Kiev destroyed by Mongols

1240

The mother of Rus cities, seat of its metropolitans and princes, was stormed in December. Contemporaries reported that for years afterward the land around the ruins was silent of bells. Six years later the Franciscan John of Plano Carpini counted bones in the weeds. The golden domes of the Tithe Church lay in rubble, and the city that had once rivaled Constantinople was reduced to a village.