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It was no longer South Russia, but Sozdalian Russia, that was threatened. In 1237 Batu conquered the Great City, capital of the half-civilized Bulgars, who were, like the Polovtsi, ancient enemies of Russia, and who were to be included in her ruin. Bolgary was given up to the flames, and her inhabitants were put to the sword.
Here the tempest of battle raged for a few days, and then Moscow followed in the footsteps of Rezdan. 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.
To cement his alliance with the Russians, Basti, Khan of the Polovtsi, embraced orthodoxy. The Russian army had already arrived on the Lower Dnieper, when the Tartar ambassadors made their appearance. "We have come, by God's command, against our slaves and grooms, the accursed Polovtsi. Be at peace with us; we have no quarrel with you."
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 Golden Horde was formed not only of Tartar-Mongols or Nogais, who even now survive in the Northern Crimea, but particularly of the remains of ancient nomads, such as the Patzinaks and Polovtsi, whose descendants seem to be the present Kalmucks and Bashkirs; of Turkish tribes tending to become sedentary, like the Tartars of Astrakhan in the present day; and of the Finnish populations already established in the country, and which mixed with the invaders.
"Eccellenza," said Sobol solemnly, "just look at nature about us: if you poke your nose or your ear out of your fur collar it will be frost-bitten; stay in the fields for one hour, you'll be buried in the snow; while the village is just the same as in the days of Rurik, the same Petchenyegs and Polovtsi. It's nothing but being burnt down, starving, and struggling against nature in every way.
The Polovtsi asked the Christian princes for help against the Mongols and Turks, who were their brothers by a common origin. "They have taken our country," said they to the descendants of St. Vladimir; "to-morrow they will take yours."
The Tartars were busy finishing the conquest of China, but presently one of the sons of Genghis, Ugudei, sent his nephew Batu to the West. As the reflux of the Polovtsi had announced the invasion of 1224, that of the Saxin nomads, related to the Khirghiz who took refuge on the lands of the Bulgarians of the Volga, warned men of a new irruption of the Tartars, and indicated its direction.
His lieutenants subdued a multitude of Turkish peoples, passed the Caspian Sea by its southern shore, invaded Georgia and the Caucasus, and entered upon the southern steppes of Russia, where they came in contact with the Polovtsi, also a Mongol race, the hereditary enemies of the Russians proper.
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