Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/601

 EASTERN EUROPE IN LATER MIDDLE AGES 549 reached the Volga; the next year they took Moscow; in ! 1239 they so defeated the Rumanians that these took ref- uge in Hungary; in the following year Kiev, Cracow, and j Breslau were sacked; in 1241 King Bela of Hungary was 3 completely crushed and his army almost annihilated. The I cruel and savage Tartar host then fearfully devastated the j Hungarian plain, and also ravaged Bulgaria, Serbia, and I Bosnia. Then news of the death of the Great Khan caused I their withdrawal eastward. Much, however, of what is now I Russia remained under their rule until almost the close of j the fifteenth century, and for a still longer period was more j influenced in its civilization by the Orient than by the West- I ern world. . A collection of Russian laws which has come I down to us from the period before the Mongol invasion a shows that the country was then little behind western Bu- rt rope in its customs. This past civilization was blotted out and future development was long retarded by the Asiatic 1 inroads. The Kingdom of the Golden Horde, as the west- I called, extended from Turkestan and the Caspian Sea to the I river Don and to Novgorod, a city which the Mongols had I been unable to capture, but which was compelled in 1260 to pay tribute to the khan. Mohammedan as well as Christian lands suffered at the hands of the Mongols. Persia was terribly ravaged by their j attacks and some cities ended their existence. Mon ■* I Even Bagdad was taken and sacked in 1258, but conquests soon recovered a measure of its former prosperity, rom s am ! although its greatness under the Abbassid caliphs was gone. After taking Bagdad the Mongols had pressed on into Syria, I but were driven out by the Mamelukes of Egypt. These j Mamelukes were captives in war of whom the Seljuk sultans had composed their bodyguard, but one of them had recently made himself Sultan of Egypt. The Mongols at first struck Christian Europe with much I the same horror that the Huns had produced, and many i looked for them to fulfill the prophecies concerning Antichrist and Gog and Magog. Then, however, came hopes of using
 * ernmost encampment and dominion of the Mongols was