warlike and civilized people of
Europe, yet they had an enormous superiority of numbers. Batu probably
had with him five hundred thousand warriors. 2. This immense army
moved like one man; it could successively annihilate the droujinas of
the princes, or the militia of the towns, which only presented
themselves successively to its blows. The Tartars had found Russia
divided against herself. 3. Even though Russia had wished to form a
confederation, the sudden irruptions of an army entirely composed of
horsemen did not leave her time. 4. In the tribes ruled by Batu, every
man was a soldier; in Russia the nobles and citizens alone bore arms:
the peasants, who formed the bulk of the population, allowed
themselves to be stabbed or bound without resistance. 5. It was not by
a weak nation that Russia was conquered. The Tartar-Mongols, under
Genghis Khan, had filled the East with the glory of their name, and
subdued nearly all Asia. They arrived, proud of their exploits,
animated by the recollection of a hundred victories, and reinforced by
numerous peoples whom they had vanquished, and hurried with them to
the West.

When the princes of Galitch, of Volhynia, and of Kiev arrived as
fugitives in Poland and Hungary, Europe was terror-stricken. The Pope,
whose support had been claimed by the Prince of Galitch, summoned
Christendom to arms. Louis IX prepared for a crusade. Frederic II, as
emperor, wrote to the sovereigns of the West: "This is the moment to
open the eyes of body and soul now that the brave princes on whom we
reckoned are dead or in slavery." The Tartars invaded Hungary, gave
battle to the Poles in Liegnitz in Silesia, had their progress a long
while arrested by the courageous defence of Olmutz in Moravia, by the
Tcheque voievode Yaroslaff, and stopped finally, learning that a large
army, commanded by the King of Bohemia and the dukes of Austria and
Carinthia, was approaching. The news of the death of Oktai, second
Emperor of all the Tartars, in China, recalled Batu from the West, and
during the long march from Germany his army necessarily diminished in
number.

The Tartars were no longer in the vast plains of Asia and Eastern
Europe, but in a broken hilly country, bristling with fortresses,
defended by a population more dense and a chivalry more numerous than
those in Russia.

To sum up, all the fury of the Mongol tempest spent itself on the
Slavonic race. It was the Russians who fought at the Kalka, at
Kolomn