The Polovtsi asked the Christian princes for help against the Mongols
and Turks, who were their brothers by a common origin. "They have
taken our country," said they to the descendants of St. Vladimir;
"to-morrow they will take yours." Mstislaf the Bold, then Prince of
Galitch, persuaded all the dynasties of Southern Russia to take up
arms against the Tartars: his nephew Daniel, Prince of Volhynia,
Mstislaf Romanovitch, Grand Prince of Kiev, Oleg of Kursk, Mstislaf of
Tchernigof, Vladimir of Smolensk, and Vsevolod, for a short time
Prince of Novgorod,[57] responded to his appeal.

To cement his alliance with the Russians, Basti, Khan of the Polovtsi,
embraced orthodoxy. The Russian army had already arrived on the Lower
Dnieper, when the Tartar ambassadors made their appearance. "We have
come, by God's command, against our slaves and grooms, the accursed
Polovtsi. Be at peace with us; we have no quarrel with you." The
Russians, with the promptitude and thoughtlessness that characterized
the men of that time, put the ambassadors to death. They then went
farther into the steppe, and encountered the Asiatic hordes on the
Kalka, a small river running into the Sea of Azov.

The Russian chivalry, on this memorable day, showed the same
disordered and the same ill-advised eagerness as the French chivalry
at the opening of the English wars. Mstislaf the Bold, Daniel of
Galitch, and Oleg of Kursk were the first to rush into the midst of
the infidels, without waiting for the princes of Kiev, and even
without giving them warning, in order to gain for themselves the
honors of victory. In the middle of the combat, the Polovtsi were
seized with a panic and fell back on the Russian ranks, thus throwing
them into disorder. The rout became general, and the leaders spurred