The Mongols, moving as one man, took one principality at a time, its nobles and citizens alone bearing arms, the peasants, by far the greater part, being utterly defenseless.

After wrecking and devastating that, they passed on to the next, which, however desperately defended, met the same fate.

The Grand Principality was a ruin; its fourteen towns were burned, and when, in the absence of its Grand Prince, Vladimir the capital city fell, the Princesses and all the families of the nobles took refuge in the cathedral and perished in the general conflagration (1238).

Two years later Kief also fell, with its white walls and towers embellished by Byzantine art, its cupolas of gold and silver.

All was laid in the dust, and only a few fragments in museums now remain to tell of its glory.