by Tim Cope
In Europe at the time, the truth is that although there was clear evidence of the formidable Mongol threat, few took it seriously. The countries firmly in the Mongols’ sights—namely, Hungary and Poland—were more concerned with domestic squabbles, and farther afield Pope Gregory IX was at war with the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II. As a measure of the ignorance among European powers, Pope Gregory had suggested that the supposed Tatar advance was nothing more than a strategy on behalf of his enemies to “unite Christendom against the Lord Pope.” When at the eleventh hour King Bela IV of Hungary finally realized the seriousness of the threat facing him, it was too late. Ironically, it seemed that the very Carpathians that ordinarily comforted Europeans with a sense of protection from the East had fatally insulated them from any real understanding of the foe that was approaching at a gallop.
The rain went on for two or three hours. I gave up waiting for it to stop and erected my tent. The horses stood stiffly. Mike retreated to his single-man, coffin-shaped tent, followed by Tigon. We went to bed too exhausted to cook a proper meal.
Come morning, the tension between Yuri and Grigori had dissipated, and it became clear that the struggle of the journey across the Chorna Gora was also over. We found an easy path around the ridge and later passed below the mist-shrouded summit of Hoverla. Climbing the last short stretch to the top was out of the question with the horses.
At the first opportunity Grigori headed down a shortcut to the nearest village. Yuri, who had grown thin and tired, walked silently down the western flanks with us to a valley. The following day he hitched a ride into the town of Rakhiv with Mike and had gone by the time I arrived.
One last challenge lay ahead of me before the mountains promised to drop away to the more gentle mountains on the edge of the Hungarian plain: the crossing of a ridge known as Svidovets. I was confident of managing the Svidovets alone, and after the intensity of the experience with Yuri and Grigori I was relieved it would just be Mike and me for the next couple of weeks.
After restocking with supplies, Mike and I began the process of rising once more into the high mountains—I on horseback, he on foot. The summer heat was cranking up in Rakhiv, and it was a relief to return to the polonina, where the air was thinner and cooler and the sun’s ferocity was vulnerable to as little as a single cloud.
On the second day we reached the exposed Svidovets ridge. The weather had stabilized, and we followed sheep tracks across soft green meadows. The terrain was less rocky than the Chorna Gora and better suited to grazing. The jingling of bells from sheep and cows was ever present, punctuated by the gruff commands of shepherds. Wiry men with the same jerky, bandy gait of their sheep sometimes stood in our way, resting on twisted old walking staffs. Their giant leathery hands looked too hardened to have any feeling.
On the evening of the second day we struck camp at a Hutsul summer station known as Staryi Polonina. We had planned to continue at first light, but by dinner Tigon was looking seriously ill. Curled up immobile on a horse blanket, he refused to stand or eat. His condition had been deteriorating for a couple of days. Mike joked that he was missing his girlfriend—a bitch from Krivorivnya with whom he had made friends—but it was more likely due to the raw pig lungs I had fed him in Rakhiv. For the next couple of days I rested Tigon and set the horses free to graze. The break proved an opportunity to learn about the life of the polonina we had heard so much about.
Staryi Polonina was separated into two quarters—one for a cow herding station, and another for sheep. We came to know the latter best. It was primarily run by two lanky seventeen-year-old boys, Bugdan and Vasil. Apart from guarding and grazing sheep, their job was to milk all four hundred animals three times a day—twice in daylight hours, and once at 4:00 A.M. After each session, they carried buckets of fresh milk to a cooking hut where milk was forever being boiled and churned, the curds and whey separated, and cheese hung up to drain. Once a week a horse and cart came to collect the cheese and take it down to the valley, where it was usually mixed with cow’s milk and made into a feta-type cheese known as brinza.4
The boys had been coming to the polonina as long as they could remember, and the hardworking life in the mountain air had already sculpted them into distinct adult characters. Vasil, the most striking, had long narrow limbs and wore black jeans that fell straight as timber planks down his bony legs. His childlike body—so slight that when he crossed his arms it was as if his shoulders were touching each other—seemed incongruent with the aged look of his face. His front teeth were turning brown and his cheeks were so gaunt that when he smiled, his face collapsed into a series of deep, habitual wrinkles. He smoked regularly, and once I noticed him fiddling with a cigarette in the corner of his mouth while he was milking a sheep. He twitched it up and down until it fell out into the pail of milk. He then simply dipped his hand in, put the cigarette back in his mouth, winked at me, and continued.
After the evening milking session, Mike and I joined the boys for a meal of maize porridge and sour cream, known as banosh, washed down with homemade wine. Darkness was descending on the forests below, but the afterglow of sunset still lit up the polonina. A feature of the station was an old dead tree, the branches of which had been turned into a rack for hanging utensils. Pots, pans, sifters, stirrers, ladles, and many other items shone a ghostly silver against the sky. When the stars came out, Vasil pointed across the valley to a distant polonina where a fire lit up the night. “Over there they have bears. That’s why they need to keep the fire burning,” he said in a deep husky voice.
“And what about here?” I asked.
“Here? Wolves are a regular audience!” he chuckled. “But we aren’t afraid of wolves and bears. And this work is a holiday compared to winter, when we work with horses hauling logs through the forest.”
During daytime the polonina was a friendly place that would have beckoned with adventure and fun for any young boy. But as the blanket of cool air dropped and the slopes turned black, the sky loomed vast and the mountains became a place for grown men. Vasil and Bugdan fired up stoves in cubicle-like huts where they barely had enough room to lie down in. The sheep settled, and as all fell quiet the huts seemed to shrink until they were nothing more than specks, as lonely as the stars.
At 1:00 A.M. that night I listened from the comfort of my sleeping bag as dogs barked, my horses whinnied, and the sheep rose to flee. Come morning we learned that wolves had emerged from the forest edge. The boys had been up all night.
The responsibility carried by Bugdan and Vasil left a deep impression on Mike and me, and for days afterward neither of us could help reflecting that on their narrow shoulders also weighed the traditions of an entire people. In Ukraine, the people of the Carpathians were renowned as poor, and for every Hutsul boy like Bugdan and Vasil, there were probably ten who had left to try their luck in the cities.
With Tigon back to health we set off again, and a day and a half beyond Staryi Polonina we climbed beyond a snowfield to reach the highest point of the Svidovets. On the way a hailstorm converged and the mist closed in, stealing away the view in a single swoop. When the worst had passed I dismounted and led the horses along a narrow ridge, watching as the rain came in waves and mist ebbed and flowed.
Late in the afternoon the wind dropped and the mist began to sink. A freshened blue sky was unveiled and the grassy but sheer ridge glistened emerald, appearing to float above the clouds. Just as the sun angled down into our eyes there came an apparition—the shape of fifty horses rising through the mist, their silhouettes coming to a standstill right before us. After some time a horse stepped nervously forward with its head up and nostrils flaring. It seemed to be readying to strike, but then nibbled gently on Ogonyok’s mane instead. Pressing on, the herd followed in a symphony of whinnies, snorts, and the rhythmic beat of hooves. Their coarse, split manes, large heads, and thick short necks were all outward signs of their Mongolian origins. Tigon strode out as if he were the proud leader, and when the herd lost interest and stole away
at a gallop, he pretended he had gallantly chased them away, shooting an aggressive bark in their direction.
We walked on until the sky turned the same rosy pink as Mike’s cheeks—we had both taken a shot of sugar beet vodka to warm up earlier in the day. Then in a small meadow atop of the ridge we called it a day. I sat admiring the horses as they rolled about the luscious green. Tigon came sprinting when he heard the ritual bang of my cooking pot, and we shared, as always, a slice of pig fat before putting on dinner to cook. All day I had been overwhelmed by the sense of freedom. Up here, away from roads and fences, it occurred to me that because my horses were free, they had nowhere to run. We had everything necessary—fresh air, water, open space, and an abundance of grass. In these circumstances it didn’t make sense to tie a dog up or fence a horse in.
Mike set up the tripod to film the sun as it slid below the horizon. The mist had pooled deep below, and for the first time it was clear we had nearly reached the end of the ridge. Ahead of us it twisted and fell as a spur to the same kind of low, forested foothills through which I had entered the Carpathians from the east. Far beneath us was a river valley collecting tributes from the many converging slopes on its snaking path to the plains of Hungary.
“Tim, this might be your last real mountain campsite,” Mike said, pulling himself away from the viewfinder.
I took out my diary and felt the cold fall. I thought about Dad; I thought about where I had come from in the last three years, and indeed what I had experienced in the last few weeks. Then I thought about going down from here. Mike was right—this tail end of the Svidovets was the end of the polonina, the end of Hutsulshchyna, and the last real mountain between us and the Danube. I was about to enter another world, and it was hard to think that I might not ever share this kind of wild landscape with my little family of horses again.
Hungary
24
THE END OF THE WORLD
“The keeping of herds on free range is not more ‘primitive’ than the other method, nor is it more sophisticated. It is simply a quite different approach to the problem …”
—Miklos Jankovich, They Rode into Europe:
The Fruitful Exchange in the Arts of
Horsemanship Between East and West
In the summer of 1240, the Mongol army was resting in the shadows of the Carpathians, poised to invade central Europe. Ever since the grand kurultai of 1235 in Mongolia, they had been steadily conquering territory to the west under the leadership of the veteran general Subodei and Genghis Khan’s grandson Batu.1 In 1238 they had defeated the powerful nomadic Kipchaks—known in Europe as the Cumans, and henceforth in this book by this name—and after fattening their horses on the rich steppe grasslands between the Sea of Azov and the Caspian Sea, they went on to subjugate Russia, culminating with the siege of Kiev.2
Despite overwhelming evidence of the Mongols’ superior military and the threat they posed, the reality was that Europe was still a deeply fractured political landscape. The Mongolians—experts in gathering detailed intelligence—were fully aware of the infighting and ready to exploit it.
Hungary was first and foremost in the Mongols’ sights. A country in the heart of the so-called Carpathian Basin, it offered the strategic gates to Central Europe and the most suitable country in Europe for grazing their army of horses. There was also a convenient pretext for invading: during the Mongols’ conquest of the Cumans, forty thousand nomad families had fled to Hungary, where King Bela IV had offered them refuge in return for conversion to Catholicism. Aware of this, Batu had issued the king a grave warning: “I command you to send them [Cumans] away, for by taking them away from me you have become my enemy. It is easier for them to flee than it is for your people. They live in tents, while you live in houses and cities. So how do you escape my hands?”3
Although it is unlikely that Hungary’s neighbors—Poland, Bohemia, and Germany—were capable of uniting to block the Mongol invasion of Hungary, Batu and Subodei were taking no chances. In early February 1241, soldiers under the command of the Mongol leaders Baidar and Orda were sent on a campaign into Poland. On March 18 they defeated the thirty-thousand-strong army of King Boleslaw IV, which had among its ranks some of Europe’s most professional soldiers.4 On Palm Sunday a few days later, the Mongols burned Krakow, then carried on into Silesia to face Duke Henry II, who was supported by German knights. Drawing the knights into an ambush near the town of Liegentz, the Mongols attacked with a technique of horseback archery not practiced in Europe, where close range fighting was the norm. The Mongols shot from afar, sometimes using smoke to disorient their enemy. Although the knights’ heavy armor offered some protection, it proved cumbersome in the face of the speed, endurance, and agility of the Mongols, who were lightly protected and rode small but strong horses; the Mongolian conquest of Europe is thought to have heralded the end of heavy battle horses and knights and the beginning of light horse cavalry. By the end of the battle Duke Henry’s head had been cut off and paraded on a pike. As evidence of the defeat, nine large sacks of ears were collected and sent to Batu and Subodei.
While the Poles were occupied with Baidar and Orda’s forces, Batu and Subodei attacked Hungary. Batu’s central column of soldiers descended from the Carpathians onto the plains and swiftly defeated a Hungarian army on March 11. Two smaller columns moved along Batu’s flanks; the northern column was credited with traveling an astonishing 70 km a day through the snow.
As the Mongols advanced, Hungary fell into internal strife. The Cu-mans were already unpopular due to their nomadic ways, which clashed with the sedentary, agriculture-based way of life, and now King Bela’s detractors spread a rumor that the nomadic Cumans were allied with the Mongols. Cuman royalty, including the leader, Kotian, were murdered, and an uprising against the unwelcome nomadic guests spread across the country. The Cumans, who were steppe nomads familiar with Mongol warfare and who under other circumstances might have bolstered the Hungarian defenses, fled south to Bulgaria, murdering Hungarians en route.
By March 15, Batu’s forces had arrived near Buda on the Danube and were soon joined by the two other columns from the north and south. On the far bank of the Danube, Bela gathered his army, which some estimate was as large as eighty thousand. On April 9, the same day as the Battle of Liegentz in Silesia, Bela’s army began moving north from Pest for an attack on the Mongols. In a tactic typical of steppe warfare, Batu and Subodei feigned retreat, leading the Hungarian army to the plain of Mohi—a place previously chosen by the Mongols—near the confluence of the Tisza and Sajo rivers. While the Mongol army melted away into the forests, Bela set up camp on the plain, fortifying the camp with a ring of wagons linked by chains. Bela reasoned the only access the Mongols had was via a single bridge across the river, which he arranged to be guarded by a thousand men.
Bela’s actions played into the hands of the Mongols. The following day, when Batu began attacking via the bridge, Subodei took a troop of men upstream, where they crossed the river and set about surprising Bela from the rear. When Batu’s army breached the bridge, the Hungarians inflicted serious losses on the Mongol army, but when Subodei appeared from behind, Bela’s army was trapped. With the Hungarians encircled, the Mongols withdrew and employed catapults, sending burning tar and naphtha raining down inside the fortress of wagons. The Mongols then intentionally created a gap in their defenses to the west, encouraging Hungarian soldiers to escape. As planned, what began as a few soldiers riding for their lives became a mass retreat. The Mongols closed in on this spread-out line of soldiers and cut them down. The killing is believed to have gone on for two days, during which about sixty-five thousand Hungarian soldiers were put to death. King Bela managed to escape to Zagreb, from where he was pursued to an island off the Adriatic coast. The detachment of the Mongols charged with the task of hunting him conquered their way through Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia in the process.
The following winter, 1241–42, the Mongols were using Hungary as a base for furthering their campaign in
to Europe. In what was an unusually cold year, the army was able to cross the frozen Danube and carry on into Austria, where they invaded the town of Wiener Neustadt, just south of Vienna. Eccentric accounts from a heretic priest who resided there provide some insight into the terror and confusion Mongols wrought. Yvo de Narbonne, as he was known, recorded the following about the fate of the locals:
Without any difference or respect of condition, fortune, sexe, or age, were by manifold cruelties, all of them destroyed; with whose carcasses, the Tartarian chieftains, and their brutish and savage followers, glutting themselves as with delicious cakes, left nothing for vultures but the bare bones … the beautiful they devoured not, but smothered them, lamenting and scritching, with forced and unnatural ravishments. Like barbarous miscreants, they deflowered virgins until they died of exhaustion and cutting off their tender Paps to present for dainties unto their chiefs, they engorged themselves with their bodies.5
Regardless of the embellished and imagined details—some of which were born of religious ideology, but also no doubt a result of Mongolian propaganda designed to spread fear—such accounts provide some insight into what appeared to lie in store for the rest of Europe. It seemed nothing could stop the Mongols from carrying on deep into the heart of Catholicism and beyond. In the end, though, there will only ever be speculation, for in March 1242 news reached the Mongols that the grand khan, Ogodei, had died in Mongolia. Batu, Subodei, and their army began to withdraw east for the election of a new leader, reaching their homeland in 1243.6 Although the Mongol Empire would hold together for another century, and the Golden Horde for 240 years more, the Mongols would never return to Hungary, nor realize their aspirations for domination of central and western Europe.