Russian forces deployed normally in five sections: vanguard, center, and rear units flanked by cavalry. The smerd were often placed in the center, supported by foot archers shooting from behind shields. Their bows were made of wood and cedar and were about six feet tall. Heavy and light spears were both produced, the lighter ones probably used as javelins. Those with swords carried a straight, double-edged blade modeled on the western European pattern. The aristocrats also used maces, battle-axes, or war hammers. Body armor was kolchuga (chain mail), scale mail, or lamellar. The helmet included a half mask or full mask with eye slits and breathing holes.
In eastern Europe the Hungarian royal household, much like the Russians, was now conspicuously modeled on those of the country’s western neighbors. The Hungarians, however, depended a bit more heavily on light cavalry made up from nomadic steppe warriors.39 Steppe nomads had been moving into the region of Hungary ever since the fifth century, when it was settled by the remains of Attila’s Huns. The Hungarians tried to emulate western European warfare, but could not always adapt it to the talents of their migrant populations; the elite of society trained in western modes of warfare may have formed a majority of heavy cavalry by the end of the twelfth century.40 The light cavalry retained its steppe weaponry and wore little or no armor. The heavy cavalry would charge with lances made of ash about ten feet in length. There was not, however, much in the way of finesse in the European heavy cavalry; they relied on straightforward power and little else in the way of tactics.41
Infantry was playing an increasingly important role in western Europe, especially with the development of crossbows, but in eastern Europe they played only minor roles, with little contemporary descriptions of their tactics available. With the dependence on heavy cavalry, there was little impetus to train or even pay much attention to the peasant infantry. Thus, when combat occurred there was no coordination between the two arms.42 Finally, because their armies were based on the feudal system, the Europeans had a major drawback in the fact that vassals were required for only a set number of days per year. This proved disastrous when fighting the Mongols, who campaigned year-round.43
The Great Raid and the Battle of the Kalka River
SUBEDEI AND JEBE MUST HAVE STARTED OUT the Great Raid with at least some siege equipment, because they captured a number of cities in late 1220 while awaiting Muhammad’s death. Many cities failed to learn from the experiences of the cities farther east that surrender meant survival, resistance meant slaughter. As the Great Raid was a reconnaissance in force, there was no real attempt to conquer, but merely to gain what supplies were necessary by intimidation or pillage. Subedei and Jebe led two tumens northwestward into what is today Azerbaijan and Georgia, and after gaining some supplies from the governor of Tabriz, they spent the beginning of 1221 on the Moghan steppe where the Kura and Araxes Rivers empty into the Caspian. They passed the time in a mild January expanding their forces with local Kurdish volunteers.
In the spring they made their way up the Kura valley toward Tiflis (Tblisi). The Georgians had an army of some repute, supplemented with a large contingent of Kipchak cavalry. King George III (the Brilliant, or the Resplendent) led a force out to confront the Mongols as they entered Georgian land. Numbers vary wildly concerning the Georgian army, anywhere from 10,000 to 70,000 including 30,000 Kipchaks; regardless, they were no match for Chinggis’s Top Dogs. Jebe’s feigned retreat worked to perfection, and Subedei’s ambush and Jebe’s counterattack broke the Georgian army. A similar battle and defeat occurred a few months later, and then the Mongols were gone, pushing north for more information. They extorted supplies and mountain guides from the shah of Shirvan in Derbend, then crossed the Caucasus Mountains in the winter. Guides led the forces through a circuitous route while, on the far side of the mountains, a Kipchak force with multiple tribal allies awaited their emergence. Unable to withdraw or break through the 50,000-man force facing them, Subedei split his enemy by bribing the Kipchaks to leave. He then slaughtered the remaining forces, after which he followed up the Kipchaks and defeated them, fetching back his bribe.
Now in the spring of 1222, the Mongols scouted southern Russia and turned west. Jebe took his tumen to explore up the Don River while Subedei took his along the north shore of the Black Sea to the Crimea. There he encountered some Venetians, people as expert in trade as the Mongols were in warfare. They made a deal: the Venetians would make detailed reports of economic strength and military movements in the countries that they visited and spread Mongol propaganda, while in return the Mongols would trade solely with the Venetians and destroy any rival trading posts.44 Subedei made good on his agreement, pillaging and wiping out two Genoese trading posts in the Crimea as he departed to rejoin Jebe. The two rode west in late 1222, across the Dnieper to the Dniester on the far northwest corner of the Black Sea. Mongol scouts brought in prisoners for interrogation, with interpretation via Chinese scholars who specialized in learning languages. The Mongols also gathered information on the economic geography of the region, as well as its people’s military abilities. When they were satisfied with their information and their loot, Subedei and Jebe headed north.45
The Kipchaks had scattered after their last encounter with the Mongols. Some fled north, others west. One chieftain, Khotian, was father-in-law to a Russian nobleman, Mstislav the Daring of Galicia. Khotian convinced him of the Mongol threat and managed to gain some cooperation from other nobles, all of whom brought their troops to the west bank of the Dnieper in the spring of 1223. As the Russians were gathering across the river on the western bank, the Mongol scouts reported that the Kipchaks (known to the Russians as the Polovets) were also gathering further north in order to join with the Russian forces. Subedei sent envoys to the Russians saying he had no cause to fight them, only the Kipchaks. Knowing absolutely nothing of the Mongols, the Russians killed the ambassadors.
Seeing an overwhelming number in opposition, and knowing that Jochi and a few more tumens were supposed to be advancing from the Caspian region, Subedei and Jebe decided it would be best to retreat toward their reinforcements. (They soon learned Jochi was not coming.) They left a minghan behind to keep an eye on the Russians congregating on the island of Khortitsa in the middle of the Dnieper. While the Russian forces approached as many as 80,000 men (again, historians vary in their guesses from 30, 000 to 90,000), with an unknown number of Kipchaks on the way, the army’s major failing was a lack of leadership or, more correctly, too much leadership. As is the nature of nobles, it was difficult to decide who was in charge, Msistislav (“the Daring”) of Galicia or Msistislav of Kiev. Thus, there was no coordination of strategy.46
Mstislav the Daring lived up to his name by leading an amphibious landing of 10,000 men on the eastern bank and engaging the Mongol rear guard, which they soon wiped out. With this initial success, the other Russian princes hurried to battle to avoid being left out of the glory and loot. The remainder of the Mongol force was in sight, so the chase was on. It lasted for nine days. With no command coordination, the various Russian units spread across the countryside, jockeying for position to engage the retreating Mongols. Even the Kipchaks who had caught up to the Russians, and who should have known better, believed that Subedei and Jebe were in retreat. Mongol tactics were not a secret in the thirteenth century, especially to other nomads, but they frequently worked anyway.47
No one knows the route of withdrawal or the exact site of the battle that ensued. The land to the east of the Dnieper rises gradually for about a hundred miles, with small east-west valleys along the way. One of the main questions surrounds references to the rivers called the Kalmius and the Kalka, which may actually have been the same.48 This river flows into the Sea of Azov at modern Mariupol. Approaching from the west, within twenty to thirty miles of the Kalmius the ground becomes much more hilly and broken. While none of the terrain is impassable (it’s primarily farm and pastureland today), only a couple of valleys lead fairly directly to the Kalmius; they emerge into the river valley near modern
Komomolskoye, about forty-five air miles upriver from its mouth at Mariupol. In his book on the Mongols, Leo de Hartog writes that the Kipchaks and Galicians crossed “the little Kalka River, which flows into the Sea of Azov.”49 The Kalmius flows into the Sea of Azov, but the modern Kalka River does not. Some historians suggest that the battle site is at the modern Kalka River, running north-south on the western side of the broken terrain mentioned above, which feeds into the Little Kalchik and then into the Kalchik. Others suggest not the Kalmius but the Kalchik as the Kalka River, but the terrain makes this questionable. The Kalchik runs mainly northwest-southeast, making it more of an avenue down which the Mongols would have withdrawn rather than a river near which to make a stand. Further, the right bank is much steeper than the left, so staging an ambush after a river crossing would be difficult. The Kalchik empties into the Kalmius within the city of Mariupol.
I favor the Kalmius site as the Kalka River of old. The river on the western side of the broken ground would provide something of an ambush spot for the Mongols, certainly; however, given the terrain approaching that site from the west the attackers could approach the spot along a relatively wide front. By placing the ambush on the Kalmius, the pursuers would be obliged to enter through one of two valleys, thus narrowing their front and being a more likely location for successive waves of Russians to ride up on each others’ backs and create the confusion described in the accounts of the battle. After the Mongols had retreated for nine days, another few miles would not have made any difference in the fatigue or readiness of the troops, and given the Mongol expertise in ambushes a narrower front makes sense.
The date of the action is disputed, but 31 May 1223 is generally accepted. Descriptions of the battle are very sketchy and in many places contradictory. The lead units seem to have been those of Mstislav of Galicia and his father-in-law’s Kipchaks (also known as Cumans as well as Polovets). When the Galicians crossed the Kalka, they found the Mongols had faced about. It would have been easy for Mongol units to have deployed upstream and downstream. Some descriptions begin with the Mongols stopping before the river, then turning on the Russian-Kipchak force with light cavalry archers firing through smoke the Mongols had created with firepots. This divided the Kipchaks from the Russians, and the Mongol heavy cavalry drove a wedge between the two, forcing a Kipchak rout. The initial units had been closely followed by those from Volynia and Kursk, with Mstislav of Kiev bringing up the rear. They could not deploy with the Kipchaks fleeing through them, so the Mongols were soon surrounding the troops from Volynia and Kursk. The survivors fled all the way back to the Dnieper, stragglers being picked off the whole time. At the Dnieper, Mstislav of Kiev defended a fortified hilltop for three days until finally surrendering on a false promise of clemency.
In another description, the Kipchaks arrived first. As they were primarily light cavalry, they would have outdistanced their heavy-cavalry allies. The Russians came in close behind, however, followed by the infantry and the baggage train.50 They were met by the Mongol heavy cavalry with their lances and swords, which drove the Kipchaks into a rapid retreat right into Mstislav’s Galicians. If the Mongol heavy cavalry were the first into action, that would be an exception to their standard practice of softening up the enemy with arrow fire. The Russians’ disorganization would have made it impossible for the pursuers to prepare for a concerted, hand-to-hand assault. The Kipchaks broke, followed by the now disordered Galicians, all of which continued to disrupt other units arriving on the scene. Only Mstislav of Kiev had the time and presence of mind to laager his wagons, which they turned in to a slow-moving fort to protect their retreat as the rest of the army made a mad dash westward.51
Another account also describes the action on the east side of the river. The Mongols had a rear guard maintaining contact with the pursuers, while Subedei divided the bulk of his army in three sections: himself in the center, Jebe to the right, and the left flank (including some 5,000 Brodniki tribesmen) commanded by Princes Tsugyr and Teshi. The Russian force advanced with the Kipchaks in front followed by Danill Romanovich and the army of Volynia. Mstislav of Galicia was next, forces from Chernigov and Kursk behind him, with the Kievans last in line.
The Kipchaks and Prince Danill’s troops crossed the river and the cavalrymen continued to ride, rather than form up for a concerted action. Mstislav’s Galicians were just across the river when the Mongol heavy cavalry struck and broke the Kipchaks. The ensuing jumble of troops thus included Kipchaks, Volynians, and Galicians, all being forced back into the Chernigov cavalry, in the middle of the river. The Mongol wings joined in, striking Russian troops on both sides of the river. When Mstislav of Kiev came in sight of the melee, he ordered his men to circle the wagons on a nearby hilltop. Subedei ordered the princes of the left wing to surround and pressure the Kievans while he and Jebe pursued the forces in retreat.
Given the possible rivers, terrain, and traditional Mongol tactics, the Kalmius of today as the Kalka seems the best location. By taking their stand on the eastern side of the hill country, the Mongols would channel the pursuing Russians into a valley, albeit a wide one. Emerging from the valley at speed, there would be even less time and space for Russian redeployment. The Mongol rear guard, leading them through the valley, could easily become the vanguard upon emerging and joining the main force already deployed on the eastern side of the river. This would also give much more cover to the flanking units than they would have gotten at the river on the western side of the hills. This also means that the retreat would have had to go back up the valley before the various units fled straight for the Dnieper or scattered to their various homelands. Had the battle taken place on relatively open ground to the west as some suggest, the Mongol wings almost certainly would have spread out farther and not allowed any retreat, as occurred later at the Sajo River in Hungary. Fighting in narrower confines east of the hills would make the huge encirclement impossible, but Subedei probably would have assumed a large enough enemy casualty count at the river to make the pursuit of survivors fairly easy.
But what of Mstislav of Kiev? Many sources describe a slow retreat within a moving wagon laager. However, de Hartog gives a different description: “Watching from the western bank of the Kalka [he] could, or would, do nothing to help his namesake. After the prince of Galich’s [Galicia’s] defeat the prince of Kiev realized that a retreat would be fatal before an enemy who reacted so quickly. He therefore entrenched himself on a dominating hilltop, but before he could complete his defences Jebe and Subedei attacked.”52 The Novgorod Chronicle says that Mstislav “never moved at all from his position; for he had taken stand on a hill above the river Kalka, and the place was stony, and he set up a stockade of posts about him and fought with them from out of this stockade for three days.”53 He would be much more likely to find a stony prominence on the Kalmius side of the hills than on the western side.
The battle at the Kalka River was a masterful piece of maneuver on Subedei’s part. Movement to contact (retrograde movement, in this case) for a meeting engagement is the best description of how this battle came to be. When the chosen ground was reached, Subedei engaged in a deliberate attack, defined as a fully synchronized operation that employs the effects of every available asset against the enemy. All the characteristics of the offense were employed, most especially concentration: massing effects without massing large formations, manipulating their own and the enemy’s forces by some combination of dispersion, concentration, deception, and attack, or in this case, all of the above. Subedei controlled the tempo for nine days, keeping just enough Mongols in view of the Russian advance guard to maintain contact without bringing on a general engagement until the time and position was right. Finally, Subedei displayed audacity, necessary to negate the disadvantages of numerical inferiority.
Once the Kipchaks and Russians stopped their attack and made for the rear, the Mongol exploitation was immediate, never giving anyone except the rearmost (now the foremost in the retreat) units any time to make a stand or
organize for combat. The Mongols undertook pursuit for the hundred miles back to the Dnieper, when Russian forces were either able to escape downriver or were killed in the chase. Meanwhile, the Mongols maintained the necessary force to keep pressure on the Kievan defensive position until it was obliged to surrender. If, indeed, the battle was fought west of the hill country, then the Mongols missed a golden opportunity to forgo the pursuit since the terrain was perfect for a nerge-style encirclement. The Novgorod Chronicle reports that after the battle, only one man in ten returned home. Since this is a phrase used multiple times in the work, it probably was just a euphemism for massive casualties; a nerge would have made sure no one returned home.
Aftermath
SUBEDEI AND JEBE ENGAGED IN RANDOM ACTS of destruction to reinforce the lesson of the Russian defeat on the local population, then moved homeward in response to orders to link up with Chinggis’s son Jochi in the region above the Aral Sea. They met on the Volga and moved upriver to engage the Volga Bulgars, but instead were ambushed themselves by the Bulgars and obliged to retreat, the only defeat of the entire Great Raid. As the army approached the outer limits of the old homeland, Jebe contracted a fever and died. Jochi and Subedei joined Chinggis a few days later on the Irtysh River and, after telling the story of their experiences, they headed for home, leaving occupation forces in the captured territories. Upon returning, Subedei requested that Chinggis allow him to recruit an army of defeated steppe peoples to garrison outposts on the western frontier; Chinggis agreed. This may well be the first instance in Russia of the Mongol tamma, a structure that was both a nomadic garrison force and the nucleus of a regional tribal federation in conquered territories.54
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