China and the West

Baring, Maurice. The Russian people. (London : Methuen, 1911).
https://archive.org/details/russianpeople017102mbp.
The Tartar invasion
A the same time that the Russians of the European Ukraine were engaged in an unremitting warfare with the tribes of the Steppes, the Polotsi, a new factor in the situation arose in the far eastern Steppes of Asia. This was the trek of the Tartars. The Tartars, who invaded Russia at the beginning of the thirteenth century, were Mongols, who came from the region of Chinese Tartary, south of Siberia, the Mongols being kindred in race to the Turks. They were subject to a Tartar race who ruled in the north of China ; they were nomads ; their manners and customs were the same as those of the Huns, the Scythians and Polotsi. In the first quarter of the thirteenth century a rising took place amongst the Mongols, and one of their Khans, Temuchin, developed an ambition to be a kind of superman; he established his independence, and reduced all the other Tartar and Mongol chiefs to subjection. Shortly after this, at a time when the Mongol warriors were gathered in hordes at the source of the River Amur, a prophet appeared and declared that Heaven had granted to Temuchin the empery of the whole world, and that henceforward Temuchin should be called Gengis-Khan, or the Great Khan. The news was received by the Mongols with joy, and the tribes of Asia, the Kirghiz, Southern Siberia, proclaimed their allegiance to him.
Gengis-Khan then refused to pay tribute to the King of the Tartar tribe, whose vassal he had hitherto been ; he invaded China, and in 1215 took Pekin. Then, leaving a certain number of his warriors in China, he turned homewards.
The Russians crossed the Dnieper (in 1224) and met the Mongol hordes at the River Kalka now Letza, in the Government of Ekateiinoslav. They fought bravely against the Mongols, but were defeated. After this battle, the Mongols turned their steps eastward, and disappeared as quickly as they had come. For six years nothing more was heard of them, and Gengis-Khan, after having made further conquests in the East, returned home and died in 1227.
His eldest son and successor, Oktai, put his nephew Batii at the head of 300,000 warriors, and bade him conquer the northern coast of the Caspian Sea and the countries beyond it. In 1237 Batii invaded Russia ; he took the town of Riazan, burnt Moscow, and in 1238 took Vladimir.
In 1240 he took Kiev and destroyed it, and put the inhabitants to the sword. The only town which escaped destruction at the hands of the Mongols was Novgorod. Batii, having made victorious raids in Poland, Hungary, Kroatia, Servia, Bulgaria, Moldavia, and Wallachia, returned to the banks of the Volga. He proclaimed himself khan and declared his suzerainty over Russia, the Taurus peninsula, the Caspian districts, and all the territory from the mouth of the Don to the Danube. Batii and the Mongols seemed satisfied with being masters of the Steppes of the south ; they did not attempt to establish themselves in the wooded regions of the north. Nor did they leave the Steppes, where their settlement was called "the Golden Horde" or abandon the nomad life, which suited them, to settle in the towns. Had they done in Russia what they did in India and Turkey, they might have been there until this day. Fortunately the climate of Russia damped any ambition of this kind. The Khans wished only to be suzerains at a distance ; they demanded tribute and homage from the Russian provinces ; the civil affairs of the kingdom were of no interest to them, and they wished in no way to interfere with them. The Russians therefore became the vassals of the Mongols. They were obliged to go to Asia to receive their investment from the heirs of Batii. They had also to support the presence in Russia of a kind of resident Mongol called Bashak, whose duty it was to levy taxes.
The Bashaks represented the Khans in Russia, and did what they pleased. They treated the Russians with contempt, as did all Mongols, even the merchants, and the tramps. The inevitable result was a moral degeneration amongst the Russian people. They forgot their pride or turned it into cunning, and in learning to deceive the Tartars they learnt to deceive one another. They exchanged the virtues of the strong for the expedients of the weak. And in growing accustomed to bribe the barbarians, they became greedy of gold and insensible to affront and shame. Their honour suffered. The only weapons of the Russian Princes were gifts, brides, and intrigue, and these they used freely. They intrigued one against the other, each one accusing the other to the Tartar Princes in order to increase his own power…

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