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Menergy
 Menergy
San Francisco’s Gay Disco Sound

L OU I S N I E BU R

1
 3
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.

© Oxford University Press 2022

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data

Names: Niebur, Louis, 1971–​author.
Title: Menergy : San Francisco’s gay disco sound /​Louis Niebur.
Description: [First.] | New York : Oxford University Press, 2022. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021036239 (print) | LCCN 2021036240 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780197511084 (paperback) | ISBN 9780197511077 (hardback) |
ISBN 9780197511107 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Disco music–​California–​San Francisco–​History and
criticism. | Electronic dance music–​California–​San Francisco–​History
and criticism. | Sound recording industry—​California—​San
Francisco–​History–​20th century. | Gay men–​California–​San
Francisco–​Social life and customs–​20th century. | Castro (San Francisco, Calif.)
Classification: LCC ML3526 .N54 2022 (print) | LCC ML3526 (ebook) |
DDC 781.648155409794/​61–​dc23
LC record available at https://​lccn.loc.gov/​2021036239
LC ebook record available at https://​lccn.loc.gov/​2021036240

DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197511077.001.0001

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Paperback printed by LSC Communications, United States of America
Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America
To my dancing brothers never forgotten
 Contents

Acknowledgments  ix

Introduction: Setting Up the Sound  1

1. Disco, the Castro, and Gay Liberation  11
2. Liberation for Some: The Continued Expansion of Gay San
Francisco in the Late 1970s  31
3. Sylvester’s Fantasy Comes True  48
4. The First Wave of the San Francisco Sound  61
5. Blecman and Hedges  78
6. Disco’s Dead/​Not Dead  96
7. The San Francisco Sound Thrives  116
8. New Heights  139
9. Trouble in Paradise  165
10. Dancing with AIDS  184
11. Everything Falls Apart  205
12. In Retrospect  223

Notes  233
Suggested Reading  261
Selected Discography  263
Index  267
 Acknowledgments

This book has been a long time coming, and there are many people who made
it possible. At the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), I would like to thank
the College of Liberal Arts and the Department of Music, who generously
funded my research. I couldn’t have written this book without the clerical
assistance of Vicki Bell, Cynthia Prescott, and Neva Sheehan, the support of
department chairs Dmitri Atapine and Peter Epstein, and the invaluable staff
at the UNR Knowledge Center, especially Amy Hunsaker, Maggie Ressel,
Rayla Tokarz, and Jennifer Wykoff. Thank you to Michael C. Oliveira at the
ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries, and Isaac
Fellman, Alex Barrows, and Joanna Black at the GLBT Historical Society in
San Francisco. Thank you to the Oral History Center, the Bancroft Library
at the University of California at Berkeley. Huge thanks to my editor, Norm
Hirschy, at Oxford University Press for again making this process run so
smoothly. His wisdom, experience, and most of all friendship over the last
decade has been essential to this project and I can’t imagine how different
this book would be without his guidance.
Special thanks to my amazing colleagues Julianne Lindberg, Ruthie
Meadows, and Eric Fassbender. Our consistent writing dates and your wise
feedback kept me focused and inspired, as did discussions with graduate
students Brad Bynum, Cole Peck, Geoff Scott, and Brian Wright. Brian Eno
and Moby’s ambient music calmed my anarchic mind for writing. Brett Van
Hoesen and Julianne Lindberg deserve special thanks for forming the School
of the Arts Research Group, a wonderful place to test out ideas. Thanks to
Scott Smale for listening to my ramblings with an open mind and ear, and
for loving to dance. Duke Day and Mike Richardson also deserve love and
thanks, dear friends who always let me crash at their place in the most expen-
sive city in the country, and who are always up for a laugh.
Historian J. D. Doyle has been unbelievably generous with his time and
support; he’s one of my heroes, and an inspiration for any scholar of our
queer musical heritage. DJ and producer Josh Cheon is also a major force
in the promotion of the legacy of queer popular and dance music, primarily
through his Dark Entries record label. Thank you for your encouragement
x Acknowledgments

and wisdom. Likewise, Joshua Gamson’s friendship and guidance (not to

mention the sharing of his personal archive) have been a constant gift to this
project. With his biography of Sylvester he proved that it was possible to cap-
ture in writing the essence of San Francisco’s magic and its influence on its
unique artists. Thank you, too, musicologists, dance historians, and other
friends throughout the world who have helped and guided me, especially
Byron Adams, Christina Baade, Philip Brett, Jennifer Doctor, Robert Fink,
Aaron Hill, Nate Hodges, Loren Kajikawa, James Kennaway, Val Martinez,
Susan McClary, Mitchell Morris, Josh Reed, Cecilia Sun, and my colleagues
in disco Hunter Charlton and Jaap Kooijman.
My greatest thanks must go to all the amazing people who shared
their experiences with me, incredible stories of friendship, dancing, and
musicking. Thank you to Mark Abramson, Ken Alan, Marianna Beachdell,
Blackberri, Barry Blum, Joe Bomback, Steven Ames Brown, John Carollo,
Brian Chin, Keefe Chow, Karl Davis, Dana Daye, Steve Fabus, Joan Faulkner,
Lisa Fredenthal-​Lee, Richard Guile, Katie Guthorn, Mike Gymnaites, John
Hedges, Gregory Higgins, Linda Imperial, Audrey Joseph, Bobby Kent,
Ernest Kohl, Jim Komarek, Kurt Lawson, Rhani Lee, Robert Lee, Gene Leone,
John Levy, Sharon McKnight, Carla Ann Nicholson, Dan Nicoletta, Chris
Njirich, Matthew McQueen, Jim Piechota, Benji Rubenstein, Jennifer Collier
Salisbury, Randall Schiller, Chrysler Sheldon, Chico Starr, Ian Anthony
Stephens, Peter Struve, Marsha Stern, Jon Sugar, Jeanie Tracy, Maurice Tani,
Lester Temple, Horace Jack Tolson, Bobby Viteritti, Dennis Wadlington,
and Joe Yeary. I especially want to thank David Diebold for capturing the
memories and experiences of so many artists and clubgoers in his essential
Tribal Rites.
Jim Hopkins’s ongoing work with the San Francisco Disco Preservation
Society has enabled those of us who weren’t lucky enough to have been there
to experience the music through his incredible recovery project. Thank you,
Jim, for your generous patience with my endless questions.
Thank you to my parents for their unending encouragement and support;
I wish mom could be here to see this project completed. I miss her every
day. The loss of Mike, too, has been a huge blow to us all, but Oscar, Natalie,
Lizzie, Violet, Chris, Heather, and Max are as solid a family as I could hope
for. And finally, to my husband, David, who has listened to a lot of disco over
the last ten years and hasn’t complained yet, I love you, and thank you!
 Introduction
Setting Up the Sound

In September 2018, I recruited my husband and two friends from Reno to

attend a Go Bang! party at San Francisco’s historic bar the Stud. Not that they
needed much encouragement. Our trips over the Sierra Nevada mountains,
through the Donner Pass, to the City by the Bay for barhopping were cathartic
and soul-​affirming; weekends of dancing, drinking, socializing, staying
at the notorious Beck’s Motor Lodge, and usually starting and ending with
Marcello’s Pizza on Castro Street. We were happy to be examples of the kind
of tourists the gay mecca was known for attracting. This particular party at
the Stud was a celebration of Sylvester, the high-​energy disco star who in the
late 1970s had kicked off the “San Francisco sound” in dance music, and the
night would be filled with not only Sylvester’s tunes but also the songs heard
in San Francisco’s gay nightclubs like the I-​Beam and Trocadero Transfer in
the early 1980s, from local labels like Megatone and Moby Dick Records. The
DJ collective Go Bang! has hosted parties since 2008, focusing primarily on
music of our collective gay past. This group of queer DJs—​Sergio Fedasz,
Jimmy DePre, Prince Wolf, and the legendary Steve Fabus—​frequently
themes its evenings around influential gay musical figures, including Patrick
Cowley, Sylvester, Hector Xtravaganza, Juanita More, and Jerry Bonham.
That night while dancing, singing, and sweating on the Stud’s packed
dance floor, I felt a kinship not only with those whose bodies moved next to
mine but also with a community of the past; I imagined I felt the same things
they felt as they moved their bodies to the same music forty years earlier. In
that space we danced, and in dancing shared these imagined pasts; imagi-
nary mostly because their stories have been lost, forgotten, or buried in the
wreckage of decades of the AIDS epidemic. I felt that the music and the act of
musicking embodied on the dance floor captured some almost ineffable es-
sence of their experience, and I knew I wanted to try and tell their stories in a
less liminal way. The act of writing history is an act of history making, a point
never made clearer to me than in the construction of this narrative, of the

Menergy. Louis Niebur, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022.
DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197511077.003.0001
2 Menergy

attempt to restore individuals to the history of music. My version, of course,

betrays my own prejudices and interests in electronics, in gay men, and in the
seedier side of gay life, but I have as a historian attempted to portray people as
I believe they were: complex, nuanced agents in a musical environment that
for the first time celebrated rather than denigrated them.
The history of the San Francisco sound is inevitably bound up in the his-
tory of the “Castro clone,” that subculture of gay men that thrived in the
hothouse environment of San Francisco in the 1970s until the rise of AIDS
in the 1980s. Close-​cropped hair, mustache, tight Levi 501s, white t-​shirt
underneath plaid flannel, leather jacket; the look was one of exaggerated
white masculinity. The emergence of the clone type was gradual, but by the
mid-​1970s it dominated the public’s perception of the gay community in
the Castro. Clone historian Martin H. Levine described the clone commu-
nity as “a somewhat closed community in the 1970s—​a gay ghetto organ-
ized around a set of socially isolated friendship cliques and crowds, which
coalesced around a series of meeting spots known as the circuit.”1 This net-
work of bars, restaurants, and bathhouses was centered primarily around the
Castro and included venues south of Market (SoMa), but it largely ignored
the established gay spots on Polk Street, which held on to its preclone atmos-
phere, despite the presence of discos like Bojangles, N’Touch, and Buzzby’s.
It’s not a subculture without fault, and many have justifiably critiqued it, both
from without and within. David Goodstein, editor of the nationwide gay
magazine The Advocate, defined the Castro of the late 1970s rather unchar-
itably as “essentially a refugee culture made up of gay men who, in a sense,
are convalescing in the ghetto from all those damaging years in Podunk.”2
He described “the Castro Street group” as a “really rough culture. Their
relationships are brief, they don’t work but live off welfare, they hang out like
teenagers, they drink too much, they take too many drugs, they fuck all day
and night, they are scattered—​and of course radical politically. They act like
kids in a candy store.”3 While it’s easy to dismiss Goodstein’s assessment with
a “yeah, and that’s bad how?,” his critical view was shared by many disillu-
sioned gay men at the time.
It was also, for those people of color who interacted or participated in it, a
mostly white and racist culture, although most white participants ironically
remember the Castro of the 1970s as a utopian environment where all indi-
viduals were welcomed equally. In this I’m reminded of Sherrie Tucker’s dis-
cussion of the dancers at the Hollywood Canteen in the 1940s, who similarly
recalled the space in differing terms:
 Setting Up the Sound 3

Some white former Canteen-​goers talked about racial tensions but most
narrated the dance floor as completely integrated, friendly, and uncontro-
versial. One after another insisted that it was a “wonderful” place where
“everyone was together” and “there was no prejudice.”. . . Canteen-​goers of
color more often narrated a segregated or at least partially segregated envi-
ronment. When I asked Mel Bryant, an African-​American veteran, about
the extent to which the dance floor was integrated, he replied, “Don’t you
believe it.” He added that it was “a different thing, a wonderful thing to have
a place where soldiers could go, but it wasn’t integrated in an equal way.”4

Similarly, none of the white interviewees with whom I spoke remembered

the dance clubs or local music subculture as racist. But without exception
the people of color I spoke with recalled incident after incident of racist be-
havior, both institutionally and by individuals in the Castro. Like so many of
my white informants, I’ve been able to ignore the clashes of intersectionality
faced by gay men of color in the Castro, seeing only the utopian aspects of gay
liberation. Likewise, as a book about a primarily male world, women are not
featured heavily here. Quite a few women did, however, feature prominently
in the scene, particularly straight-​identified women, and I have tried to high-
light their contributions to a subculture that didn’t always treat women with
the greatest respect. Gay men are not immune to the historic problems of
racism and sexism endemic to the United States; rather, San Francisco gay
life reflected the biases inherent in all American cultures where different
power dynamics are in play. I hope I have not downplayed these biases in
my narrative. I have tried to look at the ways in which, despite these intrac-
table issues, gay men of color and women sometimes found their own liber-
ation in the San Francisco sound and on the dance floors of the city’s discos,
and I mark that experience as mediated through prejudice or privilege when
others have observed it as such.

Disco

Before the changes fought for in Stonewall’s wake, same-​sex dancing was
one of the many offences that could get you locked up. “It was a time when
just moving in time to the music was enough to get you called down by an
angry, frightened bartender yelling no dancing,” one bar-​goer recalled in
the mid-​1970s: “Even when dancing was eventually allowed, it would be a
4 Menergy

risky business . . . permissible only so long as there was no touching.”5 With

the gradual loosening of antigay laws after the Stonewall uprising of 1969,
dancing took on a significance that is hard to overstate.
Disco was the sound and style adopted as the dominant musical force in
the newly legalized (if still frequently stigmatized) public meeting places of
American and European gay communities in the early 1970s. As Alice Echols
has shown so eloquently, disco music gave several groups a sense of agency,
including women and African Americans.6 For gay men of any class or eth-
nicity, disco also held out the promise of freedom, as a vehicle for expressing
a communal identity through dancing. Described by one gay man in 1976
as a physical manifestation of his liberation, his gayness made manifest, the
act of dancing in a gay bar exemplified a new kind of public declaration of
sexuality.7 For San Francisco author Donald Cameron Scot, dancing was a
catharsis, a transcending practice that embodied his identity entirely:

Soaring higher as computerized lights flash from panel to panel across the
lighted floor, bodies bobbing, jerking, dancing to the upbeat tempo. Feeling
more than hearing the music. Tripping. Art-​deco patterns of musical
instruments weave in and out of prominence to swiftly changing music.
Busby Berkeley neon violins recede to large spots as trumpets take their
places to silhouette Gladys Knight against a now secondary background or-
chestra, only to give way as other instruments float around the backdrop,
circling to front center stage, then retiring graciously in a continuum of
swirling, circular motion.8

In 1976, for example, disco was used as a way to bring together various
factions of the gay liberation movement. That year, a prominent group of gay
liberationists established a National Disco Tea Dance, where they proudly
proclaimed that, “In cities and resorts from San Juan to Waikiki, the gay
community will dance . . . and to the same music. . . . And, as the lights and
music around the country flash on in harmony, that Sunday and each Sunday
thereafter new cities will join the network and the music will play, and as our
numbers grow, so too will our power, and all we have to do is dance.”9
San Francisco was second only to New York City in the cultivation of this
dancing culture, but the legacy of 1960s counterculture ideals and the rela-
tive homogeneity of the participants (increasingly white, college-​educated,
middle class) forged a unique, highly performative subculture far from
the grit of the New York scene. The emergence of San Francisco’s Castro
 Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
The horrors of Ryazan were repeated in Vladimir. Only young
women, nuns, and strong laborers were led away captive. The sick,
the infirm, the weak and the aged were slaughtered at once, and
without mercy. Smoking ruins alone were left of the beautiful city of
Vladimir. When the Mongols marched away from the remnant of the
capital, there was not a groan, or a cry to be heard from the people,
for all who were in that city were lying dead.

To overtake Yuri and destroy his forces was no difficult task for the
savage invaders. They found him in Yaroslavl regions, on the banks
of the Siti. Among other princes was Vassilko, his favorite nephew, a
son of Constantine, whom his dying father had asked Yuri to treat as
one of his own sons. Crushed by news from Vladimir, Yuri seemed
dazed, and repeated unceasingly: “Why am I left, why do I not die
with them?” Grief for children and wife was swallowed up in his
anguish over the destruction of the city, the people, the bishop, and
the clergy. Volunteers who were pouring in brought similar tidings
from every part: “The enemy are slaying all people, burning all
places; they are everywhere!” Only one thing remained: retreat to the
distant north. But from [237]Vologda, and even from Galitch beyond
the Volga, came news of the same universal slaughter and
destruction. Three thousand men, sent as scouts to the north,
returned with these tidings: “The enemy are attacking off there, they
are around us far and near, they are everywhere.”

Soon the struggle began on the Siti, and became straightway a most
terrible massacre. Numbers crushed everything. The Mongols had
scarcely begun when they had victory. Those people who were not
mortally wounded, and who rose from the battle field, and a few who
were unwounded fled, and hid in the forests. Yuri, Grand Prince of
Vladimir, lay dead in a great pile of bodies,—his head was not with
his body. More terrible still was the death of Vassilko. The young
prince was taken alive by the Mongols. Attractive in mind and in
person, his men said of him that whoso had served him would not
serve another. He pleased also the Mongols. Batu strove to incline
him to friendship. “Oh, dark kingdom of vileness,” answered
Vassilko, “God has given me into thy hands, but thou canst not
separate me from Christians.” He would take neither food nor drink
from the pagans. Enraged at his stubbornness, they killed him most
cruelly, and threw out his body to be eaten by wild beasts. The
corpse of the young prince was found in a forest, under the guidance
of a woman who said that she had witnessed his tortures, and
Vassilko was buried with Yuri, his uncle. The headless Yuri, as found
on the field of battle, was put in a coffin, but afterward the head was
discovered and placed with the body, and the two bodies were taken
later on to Rostoff for interment.

After the destruction of Vladimir, Rostoff and Suzdal, the whole

principality of Vladimir was ravaged. The lands now included in the
governments of Vladimir, Yaroslavl, Kostroma, Tver and Moscow,
with a part of Novgorod and Vologda, were scenes of ruin and terror.
Everywhere the same marks of Mongols. Such noted places as Tver,
Torjok, Volokolamsk, Yaroslavl and Mologa were sacked and burned
to the ground, as well as villages and settlements beyond reckoning.
The Russians looked on this invasion as a testimony of God’s anger,
such an evil as a flood or an earthquake, irresistible and almighty. In
small villages, when the Mongols appeared, the people grew
helpless from terror; those who could escape rushed away to the
forests, secreting their property [238]in the ground; what remained
was left to fire and sword. Such boundless woe had never been
witnessed in Russia. The surviving clergy throughout the country
called on all to prepare for the last hour.

The Mongols cut people down as a mower cuts grass. When they
entered a province, they sent out detachments on every side; like
locusts, they destroyed everything utterly. Monasteries and villages
they stripped clean of all things that had value. From stores of grain
they took what they needed, and burned the remainder, boasting that
grass would not grow on their path.

A great thaw saved Northwestern Russia. In the first days of March,

the Mongols, when within a hundred versts of Novgorod, became
alarmed by the swelling of rivers and turned back. Conducting their
countless treasures and urging on long lines of prisoners, they
moved swiftly southeastward to grass-growing regions. On the way
they came to Koselsk, where they met a most stubborn resistance. A
detachment attacked the town for forty-two days, but succeeded in
storming the place only after reinforcements had been sent by Batu,
who was enraged at this resistance. It was destroyed utterly, but its
fame will never die in Russian history.

Before the wooden walls of this city, the Mongols lost four thousand
men and three princes. When at last they burst into the town, they
were met by old and young, men and women, who rushed at them
with knives, axes and other weapons, and fought with desperation
from house to house, from street to street. Gradually forced back,
they retired into the Kremlin, or fortress, and fought till the last man
perished. Vassili, the little prince, who was very young, was
drowned, it is said, in the blood of the people.

The Mongols called this town “Mo balig” (town of woe), the same
name which they gave Bamian of the Kwarezmian Empire, the place
at which Moatagan, one of Jinghis Khan’s grandsons, fell pierced by
an arrow, and where the young man’s mother, a daughter of Jinghis,
rushed in at the head of ten thousand warriors and left nothing alive,
not a man, woman or child, destroying even the dogs and cats,
slaying everything in her vengeance.

After Batu had established himself in the steppes of the Volga, he

began to build Sarai, the capital of his Horde. He cleared the whole
country and drove out the Polovtsi. Kotyan, the Polovtsi [239]Khan,
took a remnant of his people, forty thousand in number, and settled
in Hungary. The king gave him land on condition that he and his
tribes became Catholic. The rest of the Polovtsi joined with the
Mongols, and from that day they ceased forever as a people in
Russia.

Pereyaslavl on the Alta and Chernigoff were doomed now, and all
who could leave those two places hurried elsewhere for refuge.

When winter had again frozen the rivers and put snow on the steppe
lands, the Mongols set out afresh to capture cities and slaughter new
thousands of people. Batu sent a number of his leaders of ten
thousand to the north again to search out and finish all places
bordering on Vladimir. This work they did thoroughly in December,
1238, and January, 1239. Batu, meanwhile, took Pereyaslavl;
destroyed the church of Saint Michael; slew the bishop; killed all who
were useless as captives; took whatever belonged to the people and
the churches; and moved on Chernigoff. The walls of that city were
broken in by hurling stones, each of such weight that five men were
needed to lift it. The city was stormed then and burned, the people
slain, and every building plundered. One of the younger princes fell
with the warriors. The chronicler states that the older princes had
fled to Hungary. It is true that Michael’s heir, Rostislav, who had been
left by his father in Galitch, and driven thence by Daniel soon after,
had gone to marry King Bela’s daughter. Michael, himself, who at
this time had taken Yaroslav’s place, in Kief, soon found it impossible
to stay there.

When Chernigoff was ruined, Batu commanded his brother to

advance upon Kief and make a reconnaissance. From the Chernigoff
bank of the Dnieper he saw the mother of cities and wondered at its
beauty. Envoys were sent to demand its surrender. The Kief people
slew them, and Michael fled from the capital. He went, as he
thought, to a safe place, to Hungary, to be present at his son’s
wedding. But, learning of the ruin of Chernigoff by the Mongols, Bela
would not give his daughter to Rostislav. Michael and his son went
then to the Mazovian prince, Konrad.

Bolder than Michael, Rostislav, a Smolensk prince, occupied Kief,

now abandoned by others. But Daniel of Galitch would not let
Rostislav stay there, and seized for himself the old capital. He did
not wait in Kief for Batu; he sent Dmitri, his boyar, to defend [240]the
city. Daniel left even Volynia and Galitch, and went to Hungary. From
there he went to Poland, for Bela himself was struck with such terror
that he fled from the Mongols, and knew not where to find refuge.

In 1239 the whole Russian land, if not yet under Mongols, looked on
that doom as inevitable. There was such panic terror that men lost
proper use of their faculties. All that interval from December, 1237,
when Ryazan was destroyed, till December, 1240, was a time of
destruction and captivity, and the end came only when there was
nothing to destroy, and all the treasures of Russia were in Mongol
hands.

For the people these three years were merged in one unit of time,
filled with anguish, terror and despair. It might be said that they had
lost the sense and the power to count seasons. That Russian land,
which in the days of Yaroslav the Lawgiver and Monomach his
grandson had so easily overcome its enemies, and which in the days
of Big Nest, Monomach’s nephew, in spite of all its divisions and
conflicts, still preserved some appearance of oneness, existed no
longer.

On the San and the Dniester there was the same terror of Mongols
as on the Desna and the Dnieper. From the north, from Vladimir,
from Novgorod, no regiments appeared, and none were expected;
no prince came with help, and no man was looking for him. The
whole land was as silent as a grave or a desert. The Mongols had
not captured Novgorod, but this was because they considered it as
subject to Vladimir. They had been sated with bloodshed, and looked
on the Vladimir region as thoroughly subjected. To avoid further evil,
Novgorod had to connect itself absolutely with Vladimir, and with it
carry the weight of the burden. Besides, the distant north was a
country without attraction for Mongols. Beyond Novgorod lived the
Chud people (Fins), whose lands extended to the shores of the
Frozen Ocean. The Mongols did not consider that Novgorod could
be the center of a region dangerous to their dominion, hence they
left the old capital of Rurik uninjured. If they had had reason to
punish Novgorod they would have razed it as they razed Ryazan and
Vladimir.

The Kief campaign was undertaken by Batu on a scale that was

enormous; with him went his brothers and relatives: Kuyuk, son of
the Grand Khan, was there, and Mangu and Baidar, grandsons
[241]of Jinghis Khan, also a multitude of famous commanders,—
Burundai, Subotai and others. The whole army consisted of more
than five hundred thousand men.

After finishing with Russia, Batu intended to pass into Hungary and
destroy that country. He had sent a demand for obedience already,
and a reprimand to the king for receiving Kotyan with his Polovtsi,
whom Batu looked on as slaves who had fled from their master.

As soon as the Dnieper was frozen, the army passed over. The
Mongol warriors were so numerous, the squeaking of their wagons
so piercing, the neighing of their horses and the roaring of camels so
deafening, that men in the city could not hear, as was declared, what
they said to one another. First the attackers surrounded Kief; next
they built a wooden wall; then they erected their engines and hurled
immense stones at the city walls day and night without ceasing. The
mother city was defended bravely by its citizens, but available
warriors were few; for so short-sighted had the princes been that
even when the enemy was on the march they had continued to
struggle for succession. When the Mongols had made sufficient
breaches in the walls, they rushed through and began a hand-to-
hand struggle. The Kief men fought desperately. From morning till
evening the battle raged, but toward night overwhelming numbers
conquered, and the Mongols held the walls of the city. That night the
Kief men made a new wall in front of the first one, even women and
children assisting in building defenses, and next day the battle
continued. From every house, church and monastery people came
out, and fought to the death in all parts of the city. In the churches,
multitudes had gathered, and from the weight of the people and their
effects on roofs and in the galleries the walls fell. Many perished in
hand-to-hand conflict; others were suffocated with smoke; but none
surrendered, for all knew that but one fate awaited them.

For several days in succession the slaying of people and the

destruction of buildings continued. The Vladimir Church fell; the
Sophia Cathedral, built by Yaroslav the Lawgiver, endured best of
any; the body of that church remained sound, and there is one
uninjured part of the wall, on which is an image of the Virgin,
preserved to the present. Of the Catacomb Monastery, the ancient
church and walls were destroyed; of the Golden Gate, built by
[242]Yaroslav, only ruins remained. The more violently the people
defended the remnant of their city, and fought out their last hour, the
more joyously did the destroyers carry on the destruction. They slew
old men and children to the last one. If in other cities they had taken
pleasure in general slaughter and devastation, they took tenfold
more pleasure now. The strong places and the sanctuaries of a city
were never overthrown with such fury, and never were the Mongols
so relentless as in Kief, the city of churches. The destroyers did not
spare even tombs; they forced them open, and with their heels
crushed the skulls and broke the bones of the ancient princes. The
havoc was so great that during the entire fourteenth century which
followed, and in the fifteenth century, a large part of the city
remained a desert covered with refuse. The remnants of stone
buildings which had stood for centuries sank into the ground, dust
drifted in over them, and then was concealed all those ruins. Of that
Kief which, in the days both of Yaroslav the Lawgiver and
Monomach, was compared by travelers with Tsargrad, there
remained only the memory. It fell December, 1240, and was never
renewed in its former magnificence, even to our day.

The defender of Kief, Daniel’s boyar, Dmitri, was brought half alive
before Batu, who repeated these words of praise: “The Russians
know well how to drink the cup of death.” He gave him his life, and
took the hero with him in his campaign against Volynia and Galitch.
The boyar, continuing to serve his prince, strove to lead the Khan
from ruining Galitch. He advised him to go quickly and take
vengeance on the King of Hungary for harboring Kotyan and his
Polovtsi, saying: “It is time to go against the Hungarians; unless thou
go now they will gather great forces and exclude thee forever. Their
land is a strong one.” Thus spoke Dmitri to Batu, while, in mind, he
was weeping over Galitch.

Batu was the more willing to hurry forward to Hungary, since he had
learned that Michael of Chernigoff and Daniel of Galitch had gone to
that kingdom. This, however, did not change his plan, though it may
have hastened its execution, for the campaign against Galitch and
Volynia was notable for swiftness. Batu on his way took through
falsehood Ladyjin, a town which fought stubbornly and refused to
yield. He promised the people in case they surrendered [243]to spare
them and their town. At last they respected his word and
surrendered. He slew every man to the last one. Kamenyets he
passed, because its position seemed impregnable. Vladimir, the
capital of Volynia, he took by assault and spared not one person.
Galitch he treated in the same way.

Moving from Vladimir of Volynia along the Būg, the Mongols

advanced only as far as Brest. There, near the edge of Lithuania,
Batu halted. The great swampy forests troubled him and his warriors,
and he resolved to turn back. As one more example of cruelty after
so many, they destroyed Brest and slew all the people. Then they
moved southward.

One division of Batu’s army entered Poland in 1240, ravaged the

province of Lublin, and returned with great booty to Galitch. The
Mongols reappeared in that country, however, in winter, crossing the
Vistula on the ice, but after advancing to within a few miles of
Cracow, they turned again toward Galitch, loaded with much spoil
and driving before them a multitude of captives, among whom were
some of the first people of Poland. They were pursued by Volodmir,
the governor, who surprised them near Palanietz, and killed many.
Discovering how small the attacking party was, the Mongols turned,
made a furious charge, and put them to flight; then they continued
their march. Soon, however, they reëntered Poland with new forces.
The nobility of Sandomir and Cracow assembled their warriors and
advanced to meet the oncoming Mongols, but in the conflict which
followed, they were defeated with great loss.

Boleslav IV at this time occupied the throne of Cracow. Fearing to

remain in the citadel, he took refuge with his family in a castle at the
foot of the Carpathians, and later on in a monastery in Moravia.
Many of the aristocracy of Poland followed his example, escaping to
Hungary or Germany; the common people sought refuge in the
forests, swamps and mountains. The conquerors entered Cracow,
March 24, 1241, and set fire to the city, which they found deserted;
then they marched toward Breslau, the capital of Silesia, devastating
the region through which they passed.

On reaching Breslau, they discovered that it had been reduced to

ashes by the inhabitants, who had taken refuge in the citadel with
the garrison. The Mongols, after investing the fortress for several
days, raised the siege and joined another corps of their [244]army to
march with it against the forces assembled near Lignitz, where
Henry, Duke of Silesia, was commander of about twenty thousand
men. The Mongols were led by a prince (in Polish chronicles called
Péta) whose army far outnumbered that of Duke Henry. The defeat
of the Poles was complete. Henry fled from the field with but four of
his officers; retarded by the fall of his horse, which was wounded, he
mounted a second, but was surrounded, captured, and his head cut
off. The Polish loss was heavy. It is told that to discover the number
of the enemy killed, the Mongols cut an ear from each corpse, and
with those ears filled four large sacks.

They now moved forward, carrying fire and blood even to the
frontiers of Bohemia and Austria. While one part of Péta’s army
besieged Olmütz in Moravia, several corps of it plundered and
devastated the surrounding region. Sternberg, commander of
Olmütz, made a successful sortie from the citadel, killed some three
hundred of the enemy, and returned in safety. A few days later the
Mongols raised camp and marched toward Hungary to join the great
army under Batu. It was evident that they had besieged Olmütz only
for the purpose of pillaging the country round it.

Before marching into Hungary, Batu had written to King Bela,

demanding that he yield obedience to the Mongol sovereign if he
wished to save his own life, or the lives of his subjects. Bela paid no
heed to this demand, and the only measure of defense he took was
to send small detachments to hold the passes of the Carpathians.
There was much dissatisfaction with King Bela, for he had no military
ability; another cause for the dissatisfaction was that he had received
Kotyan, the Polovtsi Khan, and allowed him to settle, with some forty
thousand families, in Hungary. The acquisition of this number of
subjects increased the power of the king, and the hope of converting
the pagans to Christianity gave him pleasure. But these Polovtsi
were so displeasing to the people that in 1240 Bela had to convoke
an assembly of the clergy, and the nobility of his kingdom as well as
the chiefs of the Polovtsi. It was then resolved that the Polovtsi
should be dispersed in different provinces, and should be assigned
uncultivated districts where they could pasture their flocks and herds.
Kotyan was baptized, [245]so also were his chief officers. Still the
hatred of the people continued.

Batu penetrated into Hungary by the pass called “Gate of Russia,”

and was joined by divisions of his army which had been devastating
Poland. Thence he marched toward Pest, and, camping half a day’s
journey from that city, he ravaged the country. The people, thinking
that Kotyan, the Polovtsi Khan, was secretly communicating with
Batu, murmured against the king and demanded the death of Kotyan
and his men. They attacked Kotyan, who defended himself for a
time, but was at last overpowered and killed. This murder only
served to increase the woes of Hungary. The report of it spread to
the country, and the peasants fell on the Polovtsi and massacred
them without mercy. But those who escaped united and later on
avenged their people.

When the Hungarian army had assembled the king marched out of
Pest to meet the Mongols. The result of the conflict was most
disastrous for the Hungarians. The king owed his escape to the
swiftness of his horse. He took refuge near the Carpathians, where
he encountered his son-in-law, who was also seeking an asylum in
that country.
While these events were passing in the heart of Hungary, Kadan
advanced through Transylvania, seizing property, profaning
churches, and leading away captives.

The Mongols remained inactive during the summer of 1241, but in

December of that year a detachment crossed the Danube and
pitched their camp near the city of Strigonia, or Gran. The besieged
destroyed all that was most valuable, killed their horses, and retired
into the stone edifices to defend themselves. The Mongols, furious at
loss of plunder, were careful that no person should escape. They
seized and burned the principal inhabitants over slow fires, to make
them declare where they had hidden their riches.

At this moment news came to Batu of the death of Ogotai, the Grand
Khan, and with the news an order to return to Mongolia at once.

The barbarians had penetrated even into Austria, and a corps

advanced to Neustadt near Vienna, but retired on learning of the
approach of a large army. After the destruction of Strigonia, Kadan
was sent with a detachment against King Bela. Bela, [246]who had
taken refuge in Austria, retired with his family to Agram in Croatia,
where he remained during the summer. Learning that Kadan was
marching toward Agram, he went to Spalato on the Dalmatian coast,
and then to Trau. Kadan marched with marvelous rapidity. Halting for
a few days at Sirbium River, he assembled the Hungarian prisoners
whom he had seized on the march, and had them all put to death.
On arriving at Spalato and learning that the king was not there, he
advanced at once to the neighborhood of Trau, and camped upon
the bank facing the island in the Adriatic where Bela had taken
refuge. There the Mongols remained through the month of March,
and then, after pillaging Cattaro, Suagio and Drivasto, and killing
every man, woman and child who fell into their hands, they returned
by way of Herzegovinia and Serbia to join Batu. While on the march
Kadan received orders to hasten, as all Mongol princes had been
summoned to Mongolia.

Daniel and Vassilko, on hearing that Batu had left Hungary, delayed
for a time in returning to Russia. They knew not where their families
were, or indeed if they were living, and their delight was unbounded
on finding them. On the way home from Poland they could not draw
near Brest, because of the terrible odor of corpses. Very little
remained of the former Vladimir, and the ruined churches were filled
with dead bodies.

Batu, who had brought terror on all Europe by the destruction

wrought in Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Moldavia and certain
portions of Poland, was not pleased with those lands. The West was
too narrow for a nomad people, and Russia became the real
province for Mongols. Hungary and Poland suffered little in
comparison. Batu pitched his tents and built Sarai, as has been
stated, on the bank of the Lower Volga, from where it was
convenient and easy to send troops in every direction, and keep
conquered Russia in obedience. The Golden Horde, as thenceforth
men called the Khan’s residence in Russia, was noted for wealth
even in Batu’s day.

Jinghis Khan, who died in 1227, was succeeded by his eldest son
Ogotai, who reigned from 1229 to 1241. During that reign, Batu
completed his conquest of Russia.

Russia, subject now to the Mongol, learned that a new sovereign

had appeared in Mongolia, but Batu, the grandson of Jinghis
[247]Khan, remained their ruler. To him was given entire control of the
“Kipchak Horde,” his possessions extending from a line somewhat
east of the Ural Mountains to the Danube. He now counted all the
Russian land as his property, and declared to its princes that they
might not live on the Khan’s land unless they bowed down to him.
Thus began the heavy yoke of the Mongols, which was to last for
more than two hundred years.

Mongol law touching subjects was brief, being this, in substance,—

that not only their families and property, but their lives were entirely
at the Khan’s disposition. This law, universal, fundamental,
unchangeable, was applied to all conquered regions. It was
inevitable to give each year one tenth of the harvest and one tenth of
every kind of increase. Every man was liable to military service with
the Mongols against whomsoever they might send him. Bashaks
were appointed in every large town to see to the accurate fulfilment
of these duties, and to keep in obedience both people and princes.
At first princes left in power by the Khan were bound to appear at the
Horde with yearly tribute; besides they were summoned whenever
the need came. They must appear with bending knees, and bowing,
and striking the earth with their foreheads. They were forced to give
special gifts to the Khan, to his wives and his courtiers.

When coming before the Khan, various ceremonies had to be

observed. For instance, when entering his tent, each man had to
cross the threshold without touching it; if he touched it death was the
penalty. But before being admitted to the eyes of the ruler, princes
were obliged to go through many trials by wizards. They were forced
to bow to fire, to bushes, to the shades of dead Khans; to pass
between two fires while the wizards and witches who lighted those
fires pronounced incantations.

As this bowing to bushes and fire and the shades of dead rulers took
place before pictures on felt and on silk, it seemed like bowing to
idols. They had also to praise Mongol customs, to drink liquor made
of mare’s milk, and eat of Mongol dishes. The least show of
repugnance or indifference involved peril. But, since effect was felt
keenly by Mongols, kindness and terror alternated. They knew at the
Horde who the men were from whom they must withhold honor, and
to whom honor ought to be given. Rulers of [248]regions under
Mongol dominion, but remote from Sarai and bordering on lands
which were free, were received more politely than those who were
nearer. The following has been stated by a man who observed the
position in Batu’s day: “The Mongols take less tribute from those
whose lands are remote from them, and border on others which are
free, and from those whom they fear for some reason. They treat
those remote subjects more kindly, so that they may not attack, or
that others may obey with more willingness.” The cruel and savage
Batu was sometimes fond of charming those princes who bowed
down before him, and of showing magnanimity in treatment, and at
such times he seemed the most kindly host possible.

Though all Russia was under the Mongol, the yoke weighed with
greatest burden on the lands in the center; that place which was the
real heart of Russia, and had formed the principality of Vladimir. It
was unspeakably more difficult for Yaroslav to manage than for
princes in Volynia and Galitch. After Kief had been swept from the
earth, so to speak, or crushed into it, and Batu had shown no wish to
take Hungary or Poland, Galitch and Volynia, as being nearest those
countries, were in the easiest position of all the principalities in
Russia.

Batu, in his first campaign, did not touch Smolensk in its western
portions, and in the second he did not go beyond Brest in a northern
direction. In the princes of Volynia and Galitch he had his last
representatives. On the west was the country which for their own
reasons the Russians represented to Batu as little dependent on
their rule, in fact a foreign region, and purposely they called it not
Rus, but Litvá. Thus of all Russian princes, the position of Daniel
was most favored with reference to the Mongols. As to his rival in
Chernigoff, Prince Michael, his possessions might have been called
non-existent. Chernigoff and Kursk were in the worst position
possible, because nearest the Mongols. Hence after the conquest,
Daniel and Michael were, each in his own way, distinguished beyond
other princes in Russia.

Daniel knew not from childhood what rest was, and only in years of
ripe manhood, after endless toil and great effort, did he secure
Volynia and Galitch on the very eve of the Mongol tempest, to
appear next in a fateful position from which he found no issue
whatever. His principalities, which comprised the borderland of
[249]Southwestern Russia in the days of Kief supremacy, were
attracted to the ancient capital from the earliest, but as the Russia of
Kief times existed no longer, and as Northern Russia had been
turned into a Mongol possession, the ruler of Volynia and Galitch had
to do one of two things: either compact his lands into a new and
special body and stand apart from the rest of Russia,—alone he
could not stand, for he would be obliged to associate himself willingly
or unwillingly with his western neighbors, the Poles and Hungarians,
and, as they were in close connection with the Holy Roman-German
Empire, he might not stand apart even from union with that power
(he might be forced to join Rome, the Latin communion),—or he had
the other issue: to recognize and strengthen the ancient bond of
Volynia and Galitch with the remainder of Russia, with that Russia
which had begun in Rurik’s day in Novgorod, and which was
baptized in the Dnieper under Vladimir. But in this case, he would
have to suffer Mongol captivity with it, and sacrifice his own land for
the benefit of the common, much suffering country. He would have to
cling to the princes of the house of Vladimir, who had been turned
into slaves, and bear with them the same bitter burden which they
were bearing. His Orthodox feeling forbade him to join Rome and the
West. But to join the other Russian princes and the rest of the
Russian people in their subjection to the Mongols was also beyond
his endurance; his pride could not brook that, so he languished all
the rest of his life in a position without escape and without moral
refuge.

Hungary and Poland, crushed by the Mongol invasion, were saved

only because those countries were too narrow for the nomad
Mongols, who wanted the freedom of movement and the space
which existed in Russia. But the Hungarians and Poles, proud of
their safety, though defeated and led away captive in every
encounter with Mongols, explained the affair in another way: the
West was no longer afraid of a Mongol invasion. Rome, which had
tried in the time of Daniel’s father to bring “the kingdom” of Galitch to
the Latin religion, did not cease now to point out to Daniel, with pride,
the freedom of the West from Mongol subjection, and to promise that
if he would obey the True Mother he would have a right to the same
freedom. The Pope explained to Daniel that the only means of
saving his country from that [250]slavery which had been put on it
because of its schism, was “to return” to the bosom of the Mother.
He promised in that case the assistance of Poles and Hungarians
and the whole Roman Empire, and offered at the same time a crown
and a kingly title. Daniel refused the title and the crown, but asked
very earnestly for the military assistance. He asked that Germany,
Hungary, Bohemia, Poland, and all who obeyed the Holy See,
should be roused to a general attack on the pagan Mongols. Rome
summoned all nations against the Mongols, and to Daniel came
assurance that aid from the West would not be slow in arriving.

Of Russian princes Daniel alone reigned a number of years without a

summons from Batu to visit the Golden Horde. He had paid no
tribute and had not been to the Khan with obeisance. But the
promised aid from the West came not, and in 1250 envoys arrived
from Batu, who repeated the message sent to other Russian princes:
“It is unbecoming to live on the Khan’s land, and not bow down to
him.” To this was added: “Give Galitch.”
Daniel might give Galitch, withdraw to the depth of Volynia, and be
satisfied with half his inheritance; besides the country beyond Brest
was unconquered. But after praying earnestly, and counseling with
his brother, Daniel said: “I will go to Batu.”

When Daniel reached Kief, he saw dreadful misery. He prayed to the

Archangel Michael; he implored the monks to pray for him, and then
sailed down the river to Pereyaslavl. Hence he went directly along by
Mongol stations toward the Golden Horde, and he grieved greatly
when he witnessed the pagan ceremonies in the Russian land. In
places Orthodox for centuries, men worshiped fire, bowed down to
the sun, moon, earth, and dead ancestors. Beyond the Volga and
near Sarai, he was troubled still more when he heard how at the
Horde they would force him to pagan observances. By that time
most other Russian princes had been at the Horde, and the Mongols
declared that not one of them had violated the ceremonies
established for receptions. One of the officials said to Daniel: “How
great is Prince Yaroslav of Vladimir, but no exception was made for
him. He bowed to the bushes, and thou wilt bow.” Daniel spat, and
said: “The devil speaks through thy lips. God close them to guard me
from hearing such utterances.”

But Batu, in addition to saving Daniel from all that might seem
[251]like the worship of idols, greeted him pleasantly, and with
unusual kindness. When the prince, led into the Khan’s tent, bowed
in a way that seemed to humiliate him, Batu said: “Daniel, thou wert
long in coming, but thou art here and thou hast done well to come.
Thou art ours now. Take our drink.” And they brought him a goblet.
The prince emptied it and bowed, repeating the commonplace words
which all princes uttered on similar occasions: “God gave thee
power. I obey thee through God’s will.” He bowed again, and begged
to salute the Khan’s consort. “Go,” said Batu, and he added when
Daniel was about to leave, “Thou art not accustomed to milk; drink
wine.” And when he was taking farewell of the Khan’s wife, they
brought a goblet of wine to him from Batu. They detained Daniel at
the Horde a shorter time than was usual for princes. After confirming
all his rights in Volynia and Galitch, they dismissed him with
courtesy.

Great was the delight of Daniel’s family when he returned to them

unharmed. His success was mentioned on all sides. That summer
the King of Hungary sent this message: “Take my daughter for thy
son Lev.” The king feared Daniel because he had visited the Horde,
and besides, on the San, he had beaten the king’s son-in-law and
expelled him from Galitch. When the wedding took place Daniel
restored all captive Hungarians. Thus he and the king became
friendly. Roman, another son of Daniel, married Gertrude, a daughter
of the late Duke of Styria. Roman now claimed Styria as the dowry of
Gertrude. The King of Bohemia, whose queen was a daughter of the
same duke, also claimed this inheritance.

Daniel, with Boleslav of Poland, Bela’s son-in-law, campaigned

against the Bohemian king. He did this to make friends in the West,
and thus get rid of the Mongols. He tried to induce his western
neighbors to join him, and for this purpose he entered their circle of
action. But from beginning to end, every promise of aid proved futile,
—empty sound, nothing more. The Pope saw very well how fruitless
were his efforts. Not only in Germany, but in Hungary and Poland his
messages were unheeded. At last Daniel left papal promises
unanswered. Then a legate was sent to deliver the crown to him and
anoint him king in Western fashion. It was not the first time that they
had come to Daniel for this purpose, but he had set them aside with
various excuses. For example, [252]he had said earlier to the legate
that it was no time for coronation when his lands were in danger,—
not a crown did he need, but strong warriors. But now the papal
envoy found Daniel at the place and time most convenient for his
object, namely, at Cracow, on the way from Bohemia to Galitch,
surrounded by his allies after a victory and the capture of a city.

He refused this time also, saying: “I am in a foreign land.” But the

papal legate, Polish princes, and magnates urged Daniel to take the
gift offered. His mother, a Polish princess, insisted also and helped
to influence him. “The Pope respects the Greek Church,” said the
legate, “and curses all men who offend it. He is about to call a
council to unite the two Churches. Aid will come from the Pope very
quickly.” The Polish princes promised with every solemnity, and their
magnates promised with them, that after Daniel had taken the crown
they would march against the Mongols.

In 1253, Daniel was crowned in Drogitchin. His subjection to Rome

was complete, as it seemed to Polish princes. But, breaking all
solemn promises, neither Poles nor Hungarians made a move to
march against the Mongols.

The following year Batu, who had been watching, and understood
perfectly Daniel’s problem, sent an envoy renowned for his
keenness, with a command to raze and destroy every fortress in
Volynia and Galitch. Never had he commanded the Galitch prince so
decisively, as if to show the world that he knew the situation and was
master of it. Daniel, understanding well that no opposition could
serve him, withdrew to Volynia, and sent Vassilko, his brother, and
Lev, his own son, to meet Burundai, the keen envoy. “Raze your
fortresses!” said Burundai. And all were destroyed at his order. The
walls of Vladimir in Volynia, though of wood, were so strong and
immense that there was no chance to tear them down before the
coming of the envoy, hence they were burned by Vassilko
immediately. Such promptness was praised by Burundai, who even
dined with Vassilko on that day. But when this envoy departed,
another one came, who said: “Burundai has commanded me to level
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