HISTORY OF THE MONGOLS

CHAPTER 2

JUCHI AND BATU.

JUCHI KHAN

 

IN the earlier and less lucky days of Genghis Khan, the Merkits made a raid upon his tent and carried off his wife Burte, who was then enceinte. Wang Khan, the chief of the Keraits, recovered her and restored her to her husband. On the way she gave birth to a son, who was named Juchi, i.e., the unexpected or the recently arrived. The man who went to fetch her, covered the infant with dough, and, putting him in the fold of his cloak, went off with him on horseback. This was about the year 1176. Such was the birth of a prince whose posterity governed a vast empire. His name occurs for the first time, according to Abulghazi in 1203, when, we are told, he commanded the left wing of his father’s army against Tayang Khan, the chief of the Naimans; but this is probably a mistake for his uncle Juchi Kasar. He took part in his father’s campaign against China but it was after this and when Genghis Khan came into conflict with the Khuarezm Shah Muhammed that Juchi becomes prominent. The origin and early history of this campaign is only told cursorily in the former volume, and may well occupy a small space here.

It was not probable that two vast empires which bordered upon one another, which were both peopled by warlike inhabitants, and both ruled by ambitious princes, would long remain at peace, and cause of quarrel soon arose between the ruler of Khuarezm and the great conqueror in the East, Genghis Khan. At first, however, their intercourse seems to have been amicable. The fruitful valleys of Transoxiana were then exceedingly prosperous—filled with busy cities, the focus of Asiatic culture, and merchants from thence seem to have made their way into remote corners of Asia, they trafficked with Bulgaria for the products of the fur countries of Siberia, and with the Mongols for objects of eastern origin. We are told that a number of these merchants found themselves at the court of Genghis soon after he had subdued the nomads of Eastern Asia. Among them there are specially named Ahmed of Khojend, the son of the Emir Hussein San, and Ahmed Tajik.

We are told that one of them exhibited his wares before the Great Khan, and asked him an exorbitant price for them, two or three gold balishes for things only worth ten to twenty dinars. Genghis was enraged, and said, “This man fancies that we have never seen such things before;” and he ordered the riches of his wardrobe to be displayed before him, and then had the merchant’s goods confiscated, and had him put under arrest. When his two companions were introduced they diplomatically put no price on their goods, and merely said, “We have brought these for the emperor.” This pleased him so much that he ordered a golden balish to be given them for each piece of golden tissue, a silver balish for every two pieces of fine cotton, and another for every two pieces of coarse cloth. He then summoned the merchant whose goods had been confiscated and paid him after the same rate. The three traders were well treated, were supplied with food, and also with white felt tents. On their departure Genghis ordered his relatives and the noyans and other grandees to choose two or three agents each, and to supply them generously with money, and then ordered the whole body to return with the merchants to the empire of Khuarezm to purchase some of its products, and no doubt also to report on the condition of the country. This caravan, according to Juveni and Rashid, consisted of 450 persons, who are said to have been all Muhammedans. Muhammed of Nessa, who was a high official at the court of Muhammed’s son, and is therefore very reliable, says their number was only four, whom he names Omar Khoja, of Otrar; El Jemal, of Meraga; Fakhr ud din, of Bokhara; and Aminuddin, of Herat. They were probably the four leaders of the caravan. The caravan was apparently preceded by three envoys specially sent by Genghis, who were named Mahmud Yelvaj, of Khuarezm; Ali Khoja, of Bukhara; and Yusuf Gemrga, of Otrar. They took with them silver bars, musk, jade, and robes made of white camel’s wool called Tarkul, as presents for the Khuarezm Shah, and they also bore letters in which Jingis recounted to him the various kingdoms he had subdued and the power he had acquired; he urged that it would be well that they should cultivate each other’s friendship, and he commended the merchants to his care. The letter, however, breathed that arrogant spirit which pervaded all Mongol documents, and, although politely worded, Muhammed was given to understand that his correspondent was really his patron, and in addressing Muhammed as his son he really meant that he should consider himself his vassal. Muhammed treated the envoys well, and in the evening he summoned Mahmud Yelvaj to him, and addressed him thus: “ You are a Mussulman and a native of Khuarezm. Tell me the truth. Has your master conquered Tamghadj or no?” At the same time he gave him a costly stone from his casket.

“As true is it as that the Almighty lives; and more, he will shortly be the master of the whole world,” was the answer. “Oh, Mahmud,” the Sultan said, “you know the extent of my empire and my wide-spreading power. Who is this Khan of yours, who presumes to call me his son, and speaks to me in such an arrogant tone ? How great is his army— how extended his power?” To which he replied, “The army of Temudjin is to that of the Sultan like the light of a lamp beside the sun; like the face of a monster compared to that of a Rumelian Turk.” The result of this interview was the arranging of a treaty of peace between the two sovereigns. After which the envoys returned home to their master.

Meanwhile the caravan I have named above made its way to Otrar, which, as I have said, was governed by Inaljuk Gair Khan. We are told he was offended at the impertinence of one of the party, who is said to have been a Hindu, and who addressed him very familiarly, but he was doubtless more moved by the chance of confiscating so much wealth which had come in his way, for he was famous for his avarice, and he determined to put them to death and to seize their treasure. He apparently treated them with great civility, but meanwhile sent a despatch off to Muhammed, in which he represented to him that these people who came in the guise of merchants were really spies. This crafty letter had the desired effect. Muhammed’s suspicions were aroused, and he sent back word that Gair Khan was to do what prudence suggested. The latter accordingly invited the merchants to his palace, where he gave them an entertainment, and then had them secretly murdered; but one of the victims managed to escape. We are told he was a camel driver, who had gone to one of the public hot baths, and managed to escape by the fireplace. He returned to Genghis and reported to him the slaughter of the envoys.

Genghis Khan was naturally enraged. He sent off envoys to complain to Muhammed about his subordinate’s treachery, to acquaint the Sultan that the greater number of the murdered envoys were Mussulmans, and to remind him of the very different treatment his subjects had met with in Mongolia. He demanded that Gair Khan should be surrendered, and offered him war as the alternative of refusal. The bearer of the message was a Turk named Bagra, whose father had been in the service of Sultan Takish. But Gair Khan was too powerfully connected to allow the Sultan to surrender him, nor does he seem to have been pleased with the tone of the message, for he put Bagra to death, and sent back the two Mongols with their beards cut. Genghis Khan was so moved by this atrocity that he wept and could not rest. He climbed a mountain, where, uncovering his head and throwing his girdle over his shoulder, he invoked the vengeance of God, and passed three days and nights fasting. Abulfaraj, to whom we owe the account, adds that on the third night a monk dressed in black appeared to him in a dream and bade him fear nothing, that he would be successful in the campaign he meditated. On awaking he repeated the dream to his wife Obulgine, the daughter of Wang Khan, of the Keraits. She assured him that the monk was a bishop who was in the habit occasionally of visiting her father and of giving him his blessing. Genghis Khan appealed to the Uighur Christians if they had any such bishop among them. They accordingly summoned Mar Denha, upon which Genghis said that although the bishop was similarly dressed to the apparition which he had seen that his face was different. The bishop then said it must have been one of the Christian saints who had gone to him. After this adventure, we are told, Genghis treated the Christians with especial consideration.

It will be confessed that Genghis Khan had enough provocation for the invasion he made of the West, but he had other reasons than those I have enumerated. The Khalif, who had grown jealous of the power of the Khuarezm Shahs, also made overtures to the Mongol chief. We are told that he summoned his advisers about him, and represented to them the danger the Khalifate stood in from the ambition of Muhammed, and that he was determined to enter into communication with Genghis Khan, whose vizier, Mahmud Yelvaj, was a Muhammedan. The council, we are told, was much divided. The minority approved his suggestion, but the majority urged that it was impious and wrong to make allies of infidels in struggling with good Mussulmans. The Khalif, in reply, said that a Muhammedan tyrant was worse than one who was an infidel, and that Genghis had numbers of Mussulmans about him, one of his chief ministers being one. His view prevailed, and a suitable envoy was chosen. In order that he might not be discovered in traversing the very crooked gauntlet he would have to pass, it was determined to write his passport on his bald head. Having given him the message he was to deliver, they then tattooed his credentials in a few words on his head, in the violet colour called by them nil (Indian blue), in the manner (De la Croix says) they do to pilgrims at Jerusalem, and then sped him on his way. The envoy reached the chancellary of Mahmud Yelvaj in safety. He was received in secret audience by Genghis Khan, and when asked for his credentials bade them shave his head. They did so, and found that the Khalif proposed that he and Genghis should attack the empire of Khuarezm on either side. At that time it would seem that Genghis was not disposed to fight, and gave the envoy a diplomatic answer, but the Khalif’s invitation no doubt formed a considerable ingredient in the motives which afterwards moved him. This invitation, which eventually brought so much disaster upon the Mussulmans, has drawn much blame down on the Khalif’s head. Mirkhond compares him to the three devout pilgrims in the fable, who one day met in the fields with a heap of rotting bones. They began to dispute about them, but could not agree as to what the animal was. They then determined to pray consecutively to God to revivify the animal. The first had hardly finished his prayer when a great wind arose and brought the bones together, when the second was praying the bones were covered with flesh, while in answer to the prayer of the third the object began to move with life. They then found it was a lion, who sprang upon them and devoured them.

In the year 1216 Genghis sent his general, Subutai, against an army of Merkits which had assembled on the Altai mountains, under command of Khudu or Khodu, the brother of Tukta Bigi, the chief of the Merkits, and the latter’s three sons Jilaun, Jiyuk, and Kutulkan Mergen. The Merkits were badly defeated, and Kultukan was captured and conducted before Juchi. He was a famous archer, whence he got his soubriquet of Mergen. Juchi, who was his father’s chief huntsman, wished to save his life, and appealed to his father. The latter refused, urging that the Merkits had been among their deadliest foes, and that after conquering so many kingdoms they could well dispense with one man. He was accordingly put to death.

The authors who recount this story would make out that the whole Merkit nation was thus exterminated, but we read in other accounts that two years later a Mongol army was in pursuit of a body of Merkits which had fled westwards to the country of the Kankalis, and according to Ibn al Athir and Muhammed of Nessa, this army was commanded by Juchi in person. There is some confusion in the accounts. Some of them call the leader of the Merkits Tuk Tughan. Rashid calls him Khudu, and he is called Huodu in the Yuan Shi. The two latter authors make the Mongols be commanded by Subutai, and it is probable that they confused the expedition of 1218 with that of 1216.

To continue our story, the Mongols had pursued the Kankalis in the direction of Jend, had overtaken them between the rivers Kabli and Kamadj—the Kaili and Kamich of Erdmann—and had completely defeated them. It is very probable that this battle was fought in the valley of the Chu.

Muhammed was returning from Irak, where he had left his son Rokn ud din in charge, and had reached Samarkand when he heard of the approach of the fugitives under Tuk Tughan. He consequently marched in the direction of that town, by way of Bukhara, to prevent them crossing into his territory. He then heard that they were being pursued by an army of Mongols under a son of Genghis himself. This induced him to return to Samarkand for reinforcements, with which he again advanced towards Jend, thinking, in the quaint language of the chronicler, “ to bring down two birds with one arrow.” He pushed on towards the scene of the recent struggle, where numerous dead bodies were lying about, among which was a wounded Merkit who was still alive. From him he learnt that the Mongols had retired after their victory. He pursued and overtook them in a place called Karaku, perhaps the lake Kara kul. The Mongol chief (who, according to Ibn al Athir, was Juchi himself) sent word to Muhammed that their two kingdoms were not at war, that they had already entrapped the prey whom they were in search of, and that he had orders to treat the Khuarezmians as friends. He also offered Muhammed a portion of the booty and prisoners whom he had captured from the Merkits. Muhammed, whose forces were much more numerous than those of the enemy, replied that if Genghis had given no orders on the subject that God had ordered him to attack the Mongols, and that he would win his approval by destroying the pagans. Then the two armies prepared to fight; the great trumpet, Kerrena, fifteen feet long, was blown, the brass timbrels, called Kus, the drums, fifes, and other warlike instruments sounded the charge. Major Raverty says the right wings of either army, as is often the case in eastern, as it has frequently been in western battles, broke their respective opponents. The Mongols then attacked the Khuarezmian centre. The Sultan was in some danger when his gallant son Jelal ud din, who had been victorious on the right, charged the Mongols in flank, and saved the centre from defeat. The fight was maintained with great obstinacy until nightfall, when the two armies retired to a short distance confronting each other. The Chinese author translated by Gaubil adds a curious fact to those reported by the western writers. He tells us that Pitu, the son of Yelu liuko, whom Genghis had appointed king of Liautung, took part in this fight on the side of the Mongols, as did his relative Yelu kohay. The former was badly wounded, but seeing Juchi surrounded by the enemy he rushed to the rescue, and both managed to force their way out.

After the fight the Mongols lighted an immense number of fires to deceive the Khuarezmians, and decamped quietly during the night to join the camp of Genghis. The site of this battle is not very easy to determine. One account says it was in the country of Kashgar, other accounts say on the frontier of the country of the Jetes, while one says it was within the borders of Khuarezm. This seems to show it was on an indefinite frontier, and strengthens the identification of it with some place in the valley of the Chu.

Sultan Muhammed, we are told, having thus witnessed and beheld with his own eyes in this encounter the warlike feats, the activity, and the efforts of the Mongol forces, the next day retired from that place, and fear and dread of them took possession of his heart and mind, and he never again came against them. He retired to Samarkand, where he was seized with unaccountable irresolution although his forces probably numbered 400,000, but they were wanting in the discipline and soldierly virtues of the Mongols. Nor had they the latter’s incentive to fight. To them victory would bring little but barren honours, while to the Mongols it would open the gate to the rich treasures of Transoxiana. We are told that Juchi was well received and much praised for his conduct by his father.

Meanwhile, in the autumn of 12194 Genghis, who had summered his horses on the Irtish, in the country of the Naimans, marched westwards with the main army. This he presently divided into four divisions, one of which, under the command of Juchi, was sent against Jend and Yanghikent. With him marched the ulus Bede, that is, the Uighurs. He first attacked Sighnak, which afterwards became the capital of the White Horde. In order to avoid bloodshed, he sent an envoy to summon its inhabitants. He chose for this purpose a Mussulman named Hassan Haji (the pilgrim), who had been in Mongolia as a trader.  He urged upon the inhabitants the prudence of coming to terms with the Mongols. This counsel was rudely declined, and in the popular tumult which followed in the bazaar he was torn to pieces. This treacherous conduct enraged Juchi, and he determined to press the attack with the utmost vigour, relays of fresh men continually replaced those who were wearied out, until the place was captured. This was after a seven days’ siege. According to Mirkhond, all the garrison was put to death, and more than one-half of the principal inhabitants paid with their lives for the murder of Hassan. The town and the rest of the inhabitants were spared, inasmuch as the Mongols needed it as a base, a magnificent mausoleum was raised in the chief place in the city to the memory of Hassan, and a splendid funeral was accorded to his remains according to the Muhammedan custom. This account seems so circumstantial that we must adopt it rather than the conventional description of its fate followed by Erdmann and D’Ohsson. Juchi gave the government of Sighnak and the surrounding district to Hassan’s son. The fate of Sighnak overawed the neighbouring towns. Uzkend determined to surrender, and when the Mongols were within two days’ march of it they sent in their submission, the governor and garrison meanwhile retiring to Benaket. Juchi treated the town with great consideration, and having levied a contribution of food merely, forbade it to be plundered, and advanced towards Eshnash. Von Hammer and others identify this town with; Tashkend, considering the name to be a corruption of El Shash, but it is written Hanasa in the Chinese authority translated by Gaubil, nor was Tashkend at all in the direction taken by Juchi. It is probable that all three towns were situated north of the mountains separating the valleys of the Sihun and Chu. We are told Eshnas made a gallant defence, and was not captured without some bloodshed. He then captured Bakhaliaket or Barkhaligkend, and afterwards advanced upon Jend. It was a famous town in the east, having been the birthplace of several celebrated men. From it, according to Mirkhond, twenty Scythian envoys went to meet Alexander, praying him if he were a god to show it by doing good to men, and if but a man to reflect on the uncertainty of his condition, instead of proceeding further with the design to rob them of their goods and quiet, t At this time it was ruled by a petty dynasty. The name of the ruler was Kutlugh Timur, whose father had submitted to the Khuarezm Shah and was a dependent of his. He was very rich, and on the approach of the Mongols thought it prudent to retire westwards towards Khuarezm with his treasures. The inhabitants meanwhile determined to defend the town. Juchi sent an emissary named, Chin Timur, to counsel them to submit, and he reminded them of the fate of Sighnak. They would have killed him but that he promised to persuade the Mongols not to touch the city. When he reported the result of his journey and the condition of the place, he, according to Khuandemir, suggested to Juchi that he should storm it on the side where the inhabitants deemed it most inaccessible, namely, where it was defended by a ditch. His suggestion was adopted. Three false attacks were made elsewhere, and the battering engines were planted at the weakest part of the defences. When the day for the attack had arrived, the latter were assailed amidst great shouts and the sound of timbrels, drums, &c. ; the battering rams were planted, and the Mongol slingers drove the besiegers from the wall. This was at dusk. When suspicion had been lulled, Chin Timur placed his bridges on the ditch and planted two ladders against the wall, one of which he mounted himself. The walls were scaled, the gates were opened, and the Mongols let in before the garrison was properly aroused. Thus, says Petis de la Croix, was the city of Jend taken without any loss, for the Mongols, meeting with no resistance, did not destroy any one. The inhabitants were ordered to leave the town and to go into a neighbouring plain, where they remained for nine days and were numbered. The Mongols then plundered the houses, and having planted a garrison there under the orders of Ali Khoja, who was a Muhammedan from Bokhara, and had been with the Mongols before the war, as I have mentioned, they allowed them to return, only two or three of them, who had abused Chin Timur in his conference with the inhabitants, were killed.

Juchi now despatched a tuman or division to capture Jhe town of Yanghikent, which was situated on the Jaxartes, two days’ journey from its outfall into the sea of Aral. There also he placed a commander. Soon after this the ulus Bede, i.e., the Uighurs, were permitted to return home, and Juchi replaced them by a body of 10,000 auxiliaries from the Kankali steppe, under the command of Ainal Noyan, and sent them towards Khuarezm. They went on with the advance guard, but these unruly nomads killed the commander Ainal Noyan set over them, and afterwards scattered and sought refuge about Amuyeh and Meru.

While Juchi was subduing the towns on the lower Jaxartes, his brothers were conquering those further east, and his father advanced on Samarkand and Bokhara. After the fall of those towns Genghis sent his three eldest sons, Juchi, Jagatai, and Ogotai, against Khuarezm, where there were at this time three commanders, Khumar Tikin, Moghol Hajib, and Feridun. The first of these was the eldest brother of the famous Turkan Khatun, the mother of Muhammed Khuarezm Shah, and he had been appointed governor of Urgenj by his nephew.

Urgenj was then very populous, and its people were living an easy life, not suspecting the storm which was about to break over them. When the Mongol advance guard approached the gates and carried off some horses and asses, the hyperbolic Abulghazi would have us believe that they were pursued by 100,000 horsemen from the town, who overtook them at a garden situated a farsang distant, and named Baghi-Kurrem, i.e., Garden of Delights; there the Mongols had planted an ambush, and such a carnage ensued that but ten men escaped of the 100,000 !!! The Mongols pursued them as far as a place called Tenure, and ravaged the whole country round. On the following day they beleaguered the town. Juchi sent in a summons for it to surrender, telling its people that it had been given him by his father, and that he wished to preserve its beauty intact. This summons was not obeyed, and the siege proceeded. It lasted for seven months, the Mongol catapults, for lack of stones, having to be served with balls made out of the neighbouring mulberry trees soaked in water; the besiegers further attempted to divert the waters of the Oxus above the town, and sent 3,000 men to dig the necessary ditch, but the garrison attacked and destroyed these workmen. The siege work was hampered by the quarrels of the two brothers Juchi and Jagatai, and to punish them Genghis superseded them and appointed Ogotai, whose generous and docile disposition was well suited to restore peace. This policy was successful, and the siege was pressed on. Gaubil’s Chinese authority tells us the inhabitants had planted their best troops along the river, and had constructed ten entrenchments. They had also prepared a well-armed fleet. Kopaoyu, who had been an officer of the Kin empire, but had passed over to the side of Jingis on the latter’s great victory in 1211, was ordered to attack the fleet. We are told he made a number of fire arrows, which he discharged during a wind, and which set the boats in a blaze. Under cover of the confusion and smoke caused by this fire the Mongols attacked and forced the entrenchments and captured the town. Its inhabitants were ordered to evacuate it, the artisans, consisting of 100,000 families, were set apart; the girls and boys were reduced to slavery; the rest were distributed among the soldiers’ twenty-four to each, and all were then slaughtered.

Abulghazi says it is reported that the Sheikh Nadjmud din Kubra, son of Omar the Khivan, whose name had a world-wide repute, was then at Urgenj. The Mongol princes sent to ask him to go out, so that he might not be trodden under by the horses. He replied that he was not alone, but had relatives and slaves. They then bade him go with ten persons. He replied, he had more than ten. Then they said he might go out with 100 persons. He said he had more than 100. Then said they, take 1,000 persons ; but he replied, “In happier days I knew all these people, who were my friends. How can I abandon them in their misfortune ? No, I cannot leave.” At this moment the Mongols arrived at his house, and after sending several of them to Hades, he ended by himself receiving the crown of martyrdom. It is said (the Koran, sura 2, verse 151), “We belong to God, and we return to him.” This very problematical story, partially constructed out of the old history of the fall of the cities of the plain, one only quotes as illustrating eastern modes of thought. Its details are entirely contrary to what we know of Mongol policy, which was not over tender to Mussulman saints.

Juchi was much piqued at being superseded, and, after the capture of Urgenj, he, according to the Persian authors, retired to the deserts of the Kirghiz Kazaks, and subdued the Kankalis and other tribes there; probably making himself master of the various nomads who lived in the steppes between the Yaik and the Jaxartes.

The Yuan-chao-pi-shi and the Tsing-cheng-lu, however, say that after the fall of the city all three brothers repaired to their father’s camp. It was probably after this he retired in dudgeon. The cause of the quarrel with his brothers, which led to important results afterwards, is perhaps to be found in the fact of the ambiguous circumstances surrounding his birth, and which made it possible for people to suggest that he was a bastard, a soubriquet that is not easily forgiven. It was perhaps because of this suspicion that his father made his brother Ogotai and not himself the head of the house. He spent his time in hunting, and was master of the hunt in the establishment of Genghis. When in 1224 Genghis returned home from his Indian campaign, he ordered Juchi to go and meet him at Kolan Tashi, near the Jaxartes, and drive a vast body of wild animals, so that they should concentrate there and he might enjoy his favourite sport. Juchi himself did not go, but he had the myriads of wild asses his father loved to hunt driven to the appointed rendezvous. His father had given him orders to conquer the country north of the Black Sea, including, according to Rashid, Ibir Sibir, Bulgaria, Kipchak, Baschguerdia (Hungary), Russia, and Circassia ; but the lazy hunter neglected this duty, and was content with the appanage he had already acquired. This consisted of the Eastern Kipchak, a great part of which was known in later days as Desht Jitteh.

Irritated at Juchi for not prosecuting the conquest of the desert tribes, Genghis had on his journey homewards from Persia sent him several summons to go to him. He had excused himself on the ground of his bad health, and he was in fact unwell. When Genghis arrived once more at his ordu, in February, 1225, a Mangut also arrived there from Juchi’s country, who reported that he was well and that he had seen him recently engaged in hunting. Genghis, we are told, was convinced his son had wilfully disobeyed him, and determined to bring him back to his obedience sharply; and his two other sons, Ogotai and Jagatai, had in fact set out with the advance guard, Genghis himself proposing to follow on that errand, when news arrived that he was dead.t Juchi died in 1224, and according to M. Veliaminof Zernof, he was buried near Seraili (?Serai). He was then forty-eight years old.

Whether Genghis had the intention to displace his eldest son from the heirship of the Mongol empire, either from his questionable birth or from his repeated disobedience or not, it is clear that his death made matters more easy for such a revolution. According to Mongol law a sovereign is always succeeded by his eldest surviving brother, and thus the immediate heritage on Juchi’s death fell not to his sons but to his brother, and by the will of Genghis, Ogotai was in fact named his heir. Juchi’s family succeeded, therefore, not to the Imperial dignity but only to their father’s special ulus or appanage, which was apparently conterminous with Khuarezm proper and the steppes of the Kankalis; the Ural, the Jaxartes, and the Oxus being the rivers which watered it.

The senior wife of Juchi was Bekutemish, the daughter of Yakembo, brother of the Wang Khan of the Keraits. She was one of three famous sisters, the other two being Siurkukteni, the wife of Tului, and Abika, the wife of Genghis, whom he afterwards married (being directed thereto in a dream) to a Urut prince, who was acting as his body guard. His second wife was Oki or Ukin Kuchin, the daughter of Ilji Noyan of the Kunkurats. Another of his wives was Sultan Khatun, of the tribe Imen. Khuandemir mentions a fourth, also a Kunkurat, who was called Sarkan. By these, and probably other wives, he had a numerous family. Rashid says forty sons, but this is doubtless a mistake for fourteen, and Khuandemir says expressly he had fourteen sons. He also left two daughters, one of whom was married to the Khan of the Karluks, and another to Sighnak Tikin, chief of Almaligh.

 

BATU KHAN.

 

The various sons of Juchi are divided by Rashid into two divisions. Those of the right hand, i.e., the western division, and those of the left hand, i.e., the eastern division, a division which probably coincides with their relationship, those in each section having been by a different mother. Orda, the eldest son of Juchi, was the head of the eastern house, and Batu of the western, the latter being in a position of feudal dependence on the former. This dependence was, however, almost nominal. We find Batu taking command of the army which invaded Hungary (to whose doings I shall return presently), and according to Abulghazi, whose authority, however, on such a point is not of much value, he was nominated as successor to Juchi by Genghis Khan himself. He tells us that after the customary mourning Genghis sent his brother Uchegin to instal Batu, surnamed Sain Khan, or the good prince, and to insist upon his brothers submitting to him. In case any of them refused he was to be sent to Genghis to be dealt with by him. When Batu heard of the approach of Uchegin he sent his sons, brothers, and emirs to meet him, and then set out himself. The first three days after his arrival were devoted to mourning for the death of Juchi. After which Uchegin duly installed Batu, who was recognised by all his brothers. A great feast followed, in which the Mongols, as was their custom, presented Batu with the cup, who in turn presented it to them again, and distributed rich presents. It was in the midst of these rejoicings that news arrived of the death of Genghis. This story, as I have said, I believe to be largely fabulous. Among the Mongols, as among nomadic people generally, the father left his clans and his herds, rather than any distinct territory to his sons. The land was merely the pasturing ground of the cattle, and its area was limited by their necessities. On turning to the army list of Genghis Khan we find that but 4,000 men of Mongol race were left to Juchi and his family. This is a very good proof of the small Mongol element there was in the Golden Horde. It formed but the steel head of the spear, the shaft of which was comprised of heterogeneous elements.

These four thousand Mongols were divided into four Hezarehs, or battalions of a thousand, the first one commanded by the Saljiut Munggur, who commanded the left wing in Batu’s army, and was succeeded by his son Jerkes; the second by Gingetai Kuman Noyan, of the Ginget tribe, whose son Huran was a distinguished prince; the third by Hushitai, of the Hushin tribe, one of the subjects of Burji Noyan; and the fourth by Barku, who was attached to the right wing. A portion of these Mongols, in the subsequent civil strife which occurred among the Mongol princes, settled in the territory of the Ilkhans, i.e., in Persia.

Such was the salt of the army; the main body was composed of Russians, Circassians, Magyars, and Turks, of whom the Turks, as I have said, formed the overwhelming number. This being so, the term Mongol, as applied to the people constituting the Ulus of Juchi and his descendants, is in some sense a misnomer, for it only describes the leaders and the cream of the army. Unfortunately no name is unexceptionable, but after some hesitation I have decided to designate them as Tartars, the name by which the mediaeval travellers and the Russian chroniclers called them, and the name by which their descendants, the Krim Tartars, the Tartars of Kazan, the Nogay Tartars, &c., are still known. In using this name it must be remembered, as I showed in the former volume, that the Tartars proper were a different race, probably of Tungus origin, and that we only use it in the present instance from its being so generally diffused as connoting the subjects of Batu Khan, and in default of a better name. As I have said, I discredit the statement of Abulghazi about Batu having been nominated to the head of his house by Jingis, nor did he acquire that dignity for some time and probably until after his great success as a general.

At this time the princes of the left hand were no doubt the most important. Orda, Tuk Timur, Singkur, and Siklumt are named as constituting it, and Orda was the eldest son of Juchi. His mother, according to Khuandemir, was called Sarkan. There are reasons for believing that these princes had the greatest share in the division of Juchi’s heritage. It would seem that soon after Juchi’s death they began an aggressive war upon the neighbouring tribes. From the narrative of the friar Julian, who travelled as far as Great Hungary, or the country of the Bashkirs, in 1236, we learn that the Tartars, i.e., the Mongols, then lived in contact with and had been defeated in battle by them, that afterwards they formed an alliance together, and as allies, that they conquered fifteen kingdoms. He describes these Eastern Hungarians, or Bashkirs, as heathens, and as neither having any knowledge of the true God nor worshipping other gods, but as living like wild beasts. They did not practise agriculture, ate horses and wolves’ flesh, and drank milk, wine, and blood. They had horses and weapons in abundance, and were very warlike. They had a tradition that the Hungarians had gone from their country, but did not know where they had gone to.

But to revert to our story, the Tartars seem to have carried their arms as far west as Bolghari, on the Volga, the capital of the Eastern Bulgarians. It is well known that among the ruins of that town, which still remain, there have been found a number of ancient gravestones with inscriptions in Arabic and Armenian. Klaproth wrote a paper on these stones, which was printed in the Journal of the French Asiatic Society. The most ancient of these inscriptions are dated in the year of the arrival of the oppression, and bear a chronogram, which Klaproth has read 623 of the hejira, the year 1226, and his view has been generally accepted, that the curious phrase and date have reference to an invasion of Bulgaria by the Tartars in that year.

Genghis Khan died in 1227, and was succeeded by his son Ogotai. On the latter’s accession he sent, or rather ordered Singkur, who is otherwise called Suntai, one of the princes of the left division already named, to march at the head of 30,000 men against the tribes on the lower Yaik or Ural; and we read how in the year 1229 the Saksins, the Poloutsi, and a section of the Bulgars fled and found refuge in Bulgaria, and Suntai apparently wintered in 1232 in the neighbourhood of Bolghari. The Bulgarians appealed for assistance to the Grand Prince George II of Vladimir, while the Poloutsi were aided by Isiaslaf Mitislaf of Smolensko and Vladimir Rurikovitch of Kief, and the Tartars seem to have been forced to retire once more to the Yaik. Wolff urges that the Poloutsi probably took part in this struggle, since Kotiak, their chief, in his communications with Bela IV of Hungary, claims to have twice defeated the Tartars in former years.

When the friar Julian visited Great Hungary, as I have mentioned, in the spring of 1236, he met some Tartars and an envoy from their chief (doubtless from Singkur). It is not easy to see why Singkur should have had charge of the army rather than his brother Orda, unless perhaps the latter with Batu accompanied Ogotai on his expedition to China, as Abulghazi says. When Batu made his great expedition into Hungary Singkur was left behind, apparently in charge of the ulus of Juchi. It was probably the report of Singkur’s want of success in Bulgaria which weighed with the great Kuriltai which assembled in 1235, where it was decided inter alia that an army should march westwards against the Russians. The command of this army was not given to Orda, the eldest brother, but to Batu, who had probably shown his prowess in the Chinese campaign. Under him marched his brothers Orda, Sheiban, and Tangut; Baidar, the son, and Buri, the grandson of Jagatai; Kuyuk and Kadan Ogul, the sons of Ogotai ; Mangu and Bejak, the sons of Tului; and Kulkan, the half-brother of the Great Khan Ogotai.

This was not the first time the Tartars had crossed arms with the Russians. I have in the previous volume described the campaign which they fought against them under their generals Subutai and Chepe, whose central point was the great fight on the Kalka. Ibn al Athir tells us that on retiring from Russia on that occasion they, in January, 1224, made a raid upon Bulgaria, where they were entrapped into an ambush and suffered severely. He tells us that during the time when the Mongols were in Southern Russia the communication with the country to the north (which was the land of furs to the then civilised world) was interrupted, and that in consequence the trade in burtasi, i.e, so called “Russian leather,” and in the furs of the ermine and beaver, was for a while interrupted.

Let us now turn, however, to the more important invasion of 1238. The grand army seems to have assembled on the borders of the Yaik, and was doubtless composed very largely of Kankalis, Naimans, &c., the debris of the old empire of Kara Khitai and of the Naimans, and resembled a huge encampment of the Kirghiz Kazaks of our day, who are so nearly allied in blood and otherwise with Batu’s followers.

The army was divided into three divisions. One marched against the Saksins, on the lower Volga, whose chief was Pachiman. The town attacked by this body was apparently the Sumerkent of Rubruquis, which he tells us took eight years to capture. This probably includes a former siege by Singkur. While Mangu and Bejuk marched with this army towards the lower Volga, Subutai, the hero of so many fights, and especially of the celebrated campaign in which, in company with Chepe, he forced the Caucasus and defeated the Russian princes on the Kalka, marched against Bolghari. He doubtless acted the part of Marshal Moltke in the recent war between Germany and France, and was the head of the staff and general superintendent of the strategy. He reduced the Bulgarians (two of whose princes did homage), and when they afterwards rebelled he was sent to punish them.

At the time of Batu’s invasion George Vsevolodovitch was grand prince of Vladimir; his brother Yaroslaf, who had for many years reigned at Novgorod, had only just seized the throne of Kief, and had left his famous son Alexander Nevski at Novgorod. Thus the three virtual capitals of Russia were in the same hands. The grand prince was also acknowledged as their lord paramount by the Mordvins, who had suffered much at the hands of his people, while the Bulgarians on the Kama were also more or less subordinate to him. The Mordvins, however, had felt the heel of their patrons too much to be very contented, and were no doubt ready to help any invaders who might offer them surcease, and such invaders were now at hand in the persons of Batu and his followers. The life of Mangu in the Yuan-shi tells us that he joined Batu in his expedition against the Russians, and fought in person at the capture of Riazan.

The main army of the Tartars advanced, as I have described,! through the modern governments of Simbirsk, Pensa, and Tambof, then chiefly peopled by the Mordvins, who acted as their guides, towards the eastern frontiers of Russia. These coincided with the eastern boundary of the modern government of Riazan, then constituting the principality of Riazan. I have described this campaign in my former volume as it is told by the contemporary writers, but a more romantic story is told in the more modern chronicle of Kostroma (which was written in the seventeenth century), perhaps founded on reliable traditions. According to this account, when Batu appeared on the frontier, George, the Prince of Riazan, sent his son Feodor with presents to him. Batu accepted them, and ordered the Russian princes to send him their sisters and daughters; and having heard that Feodor had a beautiful wife, an Imperial princess named Euphrasia, he asked to see her. Feodor replied that it was not the custom for Christian princes to show their wives to infidels, upon which he was decapitated. A few days after Euphrasia, who was in one of the top rooms of the palace holding in her arms her little son, Ivan Feodorovitch Postnik, having heard the news of how her husband had sacrificed his life for her beauty, threw herself from the window, and thus perished. Another narrative says that she threw herself down from the church of Saint Nicholas with her child. The site of this deed afterwards bore the name of uboi, i.e., “fall.” The names in Rashid’s MSS. are frequently very corrupt. In the MS. of Vienna, Riazan is given as Erjan, while in that of Paris, as given by D’Ohsson, it is further corrupted into Ban. The Riazan of those days is now represented by the ruins and village of Staraia Riazan, ten leagues distant from the modern Riazan. One of the Russian chronicles tells us that during the attack on Riazan, Ingor, one of its princes, was at Chernigof with a nobleman named Eupathius Kolurat. When the latter heard of the Tartar invasion he marched to the rescue, but Batu had already passed on. He went on in pursuit with 7,000 warriors, with whom he broke the Tartar rear guard, who thought that they were the warriors of Riazan who had come to life again, but they were overwhelmed and perished. Meanwhile Ingor returned once more to the principality, which he found strewn with ruins and corpses. Having collected together the priests and others who had escaped, he began to inter the dead. The body of Prince George was found after some trouble, taken to Riazan, and there buried, and stone crosses were erected over the tombs of Feodor, his wife, and son, who were buried on the banks of the Osseter, where the church of Saint Nicholas Zarasky now stands. Zaras means the murder; Karamzin mentions that a great curiosity still exists in the monastery of Saint John the Evangelist, about thirty-six versts from Riazan, namely, a golden Mongol tablet, i.e., a paizah, which was deposited for safety against the depredations of the Mordvins in the metropolitan church by the Archbishop Misael in 16534. After the capture of Riazan the Tartars proceeded along the Oka and captured Kalomna, as I have described. In the battle which followed, where Roman Igorovitch was killed, Vsevolod, son of the grand prince George, was present, but he escaped to his father at Vladimir. The Mongols then took and burnt Moscow, which is called Mokos in the Jihankushai. They afterwards advanced against Vladimir, the capital of the principality of Suzdal, and at this time the seat of the grand principality of Russia. The grand prince had retired, as I have described, and left the town in command of his sons Vsevolod and Mitislaf. Having invested it, the Tartars sent off a contingent to the neighbouring town of Suzdal. There they destroyed the church of Our Lady, and set fire to the palace of the prince and the monastery of Saint Dimitri. I was misled by Von Hammer and Wolff into stating that the monks and nuns were spared. It was only the young ones, together with the young girls, that were spared; the old ones perished with the blind, the infirm, and the cripples. After the fall of Vladimir the Mongols divided into three bodies. One marched upon Gorodetz, on the Volga, not far from Nishni Novgorod; another upon Galitch, situated on the river Kostroma, and known as Galitch Merski from the Meriens who lived there; while a third marched upon Rostof and Yaroslavl, and proceeded to destroy the various towns of the grand principality, which I have already enumerated. When the grand prince fell in battle on the Sitti, there perished with him his nephews Vsevolod and Vladimir, the sons of his brother Constantine. His son Vassilko was taken prisoner, but he refused to take food ; and on being pressed by the Mongols to join their banners, he refused with scorn, and called them tigers, polluted with blood, enemies of Christ, and enemies of his country. “You shall never be my friends,” he said, “you are doomed to perdition. There is a God, and you shall be destroyed when your cup is full.” They accordingly put him to death, and threw his body into the forest of Scherensk. Cyril, bishop of Rostok, afterwards found the corpse of George; it was beheaded, but he recognised it by its rich garments. That of Vassilko was also recovered, and father and son were deposited in the same tomb.

On their march towards Novgorod they captured Volok Lamsky (now called Volo Kolansk), Tuer, and Torjek. The last place having resisted them was destroyed, according to the Mongol law under such circumstances. The Tartars advanced as far as the lake Seliger, where the Volga springs. “The villages,” says the chronicler, “disappeared, and the heads of the Russians fell like grass before the sickle” Torjek was captured on the 14th of March, and if we consider that the battle on the Sitti was fought on the 4th, we shall have a measure of the terrible vigour of the invaders.

So far the history of the campaign is tolerably plain. At this point, however, difficulties arise. We know, as I have said, that the Tartars retired towards the south, and that they laid siege to and captured Koselsk, in the government of Kaluga, and somewhat south-west of Moscow. According to the chronicle of Nikon they afterwards went again to Riazan. Rashid says that after taking Koselsk they went into cantonments, i.e., encamped; and this, the main army may well have done somewhere in Central Russia, and not improbably near Riazan, while different contingents made expeditions in various directions. A second body, under Bereke, the brother of Batu, attacked the Kipchaks, no doubt in their homeland, the Desht Kipchak, between the Volga and the Don, and compelled their chief Kotiak to escape to Hungary. This district was afterwards assigned as a camping ground to Bereke. A third army, under Sheiban, Bujek, and Buri, marched against the Marimes, a branch of the Chinchaks, as we read it in the corrupt Paris text of Rashid. I have suggested that these Marimes may have been the Mari or Cheremisses, but inasmuch as Karamzin mentions the conquest of the Mordvins of Murom and Ghorokhovetz, the former town on the Oka, and the latter on the Khasina, it may well be that the Marimes of Rashid were the inhabitants of Murom, and that Chinchakes is merely a corruption of Chudes, the generic name for the various Ugrian race of South-eastern Russia. A fourth army was sent, under Kadan and others, against the Caucasian mountaineers, and defeated the Circassians and killed their chief Tukan. This was in the autumn of 1238. Later in the year Kadan, Buri, and others, no doubt with the same contingent, laid siege to Mangass or Mikes. It would seem that Mangu took part in this campaign, for we are told in the Yuan-shi that in the winter of 1238 and 1239 he invested Asu-Mie-kieze, and took it after three months’ siege. The name Asu means here Alan. This was doubtless the capital of the Alans or Ossetes, which is called Magass by Masudi. D’Ohsson identifies it with a place called Mokhatschla, on the Cherek, a tributary of the Terek. This they captured after a siege of six weeks, and in the spring of 1239 sent Kukdai to attack Derbend. Meanwhile the main army under Batu wintered, as I believe, somewhere in Central Russia, probably near Riazan.

On Batu’s retreat Yaroslaf, prince of Kief and brother of the late grand prince George, went to Vladimir to occupy the vacant throne, “to reign,” in the quaint language of Karamzin, “over ruins and corpses.” He buried the dead, collected together the fugitives, and began once more to restore order to the desolated provinces, and then invested his elder brother Sviattosaf with the principality of Suzdal; the younger one, Vladimir Dimitri, with Starodub; and the grandsons of his elder brother Constantine, Boris, Gleb, and Wasili, with Rostof, Bielosero, and Yaroslaf. Nor was he so weak that he failed to defeat the Lithuanians in the neighbourhood of Smolensko and Pskof. In the spring of 1239 the main body of the Mongols under Batu was again in motion. This time against the inhabitants of the Dnieper, the later Malo-Russians, and their clients the Karakalpaks or black bonnets, the Turkish representatives of the later Slavic Zaporogian Cossacks. Against what in fact was alone Russia in the eyes of Nestor and the other old chroniclers, for Great Russia or Muscovy, as we now term it, was no part of the primitive Russia, which was limited to the districts of Little Russia. While Kief lost its paramount importance by its sack in 1169, as I have mentioned, it was by no means extinguished, and in the hands of some of its princes obtained an intermittent importance only second to that of Vladimir. It became in fact the capital of the south-west districts of Russia, those districts which are now called Malo-Russian.

When Batu marched against the grand prince George II, the latter’s brother Yaroslaf Feodor was prince of Kief, but he had only been so for a few months. On his brother’s death he moved to Vladimir, and succeeded to the principality, as I have mentioned. The throne of Kief was thereupon immediately seized by Michael of Chernigof, the son of Vsevolod the Red, who ever since the year 1224 had carried on a struggle with the Yaroslaf first named for the possession of Novgorod. Michael’s son Rostislaf was given the town of Galitch as an appanage, but having made a raid into the lands of Daniel, the prince of Volhynia and Gallicia, he was driven away and sought refuge in Hungary. There he married a daughter of Bela IV, the Hungarian king.

It would thus seem that on the approach of the Tartars the princes of South-western Russia, instead of being united, were at variance with each other, and could offer no decent resistance to the enemy, who now marched upon Kief, the mother of the Russian cities. On their approach Michael fled westwards to Poland, to Duke Conrad of Mazovia, and thence, after a short stay, he went on to Silesia. While staying at Neumarkt, in that district, his people were attacked, his treasure robbed, and one of his grand-daughters was killed.

While one army attacked Pereislavl, on the Trubetch, twelve German miles south of Kief; another attacked Chernigof, on the Desna, about the same distance to the north of the capital, where Mitislaf, cousin of Michael of Kief, ruled. Both towns were captured and destroyed, as was Glukhof, in the government of Chernigof. I have already described the capture of these towns and of their metropolis Kief, nor have I anything to add to that account. It was apparently in the autumn of 1239 that the princes Kuyuk, Mangu, and apparently also Buri, that is, a son of each of the three brothers, Ogotai, Tului, and Jagatai, were summoned to return home by the Khakan Ogotai, whose wife Turakina was determined that her son Kuyuk should succeed his father Ogotai. They accordingly left the grand army and made their way back to Mongolia. This is not only stated by Rashid, but also in the Chinese account followed by Gaubil. Wolff, who has made Kuyuk take an active part in the campaign, has done so, as he says, on the authority of the monk Roger, who, by the way, does not mention a Kuyuk but a Coacton; and I have followed in his footsteps in the former volume, but it is quite clear to me now that this view is erroneous, not only from the statements already quoted from Rashid and Gaubil, but from all the circumstances surrounding the accession of Kuyuk, and I am quite sure that Rashid’s authority must be followed in denying to Kuyuk any pail in the Hungarian campaign.

The plan of that campaign was a skilful one. While Batu with the main army advanced upon Hungary directly, two other armies were sent to outflank that great natural fortress on either side, one through Poland and the other by way of Wallachia. The most northern of these armies was, according to Rashid, commanded by Orda, Batu’s elder brother, while the western writers make it be led by Baidar (whom they call Peta), the son of Jagatai; the probable explanation being that, as was usual in Mongol armies, the chief command was divided, and that Orda and Baidar had a joint command. The statement of Dlugocz, that Kadan had a share in this northern campaign is clearly a mistake, which is only aggravated by the gloss which Wolff has put upon it in his note. The Caidan of Dlugocz was clearly the Kadan who commanded in Transylvania. This northern army, under Baidar and Orda, seems to have marched westwards from Kief by the great route which leads through Schitomir and Rowno, in Volhynia, and to have wasted the districts ruled over by Daniel, the brave prince of Gallicia. Vladimir of Volhynia, otherwise called Lodomeria, one of his towns, was captured. I have already described the raids made upon the districts of Lublin and Cracow.  The place where the fight there described, which was fought with the Palatine of Cracow, was called Great Turksko, near Polamiez, on the banks of the Czarna.

As I have said, after this, the northern army was divided into two sections. The contingent, which made a detour through Sieradia, Lancitia, and Cujavia, was probably commanded by Orda, and it seems to have rejoined the main army near Breslau. I have already sufficiently described this march and the subsequent fatal battle of Lignitz, where so many of the first men in Poland perished. I may add that the figure of Henry II on his tomb at St. Jacob’s, at Breslau, is represented with its feet on a prostrate Tartar. A representation of the lower portion of this tomb may be seen in the second edition of Colonel Yule’s Marco Polo. Besides other souvenirs of the fight already named, I may mention that a family of Tader still exists, which was named after the ruthless victors, while a tradition exists in the families of Haugwitz and Rechenberg that only two members survived the fight, to one of whom Henry is said to have addressed the words, “Haugwitz, räche den berg”. i.e., Haugwitz, defend the hill, whence the name of Rechenberg. The Jesuits also found materials for some of their religious dramas in the terrible slaughter of the faithful. Among the colonies of Germans founded in Silesia by Bishop Bruno to occupy the land left desolate by the invaders, Wolff mentions Liebenthal, Pilgersdorf, Hennersdorf, Johannesthal, Matzdorf, Rosvald, Schlakau, Pittarn, Schlatten, &c.

The short campaign of this division of the Tartars in Moravia is, as I have said, not easy to follow, and the difficulty is increased by the probability that it has been confused with an invasion of the Comans a few years later. There are three popular Sagas relating to this campaign which Wolff has dissected in his sixth chapter. In one of these we are told that on the approach of the Tartars the neighbouring inhabitants took refuge, partly in the wooden town of Stramberg and partly on the mountain Kotusch, where they were blockaded by the invaders. At length, on the evening of the feast of the Ascension, i.e. of the 8th of May, there fell a tremendous deluge of rain, which swelled the neighbouring rivers until they burst their banks and swept over the camping ground of the Tartars; many of whom perished, while the remainder retired. We are told that in this neighbourhood gingerbread cakes in the shape of hands and ears are eaten at the Ascension tide, in memory of the fact that the Tartars were in the habit of cutting off these members; and we are told further, that in digging the foundations of the church of Stramberg, in 1660, there were found many cauldrons and instruments in the shape of hoe blades, which perhaps had belonged to the invaders. In confirmation of this Saga, which was only recorded by Palacky in the seventeenth century, it seems tolerably certain that the Tartars were in Northern Moravia in the early part of May, 1241. Stramberg is a little town situated on a mountain a short distance from Neutitsch, whose crest is crowned by some ruins marking the site of a town called Sternberg, which was founded in 1242 by Idislaf of Chlumec, son of Divish of Davikhof; and if the legend applies to the Tartar attack, it doubtless refers to some Slavic wooden fortress which existed previously on the same site, a site, as Wolff shows, the focus of many legends and tales of the old heathen days.

A second Saga centres about Hostein or Hostyn, a mountain not far from Bistriz, which was crowned in early times by a temple to Radegast, and in later ones by a church dedicated to the Virgin. This Saga is a good type of the way in which popular legends grow and get distorted, and being so, is an instructive example.

As I have said, Michael, the prince of Kief and Chernigof, had fled from the Mongols, and after some wanderings had found refuge at Neumarkt, whose Slavic name was Sreda, whose citizens seem to have received him badly, to have plundered his treasure, and inter alia to have killed one of his grand-daughters.

This adventure was transferred to Batu in an old German legend of St. Hedwig, dating from the fourteenth century. In this edition of it the wife of Batu, having a great desire to see different peoples and their customs, set out with a great following and much treasure, and eventually reached the Silesian town of Neumarkt, where, in order to possess themselves of her treasure, the townspeople slew her and her followers, except two young girls, who reported the event to Batu. The latter thereupon invaded Poland and Silesia. This legend was again distorted in a poem entitled “The War between the Christians and the Tartars,” which was found at Koniggratz in 1817, in which we read that the daughter of the Tartar chief Kublai, with ten noble youths and two maidens, beautifully dressed, set out for the west and were slain by the Germans in a wood, upon which the Tartar Khan set out to revenge them. He bade his magicians, soothsayers, and astrologers foretell the issue of the battle. They accordingly split a reed in two, called one half of it Kublai and the other half the king, and said some magical sentences over them, whereupon the two halves began to struggle with one another, and eventually that called Kublai won. The battle having commenced the Christians at first had the advantage, but the magicians brought out the split canes and aroused the enthusiasm of the Tartars, who thereupon defeated the Christians, and captured Kief and Novgorod, after which they divided into four bodies. They overran Poland and advanced as far as Olmutz, the Tartars having been reinforced, the Christians, who were encouraged by Wneslaf, retired fighting to the hill of Hostinof, which they beleaguered. The Christians defended it bravely, and cut down twenty trees, whose trunks they rolled down upon the Tartars as they advanced. There was, however, no spring on the hill, and the garrison began to suffer from thirst, nor were the prayers they offered to the Virgin answered; and, beginning to despair, they thought of surrendering, when Wratislaf renewed his entreaties at her altar, a violent thunderstorm then came on which fed the rivulets on the mountain. Soon after a general muster of the people of the surrounding districts came to the rescue, the battle was renewed, and the Tartars were beaten, or, as the story says, “the Hanna was freed from the Tartars.” Wolff has pointed out the anachronisms in this story, the mention of Kublai, whose name was not known probably in Central Europe until the end of the thirteenth century, the murder of his daughter, which is clearly another edition of the story told above of Batu’s daughter. The story of the split canes, which was perhaps, as Wolff suggests, derived from Marco Polo. The hill of Hostein is marked by a considerable spring of water, so that the thirst of the Christians is not accounted for. The district of Hanna is some distance from Hostein, and not far from Kremsir, where the river Hanna flows. Nor does the description of Hostinof in the poem agree with the facts as they occur on the real hill of Hostein. For these and other reasons Wolff deems the whole story a romance, constructed by some Bohemian contemporary of the old German epic writer. I have already mentioned the case of the third Saga, relating to the capture of Olmutz, which has been so admirably dissected by Wolff, and shown by him to refer to the Comans and not to the Mongols.

We may take it that after the great fight near Lignitz, Baidar and his army proceeded to waste the eastern fringes of Bohemia and the western of Silesia, including the towns of Heinrichau, Ottmachau, Glatz, Hotzenplotz, Leobschutz, &c., and broke into Moravia in the first week of May, 1241, by the valley of the river Oppa and the town of Troppau.

I have already related how Moravia was devastated, and given the names of the towns which chiefly suffered. The whole country, from the river March in the east to the towns of Orlava and Iglava on the west, seems to have been harried. Roger tells us that the Tartars passed into Hungary by the Hungarian gates, and as we know from old documents that the towns of Trentschin, Neutra, and Tyrnau were devastated, Wolff has concluded that by this expression he means the Hrosinka pass, which crosses the Carpathians south of the mountain Yawornik from Ungarsch-Brod and Banof on the Olschawa, a tributary of the March, to the valley of the Waag. Thence this division doubtless joined the main army under Batu, which was then encamped north of the Danube.

Let us now turn to Batu himself with the main army. It would seem that besides his grievance against the Hungarian king Bela, in that he had given an asylum to his enemies and had not answered his summons, he was also invited to invade Hungary by Dimitri, a voivode of Kief who was a prisoner in his hands, and who hoped to turn aside the terrible scourge from his own land, and accordingly aroused the suspicions of Batu by representing Bela as collecting a large army to attack him. Batu apparently advanced by way of Kremenetz, in Volhynia, which he captured.  He then seems to have traversed Gallicia, skirting the Carpathians, and at length arrived at the famous pass, which leads to the districts of Ungvar and Munkatz, in Northeastern Hungary. The same route, according to Von Hammer, was followed by the Magyars themselves in invading the land. Batu’s army was preceded by a body of 40,000 men, who cut roads and acted as pioneers through the terribly difficult country. The incredible speed at which the Tartars marched, and which was no doubt one secret of their successes, is shown by the fact that in three days they covered a distance of nearly seventy German miles, and suddenly appeared in the neighbourhood of Pesth; but this was clearly only a body of videttes or skirmishers, for the great fight took place a considerable distance from Pesth, on the river Sayo, about half way between Munkatz and the capital, and close to the modern town of Miskolcz. While Batu himself, with the main army, skirted the Eastern Carpathians on their outer flank, he apparently detached an army under his cousin Kadan, the son of Ogotai, which marched upon Kamenetz, in Podolia, and Chernovitz, in the Bukovina, and thence over the Borgo pass into Northern Transylvania. This pass was also called the pass of Rodna, from the town of that name, the centre of the gold mining enterprise in these districts, which was formerly occupied by Saxon colonists, but now by Roumans, who have displaced them. Ruins of the old town of Rodna still remain, especially massive debris of the church, proving its former importance.

At Rodna, we are told the Tartars found the garrison so threatening that they made a feigned retreat, whereupon the too confident Christians returned in triumph, and not only discarded their arms, but also, according to the monk Roger, an Italian, and no lover of strong drink, “got drunk in the wild Teutonic manner.” (Theutonicorum furia is his phrase.) While in this condition the Tartars returned and captured “the town of the gold mines.” They were assisted, we are told, by a contingent of 600 Germans, under Count Ariscald. The invaders were apparently divided into various bodies, and not only ravaged the various towns of Transylvania, as I have mentioned, but also the neighbouring districts of Hungary, and in a document of King Ladislas IV, dated in 1277, we are told how the districts of Marmarosch, Szathmar, and Solnoker still remained desolate from the devastation they had suffered at the hands of the Tartars. It would seem that they marched into Hungary by the Meszez pass, by way of Zilah and Somlyo, and directly upon Great Varadin or Wardein, of which Roger, the author of the Miserabile carmen was archbishop, and of whose devastation he was an eyewitness.

Great Wardein, like most mediaeval towns, was built of wood, with wooden towers on its walls. The town itself was doubtless open, but was protected by a strong citadel or fortress. It was easily captured and destroyed, and as it had resisted, its inhabitants were, according to Mongol fashion, destroyed. The captors then retired for some distance, and when the garrison in the citadel thought they had finally retreated, and returned once more to their houses, they went back and surprised many of them. They then bombarded the citadel with seven balistas until they breached its walls, and finally stormed it. The cathedral and other churches were inside the citadel, and there the women, old and young, had taken refuge. As they could not force an entrance into these buildings the Tartars fired them, and their inmates perished miserably. Women were ravished in the churches, while the leading inhabitants were conducted outside the town and there slaughtered, the tombs of the saints were desecrated, and the vessels of the altar defiled; nor did the Tartars fail to return again and again to search among the ruins and the corpses for some new victims who should have hidden away in the woods and returned in the false hope that the storm had passed away. Roger tells us how, when he escaped from Wardein with a number of his people, he went to Thomas’ Bridge on the Black Koros, where the German garrison refused them permission to cross, and wished to insist upon their stopping to defend it. They, however, hurried on to an island where the people of Agra, Waydam, Geroth, &c., had taken refuge. It was probably such an island as Athelney, surrounded by marshes, and, we are told, was approached by only one narrow way, which was protected by fortifications and barricades. There he determined to stay, but having heard that the Tartars were close by, the archdeacon prudently slipped away secretly and made his way to Czanad. The very next day Czanad was attacked, as Roger says, by another body of Tartars, who had invaded Hungary from another side. It would seem that the contingent under Kadan, having laid waste Northern Transylvania and North-eastern Hungary, rejoined Batu’s main army after the great fight on the Sayo, and probably in the rich country of Tokay.

Let us now turn to the doings of this army. According to Wolff, it was led by Subutai Baghatur and Kuyuk, but, as I have said, Kuyuk took no part in this expedition, and Rashid distinctly gives the leadership of this army to Bujek, the son of Tului; and it is probable that it was led by the latter and Subutai in conjunction. It seems to have marched through Moldavia, inhabited by the Vlakhs or Roumans, who were styled Kara Iflah by the Osmanli Turks, and Kara Ulugh by Rashid. This army having crossed the Sireth, attacked the south of Transylvania. It was this division which chiefly ravaged the various towns of Transylvania, as I mentioned in the former volume. I notice that there is a town in the district of Gyergyo which is still called Tatárhago, which name is probably a souvenir of their passage. This army seems to have followed the valley of the Maros, while that of Kadan marched along that of the Koros. It was probably the contingent commanded by Subutai which suddenly appeared before Czanad while Roger was sheltering there.

Let us continue his story. He tells us he was deserted by two of his servants, and having heard of the storming of Thomas’ Bridge by the ruthless enemy and the slaughter of its inhabitants, he returned once more to the island or marsh, which was probably situated in the marshy district between Bekes and Gyola, where he counselled the people to fortify their retreat, but he himself, according to his own confession, soon left again, and hid away in the woods, where he bade his servant bring him food. The island was captured, and a horrible slaughter ensued, as I have mentioned. It was not till after several days that Roger ventured to visit it, and he gives a most piteous account of the horrors which he saw, and describes the inhuman skill of the Tartars in finding out fresh victims in their hiding places as like that of hounds when hunting boars and hares. They issued orders that those who surrendered freely should, after a short time, once more return home. A large number of people, driven by hunger, accepted these hollow promises, and the district was more or less repeopled and divided into sections, each under a petty chief. The Tartars had in fact determined to winter there, and required food. It was harvest time (July, 1241), and the returned fugitives were allowed to reap their harvest, but they frequently had to purchase a respite in their lives by surrendering their wives, sisters, and daughters to the lustful Tartars, who ravished them before their eyes. The Tartars appointed officers, whose duty it was to see them supplied with food, clothing, arms, and horses. There were about a hundred of these bailiffs, and the one under whom Roger lived had authority over nearly a thousand villages. These bailiffs were men of taste, and furnished themselves with the fairest girls; those who brought them such were rewarded with presents of sheep, oxen, horses, &c. They generally met together weekly, and Roger tells us that, in the hope of learning more of their way of living, of becoming acquainted with some of their grandees, or of finding a way of escape, he used to attend these meetings with his bailiff. On one occasion the inhabitants of the various villages were summoned to meet the bailiffs and to bring presents. Suspecting some evil play, Roger at length hired himself as a slave to a Hungarian prince. His fears were well founded, for, having appropriated their gifts, the Tartars collected the poor people together and slaughtered them. They now brought together all the provisions they could collect, having determined to winter there, and afterwards devastated the whole province, and made a hideous slaughter of the inhabitants. They would not allow them, doubtless, to consume the winter provisions they themselves needed. In the spring of 1242 they once more set out, and, as I have mentioned, destroyed Perg with a vast mass of people, only two girls and those who feigned death amidst the corpses of their relatives and were stained with their blood, escaped. They then stormed the monastery of Egres, where they seem to have spared some women and monks. This division of the Tartar army seems to have passed the summer of 1241 on the Theiss, and then probably made its way towards the middle Danube, in which neighbourhood Batu himself was encamped.

The story of the fatal battle on the Sayo is told with some graphic details which I have not related in my previous notice, both in the Jihankushai and the Chinese annals. In the former we are told that Batu sent Sheiban with 10,000 men to reconnoitre, and that he returned in a week reporting that the enemy had a superior force. This was probably the advanced division to which I have already called attention. When the two hosts faced one another Batu retired to a hill for a day and night to implore divine assistance. He had also ordered all the Mussulmans in his army to pray to heaven. Next day he detached Sheiban with some troops to cross the Sayo, but their attack was unsuccessful, their numbers having been too small. The main body then rushed upon the Hungarians, and penetrated to the camp of their kelar (kiraly, the Hungarian name for a king), and cut the ropes of his tent, upon which his troops fled. The Yuan shi assigns the command of the advance guard to Subutai, who in face of the strength of the enemy’s army had recourse to stratagem. While Batu crossed the river where it was shallow and where there was a bridge, Subutai crossed it lower down where it was deeper, and built a bridge by fastening beams together. Meanwhile Batu had been engaged, and had lost thirty men, including one of his adjutants styled Ba ha tu. Batu began to be discouraged and would have retired, but Subutai insisted that they should go on, and completely defeated the enemy. Some time after Bature preached Subutai, and said, “while we were fighting together on the river Tiuming I lost my Bahatu because of your tarrying.” Subutai replied, “that while Batu crossed easily at a shallow place, he was delayed by having to build a bridge over a deep one.” At a feast, on another occasion, Batu did more justice to his brave general, and gave him the credit of the victory over the Hungarian king.

After the battle on the Sayo, Bela fled to the woods Dios gior, thence he probably escaped by way of Szomolnok and Leutschau to the castle of Piewnicza, south of Sandecz, almost directly north of the battle field, where he met his son-in-law Boleslaf, of Cracow. There he did not tarry long, having doubtless heard of the terrible march of Baidar through Cracovia, but, adopting the disguise of a pilgrim, he fled along the Carpathians towards the frontier of Austria, doubtless to rejoin his family at Oedenburg. A body of the Tartars followed him sharply; it marched through the defiles of Zips or Spisky, in the central Carpathians, west of Piewnicza and, doubtless mistaking his traces, fell upon Cracow, which had so recently been devastated, and then marching through the districts of Auschwitz and Teschen, reached Hungary again by the Yablunka pass. Bela reached Neitra in safety, and was escorted thence to the Austrian frontier by the German colonists. They were afterwards, namely, in 1258, rewarded for their fidelity by being made free burghers of Stuhlweissenburg. He was made to pay a heavy ransom by the Duke of Austria, as I have mentioned. Having rejoined his wife and young son Stephen, he made his way to Agram, in Croatia. The Duke of Austria, it would seem, had also insisted, as a part of the ransom, that Bela should surrender three of his provinces (probably those of Wieselburg, Oedenburg, and Eisenburg are meant). He now seems to have invaded them, and thus took advantage of the dire necessity of Hungary to spoil her further.

The terrible battle of Lignitz and the rapid march of the Tartars through Poland and Moravia had naturally aroused much feeling in Germany, and measures began to be concerted there for the defence of the empire. At the wish of King Wenceslaus of Bohemia, and of Henry Raspe, the Landgrave of Thuringia, a meeting of princes and prelates took place at Merseburgh, north of the Platen Sea, where it was decided that old and young should take the cross, and all capable of taking arms should set out, those who were rich and not so capable, paying for others who were. This scheme broke down, however, through the fierce strife between Kaizar and Pope which was then raging, and to which I shall presently refer; but as the Tartars continued their march, and threatened to overwhelm the empire itself, even the fierce combatants of church and state respectively drew nearer to one another. Konrad IV, the emperor’s son, a boy of but thirteen years, and therefore but little fitted to cope with these troubled times, convoked a meeting of notables at Eslingen, on the Neckar, for the 19th of May, 1241, where a pact was made that until the feast of Saint Martin, the 10th of November, and longer if necessary, they should unite in a common crusade against the Tartars, not compromising meanwhile any of their intentions in the civil strife just named, and that an army should be assembled at Nuremberg to march against the invaders, while the Franciscan friars who had been sent by Pope Gregory IX to excommunicate the emperor, his sons, and supporters, were to preach the crusade. This was allowed to be preached within their dioceses by the Bishop of Costniz, the Archbishop of Mayence, and the Bishop of Augsburg. Presently the news of the Tartar doings reached Rome, and the Pope himself sent orders to the heads of the two great orders of friars, and also to the abbots of the Cistercian monasteries in Germany, to preach the same holy war. The Tartars were informed by their spies of these movements in Germany, and we accordingly find that Batu, who was encamped in the country about Comorn, north of the Danube, sent a detachment to the borders of Austria, where, according to a letter of the Austrian Duke Frederick II, dated the 13th of June, 1241, he claims that his people slew 300 of them.

The Tartar invasion was synchronous with the terrible strife between the civil and religious powers—between the emperor and the pontiff—which caused so much damage and scandal to Christianity. The Kaiser was the redoubtable Frederick II and the Pope was Gregory IX. The former was master of Naples and Sicily, and was determined to put his foot on all the land beyond the Alps. The Pope, who was equally vigorous and determined, would not submit to have the land overshadowed by the double-headed eagle, and the strife had grown very envenomed. While the Tartars were ravaging Russia, Poland, and Hungary, namely, from August, 1240, until April, 1241, Frederick was laying siege to the papal city of Faenza, which he at length captured. On his side, the Pope had excommunicated him on the 20th of March, 1239, being Palm Sunday, and had a year later permitted a crusade to be preached against him; and, lastly, he had created a party among the princes of Germany, who were banded together against his great enemy. These consisted of the treacherous Duke of Austria Frederick II, Otto II of Bavaria, Otto the younger and John of Brunswick, Henry II of Silesia, and the Landgraf Henry Raspe, all headed by Wenceslaus of Bohemia; and the Pope had even gone so far as to decree the dethronement of the Kaizar, and to nominate another in his place, a claim which was far beyond his rights, which did not go beyond the crowning of the prince who should be elected by the rest. With such an enemy it is not to be wondered at that Frederick, who was the great mediaeval champion of the civil power, should have been most careful not to let his rival have a chance of escaping. It was, consequently, a terrible time of feud and dislocation for any effort to be organised against the common foe of all, who threatened to stamp both Kaizar and Pope underneath his heel. When Bela, the Hungarian king, reached Agram in his flight he despatched the Bishop of Waitzen with a letter to the emperor and the pope, setting out the devastation of Hungary, and promising the former to acknowledge him as his suzerain if he would come and help him. These letters were dated the 18th of May, 1241. The bishop first repaired to Rome, where the pope, who possibly mingled benevolence and diplomacy in his acts, and who did not wish to see Hungary become an imperial appanage, took Bela under the immediate protection of the holy see, offered the same indulgences and immunities to all who would march against the Tartars as were offered in the case of the crusades, and ordered the Hungarian clergy to help their king. From Rome the bishop repaired to Spalatro, where the emperor was then staying. The emperor replied to him, “ That if he left Italy before the war there was ended, that Germany would lose the benefit of the blood and treasure it had poured out in his support, and that if he marched against the Tartars he would expose his own states ( Naples and Sicily ) to attack, since the pope was so much at issue with him, but he hoped before long to restore peace to the Christian world; and, having pacified Italy, he said that he would march at the head of a great force against the invaders.” Well might Matthew Paris, in his commentary on these proceedings, say that God must have been at enmity with the Christians to permit such feuds in face of the unbelievers. Meanwhile, however, the emperor wrote to his son Konrad, and to the Swabian princes and dukes to aid in repelling the barbarians, and he also wrote to the other European sovereigns, entreating them to make common cause against the enemy. The letter which he sent on the 3rd of July, 1241, to his brother-in-law, Henry III of England, has been preserved by Matthew Paris. He implored him to render assistance in the work of repelling the invaders, “ for,” said he, “if the Tartars penetrate into Germany and find no barriers to their progress there, other nations will suffer from the terrible scourge which divine justice, as we believe, has allowed to appear to punish the world for its crimes, and on account of the decay of piety. He bade him therefore use diligence in affording his help, for this people, he said (the Tartars), have left their own country with the intention of subjugating all the west, and of destroying the faith and the name of Christian; but we have faith in Christ, who has hitherto enabled us to vanquish our enemies, and will cause their pride to fall, and the Tartars to be once more remitted back to Tartarus.”

Matthew Paris tells us the emperor ordered his sons Konrad and Henry to march against the Tartars. The latter was at the head of 4,000 horsemen and a crowd of foot soldiers, and encountered the Tartars near Devin, on the river March. Wolff contends that Matthew Paris is here mistaken, and that the confederates were not the sons of the emperor, but the bishop of Costniz and the bishop of Freisingen, who had been promoters of the crusade I have mentioned. In this battle, which is mentioned by Haithon, the Armenian, and by the Dominican Bieul, the Tartars were defeated and driven away. It was apparently fought in the autumn of 1241. Batu’s army having spent that season north of the Danube, and having been rejoined by the contingents under Baidar and Kadan, began to move again in December, 1241.

One division, under Batu himself, marched upon Gran, perhaps by the valleys of the Sayo and the Ipoly. It was an unusually severe winter, and the Danube was frozen over. To test whether it would bear their army or not, the Tartars abandoned a number of their cattle on the opposite bank, and then made pretence of retiring altogether. After waiting three days, the Hungarians crossed over to secure what they deemed their booty, upon which the Tartars crossed it also. They crossed on the 25th of December, 1241. I have already described the siege and capture of the town. One incident of the sack is a grim epitome of the horrible barbarities committed by the captors. Three hundred of the first ladies in the town were captured in one house. Dressed in their richest garments they presented themselves before Batu and implored his pity, offering to become his slaves. He ordered them to be disrobed and then beheaded. Pity was not to be found in the code of the ruthless Tartar, whose draconic sentence upon every town which resisted, was destruction. After the destruction of Gran, Batu apparently spent a considerable time in its neighbourhood. His people, however, were not idle, and were engaged in desolating the valley of the Danube, advancing north of that river as far as Niunburg or Kronnenburgh, two German miles north of Vienna, where they slaughtered many Christians; while south of the Danube they advanced, as I have described, as far as Neustadt, south of Vienna, where they suffered a check at the hands of the Archduke of Austria, the King of Bohemia, the Patriarch of Aquilia, the Duke of Carinthia, and the Margrave of Baden who had assembled a considerable army. But it would seem that altogether the country west of the Danube fared better than that east of the river, and that several towns, such as Oedenburg, Presburg, Neitra, Trentschin, Comorn, Turotz, &c., successfully resisted the Tartar attack.

While Batu and the main army remained near the middle Danube, a contingent was sent under Kadan in pursuit of Bela, as I have described. The latter had sent his wife Maria and young son Stephen, in the spring of 1241, into Dalmatia, and confided them to the care of the people of Spalatro, but the queen was nervous, and, with a number of widows whose husbands had been killed by the Tartars, and with her husband’s treasure, she took refuge at the strong fortress of Clissa, a short distance from Spalatro. Bela himself remained for a while in Croatia, and he complains in a document still extant of the way in which he was deserted by his grandees; but he seems to have been of a vacillating disposition, and neither conciliated enemies nor made many friends. The clergy alone behaved handsomely to him. Inter alia we are told how the monastery of Mons. Pannoniae made him a present of 800 marks of fine gold. In the early part of February, 1242, having heard of Kadan’s pursuing march, he fled to the Dalmatian coast, and, having removed his family from Clissa, went to Spalatro. Kadan pursued him sharply, as I have described. The Tartars seem to have left a considerable portion of their forces near Verbacz, where pasturage was abundant, and to have hurried on with the light troops through the barren and inhospitable mountains of Croatia, where they pitilessly slaughtered the inhabitants, without regard to age or sex. Fancying that Bela was taking refuge at Clissa, they poured a shower of arrows upon it, and finding this of little use, they dismounted and began to clamber up on hand and foot, and were met by the garrison rolling down great stones upon them. But Bela had gone to Trau, as they learnt there, and thence shipped his wife and family to the neighbouring islands of Lesina and Brazza, while he himself remained on board ship. The two islands were granted the privilege of having their own bishops and their own Zupan (the latter, however, to be of the family Geviche), in recompense for the refuge they thus afforded the royal family. The Tartars advanced to the outskirts of Trau, and finding it unassailable, they sent a messenger to summon the town, who spoke in the Slavonic tongue : “Kadan, the chief of the unconquered army, bids you know, if you do not wish to share in the penalty earned by one who is a stranger in blood to you, deliver the enemy into our hand”. No answer, at the wish of the king, was given to this arrogant message. The Tartars then retired. They spent nearly the whole of March, however, in the neighbourhood, and several times visited the coast towns, but afterwards returned to Verbacz.

Several documents are extant showing how Bela rewarded the various grandees who had faithfully served him during this terrible time. Inter alia we read how the count Detrikus, son of Matthew, was made Ban of Slavonia. Similar rewards overtook other Croatian notables. The most important of his friends at this time were the Frangipanni counts of Veglia, who put not only their men and ships at his service, but also made him an advance of 20,000 marks. It would seem that they assembled a considerable fleet from the neighbouring coasts, which acted as an escort to Bela, when on the 18th of March he set out from Trau. It was overtaken by a storm on the open sea, between the canals of Zara and Quarnero, and a portion of the fleet was driven on to the coast of the peninsula of Nona. A terrible struggle ensued between the castaways and the Tartars, who were lying in wait on the shore, but the latter were badly beaten. We are told that on this occasion three young champions, named Krecz, Yegerlich (called Kupissa), and Raak, with thirty-eight followers (who came from Syrmia, in Eastern Slavonia, and of whom twenty-five perished in the struggle), distinguished themselves. The fight took place before the king’s own eyes, and the description is enlivened by some graphic touches, the Tartars being hemmed in and slaughtered, we are told, like “ geese on a fish-pond.” They were at length defeated and driven beyond the Kerka, near Brezcza.

The Frangipanni, who had behaved so loyally, were handsomely rewarded by the king. By a deed of the 5th of April, 1251, they were granted the counties of Vinodol and Modrus, in Croatia; and by a deed, dated four years later, he made over to them the town of Zeng, with Zubehör, Zoll, &c.; while in 1263 he heaped fresh honours upon them, and gave the castle of Zkrad, in Croatia, to the brothers Philip and Bartholomew Szkalyk de Lyka, who had supplied a contingent of ships.

Let us turn once more to Kadan and his Tartars. Finding he could not reach Bela, he set out at the end of March, 1242, and passed through Turkish Croatia and the Herzegovina. When he had reached as far south as Drivasto, in Albania, he received orders from Batu to return, the death of the Great Khan Ogotai having summoned the various princes back again to Asia. He accordingly marched east through Bulgaria to meet him.

Batu had remained apparently, as I have said, in the neighbourhood of Gran. When the news of Ogotai’s death reached him he set out eastwards. This was probably about the end of March. The army marched with a large convoy of waggons and troops of cattle and horses. The forests were tramped through on foot, so that the insatiable Tartars might glean the few victims who escaped them as they advanced into the country. In Transylvania the ravage had not been quite complete before, and many towns and inhabitants still remained. These were trodden under and destroyed. The Tartars then crossed over into Wallachia, and thence into Bulgaria. This was about the beginning of June, 1242, and about the same time Kadan reached Bulgaria and rejoined Batu with his contingent. On his passage through Bulgaria, Batu did not fail, in Mongol fashion, to lay waste the whole land. The King of Bulgaria, Kolowan, appealed to his suzerain, Baldwin II, the Emperor of Constantinople, for help. Allying himself with the Comans, who had migrated from Hungary in 1241, he defeated the Tartars in a first engagement, but was defeated and his country subdued in a second more unfortunate fight. It was while in Bulgaria that Batu assembled the various prisoners whom he had captured, and after he had given them permission to return home made a great slaughter of them, as I have mentioned. At length, in the winter of 1242-43, the Tartars once more crossed the Danube.

When the Tartars invaded Gallicia its prince, Daniel, fled westwards and found refuge with Konrad, Duke of Mazovia and Cujavia, where his rival Michael of Kief had preceded him. When the Tartars passed into Hungary he returned once more to his principality, and, turning aside from Brest and Vladimir on account of the pestilential odour emitted by the corpses there, he settled at Kholm, a town which he had himself founded, near the ancient Cherven. It had escaped the general ravage, and was inhabited by a mixed population of Germans, Poles, &c. It was beautifully built, and adorned with gardens, an oasis in the general desert, and from it Daniel commenced the work of restoring prosperity once more to the devastated country. He was opposed, however, by the Gallician boyards, who had tasted in his absence a little liberty, and who seized the salt mines of Kolomna, the dues from which went to support the princely exchequer. They also intrigued with Rostislaf, the son of Michael of Kief. Michael had been well treated by Daniel, who had ceded to him the principality of Kief, to which he had returned. Daniel defeated the treacherous conduct of the boyards and of the bishops of Galitch and Pereislavl, drove Rostislaf away from the town of Galitch, defeated the Poles, from whom he captured Lublin, and made himself powerfully felt. He is styled Grand Prince by some, and had certainly in South-western Russia an equivalent position to Yaroslaf in Central Russia at Vladimir.

When Batu crossed the Volga he sent the Poloutzian Aktai to apprise him that he had returned from his campaign in Hungary, and that he should send his commanders Memmen and Balai with an army against him if he did not send in his submission. He then continued his march towards the Volga.

We have now completed the story of Batu’s great campaign. And what a terrible story it is, what a picture of utter destruction and desolation. From the German frontier to the Volga hardly a town survived the passage of the tornado. If towns were an eyesore to Mongol eyes, as many of their graphic sayings attest, then assuredly they had done credit to their aesthetic training; and if the presence of settled inhabitants, and of those who reap and sow, who knit and weave, was a menace to the roving soldiery, whose grass needed no tillage, and whose wealth was in their flocks, they had had their fill of satisfaction. They had few local ties and scruples, and were on a gigantic scale what the Turkoman and Kazak frontagers of Persia are on a small one, devoted to that licentious liberty which is incompatible with town life, and that obstinate independence which deems most laws the yokes of slaves. If it be true that man was first a hunter, then a nomad, then a settler, and that between these forms of life there is perpetual war, and that although the victory goes unfailingly to the last, that it has to be won at the sword’s point, and is only won when its enemy is entirely extirpated; then we have a raison d'être for much which crowds these volumes, and we may accept the campaign of Batu and its results as one chapter in that mighty warfare between the nomad and the agriculturist, which is now waning, because the nomad has had his day, but which was then in the balance, for assuredly, but for the lucky death of Ogotai and the consequent recall of the Tartar leaders, there is no good reason why an acre of land in Europe should have escaped being trampled upon by Tartar troops, and should have been scorched accordingly. I have in the previous volume collected some of the reasons why the Tartar march was so successful, others remain. The first and most obvious cause was that the Tartars were a perpetual standing army. “The nomad nations,” as one historian of Russia says, “are armies, irregular indeed, but easily put in motion, prompt, and always on foot; whatever they leave behind them can be guarded by old men, women, and children. To such nations war is not an event, for long marches produce but little change in the habits of a wandering people, their houses, their provisions, march along with them; and this is of some importance in uncultivated plains and uninhabited forests.” There was no distinction among the Tartars between civilian and soldier, all were warriors who could carry arms, save perhaps a few Shamanist medicine men. On the other hand, what do we find in Europe at this time ? In the first place, it was so divided in interests and other respects by its feudal institutions, that its patriotism was parochial and its strength frittered away. In the next place, in Russia, and probably in Hungary, the possession of arms was reserved for nobles and freemen only, and from these we must deduct the traders and clergy. Now, as the author just quoted says, speaking of Russia, “continual wars had so much increased the number of monks, hired servants, and slaves, and so much diminished that of freemen and landholders, that there remained scarcely warriors enough to make head against the Poloutzi.” These were the natural warriors, who were trained to arms ; besides them each of the petty chiefs kept paid guards of mercenaries. These in former times had been Varangians and Norsemen, but in later days they had also taken Turkomans into their pay, and we read of Berendeens, Turks, &c., being in the service of the Russian princes, but these guards had greatly diminished in numbers. “About the year 1100 the guard of the Grand Prince was only 800 men, and he lost it.” These frail materials formed the only soldiery in the country, and the crowds who were collected to repel a sudden invasion were necessarily but a very indifferent militia, and disappeared like chaff in the fire before the terrible Tartar cavalry, so well disciplined and with such admirable tactics. Badly armed foot soldiers, with little training or discipline, have never been a match for such opponents, and especially when they have come in such multitudes as the soldiers of Batu. Again, not only did they excel in discipline, training, and numbers, but also in weapons. Here let me quote from a historian who is too little appreciated. He says, “ It is unnecessary to expatiate upon the influence exercised by military arms in organisation and discipline, and in the general science of war, upon the history of comparatively modern times… The system organised by Gustavus Adolphus turned the tide of victory against the Imperial arms in Germany, and on more than one hard fought field in England, when used by Fairfax and Cromwell against the ill-regulated valour of the supporters of King Charles… The dagger screwed into the muzzle of the musket first placed that weapon on a footing with the pike at close quarters; the bayonet attached to the end of the barrel completed its efficiency without interfering with its use as a firearm. The firelock and the iron ramrod each made a mark, however small that mark may have been, upon some portion of the history of the last two centuries.’’ The same very learned author then proceeds to discuss the superiority of the Frank weapons over those of the Roman colonials, and of the Normans at Hastings over those of the English, in both cases awarding the victory to the well-equipped. Now, in the case of the Tartars we have every reason for believing that they were in every way better armed than their opponents. In the magnificent collection of armour at the Palace of Peterhof there are some specimens of the body armour of the Mongols, made with scales of iron overlapping one another, which testify to the skill of their smiths, and are marvels of workmanship compared with any contemporary armour then in use in Eastern Europe. As to the Tartar weapons they have been described for us by one of the chroniclers. Their armour, he tells us, was made of buffalo hides, with scales fastened on it. It was impenetrable, and formed a capital defence. They wore iron or leathern helmets, crooked swords sabres, quivers, and bows. The heads of their arrows were four fingers broad, longer than those used in the west, and were made of iron, bone, or horn, and the notches were so small that they would not pass over the strings of western bows. Their standards were short, made of black or white yak’s tails, and having balls of wool at the top. Their horses were small, compact, and hardy, and submitted to almost any hardship. They rode them without stirrups, and made them jump like deer over rocks and walls.

It will thus be seen that in weapons and armature also, the invaders were superior to their opponents, and we cannot wonder, when we gauge the respective qualifications of either side, that the Mongols should have been universally successful in the open field. Their engineering skill was also very superior to anything then known in Europe. We have pictured for us in the accounts of the Mongol campaigns in China the elaborate mangonels and other kinds of artillery which they had at command, and which enabled them to break very readily the more or less frail barriers of wood or stone, which were then deemed formidable fortifications; and we accordingly find that when they had enough time they were seldom foiled in attacking towns. Towns had this additional weakness in Russia, that they were so far asunder and so separated by forests and deserts that they could not help one another. All the odds, in fact, were in favour of the invaders; and, as if this was not enough, the princes both in Russia and Hungary were, if not in actual conflict, engaged too often, to use a graphic colloquial phrase, in “paddling their own canoes.” The Grand Prince of Russia was a very feeble person, Karamzin, who is ever tender to princes, speaks of him as having taken no measures for the defence of Russia, but as having the virtues of his century, “he decked the churches, made presents to the monks, and his memory was blest by the people,” which is fiercely translated by another writer, “ He was an idiot, ... was solely occupied in adorning the churches, perpetuating mendicity by alms, and fattening the monks.”

In Hungary, Bela was also marked by feeble qualities, and, as I showed in my former volume, had exasperated or alienated large numbers of his people. We need not wonder, therefore, at the completeness of the Tartar success, and if we find cause of admiration from the military point of view, it must be as an engineering feat, for the marvellous rapidity with which the land was won, and the ease with which such a large force was moved and provisioned, and the admirable strategy by which the whole campaign was marked; and in gauging this we must remember that in Hungary, at least, it is probable the Tartars were assisted by the Comans as guides and counsellors, for they also had a grievance against the Hungarians, while it would seem from the narrative of Roger that both Magyars and Germans did not scruple to join the ranks of the ruthless invaders, driven as much perhaps by terror as by sympathy.

With these advantages the success of the Tartars was inevitable, and when we consider their mission, it is only too easy either to be cynical, or, if our method be not that of Diogenes, to stand aside and despair entirely of solving the riddle of history; but we surely may do better than this. It is not a mere phrase when we speak of the tide of human progress, and thus postulate for it an ebb as well as a flow ; and the ebb has its ends and uses no less than the flow. And there was one result at least of the Tartar invasion which was lasting and most useful, and in this it was similar to the terrible invasions of the Danes in the further west at an earlier day. Through the process of parcelling out the kingly inheritance a considerable danger was overhanging Europe, every province was becoming a rival of its neighbours, and all the countries of the west were in consequence disintegrating. It required the sharp iron of the Danes to weld together the fragments of England into one land, to make men feel that they had a common heritage to guard, and common interests to gather round, or, if we would have a more modern example, we cannot doubt that all the romance and fervid sentiment which surrounds the term Fatherland in Germany, which has in that disjointed mass of little principalities formed a public opinion too strong for any provincial loyalties to withstand, and which has demanded unity and strength under one head, has been born of the roll of misfortunes and troubles which division and mutual strife have entailed on her children, and have made her an ever easy prey to her unscrupulous neighbours. So it was with the Russians, only in a much greater degree. That union, that obedience to authority, that terrible patience and dogged perseverance, which we recognise as the great Russian virtues, were born doubtless of the terrible troubles which befell the land in the Tartar and earlier period. So dislocated and broken to pieces was the whole fabric of the State in the early thirteenth century, that nothing but blood and iron, the two remedies of a strong-fisted statesman, were capable of welding it together, and these were supplied copiously enough by the Tartars. The need of union against the common enemy created Russia, out of a patchwork of small rival States with ignoble ambitions. This at least was one result of the struggle, others will suggest themselves as we proceed.

There is a question, however, which forces itself upon us at this point which is certainly very curious, and that is a comparison of Batu’s conduct in the campaign and his conduct afterwards; and this is so much in unison with what the Mongols did elsewhere that it has no doubt a common explanation. During the war the very spirit of destruction seems to have accompanied him; after it was over this policy ceased. Tribute and homage were exacted, and also obedience, but otherwise the victims were treated with comparative leniency, and seldom disturbed at home. This was quite in character with the precepts of Genghis, “In war tigers, in peace doves”. War with the Tartars was no play time. It meant, as it logically means, the destruction of the enemy and all that belongs to him. At all events, the running of no risks for the sake of sentiment, the exacting of the most terrible punishment. Rather than leave a population behind which might grow into an army, everybody who could embarrass the communications or the retreat of the army was destroyed; rather than keep a great mass of prisoners, who must be fed and clothed, and who would hamper the movements as well as the commissariat of the army, their throats were cut; no walls and houses which could be converted into fortresses were to be left standing ; and following out the grim notion that war means a terrible struggle for existence, and not a sentimental game, they deemed everything fair. With your enemy at your throat, every treacherous method was deemed honest, every cruel expedient, justifiable. Resistance brought destruction at once, while submission only purchased safety when it was not compromising in any way to the victors. The girls and boys, the artisans and handicraftsmen, who could be made into slaves and otherwise employed, were spared and sent to Mongolia in some numbers, otherwise the decree upon an enemy’s land was that it must be desolated. The issue is no doubt awful, but it is at least logical, and is certainly contrasted with that decrepit philanthropy which, when two combatants are determined to fight it out, supplies plaster and medicine to enable them to continue the struggle longer. When the war was over, then the necessity for such menaces ceased also. So long as the victors had plenty of broad lands for pasture, and an occasional opportunity of replenishing their harems and houses with wives and trinkets by a plundering raid, they left their neighbours alone, and eventually became demoralised by contact with them and by the enervating effects of luxury and ease, while their former victims were knitting their strength together until they overwhelmed them, a process which we shall follow in the succeeding pages.

Of the various districts of Russia one portion alone now remained independent of the Tartar arms, and that was the principality of Novgorod, whose fame is widely spread as a member of the Hanseatic league, as the mother of modern republics, and as the seat of power of Alexander Nevski, the son of the Grand Prince Yaroslaf, who ruled there when Batu’s army swept over Southern Russia, and whose good fortune and happy reign form for a few years a bright relief to the generally dismal annals of Russia at this epoch.

Let us now turn once more to Batu and his Tartars. Batu and his army had been recalled from the campaign in Europe by the death of Ogotai, a death which it was suspected in some quarters had been caused by poison, but which was much more certainly the result of hard drinking. The death of Ogotai opened up serious questions of succession. Among the Mongols a man was not succeeded by his son so long as he had brothers living. When the brothers were exhausted the inheritance reverted to the family of the eldest brother. Thus, on the death of Ogotai, whose last surviving brother, Jagatai, died in 1240-1, the rightful heirs to the throne were the sons of Juchi. It is true that Ogotai, on accepting the throne, had exacted a promise that it should be continued in his family, but such promises, when made in the face of the custom prescribed by antiquity, are seldom acquiesced in, and we may believe that on his death the sons of Juchi looked forward to a reinstatement of their family. Matters were further complicated by the fact that Ogotai had made a will in which, like his father, he had displaced his own son from the heritage, and had named his grandson Shiramun to succeed him.

His chief widow was Turakina, a strong-minded woman, a Merkit, and therefore, as I have shown, probably a Turk by origin, and having sympathy also, as it would seem, with the creed of Islam. She was jealous of the three sisters Siurkukteni, the widow of Tului, Abika, and Bekutemish, the widow of Juchi, and she determined to secure the throne for her son Kuyuk.

Under these circumstances, it is a curious and striking proof of the rigid discipline of the Mongols and their very loyal attachment to law, that no attempt should have been made to fill the throne immediately, but that a regency should have been constituted until “ the grand army ’’ could return from the west and the princes could be assembled to elect their chief in proper form. Of these princes Batu was certainly now the most influential. Although he had an older brother, Orda, to whom he acknowledged his subservience, his wonderful success and his command of the army gave him a predominant position. He was doubtless informed pretty accurately by his aunt Siurkukteni of what was passing in Mongolia, and of the intrigues which went on at the regent’s court, where there must have been much fear and jealousy of himself, nor would he like to trust himself there without a strong escort. Besides these general considerations there was a further one, that he had a personal feud with Kuyuk, which only intensified his feelings towards that rival. The origin of this quarrel is thus described in the Yuan-chao-pi-shi. We are told that Batu sent an envoy from Kipchak to his suzerain Ogotai with the following message:—

“ By the favour of Heaven and an auspicious fate, oh emperor, my uncle, the eleven nations have been subdued. When the army had returned, a banquet was arranged, at which all the Mongol princes were present. Being the eldest, I drank one or two cups of wine before the others. Buri and Kuyuk were incensed, left the banquet, and mounted their horses, at the same time reviling me. Buri said: ‘Batu is not superior to me; why did he drink before I drank ? He is an old woman with a beard. By a single kick I could knock him down and crush him.’ Kuyuk said : ‘He is an old woman with bow and arrows, I shall order him to be thrashed with a stick.’ Another proposed to fasten a wooden tail to my body. Such is the language that was used by the princes, when after the war with the different nations we had assembled to deliberate on important matters; and we were obliged to break up without discussing the affairs. Such is what I have to report, oh emperor, my uncle.”

Ogotai on hearing this news got very angry, and at first refused to see Kuyuk (who had in the meantime arrived from the west); but when those around him interceded, he severely rebuked his son, and gave him to understand that the subjugation of some tribes of Russians attributed to him afforded no reason for boasting, the whole merit being due to Subutai. As to Buri’s case, Ogotai ordered that Batu should apply to his father Jagatai for judgment. This incident, which is to some extent confirmed by Rashid and Rubruquis, doubtless happened in the interval between the campaign in Central Russia and the attack on Hungary, and was perhaps a weighty reason for Kuyuk returning to Mongolia. We can see how it would embitter the feeling of Batu towards him.

For these ample reasons Batu did not hasten his return to Mongolia, but loitered in his own proper country. As Juchi had been given the various towns and camping grounds of the Kankalis, which he had himself conquered, together with Khuarezm, which was apportioned to him for conquest, so Batu acquired by the same right the dominion over the wide steppes of the Comans or Kipchaks. These became his camping ground, while the various Russian princes became his tributaries. His elder brother Orda retained his father’s portion on the sea of Aral and Jaxartes, and to him Batu was feudally subservient, a subservience more nominal than real doubtless, since the importance of his government much outweighed that of his brother. Other brothers, as we shall see presently, were provided for elsewhere.

In order to realise the kind of authority which Batu exercised, we must think of him, not as the sovereign of a settled community, ruling over cities and agriculturists with fixed settlements, but as the leader of a great nomadic host, whose herds required wide prairie lands to feed them, and who moved about as the exigencies of these herds demanded. We still have in miniature among the Kalmuks and Kazaks, conditions which answer to this description. Now the greater part of Russia proper in the thirteenth century, almost all the country in fact, which had been occupied and settled by Slavic settlers, and whose kernel is known to us as Great Russia, was in every way unsuited to the life of a nomadic race. For the most part covered with wood and morass, the towns were mere clearances in the forest, and were separated from one another by wide stretches of forest and bog. Such land as had been reclaimed was under the plough, and was not grass land. This offered few temptations to the invaders to settle in, especially as the climate was harsh and severe. This great kernel of Central Russia, however, was bounded on the south and south-east by a very different kind of land. There were huge flat plains covered with juicy grasses. The excellence of the pasture of these plains is best proved by their being the homes of the famous breed of Ukraine cattle, the famous fat-tailed sheep, and the hardy Cossack horses. Here were no interminable forests or quagmires, no boundaries or limits. These steppes or pampas were in effect a very paradise for a nomadic race, and have from the earliest recorded history been the homes of tribes of Scyths and Huns, and Turks and Kalmuks. Here then the Tartar conquerors settled down. The vast prairies which stretch from the Carpathians to the Balkash sea are threaded by some famous rivers, and it was on these rivers that the main encampments of the Tartars were fixed. Batu himself settled down on the Volga, which waters probably the finest pasture lands in the world, while other and subordinate hordes were settled on the Yaik or Ural, the Don, and the Dnieper. As was the universal habit in these districts, there was an annual migration up and down the river. In summer the camp was fixed in the north, and as winter came on there was a gradual movement further south. Except in winter there was probably little actual halting. During that season a more permanent camp was formed, which, as civilisation overtook the Tartars, took the form of a small city. The camp was gathered round the chief’s golden tent or sira ordu, whence the whole encampment, and from it the whole race took its name of the Golden Horde. This golden tent was styled a serai or palace, and what was once but a magnificent yurt became the nucleus of a considerable town, and is well known as Serai, the capital of the Golden Horde.

It was lucky indeed for Russia, and probably also for Europe, that the Tartars thus planted themselves without its borders, and did not, as in Persia and China, actually occupy the land itself and become incorporated with the natives. As Karamzin says, if they had done so, Russia might still have been a Mongol possession. In other places a fertile soil and a genial climate won the nomads eventually to settled habits. The hard conditions of life in Russia repelled the invaders, who remained perforce nomads, and they occupied only the grass steppes where the Comans formerly dwelt, and gradually encroached upon those border districts still occupied at a much later day, not by Slaves, but by Finnic races, by Mordvins, Cheremisses, &c. The Oka was the great frontier river between the Tartars and their proteges, the Russians, and many a fight will be recorded in these pages as having occurred there.

During the absence of Batu in Hungary, the Tartars who were left behind, probably under his brother Singkur, put to death Mitislaf, the Prince of Rylsk, in the Ukraine. On his return Batu summoned the Grand Prince Yaroslaf Vsevolodvitch to meet him. The latter accordingly went, and also sent his young son Constantine to the court of Batu’s son Sertak, on the Don. He himself was well received by Batu, who confirmed him as suzerain over the other Russian princes, and gave him authority over Kief, whose prince, Michael, had fled to Chernigof. The example of Yaroslaf was followed by the petty princes of Suzdal. Two years later Yaroslaf was summoned to attend the Imperial court in person, and to assist at the inauguration of Ogotai’s successor Kuyuk, a journey from which he did not return. The same inauguration was attended by the Franciscan friar Carpini, who has left us an admirable picture of the state of the Mongols at this time. King Bela of Hungary had scarcely returned to his country again when fresh rumours arose as to another attack of the Tartars. Pope Gregory died on the 21st of August, 1241. Celestin only ruled for a few days, and the chair of St. Peter was vacant until the 25th of June, 1243, when Innocent IV became Pope. Bela wrote to him to have compassion on his kingdom, and to order a crusade in his defence. The patriarch of Aquilia was accordingly ordered to stir up the German princes to go to the aid of the Hungarians; but Bela’s fears proved groundless. The council of Lyons met two years later, and among the objects there debated was the necessity of taking some precautions against the Tartars. Solemn prayers were ordered, towns were to be fortified, roads to be obstructed; and finally, it was decided to send missionaries in the name of the pope to try and convert the barbarians, and to prevent them shedding more Christian blood. To this policy we owe the work of Carpini, whose narrative has been edited with capital notes by M. D’Avezac, for the collection of old travels published by the French Geographical Society, from which I shall quote freely.

John of Plano Carpini was one of the earliest among the Minorite or Franciscan friars, and was a companion of St. Francis himself. He was probably born about 1182. He was doubtless an Italian, and belonged to the lords of Pian di Carpine, in the district of Perugia. He is first met with in 1221, as one of the companions of Caesar of Spire, the celebrated Franciscan preacher and we find him mentioned with others as undertaking “ a Revival ” series of services in Southern Germany, and especially in the cities of the Upper Rhine. In 1223 he was appointed custodian of Saxony, the following year he was sent to Cologne, and in 1228 was made Provincial of Germany, and was renowned as a most active missionary. In 1230 he was made Provincial of Spain. There he probably came in contact with the Moorish Mussulmans, and he would seem to have been also intrusted with a mission to Tunis by the pope. In 1241 we find him again presiding in Germany, and employed in arousing a crusade against the Tartars, who had recently won the battle of Lignitz. He was therefore a person of great experience and dignity, and as such was no doubt chosen by Innocent IV to go and interview the terrible Tartars, and seek to convert them to Christianity. With him went Stephen of Bohemia and Benedict of Poland. They started on their dangerous mission on Sunday, the 16th of April, 1245, from Lyons. They traversed Germany, where they met and received some assistance from the Cardinal Legate Hugh de Santocaro, and then went on to Wenceslaf, the King of Bohemia, from whom, as an old friend of his master’s, he asked counsel as to the best route he should adopt. He advised them to go by way of Poland and Russia. He gave them letters and paid their expenses during their transit through his country and as far as that of his nephew Boleslaf, the Duke of Silesia. At Breslau he met his companion Benedict of Poland. Boleslaf imitated his uncle in paying the expenses of their route until they reached the territory of Konrad, Duke of Lenczy or Cracow, where he met Vassilko, Duke of Vladimir of Volhynia, and brother of Daniel, Duke of Gallicia (who was then at the court of Batu). From Vassilko he learnt some facts about the Tartars, which showed him what kind of men they were. He accordingly spent some of the money which he had given to him as alms in buying some furs of beaver and other animals. Duke Konrad; the Duchess of Cracow, the bishop of the same city, and some knights gave him others; and they further commended him to the good graces of Vassilko, and asked him to do what he could for him. Carpini now went on to Vassilko’s capital, Vladimir of Volhynia, where, being delayed for some days, he improved the time by trying to induce the Russian bishops to accept the supremacy of the pope, but a ready excuse was found in the absence of Daniel, without whom nothing could be done. Vassilko now sent him on, on his way to Kief, sending a servant with him to protect him from the attacks of the Lithuanians, the population there being small, the Russian inhabitants having been killed or carried off into captivity by the Tartars. At Kief the friars had an interview with the Mongol commissary or baskak, who counselled them to leave their horses behind, and to get Tartar horses, which could find food for themselves by brushing the snow away with their noses, and not to trust to their western horses, which must starve in a country where there was no garnered hay or other provender for cattle. They followed this advice, and left Kief two days after the feast of the Purification of the Virgin, that is, on the 4th of February, 1246, and entered the country immediately subject to the Tartars, the first village they reached being Kanief (Karamzin translates it “town of the Khan”). There Stephen of Bohemia fell ill, and John of Carpini and Benedict had to go on alone. Leaving this they reached another village, where an Alan named Mikheas ruled, who is described by Carpini as  full of malice and wickedness.” He refused to furnish them with remounts unless they paid him black mail, which they were accordingly constrained to do. Leaving him on the 19th of February, they arrived on the 23rd of the same month at the first encampment of the Nomads. The Tartars came round them terribly armed, and demanded who they were and what was their business. “We told them,” says Carpini, “we were envoys of the Lord Pope, who was Lord and Father of the Christians, who had been sent to the sovereign and chiefs of the Tartars to exhort them to become Christians, and to remonstrate with them for having made such a slaughter in Hungary, Moravia, and Poland, whose inhabitants had done them no harm.” They replied that in regard to these matters they must depute the friars to their chief Corenza, and furnished them with horses for the journey; as usual, taking black mail in the shape of “demanded gifts.” It would seem from Benedict’s narrative that the number of Tartars in this camp was 8,000. They then went on to the camp of Corenza, who commanded the Tartar garrisons on their western frontiers. These were planted on the right bank of the Dnieper, and numbered 60,000 men. Before they had an audience, he sent some of his men to ask in quaint terms how they meant to conciliate him, i.e., what presents they had brought. They replied, “The pope had sent no presents, but they were willing to give him somewhat of what they had.” This being accepted, they were taken to his tent, and told how they must bend the left knee three times before the threshold, and take care not to put their feet on it, i.e., on the cord which fastened the tent door. “This,” says Carpini, “we were careful to obey, for a breach of the rule is punished with death.” Having entered, the friars, on bended knees, repeated the exhortations they had previously made and presented their letters, which none however could read.

After this they were supplied with three attendants and with horses to take them on to Batu. They left Corenza’s camp on the 26th of February, and rode from dawn till evening, and often during the night, changing horses three or four times, traversing the whole land of the Comani, (the steppes of the Nogays), crossing the Dnieper, on whose right bank Corenza governed, while its left bank was controlled by a greater chief named Maucy; then the Don, on whose banks there wandered a chief called Kartan, who had married a sister of Batu’s; and then the Volga, where Batu himself ruled. The two banks of the Yaik or Ural were controlled by two other chiefs.

During the winter the sea was frozen for some distance from the shore, and the friars travelled over the ice. Before they arrived at Batu’s camp two of the Tartars were sent on to apprise him of their journey. They had been five weeks in crossing the steppes of the Comani, on whose eastern borders Batu’s camp was placed. The friars encamped about a league away. Before having an audience they were made to pass between two fires, so that any bad intentions or any poison they might carry with them might be counteracted by the fire. Before entering the tent they were again enigmatically called upon to give presents by Eldegai (probably Edegu or Idiku), a kind of chamberlain of Batu’s. They made the same reply they made to Corenza, and, as before, seem to have given presents when admitted to the Khan’s presence. They asked for interpreters, with whose assistance Carpini says the letters of the pope were transcribed into the Ruthenian (Russian), Saracenic (Arabic), and Tartar (Uighur) writing. The letters were then presented to Batu, who had them carefully read. The friars were afterwards conducted back to their tent. Carpini complains that they were not given any food except on the first night of their arrival, when they had a little flour (millet) in a little dish. Batu himself at the audience was seated aloft, on a kind of throne, with one of his wives. His brothers, sons, and other grandees had seats on a bench on a lower level. The inferior people sat on the ground. The men on the right, the women on the left. The tent, which was made of fine linen, belonged formerly to the King of Hungary. Except his relatives none entered the Khan’s tent without permission, it did not matter how high in rank they were. As was customary with envoys, the friars were seated on the left; on their return from the Imperial ordu, however, they had seats given them on the right of the tent. In the midst was a table with golden and silver cups containing drinks. Whenever Batu or any of the Tartar princes drank, the musicians played and sang. When he went abroad on horseback an umbrella or canopy was held over him, and similarly with the greater princes and their wives. Batu, Carpini describes as genial and kind to his people, by whom he was much feared; but he says that he was exceedingly savage in war, in which he was very skilful, having had a long experience.

Benedict, in his narrative, adds little to the relation of Carpini; he tells us the friars’ presents to Batu consisted of forty beaver skins and eighty badger skins, and that the gifts as well as the givers had to be purified by passing between fires. After this the friars had to pay honour to the car in which the golden statue (or probably the golden tablet) of the Khakan was contained, which they contented themselves with honouring by a mere inclination of the head.

At length, on the 8th of April, they set out again for the Great Khan’s court. Before leaving they sent some letters back for the pope, but these were retained until their return, by Mauci. They were in a very weak state, having fasted during all Lent, and having eaten only some millet dissolved in water with a little salt, and drank only melted snow. So weak were they that they were tied on their horses. This is explained by M. D’Avezac as a practice much used in the east to prevent fatigue in rapid riding, and consists in putting the legs in bandages. The friars rode hard, changing horses five or seven times a day, except in crossing the desert, where they were mounted on more enduring animals. They were eight days in reaching the eastern boundary of Comania, namely the Yaik, which was probably also the eastern boundary of Batu’s special ulus. They then entered the land of the Kangites, i.e., the Kankalis, a terrible waste of salt marshes and desert, which, as well as Comania, Carpini describes as strewn with human bones, and he tells us that many of the Russians who accompanied Yaroslaf on his journey to the Mongol court perished there. Its inhabitants, the Kankalis, who were nomads, had been conquered and reduced to slavery by the Tartars. After crossing the wastes of the Kankalis they entered the land of the Besermans, i.e., the Mussulmans, the Turkia of Carpini’s companion Benedict. This land was governed formerly, according to Carpini, by Alti Soldan, who was destroyed by the Tartars, i.e., by Ala ud din, the Khuarezm Shah, and he tells us many ruined castles and towns were situated there. By it he means undoubtedly the empire of Khuarezm. They entered this country on the 17th of May, having no doubt skirted along the northern shores of the Aral sea; and then reached the valley of Jaxartes and the town of Yankint, i.e., the well known Yanghi-kent or new town on the Jaxartes. Besides this town, Carpini mentions also Barkhin, i.e., the Barkhalikent of the Persians, Ornas, which is clearly Urgenj, and Lemfinc (a corruption of Jend). Carpini tells us the valley of the Jaxartes was marked by ruined and deserted towns. In the borders of this empire, the same friar tells us, dwelt Buri or Burin and Kadan. He calls them brothers, but this was not their relationship, Buri was a grandson of Jagatai and Kadan a son of Ogotai’s. As Rubruquis tells us that Talas or Taras was part of Buri’s domain, we may locate them in the valley of the Taras. North of their land lay a portion of Kara Khitai, which was subject to Batu’s brother Sheiban. Having crossed a portion of this they entered Kara Khitai proper, and were entertained at Omyl or Imil, a town not long before built by Ogotai, and whose ruins still remain at Chuguchak, on the Imil. It was apparently the capital of Ogotai’s special ulus.

Leaving Imil they skirted a lake containing islands, near which was a gorge through which in winter there blew a very strong wind. This is described by other authors, and the lake has been identified beyond much doubt with lake Alakul. Carpini, however, seems to confuse this lake with the lake Balkash, unless both were in fact one at this time, for he tells us he skirted it for several days, keeping it to the left, and that it was fed by many streams on whose banks were woods. This doubtless refers to the great plains east of lake Balkash. There, he tells us, was the camping ground of Ordu, the eldest brother of Batu. The travellers now passed the first ordu or camp of the Great Khan, i.e., one of the encampments of one of his wives, for each wife had her separate ordu or camp. Having stayed a day there they entered the country of the Naimans on the 28th of June. Carpini says they were pagans. Their land was mountainous and cold, and even in the midst of summer, when he passed, there was a fall of snow. Having traversed the Naiman country, they at length arrived, after three weeks hard riding through the country of the Mongols, at the ordu or great camp of Kuyuk, i.e., at Karakorum. Their escort had pushed them on very rapidly, so that they would arrive in time for Kuyuk’s inauguration. I have extracted some of Carpini’s statements about his intercourse with the Great Khan in my former volume, and will now supplement that account by other details which I omitted. The friars had not an immediate audience as Kuyuk had not been elected; they forwarded, however, the translations of their letters which had been made at Batu’s court. After waiting five or six days, they were summoned to an audience by Kuyuk’s mother, Turakina, in a vast tent of alba purpurea (? white damask), capable of holding 2,000 people, which was surrounded by a wooden dado, painted with various figures. This was the tent in which the ceremony of installation was held. Carpini observes more than once that Yaroslaf, the Russian prince, and himself and his companion, the envoys of the pope, were especially honoured among the guests.

Among the other magnificent presents which he enumerates were a splendid state umbrella or portable tent, covered with jewels; numerous camels, housed with Baudekin or rich stuff from Baghdad, and on them howdahs or raised seats; and many horses and mules protected by armour, some of leather and some of iron. There was also a splendid tent of red cloth, which had been made in China. In this was the Imperial throne, which was made of ivory, marvellously carved and ornamented with gold, precious stones, and pearls. It was placed on a circular platform, around which were ranged benches for the grandees, and below these again others for those of inferior rank. Besides the three state tents, there was another made of white felt, used by Kuyuk’s wives. Carpini says that this was divided into two parts. In one of which the Khan dispensed justice, while the other pertained to his mother, i.e., to the harem. He tells us that among the victims to justice was one of the Khan’s aunts, who was accused of poisoning Ogotai, and who was put to death, a fact of which we have no other evidence, but which the friar can hardly have manufactured. About the same time the Grand Prince Yaroslaf also died. It was supposed he was poisoned, since he sickened and died after partaking of some food from the hands of Turakina, the empress mother. She afterwards wrote to his son Alexander to go and receive investiture of his father’s kingdom, but he deemed it prudent to stay away. After some delay the friars were conducted to the Imperial tent, but were remitted back to the Khan’s mother. The reason for their not being admitted, Carpini was told, was, that the Khan was preparing an expedition against the west, and did not wish them to know. The delay was most unwelcome to the friars, whose money was consumed, while the greedy Mongols let them have little to eat; and they would have perished but for the good offices of a Russian named Cosmas, who was the Imperial goldsmith. It was he who had made the ivory throne. He had also carved the Imperial seal, and explained to them its inscription. It was from him, and from certain other Russians and Hungarians, who knew Latin and French, and who, having been three years there, also knew Mongol well, that the friars learnt so much about the internal economy of the court.

They at length received orders, through Chinkai, to communicate what they wished to say in writing. After some days they were interrogated by the chancellor Kadak and his deputies, Chinkai and Bela, through the medium of a Russian interpreter named Timur, whose name points him out as of Turkish descent. They were asked if the pope had any people by him who understood Russian, Saracenic (Arabic), or Tartar. They replied, “No, but that whatever was told them should be faithfully translated and forwarded.” This was at length done, and the Khan’s message was duly translated into Latin in the presence of his officers. This letter has been published by M. D’Avezac, and runs as follows :—

“ God's strength, Cuyuc, ruler of all men, great Pope. You sent us letters most certain and true, with advice given for maintaining peace with us, you and all the Christian people who dwell in the West; which, as we heard from him and as was contained in your letters, you wish to have peace with us. Therefore if you desire to have peace with us, you, Pope, emperors, all kings, and all powerful men of the cities and lands, should not delay coming to me to settle peace, and you will hear our response and our will likewise. Your letters contained a series of points that we should be baptized and become Christian: to this we briefly respond that we do not understand how we should do this. Also regarding what was contained in your letters: that you are astonished at the killing of men, especially Christians and particularly Hungarians, Poles, and Moravians; to this we briefly respond that we also do not understand this.

However, so that we are not seen to let this pass in silence, we considered it necessary to respond to you in this way: because they did not obey the command of God and Genghis Khan, and having bad intentions, they killed our messengers; therefore God commanded their destruction and delivered them into our hands. Otherwise, if God had not done this, what could man have done to man? But you, inhabitants of the west, worship God, and believe that only you are Christians, and despise others; but how do you know to whom He will grant His favor? We worship God and by His strength from east to west we will destroy all the land. And if men did not have the strength of God, what could men have done?”

 

The Khan wished to send some of his people back with the friars as bearers of his letters, but they dissuaded him from doing so for several reasons which are set out. 1st, they were afraid they would see how disunited the Christians were ; 2nd, that they would be spies upon their land ; 3rd, they were afraid that violent hands might be laid on them, and thus bring destruction upon the Christians, for it was a Mongol maxim to have no peace with those who killed their envoys, &c. At length on the day of St. Brice, the 15th of November, they took their departure, bearing with them the Khan’s letter duly sealed. The seal bore a legend, which was thus translated by the Russian jeweller Cosmas :—“ God in heaven and Kuyuk on earth, by the strength of Goch the seal of the emperor of all men.” They went to bid good-bye to the queen mother Turakina, who gave them and their servant each a cloak of fox skin and a kaftan of honour. They set out with the envoys of the Caliph, but after fifteen days parted company with them, the latter trending southwards. It was winter, and the friars suffered much from the cold. It was the 9th of May when they once more reached Batu’s camp. On the 2nd of June they arrived in that of Mauci, and, passing once more that of Corenza, reached Kief on the 9th of June. They were received with great honour by the Dukes Daniel and Vassilko, whom they induced to acknowledge the supremacy of the pope. They then proceeded onwards through Poland, Bohemia, and Germany, crossed the Rhine, and went on to Lyons, where they delivered the Great Khan’s letters to Innocent IV, who shortly after made Carpini Archbishop of Antivari and Metropolitan of Dalmatia..

From Carpini’s narrative we gather that in 1245, when he traversed the Kipchak, Batu himself, with bis main horde, was encamped on the Volga. His brother-in-law Kartan, otherwise written Karbon and Tyrbon, commanded on the Don. On the east of the Dnieper was Mauci or Maucy, who has been conjecturally identified by M. D’Avezac with Mauchi, the second son of Jagatai ; while on the west of that river was Corenza or Curoniza. As we shall see presently, Batu’s brothers had appanages in other districts close at hand. Those of the Western Horde were no doubt immediately subordinate to himself, while those of the Eastern Horde were subordinate to Orda. He also seems to have had commissaries in the various towns where the dependent Russian and other princes held their Courts. These latter were effectually cowed. In 1244 we find four of them, namely, Vladimir Constantinovitch of Uglitsh, Boris Vasilkovitch of Rostof, Gleb Vasilovitch, and Vasili Vsevolodvitch at Batu’s court. They deemed it more prudent to seek the patronage of the Tartars than to make common cause against them. The next year Constantine, son of Yaroslaf, with his brother and nephews, Vladimir Constantinovitch, his nephew Vassilko of Rostof, with his sons Boris and Gleb, and Vsevolod, with his son Vasili, were there. In 1246 Sviatoslaf, Vsevolodvitch, and his brother Ivan, with their sons, also went.

These dependents were treated with considerable rigour, and in some cases with marked severity, as in the case of Michael, the Prince of Kief and Chernigof. He had put to death the Mongol envoy who had summoned the former city when the Tartars first marched westwards. He had then fled to Hungary, but being received very coldly there, he made his way back to Chernigof. When he arrived the Mongol officers were engaged in taking a census of the inhabitants for the poll tax. By them Michael was ordered to repair to the Tartar court. He went there, accompanied by his grandson Boris of Rostof, and one of his principal boyards named Feodor. When summoned before Batu, he was made to pass between two fires, and was then ordered to prostrate himself before the tablets of Genghis Khan. He replied that he did not object to do obeisance to Batu himself or to a living prince, but to adore images of dead men was repugnant to a Christian. As he persisted in his refusal, Batu ordered him to be put to death. Karamzin says he accordingly took a consecrated wafer from his pocket, which he divided with Feodor, and sang aloud the Psalms of David. In vain the young Prince Boris entreated him to comply, and the boyards of Rostof offered to take the sin on their own shoulders and to perform expiatory penance for it. “I will not lose my soul for you,” said the prince, and throwing off his mantle, he said, “Take these worldly vanities, I wish to gain eternal glory.” He was then put to death, and his head was cut off by an apostate from Putivle named Doman. Feodor shared his fate, while Boris was allowed to return home. The two victims were made saints by the Russian church. Carpini, in describing the death of Michael, merely says he was kicked in the stomach, and his head was then cut off. He tells us another story which shows the brutal way in which the Tartars treated their dependents. He says that Andrew, Duke of Cherneglove, i.e., of Chernigof, was accused before Batu of stealing Mongol horses and selling them elsewhere. Although the charge was not proved, he was put to death, upon which his widow and younger brother went to ask that the Khan would not confiscate the principality. Batu ordered the young prince to marry the widow, according to the Mongol custom; both parties refused from religious scruples, but were violently compelled to submit.

This was not, however, the universal treatment received by the vassal princes, thus we are told that Daniel, Prince of Gallicia, having been summoned to Batu’s court, was admitted to an audience without the preliminary ceremonies. Batu, addressing him, said, “You have for a long time refused to come, but have effaced your ill conduct by your obedience.” Daniel diplomatically made obeisance before the Tartar chief, and saluted him with a draught of kumis. He was congratulated by Batu for thus conforming to Mongol customs. The latter was so pleased that he presented him with some wine, as he was not accustomed to drink kumis; and after a stay of some days he sent him home. The patriotic Karamzin says he returned with the shameful titles of servant and tributary of the Khan. This prince was with the horde when Carpini passed through on his travels. By his submission to the Tartars, Daniel of Gallicia acquired great authority among his neighbours, and Bela, the Hungarian king, who had been at issue with him, began to fear that his patrons would, in support of their protégé, make another raid across the Carpathians; he accordingly proposed an alliance to him, and Leon, the son of Daniel, was married to Constance, the daughter of Bela. Daniel was also on good terms with the Polish princes. He was a skilful statesman as well as a king, and before this had begun to look around for some allies on whom to depend in case he should have to struggle with the Tartars. Byzantium, which was the metropolis of his faith, was then threatened by the Arabs, Turks, and Crusaders, and he accordingly turned his eyes further west to Rome, the common centre of Western Christendom. He sent word to Innocent IV that he wished for a reunion of the churches, and that he was ready to march against the Tartars under the Latin banner. This was in 1245 or 1246, Innocent sent him the title of king, named him his dear son, and ordered the Archbishop of Prussia to go to Gallicia to ordain some bishops there, and decreed that all the ceremonies of the Greek rite which did not conflict with Roman dogma should be preserved. Daniel replied, “he wanted an army, and that a crown was a useless ornament so long as the yoke of the barbarians was laid upon Russia,” and he continued for some time to play a diplomatic game. The pope’s legate became irritated and left the country, and it was only by the intercession of the Polish princes, who were Roman Catholics, and that of his mother that he submitted and agreed to accept the crown and royal insignia which the pope had sent him. It was on the 7th of May, 1253, that he was crowned at Drohiczin by the pope’s legate, the abbot Opizo of Messana. Thenceforward Daniel styled himself king, and the pope issued a brief to the people of Bohemia, Moravia, Poland, and Servia, engaging them to assist the Gallicians against the Tartars.

It was not only Daniel who had this correspondence with Rome. We find that Innocent also wrote to Alexander Nevski, reminding him that Yaroslaf, his father, had promised the friar Carpini, when he met him in Tartary, that he would join the Roman Church, and that he would have done so but for his death, and bidding him follow his good example. He ended by praising him greatly for not having acknowledged the authority of Batu, for the pope had not then heard of Alexander’s journey to the horde, to which I shall refer presently. Having summoned a council of learned men, he replied in curt terms to the pope’s advances, “We follow the true faith of the church, and neither wish to know nor adopt yours.” The patriotic Karamzen dwells with pleasure over this emphatic answer.

On the death of the Grand Prince Yaroslaf, Alexander Nevski of Novgorod, who had not as yet acknowledged the Mongol supremacy, was summoned to the court of Batu. He went with his brother Andrew, and was well received; but, like their father, they had to travel further and go to the court of the Grand Khan. Yaroslaf, says Karamzin, had been succeeded as Grand Prince (at Vladimir), according to custom, by his brother Sviatoslaf, but during the absence of Alexander and Andrew, their younger brother Michael, Prince of Moscow, surnamed the Brave, drove his uncle Sviatoslaf from the throne. He was himself, however, shortly after killed in a battle with the Lithuanians. This was in 1248. Alexander and Andrew were well received by the Grand Khan Kuyuk. The former was given authority over all Southern Russia, including Kief, while Andrew was assigned the throne of Vladimir or Suzdal, and their dispossessed uncle in vain presented his complaints before the horde. He died two years after the return of the young princes, namely, in 1251, at Yurief. Andrew was of a proud, independent temper, and more given to hunting and amusement than to good government. He seems to have given umbrage to the Mongols, who sent a prince named Nevrui (? Nurus) and two officers named Kotiak or Kaitak and Alibuga against him. On their approach he fled. The Tartars accordingly spread over the province of Vladimir, and harried the cattle and the people there. They killed the Voievode of Pereiaslavl, as well as the wife of the young Yaroslaf, Yaroslavitch, and retired with a rich booty. Andrew fled to Pskof, and thence to Sweden. Meanwhile his brother Alexander Nevski repaired to the camp of Batu’s son Sertak, who, now that his father was growing old, was taking the lead in affairs. He succeeded in conciliating Sertak, and obtained the grand principality of Vladimir, which his brother had so badly governed. He was received in that town with great rejoicings. The same year, 1252, Oleg, Prince of Riazan, who had for some time been a prisoner at the Mongol court, returned home again. It would seem that the Tartars heard of the tortuous policy of Daniel of Gallicia, and of his intrigues with the Polish princes, for we find that in 1254 a Mongol army, commanded by Nevrui, Kaitak, and Alibuga, laid waste the greater part of his dominions, as well as the districts of Sendomir and Cracow in Poland. This expedition is mentioned in a letter of the pope (Alexander IV) to the bishop of Cracow, and written on the 4th of February, 1256.

Let us now turn once more to the doings of Batu. We have already given several reasons why he should have absented himself from the Kuriltai where Kuyuk was elected Grand Khan. Nor did he after all attend it. The family of Juchi was represented there by some of his brothers, among whom Orda was one, for we find him with Mangu appointed to try their great uncle Utsuken for treason. The election was held in August, 1246, but the reign of Kuyuk was not protracted. He died in April, 1248. There is some mystery about his death. He was marching westwards, and Siurkukteni had warned her nephew Batu of his approach. The latter was himself marching eastwards, and had reached the Alaktag mountains, as the authorities say, to do homage; but it would seem that a struggle was impending between the two, and Rubruquis, whom we shall quote largely from presently, suggests that Kuyuk did not come by his death fairly. He reports that Brother Andrew said he died from having taken a certain kind of medicine which Batu had caused to be given to him. He himself had heard a different story, viz., that as Batu was on his way to meet him he sent forward his brother Stichan (? Sheiban), who went to meet Kuyuk, and should have presented the cup to him; a quarrel arose, and in the struggle they killed each other. He further says that he himself stayed a whole day in the house of Stichan’s widow. This account seems very probable.

An opportunity had now arrived for deposing the family of Ogotai from the over-chiefship of the Mongols, and Batu was determined to avail himself of it. He did not, as he well might, claim the succession for himself or his brother Orda. He felt, perhaps, that their special appanages were too far removed from the centre of gravity of the Mongol world; but next to being king, the position of kingmaker is surely most welcome to an ambitious person. He accordingly selected the family of Tului, related to him both on the father’s and mother’s side, for special favour. They had the additional claim of having their special appanages in Mongolia itself. Batu accordingly fixed upon his cousin Mangu for the post of Khakan, and to secure his election he summoned a Kuriltai in his own country of Alaktag. Against this meeting the princes of the family of Ogotai protested, declaring it to be irregular to hold it anywhere except in the Mongol country proper; but they nevertheless sent Timur Noyan, the governor of Karakorum, to subscribe in their name to what should be decided. The result of this meeting was the selection of Mangu as Grand Khan. It was decided to convoke a second Kuriltai on the banks of the Onon, where the ceremony of inauguration should be carried out, and meanwhile Ogul Gaimish, the widow of Kuyuk, was appointed regent. Batu sent his brothers Bereke and Tuka Timur with an escort to conduct Mangu to the borders of the Kerulon. The family of Ogotai, and Yissu Mangu, the de facto ruler of the Khanate of Ogotai, refused to attend this second Kuriltai, declaring that none had a right to the throne but the family of Ogotai. Batu and Siurkukteni sent many envoys to induce them to do so, and to argue with them that it required a grown and experienced man to govern such an empire; but as they persisted in their refusal, he, after a delay of a year, ordered Bereke to proceed with the installation. This Kuriltai was held in February, 1251,tand Bereke and Tuka Timur received magnificent presents there for themselves and their brother Batu.

The ceremony was followed by the trial and punishment of several persons who had taken part against Mangu. Among these, we are told, was the famous general, Ilchikadai, who was arrested at Badghiss, in Khorassan, and handed over to Batu, who had him put to death. Buri, the grandson of Jagatai, who seems to have been a close ally of Kuyuk’s, and against whom Batu had an especial grudge, as I have mentioned, was also handed over to the latter for punishment and put to death, as is reported both by Rashid and Rubruquis. The latter’s version of the quarrel is that Buri, not having very good and fertile pastures, one day when drunk addressed his men, saying, “I am of the stock of Genghis Khan as well as Batu; why, then, cannot I pasture my herds on the Volga like he can?” This being reported to Batu, he ordered Buri’s people to take him to him bound. When asked if he had spoken the words he confessed that he had, but that he was drunk at the time. “How dared you name me when you were drunk?” said the exacting Khan, and he had him decapitated.

It was shortly before this, namely, in 1247, that we read of Batu in a more tender light. Rusudan, the beautiful Queen of the Georgians and daughter of Queen Thamar, seems to have won his heart, or at least the repute of her beauty had reached him, and we find him sending her envoys and presents, and an invitation to go and see him. As she at the same time received other presents and another invitation from Baichu, the Mongol general in Persia, and dare not, probably, trust herself with either Lothario, she sent envoys in return to each, and sent in addition her son David as a hostage to Batu. Baichu, irritated at her refusal to go to him, set up her nephew David, the son of Lacha George, who was then an exile in Asia Minor, as a rival. Baichu sent for him, and then sent him on to Kuyuk, who ordered him to be put on the throne. Vahram, Prince of Cham’khor, in Asia Minor, accordingly conducted him to Mtskheta, the ancient capital, where he was consecrated. Afterwards, accompanied by the greater part of the Georgian princes, and the Armenian princes Avak, Chahanshah, and Alpugh, he proceeded to Tiflis.

When Batu heard of this he sent his protégé David, the son of Rusudan, with an escort to Kuyuk. Meanwhile the pretty queen was pressed again by both the Mongol leaders to go to them, and, fearing one as much as the other, she poisoned herself. Kuyuk decided that Batu’s protégé should be subordinate to the other David, a decision not likely to make the master of the Golden Horde more amiable.

We have now reached a period when considerable light is thrown on Mongol affairs by the narrative of the Franciscan friar Rubruquis, which I partially used in the former volume, and from which I now propose to abstract some more facts. William Rubruquis has been supposed until lately to have been a native of Ruysbroeck, in North Brabant, but M. D’Avezac and Colonel Yule have shown good grounds for making him a native of Rubrouck, a commune in the canton of Cassel, arrondissement of Hazebrouck, in the department du Nord, in the district of French Flanders. When Louis the Pious was in Palestine, rumours reached him that Sertak, the son of Batu, was a Christian. Deeming this a favourable opportunity for spreading the faith, he commissioned Rubruquis to go to the Mongol camp with letters from himself to Sertak, asking permission for him to settle in Tartary and there to preach the gospel. He set out from Palestine, accompanied by another friar named Bartholomew, of Cremona. Having embarked at Constantinople, they crossed the Black Sea and landed at Soldaia, in the Crimea, on the 21st of May, 1253. There they had an interview with the governor of the town, who offered them choice of either wheeled cars with bullocks, or horses to transport their party in. They were counselled, however, by some merchants to buy carts of their own, such as were used in the transport of Russian furs. With these they would not have to unpack their baggage at every post, as they would if they took horses. They afterwards found, however, that the carts took two months to do a journey which might have been done on horseback in one month. They took with them some fruit, muscatel wine, and cakes, which they had bought at Constantinople, and which they were told would be very grateful to Sertak. Besides the two friars and their clerk Gosset, there also went with them a Turkoman convert and a boy named Nicholas, whom they had redeemed from slavery—five persons in all. They rode on horseback, while their baggage occupied four carts. They also took two men with them to take charge of carts and of the horses. Rubruquis tells us there were forty fortresses between Kherson and Soldaia, of which almost everyone had its distinct dialect. Among others there were Goths there, who spoke the Teutonic tongue. North of this district there was a well wooded and watered country, and after that a plain extending for a distance of five days. It then became very narrow, and had the sea on either hand, and was traversed by a deep ditch. Our author’s description clearly refers to the isthmus of Perekop. Here, he tells us, the Comans took refuge from the invading Mongols, and were driven to such straits that they even ate one another. On the borders of this steppe there were many salt lakes, whence the people of Russia chiefly drew their supply, paying a tax to Batu and his son of two pieces of cotton for each cart load. A similar tax was imposed upon the export of salt by sea, which was carried on on a considerable scale. Three days after leaving Soldaia the travellers met with the Tartars, and, as Rubruquis says, he now seemed to enter upon an entirely new world. He tells us how the Tartars surrounded them on horseback, and asked if they had ever been among them before. They then began to beg for food, and the travellers gave them some cake. When they offered them a flask of wine they asked for another, saying men could not walk on one leg. They then asked them the object of their journey, and whether they were going of their own free will or at the instance of some one else. The friars replied, they had heard that Sertak was a Christian, and that they were the bearers of letters from the king. They then wished to know what they had in their carts, and whether they had gold, silver, and precious garments with them. This Rubruquis refused to disclose. They then conducted him to their captain, named Scatai or Scatatai (probably Jagatai), who was a relative of Batu’s, and to whom the Emperor of Constantinople had written, asking him to assist them. They provided them with horses and cattle for this journey, and ceased not to beg for everything they could see, and when they were refused called Rubruquis bad names; but they stole nothing. The friar, whose notion of giving was somewhat mercenary, says it was no use giving them anything for they never made any return ; but he contradicts himself, for he says they gave him milk to drink. On leaving them he deemed he was escaping from the hands of devils. On the following day they arrived at the camp of Scatai, which was in process of migration, the yurts being placed on carts. The procession seemed to Rubruquis as large as a city. He was astonished at the number of horses and cattle and the flocks of sheep, and was told that notwithstanding he only had 500 herdsmen, of whom one-half were on another pasture. Their boy conductor went on to announce their approach, and presently messengers came to them to ask what presents they bore. They sent their master a flask of wine, some cake, and a dish of apples and other fruit, but he was vexed that they did not offer him any precious cloth. They approached him with fear and shyness. He was seated on a cushion holding a lute in his hand, and his wife sat beside him. The latter, Rubruquis says he believes, must have had her nose amputated, for she seemed to have none, it was so flat, and the place where it ought to have been, as well as her eyebrows, which looked very ugly, were coloured with some black ointment. Rubruquis told his message, which, as he had been warned, he repeated the same terms. He asked Scatai to accept a small present, since he, as a monk, had neither gold nor silver to offer, and could only offer him some food as a blessing. He accepted it and distributed it among his followers. Rubruquis then gave him the letters of the Emperor of Constantinople, which, being written in Greek, had to be sent to Soldaia for translation. He was then offered some cosmas (kumis). This the priests of the Russians, Alans, and Greeks who lived there insisted upon their people not drinking, and deemed one who drank it no longer a Christian; and Rubruquis hints that to comply with this queer prejudice, which he elsewhere confesses prevented many of the people to whom kumis was almost indispensable, from being converted, like wearing trousers does in our own day among the negroes of Africa, he excused himself, saying he had plenty to drink. Scatai was inquisitive to know what their message for Sertak was, and what their letters contained. They explained that they went to speak to him of the word of God ; and as to their letters, as they were sealed, he could not disclose them, but they only contained a message of good will and friendship. Rubruquis then explained to his host, through an interpreter, whose stupidity he enlarges upon, the Christian message he bore, but Scatai did not answer, and merely moved his head. He tells us the people of these parts did not use money, nor would they sell their goods for gold and silver, but only bartered them for pieces of cloth, and when money was shown to them they rubbed it with their fingers and smelt it to see if it was copper. Scatai at length sent them on with a guide and two porters, and also presented them with a goat for food, and several skins of milk and kumis. The travellers set out northwards, and after some suffering crossed the well-known Scythic dyke, which is mentioned by Herodotus, and which was then partially occupied by officers of the Tartars who collected the salt dues. Having given them some cake, they received in return another goat and several skins of milk, and were provided with eight oxen. They then entered the steppe again, and for ten days found no water except in certain stagnant pools and two rivulets. They then marched eastwards, with nothing to relieve the dreary steppe but the tombs of the Comans, with the sun oppressively hot, and their servants by no means too civil, and made their way from one post station to another. At length, a few days before the festival of Saint Mary Magdalene, they arrived at the river Don. At the point where they touched it the Tartars had organised a portage, the boatmen being Russians. They first took over the travellers, and then their carts, putting one wheel in one boat and the other in another, tying the boats together, and then rowing them over. Their cattle and horses were sent back by their guide to the former halting place, and when they asked for more they were told that in consideration of supplying the ford with boats the ferrymen were relieved of the duty of furnishing post horses. The travellers were consequently delayed there for three days. On the first they were given a borbota (?), on the second some rye bread and a little flesh, and on the third some stock fish. The river, says Rubruquis, was as wide as the Seine at Paris, and there was a second ford some distance further south, which was used in the winter. The streams were well stocked with fish, but the Tartars only ate those which were very large and could be carved like sheep (no doubt sturgeons). At length the ferrymen became more accommodating, and supplied them with sumpter cattle. They themselves travelled on foot, and reached the camp of Sertak on the 2nd of August.

His camp was about three days journey from the Volga, and it was of considerable size. He had six wives, while his eldest son had two or three more. Each wife had a separate yurt and about two hundred carts or arabas. The friars were first taken to a man named Coiac (Kuyuk), a Nestorian, who was a kind of chamberlain. By him they were sent on to another named Jamia or Jam, whose duty it was to receive envoys. In the evening Kuyuk summoned them to his presence. “ He was seated in his glory,” says Rubruquis, “ and had a lute played before him, and some people danced.” The friars excused themselves for not taking him any presents on the ground that they were clerics, and neither gave nor received gold and silver and precious garments, and their only treasures were their books and the chapel in which they performed the service. He seems to have been conciliated by this answer, gave the travellers some milk, and asked them for their blessing. Rubruquis spoke to him of the emperor and of the King of France, whom he had heard of from a previous traveller named Baldwin de Hennonia. He also met a Dominican, who had gone there from Cyprus, and told him many things. The friars presented their host with some muscatel wine and sweet cake, and were summoned the following day to go and see Sertak, taking with them their books and chapel in one cart, and bread and wine and fruits in another, many Tartars, both Christians and Saracens (Mussulmans), standing around. Rubruquis was clad in his vestments, with a cushion on his arms, and carried the Bible given to him by Louis, and the illustrated psalter given to him by the queen in his hands; while his companions bore the missal and cross, and the assistant, dressed in a surplice, carried the thurible. Thus they approached the entrance to Sertak’s tent. The hanging which generally closed it was raised so that he might see them. The interpreter and Nestorian, who accompanied them, prostrated themselves, but this ceremony was not exacted from them. They were warned not to tread on the threshold in entering or leaving the tent, and told that they must chant a blessing. They accordingly entered singing the Salve Regina. At the entrance to the tent there was the usual sideboard with vessels of kumis on it. Kuyuk, the chamberlain, took the thurible with the incense from them, and showed it to his master. The latter and his wife also inspected the psalter, the Bible, and the cross. He asked if the image upon it was that of Christ. Rubruquis adds parenthetically that the Nestorians and Armenians did not put figures on their crosses, and suggests that they were ashamed of “the Passion.” When they had been inspected, the friars handed Louis’s letters and the translations of them into Arabic and Syriac, which Rubruquis had made at Acre. Having retired, Kuyuk and some interpreters went with them to translate the letters. These having been read to Sertak, he replied that before he gave an answer he must consult with his father Batu. Having left their books and vessels in charge of Kuyuk, they once more set out on their journey, and on the third day they reached the Volga. The route they traversed was a dangerous one, for Rubruquis tells us the Tartars owned a great number of Russian, Hungarian, and Alan slaves, who were in the habit of banding themselves twenty or thirty together, and escaping by night and concealing themselves during the day, supplying themselves with horses from the Tartar herds. These men were very dangerous to travellers, whom they were in the habit of attacking. At the Volga they found a similar ferry to the one they had passed at the Don, in charge of some Russians and Muhammedans. He tells us Batu lived on the further bank of the Volga, and from January to August moved northwards with his people, returning southward in the other six months of the year. The point where they crossed was the northern limit of this migration, and therefore probably Ukek, and as Batu had set out southwards, our travellers sailed down the river to Batu’s camp, which Rubruquis compares to a great city, and to the old camp of the Israelites. He tells us such a camp was called orda, that word meaning middle, and it was so named because the chief was there encamped in the midst of his people, whose tents were strewed all about, except towards the south, where the entrance was, and which was open. The travellers found Batu in a large tent, and were bidden not to say anything until he spoke, and then to speak briefly, and were again warned not to touch the threshold. They went in barefoot, with their hoods off. Rubruquis says that Carpini, being a papal nuncio, had changed his habit, so that he might not be contemned. They stood in the midst of the tent while they could repeat a miserere amidst a general silence. Batu sat on a gilded couch, on a platform reached by three steps, and one of his wives sat beside him, while some of his followers were seated around. At the entrance was a sideboard with gold and silver vessels on it, ornamented with precious stones. Rubruquis tells us naively that he looked at Batu for some time, and that his appearance was like that of John of Bello-monte, for his face was covered with red spots. He bade them speak, upon which they were told to kneel down, and proceeded to urge upon him to become a Christian, telling him that those who would not believe would be lost. At this message he smiled derisively, and his companions jeered. He told him how they had heard that Sertak was a Christian, and how they in consequence had gone to him as envoys from the French king, and had been bidden to go to himself Batu. Batu then asked the name of the Frankish king, and why he was then at the head of his army, and was told that he had gone to fight against the Saracens. Batu then gave them some kumis, which was deemed a great honour. When they returned to their tent they were told that in order that they might have permission to stay in the country, it was necessary they should have the Khakan’s leave, and that Rubruquis and his interpreter must go on to Mangu Khan at Karakorum, while his companions returned to Sertak. They naturally separated with great grief. They were provided with horses and food, and travelled with Batu down the river, for the space of five weeks, along the Volga. On the way the travellers suffered a good deal. They met with two Hungarians and a Coman, who had been baptised, and wrote out a copy of the Hours of the Virgin and of the Office of the Dead for them. By them they were supplied with some meat and other refreshment. The Coman told Rubruquis he had been baptised in Hungary, and that he had been much questioned by Batu in regard to the friars, and had told him the rules of their order. At length, on the feast of the Holy Rood, they were overtaken by a Mongol, who told them he had been deputed to conduct them to the court of Mangu Khan. He was a truculent person, and was very frank with them about the difficulties of the four months’ journey there, and of the small scruples he should have in abandoning the travellers; he overlooked their wardrobe, making them leave behind everything but necessaries, and they were furnished with a furred cloak and trousers, made of sheep’s skin, with the wool still upon it, and boots, also felt socks and fur hoods; and at length the second day after Holy Rood they set out over the terrible Nogay steppes, having the Caspian on the south and Great Bulgaria on the north. After riding twelve days from the Volga they reached the Yaik, which Rubruquis tells us flowed from Pascatir, , the land of the Bashkirs. This steppe was then inhabited by the Cangli, i.e., the Kankalis. They changed horses three and four times a day, and sometimes travelled two or three days without meeting anyone. The friar quaintly tells us how he was provided with a strong horse, being corpulent, and how it behoved them to make no complaints, since they were lucky even to have horses at all.* He is nevertheless very querulous, and complains that there was no end to the hunger and thirst, the cold and weariness which he suffered, for his conductor gave them no meat except in the evenings, when they had a shoulder-blade of mutton, &c., and some broth. In the mornings they had only something to drink or a little boiled millet. Often they had to eat their meat nearly raw or half cooked, as they could not find any dried dung with which to make up their fires, for wood there was none. At first their guide contemned his charges greatly, but presently they became more respected, and, we are told, they were conducted by the camps of rich Mongols for whom the friars were expected to pray ; and Rubruquis regrets that he had not a good interpreter with him, to take advantage of his opportunities for furthering his master’s work.

Having proceeded eastwards for a considerable time, the travellers at length on the eve of All Saints,  31st of October, turned more to the south, and passed over certain mountain ridges (probably the high lands south of Akmolinsk). Having gone southwards for eight days, and seen many wild asses on the way, they at length reached a fertile district bounded by high mountains (the Alexandrofski range), and on the eighth day after the feast of All Saints they reached Kenchat (that is Kenchak, not far from Merke). There the governor came out to meet them, with ale (cervisia) and cups. It was the custom for the people of Mangu to thus treat those who came from Batu, and vice versa. The people of the country told him it was watered by a great river, whose waters were largely diverted by canals and sluices for artificial irrigation, and that it did not fall into the sea but was lost in the swamps. This river was doubtless the Chu. Rubruquis found many vines there and drank of the wine. As he passed this way Rubruquis made inquiries about the city of Talas and a colony of Germans, who had been settled there by Buri. The latter had been put to death, as I have already described, by Batu, while the Germans had been removed by orders of Mangu to Bolac, a town a month’s journey from Talas (Pulad, near lake Sairam), where they were employed in digging for gold and in making armour. Rubruquis tells us he passed within three days of this town in journeying eastwards, and soon after he entered the country subject immediately to Mangu, namely, the district of Kara Khitai. His journey onwards I shall consider when we write of the Khanate of Jagatai in a later volume.

Having spent some time at Mangu’s court, and been deputed by him to carry letters to his master Louis IX, he returned again. His return journey, he tells us, was made further north and in the summer. When he had travelled some twenty days he heard that the King of Armenia had passed by, and soon after met Sertak, who with his family was on his way to Mangu’s court; and after some diplomatic phrases, he learnt from Kuyuk, Sertak’s dependent, that the books and other treasures he had left behind were safe. He arrived at Batu’s court the same day on which he had left it the year before, and met his companions, who had been well treated by the King of Little Armenia, whose journey I shall presently describe. He apparently found Batu encamped in his old quarters on the Volga, and having obtained permission to return home by land, the sea route being closed in winter, and being provided with a Uighur guide, he set out by way of Serai, which Rubruquis tells us had only recently been founded by Batu, on the east of the Volga, where it divides into three channels, and then by the town of Sumerkent, on the Lower Volga, and by way of the Eastern Caucasus into Persia.

The mission of Rubruquis was followed by that of a more important person, namely, Haithon, the King of Cilicia or Little Armenia. He had succeeded to the throne on marrying Zabel or Isabel, the only child of Leo II. He was crowned in 1224, and abdicated in favour of his son Leo III in 1269, when he became a monk. He had sent his brother Sempad to attend the inauguration of Kuyuk, and, as we are told in the narrative of his journey, when Mangu Khan mounted the throne, the great “Basileopator” and general, Batu, who lived with a great multitude of people on the river Athil (the Volga), sent an invitation to Haithon to go and visit him, and also Mangu. He had previously (in 1252) sent a priest named Basil as an envoy to Batu. Having disguised himself for fear of the Seljuki Turks, whose sultan at this time was Alai ud din, son of Kaikobad, and who hated him because of his friendly intercourse with the Mongols, he at length arrived at Kars, where he met Baiju Noyan, the Mongol general, and other grandees, who treated him with honour. He next stopped at a village named Varden is, at the foot of mount Arai, in Armenia, whose site is elaborately discussed by Klaproth. There, there was a palace of a prince named Kurth, a Christian Armenian, whose sons were named Vache and Hassan. He remained there until they brought him some of his treasures, which were necessary for presents, and which were sent him by his father Constantine, who was an old man. When the chief patriarch Constantine heard that Haithon was passing this way, he sent the abbot James, an eloquent and wise man, who had previously been on an embassy to the Greek Emperor John, the bishop Stephen, the abbot Mekhitar, of Skevra, as well as Basil, the priest, who had returned from Batu, Thoros, a priest, his companion, and Karapet, another priest, to him. He passed through the country of the Aghuvans (the Albanians), and by the defile of Derbend. Thence he went to Batu and his son Sertak, “who was a Christian.” We thus see that the rumour of Sertak’s having been a Christian, which Rubruquis had found to be so vain, had reached other ears besides those of Louis the Pious. Haithon was received with great honour by the two, and was sent on to Mangu by a very long road beyond the Caspian.

He set out on the 13th of May, and having crossed the Yaik, arrived at Hor, midway between Batu’s and Mangu’s camps, which is no doubt the river Or, giving its name to Orsk. It falls into the Yaik. He crossed the Irtish, and entered the land of the Naimans, and arrived at Kara Khitai on the 13th of September. This is probably a mistake for Karakorum, for Kara Khitai had been left long behind. The narrative goes on to say that on the festival of the elevation of the cross he had an audience with Mangu, who was seated in all his glory, and Haithon offered him presents. He was received with special honour. He was given a warrant or diploma, with a seal, to guarantee that neither himself nor his country should be molested, and also given a letter of enfranchisement for the churches of his kingdom. He left again on the 1st of November, and returned by a different route. I shall have more to say about him when I treat of Khulagu.

Two years after Mangu’s accession, 1254, Izuddin, the joint sultan of Rum, was summoned to Karakorum. Afraid that his brother Roknuddin, who had long been his rival, and to whom he had given a joint authority with himself, would take advantage of his absence to oust him from his position, he determined to send his third brother, Alaiuddin Kaikobad, who accordingly set out (taking with him many presents) by way of the Black Sea and the Golden Horde. He was accompanied by one of the principal Seljuki generals named Seifuddin Tarentai, and by Shujauddin, governor of the maritime districts. Izuddin sent a letter to Mangu, in which he excused himself for not going just then as he had to make way against his enemies, the Greeks and Armenians; he said that he hoped to be able to go before long, and that he had sent as his substitute a younger brother who had joint authority with him.

Soon after this party had set out, the partizans of Roknuddin, who wished to circumvent his brother, despatched the chancellor Shemsuddin and the Emir Seifuddin Jalish with a forged letter, purporting to have been written by Izuddin to Tarentai, ordering the latter and his colleague to return to Iconium. They overtook the travellers at the ordu of Batu, with whom they had an audience, and to whom they explained that Izuddin, having discovered that Tarentai had formerly been struck by lightning (and was therefore an inauspicious person), could not be presented to Mangu, while Shujauddin was a doctor, skilled in magic, and carried with him some drugs with which to poison Mangu. He had therefore sent the two bearers of the letter to replace them. Batu ordered the baggage of the two former envoys to be examined, and there were in fact found among them some drugs and medicinal roots, among other things scammoni. Batu ordered Shujauddin to take some of these drugs himself, which he did except the scammoni. Batu was thereupon convinced that these things were not poisons but drugs. He decided that all four officers should go on to the ordu. The former two with their young master, and the latter two with the presents. Alaiuddin, whose mother was a daughter of the beautiful Armenian queen Rusudan, died on the way, like so many travellers who had traversed the terrible route leading to Karakorum, and the officers went on alone. They pleaded their several master’s cause, and Mangu ordered Rum to be divided between the two brothers.

Besides his authority over his special ulus, Batu had a joint authority elsewhere, and notably in the country south of the Oxus, which was not disposed of by Genghis Khan’s will, and which was apparently meant to be a joint possession shared by the masters of the three great Khanates. Thus we are told that when Genghis Khan evacuated Persia, Juchi appointed Chin Timur as his deputy in Khuarezm. When in 1230 Chormagun was ordered by the Khakan Ogotai to attack the Khuarezm Shah Jelaluddin, Chin Timur was ordered to follow him with the troops of Khuarezm to subdue Khorassan. He remained there as governor, and, we are told, had four colleagues; Kelilat, nominated by the Khakan, Nussal by Batu, Kul Toga by Jagatai, and Tunga by the widow and son of Tului.

On the death of Chin Timur in 1235, Nussal, who was a very old man and almost a centenarian, took his place as governor of Khorassan. Chin Timur’s chancellor was a Uighur, named Kurguz, who, being a skilled penman, had been taken into Juchi’s service, and had taught his children writing. When Chin Timur was made governor of Khuarezm, he was nominated his secretary and eventually his minister. This post he retained under Nussal. As the latter was practically incapable, there were two candidates for the post. Kurguz, who was supported by his countryman Chinkai, who had great influence with Ogotai, and Ongu Timur, the son of Chin Timur, who was supported by Chinkai’s rival Danishmend Hajib. The quarrel between the two was protracted, and eventually both repaired to the Imperial court, where, after hearing both sides, Ogotai decided against Ongu Timur; “but,” he added, “as you belong to Batu, I will remit the matter to him, and he will punish you.” Chinkai thereupon interceded for him, saying, “Ongu Timur says the Khakan is the lord of Batu. Is it right that a dog like myself should be the cause of two sovereigns deliberating over me. The Khakan had better decide.” “You speak well,” said Ogotai, “for Batu would not spare his own son in a similar position to yours.” The companions of Ongu Timur were thereupon punished as calumniators, and Kurguz was given the government of all the country south of the Oxus.

When Khulagu set out to conquer Persia in 1253, each of the Mongol princes furnished a contingent of troops for the work, due doubtless to their having common rights in Khorassan, and we are told the contingent sent by Batu was commanded by the prince Alakai, son of Sheiban, with Kotar Oghul and Kuli. It is probable that the rights of the heads of the several minor Khanates in Khorassan, &c., were not territorial, but that they were entitled to share a portion of the revenue drawn from thence. This was also the case in China, and we are told in the Yuan shi, under the year 1236, that the emperor (Ogotai) granted to the empress dowager, the princes, and princesses appanages in China. Among these we are told that Waludo and Batu, i.e., Orda and Batu, received the department of Ping Yang in Shansi. Yelu Chutsai, the famous minister of Ogotai, having presented a report in which the system of appanages was condemned, “the emperor ordered darughas or governors to be appointed over the places given as appanages, and that the princes and others should merely receive the revenues from their lands”

Batu Khan died in the year 1255 or 1256. The name Batu in Mongol means hard, durable. He was entitled Sain Khan (the “Good Khan”), and Marco Polo and the chronicler of Kazan make two distinct persons out of the two names. Herberstein has a curious story about his death, which is clearly fabulous. He tells us that according to the annals “Batu was killed by Vaslaf, king of the Hungarians (who on his baptism was named Vladislaus, and was enrolled among the saints), for he had carried off the king’s sister, whom he had accidentally met with during the spoiling of the kingdom, and the king, moved by love for his sister and by the indignity of the deed, pursued him; but when he made his attack upon Batu, his sister took up arms in cause of the adulterer against her brother, which so enraged the king that he slew his sister, together with the adulterous Batu.” These things were done in A.M. 6745 (a.d. 1237). I need not say that Batu did not die in 1237, and that St. Vladislaf of Hungary did not live until long before Batu’s time, i.e., from A.D. 1076 to 1095.

Fraehn has given three coins, without dates, as having been struck at Bolghari during the Batu’s reign, but I deem it much more probable that they were struck during the reign of Bereke, who was a Mussulman and an innovator upon ancient Mongol customs. Among the earlier Mongols, as is well known, coined money was unknown. I shall refer again to these coins in the next chapter.

 

SERTAK.

 

For some time before his death Batu took little share in the government of the Khanate, which was intrusted to Sertak. He had, as we have seen, immediate command of the Mongols encamped between the Don and Volga, while his father lived on the Volga. Here, like the Grand Khan, he encouraged the priests of various religions, and it was probably some Nestorians who had been at his court who spread the news in the west that he was a Christian. This was reported by the Muhammedans, and the Pope sent him a letter in 1254 to congratulate him. The Armenian historian Chamchean tells us that he had been brought up by Christian nurses, that he was baptised, and lived like a Christian. He tells us, further, that he was permitted to do this by his father, that Christianity was tolerated, and that he forbade the churches to be taxed. He adds that it was by his and his father’s influence that the Armenian and Georgian princes under the jurisdiction of the Mongol general Baiju were well treated. Rubruquis was quite persuaded that the Christianity of Sertak was all a pretence.

 

Batu, according to Rubruquis, had sixteen wives, each of whom had her own establishment. His chief wife was Borakchin. She was probably the mother of his four sons Sertak, Tutukan, Andewan, and Ulaghji. As he left brothers, it is clear that according to Mongol laws of succession none of these sons were entitled to the throne, but rather his eldest surviving brother, who would appear to have been Bereke. Nevertheless we find Sertak named as his successor. It came about thus : Mangu Khan convoked a Kuriltai to meet in the spring of 1256, in a place called Orbolguetu, where he entertained the various princes and others magnificently for two months, and gave them splendid presents. Apropos to this feast, D’Ohsson tells a story from the Yuan history, that in 1253 Batu had sent one of his officers named Tobdja to ask from Mangu a present of 10,000 golden ingots. According to M. Hyacinthe, no million silver roubles in value, of which he had need to buy a pearl. The Khakan sent him 1,000, saying, “If we thus lavishly squander the resources collected by Genghis and Ogotai, how can we reward the princes ?”

To this Kuriltai Batu sent his son Sertak, who set out in 1255, and was met on the way by Haithon. It was while on his way that news arrived of his father’s death, and we are told that thereupon Mangu appointed Sertak as his successor, and dismissed him with magnificent presents. Von Hammer and D’Ohsson both say he died on his way home; but the Armenian Chamchean, who was probably informed by the Armenian Prince of Khachen named Jelal, a resident for some time at Sertak’s court, and who was his companion on his journey, says he was poisoned by his relatives Park ’hachah and Parak ’hsar. Bar Hebraeus also says he was killed on the way. Klaproth has pointed out that in the names mentioned by the Armenian historian we find Bereke, the well-known fourth, and Berekjar, the ninth son of Juchi. The account is very probable, and I have no hesitation in accepting it.

We are told by Rashid that on the death of Sertak, Mangu nominated Ulaghji (who was his brother, and not his son, as D’Ohsson says,) to succeed him, and named his mother Borakchin regent. This nomination is doubtful, and so is the statement that he shortly after died. I believe, with Von Hammer, that he was the same Ulaghji who was appointed his lieutenant in Russia by Bereke, and who thus filled towards him much the same position that Sertak did towards his own father Batu. If he was nominated as Khan, it would seem, therefore, that he immediately gave place to his uncle Bereke, who was the rightful heir, and whose history we will reserve for the next chapter.

 

Note I.—Since writing the above chapter, I have met with a passage which throws some light on a difficult part of the Mongol history of this period. It has always seemed strange to me that an obscure son of Juchi’s like Singkur should have been chosen to command the armies of his ulus in the interval between the death of Genghis Khan and the great expedition under Batu in the west. I have nevertheless followed Wolff and Von Hammer in identifying the Suntay of Abulfaraj with Singkur, a view to some extent confirmed by Vassaf, who speaks of Suntay as the brother of Batu. Let us now examine the ground more closely. At the great Kuriltai held by Ogotai in 1235, it was determined to send an army into the countries of the west, and we are told by Raschid that accordingly Kuktai and Subutai Bahadur were given command of an army of 30,000 men, and ordered to conquer the country of Kipchak, of Saksin, and of Bulghar. This agrees with the Chinese authorities, which tell us that Ogotai in 1235 withdrew Subutai from China, where he had been very successful, in order to give him another command. Abulfaraj also tells us, in his Syriac chronicle, that when Ogotai sent an army of 30,000 cavalry under Churmaghun Noy an into Khorassan, he ordered a similar army to march against Kipchak and the country of the Bulgars, under the command of Sunati Agonista. In the Arabic chronicle of the same author he is called Sontay or Sitay Behadur. This conversion of Subutai into Suntai occurs also in some places in the narrative of Rashid, and is due to the confusion of diacritic points in the script. In the Armenian rescension of Abulfaraj, in which there is not a similar difficulty, the name is written Sapada Bahadur. Agonista is derived from a well-known Greek word signifying athlete or hero, and is a mere translation of Behadur. This makes it pretty clear that Suntay is a corruption of Subutai, and that it was that renowned general, and not Singkur, who commanded the Tartars in their attack on Bolghari. The great expedition was despatched in 1235. The very next year the Dominican friar Julian was travelling, as I have said, on the Volga. His journey was an interesting one, and we may add a few more facts about it. There was a tradition among the Hungarians that their nation had come from the east, but they did not know whence. In 1230 they sent four brothers to explore, but after three years’ fruitless search, they returned without finding the desired cradleland of their race. One of them named Otto, a merchant, reported, however, the existence of a nation in the east which spoke the Hungarian tongue, but he died shortly after. Bela IV, the Hungarian king, being interested in this question, despatched in 1234 four Dominican friars, of whom Julian was one, to explore. They traversed Hungary and Bulgaria, and at length reached Constantinople, where John of Brienne was then reigning. Thence they navigated the Euxine, and in three days reached the town of Matrika (near the modern Fanagoria), whence they passed through Zichia and Alania, i.e., Circassia and the country of the Ossetes, of whose inhabitants Julian gives some account. There they could find no one to accompany them through ear of the Tartars, who were not far off. As they ran short of provisions, the friars determined that two of their number should be sold as slaves to enable the other two to continue their journey. But as they could not find a merchant, and did not understand the arts of ploughing and grinding corn, two of them determined to return, while the other two, Bernhard and Julian, persevered, and after a stay of six months, during which they suffered great hunger, living on a little millet, which they obtained in barter for some spoons and other objects which one of them carved out of wood, they at length found some companions, with whom they travelled for seven and thirty days through deserts, having only twenty-four cakes, baked in the ashes, to eat, and in constant dread of being killed by their companions, who suspected they had gold with them. Bernhard fell ill on the way, and wished Julian to leave him, but he succeeded with great trouble in conveying him onwards until, on the twenty-seventh day, they reached the land of the Saracens. The people who lived there Julian calls Veda. I believe them to be the Berdas or Merdas of other authors, who, we are told, were Mussulmans. The travellers reached the town of Bunda. (?) There they found no shelter, and had to camp out in the fields in the rain and cold, but Julian and his companion received some alms from the prince and people, who were favourable to the Christians. Thence they went on to another town, where Bernhard died in the house of a hospitable Saracen, and Julian, in order to prosecute his journey further, became the servant of a Saracen priest and his wife, with whom he went on to Great Bulgaria. In a large city there, which possessed 50,000 warriors, by which no doubt Bolghari is meant, he learnt from a woman, whose husband had been there, that he was only two days’ journey from Hungary (Great Hungary), the place he was searching for. Following her instructions, he arrived in fact there. When the people learnt he was a Hungarian they entertained him in their houses, inquired about the king and people of their Christian brothers. He tells us they conversed freely, he understanding them and they him. They were heathens, and had no gods, and lived like wild beasts; they did not practice agriculture, ate horse and wolf flesh, drank milk, wine, and blood; had abundance of horses and weapons, and were very warlike. They knew the Hungarians had migrated from their country, but did not know whither they had gone. He doubtless refers to the Bashkirs. The Tartars were near neighbours of theirs. They had not been subjected by but had in fact beaten them, and had afterwards in alliance with them subjected fifteen kingdoms. He met some Tartars there, and also one of their envoys who could speak Hungarian, Russian, Cumanian, German, Saracenic, and Tartar. He said that the chief of the Tartars was five days’ journey away, and was about to march against Germany, but was waiting for the progress of another army which was going to Persia. This was in 1236, and therefore the very year after the great Kuriltai, and the army referred to is doubtless that commanded by Subutai. On hearing the news of the march of the Tartars, Julian returned home by a nearer route through the country of the Mordvins. In 1237, news having arrived in Hungary of the advance of the Tartar king, Bela sent Julian on another journey to explore and report. He again traversed Russia, and found that the Tartars had conquered Great Hungary and Great Bulgaria, and he gives a confused account of their further doings which is of small value.

 

Note 2.—In his account of the various tribes of South-eastern Russia, Rubruquis speaks of the Moxel or Mokshas, a section of the Mordvins, and tells us their lord or sovereign, “with a great number of his people, were killed in Alemannia” (Germany), “ for,” he says,“ the Tartars led them to the frontiers of Alemannia, where they offered to submit themselves to the Alemanniens, hoping in this way to free themselves from the Tartar yoke.” He implies that the Tartars destroyed them on account of this intrigue. This notice, which had escaped me, shows how the army of the invaders grew, snowball fashion, wherever it went through the incorporation of conquered tribes.

 

Note 3.—My deceased friend, the late antiquary Thomas Wright, supplied M. D’Avezac with a copy of some verses taken from a poem written by John de Garlande, apparently soon after the Tartar invasion, and entitled, “De Triumphis Ecclesiae ” from which I quote as follows:—

“ The seventh book opens with an account of the inroads of the Tartars ; he describes them as cannibals:

“ The people are too savage, Satan's household, a plague on the Church, faithless, lovers of slaughter. Water, wine, bread, meat, fish, it cools, it boils, it heats, it nourishes; it lives in a temple of shame. This people surpass beasts, which the world abhors; why? Because they trample on nature with their injustice. You may seek the method of trampling; with a draught of blood the frenzy drinks itself.

A hungry man is gnawed by man; no lion fills the loosened entrails of a lion; no wolf tears a wolf with its claw; that tribe turns limbs into the thorns on the hearth. Virgil depicts the monster as having fame. Under feathers are eyes and unstable steps. It gave them a thousand tongues speaking inventions; it changes true things with falsehood so it speaks; yet it fashions some rumor to resemble truth. For certainly that priest told me: priests of the land are laid low, thus they are crucified, put down, and tortured for a long time. Mothers are killed, and weeping boys are allowed to go through their mothers’ breasts, crying, shouting, perishing. This ferocity, fame says, has drunk human marrow: what crime does such ferocity fear?

The king cooks the fat, tender, soft, generous, and beautiful ones for himself. The common people devour the old, black, hard, scabby, hairy, trembling ones; this work does not disgust him. What follows they really do: they cut off women's throats, then join their bodies to his lust.

Hi because they are wicked cannot be cleansed by piety. These men of Tyre and Pergamum perished. The heart tasting cruelty, they cut the offspring of women, they do not honor the holy one (wretched me!)

Those Cumans learned to serve evil, always empty, vain, and bringing false tricks. They are false followers of Christ, lawless, harsh. This is why the school proposed to investigate this fraud.

 

“He goes on to speak of the Jews as holding secret correspondence with them, and believing their prince to be the expected Messiah:

The Jews give filthy sacrifices to the god, defiling themselves badly by offering entrails. They defile themselves badly by offering entrails to the god; filthy Jews give similar sacrifices. While circumcised for the sake of skin, they deserve the name Apelios, this surname is suitable for them. These wretched people meet miserable deaths throughout the world: destroyed laws, all laws are evil. Why should I mention the applause given by the treacherous synagogue? Should I announce its treachery? I pass over the gifts it sends secretly or openly. While it believes it possesses its Messiah, its hope for harvest fails: expecting a messiah in such times, it fosters a barren hope pitifully.

“After some religious reflections, this author again describes the devastations they committed wherever they came :

“ Priests lay prostrate as monks desecrate altars and temples, and they slaughter oxen and bind their feet. Fury hurls the Church into chaos while discord reigns, sharpening hellish rage for battle. In sacred cloisters they dare to commit vile acts; they want to stain holy tombs with soil. They break open saints' shrines and steal bones; and flaunting gems, gold, and vile treasures, they deck themselves in the Church's finery. They defile sacred vessels and drink from them. The Catholics tried to follow them, empty-handed, tempted by theft, killing, and plundering.

 

Note 3—Abulghazit tells us that Juchi’s capital was called Kok orda, i.e., the Blue Horde. This was probably the later Seraichuk. Klaproth tells us that, according to a short history of Genghis Khan and his family, written in Jagatai Turk, the camp of Batu was at a place called Utch kandak. I cannot throw any light on this name, but it would certainly seem from the narrative of the friar Julian that before the great campaign in Europe, and before the conquest of the valley of the Volga, the ulus of Juchi had a fixed camping place, for he tells us in his second letter, describing his journey in 1237, that the Tartars were then ruled over by Chayn, i.e., by Sain Khan or Batu, who lived in the great city of Hornah. It may be that by this the Ornas of other writers is meant, i.e., Urgenj, which was a city belonging until the time of the Great Timur to the ulus of Juchi. M. Wolff deems the word Hornah a corruption of Ordu. It will be well before passing on to say a few words about some of the towns founded by the Mongols on the Volga, and we may naturally begin with their famous capital Serai. It is first mentioned by Rubruquis, who tells us it was founded shortly before his passage through the country on his return home. The name is Turkish, and means a palace. It is a mere translation of the Mongol term Ordu. It occurs frequently elsewhere, thus the royal residence of the house of Jagatai was called Sali Serai. We also read of Arhenkserai and Zenjir Serai. Ak Serai was the name given to his palace at Kesh by Timur. Baghi or Bakshi Serai, i.e., the Garden Palace, was the name of the capital of Krim. We are all familiar with the derivatives Caravanserai and Seraglio. The town therefore took its name from the Imperial residence around which it clustered. We must now consider its situation. This is by no means a simple matter, and the Russian authorities are at issue with two of the most ingenious and learned foreign authors who have treated of the question, namely J. H. Muller and Colonel Yule. The latter has argued that there were two Serais on the Volga, between which we must carefully distinguish; the one founded by Batu and the other by Janibeg Khan, each one answering in position to a famous cluster of ruins still existing, and he identifies the Serai of Batu with the ruins situated at Selitrennoi-Gorodok, or Saltpetre town, near Astrakhan. With this view I most cordially concur. In the first place, I may mention that Fnehn, the distinguished numismatist, has shown very conclusively to my mind that the Tartars of the Golden Horde had three mint places in whose names Serai occurs. Serai proper, Serai el Jedid or New Serai, and Seraichuk or Little Serai. Seraichuk is a place whose site is well ascertained, and which was situated on the Yaik or Ural. Fraehn, in a special memoir, has argued very conclusively that Serai el Jedid is quite a different place from Seraichuk, and as both Serai and Serai el Jedid occur as contemporaneous mint places, it is clear that these two were also different towns. This view agrees exactly with that urged by Colonel Yule, that we must distinguish the Serai of Batu from the later Serai of Janibeg Khan, which was doubtless the New Serai of the coins. The statements of Pegolotti, that Serai was a day’s journey from Astrakhan, of Abulfeda, that it was two days’ journey from the outfall of the Volga, of the Persian geographer Sadik, that it was four days’ journey from Derbend, of the chronicler Nikon, that it was two days* journey from Astrakhan by water, and of Ibn Batuta, that he reached Serai in three days from the same city, are only consistent with the Serai mentioned by these authors having been situated near Astrakhan and not near Tzaritzin, and the Serai they mention is doubtless the old Serai. On the other hand, the ruins near Tzaritzin are actually called to this day the Serai of Janibeg Khan by the neighbouring Tartars.! Fra Mauro, as Professor Bruun and Colonel Yule have pointed out, puts two cities of Serai on the Akhtuba, calling the northern one, i.e., the Serai of Janibeg Khan, “Great Serai,” while Pegolotti, having carried his merchant from Tana (Azof) to Gittarchan (Astrakhan), takes him one day by river to Sara, and from Sara to Saracanco, i.e., Sara Kunk or Great Serai eight days more. The Saracanco of Pegolotti, I have no doubt, is the New Serai of the coins, whose extensive ruins near Tzaref have been so diligently explored by M. Grigorief. I shall have more to say about it in a future chapter. We will now confine ourselves to the Southern Serai, Its foundation by Batu was probably rather nominal than real, that is, he fixed its site, which was probably the place where his winter quarters were generally planted, and he probably built a number of wooden buildings, forming his more permanent palace or ordu. It was probably Bereke who became a Mussulman, and who is credited by one author (Jenabi) with the foundation of the city, who built its first imposing building in the shape of a mosque, while it was reserved for Uzbeg Khan, as we shall presently see, with the aid of his Egyptian workmen, to make the city one of the most famous and beautiful then existing. The remains at Selitrennoi-Gorodok are still very extensive, and I will abstract the account of them by Pallas. He says:—

“ The abandoned saltpetre work called Selitrennoi-Gorodok is situated in the midst of a hilly tract, extending to upwards of ten versts in length; here, along the banks of the Akhtuba, on a place from one to two versts broad, we discovered in every direction heaps of rubbish, traces of buildings, and tombs of brickwork, being the ruins of an extensive city of the Nogays. There had been a small fort erected on a hill, which unquestionably contained the principal and most elegant buildings of the place, and was surrounded by a strong wall; but at present the fort, which was originally built for the protection of the saltpetre work, is in a ruinous state, together with its dependent buildings. We particularly remarked the remains of two buildings, the most magnificent of which has lately been cleared of its rubbish, with a view to discover treasures; the other, if we may judge from the existing ruins, appears to have been a dwelling-house with many apartments. The former of these buildings, as is evident from its foundation and sepulchral walls, has been the family mausoleum of a Khan, with a superstructure which probably was a house of prayer.

“ This venerable place, as we were informed, has been plundered of many treasures, and whole coffins covered with silver. The fabric forms an oblong square, in a direction from N.N.E. to S.S.W., about twelve fathoms long, and eight fathoms and a half broad, when measured on its southern point. We could distinctly trace two equal divisions, on the northern side, beneath which were the sepulchral vaults, as is obvious from the tombs that have fallen in; while the southern division, especially on its portico, has been ornamented with Gothic pilasters, columns, and arches, the fragments of which are still distinguishable. Its foundation walls are nearly two .fathoms high, and upwards of two ells thick. In the whole brickwork, which consists of beautiful broad squares, disposed in the most regular manner, there is a degree of taste and elegance of which I have nowhere seen an instance among the ruins of the Tartars. The outside of the walls is not only embellished in all the interstices between the bricks with glazed earthen ornaments, of green, yellow, white, and blue colour, in triangular and other figures, but we also observed on the principal front of the building, the remains of Gothic stucco-work, which was decorated with glazed figures, such as artificial flowers, shellwork, nay, whole tablets in the Mosaic style.

“ But the tooth of time, and the depredations of the vulgar, have many years since converted these remarkable vestiges of antiquity into heaps of ruins. Formerly whole cargoes of bricks were carried from these buildings to Astrakhan; though, on account of the excellent cement, the workmen who were employed in demolishing entire walls, were obliged to destroy at least two-thirds of the bricks. Tradition relates many extraordinary stories of the coins and precious relics which were formerly dug up and collected here in great quantities, but I doubt whether many of those antique treasures have been rescued from the plundering barbarians, and judiciously consigned to the antiquarian; or whether any of them have been transmitted to the Cabinet of Russian Antiquaries, which belongs to the Imperial Academy of Sciences.”

The neighbourhood of these ruins is surrounded with a number of kurgans or mounds, proving that the site was that of a large city. F. H. Muller tells us that not long before he wrote a number of these were opened by Rybuschkin, the director of education in the government of Astrakhan, at the cost of the State. In more than twenty places walls built of dressed stone and cemented with lime were found, as well as floors made of similar stones. In the graves were found silver and copper coins, petrified shells, pieces of marble, bones, and urns with ashes in them, as well as metal utensils. Having described the site of the capital, let us now examine one or two other Mongol settlements on the Volga. Marco Polo, in describing the travels of his father and uncle, tells us that on leaving Bolgara they proceeded to a city called Ucaca, which was at the extremity of the kingdom of the lord of the Ponent. Abulfeda tells us that almost midway between Serai and Bular (Bolghari), on the western bank of the Itil, and fifteen days’ journey from each, was the little town of Ukek, as far as which, and no farther, extended the horde of the Tartars in the land of Bereke.t Ibn Batuta, in his journey from Astrakhan tells us he went to Ukek, which was ten days’ journey from Serai, and one day’s journey from the mountains of the Russians. These statements as to Ukek being a frontier town of Kipchak are illustrated by an extract from Antoniotto Usodimare, who wrote about the middle of the fifteenth century, and who tells us the empire of Uzbeg commenced in the province of Borgaria (Bulgaria), that is to say, with the town Vecina and ended with the town Cerganchi (Urgenj). According to Schmidt, Ukek in Mongol means a dam or fence of hurdles, whence and from the fact of its not being named before the Mongol invasion, it is probable that it was of Mongol foundation. Colonel Yule says it was the site of a Franciscan convent in the fourteenth century, and it was finally destroyed by Timur. It occurs as a mint place on coins of Tuktagha, dated 1306. In Russian documents it is written Uwek or Uwesh, a corruption compared by Fraehn with that of Azak into Azof. This form occurs early, for in Wadding’s fourteenth century catalogue of convents it occurs as Uguech. Anthony Jenkinson, in Hackluyt, gives an observation of its latitude as Oweke, 51.40; and Christopher Burroughs, in the same collection, gives it as Oueak, 51.30. There can be little doubt that its site is marked by the village of Uwek, six miles south of Saratof, on the right bank of the Volga. Burroughs, who travelled this way in 1579, tells us there formerly stood there a fine stone castle, called Oueak, around which a town formerly gathered, which, according to the report of the Russians, was swallowed up by the earth by the justice of God for the wickedness of its inhabitants. Ruins of the castle and handsome tombs, evidently constructed for people of high rank, still survived; on one of which, he says, could still be seen the figure of a man on horseback, who held a bow in his hand and had a quiver by his side. On another was an escutcheon with characters engraved on it which he took to be Armenian. On another stone was another kind of writing-!! Armenian gravestones, as is well known, have been found at the neighbouring town of Bolghari. These ruins have all disappeared under the pressure of Russian Philistinism, and amid the sighs of Fraehn. Falk, on his journey through here in 1769, found only a grave and wall enclosing a large square space. He tells us that Tartar coins were found there by the saltpetre miners, of which he obtained some.§§ Erdmann visited the site of the town in 1815, and tells us that there were several mounds round it in which ruins and Tartar coins were found. Levchine, who also passed this way in 1769, found in several places holes where the inhabitants quarried ancient bricks, and also potsherds of a beautiful fabrique. Besides coins there were also found rings, earrings, copper vessels, and even gold jewels, which were disposed of to the goldsmiths at Saratof. Fraehn has described a small find of seven coins, including three of Uzbeg Khan, one of Janibeg, and another of Berdibeg’s, a copper seal, and a small silver figure, which were found there.* Abulghazi says that the Itil (the Volga) flows past Ukek, then reaches the village of Jemer, and thence passes on to Serai. Von Hammer adds that Fraehn, in the margin of the MS., has written that Jemer stands for Belshemen. Jemer is undoubtedly the place called Sumerkent by Rubruquis, kent being the well-known Iranian termination to topographical names, which has been illustrated by M. Lerch, of St. Petersburgh, and occurs so frequently in Transoxiana and Turkestan. Rubruquis tells us how, on his return from his journey to the Great Khan, he on his way towards Serai struck the Itil where it divided into three branches ; one of these again divided into four lesser streams, so that he crossed seven rivers altogether. On the middle branch, he tells us, was the town of Sumerkent. It was unwalled, but when the river was inundated it was surrounded with water. He tells us the Tartars attacked it for eight years before they captured it, and that it was inhabited by Alans and Saracens. Rubruquis visited the town, where he met a German and his wife, with whom his man Goset had spent the winter, having been sent there by Sertak that he might ease his court. Rubruquis tells us that Batu and Sertak, one on one side the river and the other on the other, were wont to descend as far as this place in their winter migration, but no further, crossing over the frozen surface of the Volga when they had occasion, and taking shelter among the woods on its banks in severe weather. He tells us a few sentences further on that Serai was situated on the eastern bank of the river, and implies that it was close to Sumerkent. This description, which is that of a traveller who actually visited the town, is not quite consistent with the paragraph quoted from Abulfeda, and the latter seems to be a mistake. The Sumerkent of Rubruquis was situated at the lower extremity of the Volga, and within the Delta of that river. That it was further south than Serai, Batu’s capital, is clear from his statement that it marked most the southern part of Batu’s migration. The description is consistent only with the neighbourhood of Astrakhan, or rather with the ruins of old Astrakhan, and I have no doubt myself that Sumerkent represents the town which appears for the first time in the fourteenth century under the new name of Haji Terkhan, and which will occupy our attention on a future occasion. The facts mentioned by Rubruquis about its capture by the Tartars and its being inhabited by Alans and Mussulmans, and also its situation in the network of the Lower Volga, shows that it is the same town referred to by Rashid uddin and the Chinese authors, ruled over by Bachiman, the details of whose capture I gave in the former volume. As I have said, it was virtually displaced by Astrakhan, which, together with another famous town on the Volga, namely, Bolghari, will occupy us in a future chapter.