780 years ago, the Mongols began a five-day siege of Ryazan, one of the main and most developed centers of Ancient Rus. After plundering the city and exterminating its defenders, Batu Khan continued his campaign of conquest in the Vladimir-Suzdal lands. For the next 250 years, the Horde yoke dominated the Russian principalities.
In the December days of 1237, there were bitter frosts on the territory between the Volga and Oka. In fact, the cold more than once came to the aid of the Russian armies, becoming a loyal ally in the most dramatic periods of history. He chased Napoleon away from Moscow, shackled the Nazis hand and foot in the frozen trenches. But he could not do anything against the Tatar-Mongols.
Strictly speaking, the term "Tatar-Mongols", which has long been established in the Russian tradition, is only half correct. In terms of the ethnic formation of the armies that came from the East and the political core of the Golden Horde, the Turkic-speaking peoples did not occupy important positions at that moment.
Genghis Khan conquered the Tatar tribes settled in the vastness of Siberia at the beginning of the XIII century - just a few decades before the campaign of his descendants to Russia.
Naturally, the Tatar khans supplied their recruits to the Horde not of their own free will, but under compulsion. There were far more signs of a relationship between a suzerain and a vassal than of equal cooperation. The role and influence of the Turkic part of the Horde population increased much later. Well, for the 1230s, calling foreign invaders Tatar-Mongols is like calling the Nazis who reached Stalingrad as German-Hungarian-Croats.
Russia has traditionally been successful against threats from the West, but has often capitulated to the East. Suffice it to recall that just a few years after the invasion of Batu, Russia defeated perfectly equipped Scandinavian and German knights on the Neva and then on Lake Peipsi.
Swept through the lands of the Russian principalities in 1237-1238, which lasted until 1240, a rapid whirlwind divided Russian history into "before" and "after". It is not in vain that the term “pre-Mongol period” is used in chronology. Finding itself for 250 years under a foreign yoke, Russia lost tens of thousands of its best people killed and driven into slavery, forgot many technologies and crafts, forgot how to erect structures of stone, stopped in socio-political development.
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Many historians are convinced that it was at that time that the lag behind Western Europe took shape, the consequences of which have not been overcome to this day.
Only a few dozen architectural monuments of the pre-Mongol era have "survived" before us. Sophia Cathedral and the Golden Gate in Kiev, unique churches of the Vladimir-Suzdal land are well known. Nothing has survived on the territory of the Ryazan region.
The Horde were especially cruel to those who had the courage to resist. Neither old people nor children were spared - Russians were massacred in whole villages. During the Batu invasion, even before the siege of Ryazan, many important centers of the ancient Russian state were burned, forever wiped off the face of the earth: Dedoslavl, Belgorod, Ryazan, Ryazan, Voronezh - today it is no longer possible to accurately determine their location.
Actually, the capital of the Grand Duchy of Ryazan - we call it Old Ryazan - was located 60 kilometers from the modern city (then - the small settlement of Pereslavl-Ryazan). The tragedy of "Russian Troy", as poetic historians called it, is largely symbolic.
As in the war sung by Homer on the shores of the Aegean Sea, there was a place here for heroic defense, and the cunning idea of the attackers, and even, perhaps, betrayal.
The Ryazan people also had their own Hector - the heroic hero Evpatiy Kolovrat. According to legend, during the days of the siege of Ryazan, he was with the embassy in Chernigov, where he unsuccessfully tried to negotiate help for the suffering region. Returning home, Kolovrat found only ruins and ashes: "… the sovereigns killed and many people perished: some were killed and beaten, others burned, and others were sunk." He soon recovered from the shock and decided to take revenge.
Having overtaken the Horde already in the Suzdal region, Evpatiy with his small squad destroyed their rearguard, defeated the khan's relative of the batyr Khostovrul, but in mid-January he died himself.
According to "The Tale of the Ruin of Ryazan by Batu", the Mongols, shocked by the courage of the fallen Rusich, gave his body to the surviving soldiers. The ancient Greeks were less merciful: the old king Priam had to ransom the corpse of his son Hector for gold.
Today, the story of Kolovrat has been taken out of oblivion and filmed by Janik Fayziev. The artistic value of the painting and the historical correspondence to real events have yet to be assessed by critics.
But back in December 1237. Having devastated the cities and villages of the Ryazan region, on whose lands the first, most powerful and crushing blow of the entire campaign fell, Khan Batu did not dare to start storming the capital for a long time.
Based on the experience of his predecessors, having a good idea of the events of the battle on Kalka, the grandson of Genghis Khan obviously understood that it was possible to seize and, most importantly, keep Russia under control only by centralizing all Mongol forces.
To a certain extent, Batu, like Alexander I with Kutuzov, was lucky with a military leader. Subedei, a talented commander and companion of his grandfather, made a huge contribution to the subsequent defeat by a series of correct decisions.
The hostilities that served as a prologue to the siege, primarily on the Voronezh River, clearly showed all the weaknesses of the Russians, which the Mongols skillfully took advantage of. There was no single command. The princes from other lands, remembering the years of strife, refused to come to the rescue. Local, but deep-seated grievances at first were stronger than fear of a common threat.
If the knights of the equestrian princely squads were in no way inferior in their fighting qualities to the elite soldiers of the Horde army - noyons and nukers, then the basis of the Russian army, the militias, was poorly trained and could not compete in military skills with an experienced enemy.
Fortification systems were erected in cities to defend against neighboring principalities, which possessed a similar military arsenal, and not at all from the steppe nomads.
According to the historian Alexander Orlov, under the current conditions the Ryazan people had no choice but to focus on defense. Their other tactics were objectively not assumed.
Russia of the XIII century is a continuous impenetrable forest. This is largely why Ryazan was waiting for its fate until mid-December. Batu was aware of internal strife in the enemy's camp and the unwillingness of the Chernigov and Vladimir princes to come to the rescue of the Ryazan people. When the frost tightly walled up the rivers with ice, heavily armed Mongolian batyrs passed along the channels as if along a highway.
To begin with, the Mongols demanded obedience and a tenth of the accumulated property. “If we are not all there, everything will be yours,” was the answer.
The Ryazan people, led by the Grand Duke Yuri Igorevich, defended themselves desperately. They threw stones, poured arrows, tar and boiling water on the enemy from the fortress walls. The Mongols had to call for reinforcements and offensive vehicles - catapults, battering rams, siege towers.
The struggle lasted five days - on the sixth, gaps formed in the fortifications, the Horde rushed into the city and lynched the defenders. Death was accepted by the head of the defense, and his family, and almost all ordinary Ryazan residents.
Having feasted on the bones, the Mongols moved on along the ice of the Oka.
In January, Kolomna fell - the most important outpost on the border of the Ryazan region and the Vladimir-Suzdal land, the key to North-Eastern Russia.
Then came Moscow's turn: for five days the governor Philip Nyanka defended the oak Kremlin until he shared the fate of his neighbors. According to the Laurentian Chronicle, all the churches were burned, and the inhabitants were killed.
Batu's victorious march continued. Until the first serious successes of the Russians in the confrontation with the Mongols, there were many decades.
Dmitry Okunev