, to be obedient to me. When the will of Heaven shall be accomplished—when the universe shall have recognized me as its sovereign, tranquillity will then be seen restored to earth. But if you dare to despise the decrees of God, and to say that your country is remote, your mountains inaccessible, and your seas deep and wide, and that you fear not my displeasure, then the Almighty will speedily show you how terrible is my power." After the death of Yaroslaf, his uncle Alexander assumed the sovereignty of the grand principality. He was a prince of much military renown. Bati, who was still encamped upon the banks of the Volga, sent to him a message as follows: "Prince of Novgorod: it is well known by you that God has subjected to our sway innumerable peoples. If you wish to live in tranquillity, immediately come to me, in my tent, that you may witness the glory and the grandeur of the Mogols." Alexander obeyed with the promptness of a slave. Bati received the prince with great condescension, but commanded him to continue his journey some hundreds of leagues further to the east, that he might pay homage to the grand khan in Tartary. It was a terrible journey, beneath a blazing sun, over burning plains, whitened by the bones of those who had perished by the way. Those dreary solitudes had for ages been traversed by caravans, and instead of cities and villages, and the hum of busy life, the eye met only the tombs in which the dead mouldered; and the silence of the grave oppressed the soul. In the year 1249, Alexander returned from his humiliating journey to Tartary. The khan was so well satisfied with his conduct, that he appointed him king of all the realms of southern Russia. The pope, now thoroughly alienated from Daniel, corresponded with Alexander, entreating him to bring the Greek church under the supremacy of Rome, and thus secure for himself the protection and the blessing of the father of all the faithful. Alexander returned the peremptory reply, "We wish to follow the true doctrines of the church. As for your doctrines, we have no desire either to adopt them or to know them." Alexander administered the government so much in accordance with the will of his haughty masters, that the khan gradually increased his dominion. Bati, the Tartar chieftain, who was encamped with his army on the banks of the Volga and the Don, died in the year 1257, and his bloody sword, the only scepter of his power, passed into the hands of his brother Berki. Alexander felt compelled to hasten to the Tartar camp, with expressions of homage to the new captain, and with rich presents to conciliate his favor. Many of the Tartars had by this time embraced Christianity, and there were frequent intermarriages between the Russian nobles and princesses of the Tartar race. It is a curious fact, that even then the Tartars were so conscious of the power of the clergy over the popular mind, that they employed all the arts of courtesy and bribes to secure their influence to hold the Russians in subjection. The Tartars exacted enormous tribute from the subjugated country. An insurrection, headed by a son of Alexander, broke out at Novgorod. The grand prince, terrified in view of the Mogol wrath which might be expected to overwhelm him, arrested and imprisoned his son, who had countenanced the enterprise, and punished the nobles implicated in the movement with terrible severity. Some were hung; others had their eyes plucked out and their noses cut off. But, unappeased by this fearful retribution, the Tartars were immediately on the march to avenge, with their own hands, the crime of rebellion. Their footsteps were marked with such desolation and cruelty that the Russians, goaded to despair, again ventured, like the crushed worm, an impotent resistance. Alexander himself was compelled to join the Tartars, and aid in cutting down his wretched countrymen. The Tartars haughtily entered Novgorod. Silence and desolation reigned through its streets. They went from house to house, extorting, as they well knew how, treasure which beggared families and ruined the city. Throughout all Russia the princes were compelled to break down the walls of their cities and to demolish their fortifications. In the year 1262, Alexander was alarmed by some indications of displeasure on the part of the grand khan, and he decided to take an immediate journey to the Mogol capital with rich presents, there to attempt to explain away any suspicions which might be entertained. His health was feeble, and suffered much from the exposures of the journey. He was detained in the Mogol court in captivity, though treated with much consideration, for a year. He then returned home, so crushed in health and spirits, that he died on the 14th of November, 1263. The prince was buried at Vladimir, and was borne to the grave surrounded by the tears and lamentations of his subjects. He seems to have died the death of the righteous, breathing most fervent prayers of penitence and of love. In the distressing situation in which his country was placed, he could do nothing but seek to alleviate its woe; and to this object he devoted all the energies of his life. The name of Alexander Nevsky is still pronounced in Russia with love and admiration. His remains, after reposing in the church of Notre Dame, at Vladimir, until the eighteenth century, were transported, by Peter the Great, to the banks of the Neva, to give renown to the capital which that illustrious monarch was rearing there. Yaroslaf, of Tiver, succeeded almost immediately his father in the nominal sway of Russia. The new sovereign promised fealty to the Tartars, and feared no rival while sustained by their swords. His oppression becoming intolerable, the tocsin was sounded in the streets of Novgorod, and the whole populace rose in insurrection. The movement was successful. The favorites and advisers of Yaroslaf were put to death, and the prince himself was exiled. There is something quite refreshing in the energetic spirit with which the populace transmitted their sentence of repudiation to the discomfited prince, blockaded in his palace. The citizens met in a vast gathering in the church of St. Nicholas, and sent to him the following act of accusation: "Why have you seized the mansion of one of our nobles? Why have you robbed others of their money? Why have you driven from Novgorod strangers who were living peaceably in the midst of us? Why do your game-keepers exclude us from the chase, and drive us from our own fields? It is time to put an end to such violence. Leave us. Go where you please, but leave us, for we shall choose another prince." Yaroslaf, terrified and humiliated, sent his son to the public assembly with the assurance that he was ready to conform to all their wishes, if they would return to their allegiance. "It is too late," was the reply. "Leave us immediately, or we shall be exposed to the inconvenience of driving you away." Yaroslaf immediately left the city and sought safety in exile. The Novgorodians then offered the soiled and battered crown to Dmitry, a nephew of the deposed prince. But Dmitry, fearing the vengeance of the Tartars, replied, "I am not willing to ascend a throne from which you have expelled my uncle." Yaroslaf immediately sent an embassador to the encampment of the Tartars, where they were, ever eagerly waiting for any enterprise which promised carnage and plunder. The embassador, imploring their aid, said, "The Novgorodians are your enemies. They have shamefully expelled Yaroslaf, and thus treated your authority with insolence. They have deposed Yaroslaf, merely because he was faithful in collecting tribute for you." By such a crisis, republicanism was necessarily introduced in Novgorod. The people, destitute of a prince, and threatened by an approaching army, made vigorous efforts for resistance. The two armies soon met face to face, and they were on the eve of a terrible battle, when the worthy metropolitan bishop, Cyrille, interposed and succeeded in effecting a treaty which arrested the flow of torrents of blood. The Novgorodians again accepted Yaroslaf, he making the most solemn promises of amendment. The embassadors of the Tartar khan conducted Yaroslaf again to the throne. The Tartars now embraced, almost simultaneously and universally, the Mohammedan religion, and were inspired with the most fanatic zeal for its extension. Yaroslaf retained his throne only by employing all possible means to conciliate the Tartars. He died in the year 1272, as he was also on his return journey from a visit to the Tartar court. Vassali, a younger brother of Yaroslaf, now ascended the throne, establishing himself at Vladimir. The grand duchy of Lithuania, extending over a region of sixty thousand square miles, was situated just north of Poland. The Tartars, dissatisfied with the Lithuanians, prepared an expedition against them, and marching with a great army, compelled many of the Russian princes to follow their banners. The Tartars spread desolation over the whole tract of country they traversed, and on their return took a careful census of the population of all the principalities of Russia, that they might decide upon the tribute to be imposed. The Russians were so broken in spirit that they submitted to all these indignities without a murmur. Still there were to be seen here and there indications of discontent. An ecclesiastical council was held at Vladimir, in the year 1274. All the bishops of the north of Russia were assembled to rectify certain abuses which had crept into the church. A copy of the canons then adopted, written upon parchment, is still preserved in the Russian archives. "What a chastisement," exclaim the bishops, "have we received for our neglect of the true principles of Christianity! God has scattered us over the whole surface of the globe. Our cities have fallen into the hands of the enemy. Our princes have perished on the field of battle. Our families have been dragged into slavery. Our temples have become the prey of destruction; and every day we groan more and more heavily beneath the yoke which is imposed upon us." It was decreed in this council of truly Christian men, that, as a public expression of the importance of a holy life, none should be introduced into the ranks of the clergy but those whose morals had been irreproachable from their earliest infancy. "A single pastor," said the decree of this council, "faithfully devoted to his Master's service, is more precious than a thousand worldly priests." Vassali died in the year 1276, and was succeeded by a prince of Vladimir, named Dmitri. He immediately left his native principality and took up his residence in Novgorod, which city at this time seems to have been regarded as the capital of the subjugated and dishonored kingdom. The indomitable tribes inhabiting the fastnesses of the Caucasian mountains had, thus far, maintained their independence. The Tartars called upon Russia for troops to aid in their subjugation; and four of the princes, one of whom, André of Gorodetz, was a brother of Dmitri the king, submissively led the required army into the Mogol encampment. André, by his flattery, his presents and his servile devotion to the interests of the khan, secured a decree of dethronement against his brother and his own appointment as grand prince. Then, with a combined army of Tartars and Russians, he marched upon Novgorod to take possession of the crown. Resistance was not to be thought of, and Dmitri precipitately fled. Karamsin thus describes the sweep of this Tartar wave of woe: "The Mogols pillaged and burned the houses, the monasteries, the churches, from which they took the images, the precious vases and the books richly bound. Large troops of the inhabitants were dragged into slavery, or fell beneath the sabers of the ferocious soldiers of the khan. The young sisters in the convents were exposed to the brutality of these monsters. The unhappy laborers, who, to escape death or captivity, had fled into the deserts, perished of exposure and starvation. Not an inhabitant was left who did not weep over the death of a father, a son, a brother or a friend." Thus André ascended the throne, and then returned the soldiers of the khan laden with the booty which they had so cruelly and iniquitously obtained. The barbarians, always greedy of rapine and blood, were ever delighted to find occasion to ravage the principalities of Russia. The Tartars, having withdrawn, Dmitri secured the coöperation of some powerful princes, drove his brother from Novgorod, and again grasped the scepter which his brother had wrested from him. The two brothers continued bitterly hostile to each other, and years passed of petty intrigues and with occasional scenes of violence and blood as Dmitri struggled to hold the crown which André as perseveringly strove to seize. Again André obtained another Mogol army, which swept Russia with fearful destruction, and, taking possession of Vladimir and Moscow, and every city and village on their way, plundering, burning and destroying, marched resistlessly to Novgorod, and placed again the traitorous, blood-stained monster on the throne. Dmitri, abandoning his palaces and his treasures, fled to a remote principality, where he soon died, in the year 1294, an old man battered and wrecked by the storms of a life of woe. He is celebrated in the Russian annals only by the disasters which accompanied his reign. According to the Russian historians, the infamous André, his elder brother being now dead, found himself legitimately the sovereign of Russia. As no one dared to dispute his authority, the ill-fated kingdom passed a few years in tranquillity. At length Daniel, prince of Moscow, claimed independence of the nominal king, or grand prince, as he was called. In fact, most of the principalities were, at this time, entirely independent of the grand prince of Novgorod, whose supremacy was, in general, but an empty and powerless title. As Daniel was one of the nearest neighbors of André, and reigned over a desolate and impoverished realm, the grand prince was disposed to bring him into subjection. But neither of the princes dared to march their armies without first appealing to their Mogol masters. Daniel sent an embassador to the Mogol camp, but André went in person with his young and beautiful wife. The khan sent his embassador to Vladimir, there to summon before him the two princes and their friends and to adjudge their cause. In the heat and bitterness of the debate, the two princes drew their swords and fell upon each other. Their followers joined in the melee, and a scene of tumult and blood ensued characteristic of those barbaric times. The Tartar guard rushed in and separated the combatants. The Tartar judge extorted rich presents from both of the appellants and settled the question by leaving it entirely unsettled, ordering them both to go home. They separated like two boys who have been found quarreling, and who have both been soundly whipped for their pugnacity. In the autumn of the year 1303 an assembly of the Russian princes was convened at Pereiaslavle, to which congress the imperious khan sent his commands. "It is my will," said the Tartar chief, "that the principalities of Russia should henceforth enjoy tranquillity. I therefore command all the princes to put an end to their dissensions and each one to content himself with the possessions and the power he now has." Russia thus ceased to be even nominally a monarchy, unless we regard the Khan of Tartary as its sovereign. It was a conglomeration of principalities, ruled by princes, with irresponsible power, but all paying tribute to a foreign despot, and obliged to obey his will whenever he saw fit to make that will known. Still there continued incessant tempests of civil war, violent but of brief duration, to which the khan paid no attention, he deeming it beneath his dignity to inter meddle with such petty conflicts. André died on the 27th July, 1304, execrated by his contemporaries, and he has been consigned to infamy by posterity. As he approached the spirit land he was tortured with the dread of the scenes which he might encounter there. His crimes had condemned thousands to death and other thousands to live-long woe. He sought by priestcraft, and penances, and monastic vows, and garments of sackcloth, to efface the stains of a soul crimsoned with crime. He died, and his guilty spirit passed away to meet God in judgment.     <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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