Russia under the Mongol Empire
In 1224 the Russians suffered a complete defeat at the hands of these marauders, on the banks of the river Kalka, close to where it discharges itself into the Sea…
From: 1224 C.E. To: 1488 C.E.
Location: Russia
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From The Story of Russia by Richard Morfill, 1890.
Russia under the Mongols
It does not belong to the plan of this work to give a detailed account of the origin of the Mongols or Tatars. Their original home was in South-eastern Siberia. From thence they carried on their expeditions for plunder and destruction over the centre of Asia and the East of Europe. They first become prominent in the year 1206, when they conferred the title of Dchingis Khan (i.e. Khan of Khans), or Temud Shin, the son of a Khan. It was under this chief, who has earned such a terrible fame in history, that they began to make themselves the terror of their neighbours. Towards the end of the thirteenth century their empire reached its widest limits, extending from the wall of China to the frontier of Poland, and from India to Siberia.
In 1224 the Russians suffered a complete defeat at the hands of these marauders, on the banks of the river Kalka, close to where it discharges itself into the Sea of Azov. But it was not till the year 1238 that the Mongols made any serious impression, on Russian territory; in this year they destroyed Bolgari, the capital of the Finnish Bulgarians on the Volga, and after having defeated the army of Suzdal at Kolomna on the Oka, they burned Moscow, Suzdal, and Yaroslavl.
It will be observed that up to the present time we have made no mention of Moscow, but at the period about which we write it was a wholly insignificant place. It is said to have been founded by George Dolgoruki—or the long-handed—the son of Vladimir Monomakh. The tradition is that the territory on, which it was built belonged to a certain boyar (for an explanation of this word see* the subsequent chapter on the Social Condition of Russia) named Kutchko. Having behaved very arrogantly to the Grand Duke, his possessions were seized, and as the country seemed a pleasant one to George, he caused the place to be enclosed and the foundations of the city to be laid.
The derivation of the name Moskva, so called from the river upon which it. is situated, has never been satisfactorily explained. We should probably find it in some Ural-Altaic language, for in the earliest times, as has been already stated, that part of Russia was inhabited by people of Finnish origin. Its importance does not begin till the time of Ivan Kalita, of whom more anon.
The Grand Duke Yuri (or George) of Suzdal—at this time, as now, the Greek γ had the sound of y, and this explains the metamorphosis of γεωργός into Yuri—was defeated on the banks of the river Sit, in the territory of Novgorod; he was decapitated after the battle, and his nephew Vasilko had his throat cut.
The Mongols took Tver—a city which had been founded at the beginning of the twelfth century, and advanced in the direction of Novgorod, but did not succeed in reaching that city; and throughout the whole of its career, which was a very prosperous one till the days of Ivan III.,
Novgorod never saw its territory ravaged. Kiev was soon afterwards taken, Galicia and Volhynia were devastated, and all Russia except Novgorod was under Mongol rule. On the Volga the city of Sarai was founded by them, and here their sovereigns reigned for two centuries, and their rule is attested by the many coins which have been preserved.
In 1272 the Mongols embraced Islamism. During the fifteenth century the Golden Horde, as it was called, was broken up into a number of smaller khanates, among them being those of the Crimea, Kazan, and Astrakhan. Kazan and Astrakhan we shall soon find subjugated by Ivan IV., but the Crimea became a dependency of the Turks, and in consequence was for a long time a bone of contention between Russia and Turkey.
It would be impossible to interest our readers in the details of all the petty battles fought by the feudatory grand dukes during this period of slavery. The Russian princes were obliged to attend the Mongol Khans when called upon to do so, and had to follow their armies into the furthest recesses of Asia to do homage to their master, which was exacted in the most humiliating fashion. They were forced to lick up any drops which fell from the Mongolian’s cup as he drank.
During this gloomy period there was little or no national life; but a great many monasteries were built, and in them the monks were cloistered, and busied themselves with the compilation of the long series of Chronicles which extends from the first attributed to Nestor, dating from the eleventh century to the days of Alexis Mikhailovich in the seventeenth. These compilations are of great value, and we shall frequently lay them under contribution. They will be more fully discussed in the chapter on Russian literature. The very learned notes added to the picturesque history of Karamzin, and the more sober-coloured production of Bestuzhgy-Riumin now in course of publication, are replete with extracts from these useful works.
In 1240 Alexander, son of Yaroslavs of Suzdal, who ruled at Novgorod the Great, defeated the Swedes on the Neva, then a Swedish, but afterwards destined to be a Russian river. It is this victory which gave him the name of Nevski, or of the Neva, and the reader will find the hero enrolled among the Russian saints. He was also triumphant, in 1242, over the German Sword-bearing knights, a religious order, who had established themselves in Livonia.
The Novgorodians, lucky in their remote position, and enjoying great prosperity as being one of the chief highways of trade, were compelled ultimately to pay tribute to the Khan in 1260. Alexander, however successful he may have been against northern invaders, was forced to submit to his Oriental lords, and he died on his return from one of the journeys on which be had gone to offer his customary homage.
But humiliating as the yoke of the Mongols was to the subject Slavs, they cannot be said to have had great influence upon the country; They made no attempt to turn the people into Tatars. They were content with the homage of the princes, with the poll-tax which they paid, and the military contingents which they were obliged to furnish when required. Besides these demands, the grand dukes had to obtain a yarlik or firman (two interesting specimens of yarliks are given in the third volume of the Transactions of the Eastern Section of the Russian Archaeological Society”), before they could ascend the throne, and they could not wage any war without the permission of their suzerains.
Many of the Russian princes contracted marriages with Mongol women, and some of their Murzas, or princes, became connected with the Russian boyars. Thus the Muscovite nobility became in part orientalized; and we shall find that no less a person than Boris Godunov, one of the most prominent nobles of the Court of Ivan IV, and afterwards himself elected Tsar, was of Mongolian origin.
The dress of the Russians became more Eastern, as shown in the long flowing caftan, or robe, which Peter the Great took so much pains to abolish. But M. Rambaud his interesting history of Russia (“ Histoire de la Russe” Paris, 1878, p. 143), has very justly remarked that the Russians had already adopted much of their orientalism from Byzantine sources.
We know from the pages of Gibbon how thoroughly barbaric in its splendours and servility the. Court of Constantinople had become, and it is to this source that many of the Muscovite customs must be traced—'Such as the seclusion of the women, the part of the house in which they spent their days having a name borrowed from the Greek terem (τέρμνον).
It would be difficult to say whether the humiliating custom of knocking the head on the ground (chelobitie) on entering the Tsar’s presence was Mongolian or Byzantine; it was abolished by Peter the Great, and the very word, which signifies literally beating of the forehead, which had become fixed in the Russian language with the simple meaning of petition, was disallowed by Catherine II.
Persons unacquainted with the subject are apt to imagine that the Russian language has a great many Tatar words, but in reality nothing can be farther from the truth; they are confined to words signifying articles of clothing and a few other names of material objects.
To the Mongols is probably owing the introduction of the knout—although the word itself is European, being nothing but a variant of our knot, perhaps introduced from Scandinavia. We shall find when we come to the reign of Ivan III. that this degrading form of punishment was then sanctioned. In the year 1488, the Chroniclers tell us, a nobleman and an archimandrite were publicly knouted for forging a will. The knout lasted till the reign of the Emperor Alexander I.
A strange custom also introduced by the Tatars was the punishment of the praviozh, or public flagellation of defaulting debtors, which we shall describe at some length in the chapter on the Social Condition of Russia. The custom was abolished by Peter the Great
Morfill, William Richard. The Story of Russia. G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1890.
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