The despairing inhabitants for fifteen days beat off the assailants.

The city then fell; its ruin was entire.

The dwellings became but the funeral pyres for the bodies of the slain.

The army of Bati then continued its march to lake Seliger, the source of the Volga, within one hundred miles of the great city of Novgorod.
"Villages disappeared," write the ancient annalists, "and the heads of the Russians fell under the swords of the Tartars as the grass falls before the scythe." Instead of pressing on to Novgorod, for some unknown reason Bati turned south, and, marching two hundred miles, laid siege to the strong fortress of Kozelsk, in the principality of Kalouga.

The garrison, warned of the advance of the foe, made the most heroic resistance.