Russia was for centuries the chief power of the Slavic race.
On its plains and amid the neighboring lands they
established a civilization and went through a development
not unlike those which transformed Western Europe during the
Middle Ages. Slavonia, like Gaul, had received Roman
civilization and Christianity from the South. The Northmen
had brought her an organization which recalls that of the
Germans; and under Yaroslaff, 1016-1054, like the West under
Charlemagne, she had enjoyed a certain semblance of unity,
while she was afterward dismembered and divided like France
in feudal times.

The Tartars seem to have been a tribe of the great Mongol
race. They conquered Northern China and Central Asia, and
after forty years of struggle were united with other Mongol
tribes into one nation by Genghis Khan. His lieutenants
subdued a multitude of Turkish peoples, passed the Caspian
Sea by its southern shore, invaded Georgia and the Caucasus,
and entered upon the southern steppes of Russia, where they
came in contact with the Polovtsi, also a Mongol race, the
hereditary enemies of the Russians proper.

This summary by the distinguished French academician, M.
Rambaud--our leading authority in Russian history with its
related studies--presents, with sufficient clearness, the
character and tendency of Russia in the thirteenth century,
when she was invaded and subjugated by Asiatic hordes.