Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [90]
For Yanka, her father and their companions were doing a very dangerous thing: they were trying to escape from the Tatars.
The Tatars. Even now, most Russians did not really understand the nature of the empire of which they had just become a part. Failing to perceive the absolute importance of the Mongol elite from their distant eastern homeland, the Russians confused them with the subject Turks who fought under them, and therefore gave the Horde a Turkish name which was to remain in use throughout history: the Tatars.
The estimate of the Mongol war council had been exactly right. Russia had fallen in three years. The great army that had passed through the village of Russka had swept on to destroy Pereiaslav utterly; within a twelve month, Chernigov had fallen and golden Kiev was a ghost town.
The ancient state of Rus was finished.
For convenience, the Mongols divided it in two. The southern half – the territories around Kiev and the southern steppe – were placed under direct Mongol rule. The north – the lands in the great loop of the Russian R, and in the deep forests beyond – were left under the nominal control of the Russian royal house, with the proviso that the princes ruled, henceforth, only as the representatives of the Great Khan. They were there to keep the people quiet and collect the Khan’s tribute. That was all.
Some chronicles of the time – and many Russians too – liked to pretend that the Tatars were just another, if impressive, group of steppe raiders whom, for the moment, the Grand Duke had to buy off.
The reality was very different. The Grand Duke was summoned eastwards, even as far as Mongolia, to receive his badge of office – the yarlyk. He ruled only at the Khan’s pleasure. ‘Remember, you belong to us now,’ all princes were told. No disobedience was tolerated. When a bold prince from the southwest refused to bow to an idol of the Great Khan, he was executed on the spot. This imposition of rule was immediate and total. Indeed, the only reason why the Russian princes were allowed to exist at all was because the Mongols, unimpressed with the wealth of the northern forests – puny indeed compared to the rich caravans and cities of Asia – had reckoned that the Grand Duke’s territories were not worth the cost of direct administration.
It is likely, had the Mongols not paused for the elections in the orient of a new Great Khan, that all Europe might have fallen at this point too. But the new Khan decided instead to consolidate his western empire: a new capital, Sarai, was built on the southern Volga and his army commanders were told: ‘Wait.’
And in this matter, too, the Mongols displayed their excellent understanding. For there was one other relevant fact which they had quickly understood.
Russia was Orthodox; the west Catholic.
Back in the days of Monomakh, the split between Rome and the Eastern Church had been one of liturgical niceties. But since then, the gulf had widened. Questions of authority were involved. Was the Patriarch of Constantinople – or his fellow patriarchs in the east – prepared to submit to the Pope’s authority? Had the Eastern – Orthodox – Church showed a proper interest in the Pope’s Crusades? Feelings ran high. When the Russians sent frantic appeals to their fellow Christians in the west for help against the heathen Mongols, they were met with silence. Indeed, the west watched with satisfaction while the Orthodox were being punished for their mistake. Worse yet, not only did the Catholic Swedes start to attack them in the north, but a pair of crusading orders – the Livonian and Teutonic Knights – whose headquarters were up by the Baltic Sea, started with the Pope’s approval to raid the lands of Novgorod.