Battle on the Ice

Novgorod, a wealthy trading city in northern Russia, was set in the midst of an incredibly hostile world. To the east lay the vast Mongol Empire, which had arisen suddenly in the Far East and swept westward, crushing all opposition before it. The hard-riding Mongols had only recently smashed a Russian army at the Battle of the Kalka River in 1223, placing thrown much of Russia under the yoke of a harsh tributary system.

To the north were hostile Swedes, and to the west, along the shores of the Baltic Sea, were the expanding territories of the Catholic German order of the Teutonic Knights. The order had originally been established in the late 12th century to crusade against Muslim forces in the