of chaos and
disorder. But to them it was only the vicissitudes naturally occurring
in the life of a great nation. They were proud of their nationality,
which had existed nearly as long as from Columbus to our own day. They
gloried in their splendid background of great deeds and their long line
of heroes reaching back to Rurik. Their Princes were proud and
powerful--their followers (the _Drujiniki_)--noble and fearless--who
could stand before them? They would have exchanged their glories for
those of no nation upon the earth, except perhaps that waning empire of
the Caesars at Constantinople!

Such was the sentiment of Russian nationality at the time when its
overwhelming humiliation suddenly came, a degrading subjection to
Asiatic Mongols, which lasted 250 years.

In the year 1224 there appeared in the Southeast a strange host who
claimed the land of the Polovtsui, a Tatar clan which had been for
centuries encamped about the Sea of Azof. The Russian chronicler
naively says: "There came upon us for our sins unknown nations. God
alone knew who they were, or where they came from--God, and perhaps
wise men, learned in books"--which it is evident the chronicler was
not! The invaders were Mongols--that branch of the human family from
which had come the Tatars and the Huns, already familiar to Russia.
But these Mongols were the vanguard of a vast army which had streamed
like a torrent through the heart of Asia, conquering as it came;
gathering one after another the Asiatic kingdoms into an empire ruled
by Genghis Khan, a sovereign who in forty years had made himself master
of China and the greater part of Asia--saying: "As there is only one
Sun in Heaven, so there should be only one Emperor on the Earth"; and
when he died, in 1227, he left the largest empire that had ever
existed, and one which he was preparing to extend into Western Europe.

It was the court of this great sovereign which, in 1275, was visited by
the Venetian traveler Marco Polo. This was the far-off Cathay,
descriptions of which fired the imagination of Europe, and awoke a
consuming desire to get access to its fabulous riches, and which two
centuries later filled the mind of Columbus with dreams of reaching
that land of wonders by way of the West.

The Polovtsui appealed to the nearest principalities for help, offering
to adopt their religion and to become their subjects, in return for
aid. When several Princes came with their armies to the res