Mongols Sack Kiev

What kind of a city was Kiev in 1240? It had already passed the pinnacle of its tenth and eleventh century glory, but it was still one of the richest and grandest cities of ancient Rus.

This city, which grew up along what was then the most important European trade route, leading “from the Varangians to the Greeks,” from Scandinavia to Byzantium, glistened with golden cupolas and was protected by mighty walls. Kiev was home to Slavs and Scandinavians, Turks and Khazars, and was frequented by travelers from Western Europe and the Arab caliphates. All were amazed by its magnificence and wealth.

By the thirteenth century, the main centers of ancient Russian life had shifted to the northeast. Vladimir and Suzdal had emerged and blossomed, and ships were not traveling down the Dnieper to Byzantium, which had also passed its prime, as often as they once had. Nevertheless, many still saw Kiev as the heart of Rus.

The princes of the region were still fighting for the right to possess this city, which remained Rus’ most important religious center. While, by 1238, northeastern Rus lay in ruins, destroyed by the Mongol hordes of Batu Khan, Kievan Rus, although it had suffered from princely in-fighting, had so far escaped devastation. However, in 1239 Batu again advanced into Rus. This time his target was its southern cities.

Mongol ambassadors arrived in Kiev demanding that the city surrender. The city responded by killing the entire embassy – one of the worst possible crimes according to the Mongol code of honor. The Kievans had chosen their fate.

In the fall of 1240, a huge Mongolian army lay siege to the city. A southern chronicler, clearly basing his history on survivor accounts, eloquently described how the city was surrounded, how around its mighty walls a new wall was erected, from behind which the attackers day and night chipped away at the city’s fortification with their weaponry. A famous detail is that the noise generated by the attacking army – the creaking of the multitude of wagons, the bellowing of camels, the neighing of horses – was so loud that defenders of the city fighting atop its walls could barely hear one another.

History had yet to see city walls that could stand up to the Mongol catapults and battering rams, and Kiev was no exception. On December 5, the enemies stormed the city. Archeological finds confirm the chronicler’s account describing how the majority of the city’s defenders hid in the Church of the Tithes (Десятинная Церковь) overlooking the Dnieper. There were so many people in the church that it collapsed, burying them in its rubble. Twentieth century excavations found a multitude of skeletons on the site where the ancient church once stood and the remains of people who unsuccessfully tried to escape from its basements.

The city was destroyed and brutally plundered. Soon afterward, the Italian monk Giovanni da Pian del Carpine passed through the area and wrote:

They marched against Rus and committed a great massacre, destroyed cities and fortresses and killed people, besieged Kiev, which was the capital of Rus, and after a lengthy siege they captured it and killed the residents of the city; from here, when we traveled through their land, we found countless heads and bones of the dead lying in the field, since this city was quite large and very populous, and now it is reduced to almost nothing: there are barely two hundred houses now, and those people are held in the most oppressive servitude.

The only fortunate one was the voyevod (commander) Dmitr [Dmitro], who was commissioned by Prince Daniil [Danylo] of Galicia to lead the city’s defense. The Mongol khan was impressed by his bravery and spared his life. The chronicle states that Dmitr tried to give Batu advice that stood to benefit other cities of Rus, suggesting that the khan should leave for Hungary as quickly as possible which, it should be mentioned, is exactly what Batu did.

Despite the utter devastation of Kiev and other cities, southern Rus conducted itself much more independently than the North. The southern princes did not cringe before the khans like their brothers from Vladimir or Pereslavl. They tried to maintain at least a remnant of their former independence. The strongest prince of the time, Daniil Romanovich of Galicia, was not able to defend Kiev, but he at least tried to stand up to his enemies and sought  allies in his struggle. He approached the princes of Lithuania and even the Pope in Rome, hoping to inspire the pontiff to undertake a new crusade. For a long time he managed to avoid traveling to the Horde to swear an oath of allegiance, but what choice did he have? In the end, he made the trip.

“Oh, more evil than evil is the honor of the Tatar,” wrote the chronicler. “Daniil Romanovich, grand prince of Russian lands – Kiev, Volhynia, Galicia – on bended knees calling himself a servant, promising tribute, trembling in fear for his life, frightened by threats!”

And this would appear to be the end of it. The southern lands of Kiev, Galicia, and Volhynia submitted exactly the same way those of Vladimir, Suzdal, and Pereslavl had done in the North. Well, not exactly the same way. The resistance that the Kievans put up, the recalcitrance of Daniil Romanovich, the cities that escaped Mongol destruction (perhaps due to the cunning of the voyevod Dmitr, or perhaps for other reasons) – all this created an atmosphere in the South that was different from that in the North, where Alexander Nevsky decisively and confidently cast his lot with the khan and submissively carried out all the Horde’s orders, at times going so far as to invite punitive detachments into Rus. The southerners, even as they consented to pay tribute, kept their dignity intact, along with the memory of independence.

About a hundred years passed and the South made another important choice. These lands began to gradually submit to the authority of the dukes of Lithuania, which meant that they ceased to pay ruinous tribute and tremble before the arrival of the baskaks when they came to collect tribute. The lands of Kiev became a part of the magnificent and mighty Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Northern and southern Rus had chosen different paths.

The terms Russia and Ukraine did not yet exist. But the seeds of division had been sown.

KIEV: The city, first mentioned in a Chronicle in 860, was named for Kiya, the city's legendary founder. After its capture by Novgorod in 882, it was the capital of Kievan Rus until the middle of the 12th century. Initially, from 1919, the capital of Soviet Ukraine was Kharkov. Kiev was made the capital in 1934.