The two generals who fought at the Kalka River were Jebe and Subutai, and by 1223 they had already been raiding continuously for three years.
Starting from Persia, they had cut through the Caucasus, defeated the Kingdom of Georgia, destroyed an Alan-Circassian coalition, then turned on the Cumans, a Turkic nomadic people who controlled the steppes north of the Black Sea.
When the Cumans fled westward, their Khan rode to his son-in-law, the Rus prince Mstislav the Bold of Galicia, and begged for help.
Mstislav gathered a coalition of Rus princes, including Mstislav III of Kiev, and assembled a force of somewhere between 30,000 and 80,000 men depending on the source.
The coalition crossed the Dnieper River and pushed east across the open steppe. An early skirmish went their way. They overran a Mongol rearguard of around 1,000 men and killed its commander.
What they did not understand was that the rearguard existed specifically to be destroyed. It was bait, and the chase that followed was the trap.
Jebe and Subutai rode east for nine days and the Rus princes followed, stretched out across the steppe in a loose, disorganized column, each prince commanding his own contingent, no unified command, no shared plan, growing more confident with every mile of empty steppe the Mongols appeared to cede.
They had never seen this before. No army in their experience ran this far without turning to fight. On the ninth day, at the banks of the Kalka River, the Mongols turned.
The attack began before the coalition had fully crossed the river. Jebe and Subutai hit from the front and flanks simultaneously with horse archers who fired at range, targeting horses and opening gaps in the line.
The Cumans broke first and ran straight back through the Rus ranks behind them, shattering formation as they went. The Mongol heavy cavalry drove through the gaps.
The army of Chernigov, still advancing and unaware the battle had even started, collided headlong with the retreating Cumans and collapsed into the confusion.
Smoke bombs disrupted any attempt to coordinate. The Rus forces surrounded on three sides and with the river at their backs were cut apart unit by unit.
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