descriptions of which fired the imagination of Europe, and awoke a
consuming desire to get access to its fabulous riches, and which two
centuries later filled the mind of Columbus with dreams of reaching
that land of wonders by way of the West.

The Polovtsui appealed to the nearest principalities for help, offering
to adopt their religion and to become their subjects, in return for
aid. When several Princes came with their armies to the rescue, the
Mongols sent messengers saying: "We have no quarrel with you; we have
come to destroy the accursed Polovtsui." The Princes replied by
promptly putting the ambassadors all to death. This sealed the fate of
Russia. There could be no compromise after that. Upon that first
battlefield, on the steppes near the sea of Azof, there were left six
Princes, seventy chief _boyars_, and all but one-tenth of the Russian
army.

After this thunderbolt had fallen an ominous quiet reigned for thirteen
years. Nothing more was heard of the Mongols--but a comet blazing in
the sky awoke vague fears. Suddenly an army of five hundred thousand
Asiatics returned, led by Batui, nephew of the Great Khan of Khans.

It was the defective political structure of Russia, its division into
principalities, which made it an easy prey. The Mongols, moving as one
man, took one principality at a time, its nobles and citizens alone
bearing arms, the peasants, by far the greater part, being utterly
defenseless. After wrecking and devastating that, they passed on to
the next, which, however desperately defended, met the same fate. The
Grand Principality was a ruin; its fourteen towns were burned, and
when, in the absence of its Grand Prince, Vladimir the capital city
fell, the Princesses and all the families of the nobles took refuge in