1240: in summer Alexander beat the Swedes on the Neva; in December Batu took Kiev.
Northern Rus' held off the West while the south fell to the East.
The events
- Batu Khan takes Kiev1240 · Kiev. In December 1240 Batu's army took Kiev after a siege. The last defenders sheltered in the Church of the Tithes, which collapsed. A few years later the papal envoy Carpini counted barely 200 houses in the city. The Mongols then moved on into Poland and Hungary.
- Battle of the Neva1240 · Mouth of the Izhora. On 15 July 1240 Prince Alexander of Novgorod defeated a Swedish force where the Izhora joins the Neva. The victory later earned him the name Nevsky.
More amazing facts
- 1147 · 1150 Moscow is first mentioned in a chronicle in 1147 — around the time Angkor Wat was being completed in Cambodia.
- 1163 · 1185 When Prince Igor marched against the Polovtsians in 1185, Notre-Dame had been under construction for 22 years.
- 1215 · 1223 Eight years after Magna Carta, the princes of Rus first met the Mongols and were crushed on the Kalka River.
- 1238 · 1242 The Battle on the Ice (1242) came just four years after work began on the Alhambra in Granada (1238).
- 1299 · 1903 The Ottoman state, founded around 1299, still existed when the Wright brothers made the first airplane flight: the sultanate was abolished only in 1922.
- 1324 · 1325 In 1324, Mansa Musa gave away so much gold in Cairo that its value fell.