In 1223 the armies of Chingis Khan, founder of the Mongol Empire, first reached the steppe south of Kievan Rus. At the Battle of Kalka they defeated a combined force of Polovtsy and Rus drawn from Kiev, Chernigov, and Volynia. The Mongols returned in 1236, when they attacked Bulgar. In 1237–1238 they mounted an offensive against Ryazan and then Vladimir-Suzdal. In 1239 they devastated the southern towns of Pereyaslavl and Chernigov, and in 1240 conquered Kiev.
The state of Kievan Rus is considered to have collapsed with the fall of Kiev. But the Mongols went on to subordinate Galicia and Volynia before invading both Hungary and Poland. In the aftermath of their conquest, the invaders settled in the vicinity of the lower Volga River, forming the portion of the Mongol Empire commonly known as the Golden Horde. Surviving Rurikid princes made their way to the horde to pay homage to the Mongol khan. With the exception of Prince Michael of Chernigov, who was executed, the khan confirmed each of the princes as the ruler in his respective principality. He thus confirmed the disintegration of Kievan Rus.
After some half-hearted attacks on Shirvan and Derbend, the Mongol expeditionary force crossed the Caucasus and, in 1222, emerged on the South Russian steppe which had been home, since the middle of the 11th century, to the Turkic tribes of the Kipchaks or Cumans. In May 1222, the Mongol generals Jebe and Sube’etei and 20,000 Mongol cavalrymen pursued the fleeing Kypchaks (or Cumans) from the western side of the Caspian Sea towards the northwest, to Kiev. The Mongols met the joint forces of the Russians and the Cumans, 30,000 men, on the eastern bank of the Dnieper River. Some say that Sube’etei, with only 2,000 Mongol cavalry, lured the Russians and Cumans for nine days towards the small Kalka River that flows into the Sea of Azov, where the main Mongol cavalrymen (numbering 20,000) were waiting. Under the direction of Jebe and Sube’etei, the Mongols attacked the enemy at the end of May and destroyed most of their forces.
According to the Arab historian Ibn al-Athir, the Mongols’ first victory was achieved through dividing the joint Kipchak-Alan forces by an appeal to the former, reminding them that the Cumans and Mongols “are of the same race, the Alans, however, do not relate to you,” a specious argument which, nevertheless, the Cumans found appealing. In January 1223 the Mongol armies entered Sudak (Soldaia) the principal market place in the Crimea, a colony of the Empire of Trebizond, where they met a mixed population consisting mainly of Greeks and Armenians. The Cumans’ treachery did not pay off since, separated now from the Alans, they had to bear alone the brunt of a Mongol attack. Defeated, their prince Koten (Kotien) sought refuge with his father-in-law Mistislav of Halich whom he warned by saying that “today they (the Mongols) took our land, and tomorrow they will come and take yours.” Koten succeeded in persuading some of the Russian princes to take the initiative and meet the Mongols before they had reached Russian territories.
Kalka
The Mongols sent an envoy of ten ambassadors to negotiate a surrender or alliance. The Russians haughtily executed them all without any awareness of what a serious breach of Mongol diplomatic etiquette they had committed and what a high price their princes, and all Russians, would soon pay for their crime.
This bold attitude brought initial success to the Russian armies and their Cuman allies; it was however insufficient to avert disaster at the principal battle fought near the river Kalka (present-day Kalec, a small tributary of the Kalmius) which, depending on our sources, took place either on May 31 or June 16, 1223. Some of the Russians, led by the Grand Duke of Kiev, resisted in a retrenchment for three days before surrendering on the promise that their lives would be spared. He capitulated, and the conditions were broken. His guard was massacred, and he and his two sons-in-law were stifled under planks. The Tatars held their festival over the inanimate bodies (1224).
Mongol forays continued for a while, reaching Novgorod in the north and the line of the Dnieper in the west. A probably halfhearted attempt to take Bulghar ended in failure. Ibn al-Athir, who recorded the event, also noted that subsequently the Mongols returned to meet Chinggis Khan, presumably towards the end of 1223.
Apparently the force that assembled to meet the Mongols was comprised of troops from all or most of the small kingdoms and city-states of the area. The Mongols began the conflict small skirmish before retreating to the east. The Russians thought that they had the upper hand and followed for nearly two weeks, at which time the Mongols brought them to a point that had been selected as providing advantageous conditions. The Russians had worn themselves out chasing the Mongols and become spread out. They drew themselves up in battle lines for attack and proceeded to get beaten badly. It is possible that at this point the Mongols offered surrender terms and the Russians took them because they had no other choice.
The Mongols continued chasing and slaughtering the Russians all the way back to the Black Sea, where the campaign began. In the words of the Novgorod Chronicle entry for 1224, of the large army sent out to fight the Mongols, only ‘every tenth returned to his home.’
It was important to the Mongols that the Russians understand the severe penalty for killing ambassadors, and it was equally as important for the Mongol leaders to reaffirm to their own men the extent to which they would always be willing to go to avenge the unjust killing of a Mongol.
