THE POLANIAN DYNASTY 71opportunities where the peoples of Central Europe might have been joined
together to face their stronger neighbours. At all events, it gave the final spur to
the reunification of the Polish kingdom under Lokietek.
Relations with Ruthenia were less complicated. As an area of Orthodox
Christianity and East Slav settlement, Rus looked mainly towards the Black Sea
and to Constantinople. Its horizons rarely overlapped with those of Poland
except in the intermediate territory of Red Ruthenia. In 981, in the era of the
united Kievan Rus, Vladimir the Great 'took the forts of Czerwien from the
Lachs'. This statement of the Russian Primary Chronicle implies that Red
Ruthenia may have originally been settled by West, not East, Slavs. In the next
generation, in 1018, Boleslaw Chrobry retrieved earlier losses and captured
Kiev, striking and denting his sword on the Golden Gate of the capital, and
installing his son-in-law, Svatopolk, on the Kievan throne. (A later imitation of
the 'notched sword', the Szczerbiec, was to be used in the ceremonial of all
Polish coronations.) In the 1030s Yaroslav the Wise took his revenge, reoccu-
pied Red Ruthenia, and installed his own son-in-law, Kazimierz I, on the Polish
throne. This success was reversed yet again by Boleslaw Szczodry, who retook
Kiev briefly in 1079. All this was of little moment. But in the subsequent cen-
turies, when Red Ruthenia emerged as one of the independent principalities of
Rus, Polish interest there was of more permanent significance. Close dynastic
links between the Houses of Piast and of Rurik provided a constant pretext for
quarrels and intervention. In 1205, the intervention of Leszek Bialy, Prince of
Cracow, and Konrad of Mazovia led to the death of Prince Roman, and to the
division of his inheritance into the twin principalities of Halicz and Vladimir. In
1340, the death of Prince Boleslaw-Jerzy Trojdenovitch, the last of his line, gave
Casimir the Great the opening to press the long-standing claim, and in compet-
ition with the Lithuanians, to launch the final conquest of the province.
The Mongols, the 'scourge of God', who dealt the final coup de grace to Kiev
Rus did not leave Poland unscathed. Advancing from the steppes of central Asia
in 1241, the Golden Horde of Batu Khan cut a triple furrow of pillage and
destruction right across Central Europe. The ultimate goal was Hungary; but
one of their three armies took the northern route along the flank of the
Carpathians. Sandomierz, Krakow, and Wroclaw were razed, and their inhabit-
ants put to the sword. At Chmielnik, the assembled nobility of Malopolska, per-
ished to a man. At Legnica (Liegnitz) on 9 April 1241 the hosts of Silesia and
Wielkopolska were heavily defeated, and their commander, Henry the Pious,
killed. Mercifully, the Horde passed on, to Olomouc in Moravia and into the
Danube Basin. But its Baskaks (Collectors of Tribute) continued to hold sway
over all the Ruthenian principalities in the east. Its descendants, known as
Tartars, established themselves permanently in the Crimea. Further Mongol
incursions occurred in 12,59 and 1287. In Cracow, they inspired two local cus-
toms which have survived to the present day. One, the Lajkonik, is commemo-
rated on the eighth day after Corpus Christi, when a rider in Mongol dress tours
the streets on a hobby-horse; the other, the Hejnai, or truncated 'trumpet-call'