Washington Journal., 1942-01-30

plre or IreDlz0nd, which was established IN
1904 in the wake of the 4th Crusade, when
Constantinople was captured by the Latins.
The Gothic clergy no longer sent represen-
tatives to Constantinople. Thenceforth Gothia
had to reckon with Genoa and Venice.
Tartar I~nvasions
The Crimea's communication with Constan-
tinople and Trebizond or with Italy became
insecure when a Seljuk Sultan of Iconium set
up a waraeet in the Black Sea. The native
Crimean Kipchacks or Cumans, descendants
of the ancient Scythians (called Polovtzi in
Russian) took to trading with that ~sultan's
merchants.
Presently both the Latins and the Turks
were swept aside by another Mongol invasion
that of the Tartars. Riding under the
leadership of Chape Noyon and Subutai, two
generals of Gengis Khan, they crossed the
Caucasus Mountains, rushed through the
steppes of the Don and penetrated into the
Crimea. In 1923 the Tartars under Subutai
attacked the Crimean city Sugdaia on the
Black Sea. Many of it's inhabitants fled
northward into Gothia. Subutai pursued; then
defeated a combined force Of Russians, Cir
c~assians, Cloths and Polovtzi, $4,000 strong,
on the River Kalka near the Sea Of Azov.
After that two-day's victory, wherein a Rus
sian prince commander fell at the head of his
troops, the Tartars withdrew from the Dnie-
per into the Crimea again. There they
stormed the Genoese trade citadel Of Caffa.
Then suddenly the Tartar horde stopped
short in its westward conquests and rode back
eastward to Mongolia.
A Russian chronicler wrote: eve know
not whence they came, nor whittier they
went. = It is known now from Chinese archives
that the Mongol forces were recalled from
Europe by Genghis Khan because Chep6
Noyon, his second in command, died in Rus
STA. Thereupon the great Khan summoned
Subutai and all other Tartar leaders to a
grand council of strategy to the Kha Khan's
imperial headquarters at Karakorum in Mon
golia.
A Persian contemporary wrote: "Have you
not heard how a huge band of horsemen from
the East, where the sun rises, OVERRIDE the
Earth to the Caspian Gates, carrying de-
structlon among peoples and sowing death
in their onrush. Then, returning to their
master, they brought their horses, loaded
with loot. All this happened in less than two
years.
After the departure of Snbutai's Tartars
from the Crimea, trade and re-
sumed there. But Is years later, in 1898, the
Tartars reappeared in eastern Europe-this
time under the leadership Of Bata Khan, sthe
Splendid, the son of the renowned Mongol
chieftain Juchi.
1t was the famous campaign against Russia,
which inflicted the Tartar yoke on the empire
founded by the Morse varyags Rurik, Oleg
and Igor. Baty Khan sacked Kiev in 1910;
then crossed the Danube and the Carpathians,
invading Hungary, Poland, Lithuania and
Bohemia.
AS a side thrust of that whirlwind campaign
the Crimea again was invaded by the Tartars.
Gothia was laid waste in 1912. The Tartars
gained a firm foothold in eastern Crimea along
the shores Of the Black Sea from Caffa to
Sugdaia, with a Mongol mandorin governing
at Solkhat (Eski-Krim). From that latter
Tartar place-name the whole former Turan-
ian Peninsula took its present name Of Krim,
in English: "Crimea". Other regions Of the
peninsula, among them Gothia, had to pay
tribute to the Tartars.
Contemporary Comments
Ten years later, Wilhelm Ruysbrock (Guil-
laume de Rubruquis), a Franciscan friar and
contemporary Of Marco Polo, travelling with
companions from Constantinople, landed at
Soldaia (Surozh) and wrote a Latin descrip-
ton Of what he saw in the Crimea. It con-
tains this passage:
ssThere are high promontories on the
seashore from Kersona (Cherson) unto
the mouth of the Tanais. There lie 40
castles between Kersona and Soldaia,
wherein the people speak diverse lang
guages, among them many Cloths, whose
idiom is Teutonic. In the same plain,
before the Tartars came, were Cumans
(Russians), who made the aforesaid 40
castles pay tribute to them, but when the
Tartars came the Cumans fed all of them
INTO the SeaShOra.v