The mountain sentinel. [volume] (Ebensburg, Pa.) 1844-1853, 1849-10-04
The Russian Empire.
Its History to the Time of Peter the Great .

on the gIODe, III the lOuI iioSs AAiP VI 'oiA
particulars of empire-its history, Its ex-
tent, its population, and its power.
1t has for Europe another interest-the
interest of alarm, the evidence of an ambi-
ton which has existed for hundred and
fifty years, and has never paused; an in
crease of territory which has never suffer-
ed the slightest casualty of fortune; the
most complete security against the retalla-
ton of European war; and government
at once despotic and popular; exhibiting
the most boundless authority in the sover-
eign, and the most absolute submission In
the people; mixture of habitual obedi-
ence, and divine homage: the reverence to
O monarch, with almost the prostration to
a divinity.
Its history has another superb anomaly:
Russia gives the most memorable instan-
ces in human annals, of the power which
lie within the mind of individual man.
Peter the Great was not the restorer, or
the reformer of Russia; he was its moral
creator. He found it, not as Augustus
found Rome, according to the old adage,
"brick, and left it marble:" he found it
living swamp, and left il covered with the
fertility of laws, energy, and knowledge;
he found it Asiatic and left it European;
he removed it as far from Scythia as if he
had placed the diameter of the globe be-
tween; he found it not brick, but mire, and
he transformed region of huts into the
magniicence of empire.
Russia first appeared in European his
tory in the middle of the ninth century,
Its climate and its soil had till then retained
it in primitive barbarism. The sullenness
of its winter had prevented invasion by
civilized nations, and the nature ofits soil,
one immense plain, had given full scope to
the rowing habits of its half-famished tribes.
The great invasions which broke down
the Roman empire, had drained away the
population from the north, and left nothing
but remnants of clans behind Russia had
no sea, by which she might send her bold
savages to plumber or to trade with Sou
thern and Western Europe. And, while
the man of Scandinavia was subduing
kingdoms, or carrying back spoils to his
northern crags and lakes, the Russian re-
manned, like the bears of his forest. in his
cavern during the long winter of his coun-
try; and even when the summer came, was
still but melancholy savage, living like
the bear upon the roots and fruits of his
ungenial soil.
1t was to one of those Normans, who,
instead of steering his bark towards the
opulence of the south, turned his dreary
adventure to the north, that Russia owed
her first connection with intelligent man.
kind. The people of Novgorod, people
of traders, finding themselves overpowered
| by their barbarian neighbors, solicited the
aid of Ruric, Baltic chieftan, and of
course pirate and a robber. The name
of Norman had earned old renown in the
north. Rurlc came, rescued the city, but
paid himself by the seizure of the sur
rounding territory, and found kingdom,
which he transmitted to his descendants,
and which lasted until the middle of the
sixteenth century.
In the subsequent reign we see the eff
feet of the northern pupilage; an expedi-
ton, in the style of the Baltic exploits, was
sent to plunder Constantinople. The ex-
peditlon consisted of two thousand canoes,
with eighty thousand men on board. The
expedition was defeated, for the Greeks
had not yet sunk into the degeneracy of
latter times. They fought stoutly for their
capitol, and roasted the pirates in their own
canoes, by showers of the famous "Greek
fire.
Those invaslons, however, were tempt
ing to the idleness and poverty, or to the
avarice and ambition of the Russians; and
Constantinople continued to be the great
object of cupidity and assault, for three
hundred years. But the CITY of Constan-
tinople was destined to fall to mightier
conqueror.
Still, the northern barbarian had now
learned the road to Greece, and the inter-
course was mutually beneficial. Greece
found daring allies in her old plunderers,
and In the eleventh century she gave the
Grand duke Vladimir wife, in the person
of Anna, sister Of the emperor Basil H., a
glit made more important by its being ac-
companied by his conversion to Christian
ity.
"A settled succession is the great secret
OF royal peace; but among those bold RI
ders OF the desert, nothing was ever settled
save by the sword; and the first act of all
the sons, on the decease of their father,
was, to slaughter each other; until the
contest was settled in their grave, and the
last survivor quietly ascended the throne.
But war, on mightier scale than the
Russian Steppes had ever witnessed, was
now rolling over Central Asia. The cav
airy of Genghiz Khan, with came, not in
squadrons, but In nations, and charged,
not like troops, but like thunderclouds,
began to pour down upon the valley of
the Wolga. Yet the conquest of Russia
was not to be added to the triumphs of the
great Tartar chieftian: mightier conquest