furnace.

The nominal king, Georges II., far distant in the northern realms of
Souzdal and Vladimir, listened appalled to the reports of the tempest
raging over the southern portion of the kingdom; and when the dark
cloud disappeared and its thunders ceased, he congratulated himself in
having escaped its fury. After the terrible battle of Kalka, six years
passed before the locust legions of the Tartars again made their
appearance; and Russia hoped that the scourge had disappeared for
ever. In the year 1227, Genghis Khan died. It has been estimated that
the ambition of this one man cost the lives of between five and six
millions of the human family. He nominated as his successor his oldest
son Octai, and enjoined it upon him never to make peace but with
vanquished nations. Ambitious of being the conqueror of the world,
Octai ravaged with his armies the whole of northern China. In the
heart of Tartary he reared his palace, embellished with the highest
attainments of Chinese art.

Raising an army of three hundred thousand men, the Tartar sovereign
placed his nephew Bati in command, and ordered him to bring into
subjection all the nations on the northern shores of the Caspian Sea,
and then to continue his conquests throughout all the expanse of
northern Russia. A bloody strife of three years planted his banners
upon every cliff and through all the defiles of the Ural mountains,
and then the victor plunging down the western declivities of this
great natural barrier between Europe and Asia, established his troops,
for winter quarters, in the valley of the Volga. To strike the region
with terror, he burned the capital city of Bulgaria and put all the
inhabitants to the sword. Early in the spring of the year 1238, with
an army, say the ancient annalists, "as innumerable as locusts," he
crossed the Volga, and threading many almost impenetrable forests,
after a march, in a north-west direction, of about four hundred miles,
entered the province of Rezdan just south of Souzdal. He then sent an
embassage to the king and his confederate princes, saying:

"If you wish for peace with the Tartars you must pay us an annual
tribute of one tenth of your possessions."

The heroic reply was returned,

"When you have slain us all, you can then take all that we have."

Bati, at the head of his terrible army, continued his march through
the populous province of Rezdan, burning every dwelling and
endeavoring, with indiscriminate massacre