They then advanced into the steppe and encountered the Asiatics on the Kalka, a small river running into the Sea of Azof. Unfortunately for the Christians, there was lack of a supreme commander who could hold in check the hot-headed princes from the various cities, each of whom desired to gain all the honors of the battle for himself; and thus disaster overwhelmed the whole.
As our own Custer, at the Little Big Horn, thought he would rout the entire nation of Sioux warriors under Chief Gall and Sitting Bull without sharing the glory with anyone else, so Daniel of Galitch, Mstislas the Bold, and Oleg, each on his own account, drove headlong into the Tartar hosts, only to be swallowed up and annihilated with the flower of their chivalry. The combat had no sooner become general than the Polovosti were seized with a panic and fell back in confusion upon the Russian main army, throwing it into disorder.
A general rout was the inevitable result. As the valor of the intrepid Knights of France at Crecy and Poictiers wrought their own ruin, so the Russian princes had made an exhibition of bravery at fearful cost to their country. About nine-tenths of the Christian army were slaughtered, the Prince of Kief alone leaving ten thousand dead upon the field.
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From General Nelson A. Miles
Thrilling Stories of The Russian-Japanese War, 1904
