MarshalBraginsky
Banned
Khans and Crosses: A Different Story of the Golden Horde
(Secret File A)
An archive which documented the secret history of the Golden Horde was recently discovered by a team of archaeologists on the ruins of what had been the city of Sarai Batu, on the banks of the Volga River. The head of the ‘Volga Expeditionary Project’, named Mr. Rinat Kostic, successfully piled up a huge set of documents written in three languages: Old Church Slavonic, Old Mongolian and what appeared to be a hybrid Qipchak language filled with loanwords taken from a South Slavic dialect. Under a painstaking set of research and further organization that took ten years to complete, the Volga Expeditionary Project has successfully completed the history of how a turn of events had resulted in a different path for a nomadic empire.
Chapter One: Lucky Break
Sartaq’s Rise to Power:
Sartaq Khan had just finished his ceremony of declaring a young, Rurikid prince named Aleksandr Nevsky as his anda, or blood brother. Just before Sartaq’s anda was about to leave the Khan’s headquarters, Nevsky’s brother Yaroslav of Tver’ showed up and whispered something to his ear. Nevsky left only after he apologized to Sartaq, allowing the latter to retire to his bedroom. Unknown to either Sartaq or Nevsky, his uncle Berke had apparently distrusted the round eyed barbarian, and he had desired the leadership of the Golden Horde as a way of showing his power to future generations of the Mongol Empire. Berke also flirted with the possibility of converting to Islam as a way of connecting with a few Muslim Turkic peoples, which set him apart from the Nestorian Christian Sartaq.
As Berke arrived inside the Khan’s special yurt, he proceeded to make a cup of fresh tea, courtesy of his cousin Ogedei (the current Great Khan of the entire Mongol Empire) as he had sent him a handful of tea leaves recently picked from the northern Chinese tea farms. After the tea was done, Berke opened a small vial and carefully placed its content into the tea. Grinning maliciously with a devious motive in mind, Berke waited until Sartaq returned to his yurt in which he would offer his nephew the poisoned tea. It was only a matter of whether or not Sartaq was willing to drink it. As if Berke’s plan would not fail, Sartaq had indeed returned to the yurt and asked his uncle if he could have a drink. Berke offered Sartaq the tea he made, but just as Sartaq was about to take a sip, a messenger had arrived carrying a letter for Sartaq himself. Just before he opened the scroll containing the message, Sartaq asked Berke if they had any horse milk instead. Shocked, Berke looked throughout the yurt for some horse milk. However, before Berke could tell Sartaq that they had no horse milk left, he was gone. Luckily for Berke, he spotted the scroll and learned from the message written to Sartaq that he was to accompany his anda to the Mongol heartland. Furious, he also decided to join Sartaq’s caravan heading back home, hoping to kill him before it was too late.
A few years later, Sartaq and Nevsky headed back west while being accompanied by five thousand keshiks, elite fighters who trained vigorously under their mentors who fought for the first Great Khan, Genghis Khan who united the tribes of the Mongol heartland. While Sartaq took the lead in front of the keshiks, a lone archer perched on top of the hill and aimed a poisoned arrow. The assassin waited for Sartaq to stop, which would be when he would release the arrow from the bow. Sartaq did stop for a bit to rest his horse, but a keshik who was unlucky enough to have volunteered to take his horse away was struck by the poisoned arrow instead. Nevsky rode in front and gazed into the hill, waiting for the mysterious assassin to climb back up. Unfortunately, the assassin was smart enough not to peek once again but more keshiks were riding away from the road and into the hills. Suddenly, the loud whinnying of horses could be heard as the surviving warriors retreated back to the group as they were being chased by similar looking horsemen but carried a different banner.
Sartaq looked around and was shocked to see a hundred more horsemen charging towards his guards as one of his generals shouted out an order to assume a defensive position. Nevsky saw a thousand arrows fly across the sky as he parried off his enemy’s sword and searched for his anda. By the time Sartaq and Nevsky had spotted each other, the same assassin from the mountains aimed his last arrow (albeit unpoisoned) at Sartaq while he charged towards them on horseback. He released the arrow and grinned at how the unfit Khan was going to die, but it was not to be. Instead, the arrow hit the hero of Novgorod in the chest. The force of the arrow released from the composite bow was deadly enough to pierce Nevsky’s armor and his inner organs as well. Unfortunately, Aleksandr Nevsky was pronounced dead by the time Sartaq’s caravan had arrived back in Sarai Batu.
Nevsky’s funeral took place in the winter of 1257, and the people of Novgorod wept for his death. News of the Swedish and Norse movements into the Baltic Sea reached the Khan’s court as Sartaq was at loss as to what he would do after the funeral concluded. Three days after Nevsky’s funeral had ended, Sartaq was awoken one morning as two Mongol generals moved towards him with the captured assassin who had killed Nevsky by accident. The general, called Subudei angrily threw the assassin down into the ground as Sartaq demanded his generals to torture him. After five days’ worth of torture in which the assassin was subjected to a bath in the boiling water, followed by regular beating for three whole days, and finally Sartaq had the assassin’s hand nailed into the table. Upon further torture, the assassin had revealed what the Christianized Khan had feared all along: Berke was responsible for the ambush, and apparently he had also tried to poison the khan as well.
Sartaq’s emotions had quickly exploded and demanded for his loyal guards to summon not only Berke, but Ulaghchi as well, since he was also named among certain generals who had conspired to overthrow his rule. “Never betray your khan” was always the Mongols’ most treasured golden rule and the fact that a close family member of the current Khan had plotted to kill him was treasonous enough, but the grisly murder (albeit accidental) of the popular Russian hero Nevsky proved to be the crux of the entire debacle. In an attempt to reconcile the Golden Horde and its enraged Russian vassals, Sartaq invited the people of Vladimir-Sudzal to the public execution of the condemned conspirators, with Berke singled out for the mob’s physical abuse before proceeding into the center of the crowd. Sartaq gave out the order to tie the conspirators’ hands on the log and placed them onto two pieces of logs, on a vertical order. Soon after, a loud crack emitted from the condemned man’s now broken back and the crowd fell silent. The agonizing screams could be heard from a long distance as each conspirators cried out in pain, one by one. After Berke himself waited for his turn to come, Subudei and another Mongol general grabbed Berke’s bounded arms and bended him in a bridge formation, and the cracking sound was heard for the last time.
With the execution of Berke and his fellow conspirators, more known supporters of Berke’s faction were also targeted for Sartaq’s horrifying interrogation and the death toll of the conspirators soon reached three hundred men, half of whom belonged to Sartaq’s own inner circle. As a result of this violent purge launched by the Christian Khan, the Russian principalities quivered in fear of what their new overlord was about to do. Sartaq did nothing at all to anger his vassals, but the popularity of Yaroslav of Tver’ worried the Khan, mainly because he might call on the rest of Europe to organize a crusade against the most volatile part of the Mongol Empire. A solution was needed in order to get rid of a potential rival, and the Khan needed it fast. It was then that Sartaq looked at the map of the lands his fellow Khans have controlled so far, and gazed at the troublesome state, named the Kingdom of Halych-Volhynia.
Although Halych-Volhynia was nominally the Golden Horde’s vassal, its current king, Danylo of Halych, had been working closely with the European states to organize a crusade in order to eject them from the Rus’ lands. As a vassal state under his control, Danylo of Halych had apparently forgotten his place as a vassal ruler and would have to pay the price. To make the campaign a lot sweeter, Sartaq would appoint the troublesome Yaroslav as leader of the Russian contingent that would fight alongside the Khan’s army on their way into Halych-Volhynia.
With the plan of Halych-Volhynia’s utter devastation in mind, Sartaq had summoned his generals for the general discussion on how to execute their plan. Yaroslav of Tver’ was also summoned into Sartaq’s tent and gave him his ‘special’ role: he was to create a diversion from which the Halych armies of Danylo would be lured into Yaroslav’s position and draw them close long enough for the main Mongol Army to capture Kiev and a newly constructed city called Lvov. Preparations were long and tenuous as additional troops from all over the Golden Horde were recruited and trained. Yaroslav levied enough taxes and men to form his own army from not only in Vladimir-Sudzal, but in the principalities of Tver’, Ryazan and Chernigov. Yaroslav’s contingent force would number around 69,200 men and several hundreds of siege engines while the main Mongol force commanded by Boroldai would number around 160,000. A few days before the main attack would commence on December of 1259, Sartaq gave Boroldai a secret order, which would not be uttered to any of his comrades. The secret order was never known even in modern chronicles but Sartaq’s motive was clear: He needed his rival out of the way.
Halych-Volhynia’s Hour of Destruction:
On December 24th 1259, Sartaq led his army to the gates of Kiev and demanded its surrender. As he expected, the caretaker of Kiev rejected his ultimatum and, as a result, the Khan gave the order to attack. A few weeks before the Christmas Eve siege began, Sartaq’s generals led their own forces into the trade routes and closed them off to the inhabitants of Kiev. Sartaq’s main objective was to starve the Kievans into submission, from which the defenders would be too weak to put up a resistance. News of Kiev’s death toll reached Sartaq’s inner circle, and the Khan was pleased that the plan seemed to be going smoothly. Yet still, on the last day of the siege, the defenders fought tooth and nail despite Sartaq’s fierce counterattacks. Yaroslav’s army then attacked from the south, and they defeated the Kievan advance guard and took their position outside the city. Suddenly, Sartaq’s army began to flee from the city as the defenders began to take their fight to them. Unfortunately, the Kievan defenders were about to enter into the well-known Mongol tactics of trapping their foes. A hail of arrows were loosed upon the hapless Kievan soldiers, with a very few survivors allowed to escape from the carnage so Sartaq could spread the terror into the rest of the Halych lands. Three survivors luckily made it into the city of Lvov and reported the fall of Kiev to Danylo, who trembled with rage at the loss of his prized city. Danylo would never know that this was just the beginning of the end of Halych-Volhynia. By December 30th, 1259, Danylo would lead around 79,000 raw recruits into battle, hastily equipped with armor and weapons. He was not alone however; since the siege of Kiev had began, Danylo had written letters to the monarchs of Poland, Hungary, Lithuania, and the Holy Roman Empire, asking for extra soldiers and provisions.
Of the three kingdoms that received the message, only the Lithuanians sent their entire forces with King Mindaugas leading the attack. It took just a month for the Lithuanian contingent to arrive in Lvov to reinforce their defensive position by the time the combined forces of Sartaq and Yaroslav of Tver’ arrived in Lvov. As Yaroslav translated Boroldai’s ultimatum to Danylo and Mindaugas, the Halych king rejected the ultimatum and mocked Yaroslav for his collaboration with the hated Mongols. Furthermore, Danylo also poked fun at Yaroslav’s dead brother for dying while journeying into the heart of the Mongol Empire. Just as Danylo kept on poking fun at his Tverian counterpart, Boroldai brought in three Halych soldiers who were captured by his forces just outside Chernigov. A Mongol keshik swung his sword at the hapless captives as Danylo’s taunts turned into rage. Boroldai waited until the great city’s defenses began its attack on the Mongol encampment when he launched his counterattack. Danylo himself rode out into the open fields with his army to meet Yaroslav’s contingent force, and the two armies clashed fiercely. Inside the Mongol encampment, Sartaq observed the Halych army in battle with his vassal’s army and smirked as he waited for the right moment until both Danylo and Yaroslav would ultimately die. Suddenly, a messenger arrived inside his tent and reported on the Lithuanian army’s advance into their position. Sartaq immediately sent for Subudei and assigned him a Mongol raiding force to amass closer to its borders with Lithuania. Subudei immediately left and the Khan turned his attention to weakening Lvov’s defenses.
Halych and Lithuanian defenders were probably not the first Europeans to witness the Mongol usage of a revolutionary weapon, gunpowder. A few sources claimed that the Chinese had discovered gunpowder by accident, but the Mongols of Genghis Khan had readily adopted and experimented on it. Bombs filled with gunpowder would devastate Lvov’s walls. Catapults were also deployed and hurled bombs over the walls, though Lvov’s defenders also had siege weapons to counter their Mongol counterparts. While the siege had dragged on, Mindaugas’s army had met up with Danylo’s contingent after Yaroslav’s counteroffensive was repulsed with heavy losses. Yaroslav himself rallied the remaining warriors and retreated northwards. Sensing Yaroslav’s apparent retreat, Danylo sent all of his troops to pursue his Tverian enemy and ordered that no single soldier should return until they bring back the enemy leader. The Halych king went along with his army to enforce this special order, though Mindaugas’s contingent had to join Danylo as well because he was worried about the state of defense back in Lithuania’s fortresses.
The decision to pursue Yaroslav however, was what Sartaq had been waiting for as he ordered another attack into the city. After a couple of rounds with the battering ram, the Mongol keshiks galloped inside the city gates and rounded up anyone in particular. Children of prominent merchant or noble families were captured by Boroldai’s men and taken into Sartaq’s tent while the adult males and females were bounded and taken into captivity from which Sartaq would decide on what to do with them. As the Khan inspected the captured children taken by Boroldai, one of the Mongol generals suggested that these children under their captivity could be raised as shock troops. Sartaq was open to the idea of creating an infantry or cavalry shock formations besides the keshiks, or to improve the fighting spirit and strength of the Mongol army. Of course, even Genghis Khan had to create his army from scratch by bringing together men from all tribes and formed new bonds across tribal lines. Why not do the same thing with these children from conquered nations? There was only one glaring problem: surely as a Christian, Sartaq can’t enslave Christians and make them loyal only to him. The Christian Khan decided to promote the Christian faith among his own people. Boroldai wrote on a parchment meant for Sartaq:
“As long as we stick to our own customs, our vassals will not see us as anything more than barbarian conquerors to be hated. By adopting the religion of the conquered nations, we can understand our vassals far better, and they can accept us with greater ease.”
However, what kind of Christian faith would Sartaq adopt? He already had an understanding of the Nestorian faith, with his distant aunt as a Christian Khatun, and Catholicism provided the very same soulless worship that deterred Vladimir of Kiev from converting. The problem with Orthodox Christianity was that there were many variants, depending on the country it hosted. Furthermore, to make the Golden Horde as legitimate in the eyes of Europe, Sartaq would have to arrange marriages with European monarchs, something unthinkable even amongst the Mongols themselves. His answer though, would not come from his vassals in the former Rus’ lands, but to the south.
Of Mongols, Bulgars, and Serbs:
The Second Bulgarian Empire was a powerful state in the Balkans, although it has been in decline since the death of Ivan Asen II. In the same year as the disastrous Teuton invasion of Pskov, the Golden Horde had devastated Bulgaria and forced Kaliman Asen I to pay tribute to Batu Khan. Now with Sartaq as Khan, he sent emissaries to his vassal for help in Christianizing his realm. Sartaq’s influence on Bulgaria had worried its growing neighbor, the Kingdom of Serbia, at the time ruled by its beloved king, Stefan Uroš I. As a rising power in the Balkans, the Kingdom of Serbia capitalized on the weakness of its Bulgarian rival but had not taken into account the Golden Horde’s control of its neighbor.
For his part, Sartaq established relations with Serbia in March of 1260 after another two months’ of campaign against Danylo, who was finally killed in the Battle of Zhytomyr back in February of 1260. It was in Zhytomyr that Yaroslav of Tver’ was killed as well, though Danylo’s son Lev of Halych would call upon his own people and army to join him in what became known as the Great Northern Exodus. In the Great Northern Exodus, Lev would not take the crown as King of Rus’, but to build another, more enduring state. By June of 1260, the exiled peoples from the now defunct Halych-Volhynia had arrived in Novgorod and Pskov, and Lev told its inhabitants the news of Yaroslav’s death. He called upon the people of Novgorod and Pskov to swear loyalty to him as the new ruler of Novgorod, but fierce opposition to Lev’s ascension forced him to send his army into the monasteries and to confiscate the gold unless the people would accept his rule. Sporadic rebellions around Novgorod compelled the ex-Halych prince to take action and sent his troops on a campaign to conquer the two cities. Like his father before him, Lev would form alliances with the West. In this case, Lev would form an alliance with Sweden, Norway and the Teutonic Order to help safeguard his new domain. Lev’s new domain had now consisted of settlers who arrived from the White Sea. These people were known as the Pomors, named for Lev’s new Kingdom of Pomorye, which would arise from the ashes of both Halych-Volhynia and the Novgorod Republic.
Back in the Balkans, the cultural exchange between the Golden Horde and Serbia was initially restricted to just economic concessions, such as Serbian silver mined from Brskovo and Rudnik, which was in great demand for merchants living in Rus’ cities under the Horde’s control. It was not until 1265, when Constantine Tikh rebelled against the Golden Horde over excess taxation of goods and constant demands for slaves to be acquired, that an alliance between Serbia and the Golden Horde would begin to truly take shape. Constantine Tikh received reports of a formation consisting of soldiers who were taken as slaves when they were young and trained by the Mongols as shock troops. After a final skirmish against the new shock troops just across the Danube River on April of 1265, Bulgaria exploded into a rebellion. By this time, Sartaq was busy delegating some of the administrative affairs to his son, Qughchi. He also made plans for his two daughters, Tughdua and Feodora to marry into any Serbian prince that might be willing to enter into a union with the Golden Horde.
When Constantine Tikh’s army marched into Vidin, Boroldai met the Bulgarians at the Danube and waited. By May 11th of 1265, news of the Bulgarian rebellion had reached Stefan Uroš’s court at Ras, and he wrote a letter to the Khan offering assistance in crushing the rebellion with further plans for the partition of Bulgarian lands. To sweeten the deal a bit further, Stefan also offered to send fifty to a hundred priests and monks from the Serbian Orthodox Church in Peć to the Khan’s court to proselytize and convert them into Orthodox Christianity, as well as to help develop and refine the Orthodox Church within the Golden Horde in conjunction with the local Rus’ clergy. Stefan Uroš’s offers were what Sartaq had been waiting for: a chance at intermarrying with an Orthodox Christian kingdom not attached to the Horde’s vassals, and to gain cultural legitimacy within the Orthodox Christian world.
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So this is my first collaborative TL ever published, and I'd like to thank NikoZnate for his contribution as well since he will be my partner in updating this interesting thread.
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