THE MONGOL DOMINATION
The Conquest--Genghis Khan and his People--Creation and Rapid
Disintegration of the Mongol Empire--The Golden Horde--The Real
Character of the Mongol Domination--Religious Toleration--Mongol System
of Government--Grand Princes--The Princes of Moscow--Influence of the
Mongol Domination--Practical Importance of the Subject.
The Tartar invasion, with its direct and indirect consequences, is
a subject which has more than a mere antiquarian interest. To the
influence of the Mongols are commonly attributed many peculiarities
in the actual condition and national character of the Russians of the
present day, and some writers would even have us believe that the
men whom we call Russians are simply Tartars half disguised by a thin
varnish of European civilisation. It may be well, therefore, to inquire
what the Tartar or Mongol domination really was, and how far it affected
the historical development and national character of the Russian people.
The story of the conquest may be briefly told. In 1224 the chieftains
of the Poloftsi--one of those pastoral tribes which roamed on the Steppe
and habitually carried on a predatory warfare with the Russians of
the south--sent deputies to Mistislaf the Brave, Prince of Galicia, to
inform him that their country had been invaded from the southeast by
strong, cruel enemies called Tartars*--strange-looking men with brown
faces, eyes small and wide apart, thick lips, broad shoulders, and black
hair. "Today," said the deputies, "they have seized our country, and
tomorrow they will seize yours if you do not help us."
* The word is properly "Tatar," and the Russians write and
pronounce it in this way, but I have preferred to retain the
better known form.
Mistislaf had probably no objection to the Poloftsi being annihilated
by some tribe stronger and fiercer than themselves, for they gave him
a great deal of trouble by their frequent raids; but he perceived the
force of the argument about his own turn coming next, and thought
it wise to assist his usually hostile neighbours. For the purpose of
warding off the danger he called together the neighbouring Princes,
and urged them to join him in an expedition against the new enemy. The
expedition was undertaken, and ended in disaster. On the Kalka, a small
river falling into the Sea of Azof, the Russian host met the invaders,
and was completely routed. The country was thereby opened to the
victors, but they did not follow up their advantage. After advancing for
some distance they suddenly wheeled round and disappeared.
Thus ended unexpectedly the first visit of these unwelcome strangers.
Thirteen years afterwards they returned, and were not so easily got rid
of. An enormous horde crossed the River Ural and advanced into the heart
of the country, pillaging, burning, devastating, and murdering. Nowhere
did they meet with serious resistance. The Princes made no attempt to
combine against the common enemy. Nearly all the principal towns were
laid in ashes, and the inhabitants were killed or carried off as slaves.
Having conquered Russia, they advanced westward, and threw all Europe
into alarm. The panic reached even England, and interrupted, it is said,
for a time the herring fishing on the coast. Western Europe, however,
escaped their ravages. After visiting Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Servia,
and Dalmatia, they retreated to the Lower Volga, and the Russian Princes
were summoned thither to do homage to the victorious Khan.
At first the Russians had only very vague notions as to who this
terrible enemy was. The old chronicler remarks briefly: "For our sins
unknown peoples have appeared. No one knows who they are or whence they
have come, or to what race and faith they belong. They are commonly
called Tartars, but some call them Tauermen, and others Petchenegs. Who
they really are is known only to God, and perhaps to wise men deeply
read in books." Some of these "wise men deeply read in books" supposed
them to be the idolatrous Moabites who had in Old Testament times
harassed God's chosen people, whilst others thought that they must be
the descendants of the men whom Gideon had driven out, of whom a revered
saint had prophesied that they would come in the latter days and conquer
the whole earth, from the East even unto the Euphrates, and from the
Tigris even unto the Black Sea.
We are now happily in a position to dispense with such vague
ethnographical speculations. From the accounts of several European
travellers who visited Tartary about that time, and from the writings of
various Oriental historians, we know a great deal about these barbarians
who conquered Russia and frightened the Western nations.
The vast region lying to the east of Russia, from the basin of the Volga
to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, was inhabited then, as it is still,
by numerous Tartar and Mongol tribes. These two terms are often regarded
as identical and interchangeable, but they ought, I think, to be
distinguished. From the ethnographic, the linguistic, and the religious
point of view they differ widely from each other. The Kazan Tartars,
the Bashkirs, the Kirghiz, in a word, all the tribes in the country
stretching latitudinally from the Volga to Kashgar, and longitudinally
from the Persian frontier, the Hindu Kush and the Northern Himalaya, to
a line drawn east and west through the middle of Siberia, belong to the
Tartar group; whereas those further eastward, occupying Mongolia and
Manchuria, are Mongol in the stricter sense of the term.
A very little experience enables the traveller to distinguish between
the two. Both of them have the well-known characteristics of the
Northern Asiatic--the broad flat face, yellow skin, small, obliquely set
eyes, high cheekbones, thin, straggling beard; but these traits are more
strongly marked, more exaggerated, if we may use such an expression,
in the Mongol than in the Tartar. Thus the Mongol is, according to our
conceptions, by far the uglier of the two, and the man of Tartar
race, when seen beside him, appears almost European by comparison. The
distinction is confirmed by a study of their languages. All the Tartar
languages are closely allied, so that a person of average linguistic
talent who has mastered one of them, whether it be the rude Turki of
Central Asia or the highly polished Turkish of Stambul, can easily
acquire any of the others; whereas even an extensive acquaintance with
the Tartar dialects will be of no practical use to him in learning a
language of the Mongol group. In their religions likewise the two races
differ. The Mongols are as a rule Shamanists or Buddhists, while the
Tartars are Mahometans. Some of the Mongol invaders, it is true, adopted
Mahometanism from the conquered Tartar tribes, and by this change of
religion, which led naturally to intermarriage, their descendants became
gradually blended with the older population; but the broad line of
distinction was not permanently effaced.
It is often supposed, even by people who profess to be acquainted with
Russian history, that Mongols and Tartars alike first came westward to
the frontiers of Europe with Genghis Khan. This is true of the Mongols,
but so far as the Tartars are concerned it is an entire mistake. From
time immemorial the Tartar tribes roamed over these territories. Like
the Russians, they were conquered by the Mongol invaders and had long to
pay tribute, and when the Mongol empire crumbled to pieces by internal
dissensions and finally disappeared before the victorious advance of the
Russians, the Tartars reappeared from the confusion without having lost,
notwithstanding an intermixture doubtless of Mongol blood, their
old racial characteristics, their old dialects, and their old tribal
organisation.
The germ of the vast horde which swept over Asia and advanced into the
centre of Europe was a small pastoral tribe of Mongols living in the
hilly country to the north of China, near the sources of the Amur. This
tribe was neither more warlike nor more formidable than its neighbours
till near the close of the twelfth century, when there appeared in it
a man who is described as "a mighty hunter before the Lord." Of him and
his people we have a brief description by a Chinese author of the time:
"A man of gigantic stature, with broad forehead and long beard, and
remarkable for his bravery. As to his people, their faces are broad,
flat, and four-cornered, with prominent cheek-bones; their eyes have
no upper eyelashes; they have very little hair in their beards and
moustaches; their exterior is very repulsive." This man of gigantic
stature was no other than Genghis Khan. He began by subduing and
incorporating into his army the surrounding tribes, conquered with their
assistance a great part of Northern China, and then, leaving one of his
generals to complete the conquest of the Celestial Empire, he led his
army westward with the ambitious design of conquering the whole world.
"As there is but one God in heaven," he was wont to say, "so there
should be but one ruler on earth"; and this one universal ruler he
himself aspired to be.
A European army necessarily diminishes in force and its existence
becomes more and more imperilled as it advances from its base of
operations into a foreign and hostile country. Not so a horde like that
of Genghis Khan in a country such as that which it had to traverse. It
needed no base of operations, for it took with it its flocks, its tents,
and all its worldly goods. Properly speaking, it was not an army at all,
but rather a people in movement. The grassy Steppes fed the flocks, and
the flocks fed the warriors; and with such a simple commissariat system
there was no necessity for keeping up communications with the point
of departure. Instead of diminishing in numbers, the horde constantly
increased as it moved forwards. The nomadic tribes which it encountered
on its way, composed of men who found a home wherever they found pasture
and drinking-water, required little persuasion to make them join the
onward movement. By means of this terrible instrument of conquest
Genghis succeeded in creating a colossal Empire, stretching from the
Carpathians to the eastern shores of Asia, and from the Arctic Ocean to
the Himalayas.
Genghis was no mere ruthless destroyer; he was at the same time one
of the greatest administrators the world has ever seen. But his
administrative genius could not work miracles. His vast Empire, founded
on conquest and composed of the most heterogeneous elements, had no
principle of organic life in it, and could not possibly be long-lived.
It had been created by him, and it perished with him. For some time
after his death the dignity of Grand Khan was held by some one of his
descendants, and the centralised administration was nominally preserved;
but the local rulers rapidly emancipated themselves from the central
authority, and within half a century after the death of its founder the
great Mongol Empire was little more than "a geographical expression."
With the dismemberment of the short-lived Empire the danger for Eastern
Europe was by no means at an end. The independent hordes were scarcely
less formidable than the Empire itself. A grandson of Genghis formed
on the Russian frontier a new State, commonly known as Kiptchak, or the
Golden Horde, and built a capital called Serai, on one of the arms of
the Lower Volga. This capital, which has since so completely disappeared
that there is some doubt as to its site, is described by Ibn Batuta,
who visited it in the fifteenth century, as a very great, populous, and
beautiful city, possessing many mosques, fine market-places, and broad
streets, in which were to be seen merchants from Babylon, Egypt, Syria,
and other countries. Here lived the Khans of the Golden Horde, who kept
Russia in subjection for two centuries.
In conquering Russia the Mongols had no wish to possess themselves of
the soil, or to take into their own hands the local administration. What
they wanted was not land, of which they had enough and to spare,
but movable property which they might enjoy without giving up their
pastoral, nomadic life. They applied, therefore, to Russia the same
method of extracting supplies as they had used in other countries.
As soon as their authority had been formally acknowledged they sent
officials into the country to number the inhabitants and to collect an
amount of tribute proportionate to the population. This was a severe
burden for the people, not only on account of the sum demanded, but
also on account of the manner in which it was raised. The exactions
and cruelty of the tax-gatherers led to local insurrections, and the
insurrections were of course always severely punished. But there was
never any general military occupation of the country or any wholesale
confiscations of land, and the existing political organisation was left
undisturbed. The modern method of dealing with annexed provinces was
totally unknown to the Mongols. The Khans never thought of attempting
to denationalise their Russian subjects. They demanded simply an oath
of allegiance from the Princes* and a certain sum of tribute from
the people. The vanquished were allowed to retain their land, their
religion, their language, their courts of justice, and all their other
institutions.
* During the Mongol domination Russia was composed of a
large number of independent principalities.
The nature of the Mongol domination is well illustrated by the policy
which the conquerors adopted towards the Russian Church. For more than
half a century after the conquest the religion of the Tartars was
a mixture of Buddhism and Paganism, with traces of Sabaeism or
fire-worship. During this period Christianity was more than simply
tolerated. The Grand Khan Kuyuk caused a Christian chapel to be erected
near his domicile, and one of his successors, Khubilai, was in the habit
of publicly taking part in the Easter festivals. In 1261 the Khan of the
Golden Horde allowed the Russians to found a bishopric in his capital,
and several members of his family adopted Christianity. One of them
even founded a monastery, and became a saint of the Russian Church! The
Orthodox clergy were exempted from the poll-tax, and in the charters
granted to them it was expressly declared that if any one committed
blasphemy against the faith of the Russians he should be put to death.
Some time afterwards the Golden Horde was converted to Islam, but the
Khans did not on that account change their policy. They continued
to favour the clergy, and their protection was long remembered. Many
generations later, when the property of the Church was threatened by the
autocratic power, refractory ecclesiastics contrasted the policy of
the Orthodox Sovereign with that of the "godless Tartars," much to the
advantage of the latter.
At first there was and could be very little mutual confidence between
the conquerors and the conquered. The Princes anxiously looked for an
opportunity of throwing off the galling yoke, and the people chafed
under the exactions and cruelty of the tribute-collectors, whilst
the Khans took precautions to prevent insurrection, and threatened to
devastate the country if their authority was not respected. But in the
course of time this mutual distrust and hostility greatly lessened. When
the Princes found by experience that all attempts at resistance were
fruitless, they became reconciled to their new position, and instead
of seeking to throw off the Khan's authority, they tried to gain his
favour, in the hope of forwarding their personal interests. For this
purpose they paid frequent visits to the Tartar Suzerain, made rich
presents to his wives and courtiers, received from him charters
confirming their authority, and sometimes even married members of his
family. Some of them used the favour thus acquired for extending their
possessions at the expense of neighbouring Princes of their own race,
and did not hesitate to call in Tartar hordes to their assistance.
The Khans, in their turn, placed greater confidence in their vassals,
entrusted them with the task of collecting the tribute, recalled their
own officials who were a constant eyesore to the people, and abstained
from all interference in the internal affairs of the principalities so
long as the tribute was regularly paid. The Princes acted, in short, as
the Khan's lieutenants, and became to a certain extent Tartarised. Some
of them carried this policy so far that they were reproached by the
people with "loving beyond measure the Tartars and their language, and
with giving them too freely land, and gold, and goods of every kind."
Had the Khans of the Golden Horde been prudent, far-seeing statesmen,
they might have long retained their supremacy over Russia. In reality
they showed themselves miserably deficient in political talent. Seeking
merely to extract from the country as much tribute as possible,
they overlooked all higher considerations, and by this culpable
shortsightedness prepared their own political ruin. Instead of keeping
all the Russian Princes on the same level and thereby rendering them all
equally feeble, they were constantly bribed or cajoled into giving to
one or more of their vassals a pre-eminence over the others. At first
this pre-eminence consisted in little more than the empty title of
Grand Prince; but the vassals thus favoured soon transformed the
barren distinction into a genuine power by arrogating to themselves the
exclusive right of holding direct communications with the Horde, and
compelling the minor Princes to deliver to them the Mongol tribute.
If any of the lesser Princes refused to acknowledge this intermediate
authority, the Grand Prince could easily crush them by representing them
at the Horde as rebels. Such an accusation would cause the accused to be
summoned before the Supreme Tribunal, where the procedure was extremely
summary and the Grand Prince had always the means of obtaining a
decision in his own favour.
Of the Princes who strove in this way to increase their influence,
the most successful were the Grand Princes of Moscow. They were not a
chivalrous race, or one with which the severe moralist can sympathise,
but they were largely endowed with cunning, tact, and perseverance, and
were little hampered by conscientious scruples. Having early discovered
that the liberal distribution of money at the Tartar court was the
surest means of gaining favour, they lived parsimoniously at home and
spent their savings at the Horde. To secure the continuance of the
favour thus acquired, they were ready to form matrimonial alliances
with the Khan's family, and to act zealously as his lieutenants. When
Novgorod, the haughty, turbulent republic, refused to pay the yearly
tribute, they quelled the insurrection and punished the leaders; and
when the inhabitants of Tver rose against the Tartars and compelled
their Prince to make common cause with them, the wily Muscovite
hastened to the Tartar court and received from the Khan the revolted
principality, with 50,000 Tartars to support his authority.
Thus those cunning Moscow Princes "loved the Tartars beyond measure" so
long as the Khan was irresistibly powerful, but as his power waned they
stood forth as his rivals. When the Golden Horde, like the great Empire
of which it had once formed a part, fell to pieces in the fifteenth
century, these ambitious Princes read the signs of the times, and put
themselves at the head of the liberation movement, which was at first
unsuccessful, but ultimately freed the country from the hated yoke.
From this brief sketch of the Mongol domination the reader will readily
understand that it did not leave any deep, lasting impression on
the people. The invaders never settled in Russia proper, and never
amalgamated with the native population. So long as they retained their
semi-pagan, semi-Buddhistic religion, a certain number of their notables
became Christians and were absorbed by the Russian Noblesse; but as
soon as the Horde adopted Islam this movement was arrested. There was no
blending of the two races such as has taken place--and is still taking
place--between the Russian peasantry and the Finnish tribes of the
North. The Russians remained Christians, and the Tartars remained
Mahometans; and this difference of religion raised an impassable barrier
between the two nationalities.
It must, however, be admitted that the Tartar domination, though it
had little influence on the life and habits of the people, had a
considerable influence on the political development of the nation.
At the time of the conquest Russia was composed of a large number of
independent principalities, all governed by descendants of Rurik. As
these principalities were not geographical or ethnographical units, but
mere artificial, arbitrarily defined districts, which were regularly
subdivided or combined according to the hereditary rights of the
Princes, it is highly probable that they would in any case have been
sooner or later united under one sceptre; but it is quite certain that
the policy of the Khans helped to accelerate this unification and to
create the autocratic power which has since been wielded by the Tsars.
If the principalities had been united without foreign interference we
should probably have found in the united State some form of political
organisation corresponding to that which existed in the component
parts--some mixed form of government, in which the political power would
have been more or less equally divided between the Tsar and the people.
The Tartar rule interrupted this normal development by extinguishing
all free political life. The first Tsars of Muscovy were the political
descendants, not of the old independent Princes, but of the Mongol
Khans. It may be said, therefore, that the autocratic power, which
has been during the last four centuries out of all comparison the most
important factor in Russian history, was in a certain sense created by
the Mongol domination.