After this thunderbolt, which struck terror into the whole of Russia, the Tartars paused and returned to the East.  Nothing more was heard of them.  Thirteen years passed, during which the princes reverted to their perpetual discords.  Those in the northeast had given no help to the Russians of the Dnieper; perhaps the grand prince George II of Suzdal[58] may have rejoiced over the humiliation of the Kievians and Galicians.  The Mongols were forgotten; the chronicles, however, are filled with fatal presages:  in the midst of scarcity, famine and pestilence, of incendiaries in the towns and calamities of all sorts, they remark on the comet of 1224, the earthquake, and eclipse of the sun of 1230.

The Tartars were busy finishing the conquest of China, but presently one of the sons of Genghis, Ugudei, sent his nephew Batu to the West.  As the reflux of the Polovtsi had announced the invasion of 1224, that of the Saxin nomads, related to the Khirghiz who took refuge on the lands of the Bulgarians of the Volga, warned men of a new irruption of the Tartars, and indicated its direction.  It was no longer South Russia, but Sozdalian Russia, that was threatened.  In 1237 Batu conquered the Great City, capital of the half-civilized Bulgars, who were, like the Polovtsi, ancient enemies of Russia, and who were to be included in her ruin.  Bolgary was given up to the flames, and her inhabitants were put to the sword.  The Tartars next plunged into the deep forests of the Volga, and sent a sorcerer and two officers as envoys to the princes of Riazan.  The three princes of Riazan, those of Pronsk, Kolomna, Moscow, and Murom, advanced to meet them.

“If you want peace,” said the Tartars, “give us the tenth of your goods.”

“When we are dead,” replied the Russian princes, “you can have the whole.”

Though abandoned by the princes of Tchernigoff and the grand prince George II, of whom they had implored help, the dynasty of Riazan accepted the unequal struggle.  They were completely crushed; nearly all their princes remained on the field of battle.  Legend has embellished their fall.  It is told how Feodor preferred to die rather than see his young wife, Euphrasia, the spoil of Batu; and how, on learning his fate, she threw herself and her son from the window of the terem.  Oleg the Handsome, found still alive on the battle-field, repelled the caresses, the attention, and religion of the Khan, and was cut in pieces.  Riazan was immediately taken by assault, sacked, and burned.  All the towns of the principality suffered the same fate.

It was now the turn of the Grand Prince, for the Russia of the northeast had not even the honor of falling in a great battle like the Russia of the southwest, united for once against the common enemy.  The Suzdalian army, commanded by a son of George II, was beaten on the day of Kolomna, on the Oka.  The Tartars burned Moscow, then besieged Vladimir, the royal city, which George II had abandoned to seek for