CHAPTER IV THE COMING OF THE MONGOLS
As an advancing tide, engulfing in its progression the stretches of ooze-land which lie in its onward path, sends scurrying before it flights of waders and other shore-haunting birds, driven from their feeding grounds, so the great Mongol wave which was creeping upon Eastern Europe drove before it disordered troops of the Polovtzi nomads, seeking among their old enemies the safety which their desert fastnesses no longer afforded. Into the principality of Kiev poured the fugitives, bringing with them droves of horses, camels, cattle, and buffaloes—a wonderful and misgiving sight to the staring Russians, who saw their fierce, untamable foes, the incarnation to them of all that was barbarous, outlandish, and terrible, cowering and fleeing from some unseen horror behind. That the wolf of the steppes should come to lie down, panting and trembling, with the lamb, boded the advent of anything but a millennium. The accounts given by the Polovtzi khans of the Mongol hordes which had swept the tribes of Western Asia before their advancing host, roused the Russian princes to a sense of the danger they courted by their disunion, and gathered them together in the old capital to deliberate on a common action in opposition to the threatened invasion. Mstislav of Galitz, erstwhile of Toropetz, Mstislav Romanovitch (of the house of Smolensk), Prince of Kiev, Daniel of Volhynia, Mstislav of Tchernigov, and other princes of less importance, held high counsel between them, and debated the means of averting the Mongol advance; and as they paused in their deliberations to mark the unwonted caravans and uncouth brutes of the desert that thronged the streets and approaches of Kiev, it must have been borne in upon them that already Asia had overflowed her limits and swept the Russian lands into her embrace. And while, taking heart of grace from the assemblage of so many important princes and the leadership of the redoubtable Mstislav of Galitz, they consider how best to oppose these fearsome enemies, it will be of interest to learn something of the history of this Mongol horde, this mushroom growth that had over-spread the northern empire of China, made a desolate waste of Persia, carried its arms into Hindostan, and risen to be the greatest power in Asia, and which was now threatening to attack the outskirts of Christendom.
In the dreary steppe-land of the Gobi desert, south of the Baikal Sea, where flows the Onon, a tributary of the Amur, history first locates the Mongols, in the sixth century, under the name Mongu, possibly derived from the word “mong,” signifying bold, daring. At that period they are indicated as a sub-tribe of the Shi-wei, who dwelt to the north-west of Manchuria, and did not enjoy any considerable importance. This insignificance continued till the accession, in 1175, to the Mongol Khanate, of Temudjin, known later under the world-famous name of Jingis Khan, when the number of his subjects did not exceed 40,000 families. A series of successful wars with the tribes in his immediate neighbourhood paved the way for more ambitious undertakings, and he soon carried his victorious standard, the Tuk with nine yak tails, into the northern empire of China, which was ruled over by the Kin, or Tartar dynasty (South China being separately governed by the Sung dynasty). From this point Jingis carried on campaign after campaign with almost uniform success, till the greater part of Asia grovelled beneath his yoke. Pitilessly cruel, this “cormorant of conquest” marked each fresh advance, whether resisted or unopposed, with wholesale massacres, which, after allowing for Oriental exaggeration, swell to a ghastly total. “From 1211 to 1223, 18,470,000 human beings perished in China and Tangut alone at the hands of Jingis and his followers,”[35] a record which would have turned the early kings of Israel green with envy. The Mongolian policy was to scatter, ruin, and, if possible, exterminate existing civilisations and communities wherever their victorious armies passed.[36] The terror which the Mongol cruelties inspired unnerved their opponents and disinclined nations with whom they were at peace from combining against them, while their hardy desert horses, light equipment, and powers of endurance enabled them to travel enormous distances in all conditions of weather. Powerful empires like those of China and Persia writhed beneath their yoke; lesser states, such as Great Bulgaria and Georgia, were almost wiped out of existence. The conquest of this latter country by a division of the Horde, under the leadership of Chepe and Subatai, two of the Mongol chiefs, was followed by an incursion into the land occupied by the Kumans, or Polovtzi, which brought the destroying hosts on to the verge of the Russian dominion. Southward the flying Kumans were pursued as far as the Krim peninsula, at which point the Mongols first came into contact with Western civilisation, burning Sudak, where the Genoese had a flourishing commercial station. Now were ten ambassadors sent to the alarmed Russian princes, assuring them that they had nothing to fear from the Horde, but warning them against showing any support to the Polovtzi. Fear and resentment made the princes forget the customs of civilisation, and the messengers were put to death, an inauspicious opening for the coming struggle. Having thus defied the gathering storm, the Russians crossed the Dniepr and marched to the banks of the Kalka, where they prepared to meet these new foes from the east, as they had aforetime met the Polovtzi and the Petchenigs before them. But even at this critical moment the princes were not in complete accord; each was jealous of the other, each fought for his own hand. Mstislav of Galitz thought he could win the fight with his own forces and the assistance of the Polovtzi, but the latter were unable to withstand the Mongol onset and broke in wild confusion. The Russians fought well, but they fought apart and without cohesion, and were only united in one overwhelming ruin. The battle of the Kalka, on the 31st May 1224, was a terrible catastrophe in Russian history, and fitly heralded a disastrous epoch in her annals. An army of over 80,000 men was scattered like chaff before the exulting Mongols, and to add to the horror of the flight the treacherous Polovtzi, on behalf of whom the Russians had entered into the quarrel, slew and plundered as they fled. From the fatal banks of the Kalka to those of the Dniepr raced the broken bands of Russians, the laggards falling beneath the lances and sabres of their grim pursuers. Six princes, many boyarins, and thousands of soldiers were numbered among the slain. The young Daniel Romanovitch of Volhynia escaped wounded from the woeful field, while Mstislav of Kiev with two other princes defended themselves for three days in a fortified camp on the bank of the Kalka. Deluded by a false promise of security, they at length fell into the power of the Mongols, who slaughtered the men and smothered the princes under planks, holding wild carousal over their swollen bodies—a scene which recalls the “night of Cannae’s raging field.” Southern Russia lay helpless at the pleasure of these merciless enemies, who ravaged unchecked in the villages and homesteads near the scene of their victory. Then they did a most unexpected thing; they went. Retiring through Great Bulgaria, they vanished as suddenly as they had come; of their arrival and departure might almost be said what was said of their attack on Bokhara: “They came, dug, burnt, killed, robbed, went.” The Russian lands awoke as from a nightmare to find their unwelcome guests had departed.
In the midst of their conquests the separate Mongol bands turned as if by common instinct back to their native haunts in the remote valley of the Onon, where they hunted and hawked after swans and cranes, antelopes and wild asses, in the odd moments when they were not engaged in hunting men. Then occurred that picturesque gathering which Howorth has so eloquently described, when the old Khan held his simple court surrounded by his family and chieftains, a little knot of desert nomads who between them had conquered half the known world.
The Russians meanwhile, delivered from the desolating presence of the Mongol hosts, resumed the uneven tenor of their ways; the citizens of Novgorod continued to displace and re-elect their princes, archbishops, and posadniks; the boyarins of Galicia to plot and intrigue with Hungary, Poland, and the house of Romanovitch; the princes to quarrel over the eternal readjustment of their appanages. And here is a fit moment to review the unfolding spectacle of national development among the Russian Slavs since their focussing under the early princes, and examine the drift and purpose underlying the chronicle of their doings. Frankly the result is not edifying. It is an unpleasant accusation to hurl against a people, but in these early centuries of their history they may be aptly likened to the “gray apes” portrayed by Kipling’s magic pen,—always setting out to do some great thing, never quite remembering what it was they had meant to do, holding fast to a thing one moment, letting it go the next, restless and ambitious, without any clear idea of what they desired, such is the character that must reluctantly be given them. These blind devotions to the Princes of the Blood, these aimless rebellions against their authority, these fervid worshippings of Mother-of-God and saints, these impious plunderings of cathedrals and monasteries, these kissings and swearings on the cross, these shameless breaking of oaths, these holy wars against the Polovtzi, these frequent military and matrimonial alliances with them, these sacrifices to keep in touch with the Greek Empire and the south, this abandoning of the south lands to Turko nomads and Italian merchants, these internal complications, revolutions, banishments, recalls, leagues, and counter-leagues, shifting as the sands of a river-bed, what do they bring to mind but a family of children squabbling and loving and squabbling again in ever-varying combinations, or, nearer still, the former simile, the gray apes. Other countries and peoples were, it is true, going through the same period of anarchy and disorder, but there was at least some method in their madness. In Italy, amid the wild chaos of republics, principalities, and imperial cities, there can plainly be discerned in the as yet scarcely named factions of Guelph and Ghibelline the Papal power seeking to extend itself on the one hand, and the Imperial interest striving to establish itself on the other, and a third party playing off one against the other for the attainment of its own independence. In Germany, Emperor, electors, prince-bishops, free cities, and the other constituents of the commonweal are balanced one against the other in an intricate but perfectly understandable whole, each working to a definite and rational end. In France and England king and barons fight out the old battle of monarchy against aristocracy, which is to be merged one day in a conflict with a newer force—if anything is new under the sun. But where is the aim or interest in these minutely-recorded Russian struggles? Hidden away in the forests of Souzdal, perhaps, lies the embryo or germ of a state policy, if it ever be hatched into life. Meanwhile Russia is losing ground, literally and metaphorically, in many directions. Southward, as has been noticed, a broad zone of steppe, inhabited by Turko tribes, shuts her off from the coast cities of the Black Sea, where the pushing Genoese have ensconced their factories. Galicia, with its population of White Kroats, is becoming less Russian every day. Lit’uania, no longer held under by the neighbouring provinces, threatens to expand at their expense. The Baltic lands are drifting into Teutonic and Catholic hands. Velikie Novgorod herself, absorbed in the details of parochial administration, has let her magnificent foreign trade slip into the grip of strangers. For Novgorod was not, as Howorth imagines, “a famous member of the Hanseatic League”; the League, now beginning to play an important part in the annals of Northern Europe, merely had a factory and station there, as it had at London and Lisbon, and this factory speedily monopolised the oversea trade of the great Russian emporium; “during three centuries the Hanseatic League concentrated in her own hands all the external commerce of Northern Russia.”[37] Finally, on the eastern marches hovered the shadow of the late incursion, an incursion which might at any moment be repeated.
While the war-clouds were lowering dark and ill-boding over the land, sank in the west that day-star of Russian chivalry, Mstislav Mstislavitch, more or less Prince of Galitz.
1228
Brave as a boar in battle, in council he was about as intelligent; “nothing is sadder than victory, except defeat,” and with him certainly a success was almost as expensive as a reverse could have been. His brilliant achievements gained no advantage for his family or for Russia, and on his death Andrew, son of the Hungarian king of that name, stepped into the vacant sovereignty. This border province, with its involved political conditions, had a magnetic attraction for the more adventurous spirits among the Russian princes, and a candidate was ready to hand to dispute its possession in the person of Daniel Romanovitch of Volhynia. Just such another knight-errant as Mstislav, Daniel possessed more of the ability to seize the contested throne than the address to establish himself firmly on it. The son of an imperious and overbearing father, he had many enemies. Vladimir Rurikovitch of Kiev, for instance, had not forgotten that Roman had made his father assume the tonsure against his inclinations, and in pursuance of this bequeathed quarrel formed a league against Daniel, which included the Princes of Tchernigov and Pinsk, and of course the Polovtzi. By detaching Kotian, the celebrated Polovtzi Khan, from this confederation, Daniel was able to gain a complete victory over his enemies. Scarcely was this accomplished than he whirled away, as his father had done, into the troubled affairs of Poland, where he supported Duke Konrad of Mazovia against the party opposed to his regency, his murdered brother, Duke Lesko V., having left his son and heir, Boleslas V., in his charge.
1229
Elate with the success which attended his arms in this direction, on his return he flung himself, with the hereditary eagle-swoop, on to the city of Galitz, which fell into his hands, together with the person of Prince Andrew. This advantage he threw away by permitting his valuable prisoner to retire to Hungary, whither had already fled Soudislav, one of the most active of the boyarins who favoured the Magyar dynasty. The reward of this clemency was a new attack on Galicia by the Hungarians, led by Prince Bela (afterwards Bela IV.) The elements were unpropitious; torrents and floods damaged and hindered the invading army, and contributed to its defeat, and the Hungarians recrossed the Karpathians in evil plight. The position of Daniel was, however, too precarious to withstand for long the resources of Hungary, the disaffection of his subjects, and the enmity of some of his brother princes. Foremost among the latter was his cousin and inveterate enemy, Aleksandr of Belz, who, having been implicated in a plot which miscarried, fled to Hungary and roused the king to a new attempt on this fair and coveted province. The boyarins, who saw themselves, doubtless, of more authority and importance as the courtiers of a foreign prince than under the personal rule of a vigorous Russian kniaz, deserted to the Hungarian standard, and the young Andrew became once more “King of Galicia.” His death in 1234 paved the way for the restoration of the Romanovitch, and the boyarins of the Magyar party had to seek safety beyond the mountains. Less concerned, however, in strengthening his hold upon this slippery fief than in carrying his arms into quarrels which did not concern him, Daniel rushed to the assistance of his late enemy, Vladimir of Kiev, who was embroiled in a war with Mikhail of Tchernigov. Daniel ravaged the latter province, but disaster overtook him and Vladimir in the shape of a defeat by a Polovtzi army, led by Isiaslav, grandson of the immortalised Igor of Severski—a strange combination.
1236
Kiev and Galitz both fell into the hands of the victors, Mikhail establishing himself in the latter principality, while Isiaslav held Kiev. On the departure of the Polovtzi he was obliged to restore the city to Vladimir, who in turn ceded it to Yaroslav Vsevolodovitch, prince and sometime persecutor of the Novgorodskie; he, on leaving Novgorod, placed in his stead his son Aleksandr, afterwards celebrated as “Nevski.” Daniel flitted about the neighbouring lands like a restless ghost, seeking aid against the intruding Olgovitch, even in Hungary, where Bela had succeeded his father Andrew (1235), and where the exile could obtain nothing more than promises, which were scarcely likely to be fulfilled. Nor did he receive warmer support from Duke Konrad.
In the north-west things were in a somewhat chaotic condition; the year 1236 was marked by a disaster to the Sword Brethren, in which Volquin von Winterstadt and a large proportion of his knights lost their lives, having ventured rashly into the Lit’uanian country, where they were surrounded by the enemy and cut to pieces. The following year the Order was amalgamated with that of the Teutonic Knights, who had established themselves in Prussia under the Grand-Mastership of Herman von Salza. This province had been formally presented to them by the Emperor Frederick II., by the Duke of Mazovia, and by Pope Gregory IX., finally by Pope Innocent IV., notwithstanding which, the inhabitants of this much-bestowed country offered a vigorous resistance to their new masters.
Out of their fools’ paradise of fancied security on their eastern border the Russians were rudely aroused by the news that the Volga lands were being devastated by the Mongols, that Bolgar was in ashes, that the heads of the Tartar horses had been turned west, and that their hoofs were now scoring broad tracks through the forests towards Riazan.
1237
On before them journeyed an eerie harbinger of ill, a woman (described in the Chronicles as a sorceress), with two attendants, and bearing a demand from Batu, the Mongol Khan, for a tenth part of the princes’ treasures.
Batu, nephew of Ogotai Khan, who had ruled the Horde since the death of his father Jingis (1227), may well have been astonished at his own moderation, since he was followed by an army estimated at 300,000 men. But the Princes of Riazan and Mourom refused his demand with a defiance of the true heroic ring: “When we are dead you can have it all.” “Just as it afterwards happened,” as the old Saxon Chronicles used to say. No aid was forthcoming from the Grand Prince Urii in response to the urgent appeals from Riazan, and the devoted principality received the full shock of the Mongol attack. The town was taken by assault after six days’ incessant fighting round the walls, and a “blood bath,” to use an appropriate German expression, ensued in the streets, houses, and churches. The Prince of Riazan and many of his family perished in the general slaughter. This was in the month of December, but, undeterred by the snow which choked the forest roads and filled the valleys, Batu turned north towards Souzdal, leaving behind him a banquet of frozen corpses for the wolves and foxes, ravens and vultures. Moskva, Tver, Souzdal, and Vladimir fell one by one into the power of the Mongols and experienced their cruel fury.
Feb. 1238
In the latter city perished Vsevolod and Mstislav, sons of Urii, who had retreated to the banks of the Sit, where he turned to bay against the ravagers of his province. Here, on the 3rd March, was fought a battle big with importance for Russia, the West fighting against the East, the forest-lands against the steppe, Christianity against Shamanism. Urii had deferred the decisive moment too long, and paid with his life the penalty of his mistake; his disheartened soldiers broke before the overwhelming numbers of the Mongols, and left them undisputed masters of the Grand Principality. The East had won. Not for many a long century, if ever, would Russia shake off the Oriental influences which the Mongol victory imposed upon her. From her history the shadow of the Horde, one is tempted to forebode, in the words of Poe, “shall be lifted nevermore.”
The Bishop of Rostov, haunting the scene of desolation, found the headless body of the Grand Prince, and conveyed it to the church of the Virgin at that town, where it was afterwards joined by its recovered head and interred, together with the corpse of Vassilko Konstantinovitch, who also fell on that fatal field. The triumphant Mongol host marched towards Novgorod, but turned aside on seeing the fastnesses of swamp and lakelet with which that town was girdled, and to which it owed its safety. Less fortunate were Volok-Lamskie, Torjhok, and Kozelsk, which drooped one by one before the blight of conquest and devastation. To the latter town, which resisted the enemy for two months and slew of them four thousand, the Mongols gave the name of “the evil city.” Vasili, its defending kniaz, fighting to the last, was said to have been drowned in blood—an end worthy of the war-lusting vikings of the twilight past.
Careful not to leave a foe behind him, Batu withdrew his forces to the basin of the Don, to hunt out the Kumans once more from their hiding-places, and to rest his warriors and their horses in the steppe-lands to which they were accustomed. Yaroslav seized this opportunity to hasten from Kiev to the evacuated Souzdalian province, of which desolated region he was now sovereign. To him fell the task of restoring order to a distracted country and courage to an affrighted people. Despite the terror which loomed in the deserts near the Don, he was able to give his attention to the succour of Smolensk, over-run by the Lit’uanians, whom he brilliantly defeated. In the south, far from making common cause against the national enemy, or seeking to revenge the cruelties which had been meted out to so many of the Russian cities and towns, the Romanovitch and Olgovitch princes renewed their private feuds and fief-grabbings. Mikhail of Tchernigov and Galitz left the latter province in the keeping of his son Rostislav, while he seized on Kiev, vacated by the new Prince of Souzdal-Vladimir. While Rostislav and his boyarins were absent on an expedition against the Lit’uanians, the ever-imminent Daniel made the inevitable eagle-pounce on Galitz, and despite the opposition of its bishop, was received with acclamation by the people, who buzzed around him, in the words of the Chronicle, “as bees swarm about their queen.”
Meanwhile, in the deserts of Astrakhan, Kotian, the old Polovtzi Khan, had been defeated by the Mongols, and fled, he and his, along the wild steppe country till he came to the Karpathian range and sought refuge in the Hungarian kingdom. Russia no longer offered a safe retreat. Swiftly and remorselessly the death-dealing Horde bore down on the middle provinces, and throughout the length and breadth of the land bishops and priests and people knelt in agonised supplication to their all-powerful God to deliver them from their savage enemies. From cathedral, church, and roadside shrine wails the pitiful litany, “Save us from the infidels!” Candles burn and incense swings, and anguish-stricken hearts yearn out their prayer, “Save us from the infidels!” Call Him louder. Perchance He sleepeth.
Tchernigov and Péréyaslavl experienced the common fate, the general ruin; town and country alike suffered the affliction of fire and sword and rapine. Shuddering villagers, lying awake around their flickering hearths at night, would hear the uneasy barking of their watch-dogs, scenting or seeing something not yet palpable to human senses; and later the house-pigeons would fly far and wildly over a landscape lit up by a glow that was not the dawn.
After a short respite, while the destroyers had turned aside again to the deserts of the Don, Central Russia once more became the scene of their ravaging. It was now the turn of Kiev to become the miserable victim of their attentions. Around the mother of Russian cities (a very Niobe under present circumstances), the sacred site of the tombs and relics of the grand old princes, the resting-place of “all the glories,” gathered a host that blackened the face of the country for miles round. Batu himself, Mengu and Kujuk, sons of Ogatai (the Grand Khan), and five other princes of the family of Jingis, came to help the city on the Dniepr to its doom. Mikhail of Tchernigov fled to Hungary on the approach of the enemy, and even the daring Daniel Romanovitch preferred not to shut himself up like a trapped rat in Kiev or Galitz, and sought refuge with King Bela, leaving, however, in the former town his voevoda Dimitri to direct the defence. Happy had it been for the inhabitants had they all fled from the death-trap. Within the walls men could scarce hear themselves speak for the floating din of creaking carts, bellowing oxen, groaning camels, neighing and stamping horses, and yelling Mongols which resounded on all sides.
1240
Against the Polish gate day and night the battering-rams crashed and splintered, till a breach was effected by which the besiegers entered. S. Sofia had become the last refuge of the defenders, but the roof, crowded with fugitives, gave way beneath the pressure, and forestalled the vengeance of the Mongols. Men, women, and infants, houses, churches, tombs, and shrines became a prey to the children of the desert, a vast hecatomb to grace the funeral pyre of the old Russia. The famous monastery of Petcherski, where the monk Nestor wrote his Chronicle, shared the general destruction, and from amid its crashing ruins the pagans seized the massive gold cross which had adorned its cupola.
From this victory the Horde pressed on through Volhynia and Galicia; Vladimir, Galitz, and other Red Russian towns fell beneath their attack, and then the conquering host branched off into two divisions; one, under the command of Batu, invaded Hungary; the other, led by Baidar and Kaidu (sons of Jagatai), carried desolation into the Polish provinces. The storm, sack, and burning of Lublin, Zawikhost, Sendomir, and Krakow, and the ravaging of the province of Breslau led up to the pitched battle of Liegnitz, where the might of Poland measured itself in desperate struggle with the Mongol wave. On the Christian side stood Duke Henry II. of Silesia; Boleslav, son of the Markgraf of Moravia; Miecislav, Duke of Ratibor; and Poppon d’Osterna, Provincial Master (in Prussia) of the Teutonic Order. Outnumbered by the Mongols, the Poles fought valiantly and with effect, till at last their spirit failed them; the great Tuk banner, lurid with flaring naphtha, and decorated with two gleaming sheep bones, transversely crossed, seemed to reproduce, amid unholy goblin flames, their own mystic symbol. The powers of darkness and the seething masses of human foes were too formidable a combination to fight against, and the chivalry of Poland broke and fled. Duke Henry on that awful night fought savagely as he fled, but was torn down at length by his untiring pursuers. Many a count and palatine shared his fate; from every corpse the savage victors cut an ear, and nine sacks full were sent to the Grand Khan, together with the head of Duke Henry, as a record of the slain.[38] In tracing the Mongol march of devastation through Silesia, Moravia, and Transylvania into Hungary, it is only necessary to observe that wholesale slaughter, destruction, and sweeping victory continued to characterise the advance of the Horde.[39] In Hungary men had awaited with cold and anxious hearts the onfall of the Mongols. Had they not heard with sorrow and foreboding at Christmas-tide last year the doleful intelligence of the fall of Kiev? And the wild stories of each fresh batch of fugitives—Kumans, Russians, Poles, Silesians—increased the terror of the Mongol name and brought their armies nearer. The King rallied his nobles round him (none too well-affected though they were) in a determined effort to stem this swarthy torrent that threatened to submerge the country. The prelates of the realm, good old fighting churchmen as they were, led their vassals in person to the fight. On the field of Mohi (name strangely like that of the other fatal battle in their history), on the banks of the Sajó, the cross of S. Stefan went down before the yak-tailed Tuk, and the nomad warriors triumphed over the Magyar chivalry. Hemmed in on all sides, the Hungarians were powerless; “it was not a battle, but a butchery.”[40] Bela fled to the Karpathians, thence to Austria; his brother Kalman reached Kroatia, where he died of his wounds. Among the slain were the Archbishops Mathias of Gran and Ugolin of Kalocza, the Bishops of Raab, Neutra, and Siebenbürgen, and counts and nobles galore, the flower of Hungarian aristocracy. Surely not to be reckoned as “the weak and the false,” “the fool and the knave.” Bela, betrayed by the Duke of Austria and hunted from one refuge to another by the remorseless enemy, took ship from the Dalmatian coast and left his kingdom in the hands of Batu. Southern Hungary, Servia, Dalmatia, and parts of Bulgaria were ravaged by detachments of the Horde, but south of Albania and west of Austria they do not appear to have penetrated. The news of the death of the Grand Khan Ogatai, and possibly the increasing difficulty of supporting so large a body of men in a devastated country, determined Batu to withdraw his hosts from the scene of their conquests, and the Mongol swarms melted away from the erstwhile fertile lands which they had turned into a howling wilderness. Bela returned to take possession of his stricken kingdom, confronted on all sides by evidences of the great calamity; “the highways were grown with grass, the fields were white with bones, and here and there for more than a day’s journey round, no living soul.”[41] In distant corners of Europe men shuddered at the tales that were told of these fearsome sons of the desert; in marvel-loving Constantinople it was gravely averred that they had the heads of dogs and fed upon human flesh, and the dread of their coming kept the fishermen of Sweden and Friesland from attending the herring-market on the English coast, thereby demoralising prices.[42]