GIOVANNI DEPLANO CARPINI DESCRIBES KIEV, 1246 This eyewitness report of Kiev six years after the Mongols had sacked it comes from a Franciscan friar, Giovanni de Plano Carpini, Pope Innocent IV's envoy to the Mongol khan. Friar Giovanni left Lyon, France, in April 1245, passed through Kiev in February 1246, and, after visiting the Mongol capital of Karakorum, passed through Kiev again on his return in 1247:
They [the Mongols] attacked Russia, where they made great havoc, destroying cities and fortresses and slaughtering men; and they laid siege to Kiev, the capital of Russia; after they had besieged the city for a long time, they took it and put the inhabitants to death. When we were journeying through that land we came across countless skulls and bones of dead men lying about on the ground. Kiev had been a very large and thickly populated town, but now it has been reduced almost to nothing, for there are at the present time scarce two hundred houses there and the inhabitants are kept in complete slavery. Going on from there, fighting as they went, the Tartars destroyed the whole of Russia. When the inhabitants of Kiev became aware of our arrival, they all came to meet us rejoicing and they congratulated us as if we were risen from the dead. We met with the same reception throughout the whole of Poland, Bohemia and Russia. Daniel [Prince of Galicia] and his brother Vasilko [Prince of Volynia] made a great feast for us and kept us, against our will, for quite eight days. In the meantime they discussed between themselves and with the bishop and other worthy men the matter about which we had spoken to them when we were setting out for the Tartars. They answered us jointly declaring that they wished to have the Lord Pope as their special lord and father, and the Holy Roman Church as their lady and mistress, and they also confirmed everything which they had previously despatched by their abbot concerning this matter. In addition they sent with us a letter and envoys.