Drama by Mikhail Chernigovsky. Act I, Batyev
Mikhail of Chernigov assumes the Grand Duchy of Kyiv – The Illustrated Chronicle of Ivan the Terrible
Two aspects of one problem
Prince Mikhail of Chernigov is a controversial figure in Russian history. storiesOn the one hand, he did not conduct himself well during the invasion of Batu's Mongol troops into Russian lands; on the other, he was martyred in the Horde a few years later. What was the cause?
To answer this question, we will examine two interconnected layers of scientific research: ritual and magic, on the one hand, and military and political, on the other.
The tragedy itself, by medieval standards and given the relative paucity of sources on Russian history during this period, is fairly well documented in literature. This includes the chronicle corpus of sources, the "Tale of the Assassination of Mikhail," and Plano Carpini's "History of the Mongols."
Let's talk. This article will be devoted to the background of the tragedy, without which it is impossible to fully understand its motives. The next article will discuss the actual massacre of the prince.
Game of Thrones in Mongolian
Thus, in 1241, the third son of the "Shaker of the Universe," Ögedei Khan, died, leading to the end of Batu's army's Western Campaign. The following year, the second son of the founder of the Mongol Empire, Chagatai, died. Genghis Khan's eldest son, Jochi, and his youngest, Tolui, had passed away even earlier.
Formally, the eldest member of the Borjigin clan—for its very founding, see B. R. Zoriktuev's scholarly article, linked in the bibliography—remained, pardon the tautology, the eldest son of Jochi, Ordu, until his death in 1251. However, it's possible that even before the Western Campaign, he ceded primacy in the Ulus of Jochi to his younger brother, Batu.
His reputation, steeped in military glory, was high among the Mongol elite at the time of Ögedei's death, but he also had plenty of enemies, especially far from the Volga region, and the late khan's son, Guyuk, was the most dangerous of them. I'll discuss the reasons for their feud below.
Here I will note on the subject of fame: in earlier materials I already wrote that the founder of the Golden Horde, apparently, did not distinguish himself by his military leadership talents and owed the success of his campaigns to Subedei.
He was, along with Tamerlane, probably the best commander of the Middle Ages; in any case, in this era, no one in Europe or Asia could compare with him in terms of scale, in terms of geography, the campaigns he conducted, as well as the number of troops involved, which he brilliantly managed, making the myth of the Mongol victory by sheer numbers absurd.
But let's return to Batu. He refrained from traveling to the imperial capital during the election of the new khan. He was far away, stricken with rheumatism, and there was plenty to do in Sarai. It was necessary to organize matters both in the newly annexed lands and in those in vassalage. The latter included the Russian principalities.
Yaroslav's Path
Accordingly, Batu wished to meet his subjects. And the first to set out from the devastated Rus' to meet the new master of the Kipchak steppes of yesterday was Yaroslav Vsevolodovich, Grand Prince of Vladimir.
He had no intention of resisting the Mongols. Yes, the prince possessed a military, knightly mentality, the quintessence of which was his illustrious ancestor's beloved phrase: "I'm coming to you."
Yaroslav fought against the Lithuanians, the Germans, the Ryazan people, the Novgorodians, and, in fact, Mikhail of Chernigov. He also took part in the famous Battle of Lipitsa in 1216.
In short, the prince was a man of war, a living representative of a corporation possessing a psychology whose bearers lived from the peaks of the Pyrenees to the Oka River, bordered by forests and steppes.
I won't dwell on their worldview. I'll just note that it originates in the archaic military democracy and was brilliantly reconstructed by the Italian medievalist F. Cardini in his monograph "The Origins of Medieval Chivalry." If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it. It's one of my favorite works on the Middle Ages.
Its pages, I repeat, hold the key to the worldview of the Russian princes of the pre-Mongol era and an understanding of why, even in the face of the Mongols' undeniable numerical superiority, they preferred to meet them in the open rather than behind city walls. The battles on the Voronezh River in December 1237 and near Kolomna in February 1238 are striking evidence of this. This is the rule. Mikhail of Chernigov proved to be an exception, as will be discussed in the next article.
And so, in the spring of 1238, the experienced commander Yaroslav arrived in Vladimir from Kyiv, where he had already been reigning for two years, and assessed the scale of the unprecedented pogrom perpetrated by the conquerors, which left no doubt about the military potential of the force coming from the Great Steppe, with which it was simply pointless to fight in the realities of the 13th century.
Moreover, the soldiers who survived the defense of the Golden Gate in Vladimir presumably had many interesting stories to tell. Historian A.A. Gorsky believes that they managed to flee the untaken citadel, built by Andrei Bogolyubsky, at night after the city's fall, because the invaders did not want to waste their forces on them, incurring excessive losses in the already plundered capital.
And what was Yaroslav supposed to fight with? The army of what had only recently been the strongest principality lay like white bones on the forested banks of the City, resting at the bottom of either Moscow or the Oka River near Kolomna, and hidden beneath the dove-shaped crosses of the devastated capital city of Vladimir. And the best perished.
Yaroslav Vsevolodovich, miniature from the Tsar's Titulary
Yaroslav hardly had even a thousand warriors. So he had no choice. He went. Batu, with the election of a new khan, also found himself in a difficult situation – the aforementioned conflict with Guyuk was brewing.
The reasons for this were reflected in detail in his brilliant monograph dedicated to the conqueror of Rus' by the historian R. Yu. Pochekaev.
Among other things, he cited a letter, possibly written directly by Batu, to Ogedei, in the pages of which the son of Jochi vividly revealed the content of his quarrel with Guyuk and Chagatai's grandson Buri:
By the power of the Eternal Sky and the majesty of our sovereign and uncle, we destroyed the city of Meget (apparently, the Alanian Magas – I.Kh.) and subjugated eleven countries and peoples to your righteous rule. As we prepared to return home with our golden reins, we decided to hold a farewell feast. Having erected a large tent, we gathered to feast, and I, as the eldest of the princes present, was the first to rise and drink the proclaimed cup. Buri and Guyuk were enraged at me for this and, not wishing to remain at the feast any longer, began to prepare to leave. Buri put it this way: "How dare he drink the cup before Batu, who is trying to catch up with us? We should have trampled with our heels and stamped with our feet these bearded women who are trying to catch up!" And Guyuk said, "Let's chop some wood on the chests of these women armed with bows! I'd like to give them a good beating!" As for us, we began to present them with all sorts of arguments about our common cause among alien and hostile peoples, but we all parted ways, unreconciled, under the influence of such speeches from Buri and Guyuk. I report the above to the sovereign and my uncle for their consideration.
In its most general terms, the essence of their conflict after the death of Ögedei resembled the prehistory of feudal warfare in Rus': in 1425, Dmitry Donskoy's son, Vasily I, died. A conflict arose within the Kalitich clan between its eldest representative and the deceased's younger brother, Yuri—a parallel with Batu—and the son of the Grand Duke, Vasily II—a parallel, accordingly, with Güyük.
The Mystery of Jochi
For Batu, the situation was exacerbated by doubts, particularly vocally expressed by Chagatai, about the legitimacy of his father's birth. The story of his birth was indeed a source of speculation: when the future "Shaker of the Universe" was still simply Temujin, his beloved wife Borte was captured by the neighboring Merkit tribe, but was soon released.
Nine months later, Jochi was born. The future khan acknowledged him as his son, but rumors began to circulate. The circumstances of Jochi's death in 1227 were also strange—according to one version, he was found hunting with a broken back.
Either he truly fell awkwardly from his horse, as the Kazakh legend of the "Lame Kulan" attests, or he was eliminated. By whom? By those who, in the face of the approaching death of the now elderly Genghis Khan—who passed away in the same year of 1227—did not want to see Jochi and his descendants at the head of the Mongol Empire. The Ogedeids and Chagatais did not want it.
Accordingly, after the completion of the Western campaign, Batu found himself in a difficult political and, most importantly, uncertain situation and was not interested in conflicts with the Russian princes.
Batu sets up the pieces
This does not mean that he was weak militarily, although after the completion of the Western campaign, the main part of the imperial army left the Ulus of Jochi, and Subedei was already old and, if I am not mistaken, also returned to the Mongolian steppes, but the remaining troops allowed Batu to keep the Russian princes in obedience.
Moreover, at the time of the events in question, their military potential was critically weakened. However, it was sufficient to cope with the internecine squabbles that continued not only before and after, but also during the Mongol invasion:
"The constant internecine war in southern Rus'," writes A.A. Gorsky, "ruled out the possibility of uniting forces to repel the Mongol attack. Significantly, it continued not only after Batu Khan's devastation of northeastern Rus', but even after the Mongols captured Pereyaslavl and Chernigov! The opposing princes seemed more concerned with their own struggles than with the impending attack from an external enemy.
For its part, Sarai expressed no interest in depleting its own, in modern parlance, tax base. Therefore, Batu and Yaroslav found common ground quite easily. The prince was recognized as the oldest prince in Rus' and received control not only of Vladimir but also of Kyiv.
Let's note: it's possible that Mikhail of Chernigov, who also laid claim to Kyiv, was becoming superfluous in the political worldviews of both Batu and Yaroslav. Let's take note for now and discuss this in more detail next time.
A depiction of Batu in a 14th-century Chinese painting
Batu's logic in choosing Yaroslav was simple: it was better to entrust the collection of tribute to a single loyal prince. This was ensured by marriage.
Yaroslav Vsevolodich's third wife, according to A.A. Gorsky, belonged to the khan's line and was possibly Batu's sister. During Yaroslav's first visit to the khan (1243), the latter could not seal his dependence on him by marriage, as the prince was married. But in early 1246, he was a widower, and Batu was able to make Yaroslav "an offer he couldn't refuse." This created a connection between the Yaroslavichi and Batu, and with the Genghisids in general.
This determined Yaroslav's rather high status in Karakorum upon Güyük's accession to the throne. A. A. Gorsky cites Plano Carpini's testimony on this matter:
During the kurultai that elected Guyuk as Great Khan (in August 1246), Yaroslav was given the “highest place” among foreigners – despite the fact that, in addition to him, there were Chinese and Korean princes, two pretenders to the throne of Georgia, and several Middle Eastern sultans present.
I won't fail to touch on a traditional theme in my articles, covered in one of the Iran series' articles—in the "Look for a Woman" section. This time, I'll mention Ögedei's widow, Turakina, thanks in no small part to whom her eldest son, Güyük, became khan, despite the obvious reluctance of Batu's supporters to see him on the throne.
And if filmmakers decide to make a real-life "Game of Thrones" instead of a fantasy film, tying it to Mongolian history in the mid-13th century, they won't be able to do without Turakina:
To ensure freedom of action, the khatun, wrote historian G.V. Vernadsky, removed three of Ogedei’s assistants: the Chinese adviser Yelu Chucai, the Uyghur chancellor Chinkai, and the Khorezm Muslim Mahmud Yalavach.
It is possible that Turakina also dealt a blow to Batu by poisoning his Russian protégé in Karakorum: Yaroslav, as is known, never returned from the Mongol capital.
The Way of Daniel
Following Yaroslav, in 1245, another of the most powerful Russian princes, Daniil of Galicia, came to pay homage to Batu. Why in that year and not earlier? After all, Southern and Southwestern Rus' had been conquered for four years.
G.V. Vernadsky proposed the following answer:
During the early years of his reign, Batu's attention was focused on the negotiations between the Mongol leaders regarding the future election of a new Great Khan; he was also concerned with Transcaucasian and Anatolian relations. Therefore, he did not interfere with the activities of the Western Russian princes until 1245.
After Guyuk's election became virtually inevitable, Batu may have decided to ensure his rear was secure in case of conflict with the hostile khan. Moreover, while Yaroslav arrived immediately and raised no doubts about his loyalty, the situation with Daniil was more complex. In 1245, he defeated the forces of Mikhail of Chernigov's son, Rostislav, and became one of the most powerful and influential rulers in Central Europe.
However, some researchers believe his meeting with Batu may have taken place earlier. In particular, historian A.V. Mayorov, analyzing his colleagues' views on this matter, writes:
Ya. R. Dashkevich (a Soviet and Russian historian – I.Kh.) noted the Galicia-Volhynia Chronicle's report that Batu himself sought a meeting with Daniil while returning from his campaign in Hungary, sending two warriors, Manman and Balai, to the prince. The meeting between them, and therefore Daniil's first contact with Batu, must have taken place as early as 1243.
As is known, Daniil, apparently also not seeking to exacerbate relations with Sarai, especially after the fall of Kyiv and the defeat of the troops of his future relative Bela IV on the Sajo River in 1241, showed loyalty and met with a completely benevolent attitude from Batu.
A sculpture of Daniil Galitsky on the Millennium of Rus' monument in Novgorod
I note that Batu's goodwill was ensured by pragmatism: the Galician land was also seen as a source of income and, in addition, unlike the Grand Duchy of Vladimir, as well as Chernigov, it was located in close proximity to Central Europe, which left Daniel with a certain amount of room for political maneuvering in relations with the East - that same Sarai, and the West - Buda and Rome, not now - if we reconstruct Batu's logic - then in the future.
Both Daniel's arrival in Sarai and his recognition of his dependence on the Mongols were an undeniable diplomatic victory for Batu, achieved without bloodshed. Yes, a punitive expedition into the Galician lands on his part, should the prince disobey, would have been entirely possible and would have had a predictable outcome, although, I admit, it would have resulted in excessive losses for the Mongols.
There's another question here that, in my opinion, requires further research: it must be assumed that Batu's army incorporated Kipchaks, Alans, and possibly Bulgars. And to what extent could Batu count on their loyalty, given the difficult realities of the interregnum in the Mongol Empire?
In short, taking into account the nature of the events taking place in Karakorum, which undoubtedly worried Batu, peace in Galich and normal relations with Daniil were beneficial to him, which is what he actually achieved.
And finally, in 1246, Mikhail of Chernigov arrived in Sarai. The third most powerful prince in Rus', he had occupied the Kiev throne from 1238 to 1239 and from 1241 to 1243, but was handed over to Yaroslav by Batu Khan's will.
Accordingly, the question is: why does Batu need Mikhail, in the conditions when everything in Rus' is already well-established?
Yes, the question is cynical, but grand political games are unthinkable without cynicism. Sentimentality has no place in them. Its manifestation is a step toward the abyss for the ruler who indulges in it.
I will repeat what has been said above: in the pieces arranged by Batu on the Russian chessboard, the one playing for the Chernigov prince was completely superfluous, which, in my opinion, largely predetermined Mikhail’s tragic fate, considering that Yaroslav was still alive at the time of his stay in Sarai.
Let's stop here and in the next article we will discuss the circumstances of the death of the Chernigov prince and the complex of reasons outlined above.
Продолжение следует ...
References
Vernadsky G.V. Mongols and Rus'. – Tver: LEAN, M.: Agraf, 2000
Gorsky A.A. Succession to the Grand Duchy in the Mid-13th Century, Batu and Alexander Nevsky's Stepmother // Russian History. Issue 4. Moscow: 31–37
Zoriktuev B. R. Formation of the Mongolian clan Borjigin
Mayorov A.V. Daniil Galitsky and "Prince Tartarus" on the eve of Batu Khan's invasion of southern Rus'
Pochekaev R.Yu. Batu. Khan, who was not a khan / Scientific. ed. A.G. Yurchenko. M.: AST: AST MOSCOW; St. Petersburg: Eurasia, 2007
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