light from the swiftness
of their movements. For them a peaceful life is a misfortune, and a
convenient opportunity for war is the height of felicity. Worst of
all, they are more numerous than bees in spring, their numbers are
uncountable." "Having no fixed place of abode," says another Byzantine
authority, "they seek to conquer all lands and colonise none. They are
flying people, and therefore cannot be caught. As they have neither
towns nor villages, they must be hunted like wild beasts, and can be
fitly compared only to griffins, which beneficent Nature has banished to
uninhabited regions." As a Persian distich, quoted by Vambery, has it--

"They came, conquered, burned,
pillaged, murdered, and went."

Their raids are thus described by an old Russian chronicler: "They burn
the villages, the farmyards, and the churches. The land is turned by
them into a desert, and the overgrown fields become the lair of wild
beasts. Many people are led away into slavery; others are tortured and
killed, or die from hunger and thirst. Sad, weary, stiff from cold, with
faces wan from woe, barefoot or naked, and torn by the thistles, the
Russian prisoners trudge along through an unknown country, and, weeping,
say to one another, 'I am from such a town, and I from such a village.'"
And in harmony with the monastic chroniclers we hear the nameless
Slavonic Ossian wailing for the fallen sons of Rus: "In the Russian land
is rarely heard the voice of the husbandman, but often the cry of the
vultures, fighting with each other over the bodies of the slain; and the
ravens scream as they fly to the spoil."

In spite of the stubborn resistance of the nomads the wave of
colonisation moved steadily onwards until the first years of the
thirteenth century, when it was suddenly checked and thrown back. A
great Mongolian horde from Eastern Asia, far more numerous and better
organized than the local nomadic tribes, overran the whole country,
and for more than two centuries Russia was in a certain sense ruled
by Mongol Khans. As I wish to speak at some length of this Mongol
domination, I shall devote to it a separate chapter.

CHAPTER XIV

THE MONGOL DOMINATION

The Conquest--Genghis Khan and his People--Creation and Rapid
Disintegration of the Mongol Empire--The Golden Horde--The Real
Character of the Mongol Domination--Religious Toleration--Mongol System
of Government--Grand Princes--The Princes of Moscow--Influence of the
Mongo