s and of the vast herds of cattle which accompanied their
march, the neighing of horses and the ferocious cries of the
barbarians, created such a clamor that no ordinary voice could be
heard in the heart of the city.

The attack was speedily commenced, and the walls were assailed with
all the then-known instruments of war. Day and night, without a
moment's intermission, the besiegers, like incarnate fiends, plied
their works. The Tartars, as ever, were victorious, and Kief, with all
its thronging population and all its treasures of wealth, architecture
and art, sank in an abyss of flame and blood. It sank to rise no more.
Though it has since been partially rebuilt, this ancient capital of
the grand princes of Russia, even now presents but the shadow of its
pristine splendor.

Onward, still onward, was the cry of the barbarians.

Leaving smoking brands and half-burnt corpses where the imperial city
once stood, the insatiable Bati pressed on hundreds of miles further
west, assailing, storming, destroying the provinces of Gallicia as far
as southern Vladimir within a few leagues of the frontiers of Poland.
Russia being thus entirely devastated and at the feet of the
conquerors, Bati wheeled his army around toward the south and
descended into Hungary. Novgorod was almost the only important city
in Russia which escaped the ravages of this terrible foe.

Bati continued his career of conquest, and, in 1245, was almost
undisputed master of Russia, of many of the Polish provinces, of
Hungary, Croatia, Servia, Bulgaria on the Danube, Moldavia and
Wallachia. He then returned to the Volga and established himself there
as permanent monarch over all these subjugated realms. No one dared to
resist him. Bati sent a haughty message to the Grand Prince Yaroslaf
at northern Vladimir, ordering him to come to his camp on the distant
Volga. Yaroslaf, in the position in which he found himself--Russia
being exhausted, depopulated, covered with ruins and with graves--did
not dare disobey. Accompanied by several of his nobles, he took the
weary journey, and humbly presented himself in the tent of the
conqueror. Bati compelled the humiliated prince to send his young son,
Constantin, to Tartary, to the palace of the grand khan Octai, who was
about to celebrate, with his chiefs, the brilliant conquests his army
had made in China and Europe. If the statements of the annalists of
those days may be credited, so sumptuous a fete the world had never