The “Battle on the
Ice”
Winters in northern Russia are long, and the surface of Lake Chudskoe
was still frozen when the Russian force marched out to meet the Germans, along
with their Finnish allies, on April 5, 1242. In a scene made famous for modern
filmgoers by the director Sergei Eisenstein, the invaders rushed at the
defending Russians, who suddenly surprised them by closing ranks around the enemy
and attacking them from the rear. The Russians scored a huge victory in the
“Battle on the Ice,” which became a legendary event in Russian history.
Two years later, Alexander drove off a Lithuanian invading force, and
though he soon left Novgorod, the people there had become so dependent on his
defense that they asked him to come back as their prince. With Novgorod now in
the lead among Russian states, Alexander was the effective ruler of Russia.
Prospects for a strong, well-defended Russian state had died
with the collapse of Kiev. Andrei Bogolyubsky, a grandson of Vladimir Monomakh
and architect of this latest defeat, transferred the center of power to his own
principality of Vladimir-Suzdal in central Russia. About this time, a small
settlement with the Finnish name of “Moskva” was established along the southern
border of the principality. Prince Andrei then attempted to put down the last
remaining challenge, Novgorod, the northern merchant city that had been
autonomous since 1136.
According to the Novgorodian Chronicle, miraculous
intercession saved the city: “There were only 400 men of Novgorod against 7,000
soldiers from Suzdal, but God helped the Novgorodians, and the Suzdalians
suffered 1,300 casualties, while Novgorod lost only fifteen men. . . .” After
several months had passed, Andrei Bogolyubsky’s troops returned, this time
strengthened by soldiers from a number of other principalities. The Chronicle
continues:
But the people of Novgorod were firmly behind their leader, Prince Roman, and their posadnik [mayor] Yakun. And so they built fortifications about the city. On Sunday [Prince Andrei’s emissaries] came to Novgorod to negotiate, and these negotiations lasted three days. On the fourth day, Wednesday, February 25th . . . the Suzdalians attacked the city and fought the entire day. Only toward evening did Prince Roman, who was still very young, and the troops of Novgorod manage to defeat the army of Suzdal with the help of the holy cross, the Holy Virgin, and the prayers of . . . Bishop Elias. Many Suzdalians were massacred, many were taken prisoner, while the remainder escaped only with great difficulty. And the price of Suzdalian prisoners fell to two nogatas [a coin of small value].
The political situation among Russia’s princes gradually
evolved into a balance of minor powers. Kiev’s last claim to dominance – its
special relationship with the seat of Orthodoxy – dissolved with
Constantinople’s fall to the crusaders of the Latin Church in 1204.
This decline of the Kievan state and the fragmentation of
Russian land into numerous warring principalities, none capable of leading a
united defense, coincided with the climactic last westward drive of Asiatic
hordes, led by the Mongols. Through military and economic vassalage, they were
able to halt Russia’s struggle toward nationhood for nearly 200 years.
Early in the thirteenth century, the scattered tribes of the
Mongolian desert – a mixture of Mongol, Alan, and Turkic peoples – were united
into a single fighting army that drove across the Eurasian plain, following the
paths of so many other Asian incursions, and threatened to change the course of
Christendom.
The leader who organized and led the nomads in their great
conquest of Asia was Temujin. He had been a minor chieftain whose success in a
series of intertribal wars on the vast steppe region of northern Mongolia had
united first his clan, then his tribe, and finally the majority of tribes –
including the Mongols. A kuriltai, or great assembly of chieftains, in 1206 had
proclaimed him not just the “Supreme Khan” but the “Genghis Khan,” meaning the
“all-encompassing lord.” Thenceforth his authority was understood to derive
from “the Eternal Blue Sky,” as the Mongols called their god.
Genghis Khan ruled over a people of extraordinary hardihood
and ferocity. The Mongols were tent-dwelling nomads whose horses were their
constant companions. Mongol boys learned to ride almost from birth, and at the
age of three, they began handling the bow and arrow, which was the main weapon
in hunting and in war. Their small sturdy horses were, like their riders,
capable of feats of great endurance. Unlike Western horses, Mongol ponies were
highly self-sufficient, requiring no special hay or fodder and able to find
enough food even under the snow cover. The Mongols took care of their horses,
which were readily rounded up in herds of 10,000 or more, allowing them regular
periods of rest; and on campaigns, each warrior was followed by as many as
twenty remounts. Their horses gave them the mobility to strike suddenly and
unexpectedly against their enemies. Furthermore, the Mongols were more skilled
in war than earlier nomad hordes, and they were undeterred by forest lands.
The Mongol nation numbered only 1 million people at the time
of the empire’s greatest extent. Within the empire, Turks and other nomadic
tribes were far more numerous, serving mainly in the lower ranks of the armies.
(The hordes that swept across Russia, under the minority rule of Mongols, were
predominantly Turkic and were generally known as Tatars, derived from the
European name for all the peoples east of the Dnieper.) The authority of
Genghis and of his law commanded unquestioning obedience. The Great Yasa,
compiled principally by Genghis, was the written code of Mongol custom and law,
laying down strict rules of conduct in all areas of public life – international
law, internal administration, the military, criminal law, civil and commercial
law. With few exceptions, offenses were punishable by death. This was the
sentence for serious breaches of military efficiency and discipline, for
possessing a stolen horse without being able to pay the fine, for gluttony, for
hiding a runaway slave or prisoner and preventing his or her recapture, for
urinating into water or inside a tent. Persons of royal rank enjoyed no
exemption from the law, except to the extent that they received a “bloodless”
execution by being put inside a carpet or rug and then clubbed to death, for to
spill a man’s blood was to drain away his soul.
The functioning of the military state was set forth mainly
in the Yasa’s Statute of Bound Service, which imposed the duty of life service
on all subjects, women as well as men. Every man was bound to the position or
task to which he was appointed. Desertion carried the summary punishment of
death. The Army Statute, which organized the Mongol armies in units of ten, was
explicit:
The fighting men are to be conscripted from men who are
twenty years old and upwards. There shall be a captain to every ten, and a
captain to every hundred, and a captain to every thousand, and a captain to
every ten thousand. . . . No man of any thousand, or hundred, or ten in which
he hath been counted shall depart to another place; if he doth he shall be
killed and also the captain who received him.
Even in the far-off khanates, which the Mongols eventually
established, the Great Yasa was known and revered much as the Magna Charta, of
about the same time, was regarded in England. It provided the legal foundation
of the Great Khan’s power and the means to administer the immense Mongol-Tatar
Empire from the remote capital, which he established at Karakorum.
In 1215, Genghis Khan captured Yenching (modern Peking) and
northern China; he went on to subdue Korea and Turkistan, and to raid Persia
and northern India. The famous tuq, or standard, of Genghis – a pole surmounted
by nine white yak’s tails that was always carried into battle when the Great
Khan was present – had become an object of divine significance to the Mongols
and of dread to their prey.
After taking Turkistan, gateway to Europe, Genghis Khan sent
a detachment of horsemen to reconnoiter the lands farther to the west. In 1223,
this force advanced south to the Caspian Sea and north into the Caucasus,
finally invading the territory of the Cumans, a Turkic people settled in the
region of the lower Volga. The khans of the Cumans called on the Russian
princes to help them. “Today the Tatars have seized our land,” they declared.
“Tomorrow they will take yours.” Heeding their call for aid, Prince Mstislav of
Galicia and a few lesser princes marched with their troops to rescue their
neighbor. In the battle on the banks of the Kalka River, at the northeastern
end of the Sea of Azov, the Cumans and their allies suffered disastrous defeat.
Few escaped with their lives, though Mstislav and two other captured princes
were saved for special treatment.
Chivalry required that enemies of high rank be executed
“bloodlessly” – according to the same rules as Mongol chieftains – so another
expedient was devised. The vanquished were laid on the ground and covered with
boards, upon which the Mongol officers sat for their victory banquet. The
Russians were crushed to death.
Apparently satisfied with their foray, the conquerors
vanished from southern Russia as suddenly and as mysteriously as they had
appeared. “We do not know whence these evil Tatars came upon us, nor whither
they have betaken themselves again; only God knows,” wrote a chronicler. Most historians
attribute their departure to political changes in Mongolia.
Genghis Khan died in 1227 while on a military campaign
against a Tibetan tribe. Since his eldest son and heir, Juji, had died earlier,
Genghis Khan’s son Ogadai was chosen to rule in Karakorum as Chief Khan.
However, Genghis directed that the administration of the empire was to be
divided among all his sons, each receiving a vast ulus, or regional khanate, a
portion of the empire’s troops, and the income of that area over which they
ruled.
Juji’s original share was to have been the khanate of
Kip-chak – the region west of the Irtysh River and the Aral Sea – most of which
was still unconquered. It was left to his son, Batu, to complete the mission.
In 1236, Batu, with the blessing of Ogadai, led a strong army westward. The
Mongols advanced by way of the Caspian Gate and then northwestward. They took
Bulgary, the capital of the Volga Bulgars, and making their way through the
forests around Penza and Tambov, they reached the principality of Ryazan. The
northern winter had already closed in, but Batu’s forces, some 50,000 strong,
were accustomed to harsh conditions. The snow-covered frozen lakes and
riverbeds served as highways for their mounts.
The Russians were in no position to defend themselves.
Kievan Rus was in decline, and the newer principalities, like Vladimir-Suzdal,
had not yet developed the strength to withstand such foes as the Mongols. Under
siege for five days, the town of Ryazan fell on December 21, 1237. A chronicler
described the ferocity of the Mongols:
The prince with his
mother, wife, sons, the boyars and inhabitants, without regard to age or sex,
were slaughtered with the savage cruelty of Mongol revenge; some were impaled
or had nails or splinters of wood driven under their finger nails. Priests were
roasted alive and nuns and maidens were ravished in the churches before their
relatives. No eye remained open to weep for the dead.
Similar stories were repeated wherever the Mongols ranged.
The invaders believed that their Great Khan was directed by God to conquer and
rule the world. Resistance to his will was resistance to the will of God and
must be punished by death. It was a simple principle, and the Mongols applied
it ruthlessly.
By February 1238, fourteen towns had fallen to their fury.
The whole principality of Vladimir-Suzdal had been devastated. They then
advanced into the territory of Novgorod. They were some sixty miles from the
city itself when suddenly they turned south and Novgorod was spared. The dense
forests and extensive morasses had become almost impassable in the early thaw,
and Batu decided to return with his warriors to the steppes, occupied then by
the Pechenegs. On their way south, they laid siege to the town of Kozelsk,
which resisted bravely for seven weeks. The Mongols were so infuriated by this
delay that on taking the town, they butchered all that they found alive,
citizens and animals alike. The blood was so deep in the streets, according to
the chronicler, that children drowned before they could be slain.
During 1239, Batu allowed his men to rest in the Azov region,
but in the following year, he resumed his westward advance. His horsemen
devastated the cities of Pereyaslavl and Chernigov. They then sent envoys to
Kiev, demanding the submission of the city. Unwisely, the governor had the
envoys put to death. Kiev was now doomed. At the beginning of December 1240,
Batu’s troops surrounded the city and after a few days of siege, took it by
storm. The carnage that followed was fearful. Six years later, John of Plano
Carpini, sent by Pope Innocent IV as his envoy to the Great Khan of Karakorum,
passed through Kiev. He wrote that “we found an innumerable multitude of men’s
skulls and bones, lying upon the Earth,” and he could count only 200 houses
standing in what had been a vast and magnificent city, larger than any city in
Western Europe.
The Mongols pressed farther westward and then divided into
three armies. One advanced into Poland; the central army, commanded by Batu,
invaded Hungary; the third army moved along the Carpathian Mountains into
southern Hungary. The Mongols were intent on punishing King Bela of Hungary
because he had granted asylum to the khan of the Cumans and 200,000 of his men,
women, and children who had fled westward in 1238. Batu had sent warnings,
which Béla had ignored. Now the Mongols overran the whole of Hungary, while the
northern army laid waste Poland, Lithuania, and East Prussia. They were poised
to conquer the rest of Europe, when suddenly, in the spring of 1242, couriers
brought news that the Great Khan Ogadai was dead. Batu withdrew his armies,
wishing to devote all of his energies to gathering support as Ogadai’s
successor. Western Europe was thus spared the Mongol devastation, which, had it
spread to the Atlantic, would have had an incalculable impact on the history of
Europe and of the world.
Ogadai had ruined his health, as he frankly admitted, by
continued indulgence in wine and women. Sensing death approaching, the khan
appointed his favorite grandson as successor. But Ogadai’s widow, acting as
regent until the boy was old enough to rule, plotted secretly to procure the
election of her own son, Kuyuk, although this was strongly opposed by Batu and
many other Mongol leaders.
Batu had established his headquarters at Sarai, some
sixty-five miles north of Astrakhan on the lower Volga. It was little more than
a city of tents, for the khan of the Kipchaks remained a nomad at heart, but
the splendor of his court became legendary among the princes of his realm.
Batu’s Golden Horde (from the Tatar altūn ordū) also impressed John of Plano
Carpini, who wrote:
Batu lives with considerable magnificence, having
door-keepers and all officials just like their Emperor. He even sits raised up
as if on a throne with one of his wives. . . . He has large and very beautiful
tents of linen which used to belong to the King of Hungary. . . . drinks are
placed in gold and silver vessels. Neither Batu nor any other Tatar prince ever
drinks, especially in public, without there being singing and guitar-playing
for them.
Though Batu owed allegiance to the Great Khan, he now
refused to visit Karakorum and to pay homage to Kuyuk. The Golden Horde
remained a province of the Mongol-Tatar Empire, but Batu and his successors
thenceforth administered the khanate with a large measure of independence,
particularly in its relations with Russia.
The Russian princes paid their tributes directly to Sarai.
The terror and destruction wrought by the Tatar invasion had left the Russians
stupefied and brought their national life to a standstill. Decades passed
before they began to recover, for the Mongol yoke lay heavy on them. In certain
regions, mainly in western Ukraine, the Mongols took over the administration
from the Russian princes and ruled directly; in other regions they set up their
own officials alongside the Russians and exercised direct supervision. In most
parts of Russia, however, the khan allowed the local Russian princes to
administer as before.
Before the Mongol invasions, a distinctly Russian system of
landholding and agricultural production had emerged. Feudalism, as it was known
in Western Europe, had not yet taken hold; with vast areas of Russia still open
to settlement, only the slaves were legally held to the acreage on which they
were born. Land was organized rather loosely in the hands of four principal
classes. First came the grand princes and lesser nobility, Russia’s
proliferating royal family. Beginning sometime in the tenth or eleventh
century, the princes turned from plunder and the collection of tributes to the
land as the primary producer of wealth. Yaroslav’s decision to divide Kievan
Rus into five portions, one for each of his sons, can be taken as the formal
beginning of the appanage system, by which titles and estates passed from
generation to generation.
Ranking below the appanage princes, and coming somewhat
later to land ownership, was the class of boyars, who were roughly equivalent
to the barons and knights of Europe. The boyars were an outgrowth of the
Varangian druzhina, the prince’s retinue, made up of a mixture of Scandinavian
and native Slavic leaders whose lands were secured by conquest, colonization,
or outright princely gift. In the tradition of adventurers, the boyars were
free to shift allegiance from one prince to another as it suited their own
interests. Initially, no contract, either formal or by custom, held the boyar
in vassalage to the prince, nor did a change of loyalty affect his title to his
land. Service was not a condition of ownership, and land passed from father to
son.
The Church formed the third and still later developing class
of landlords, its right to tenure and administration independent of the princes
established by Byzantine precedent. Church lands were acquired either by
colonization in unclaimed lands or by donations from princes, often in exchange
for the prayers of the Church.
The fourth and most elusive of definition was the peasant
majority. Conditions varied from one principality to another, depending on
local custom and the power of the prince. Prior to the development of boyars’
estates, a peasant held the land by virtue of having wrested it from the
wilderness. This he usually accomplished as a member of a commune – a gathering
of a few family units, itself an outgrowth of the more primitive Slavic tribal
family. The peasant was technically a free man and remained so until the reign
of Alexei, in the middle of the seventeenth century, though the intervening
centuries brought an accumulation of legislation that would progressively limit
his right to exercise this freedom. With the growing power of the various
landlord classes, however, peasants living in the more settled areas of Russia
were put under obligations, the most common being obrok, quitrent or payment in
kind for land use, and barshchina, payment in contracted days of labor on the
owner’s estate. Only the kholopy, or “slaves,” a motley assortment of prisoners
and indebted poor, were entirely excluded from landholding during the period of
Mongol domination.
The khans of the Golden Horde were interested in the
conquered lands only as a source of revenue and troops, and so were content to
allow the continuation of this political structure. The appanage princes had to
acknowledge that they were the khan’s vassals and that they recognized the
overall suzerainty of the Great Khan of Karakorum. They could hold their
positions only upon receiving the khan’s yarlyk, or patent to rule; often, they
first had to journey to Sarai to prostrate themselves before him. On occasion,
they even went to Mongolia to make their obeisances. Moreover, they had to
refer to the khan for resolution of major disputes with other princes and to
justify themselves against any serious charges, competing with each another for
the khan’s recognition with gifts, promises to increase their payments of
tribute, and mutual denunciations.
Prompt action was taken in each newly conquered country to
promote a census of the population, for the purpose of assessing the amount of
tax to be levied and the number of recruits owed to the army. Mongol officials
were appointed to collect and to enroll recruits. Delays in making payments to
the tax collector, or producing men, or rebellion of any kind were punished
with extreme ferocity.
Nevertheless, driven beyond endurance by Mongol demands, the
Russians sometimes rebelled. No fewer than forty-eight Mongol-Tatar raids took
place during the period of the domination of the Golden Horde, and some of
these expeditions had the purpose of suppressing the Russian uprisings.
Gradually, however, the khan’s grip on his vassal states relaxed. Early in the
fourteenth century, Russian princes were allowed to collect taxes on behalf of
the Horde, and the tax collectors and other officials were withdrawn. The
Russian lands once again became autonomous, though they continued to
acknowledge the suzerainty of the khan. However, internal rivalries, much like
those that had fractured the Russian principalities, were weakening the Golden
Horde, which was ceasing to display the bold confidence of conquerors. In the
fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, the khan’s direct rule came to be
limited to the middle and lower Volga, the Don, and the steppelands as far west
as the Dnieper.
The impact of the Mongol invasion and occupation on Russia’s
social and cultural fortunes was largely negative, halting progress and
introducing a number of harsh customs. The Mongols probably left their mark in
such evil practices as flogging, torture, and mutilation, the seclusion of
women of the upper classes in the terem, or the women’s quarters, the cringing
servility of inferiors, and the arrogant superiority and often brutality of
seniors toward them. But evidence that the invaders made any enduring, positive
impression is slight. Historians S. M. Solovyev and V. O. Klyuchevsky argued that
Russia had embraced Orthodox Christianity and the political ideas of Byzantium
two centuries before the coming of the Mongols, and its development was too
deeply rooted in Byzantine soil to be greatly changed. Further, the Mongol
conception of the Great Khan’s absolute power was, in practice, close to the
Byzantine theory of the divine authority of the emperor, and, indeed, the
Mongol and Byzantine concepts might well have merged in the minds of the
Russian princes.
Only the Orthodox Church flourished. The religion of the
Mongols was a primitive Shamanism in which the seer and medicine man, the
shaman, acted as the intermediary with the spirit world. He made known the will
of Tengri, the great god who ruled over all the spirits in heaven. This form of
worship could readily accommodate many faiths, and the Mongols showed a
tolerance toward other religions, which Christian churches would have done well
to emulate. The Mongols were familiar with Nestorian Christianity, a heretical
sect for which Nestorius, patriarch of Constantinople, was deposed in the fifth
century, and certain clans had embraced Nestorianism. Though the Great Khan,
after considering Buddhism, Christianity, and Judaism, had finally in the
fourteenth century decided to adopt Islam as the faith of the Mongols, they
continued to show a generous tolerance toward the Christians.
The Russian Orthodox Church, in fact, enjoyed a privileged
position throughout the period of the Mongol yoke. All Christians were
guaranteed freedom of worship. The extensive lands owned by the Church were
protected and exempt from all taxes, and the labor on Church estates was not
liable to recruitment into the khan’s armies. Metropolitans, bishops, and other
senior clerical appointments were confirmed by the yarlyk, but this assertion
of the khan’s authority apparently involved no interference by the Mongols in
Church affairs.
Under this protection, the Church grew in strength. Its
influence among the people deepened, for it fostered a sense of unity during
these dark times. Both the black, or monastic, clergy and the white clergy,
which ministered to the secular world and was permitted to marry, shared in
this proselytizing role. Moreover, the Church preserved the Byzantine political
heritage, especially the theory of the divine nature of the secular power. In
accordance with this tradition, the support that the Church gave to the
emerging grand princes of Moscow was to be of importance in bringing the
country under Moscow’s rule.
The Orthodox Church was also strengthened, by virtue of
being unchallenged by other ideas and influences. Kievan Rus had maintained
regular contact with the countries to the south and west. By the great trade
routes, Russian merchants had brought news of the arts and cultures, as well as
the merchandise, of these foreign lands. But the Mongol occupation had isolated
the Russians almost completely. The great ferment of ideas in the West, leading
to the Renaissance, the Reformation, the explorations, and the scientific
discoveries, did not touch them. The Orthodox Church encouraged their natural
conservatism and inculcated the idea of spiritual and cultural self-sufficiency
among them. Indeed, this isolation, which was to contribute notably to Russia’s
backwardness in the coming centuries, was to be one of the most disastrous
results of Mongol domination.
Only the remote, northern republic of Novgorod had managed
to escape the devastation of Batu’s westward advance in 1238. The city,
standing on the banks of the Volkhov River, three miles to the north of Lake
Ilmen, in a region of lakes, rivers, and marshes, had built up a commercial
empire “from the Varangians to the Greeks,” as they described it. “Lord
Novgorod the Great,” the Novgorodtsi’s title for their republic, had been one
of the first centers of Russian civilization. Beginning with Prince Oleg’s rule
in the last years of the ninth century, it had acknowledged the primacy of
Kiev; but as the power and prestige of “the mother of Russian cities” declined,
Novgorod had asserted anew its independence. In 1136, its citizens had rallied
and promptly expelled the Kiev-appointed prince who, they complained, had shown
no care for the common people, had tried to use the city as a means to his own
advancement, and had been both indecisive and cowardly in battle. The city
concentrated its efforts on commerce, especially its connections with the
Hanseatic trading ports of the Baltic, avoiding most of the internecine strife
that had wracked the other principalities. “Lord Novgorod” showed the same
pragmatism in dealings with the khan.
The Novgorodian Chronicle relates that their prince,
Alexander Nevsky, son of Yaroslav I of Vladimir, had recognized the futility of
opposition and had directed his people to render tribute. In the year 1259,
“the Prince rode down from the [palace] and the accursed Tatars with him. . . .
And the accursed ones began to ride through the streets, writing down the
Christian houses; because for our sins God has brought wild beasts out of the
desert to eat the flesh of the strong, and to drink the blood of the Boyars.”
Nevsky also made frequent journeys of homage to the khan of
the Golden Horde, at least once to distant Karakorum, and had won the trust of
the Mongols. But a further reason, which was perhaps of overriding importance
in gaining the khan’s favor, was that Mongol policy stimulated Baltic trade,
for international commerce was the source of the Golden Horde’s prosperity.
While Kiev lay in ruins, Novgorod’s trade in the Baltic, and south by the river
road to the Caspian Sea, continued to flourish, and the people – 100,000 in its
heyday – to prosper. Confident in their wealth and power, the citizens asked
arrogantly: “Who can stand against God and Great Novgorod?”
Novgorod was unique in claiming the right to choose its own
prince; it allowed him only limited authority, in effect keeping him as titular
head of state with certain judicial and military functions. The real power
emanated from the veche – an unwieldy but relatively democratic assembly of
male citizens – and its more select, more operative council of notables, which
such day-to-day business as taxation, legislation, and commercial controls.
Participation in the veche was by class – groups of boyars, merchants,
artisans, and the poorer people – with the aristocratic element generally
dominant by virtue of its close ties with the council. Conflicts within the
assembly were often violent – a unanimous vote was required to pass any
decision – and meetings broke up in disorder. Nevertheless, they managed to
elect their posadnik, or mayor, and tysyatsky, or commander of the troops. The
veche also nominated the archbishop, who played an influential part in the
secular affairs of the republic. Both council and veche had existed in Kievan
Rus as advisory institutions, but in Novgorod, they represented an impressive,
if short-lived, experiment in genuine democratic government.
Prince Alexander was one who seems to have enjoyed the good
will of his electors. He had an equally successful record in dealing with the
armed threat from the West. While the Russian lands were falling under
Mongol-Tatar occupation, powerful forces were putting pressure upon the Western
principalities. In 1240, Alexander routed the Swedes on the banks of the Neva
River, thereby gaining for himself the name “Nevsky” and for the Novgorodtsi an
outlet to the Baltic. Two German military religious orders, whose conquests
were directed at the extension of Roman Catholicism among the pagan Letts and
Livonians of the Baltic, were also major threats. First to be organized were
the Teutonic Knights, an army of noblemen that had come into existence as a
hospital order during the third crusade. Beginning in the thirteenth century,
they took over lands roughly equivalent to later-day Prussia. At this time, a
second order, the Livonian Knights, was founded by the bishop of the Baltic
city of Riga. The two united in 1237, and five years later, they marched on
Novgorod. They were met on the frozen Lake Peipus, near Pskov, and defeated in
the Battle on Ice, thus halting for a time the German drive eastward.
The Knights continued, however, to harass the pagan Letts
and Lithuanians, who were forced to reach out in the only direction left them:
eastward toward their weakened neighbor Russia. The Mongols had ravaged
Lithuania in 1258, but had then withdrawn and not returned. The Lithuanians had
recovered quickly, and not long afterward, under their great military leader
Gedimin the Conqueror (1316-41), they succeeded in occupying most of west and
southwest Russia, including Kiev. Though technically it now lay outside the
sphere of Russia proper, this new “grand princedom of Lithuania and Russia”
would rival the strongest all-Russian principality for decades to come.
Olgierd, the son and successor of Gedimin, eventually defeated Novgorod in
1346, thereafter subduing the sister city of Pskov, expelling the Tatars from
southwest Russia, and taking the Crimea.
Meanwhile, Moscow was growing from an insignificant
settlement into the matrix and capital of the nation. Of this dramatic and
unexpected development in Russia’s history, a Muscovite would write in the
seventeenth century: “What man could have divined that Moscow would become a
great realm?” The chronicle relates that, in 1147, Prince Yury Dolgoruky of
Vladimir-Suzdal sent a message to his ally, Prince Svyatoslav of
Novgorod-Seversk: “Come to me, brother, in Moscow! Be my guest in Moscow!” It
is not certain that the town was then on its present site. Prince Yury founded
the town of Moscow nine years later by building wooden walls around the high
ground between the Moskva River and its tributary, the Neglinnaya, and thus
created the first kremlin, or fortress. It soon became the seat of a family of
minor princes under the hegemony of Vladimir-Suzdal. In 1238, the Mongols
destroyed Moscow and the surrounding territory. About 1283, Daniel, son of
Alexander Nevsky, acquired the principality and became the first of a regular
line of Muscovite rulers. The rise of Moscow had begun.
Among Moscow’s neighbors, Tver, Vladimir-Suzdal, Ryazan, and
Novgorod were more powerful and seemed stronger contenders for leadership of
the nation, but Moscow had important advantages. It stood in the region of the
upper Volga and Oka rivers, at the center of the system of waterways extending
over the whole of European Russia. Tver shared this advantage to some extent,
but Moscow was at the hub. This was a position of tremendous importance for
trade and even more for defense. Moscow enjoyed greater security from attacks
by Mongols and other enemies. As a refuge and a center of trade, the new city
attracted boyars, merchants, and peasants from every principality, all of whom
added to its wealth and power.
Another important factor in Moscow’s development was the
ability of its rulers. They do not emerge as individuals from the shadowed
distance of history, but all were careful stewards of their principality – enterprising,
ruthless, and tenacious. They acquired new lands and power by treaty, trickery,
purchase, and as a last resort, by force. In a century and a half, their
principality would grow from some 500 to more than 15,000 square miles.
Ivan I, called Kalita, or Moneybag, who ruled from 1328 to
1342, was the first of the great “collectors of the Russian land.” Like his
grandfather Alexander Nevsky, he was scrupulously subservient to the Golden
Horde. His reward was to obtain the khan’s assent to his assuming the title of
grand prince and also to the removal of the seat of the metropolitan of all
Russia from Vladimir to Moscow, an event of paramount importance to Moscow’s
later claims of supreme authority.
Ivan I strengthened his city by erecting new walls around
it, He built the Cathedral of the Assumption and other churches in stone. The
merchant quarter, the kitai gorod, expanded rapidly as trade revived. Terrible
fires destroyed large areas of the city, but houses were quickly replaced, and
Moscow continued to grow.
Ivan I was succeeded by Simeon the Proud, who died twelve
years later in a plague that devastated Moscow. He was, in turn, succeeded by
his brother, Ivan II, a man whose principal contribution to Russian history
seems to have been fathering Dmitry Donskoy, who became grand prince of Moscow
in 1363. Under Prince Dmitry’s reign, Moscow took advantage of the waning power
of the Golden Horde to extend its influence over less powerful principalities.
Generous gifts to Mamai, the khan of the Golden Horde, put an end to Dmitry’s
most serious competitor, Prince Mikhail of Tver; Dmitry’s patent was confirmed
and Mikhail’s claims to the throne ignored for several years. Then, with
Moscow’s power growing at an alarming rate, Mamai reversed his earlier grant
and sent an army against Moscow in 1380.
Dmitry was well prepared. He had rebuilt the Kremlin walls
in stone, adding battlements, towers, and iron gates. He had secured by treaty
the promise of support troops from other principalities. He had introduced firearms
on a limited scale. Dmitry won enduring fame by launching the first
counterattack against the dreaded Mongol enemy. The heroic battle of Kulikovo,
fought on the banks of the river Don (hence Dmitry’s surname “Donskoy”) ended
with the Russians inflicting a major defeat on the Golden Horde. The news was
greeted with great rejoicing in Moscow, though the Russians had lost nearly
half of their men in the struggle. It inspired all Russians with a new spirit
of independence. The battle was not decisive, however, and it brought
retribution. In 1382, the Mongols, this time led by the Khan Tokhtamysh, laid
siege to Moscow. For three days and nights, they made furious attacks on the
city, but they could not breach the stone walls. The khan then gained entry by
offering to discuss peace terms. Once inside the city, his warriors began to
slaughter the people – “until their arms wearied and their swords became
blunt.” Recording these events, the chronicler lamented that “until then the
city of Moscow had been large and wonderful to look at, crowded as she was with
people, filled with wealth and glory . . . and now all at once all of her
beauty perished and her glory disappeared. Nothing could be seen but smoking
ruins and bare earth and heaps of corpses.” More than 20,000 victims were
buried. With extraordinary vitality, however, Moscow soon was revived, and
within a few years had been restored to its former power.
In the reign of Dmitry’s son, Vasily I, Moscow was
threatened with an attack by Tamerlane, the Turkic conqueror who had, by a feat
of historical revisionism, claimed to be a descendant of Genghis Khan. In 1395,
following his successful campaign against his rivals, the doubting Tokhtamysh
and the Golden Horde, Tamerlane advanced from the south to within 200 miles of
Moscow, but then turned aside, apparently convinced that another siege would be
too costly to his own troops. The city was saved, the people said, because of
the miraculous intervention of the icon of Our Lady of Vladimir.
Though the Tatars would continue to be a major factor in
Muscovite history for another half century, the balance of power was shifting
to the Lithuanian front. Ladislas Jagello, son of the Lithuanian grand duke who
had brought parts of western Russia under his suzerainty, ascended the
Lithuanian throne in 1377. During the Jagello era, which his reign inaugurated,
the prince conceived a dynastic union with his former enemy, Poland, through
marriage to Jadwiga, heiress to that throne. Jagello thus became sovereign of
the federated states of Poland and Lithuania, the latter under the vassal rule
of his cousin. Husband and wife shared an ambition to control a still larger
portion of Russia. Jagello’s conversion to Roman Catholicism, which was part of
the marriage treaty, made this imperial plan all the more dangerous to
Muscovite security. With Smolensk’s fall to the Lithuanians in 1404, almost all
of the lands on the right bank of the Dnieper were brought under
dynastically-united Polish and Lithuanian rule.
Only a matter as crucial to all Slavic peoples as the defeat
of the Teutonic Knights held them in a brief state of peace. In 1410, the
combined Polish and Lithuanian forces met the German forces at Tannenberg.
Their grand master, many of their officers, and a devastating number of knights
fell in the bloody clash. The eastward drive of the German Knights was
effectively halted for all time, but the Polish and Lithuanian drives received
new impetus.
The reign of Vasily I ended in 1425. His son and successor,
Vasily II, ascended the Muscovite throne against strong opposition from a
powerful boyar faction; the first twenty-five years of his long reign were
largely devoted to suppressing these rivals, a feat achieved only after he had
himself been blinded. Events outside of Muscovy would be of more lasting
significance: The Golden Horde was losing large parts of its territory to the
breakaway khanates of Crimea and Kazan, and the Ottoman Turks were threatening
the very existence of the Greek Orthodox Church. In a desperate move to defend
itself from total destruction, the Eastern clergy had sought help in Rome, at
the price of recognizing the supremacy of the pope. Moscow was represented at
the Council of Florence, which met in 1439, by the Russian Metropolitan
Isadore. Acting on his own initiative, Isadore committed Russian Orthodoxy to
the bargain. Upon his return, he was deposed and arrested, and Moscow formally
severed its ties with Byzantium. When Constantinople, the capital of Eastern
Orthodoxy, fell to the Turks in 1453, no Russian was surprised. It was God’s
retribution to the duplicitous Greeks. Holy Russia would find its own way.
