Mongol invasion of Kievan Rus'

Between 1237 and 1240 the armies of the Mongol Empire swept through the principalities of the Rus', burning Vladimir, Chernigov, Kiev and many smaller towns. The campaign, led by Batu Khan, a grandson of Genghis Khan, finished off an already fragmented Kievan Rus' and left most of its lands paying tribute to the Mongols for more than two centuries.

The Rus' first met the Mongols in 1223, when a force under the generals Subutai and Jebe, returning from a long raid through the Caucasus, crossed the steppe. On 31 May 1223, at the Kalka River, it routed a coalition of Rus' princes and their Cuman allies. The Mongols then withdrew. Later sources suggest the expedition had served as reconnaissance, and the princes went back to their own quarrels.

At a kurultai, or assembly, in 1235, the Great Khan Ögedei ordered a western campaign. Batu was placed in overall command, with Subutai as his leading general and several princes of Genghis Khan's family at the head of their own contingents. Estimates of the army's size vary widely, from about 60,000 to around 120,000 men. In 1236 and 1237 it overran Volga Bulgaria, the Cumans and the Alans, and by the end of 1237 it stood on the borders of the Rus' lands, waiting for the rivers to freeze.

Late in 1237 the Mongols demanded the submission of Grand Prince Yuri II of Vladimir. They then took Ryazan after a three-day siege, burned Kolomna and Moscow, and on 4 February 1238 surrounded Vladimir, which was stormed and burned three days later. Yuri's new army was destroyed on 4 March at the Sit River, where he was killed. Mongol detachments then plundered more than a dozen towns, including Rostov, Yaroslavl and Tver. The small town of Kozelsk held out for seven weeks. Novgorod avoided attack by submitting in advance.

After raiding the steppe and Crimea, Batu turned south. In the winter of 1239 his forces sacked Pereyaslavl and Chernigov. They reached Kiev in November 1240 and stormed it in December. The city, then defended in the name of Prince Daniel of Galicia, was looted, though St Sophia's Cathedral survived. The papal envoy Giovanni da Pian del Carpine, passing through in 1246, reportedly found only about 200 houses left, but historians question parts of his account. The Mongols then ravaged Galicia–Volhynia and invaded Poland and Hungary in the Mongol invasion of Europe, before the death of Ögedei led them to withdraw.

The conquered lands became part of the realm of Batu, later known as the Golden Horde, ruled from Sarai on the lower Volga. Rus' princes kept their thrones but had to seek the khan's approval and pay tribute. Even principalities that escaped destruction, such as Novgorod, Polotsk and Galicia–Volhynia, came to accept Mongol overlordship.

The damage was uneven. Kiev and other great centres declined for generations, stone building and many skilled crafts halted for decades, and people fled north and into the forests. Colin McEvedy estimated that the population fell from about 7.5 million to 7 million. Moscow, by contrast, prospered as the khans' trusted collaborator; in 1327 its prince Ivan I helped crush a rising in Tver and was rewarded with the title of grand prince. Historians debate how far Mongol institutions shaped the later Muscovite state. Although a Russian army won at the Battle of Kulikovo in 1380, tribute continued until the stand on the Ugra River in 1480.

Our 1200 map shows Kievan Rus' before the invasion. The 1279 and 1300 maps show the Golden Horde dominating the former Rus' lands, with the Novgorod Republic in the north.