MAPS OF HISTORY · ON THIS DAY · December 6 · 1240

ON THIS DAY · 6 DECEMBER 1240

The sack of Kiev

6 Dec 1240 — The mother of Rus cities, four hundred years old, refuses surrender and is stormed; the last defenders die under the collapsing roof of the Church of the Tithes. Six years later a papal envoy counts two hundred houses standing. Remember Kiev.

THE MOMENT IN CONTEXT

This is the campaign Subötai filed away in 1224, executed with the empire’s full weight: a kurultai assigns the “western lands” to Batu, Jochi’s son, with perhaps 120,000–150,000 riders and the old marshal as its brain. Volga Bulgaria — which had beaten the raiders once — is erased in a season (1236). Then the stroke of genius that looks like madness: the Rus are invaded in December. Winter, the Rus certainty that made war impossible, is Subötai’s weapon — frozen rivers become cavalry highways aimed at every city’s waterfront, and the princes cannot combine (would not have anyway; see Chapter 5). Watch the arrows: Ryazan falls in five days at midwinter, Vladimir in February, fourteen towns in three months; little Kozelsk buys seven weeks with everyone’s lives. Novgorod alone is spared by the thaw — mud, the one enemy the horses respect. In 1240 the south takes its turn, and Kiev, the golden-domed mother of Rus cities, refuses surrender and is stormed on 6 December; a papal envoy passing six years later counts two hundred houses standing amid the bones. The hatched belt on your map is what remains: the Rus principalities become tan tributaries — the “Tatar yoke” that will shape Russian history for 240 years.

From Chapter 6 — The Storm on the West of The Mongol Empire, 1206–1294 (1241).

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THE ATLAS THAT SHOWS IT

The Mongol Empire, 1206–1294

12 CHAPTERS · AN INTERACTIVE SITUATION MAP