‘Tengri, the god of the Great Blue Sky, has granted me to rule all who live in felt tents,’ he declared. But if this meant merely the nomad dwellers on the plains, he took it to mean the world. And like the Chinese emperors he conquered, he claimed a mandate from heaven.
His object – which popular history, with some reason, often forgets – was universal peace. The rules of this new world order were all set forth by Genghis in his code – the great Yasa – a copy of which was kept, like the Covenant, sacred and hidden from the eyes of the people at each of the Mongol capitals.
‘All men are equal,’ declared the Yasa, ‘and all, on their merits, shall serve the great Khan.’ It was a formula that other empires, like the Chinese, had used. ‘The old and the poor shall also be protected,’ the Yasa ordered. And indeed, in the empire of Genghis Khan, there was a kind of welfare state.
Wiser than many despots, he also allowed freedom of religion. ‘You may worship as you please,’ the conquered were told, ‘but in your prayers, you must also pray for the Great Khan.’ And all this was bound together with the simple formula: ‘There is one God in heaven, and one lord upon the earth – the Great Khan.’
In 1227 Genghis died. Like the falcon that was the tamga of the clan, he had flown up into the heavens, many believed. But his empire did not falter. For centuries the Khans would be elected from the large number of his direct descendants, the state clan.
The empire Genghis left his sons and grandsons in his Will was divided into four parts. In the oriental world, each of the four points of the compass had a colour: the north was black, the south red; the east was blue and the west white. And the centre, the royal centre, was gold.
Thus it was that the descendants of Genghis were called the Golden Kin.
To his sons, Genghis gave the order: expand. And to each, in his Will, he left not silver and gold, but armies with which to get them.
The great army that descended upon the western world in 1237 was led by Batu Khan, a junior ruler and grandson of Genghis. At his right hand was the great Mongol general Subudey. The clan council of the Great Khan had decided that his army, though it belonged to the western of the empire’s four divisions, should be supplemented by large detachments from the other divisions as well. It consisted, it is estimated, of about 150,000 men: the core Mongol, the rest mainly Turks from the conquered lands of Central Asia.
History, since that time, has usually referred to this army, and the vast western empire it was to rule, as the Golden Horde. In fact, this name comes from a misreading of a text written centuries later. The huge western Mongol lands were not called golden: being western, they were white. And the horde within this vast white division, that had come to subdue Russia, was called the Great Horde.
The Mongols’ information was excellent. Back in the time of Genghis, they had sent an expedition across the southern steppe, past the River Don; but the Russians had not understood who these soldiers were. Since then, spies had come, and merchant caravans had told their story: there were always many whispers across the steppe. While the Russians hardly knew of their existence, the rulers of the mighty empire had prepared their plan. ‘It will not be a long campaign,’ Mengu had told his wife.
Indeed, while the Mongol council believed that to subdue the entire empire of the Chinese, north and south, might take sixty years, they had estimated that the conquest of the Rus would take three.
In order to understand the shape and nature of the Russian state, it is necessary only to consider her greatest rivers. And the pattern they make is very simple: for they form, roughly speaking, the capital letter R.
First, from the beginning, there was the great north-south network of waterways that led from the cold northern lands by the Baltic Sea, down to the broad River Dniepr and thence through pleasant forest, across the dangerous southern steppe and at last to the warm Black Sea. This was the upright of the R, on which lay Novgorod in the north, Smolensk in the middle, and Kiev just above the southern steppe.
The tail of the R, stretching south-east from the centre, out across the steppe and down to the eastern corner of the Black Sea shore and the settlement of Tmutarakan, was the great River Don.
The loop of the R was made by two rivers: the upper part by the mighty Volga as it started its journey with an enormous curve up through the dark, north-eastern forest before turning south again; and the lower part by another river, the sluggish Oka, that came out from the centre and curved northwards to meet it. From their meeting point, about halfway up the loop, the Volga flowed away to the east again, to continue its journey across the endless Eurasian plain.
Within this huge loop – a land of forests and marshes, where primitive Finnish folk had dwelt since time immemorial – had gradually been established towns: Suzdal in the central section, sometimes called Suzdalia; Rostov further north; and on the outside of the loop, on the River Oka, the towns of Riazan and, above it, Murom.
Four chief rivers: Dniepr, Volga, Oka and Don. From the frozen north to the warm Black Sea: about a thousand miles. From west to east across the loop: nearly five hundred. This was the R of Russian rivers, the shape of the state of Rus.
In the century that followed the reign of Vladimir Monomakh in Kiev, however, one great change had taken place in the state of Rus. Its leaders had taken an increasing interest in the lands within the loop of the Russian R. New towns like Yaroslavl and Tver grew up. Monomakh himself had set up an important city in Suzdalia and given it his own name: Vladimir. Meanwhile, in the south, not only did the Cumans continue to raid from the steppe but – thanks to the near wrecking of Constantinople during the west’s confused Crusades – the Black Sea trade had weakened and the great city of Kiev entered a slow decline.
As a result of these developments, the centre of gravity in the state of Rus had shifted to the north-east, into the loop. The proud descendants of Monomakh preferred the forest lands where the Cuman raiders did not penetrate. The senior member of the royal clan called himself Grand Duke of Vladimir now; and golden Kiev, like a famous woman growing older but still glamorous, became only a possession that rich and powerful princes liked to display at their side.
The Grand Dukes of Vladimir were mighty indeed. They usually controlled Novgorod, and its huge trade with the Hanseatic German towns and far beyond. They received the great caravans that came across the steppe and forest from the lands of the Volga Bulgars and the orient.
And, to add religious importance to their new northern capital, they brought from Greece a sacred icon of the Mother of God and installed it in the new cathedral of Vladimir. No object was more reverenced in all Russia than the icon of Our Lady of Vladimir.
There was, however, one central weakness in the state of Rus: it was disunited. Though the rules of brotherly succession still applied for the position of Grand Duke, individual cities had gradually become power bases for different branches of the numerous royal house. The disputes were endless. No ruler in Vladimir ever imposed unity upon them from the centre.
The state of Rus was disunited. The Mongols knew it very well.
1239
Yanka was awake at dawn. The sky was growing pale.
Quietly she slipped off the warm shelf over the stove and made her way to the door. She could hear her parents and her brother breathing. No one stirred.
Pulling on her furs and her thick felt boots, she unlatched the door and stepped out on to the crisp snow.