With tears the unhappy prince bade adieu to his country, and, traversing vast deserts and immense regions of hills and valleys, he at length reached the metropolis of his cruel masters.
Here he successfully defended himself against some accusations which had been brought against him, and, after a detention of several months, he was permitted to set out on his return.

He had proceeded but a few hundred miles on the weary journey when he was taken sick, and died the 20th of September, 1246.

The faithful nobles who accompanied him bore his remains to Vladimir, where they were interred.
There was no longer a Russian kingdom.

The country had lost its independence; and the Tartar sway, rude, vacillating and awfully cruel, extended from remote China to the shores of the Baltic.

The Roman, Grecian and Russian empires thus crumbling, the world was threatened with an universal inundation of barbarism.