Daniel promised the Pope of Rome that he would do his best to help unite the two churches, and he offered to join in the crusade against the Tartars. The Pope wrote him an affectionate letter calling him his dear son, gave him the title of King, and sent him a crown and sceptre. He was solemnly crowned by the Abbot of Messina. He did not fulfil his engagements, however, and the new Pope overwhelmed him with reproaches and threats, but he still kept the title of King Daniel took an active part in the wars of Europe, but he was not able to hold his own against the Tartars. He was obliged to dismantle his fortresses and submit to the horde.
"Thou hast done well to come at last," said the khan, who treated him honorably, and gave him wine to drink when he saw that the sour milk of the Tartars was not to his taste.
The civil wars of his youth, his struggle with the hordes of Asia, his dealings with the West, make the story of his checkered career one of the most romantic in Russian history. A chronicler describes how "the Hungarians admired the order that reigned among his troops, the magnificence of the prince, his Greek habit, embroidered with gold, his sabre, and his arrows, his saddle, enriched with jewels and precious metals richly chased." "No prince," says a French writer, "better deserved to free Southern Russia, but his activity and talents struggled in vain against the fate of his country." After his death Galitch passed to different princes of his family and was finally absorbed into the Kingdom of Poland.
The Coming of the Tartars
Who were the Tartars? A Chinaman, writing six hundred years ago, says of them:—
"The Ta-tzi, or the Das, are entirely busied with their flocks; they go wandering ceaselessly from pasture to pasture, from river to river. They know not the nature of a town or a wall; they are unacquainted with writing and books; their treaties are made orally. From infancy they are wont to ride horses, to shoot their arrows at birds and rats, and thus they gain the courage needful for their life of war and rapine. They have neither religious ceremonies nor courts of justice. From the prince to the lowest man of the tribe, all feed on the flesh of such animals as they kill, and they dress in skins and furs. The strongest among them have the largest and fattest morsels at feasts; the old men eat and drink the remains. They respect naught but strength and courage; they scorn age and weakness. When the father dies his son marries the youngest wives."
The Tartars were armed with lances, axes, and lassos; with them came a multitude of wagons filled with their provisions; when they encamped they used felt tents. An ancient writer thus describes them to one of the popes:—
"On the east side of Moscow are the Scythians, which are now-a-days called Tartars, a wandering nation, and at all ages famed in war. In the stead of houses they use wagons covered with hides. For cities and towns they use great tents and pavilions, not defended by trenches or walls of timber or stone, but enclosed with a numberless host of archers on horseback. The Tartars are divided into companies which they call Hordes, which word in their tongue signifies a consenting company of people gathered together in form of a city."
TARTARS.
"For person and complexion," says a quaint old English writer, "they have broad and flat visages of a tanned color, yellow and black, fierce and cruel looks, thin haired upon the upper lip and a pit on the chin, light and nimble bodied, with short legs, as if they were made naturally for horse men: whereto they practise themselves from their childhood, seldom going a foot about any business. Their speech is very sudden and loud, speaking as it were out of a deep hollow throat. When they sing you would think a cow lowed or some great ban dog howled. Their greatest exercise is shooting, wherein they train up their children from their very infancy, not suffering them to eat till they have shot near the mark within a certain scantling."[original spelling corrected]
The Tartars had no infantry in battle, and when they wanted to take a city they rode up to it on their fiery little horses, and obliged the natives of the surrounding villages to lug a quantity of wood, stones, and other things whereby they filled up the ditches or reached the level of its walls. "In the capture of a town," says a Chinese author, "the loss of ten thousand men was a mere trifle. No place could resist them. When once they had possession they put to death the whole population, old and young, rich and poor, beautiful and ugly, those who resisted and those who yielded."
TARTAR MAN.
These rough tribes of Mongols living at the foot of the Altai Mountains were united into a conquering army under an energetic prince living near the river Amur. On the death of this conqueror, his son, a lad of thirteen, found himself the lord of fifty thousand families. Many of the subject tribes tried to break away fro him,[ but he seized their leaders, plunged seventy of them into boiling water, and after forty years of obscure struggles he freed himself from the overlordship of the Chinese Emperor, and was acknowledged to be Chingis-Kan, the Lord of the earth.
At the head of an immense army he crossed the famous wall of China and made himself master of ninety cities. The Emperor sent him as a sign of submission a thousand beautiful young men and women, three thousand heroes and great treasures of silk and gold. This tribute did not stop his progress. Peking fell before his legions and was given to the flames. Then he crossed the lands of "the great and mighty Saladin," burnt Samarkand and the capital of Bukhara, and for three years ravaged the plains of Western Asia, and made such devastation that to this day Turkestan has not recovered from the disaster.
TARTAR WOMAN.
While the "Chief of the Kans" was subduing Bukhara he sent two of his generals around the Caspian Sea. They conquered a host of Turkish tribes, passed Georgia and the Caucasus, and on the level steppes of. Southern Russia measured their arms with the Kumans, the ancient enemies of the Russians.
Basti, the Kan of the Kumans, sent a message to the princes of Kief and Suzdal and Galitch:—
"To-day they have taken our land, to-morrow they will take yours."
Venging Fame the Rash, and the brave Daniel, persuaded all the princes of Southern and Western Russia to go to the defence of Basti, who in honor of the alliance was baptized.
The Russian princes of Galitch and Volynia, Chernigof and Smolensk, Novgorod and Kief, assembled on the banks of the Dnieper, and the Tartars sent them ambassadors, who said,—
"We are come by the will of God against our slaves and grooms, the cursed Kumans. Be at peace with us, we have no quarrel with you."
But the princes put the ambassadors to death and marched nine days into the steppe. On the banks of the little Kalka stream flowing into the Sea of Azof, they caught the first glimpse of the many-colored tents of the Tartar host extending as far as the eye could reach.
Venging Fame the Rash, and Daniel of Volynia, without waiting for any signal or giving any warning, but wishing only to win fame, dashed into the midst of the Asiatic horsemen, and the battle raged with instant fury. Suddenly their allies, the Kumans, were seized with a panic and doubled back upon the Russians carrying' disorder into the ranks. The Tartars, with shouts and yells, and sending showers of arrows, rushed in pursuit and drove the fugitives before them. The rout became general; the battle was lost. Seven princes and seventy of the chief captains or boyars were among the slain. Nine-tenths of the army were destroyed. Kief alone lost ten thousand men. Its grand prince, abandoned by his allies, remained in a fortified camp on the banks of the Kalka, and tried to defend himself.•