Kholm: a new town that craftsmen fled to from the Tatars
Editorial contextDaniil founded Kholm on a wooded hill he spotted while hunting, and the chronicler notes that the Tatars could not take it when Batu conquered Rus. Daniil invited Germans, Rus, Poles and other foreigners, and young men and master craftsmen of every kind 'fled from the Tatars' to it: saddlers, bowyers, quiver makers, and smiths of iron, copper and silver. Here the arrow runs the other way: craftsmen leave Tatar-held lands to build a Rus prince's town.
he began to invite newcomers, Germans and Rus, foreigners and Poles; they came day after day, and young men and masters of every kind fled from the Tatars, saddlers and bowyers and quiver makers and smiths of iron and copper and silver, and there was life, and they filled the courtyards around the town, the fields and the villages
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нача призывати прихожаѣ Нѣмцѣ и Русь, иноязычникы и Ляхы; идяху день и во день, и уноты и мастеръ всяціи бѣжаху изъ Татаръ, сѣдлници, и лучници, и тулници, и кузници желѣзу и мѣди и сребру, и бѣ жизнь, и наполниша дворы окрестъ града поле и села
About Prince Daniil of Galicia; craftsmen fleeing the Tatars
Continue in this sourceThe Hypatian Chronicle: Kiev, Galicia and the Horde852 to 1292 · 13 passagesAn oath sworn on drawn daggers
Editorial contextWhen envoys of Khan Sachmat (Sheikh Ahmed of the Great Horde) concluded an alliance against Moscow with Polish and Lithuanian lords at Kraków, the Tatars sealed it their own way. They poured cold water over drawn daggers and, one after another, sipped it as it dripped from the points, cursing whoever first broke the treaty to vanish like that water. In a footnote Schlözer remarks drily that this Christian alliance with Tatars came decades before the French scandalised Europe by allying with the Ottomans.
whereby the Tatars, after the custom of their country, poured cold water on drawn daggers and, as it dripped from the point, sipped it one after another, with the curse that whoever first broke the alliance should pass away like this water.
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wobey die Tataren, nach ihrer Landessitte, auf gezückte Dolche kaltes Wasser gossen, und solches, so wie es von der Spitze herabträufelte, einer nach dem andern schlürften, mit dem Fluche, daß wer den Bund zuerst bräche, wie dieses Wasser vergehen solle.
About Kipchak (Great Horde) Tatars of Khan Sheikh Ahmed (Sachmat)
Continue in this sourceSchlözer's history of Lithuania (Northern History, part two)1771 · 4 passagesA 13th-century poem calls the Tartars cannibals
Editorial contextIn his notes d'Avezac prints lines, copied by Thomas Wright from a Cotton manuscript, of John of Garland's poem On the Triumphs of the Church. It paints the Tartars as Satan's household and the Church's plague who eat human flesh: no lion eats a lion and no wolf tears a wolf, but these men roast human limbs on spits. D'Avezac traces the poet's 'reliable' information to atrocity letters from priests in central Europe.
A people exceedingly savage, of Satan's household, a plague to the Church, at odds with the faith, in love with slaughter. … Hungry, man gnaws man; no lion fills its slack belly with lion's flesh; no wolf tears a wolf with its claw; this people turns limbs spitted on hazel skewers over the fire.
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Gens est sæva nimis, Sathanæque domestica, pestis Ecclesiæ, fidei dissona, cædis amans. … Esuriens hominem corrodit homo; leo nullus Carne leonina viscera laxa replet; Non lupus ungue lupum lacerat; gens ista colurnis In veribus vertit membra veruta foco.
About Tartars (Mongols invading Europe, 1241)
Keep in mind
War propaganda built on rumour; Garland never met a Mongol. The poem's Latin is quoted from a single manuscript copy and the OCR is rough.
A magic head on a Tartar banner, breathing smoke at the Poles
Editorial contextIn the history of the Polish kings Guagnini tells how the Poles were winning against the Tartars until a Tartar standard-bearer came forward with a banner marked with a Greek X and, on top of the lance, a terrible head made by magic art that breathed foul smoke over the Poles. Bewitched, they lost their strength and were cut down 'like grain by hail', and the Tartars cut off every dead man's right ear and filled nine great sacks.
but a certain standard-bearer of the Tartars came forward with a banner on which was written a Greek letter in this manner, X; and above, on the point of the lance, was fixed a terrible head, made by magic art, spewing smoke and foul vapour from its mouth over the Poles, by which, as if infected with a plague and bewitched by the force of spells, they lost their strength.
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sed quidam Vexillifer Tartarorum, cum vexillo, in quo erat scripta litera Graeca tali modo, X, processit: superius vero in cuspide hastae erat caput quoddam terribile infixum, arte magica confectum, ore fumum vaporemque sordidum in Polonos evomens: quo velut peste quadam infecti, & incantationum vi fascinati, vires amiserunt.
About Tartars (Mongols of 1241)
Keep in mind
A battle legend from Polish chronicles (Dlugosz tells it of Legnica); Guagnini dates the reign from 1243 and does not name the battle. Some historians suspect a smoke or incendiary device behind the tale.