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Place must be 18 or over. In the winter of 1222 to 1223, the leadership of Kievan Russe received urgent appeals for help from the tribe called the Cumans, who inhabited the steplands to their south. In an act of unusual unity, various princes of the Russian lands formed a joint army to counter the threat of an invading force arriving from the east. The threat was taken seriously, but not as seriously as if they had known the full nature of the enemy that was approaching,

and how their whole world was about to be turned upside down.

For the new enemy were the Mongols, who already just crushed the mighty armies of both the Persians and the Chinese, who were about to reach Europe with potentially devastating consequences.

Welcome to a history of Europe, Key Battles, the Battle of the Calca River of the year 1223.

Part 1 of 3

The state which historians today call Kievan Rus is the polity that existed between the 9th and 13th centuries

in the region centred around the city of Kiev,

the capital of modern-day Ukraine.

The date of its beginning is disputed, but for certain, the event which crystallized its

cultural and political character was the baptism of Prince Vladimir the Great in year 988, and his decision to convert his people to Orthodox Christianity.

As for the end of Kievan Rus, where the beginning of the end was the year 1223 on the arrival of the Mongols, the subject of this set of episodes.

The early years of Kiev and Rus between the reigns of Vladimir the Great

and his great-grandson, Vladimir Omonomac, who died in 1125,

...