54

HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

than did the Vikings themselves. This mingling of the adventurers and the indigenous race explains the rapidity with which both the Normans of Russia and the Normans of France lost their language, customs, and religion. The Varangians only retained one thing, their military superiority, the habit of obeying the chosen or hereditary chief. Into the Slav anarchy they brought this element of warlike and disciplined force, without which a State cannot exist. They imposed on the natives the amount of constraint necessary to drag them from their isolation and division into *gorodichtchés* and *volosts*. The Slavs of the Danube also owe their constitution to a band of Finno-Bulgarian adventurers under Asparuch; the Polish Slavs to the invasion of the Liakhs or Lechites; the Tcheques to the Frank Samo, who enabled them to shake off the yoke of the Avars.

The spontaneous appeal of the Slavs to the Varangian princes may seem to us strange. We might believe that the annalist, like the old French historians, has tried to disguise the fact of a conquest, by representing that the Slavs submitted voluntarily to the Varangians of Rurik, as the Gauls are supposed to have done to the Franks of Clovis. In reality there was no conquest, a statement which is proved by the fact that the municipal organisation remained intact, that the *vetché* continued to deliberate by the side of the prince, the local army to fight in conjunction with the band of adventurers. The laws of Iaroslaf established the same wer-gild for the murder of either Slav or Varangian, while the Merovingian laws recognise a great difference between a Gallo-Roman and a Frank. The defence of the country, the administration of justice, and the collection of the tribute were the special cares of the

FORMATION OF RUSSIA.

55

prince, the last being considered his legitimate re-
ward. He played in the Slav towns a rôle similar to
that of the Italian podestàs in the 15th century, who
were called in to administer justice impartially, or
that of the leaders of condottieri, to whom the cities
entrusted their defence.

As early as 859 the Varangians exacted tribute
from the Slavs of Ilmen and the Krivitches, as well
as the Tchouds, Vesses, and Merians. The natives
had once expelled the Varangians, but as divisions
once more became rife among them, they decided
that they needed a strong government, and recalled
the Varangians in 862. Whether the name of
Russia or of Rouss was originally derived from a
province of Sweden, or from the banks of the Dnieper,
the fact remains that with the arrival of the Varan-
gians in Slavonia, the true history of Russia com-
mences. It was the 1000th anniversary of this
event that was commemorated at Novgorod in 1862.
With the Varangians the Russian name became
famous in Eastern Europe. It was the epoch of
brilliant and adventurous expeditions; it was the
heroic age of Russia.

The Varangians of Novgorod and Kief are not
unworthy mates of the Normans of the West—the
bold conquerors who sought their fortunes from the
coasts of England, Sicily, and Syria. They are to
be found nearly at the same time under the walls
of Constantinople and at the foot of the Caucasus,
where they captured the town of Berdaa from the
Arabs (944). Nestor, the monk of the Petcherski
convent at Kief, whose history extends to 1116, adds
to his conscientious accounts many legendary traits,
which seem an echo of Scandinavian sagas and early
Russian bylinus. His Annals, which Greek and

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HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

French authorities enable us to check, and which are tolerably exact in all essentials, seem at times, like the first books of Livy, to be epic poetry converted into prose.

THE EARLY RUSSIAN PRINCES: RURIK, OLEG, IGOR—
EXPEDITIONS AGAINST CONSTANTINOPLE.

At the call of the Slavs, Rurik, Sineous and Trouvor, three Varangian brothers, whose Scandinavian names signify the *Peaceful*, the *Victorious*, and the *Faithful*, gathered together “their brothers and their families,” that is, their warriors or *droujines* (resembling the *truste* of the Frank kings), crossed the Baltic and took up their position on the borders of the territory they were summoned to defend. Rurik, the eldest, established himself on the lake Ladoga, near to which, on the southern side, he founded the city of Ladoga; Sineous on the White Lake (Biéloe-Ozéro), in the Vess country; Trouvor at Izborsk, to hold the Livonians in check. When the two latter died, Rurik established himself at Novgorod, where he built, not a town as Nestor would have us believe, but a castle. It is thus we must explain the pretended foundation by his orders of Polotsk and of Rostof, which had existed long before the arrival of the Varangians. What he probably did was to transform ancient *gorodichtchés* with ramparts of mud into fortresses. Two other Varangians, Askold and Dir, who were not of the family of Rurik, went down to Kief, and reigned over the Polians. It was they who began the expeditions against *Tzargrad* (Byzantium), the *queen of cities*. With 200 vessels, says Nestor, they entered the *Sound*, in old Slav *Soud* (the Bosphorus or the Golden Horn), and besieged Constantinople. But

FORMATION OF RUSSIA.

57

the patriarch Photius, according to the Byzantine accounts, took the wonder-working robe of Our Lady of Blachernes, and plunged it in the waves. A fierce tempest instantly arose, and the whole Russian fleet was destroyed.

Rurik's successor was not his son Igor, then a minor, but the eldest member of the family, his fourth brother, the enterprising Oleg. At the head of an army composed of Varangians, Slavs and Finns, he marched to the south, received the submission of Smolensk and Loubetch, and arrived under the walls of Kief. By means of treachery he took Askold and Dir prisoners, and put them to death, observing: "You are neither princes yourselves, nor of the blood of princes; this is the son of Rurik," pointing to Igor. The tomb of Askold is still shown near Kief. Oleg was charmed with his new conquest, and took up his abode there, saying, "Let Kief be the mother of Russian cities." The Varangian chief held communication both with the Baltic and the Black Sea by means of Novgorod, Smolensk, and Kief. He subdued the Novgorodians, the Krivitches, the Merians, the Drevlians, the Severians, the Polians, the Radiitches, and thus united nearly all the Russian tribes under his sceptre. It was about this time that the Hungarians crossed the Dnieper near Kief, and invaded Pannonia. The Magyar chronicles speak of their having defeated Oleg; Nestor is silent on the subject.

In 907 Oleg collected a large army from among the tributary races, equipped 2000 boats, and prepared to invade Tzargrad by land and sea. Russian legends have embellished this expedition with many wonderful details. Oleg built wheels to his vessels, and spread their sails; blown by the wind they reached the

58

HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

gates of the city. Leo VI. the Philosopher, horror-stricken, agreed to pay tribute, but the Greeks tried to get rid of the Russians by offering them poisoned food. Oleg divined their perfidy. He imposed a heavy contribution, a commercial treaty advantageous to the Russians, and suspended his shield on the Golden Door.

To his subjects Oleg was more than a hero. Terror-stricken by his wisdom, this "foolish and idolatrous people" looked on him as a sorcerer. In the Scandinavian sagas we find many instances of chiefs, such as Odin, Gylf and Raude, being at the same time great warriors and great magicians. It is strange that neither Greek, Frank, nor Venetian historians allude to this campaign. Nestor cites the names of the Russian envoys who negotiated the peace, and gives the text of the treaty.

A magician had predicted to Oleg that his favourite horse would cause his death. It was kept apart from him, and when, five years after, the animal died, he insisted on being taken to see its body, as a triumph over the ignorance and imposture of the sorcerers. But from the skull of the horse issued a serpent which inflicted a mortal sting on the foot of the hero.

Igor led a third expedition against Tzargrad. The Dnieper conducted, as it were of her own will, the Russian flotilla to the seas of Greece. Igor had 10,000 vessels according to the Greek historians, 1000 according to the more probable calculation of Liutprand. This would allow 400,000 men in the first case, and only 40,000 in the second. Instead of attacking the town, he cruelly ravaged the Greek provinces. The Byzantine admirals and generals united, and destroyed the Russian army in a series

FORMATION OF RUSSIA.

59

of engagements by the aid of Greek fire. Nestor
has not copied the numerous details the Byzantine
historians give of this battle, but we have the evi-
dence of Liutprand, bishop of Cremona, derived from
his father-in-law, the ambassador of the king of Italy
at Constantinople, who saw with his own eyes the
defeat of Igor, and was present at the sacrifice of
prisoners, beheaded by order of the Emperor
Romanus Lecapenus. In 944 Igor secured the help
of the formidable Patzinaks, and organised an
expedition to avenge his defeat. The Greek Em-
peror, now seriously alarmed, offered to pay tribute,
and signed a new commercial treaty, of which the
text is given by Nestor. Byzantine and Western
writers do not mention this second expedition of
Igor. On his return from Russia, he was assassi-
nated by the Drevlians, from whom he had tried to
exact tribute. Leo the Deacon, a Greek writer, says
he was torn in pieces by means of two young trees,
bent forcibly to the earth, and then allowed to take
their natural direction (945).

OLGA—CHRISTIANITY IN RUSSIA.

Olga, widow of Igor, assumed the regency in the
name of her son Sviatoslaf, then a minor. Her first
care was to revenge herself on the Drevlians. In
Nestor's account it is impossible to distinguish be-
tween the history and the epic. The Russian chro-
nicler relates in detail how the Drevlians sent two
deputations to Olga to appease her, and to offer her
the hand of their prince, and how she disposed of
them by treachery, burying some alive, and causing
others to be stifled in a bathing-house. Next, says
Nestor, she besieged their city Korosthenes, and she

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HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

offered them peace on payment of a tribute of three
pigeons and three sparrows for each house. Lighted
tow was tied to the tails of the birds, and they were
set free. They flew straight home to the wooden
town, where the barns and thatched roofs instantly
took fire. Lastly the legend relates that Olga mas-
sacred part of the Korosthenians, and the rest became
slaves.

This vindictive Scandinavian woman, in spite of
all, was destined to be the first apostle of Russia.
Nestor relates that she went to Tzargrad to the
Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, astonished
him by the strength and adroitness of her character,
and was baptized under the name of Helen, the Greek
Tzar being her godfather. Only two facts in Nes-
tor's account are historical, namely, the reception of
Olga at the imperial palace of Constantinople, related
in detail in the 'Book of Ceremonies,' and perhaps
her baptism. If the Greek historians do not mention
it in the contemporary chronicles, it is because they
did not perceive the important consequences of this
event. If writers allude to it in the chronicles of
the 11th and 12th centuries, it is because the con-
sequences of the event had by that time been
completely developed.*

Even in Russia Olga's conversion passed almost
unnoticed. Christianity had made but little progress
in that country. No doubt since Cyril and Metho-
dius had invented the Slavonic alphabet, and trans-
lated the Holy Books for the Bulgarians, Christianity,
which had already triumphed over some Slav
peoples, was being handed on from one to the other.
Some missions were already established in Russia.
The Byzantines say, that alarmed by the miraculous

* A. Rambaud, ‘L’Empire grec au dixième siècle,’ p. 383.

FORMATION OF RUSSIA.

61

defeat of Askold and Dir, and seized with a respectful awe of the Christian talismans of the Patriarch Photius, the Russians "sent envoys to Constantinople to ask for baptism." The Emperor Basil the Macedonian then gave them an archbishop, who performed a miracle before them. He threw a copy of the Gospels into a brazier, and drew it out unharmed. According to this account, Askold was the first Russian prince who became a Christian. Hence the worship rendered to his tomb and memory. In the list of Byzantine Eparchies under Leo VI., the Bishopric of Russia figures, of which no doubt Kief was the metropolis. These missions, however, do not seem to have been very successful; at the time of the treaty concluded between Oleg and Leo VI., the Russians still swore by their swords, by Voloss and Perun. In the treaty concluded by Igor, when the Russians swore at Kief before the Emperor's envoy, to confirm it, some ascended the hill of Perun and performed the vows in the ancient way; others went to the chapel of Saint Elias, and laid their hand on the Gospel. There existed then, in the "mother of Russian cities," a Christian community, though a very weak one, if it is true that Olga refused to be baptized in Kief "for fear of the pagans." The mass of warriors kept Christianity at a distance. In their expeditions against the Byzantine provinces, we find them attacking monasteries and churches by preference, giving them up to the flames, and finding a peculiar pleasure in torturing priests and monks by driving nails into their heads. It was thus that the Normans of France, the fanatics of Odinism, treated the ecclesiastics with refinements of cruelty, boasting that they "sang them the Mass of lances." "When one of the soldiers of the Grand Prince

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HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

wished to become a convert," says Nestor, "he was not prevented, but only laughed at." The efforts of Olga for the conversion of her son Sviatoslaf, who had assumed the reins of government on reaching his majority, were fruitless. He did not like exposing himself to the ridicule of his soldiers by embracing a new faith. "My men will mock me," he replied to the prayers of his mother. "And often," Nestor affirms sadly, "he became furious with her." Olga vainly assured him that if he would be baptized, all his subjects would soon follow his example. The public mind was not yet in a condition for the example of the prince to be all-powerful. The Christian Olga, canonized by the Church, "the first Russian who mounted to the heavenly kingdom," remained an exception, little noticed or thought of in the midst of the pagan aristocracy.

SVIATOSLAF—THE DANUBE DISPUTED BETWEEN GREEKS AND RUSSIANS.

The reign of Sviatoslaf, 964-972, though short, was signalised by two memorable events: the defeat of the Khazars, and the great war against the Byzantine Empire for the possession of Bulgaria. About the former event the annalist gives few details; but Sviatoslaf must have gained a complete victory, if it be true that he took the White City, capital of the Khazar Empire on the Don, and that he exacted tribute from the Iasses or Ossets of the Caucasus, and the Kassogans or Tcherkesses. The Russians had no reason to rejoice in their success, for the decline of the Khazars, who were a civilised people, favoured the progress of the Patzinaks, the most ferocious of all barbarians. The Arabs spoke of them as wild

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63

beasts, and Matthew of Edessa calls them “a greedy people, devouring the bodies of men, corrupt and impure, bloody and cruel beasts.” During one of the frequent absences of Sviatoslaf, the Patzinaks suddenly appeared under the walls of Kief, where the mother and children of the Grand Prince had taken refuge, and reduced it to the last extremity. The bold manœuvre of a voïevode saved the Kievians, who were starving. On his return to his capital, Sviatoslaf was horrified at the risks it had encountered. It was at the hands of these same Patzinaks that he was one day to perish.

On the subject of the Bulgarian war the narrative of Nestor is confused and incomplete. He is silent about the Russian defeats, and legend mixes largely with historical facts. Nestor relates that the Greeks wished to ascertain what sort of man Sviatoslaf was. They sent him gifts of gold and fine tissues, but the Grand Prince looked on them with disdain, and said to his soldiers, “Take them away.” Then they sent him a sword and other weapons, and the hero seized them and kissed them enthusiastically. The Greeks were afraid, and said, “This must be a fierce man, since he despises wealth and accepts a sword for tribute.” Happily the very minute account of Leo the Deacon appears both exact and impartial, and we are enabled to follow this campaign, where a chief of infant Russia crosses that Danube which the Russian armies are not again to see till the reign of Catherine II. and Nicholas. The Greek Emperor Nicephorus Phocas, in order to avenge himself on Peter the Tzar of Bulgaria, had recourse to the dangerous expedient so frequent in Byzantine policy. He called in the barbarians. A certain Kalokyr was sent as envoy to Sviatoslaf with a sufficient sum of

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HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

money to allow him to take the field. It was thus
that these two Slav races—who owed their constitu-
tions, one to the Varangian *droujina* of Rurik, the
other to the Turanian *droujina* of Asparuch—were
urged to conflict by Greek diplomacy. Sviatoslaf
descended on Bulgaria with a thoroughly-equipped
fleet, reassured the Byzantines by bringing 60,000
men to their assistance, took Pereiaslaf, the Bulgarian
capital, and all their fortresses.

The Tzar Peter yielded to his evil destiny at the
moment the Patzinaks were besieging Kief. This
lesson was, however, lost on Sviatoslaf. He was
overjoyed at his conquest, and wished to trans-
port his capital to Pereiaslaf on the Danube, a
city distinct from Pereiaslaf or Prislaf, the modern
Eski-Stamboul, which was the capital of the Bul-
garians in the 10th century. "This place," he said
to his mother, "is the central point of my possessions,
and abounds in wealth. From Greece come precious
stuffs, wine, gold, and all kinds of fruit; from the
country of the Tcheques and Hungarians, horses and
silver; from Russia, furs, money, wax, and slaves."
This resolution of Sviatoslaf was fraught with
immense danger to the Greek Empire. If Byzan-
tium feared the neighbourhood of an enfeebled Bul-
garia, how was she to resist a power that extended
from the Baltic to the Balkans, and which could add
to the Bulgarian legions, disciplined after the Roman
fashion by the Tzar Simeon, the Varangians of
Scandinavia, the Russian Slavs, the Finnish hordes
of the Vesses, Tchouds, and Merians, and even the
light cavalry of the Patzinaks?

The formation of a great Slav Empire so close to
Constantinople would have been rendered more for-
midable by the ethnographical constitution of the

FORMATION OF RUSSIA.

65

peninsula. Ancient Thrace and ancient Macedon
were peopled by Slav tribes, some of whom were off-
shoots from the Russian tribes; for example, Drego-
vitches and Smolenes were to be found there as much
as at Minsk and Smolensk. Thessaly, Attica, and
the Peloponnesus were invaded by these emigrants,
who became the subjects of the Greek Empire. The
famous mountain Taygetus, in Laconia, was inhabited
by two Slav tribes, still unsubdued—the Milingians
and the Ezerites. We must not forget that Bulgaria
extended as far as the Ochrid, and that the ancient
provinces, under the names of Croatia, Servia, and
Dalmatia, had become almost entirely Slav. This great
race extended then almost unbroken from the Pelo-
ponnesus, already called by the Slav name of Morea,
to Novgorod. Thus, if the town of Pereiaslaf on
the Danube had really become the centre of the
Russian dominions, according to the wish of Sviato-
slaf, the Greek race and the Roman domination in the
Balkan peninsula would speedily have come to an
end. The Greek emperors had been able to resist
Askold, Oleg, and Igor. The Russians of their day
had lived far from the Empire, and were obliged to
go by water, which limited greatly the number of
their armies. With their canoes hollowed out of the
trunks of trees, such as are now to be seen in the
Russian villages, they had to descend the Dnieper,
disembark at each of the seven cataracts, carry
canoes (monoxyles) till they could re-embark further
on, and all the while gave battle to the Patzinaks,
who were in ambush behind the rocks. After they
had escaped these perils, they had to brave with
their frail barques the tempests of the Black Sea, the
powerful Roman galleys manned by the best sailors
of the East, and the mysterious Greek fire which filled

VOL. I.

F

66

HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

them with terror. Few reached the walls of Constantinople, and their defeat was certain. Now, on the contrary, masters of the Danube, masters of the land-route, they could precipitate on Constantinople all the hordes of Scythia.

Fortunately for the Greek Empire, it then chanced to be renewing its youth. A series of great captains succeeded each other on this tottering throne. In John Zimisce斯 the Russian prince was to find an adversary worthy of him. Sviatoslaf, recalled to Bulgaria, had been obliged to reconquer it. It was at this moment that Zimisce斯 summoned him to execute the conditions of the treaty concluded with his predecessor; that is, to evacuate the country. Sviatoslaf, who had just taken Philippopolis and exiled the inhabitants, replied haughtily that he hoped soon to be at Constantinople. Zimisce斯 then began his preparations. In the beginning of March 972, he despatched a fleet to the north of the Danube, and himself marched to Adrianople. He surprised the Russians, who had not expected him so soon, in the defiles of the Balkans; appeared suddenly under the walls of Pereiaslaf, defeated a body of many thousand Russians, and obliged them to retire within the walls; then he gave the order for the assault, and took the town by escalade. Eight thousand Russians shut up in the royal castle made a frantic resistance, refused to capitulate, and perished in the flames.

When the news of this disaster reached Sviatoslaf, he advanced with the greater part of his army to meet the Emperor, and came up with him near Dorostol (Silistria). The Greek historians make the Russian army to have consisted of at least 60,000 men; Nestor only reckons 10,000. Here a bloody

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67

battle took place, and twelve times victory appeared
to shift from one side to the other. The solidity of the
Russian infantry defied the charges of the cavalry
—"the Ironsides" (κατάφρακτοι). At last they gave
way under a desperate charge, and fell back on
Dorostol. There they were besieged by the Em-
peror, and displayed a wild courage in their sallies.
Even their women, like the ancient Amazons, or the
heroines of the Scandinavian sagas or Russian songs,
took part in the mêlée. The Russians slew them-
selves rather than ask for mercy. The night following
on an action, they were seen to leave the town by
moonlight to burn their dead. On their ashes they
sacrificed prisoners of war, and drowned in the
Danube cocks and little children. Provisions failed,
and Sviatoslaf stole out one stormy night with
canoes manned by 2000 warriors, rowed round the
Greek fleet, collected millet and corn in the neigh-
bouring villages, and, falling suddenly on the
Greeks, re-entered the town victoriously. Zimisces
then took measures to prevent any boat from
getting out. This epic siege was signalised by some
strange combats. One of the bravest of the Russian
chiefs was slain by Apemas, a baptized Arab, son of
an Emir of Crete, and himself one of the guards of
Zimisces.

Sviatoslaf resolved to make one last effort, and issued
from the town with all his forces. Before the battle
Zimisces proposed to Sviatoslaf to terminate the war by
a duel between themselves. It was the barbarian who
refused: "I know better than my enemy what I have
to do," said Sviatoslaf. "If he is weary of life, there
are a thousand means by which he can end his days."
This battle was as obstinate and bloody as the
former. Sviatoslaf came near being slain by Apemas.

F 2

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HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

At last the Russians gave way, leaving on the battlefield, says Leo the Deacon, 15,500 dead and 20,000 shields. The survivors retired into the town. They were forced to treat. Zimisces allowed them to retire from Bulgaria, and they swore by Perun and Voloss never again to invade the empire, but to help to defend it against all enemies. If they broke their vows, might they "become as yellow as gold, and perish by their own arms." Nestor gives us the text of this convention, which was really a capitulation, and confirms the account of the Greek historians rather than his own. These relate that Zimisces sent deputies to the Patzinaks to beg them to grant a free passage to the remnant of the Russian army. It is certain that the barbarians awaited the Russians at the Cataracts, or *porogs* of the Dnieper. They killed Sviatoslaf, cut off his head, and his skull was used by their Prince Kouria as a drinking-cup. Sviatoslaf was, in spite of his Slav name, the very type of a Varangian prince of the intrepid, wily, and ambitious Northmen. Nestor boasts his good faith. When he wished to make war on a people, he sent to warn them. "I march against you," he said.

After the surrender of Dorostol, he had an interview with his enemy Zimisces. Leo the Deacon profits by the occasion to give us his portrait. The Emperor being on horseback by the shore, Sviatoslaf approached him by boat, handling the oar like his companions. He was of middle height, but very robust; he had a wide chest, a thick neck, blue eyes, thick eyebrows, a flat nose, long moustaches, a thin beard, and a tuft of hair on his shaven head as a mark of his nobility. He wore a gold ring in one of his ears, ornamented with rubies and two pearls.

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HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

CHAPTER V.

THE CLOVIS AND CHARLEMAGNE OF THE RUSSIANS.
SAINT VLADIMIR AND IAROSLAF THE GREAT,
972-1054.

Vladimir (972-1015) — Conversion of the Russians — Iaroslaf the Great (1016-1054) — Union of Russia — Splendour of Kief — Varangian-Russian society at the time of Iaroslaf — Progress of Christianity — Social, political, literary, and artistic results.

VLADIMIR (972-1015) — CONVERSION OF THE RUSSIANS.

THE Slav tribes owe their organisation to a twofold
conquest—a military conquest which came from the
North, an ecclesiastical conquest which came from
the South. The Varangians sent them chiefs of war,
who welded their scattered tribes into a nation; the
Byzantines sent missionaries, who united the Slavs
among themselves and to their civilised neighbours
by the bond of a common religion.

The man destined to conclude the work of propaganda begun by Olga did not at first seem fitted for this great task. Vladimir, like Clovis, was at first nothing but a barbarian—wily, voluptuous, and bloody. Only while Clovis after his baptism is not perceptibly better than he was before, and becomes the assassin of his royal Frankish relations, the Russian annalist seems to wish to establish a contrast between the life led by Vladimir prior to his conversion and the life he led after it. Sviatoslaf left

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71

three sons: Iaropolk at Kief, Oleg ruler of the Drevlians, Vladimir at Novgorod. In the civil wars which followed, and which recall the bloody Merovingian anarchy, Iaropolk slew Oleg, and in his turn died by the hand of Vladimir. He fell in love with Rogneda, Iaropolk's betrothed, and demanded her in marriage from the Varangian Rogvolod, who ruled over Polotsk. The princess answered, that she would never marry the son of a slave, in allusion to Vladimir's mother having been a servant, though he himself had always been treated by his father as his brother's equal. Maddened by this insult, Vladimir sacked Polotsk, killed Rogvolod and his two sons, and forced Rogneda to marry him. After the murder of Iaropolk, Vladimir also took the wife whom Iaropolk had left *enceinte*, a beautiful Greek nun, captured in an expedition against Byzantium. These two women he had deprived, one of her husband, the other of her father and brothers. He had, besides, a Bohemian and a Bulgarian wife, and another, all of whom bore him sons. Finally this bastard, this "son of a slave," was so abandoned in his profligacy, that he kept 300 concubines at Vychegorod, 3000 at Bielgorod, near Kief, and 200 at Berestof. Lusting no less after war and plunder, he reconquered Red Russia from the Poles, quelled a revolt of the Viatitches and Radimitches, and exacted tribute from the Lithuanian Latvaguians, and Livonian tribes of Letts or Finns.

The soul of the sensual and passionate barbarian was troubled, notwithstanding, by religious aspirations. At first he turned to the Slav gods, and his reign was inaugurated by a new growth of paganism. On the high sandy cliffs of Kief, which tower above the Dnieper, he erected idols; among them one of

72

HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

Perun, with a head of silver and a beard of gold. Two Varangians, father and son, both Christians, were stabbed at the feet of Perun. But the day of the ancient gods was passed; Vladimir was undergoing the religious crisis in which all Russia laboured. He felt other faiths were necessary to him; so, according to the testimony of Nestor, he took it into his head, like the Japanese of to-day, to institute a search after the best religion. His ambassadors forthwith visited Mussulmans, Jews, and Catholics: the first represented by the Bulgarians of the Volga, the second probably by the Khazars or the Jewish Kharaïtes, the third by the Poles and Germans. Vladimir declined Islamism, which prescribed circumcision and forbade "the wine, which was dear to the Russians;" Judaism, whose disciples wandered through the earth; and Catholicism, whose ceremonies appeared wanting in magnificence. The deputies that he sent to Constantinople, on the contrary, returned awe-stricken. The splendours of Saint Sophia, the brilliancy of the sacerdotal vestments, the magnificence of the ceremonies, heightened by the presence of the Emperor and his Court, the patriarch and the numerous clergy, the incense, the religious songs, had powerfully appealed to the imagination of the barbarians. One final argument triumphed over the scruples of Vladimir. "If the Greek religion had not been the best, your grandmother Olga, the wisest of mortals, would not have adopted it," said the boyards. The proud Vladimir did not intend to beg for baptism at the hands of the Greeks—he would conquer it by his own arms, and ravish it like a prey. He descended into the Taurid and besieged Cherson, the last city of this region that remained subject to the Emperors. A certain

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Anastasius, possibly from religious motives, betrayed his country. Rendered prouder than ever by this important conquest, Vladimir sent an embassy to the Greek Emperors Basil and Constantine, demanding their sister Anne in marriage, and threatening, in case of refusal, to march on Constantinople. It was not the first time the barbarians had made this proposal to the Greek Caesars, and Constantine Porphyrogenitus himself teaches his successors how to get rid of these inconvenient demands. But on this occasion the Emperors, who were occupied with revolts in the interior, thought themselves driven to consent, on condition that Vladimir was baptized. It was in Cherson that the Russian prince received baptism, and celebrated his marriage with the heiress of the Emperors of Rome. The priests he brought to Kief were his captives; the sacred ornaments, the holy relics with which he enriched and sanctified his capital, were his booty. When he returned to Kief it was as an Apostle (Isapostolos), but as an armed Apostle that he catechised his people. The idols were pulled down amid the tears and fright of the people. Perun was flogged and thrown into the Dnieper. They still show on the side of the Kievian cliffs the rock called "The Devil's Leap;" and further away, the place where Perun was thrown up by the waters on the shore. The people instantly rushed to worship him, but the soldiers of Vladimir cast him back into the river. Then, by Vladimir's order, all the Kievians, men and women, masters and slaves, old people and little children, plunged naked into the consecrated waters of the old pagan stream, while the Greek priests standing on the bank with Vladimir read the baptismal service. After a sturdy resistance, the Novgorodians were in like manner

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forced to hurl Perun into the Volkhof, and enter it
themselves.

We have already seen that the Russians had not
lost all recollections of their ancient gods, and that
nature was still the home of a whole world of deities.
A long time had to pass before Christianity could pen-
trate into their hearts and customs. M. Bouslaef
assures us that, even in the 12th century, Christian
rites were only practised by the higher classes. The
peasants kept their old pagan ceremonies, and con-
tinued to contract their marriages "around the bush
of broom." They preserved even longer their
faith in magicians and sorcerers, who were often of
more authority than the priests. Vladimir, at any
rate, wished to prepare the transformation. It does
not appear that he persecuted the idolaters, but he
occupied himself in adorning the churches of his
capital, which he had shorn of its idols. On the
spot where Perun stood he built the church of Saint
Basil, the Greek name which he had taken at his
baptism. On the place where the two Varangian
martyrs had been slain by his orders he raised the
church of the *D'ciatine* or the *Dîme*, embellished and
ornamented with Greek inscriptions by artists who
came from the South. He founded schools, where
boys studied the holy books translated into Slavonic,
but he was obliged to compel the attendance of the
children, whose parents, convinced that writing was
a dangerous kind of magic, shed tears of despair.
Nestor cannot sufficiently praise the reformation of
Vladimir after his baptism. He was faithful to his
Greek wife, he no longer loved war, he distributed
his revenues to the churches and to the poor,
and, in spite of the increase of crime, hesitated
to inflict capital punishment. "I fear to sin," he

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replied to his councillors. It was the bishops who had to recall to him the fact that “criminals must be chastised, though with discretion,” and that the country must not be left a prey to the Patzinaks. Vladimir, who reminded us formerly of a Northman of the type of Robert the Devil, suddenly becomes the “good King Robert” of Russia.

His wars with the Patzinaks are recorded by Nestor with all kinds of episodes borrowed from the epic poetry. There is the Russian champion who tears in pieces the furious bull, or stifles a Patzinak giant in his arms; there are the inhabitants of Bielgorod, who, having been reduced to famine by the barbarians, let down into wells two large caldrons, one full of hydromel and the other of meal, to make the Patzinaks believe these were natural productions of the soil. We see in the popular songs of what a marvellous cycle of legends Vladimir has become the centre; but in these *bylinas* he is neither Vladimir, the Baptist, nor the Saint Vladimir of the orthodox Church, but a solar hero, successor of the divinities whom he destroyed. To the people, still pagans at heart, Vladimir is always the “Beautiful Sun” of Kief.

## IAROSLAF THE GREAT (1016-1054)—UNION OF RUSSIA—SPLENDOUR OF KIEF.

Vladimir died in 1015, leaving a large number of heirs by his numerous wives. The partition that he made between them of his states tells us what was the extent of Russia at that epoch. To Iaroslaf he gave Novgorod; to Isiaslaf, son of Rogneda, and grandson of the Varangian Rogvolod, Polotsk; to Boris, Rostof; to Gleb, Mourom (these two principles

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palities were in the Finn country); to Sviatoslaf, the Drevlians; to Vsevolod, Vladimir in Volhynia; to Mstislaf, Tmoutorakan, the Tamatarchia of the Greeks; finally, to his nephew Sviatopolk, the son of his brother and victim Iaropolk, the principality of Tourof, in the country of Minsk, founded by a Varangian named Tour, who did not belong to the "blood of princes" any more than Askold and Dir. The history of Vladimir's successors recalls that of the heirs of Clovis. The murder of the sons of Clodomir is paralleled by the assassination of Boris and Gleb, sons of Isapostolos, by the order of Sviatopolk, who usurped the throne of Kief. His two victims were canonised, and henceforth became inseparable, and are, as it were, the Dioscuri of orthodoxy. The prince of the Drevlians perished by the same hand. Iaroslaf resolved to avenge his brothers and to save himself. At this moment, however, he had alienated his Novgorodian subjects, having enticed the principal citizens into his castle, and then treacherously slain them. When he learnt the crimes of Sviatopolk, he trembled for his own life, and threw himself on the generosity of those he had so cruelly outraged. He wept for his sins before them, and besought their help. "Prince," replied the Novgorodians, with one voice, "you have destroyed our brethren, but we are ready to fight for you." After a bloody war, in which Boleslas the Brave, king of Poland, took part, the usurper fled, and died miserably in exile. Iaroslaf had still to defend himself against the Prince of Polotsk and Mstislaf of Tmoutorakan. The latter had acquired great fame from his wars with the Khazars, whom, with the aid of the Greek Emperor, Basil II., he finally annihilated, and with the Tcherkess, whose chief, a giant named Rhededia, he slew in single combat.

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bat. At last, Iaroslaf remained the sole master of Russia, and reigned gloriously at Kief. He recalls Charles the Great by some successful wars, but particularly by his code of laws, his taste for building, and his love of letters in a barbarous age. He owes part of his reputation to the anarchy which followed his death, and which caused his reign to be regretted as the climax of Kievian greatness.

In Poland Iaroslaf revenged on the son of Boleslas the Brave the invasions of his father, and took from him the towns of Red Russia. He fought a bloody battle with the Patzinaks under the walls of Kief, and in their flight part of the vanquished barbarians were drowned in crossing the rivers. It was as fatal a blow to the Patzinaks as that struck by Sviatoslaf at the Khazars: they never recovered it. But in the same manner as the defeat of the Khazars opened the way to the Patzinaks, the ruin of the Patzinaks opened the way to the Polovtsi. The steppes of the Don were incessantly filled by new hordes from Asia. Iaroslaf also fought against the Finnish and Lithuanian tribes. In the country of the Tchouds he founded Iourief (Saint George) on the Embach, near the Peipus (the Germans called it Dorpat); in the country of the Merians, he founded Iaroslavl on the Upper Volga. Finally, his reign was marked by a new war with Greece, brought on by mercantile disputes. His son Vladimir, leader of the expedition, rejected proudly the propositions of the Emperor Constantine Monomachus. A naval battle was fought in the Bosphorus; Greek fire and the tempests of the Black Sea dispersed the Russian armament. Part of the army, a body of 8000 men, which was retreating into Russia by land, was attacked and

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exterminated by a Greek force: 800 prisoners were sent to Constantinople, where their eyes were put out. Notwithstanding the bonds of religion which had been riveted between the Byzantines and their neophytes on the Dnieper, the Russians were always dreaded by Constantinople. An inscription hidden in the boot of one of the equestrian statues of Byzantium announced that the day would come when the capital of the empire would fall a prey to the men of the North. The decay of Kievian Russia after the death of Iaroslaf, adjourned or nullified the fulfilment of this prophecy.

The legislation of the Russian Charlemagne is comprised in the Code entitled *Rousskaïa Pravda*, the *Russian right* or *verity*. This Code strangely recalls that of Scandinavia. It consecrates private revenge, and the pursuit of an assassin by all the relatives of the dead; it fixes the *wergeld* for different crimes, as well as the fine paid into the royal treasury; it allows the judicial duel; the ordeal by red-hot iron and boiling water; the oath corroborated by those of the *compurgatores*; it also established by the side of the judges nominated by the Prince, a jury of twelve citizens. In the “Rousskaïa Pravda,” there is not, properly speaking, any criminal law. Capital punishment, death by refinements of cruelty, corporal chastisement, torture to wring out confessions, even a public prison, were all unknown. These are Scandinavian and German principles in all their purity. At this period Russia had almost the same laws as the West.

Iaroslaf occupied a glorious place among the princes of his time. His sister Mary was married to Casimir, king of Poland; his daughters also became the wives of kings: Elizabeth, of Harold the Brave,

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king of Norway; Anne, of Henry I., king of France; Anastasia, of Andrew I., king of Hungary. Of his sons, Vladimir, the eldest, is said to have married Githa, daughter of Harold, king of England; Isiaslaf, a daughter of Micislas II., king of Poland; Vseslaf, a Greek princess, daughter of Constantine Monomachus; Viatcheslaf and Igor, two German princesses. Iaroslaf gave an asylum to the proscribed princes, Saint Olaf, king of Norway, and his two sons; a prince of Sweden; Edwin and Edward, sons of Edmund Ironside, king of England, expelled from their country by Knut the Great. The Varangian dynasty was thus mingled with the families of the Christian princes, and we may say of the Russia of the 11th century, what we can no longer say of the Russia of the 16th century, that she was a European State.

To Kief was destined the lot of Aachen, the capital of Charles the Great, which, glorious in his life, after his death fell into decay. Under Iaroslaf, Kief reached the highest pinnacle of splendour. He wished to make his capital the rival of Constantinople; like Byzantium, she had her cathedral and her Golden Gate. The Grand Prince also founded the monastery of Saint Irene, of which only a few ruins now remain, and those of Saint George and the Catacombs, the latter made illustrious by the virtues of its first superiors, Saint Theodosius and Saint Antony. He repaired the church of the Dîme, and surrounded the city with ramparts. The population began to increase, and the lower town to grow at the feet of the upper. Kief, situated on the Dnieper, the great road to Byzantium, seemed to be part of Greece. Adam of Bremen calls her *æmula sceptri Constantino-politani et clarissimum decus Græciae*. She was the

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rendezvous of the merchants from Holland, Hungary, Germany, and Scandinavia, who lived in separate quarters of the town. She had eight markets, and the Dnieper was constantly covered with merchant-ships. Iaroslaf had not enough Greek artists to decorate all the churches, nor enough priests to serve them, for Kief was at that time "the city of 400 churches," so much admired by the writers of the West. What she was then we may partly realise by seeing what she is still at certain seasons of the year. The Monastery of the Catacombs, with the incorruptible bodies of its ascetics and thaumaturges, some of whom bricked themselves up while living, in the cell which was to be their sepulchre, draws annually, and especially at the Assumption, 50,000 pilgrims. Saint Sophia was the pride of Kief; the mosaics of the time of Iaroslaf still exist, and the traveller may admire on the "indestructible wall" the colossal image of the Mother of God, the Last Supper, with a double apparition of Christ, presenting to six of His disciples His body, and to six others His blood, the images of Saints and Doctors, the Angel of the Annunciation of the Virgin. The frescoes which have been preserved or carefully restored are still numerous, and everywhere cover the pillars, the walls, and the vaults floored with gold. The inscriptions are not in Slavonic, but in Greek. Iaroslaf did not forget Novgorod, his first residence, and there he built another Saint Sophia, one of the most precious monuments of the Russian past. Like Charles the Great, he set up schools. Vladimir had founded one at Kief; Iaroslaf instituted that of Novgorod for 300 boys. He sent for Greek singers from Byzantium, who taught the Russian clergy. Coins were struck for him by Greek artists, with his Slavonic

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name in Slav on one side, and his Christian name, Ioury (George), on the other. Like all other barbarian neophytes, Iaroslaf pushed devotion into superstition. He caused the bones of his uncles, who had died unconverted, to be disinterred and baptized. He died in 1054, and his stone sarcophagus is one of the most precious ornaments of Saint Sophia.

VARANGIAN-RUSSIAN SOCIETY AT THE TIME OF IAROSLAF.

Varangian-Russian society presents more than one analogy with the society which was developed in Gaul after the Frank conquest. The government of the Varangian princes somewhat resembled that of the Merovingian kings.

The germ of the future State lay in the *droujina*, the land of warriors surrounding the prince, as in Gaul it lay in the *truste*. The *droujinniki*, like the *antrusions*, were the faithful followers, the men of the prince. They formed his guard, and were his natural council in all affairs, public or private. He could constitute them a court of justice, nominate them individually *voivodes* or governors of fortresses, or *pussadniks* or lieutenants in the large towns. In the same way as the body surrounding the Merovingian kings was not composed so entirely of Franks, but that shortly Gallo-Romans crept into the *antrusions*, so the *droujina* of the Russian princes admitted many different elements, not only Varangian but Slav. Mstislaf, prince of Tmoutorakan, had enrolled Iasses and Kassogans; a Lithuanian Latviague is mentioned as being in the *droujina* of Igor, a Hungarian in that of Boris. The military class did

VOL. I.

G

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HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

not form at that time a caste apart in Russia any
more than in Gaul; Saint Vladimir took into his
service the son of a leather-worker who had van-
quished the Patzinak giant; his maternal uncle
Dolbryna was not even a free man.

The prince in the middle of his *droujina* seems to
be only the first among his equals; all that he had
seems to belong to his men. We see them eat at the
same table, and listen together to the songs of the blind
poets who accompanied themselves on the *gouzzla*.
It was as it were a family of soldiers, from which
one day the Russian administration was to come.
The prince had great respect for the demands of his
men. Those of Vladimir complained one day that
they had to eat from wooden bowls. He gave them
silver ones, and added, "I could not buy myself a
droujina with gold and silver; but with a droujina
I can acquire gold and silver, as did my father and
my grandfather." The prince did nothing without
consulting his *droujinniki*. It was this that pre-
vented Sviatoslaf from listening to the exhortations
of Olga; he said that "his droujina would mock
him" if he became a Christian.

The administration of the Varangian princes was
very elementary. Let us see what the Arab writer
Ibn-Dost says of the way they distributed justice:
"When a Russian has a grievance with another, he
summons him before the tribunal of the prince,
where both present themselves. When the prince
has given sentence, his orders are executed; if both
parties are displeased by the judgment, the affair
must be decided by arms. He whose sword cuts
sharpest gains his cause. At the moment of the
combat the relations of the two adversaries appear
armed, and surround the space shut off. The com-

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batants then come to blows, and the victor may impose any conditions he pleases.”

After justice, the most important of the princely functions was the collection of the tributes. The amount was fixed by the prince himself. Oleg imposed on the Drevlians a tax of a marten's skin for every house. The raising of taxes was always very arbitrary. Nestor's account of the death of Igor is a lively picture of the political customs of the time; we might imagine ourselves reading a page of Gregory of Tours about the sons of Clovis, for example the expedition of Thierry in Arvernia. "In the year 945 the *droujina* of Igor said to him, 'The men of Sveneld are richly provided with weapons and garments, while we go naked; lead us, prince, to collect the tribute, so that thou and we may become rich.' Igor consented, and conducted them to the Drevlians to raise the tribute. He increased the first imposts, and did them violence, he and his men; after having taken all he wanted, he returned to his city. While on the road he bethought himself and said to his *droujina*, 'Go on with the tribute; I will go back to try and get some more out of them.' Leaving the greater part of his men to go on their way, he returned with only a few, to the end that he might increase his riches. The Drevlians, when they learnt that Igor was returning, held council with Mal their prince. 'When the wolf enters the sheepfold he slays the whole flock, if the shepherd does not slay him. Thus it is with us and Igor; if we do not destroy him, we are lost.' Then they sent deputies and said to him, 'Why dost thou come anew unto us? Hast thou not collected all the tribute?' But Igor would not hear them, so the Drevlians came out of the town of Korosthenes,

G 2

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HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

and slew Igor and his men, for they were but a few.”

For the government and defence of the country the prince established the chief of his *drojinniki* in different towns, supported by adequate forces. Thus Rurik distributed the towns of his appanage; he gave to one of his *men* Polotsk, to another Rostof, to a third Bielozersk. A principality was in some sort divided into fiefs, but the fiefs were only temporary, and always revocable. For the defence of the frontiers new towns were built, where native soldiers kept watch.

Social conditions from the 9th to the 12th century were as unequal as in the West. The *droujina* of the prince, which speedily absorbed all the Slav and Finn chiefs, constituted an aristocracy. Still we must distinguish in it those who were only simple guards or *gridi* (*girdin* among the Scandinavians), the *mouges* or men (*vir* in Latin, *baron* in French), and the *boyards* who were the most illustrious of all. The freemen of the Russian soil were “the people” or *lioudi*. The *gosti* or merchants were not at this period a class apart; it was in fact the warriors or the princes who pursued commerce with arms in their hands. Oleg was disguised as a merchant when he surprised Kief and slew Askold and Dir; the Byzantines mistrusted these terrible guests, and assigned them a separate quarter, closely watched, of Constantinople.

The rural population, on whom the weight of the growing State was beginning to rest, was already less free than in primitive times. The peasant was called *smerde* (perhaps derived from *smerdi*, to stink), or *mougik*, insulting diminutive of *mouge*, man. Later he became the *Christian* par excellence, *krestianine*.

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Below the peasant, whose situation recalls that of the Roman *colonus*, were the slaves properly so called, *rabi* or *kholopy*. The slave might have been taken in war, bought in a market, born in the house of his master, or have lost his liberty by the mere fact of fulfilling certain offices, such as that of house-steward. War was, however, the principal source of slavery. Ibn-Dost relates that the Russians, when they marched against another people, did not depart without having destroyed everything; they carried off the women, and reduced the men to slavery. They maintained a great slave-trade with foreign nations. "From Russia," said Sviatoslaf, the conqueror of Bulgaria, "will be brought skins, wax, honey, and slaves."

PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY—SOCIAL, POLITICAL, LITERARY, AND ARTISTIC RESULTS.

Russia had become Christian: it is the chief event in her primitive history. An important fact is that her Christianity was received not from Rome, like that of the Poles and other Western Slavs, but from Constantinople. Although the separation between the Churches of the East and West was not yet fully consummated, it was evident that Russia would be engaged in what the Latins called "the schism." It is usually considered in the West that this fact exercised an evil influence on Russia. Now let us see the opinion of a Russian historian, M. Boustoujef-Rioumine, on the subject. "What is no less important is that Christianity came to us from Byzantium, where the Church put forth no prepositions of governing the State, a circumstance which preserved us from struggles between the secular, a national, and the spiritual, a foreign power. Excluded

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HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

from the religious unity of the Romano-Germanic
world, we have perhaps gained more than we have
lost. The Roman Church made her appearance with
German missionaries in Slavonic lands; and if she
did not everywhere bring with her material servi-
tude, she at least introduced an intellectual slavery
by forcing men to support foreign interests, by
bringing among them foreign elements, and by esta-
blishing in all parts a sharp division between the
higher classes who wrote and spoke in Latin, and
the lower classes who spoke the national tongue and
were without literature."

No doubt an ecclesiastical language which, thanks
to Cyril and Methodius, mingled with the national
language, and became intelligible to all classes of
society; a purely national Church, which was subject
to no foreign sway; the absolute independence of the
civil power and of national development, were the
inestimable advantages that Byzantine Christianity
brought into Russia. But if the Russian State was
free from all obligations to Rome, she had nothing
to hope for from her. She could not reckon in her
days of peril on the help that Spain received when
she grappled with the Moors; Germany in her
crusades against the Slavs and Finns; Hungary in
her national war with the Turks. Separated from
the West by difference of faith, Russia in the time of
the Mongols, like Greece at the epoch of the Ottoman
invasion, saw no Europe arming in her defence.

Her princes were neither laid under the pontifical
interdicts, like Robert of France, nor reduced to
implore pardon at the feet of a Gregory VII., like
Henry IV. of Germany; humiliations always followed
by a swift revenge, as on the day when Barbarossa
expelled Alexander III. from Italy, and Philip the

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Handsome caused Boniface to be arrested in Anagni. Humiliations still more cruel awaited the Russians at the court of the Mongols. Another misfortune attending the entrance of the Russians into the Greek Church is, that they found themselves separated by religion from the races to whom they were bound by a common origin, and who spoke almost their own tongue. It was the difference of religion which inflamed their long rivalry with the Poles, and which at present deprives them of much influence over part of the Slavs. This same difference of religion delayed for them the benefits of civilisation resulting from the Renaissance of the West, but it spared them the terrible crisis of the wars of the Reformation.

Oriental Christianity, with the Byzantine civilisation that was inseparable from it, produced in time a considerable transformation in Russia. The first effect of Christianity was to reform society, and draw closer family ties. It condemned polygamy, and forbade equal divisions between the children of a slave and those of the lawful wife. Society resisted this new principle for some time. Saint Vladimir, even after his conversion, divided his possessions equally between the children the Church regarded as natural and those she considered legitimate. In the long run Christianity prevailed, and by the abolition of polygamy the Russian family ceased to be Asiatic, and became European.

Christianity prescribed new virtues, and gave the ancient barbaric virtues of hospitality and benevolence a more elevated character.

Vladimir Monomachus charged his children to receive strangers hospitably, because, says he, they have it in their power to give you a good or evil

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reputation. The hospitality of primitive peoples
may often be explained by their need of merchants
and foreigners. Pagan Slavs were only obliged to
help those of the same association; warriors, the
members of the same *droujina*; peasants, those of the
same *commune*; merchants or artisans, those of the
same *artel*. Christianity enjoined benevolence to all
the world, without hope of reward in this life. It
rendered honourable, weakness, poverty, manual
labour. If it prescribed excessive humility, it was
useful at least as a reaction against the brutality of
overweening pride. Between these two societies,
aristocratic and religious, which rest on opposite and
equally exaggerated principles, there would one day
be room for lay and civil society.

The influence of Christian principles was rather
slow among these excitable and ardent natures, but
at last we see in Russia, as in the West, princes
abjure their pride and seek the peace of the cloister,
like the good King Robert, or Saint Henry. In the
end it became an established custom with the Russian
sovereigns that, on the approach of death, they should
be tonsured, change their worldly name for a monkish
name, and so die in the garb of one of the religious
orders.

From a political point of view, the influence of
Byzantine Christianity was bound in the long run
to cause a complete revolution. For what was a
Russian prince, after all, but the head of a band,
surrounded by the men of his *droujina*, and in a
sense a foreigner to the land he governed and on
which he levied tribute? Properly speaking, a
Russian prince had no subjects. The natives might
always expel him—his *droujinniki* were always free
to forsake him.

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The princes of Kief were no more sovereigns in the modern or Roman sense of the term, than Merwig or Clodowig the Long-haired. But the priests who came from Constantinople brought with them an ideal of government; in a little while it was that of the Russians who entered the ranks of the clergy. This Greek ideal was the Emperor, the *Tzar* of Constantinople, heir of Augustus and Constantine the Great, Vicar of God upon earth, the typical monarch on whom the eyes of the barbarians of Gaul as well as those of Scythia were fixed. He was a sovereign in the fullest sense of the word, as, by a legal fiction, the people by the *Lex Regia* was supposed to have yielded its power to the *imperator*. He had subjects, and subjects only. Alone he made the law; he *was* the law. He had neither *droujinniki* nor *antrustious* that he placed in such and such a town, but an host of movable functionaries, the inviolate Roman hierarchy, by means of whom his all-powerful will penetrated to the remotest parts of his dominions. He was not the leader of a band of exacting soldiers, free to quit his service for that of another, but master of a standing army, to guard both frontiers and capital. He did not consider his states as a patrimony to be divided between his children, but transmitted to his successor the Roman Empire in its integrity. He inherited his power, not only from his people, but from God. His imperial ornaments had, like his person, a sacred character: and whenever the barbarian kings demanded one of them at Constantinople, whether it was a crown enriched with precious stones, the purple mantle, the sceptre or the *brodequins* (leggings), they were answered, that when God gave the Empire to Constantinople, He sent these vestments by a holy angel; that they were not the work of man, and that they

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HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

were laid on the altar, and only worn, even by the
Emperor, on solemn occasions. Leo the Khazar was
said to have been smitten with a fatal ulcer for
having put on the crown without permission of the
patriarch.

An empire one and indivisible, resting on a stand-
ing army, a hierarchy of functionaries, a national
clergy, and a body of jurisconsults,—such was the
Roman Empire, and such it revived in the monarchies
of the 17th century. This was the conception of the
State, unknown to both Slavs and Varangians, that
the Greek priests brought to Russia. For a long
while the reality answered little to the ideal; the
princes continued in their wills to divide their soldiers
and their lands among their children; but the idea
did not perish, and if it was never realised in Kievian
Russia, it found a more propitious soil in Muscovite
Russia. Legislation likewise felt the influence of
Christianity. Theft, murder, and assassination
were not looked upon by the Church as private
offences, for which the aggrieved persons could take
reprisals or accept a wergeld. They were crimes
to be punished by human justice in the name of
God.

For private revenge Byzantine influence substi-
tuted a public penalty; for the fine it substituted cor-
poral punishment, repugnant to the free barbarian,
and to the instinctive sentiment of human dignity.
Imprisonment, convict labour, flogging, torture,
mutilation, death itself, inflicted by more or
less cruel means; such was the penal code of the
Byzantines.

The Greek bishops of the time of St. Vladimir had
wished that brigands should be put to death, but the
custom was, and long remained, against it. Vladimir,

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after having employed this supreme means of repression, returned to the system of the *wergeld*, which besides helped to fill the treasury. The Byzantine mode of procedure likewise rejected the judicial duel, the judgment of God and the *compurgatores* long defended by habit. But, as in Gaul Roman law existed for Church officers and part of the natives, side by side with the Frank or Burgundian law, so in Russia the Byzantine codes of Justinian and Basil the Macedonian were established at the side of the Scandinavian code of Iaroslaf.

During many centuries the two systems of legislation existed together, each being slightly influenced by the other, to the time when they were mingled in a new code, the Oulojenie of Ivan the Great, and the Soudebnik of Ivan the Terrible.

The Byzantine literature which found its way into Russia consisted not only of the sacred books, but also of the Fathers of the Church, among whom we may reckon some writers of the first order, like Saint Basil and Saint John Chrysostom; lives of the saints, the inexhaustible source of new poetry; chronicles destined to serve as models to the Russian annalists; philosophical and scientific books; even romances such as 'Barlaam and Josaphat,' 'Salomon and Kitovras,' &c. Though this literature was partly the fruit of Byzantine decay, we may perceive how it implanted fresh ideas in the mind of a young nation, and would largely influence the moral life of the individual, and public and family life. We shall see up to what point Russian society of the Middle Ages was modelled on the examples afforded by this literature. Finally, it must not be forgotten that Christianity brought music in its train to a people whose music

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CHAPTER VI.

RUSSIA DIVIDED INTO PRINCIPALITIES.
SUPREMACY AND FALL OF KIEF, 1054-1169.

Distribution of Russia into principalities — Unity in division — The successors of Iaroslaf the Great — Wars about the right of headship of the royal family, and the throne of Kief — Vladimir Monomachus — Wars between the heirs of Vladimir Monomachus — Fall of Kief.

DISTRIBUTION OF RUSSIA INTO PRINCIPALITIES—
UNITY IN DIVISION.

THE period that extends from 1054, the year of Iaroslaf's death, to 1224, the year of the first appearance of the Tatars, or to take the French chronology, from the reign of Henry I. to the death of Philip Augustus, is one of the most confused and troubled in Russian history. As the barbarian custom of division continued to prevail over the Byzantine ideal of political unity, the national territory was ceaselessly partitioned.

The princely anarchy of Eastern Europe has its parallel in the feudal anarchy of the West. M. Pologine reckons during this period, sixty-four principalities which had an existence more or less prolonged, 293 princes who disputed the throne of Kief and other domains, and eighty-three civil wars, in some of which the whole country was engaged. There were besides foreign wars to augment this immense heap of historical facts. Against the Polovtsi alone

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the chroniclers mention eighteen campaigns, while
these barbarians made no less than forty-six invasions
of Russia. It is impossible to follow the national
chroniclers in the minute details of their annals; we
will only treat of the principalities which lasted some
time, and of the facts which were most important.

The ancient names of the Slav tribes have every-
where disappeared, or only remain in the names of
some of the towns, for example that of the Polotchanes
in Polotsk, and that of the Severians in Novgorod
Severski. The elements of which Russia was now
composed were no longer tribes, but principalities.
We hear no more of the Krivitches or the Drevlians,
but of the principalities of Smolensk and Volhynia.
These little States were perpetually dismembered
at each new partition between the sons of a prince,
and then were reconstituted to be divided anew into
appanages.

Notwithstanding all these vicissitudes, some of
them maintained a steady existence, corresponding to
certain topographical or ethnographical conditions.
Without speaking of the distant principality of
Tmoutorakan, situated at the foot of the Caucasus
in the centre of Turkish and Circassian tribes, and
reckoning eight successive princes, the following
are the great divisions of Russia from the 11th to
the 13th century :—

1. The principality of Smolensk occupied the im-
portant territory which is, as it were, the central
point in the mountain system of Russia. It compre-
hends the ancient forest of Okof, where three of the
largest Russian rivers, the Volga, the Dnieper, and the
Dwina, take their rise. Hence the political import-
ance of Smolensk, attested by all the wars to gain
possession of her; hence, also, her commercial pros-

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95

perity. We must observe that all her towns were built on one or other of these three great rivers; all the commerce, therefore, of ancient Russia passed through her hands. Besides Smolensk we must mention Mojaïsk, Viasma, and Toropetz, which was the capital of a secondary principality, the property of two celebrated princes, Mstislaf the Brave (Khrobryi) and Mstislaf the Bold (Oudaloi).

2. The principality of Kief was Rouss, Russia in the strict sense of the word. Her situation on the Dnieper, the neighbourhood of the Greek Empire, the fertility of the *Black Land*, for long secured to this State the supremacy over the other Russian principalities. On the south she bordered directly on the nomads of the steppe, against whom her princes were forced to raise a barrier of frontier towns. They often took these barbarians into their pay, granted them lands, and constituted them into military colonies. The principality of *Peréiaslavl* was a dependence of Kief; Vychegorod, Bielgorod, Tripoli, Torchesk, were at times erected into principalities for princes of the same family.

3. On the tributaries of the right bank of the Dnieper, notably the Soja, the Desna and the *Seime*, extended the two principalities of *Tchernigof*, with Starodoub and Loubetch; and of *Novgorod-Severski*, with Poutivl, Koursk, and Briansk. The principality of Tchernigof, which reached towards the Upper Oka, had therefore one foot in the basin of the Volga; her princes, the Olgovitches, were the most formidable rivals of Kief. The princes of Severski were always occupied with their ceaseless wars against the Polovtsi, their neighbours on the south. It was a prince of Severski whose exploits against these barbarians formed the subject of a sort of

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chansons de geste, the Song of Igor, or the Account of the Expedition of Igor (Slovo o polkou Igorévié).

4. Another principality, whose very existence consisted in endless war against the nomads, was the double principality of Riazan and Mourom. Her principal towns were Riazan, Mourom, Peréiaslavl-Riazanski, situated on the Oka, Kolomna at the junction of the Moskowa with the Oka, and Pronsk on the Prona. The Upper Don formed its western boundary. This principality was placed in the very heart of the Mouromians and Mechtcheraks, Finnish tribes. The reputation of her inhabitants, who were reckoned warlike in character, and rough and brutal in manners, was no doubt partly the result of the mixture of the Russian race with the ancient inhabitants of the country, and of their perpetual and bloody struggle with the nomad tribes.

5. The double principalities of Souzdal, with their towns of Souzdal, Rostof, Iourief-Polski on the Kolocha, Vladimir on the Kliazma, Iaroslavl, and Peréiaslavl-Zaliesski, were situated on the Volga and the Oka amongst the thickest of northern forests, and in the middle of the Finnish tribes of Mouromians, Merians, Vesses, and Tcheremisses. Although placed at the furthest extremity of the Russian world, Souzdal exercised an important influence over it. We shall find her princes now establishing a certain political authority over Novgorod and the Russia of the Lakes, the result of a double economic dependence; now intervening victiously in the quarrels of the Russia of the Dnieper. The Souzdalians were rough and warlike, like the Riazanese. Already we can distinguish among these two peoples the characteristics of a new nationality. That which divides them from the Kievians and the men of Novgorod-Severski,

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97

occupied like themselves in the great war with the barbarians, is the fact that the Russians of the Dnieper sometimes mingled their blood with that of their enemies, and became fused with the nomad, essentially mobile Turkish races, whilst the Russians of the Oka and the Volga united with the Finnish tribes, agricultural and essentially sedentary. This distinction between the two foreign elements that entered the Slav blood, has doubtless contributed to the difference in the characters of the two branches of the Russian race. From the 11th to the 13th century, in passing from the basin of the Dnieper to the basin of the Volga, we can already watch the formation of Great and Little Russia.

6. The principalities of Kief, Tchernigof, Novgorod-Severski, Riazan, Mourom, and Souzdal, situated on the side of the steppe with its devastating hordes, formed the frontier States, the *Marches* of Russia. The same *rôle*, on the north-west, opposite the Lithuanians, Letts, and Tchouds, fell to the principality of *Polotsk*, which occupied the basin of the Dwina; and to the republican principalities of *Novgorod* and *Pskof* on the lakes Ilmen and Peipus. To the principality of Polotsk, that of *Minsk* was attached, which lay in the basin of the Dnieper. The possession of Minsk, thanks to its situation, was often disputed by the Grand Princes of Kief. To Novgorod belonged the towns of Torjok, Volok-Lamski, Izborsk, and Veliki-Louki, which were at times capitals of particular States.

South-east Russia comprehended—1. *Volhynia* in the fan-shaped distribution of rivers formed by the Pripet and its tributaries, with Vladimir-in-Volhynia, Loutsk, Tourof, Brest, and even Lublin, which is certainly Polish. 2. *Gallicia* proper, or Red Russia,

VOL. I.

II

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HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

in the basins of the San, the Dniester, and the
Pripet, whose ancient inhabitants the White Croats
seem to have sprung from the stock of the Danubian
Slavs. Her chief towns were Galitch, founded by
Vladimirko about 1144, Peremysl, Terebovl, and
Zvenigorod. The neighbourhood of Hungary and
Poland gave a special character to these principalities,
as well as a more advanced civilisation. The epic
songs speak of Gallicia, the native land of the hero
Diouk Stepanovitch, as a fabulously-rich country.
The *Tale of the Expedition of Igor* gives us a high
idea of the power of these princes. " Iaroslaf
Osmomysl of Gallicia!" cried the poet to one of
them, "thou art seated very high on thy throne of
wrought gold; with thy regiments of iron thou sus-
tainest the Carpathians; thou closest the gates of
the Danube; thou barrest the way to the king of
Hungary; thou openest at thy will the gates of Kief,
and with thine arrows thou strikest from far!"

The disposition of these fifteen or sixteen princi-
palities confirms all that we have said about the
essential unity of the configuration of the Russian
soil. Not one of the river-basins forms an isolated
and closed region. There is no line of heights to
establish barriers between them or political frontiers.
The greater number of the Russian principalities
belong to the basin of the Dnieper, but extend
everywhere beyond its limits. The principality of
Kief, with Peréiaslavl, is nearly the only one
completely confined within it; but Volhynia puts
the basin of the Dnieper in communication with
those of the Bug and the Vistula, Polotsk with the
basins of the Dnieper and the Dwina, Novgorod-
Severski with the basin of the Don, Tchernigof and
Smolensk with the basin of the Volga. Water-

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99

courses everywhere established communications be-
tween the principalities. Already Russia, though
broken up into appanages, had the germs of a great
united empire. The slight cohesion of nearly all
the States, and their frequent dismemberments,
prevented them from ever becoming the homes of
real nationalities. The principalities of Smolensk,
Tchernigof, and Riazan have never possessed as de-
finite an historic existence as the duchy of Bretagne
or the county of Toulouse in France, or the duchies
of Saxony, Suabia, and Bavaria in Germany.

The interests of the princes, their desire to create
appanages for each of their children, caused a fresh
division of the Russian territory at the death of
every sovereign. There was, however, a certain
cohesion in the midst of all these vicissitudes. There
was a unity of race and language, the more sensible,
notwithstanding all dialectic differences, because the
Russian people was surrounded everywhere, except
at the south-west, by entirely strange races, Lithu-
anians, Tchouds, Finns, Turks, Magyars. There was
a unity of religion; the Russians differed from nearly
all their neighbours, for in contrast with the Western
Slavs, Poles, Tcheques, and Moravians, they repre-
sented a particular form of Christianity, not owning
any tie to Rome, and rejecting Latin as the language
of the Church. There was the unity of historical
development, as up to that time the Russo-Slavs
had all followed the same road, had accepted Greek
civilisation, submitted to the Varangians, pursued
certain great enterprises in common—such as the
expeditions against Byzantium and the war with the
nomads. Finally, there was political unity, since
after all, in Gallicia as in Novgorod, on the Dnieper
as in the forests of Souzdal, it was the same family

H 2

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that filled all the thrones. All these princes descended from Rurik, Saint Vladimir, and Iaroslaf the Great. The fact that the wars that laid waste the country were civil wars, was a new proof of this unity. The different parts of Russia could not consider themselves strangers one to the other, when they saw the princes of Tchernigof and Souzdal taking up arms to prove which of them was the eldest, and which consequently had most right to the title of Grand Prince and the throne of Kief. There were descendants of Rurik who governed successively the remotest States of Russia, and who, after having reigned at Tmoutorakan on the Straits of Ienikale, at Novgorod the Great, at Toropetz in the country of Smolensk, ended by establishing their right to reign at Kief. In spite of the division into appanages, Kief continued to be the centre of Russia. It was there that Oleg and Igor had reigned, that Vladimir had baptized his people, and Iaroslaf had established the metropolis of the faith, of arts, and of national civilisation. It is not surprising that she should have been more fiercely disputed than all the other Russian cities. Russia had many princes; but she had only one Grand Prince (Velikii-kniaz)—the one who reigned at Kief. He had a recognised supremacy over the others which he owed not only to the importance of his capital, but to his position as eldest of the royal family. Kief, the mother of Russian cities, was always to belong to the eldest of the descendants of Rurik; this was the consequence of the patriarchal system of the Slavs, as was the custom of division. When the Grand Prince of Kief died, his son was not his rightful heir; but his uncle or brother, or whichever of the princes was the eldest. Then the whole of Russia, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, held itself

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101

in readiness to support the claims of this or that
candidate. It was the same with the other princi-
palities, where the possessors of different appanages
aspired to reign in the metropolis of the region.
The civil wars, then, themselves strengthened the
sentiment of Russian unity. What were they, after
all, but family quarrels?

THE SUCCESSORS OF IAROSLAF THE GREAT—WARS FOR THE RIGHTS OF ELDERSHIP AND THE THRONE OF KIEF—VLADIMIR MONOMACHUS.

The persistent conflict between the Byzantine law,
by which the son inherited the possessions of the
father, and the old national law of the Slavs which
caused them to pass to the eldest of all the family,
was an inexhaustible source of civil wars. Even had
the law been perfectly clear, the princes were not
always disposed to recognise it. Thus, although the
eldest of Iaroslaf's sons had in his favour the formal
will of his father, giving him the throne of Kief,
and though Iaroslaf on his deathbed had desired
his other sons to respect their elder brother as they
had done their parent, and look on him as their father,
Isiaslaf at once found his brother Sviatoslaf ready to
take up arms and overturn his throne (1073). He
was obliged to seek refuge at the Court of Henry IV.
of Germany, who sent an embassy to Kief, com-
manding Sviatoslaf to restore the throne of Isiaslaf.
Sviatoslaf received the German envoys with such
courtesy, made them such a display of his treasures
and riches, that, dazzled by the gold, they adopted
a pacific policy. Henry IV. himself, disarmed
by the liberalities of the Russian prince, spoke no
more of chastising the usurper. Isiaslaf did not

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HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

return to Kief till after the death of his rival
(1076).

When his own death took place (1078), his son Sviatopolk did not succeed him immediately. It was necessary that all the heirs of Iaroslaf should be exhausted. Vsevolod, a brother of Isiaslaf, whose daughter married the Emperor Henry IV., or Henry V.—it is not quite certain which—reigned for fifteen years (1078-1093). In accordance with the same principle, it was not the son of Vsevolod, Vladimir Monomachus, who succeeded his father; but after the crown had been worn by a new generation of princes, it returned to the blood of Isiaslaf. Vladimir Monomachus made no opposition to the claims of Sviatopolk Isiaslavitch. “His father was older than mine,” he said, “and reigned first in Kief,” so he quitted the principality which he had governed with his father, and valiantly defended against the barbarians. But everyone was not so respectful to the national law as Vladimir Monomachus.

Two terrible civil wars desolated Russia in the reign of the Grand Prince Sviatopolk (1093-1113): one about the principality of Tchernigof, the other about Volhynia and Red Russia. Sviatoslaf had enjoyed Tchernigof as his share, to which Tmoutorakan in the Taurid, Mourom and Riazan in the Finn country, were annexed. Isiaslaf and Vsevolod, Grand Princes of Kief, had despoiled the sons of Sviatoslaf, their brother, depriving them of the rich territory of Tchernigof, and only leaving them Tmoutorakan and the Finnish country. Even Vladimir Monomachus, whom we have seen so disinterested, had accepted a share of the spoil. The injured princes were not people to bear this meekly, especially the eldest, Oleg Sviatoslavitch, one of the most energetic

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men of the 11th century. He called the terrible Polovtsi to his aid, and subjected Russia to frightful ravages. Vladimir Monomachus was moved by these misfortunes; he wrote a touching letter to Oleg, expressing his sorrow for having accepted Tchernigof. At his instigation a Congress of Princes met at Loubetch, on the Dnieper (1097). Seated on the same carpet, they resolved to put an end to the civil wars that handed the country as a prey to the barbarians. Oleg recovered Tchernigof, and promised to unite with the Grand Prince of Kief and Vladimir Monomachus against the Polovtsi. The treaty was ratified by the oath of each prince, who kissed the cross and swore, "That henceforth the Russian land shall be considered as the country of us all; and whoso shall dare to arm himself against his brother becomes our common enemy."

In Volhynia, the prince, David, was at war with his nephews, Vassilko and Volodar. The Congress of Loubetch had divided the disputed territories between them, but scarcely was the treaty ratified when David went to the Grand Prince Sviatopolk and persuaded him that Vassilko had a design on his life. With the light faith habitual to the men of that date, the Grand Prince joined David in framing a plot to attract Vassilko to Kief on the occasion of a religious fête. When he arrived he was loaded with chains, and the Grand Prince convoked the boyards and citizens of Kief, to denounce to them the pretended projects of Vassilko. "Prince," replied the boyards, much embarrassed, "thy tranquillity is dear to us. Vassilko merits death, if it is true that he is thine enemy; but if he is calumniated by David, God will avenge on David the blood of the innocent." Thereon the Grand Prince delivered Vassilko to his

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enemy David, who put out his eyes. The other descendants of Iaroslaf I. were indignant at this crime. Vladimir Monomachus united with Oleg of Tchernigof, his ancient enemy, and marched against Sviatopolk. The people and clergy of Kief succeeded in preventing a civil war between the Grand Prince and the confederates of Loubetch. Sviatopolk was forced to disavow David, and swear to join the avengers of Vassilko. David defended himself with vigour, and summoned to his help, first the Poles, and then the Hungarians. At last a new congress was assembled at Vititchevo (1100), on the left bank of the Dnieper, a town of which a deserted *gorodichtche* is all that now remains. As a punishment for his crime, David was deprived of his principality of Vladimir in Volhynia, and had to content himself with four small towns. After the new settlement of this affair, Monomachus led the other princes against the Polovtsi, and inflicted on them a bloody defeat; seven-teen of their khans remained on the field of battle. One khan who was made prisoner offered a ransom to Monomachus; but the prince showed how deeply he felt the injuries of the Christians—he refused the gold, and cut the brigand chief in pieces.

When Sviatopolk died, the Kievians unanimously declared they would have no Grand Prince but Vladimir Monomachus. Vladimir declined the honour, alleging the claims of Oleg and his brothers to the throne of Kief. During these negotiations, a sedition broke out in the city, and the Jews, whom Sviatopolk had made the instruments of his fiscal exactions, were pillaged. Monomachus was forced to yield to the prayers of the citizens. During his reign (1113-1125) he obtained great successes against the Polovtsi, the Patzinaks, the Torques, the Tcher-

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105

kesses, and other nomads. He gave an asylum to the remains of the Khazars, who built on the Oster, not far from Tchernigof, the town of Belovega. The ruins of this city that remain to-day prove that this Finnish people, eminently perfectible, and already civilised by the Greeks, were further advanced in the arts of construction and fortification than even the Russians themselves. According to one tradition, Monomachus also made war on the Emperor Alexis Comnenus, a Russian army invaded Thrace, and the Bishop of Ephesus is said to have brought gifts to Kief, among others a cup of cornelian that had belonged to Augustus, besides a crown and a throne, still preserved in the Museum at Moscow, under the name of the crown and throne of Monomachus. It is at present ascertained that they never belonged to Vladimir, but it was the policy of his descendants, the Tzars of Moscow, to propagate this legend. It was of consequence to them to prove that these ensigns of their power were traceable to their Kievian ancestor, and that the Russian Monomachus, grandson of the Greek Monomachus, had been solemnly crowned by the Bishop of Ephesus as sovereign of Russia.

The Grand Prince made his authority felt in other parts of Russia. A Prince of Minsk who had the temerity to kindle a civil war, was promptly de-throned, and died in captivity at Kief. The Novgorodians saw many of their boyards kept as hostages, or exiled. The Prince of Vladimir in Volhynia was deposed, and his states given to a son of the Grand Prince.

Monomachus has left us a curious paper of instructions that he compiled for his sons, and in which he gives them much good advice, enforced by examples drawn from his own life. "It is neither fasting, nor

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solitude, nor the monastic life, that will procure you
the life eternal—it is well-doing. Do not forget the
poor, but nourish them. Do not bury your riches in
the bosom of the earth, for that is contrary to the
precepts of Christianity.* Be a father to orphans, judge
the cause of widows yourself. . . . Put to death no
one, *be he innocent or guilty*, for nothing is more sacred
than the soul of a Christian. . . . Love your wives,
but beware lest they get the power over you. When
you have learnt anything useful, try to preserve it
in your memory, and strive ceaselessly to get know-
ledge. Without ever leaving his palace, my father
spoke five languages, *a thing that foreigners admire in
us*. . . . I have made altogether twenty-three cam-
paigns without counting those of minor importance.
I have concluded nineteen treaties of peace with the
Polovtsi, taken at least 100 of their princes prisoners,
and afterwards restored them to liberty; besides
more than 200 whom I threw into the rivers. No
one has travelled more rapidly than I. If I left
Tchernigof very early in the morning, I arrived at
Kief before vespers. Sometimes in the middle of
the thickest forests, I caught wild horses myself, and
bound them together with my own hands. How
many times I have been thrown from the saddle by
buffaloes, struck by the horns of the deer, trampled
under foot by the elands! A furious boar once tore
my sword from my belt; my saddle was rent by a
bear, which threw my horse down under me! How
many falls I had from my horse in my youth, when,

* To bury riches in the earth is the custom with which the
Emperor Maurice reproaches the Slavs of his time, and which is
to this day characteristic of the Russian peasants. Often the head
of the family dies, without having revealed the hiding-place to
his children. Treasure trove is frequent in Russia.

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107

heedless of danger, I broke my head, I wounded my
arms and legs! But the Lord watched over me!"

Vladimir completed the establishment of the Slav
race in Souzdal, and founded a city on the Kliazma
that bore his name, and that was destined to play a
great part. Such, in the beginning of the 12th
century, when Louis VI. was fighting with his barons
of the Isle de France, was the ideal of a Grand Prince
of Russia.

WARS BETWEEN THE HEIRS OF VLADIMIR MONOMACHUS
—FALL OF KIEF.

Of the sons of Vladimir Monomachus, George
Dolgorouki became the father of the Princes of
Souzdal and Moscow, and Mstislaf the father of the
Princes of Galitch and Kief. These two branches
were often at enmity, and it was their rivalry that
struck the final blow at the prosperity of Kief.
When Isiaslaf, son of Mstislaf (1146-1154), was
called to the throne by the inhabitants of the capital,
his uncle, George Dolgorouki, put forward his rights
as the eldest of the family. Kief, which had been
already many times taken and re-taken in the strife
between the *Olgovitches* (descendants of Oleg of Tcher-
nigof) and the *Monomachivitches* (descendants of
Vladimir Monomachus), was fated to be disputed
anew between the uncle and the nephew. It was
almost a war between the Old and New Russia, the
Russia of the Dnieper and that of the Volga. The
Princes of Souzdal, who dwelt afar in the forests in the
north-west, establishing their rule over the remnants
of the Finnish races, were to become greater and
greater strangers to Kievian Russia. If they still
coveted the "mother of Russian cities," because the

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HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

title of Grand Prince was attached to it, they at least began to obey and to venerate it less than the other princes.

George Dolgorouki found an ally against Isiaslaf in one of the Olgovitches, Sviatoslaf, who thirsted to avenge his brother Igor, dethroned and kept prisoner in Kief by the Grand Prince. The Kievians hesitated to support the sovereign they had chosen; they hated the Olgovitches, but in their attachment to the blood of Monomachus, they respected his son and his grandson equally. "We are ready," they said to Isiaslaf, "we and our children, to make war on the sons of Oleg. But George is your uncle, and can we dare to raise our hands against the son of Monomachus?" After the war had lasted some time, a decisive battle was fought. At the battle of Peréiaslavl, Isiaslaf was completely defeated, and took refuge, with two attendants, in Kief. The inhabitants, who had lost many citizens in this war, declared they were unable to stand a siege. The Grand Prince then abandoned his capital to George Dolgorouki, and retired to Vladimir in Volhynia, whence he demanded help from his brother-in-law, the King of Hungary, and the kings of Poland and Bohemia. With these reinforcements he surprised Kief, and nearly made his uncle prisoner. Understanding that the national law was against him, he opposed eldest with eldest, and declared himself the partisan of another son of Monomachus, the old Viatcheslaf, Prince of Tourof. He was proclaimed Grand Prince of Kief (1150-1154), adopted his nephew Isiaslaf as his heir, and gave splendid fêtes to the Russians and Hungarians. George returned to the charge, and was beaten under the walls of Kief. Each of these princes had taken barbarians into his pay: George, the

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Polovtsi; Isiaslaf, the *Black Caps*, that is the Torques, the Patzinaks, and the Berendians.

The obstinate Prince of Souzdal did not allow himself to be discouraged by this check. The old Viatcheslaf, who only desired peace and quiet, in vain addressed him letters, setting forth his rights as elder. "I had already a beard when you entered the world," he said. George proved himself intractable, and went into Gallicia to effect a junction with his ally, Vladimirko, Prince of Galitch. This Vladimirko had violated the oath he had taken and confirmed by kissing the cross. When they reproached him, he said, with a sneer, "It was such a little cross." To prevent this dangerous co-operation, Isiaslaf, without waiting the expected arrival of the Hungarians, began the pursuit of George, and came up with him on the borders of the Rout, a small tributary of the Dnieper. A bloody battle was fought, where he himself was wounded and thrown from his horse, but the Souzdalians and their allies the Polovtsi were completely defeated (1151). Isiaslaf survived this victory only three years. After his death and that of Viatcheslaf, Kief passed from hand to hand. George ended by reaching the supreme object of his desires. He made his entry into the capital in 1155, and had the consolation of dying Grand Prince of Kief, at the moment that a league was being formed for his expulsion (1157). "I thank Thee, great God," cried one of the confederates on learning the news, "for having spared us, by the sudden death of our enemy, the obligation of shedding his blood!"

The confederates entered the town; one of them assumed the title of Grand Prince, the others divided his territories. Henceforth there existed no Grand Principality, properly speaking, and with the growing

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power of Souzdal, Kief ceased to be the capital of
Russia. A final disaster was still reserved for her.

In 1169, Andrew Bogoliubski, son of George
Dolgorouki and Prince of Souzdal, being disaffected
to Mstislaf, Prince of Kief, formed against him a
coalition of eleven princes. He confided to his son
Mstislaf and his voïevode Boris an immense army of
Rostovians, Vladimirias, and Souzdalians to march
against Kief. This time the Russia of the forests
triumphed over Russia of the steppes, and after a
three days' siege Kief was taken by assault. "This
mother of Russian cities," says Karamsin, "had been
many times besieged and oppressed. She had often
opened her Golden Gate to her enemies, but none
had ever yet entered by force. To their eternal
shame, the victors forgot that they too were Russians!
During three days not only the houses, but the
monasteries, churches, and even the temples of Saint
Sophia and the Dîme, were given over to pillage.
The precious images, the sacerdotal ornaments, the
books, and the bells, all were taken away."

From this time the lot of the capital of Saint
Vladimir, pillaged and dishonoured by his descend-
ant, ceases to have a general interest for Russia.
Like other parts of Slavonia, she has her princes,
but the heads of the reigning families of Smolensk,
Tchernigof, and Galitch assume the title, formerly
unique, of Grand Prince. The centre of Russia is
changed. It is now in the basin of the Volga, at
Souzdal. Many causes conspired to render the
disaster of 1169 irremediable. The chronic civil wars
of this part of Russia, and the multitudes and growing
power of the nomad hordes, rendered the banks of
the Dnieper uninhabitable. In 1203 Kief was again
sacked by the Polovtsi, whom the Olgovitches of

DIVISION INTO PRINCIPALITIES.

111

Tchernigof had taken into their pay. On this soil,
incessantly the prey of war and invasion, it was im-
possible to found a lasting order of things; it was im-
possible that a regular system of government should
be established—that civilisation should develop
and maintain itself. Less richly endowed by nature,
and less civilised, the Russia of the forests was at
least more tranquil. It was there that a grand prin-
cipality was formed, called to fulfil high destinies,
but which unhappily was to be separated for three
hundred years, by the southern steppes and the
nomads who dwelt there, from the Black Sea; that
is, from Byzantine and Occidental civilisation.

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HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

CHAPTER VII.

RUSSIA AFTER THE FALL OF KIEF. POWER OF SOUZDAL AND GALLICIA, 1169-1224.

Andrew Bogoliubski of Souzdal (1157-1174), and the first attempt at autocracy — George II. (1212-1238) — Wars with Novgorod — Battle of Lipetsk (1216) — Foundation of Nijni-Novgorod (1220) — Roman (1188-1205) and his son Daniel (1205-1264) in Galicia.

ANDREW BOGOLIOUBSKI OF SOUZDAL (1157-1174) AND THE FIRST ATTEMPT AT AUTOCRACY.

AFTER the fall of the grand principality of Kief, Russia ceased to have a centre round which her whole mass could gravitate. Her life seemed to be withdrawn to her extremities; and during the fifty-four years which preceded the arrival of the Mongols, all the interest of Russian history is concentrated on the principality of Souzdal, on that of Galitch, and on the two republics of Novgorod and Pskof.

George Dolgorouki was the founder of Souzdal, but we have seen him expend all his energy in securing possession of the throne of Kief. His son Andrew Bogoliubski was, on the contrary, a true prince of Souzdal. From him are descended the Tzars of Moscow; with him there appears in Russian history quite a new type of prince. It is no longer the chivalrous light-hearted careless kniaz, in turn a prey to all kinds of opposing passions, the joyous kniaz of the happy land of Kief—but an ambitious, restless, politic, and imperious sovereign, going

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straight to his goal without scruple and without
pity. Andrew had taken an aversion to the tur-
bulent cities of the Dnieper, where the assemblies of
citizens sometimes held the power of the prince in
check. In Souzdal, at least, he found himself in the
centre of colonists planted by the prince, who never
dreamed of contesting his authority; he reigned over
towns which for the most part owed their existence
to his ancestors or himself. During the lifetime of
his father George, he had quitted the Dnieper and his
palace at Vychegorod, had established himself on the
Kliazma, bringing with him a Greek image of the
mother of God, had enlarged and fortified Vladimir,
and founded a quarter that he called Bogolioubovo.

When after the death of George the grand prin-
cipality became vacant, he allowed the princes of
the south to dispute it among themselves. He only
wished to mix with their quarrels as far as would
suffice for the recognition of his authority, not at
Kief, but at Novgorod the Great, then bound by the
closest ties to Souzdal. He established one of his
nephews as his lieutenant at Novgorod. A glorious
campaign against the Bulgarians increased his repu-
tation in Russia. He deserved more than anyone
to be Grand Prince of Kief, but we have seen that
he preferred to pillage it—that he preferred a sacri-
legious spoil to the throne of Monomachus.

After having destroyed the splendour and power
of Kief, and guided by the sure instinct that afterwards
led Ivan the Great and Ivan the Terrible against
Novgorod, he longed to subdue the great republic to
a narrower dependence. “The fall of Kief,” says
Karamsin, “seemed to presage the loss of Novgorod
liberty; it was the same army, and it was the same
prince (Mstislaf Andreievitch) who commanded it.

VOL. I.

I

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HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

But the Kievians, accustomed to change their masters—to sacrifice the vanquished to the victors—only fought for the honour of their princes, while the Novgorodians were to shed their blood for the defence of the laws and institutions established by their ancestors." Mstislaf, who had forced the princes of Smolensk, Riazan, Mourom, and Polotsk to join him, put the territories of the republic to fire and sword, but only succeeded in exasperating the courageous citizens. When fighting began under the walls of the town, the Novgorodians, to inflame themselves for the combat, reminded each other of the pillage and the sacrilege with which their adversaries had polluted the holy city of Kief. All swore to die for St. Sophia of Novgorod; their archbishop, Ivan, took the image of the Mother of God and paraded it with great pomp round the walls. It is said that an arrow shot by a Souzdalian soldier having struck the image of the Virgin, her face turned towards the city, and inundated the vestments of the archbishop with miraculous tears. Instantly a panic seized the besiegers. The victory of the Novgorodians was complete; they slew a multitude of their enemies, and made so many prisoners, that according to the contemptuous expression of their chronicler, "You could get six Souzdalians for a grivna (1170)." Their dependence on Souzdal for corn soon forced them to make peace. They abandoned none of the ancient rights of the republic, but of "their own free will," according to the consecrated expression, they accepted as sovereign the prince nominated for them by Andrew of Souzdal.

Andrew about this time lost his only son, his heir, Mstislaf. The knowledge that in future he would be working for his collateral relatives no whit

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diminished his ambition or his arrogance. The princes of Smolensk, David, Rurik, and Mstislaf the Brave, could not endure his despotic ways, and, in spite of his threats, took Kief. The Olgovitches of Tchernigof, delighted to see discord kindled between the descendants of Monomachus, incited Andrew to revenge this injury. So he sent a herald to the princes of Smolensk, to say to them, "You are rebels; the principality of Kief is mine. I order Rurik to return to his patrimony of Smolensk, and David to retire to Berlad; I can no longer bear his presence in Russia, nor the presence of Mstislaf, the most guilty of you all."

Mstislaf the Brave, say the chroniclers, "feared none but God." When he received Andrew's message, he shaved the beard and hair of the messenger, and answered him: "Go, and repeat these words unto your prince—'Up to this time we have respected you like a father, but since you do not blush to treat us as your vassals and common people, since you have forgotten that you speak to princes, we mock at your menaces. Execute them—we appeal to the judgment of God.'" The judgment of God was an encounter under the walls of Vychegorod, besieged by more than twenty princes, allies or vassals of Andrew of Souzdal. Mstislaf succeeded in dividing the assailants, and completed their defeat by a victorious sortie, 1173.

When Andrew came to establish himself in the land of Souzdal, the inhabitants themselves elected him their prince, to the exclusion of other members of the family. But this enemy of municipal liberty had no intention of fixing his residence either at Rostof or Souzdal, the two most ancient cities of the principality, which had their assembly of citizens,

12

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HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

their *vetché*. From the beginning he had conceived
the project of raising above them a new town,
Vladimir on the Kliazma, considered by Rostof and
Souzdal merely a subject borough. To give a
plausible pretext to this resolution he had his tent
pitched on the road to Souzdal ten versts from Vlad-
mir, and installed himself there with his miraculous
image of the Virgin which came from Constantinople,
and was, we are assured, the work of St. Luke. The
next day he announced that the Mother of God had
appeared to him in a dream, and had commanded
him to place her image, not at Rostof, but at
Vladimir. He was likewise to build a church and a
monastery to the Virgin on the spot where she made
herself manifest; this was the origin of the village
of Bogolioubovo. Andrew preferred Vladimir to the
old cities, but it was in his house at Bogolioubovo
that he best liked to live. He tried to make of
Vladimir a new Kief, as Kief herself was a new
Byzantium. There were at Vladimir a Golden Gate,
a Church of the Dîme consecrated to the Virgin, and
numerous monasteries built by the artists summoned
by Andrew from the West.

Andrew sought the friendship of the priests, whom
he felt to be one of the great forces of the future.
He posed as a pious prince, rose often by night to
burn tapers in the churches, and publicly distributed
alms in abundance. After a victory over the
Bulgarians of the Volga, he obtained leave from the
Patriarch of Constantinople to establish a commemo-
rative feast. It happened that on the same day that
Andrew triumphed over the Bulgarians, thanks to
the image of the Virgin, the Emperor Manuel had
won a victory over the Saracens by means of the
true cross and the image of Christ represented on

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117

his standard. One anniversary served for both
victories of orthodoxy, and Vladimir was in harmony
with Byzantium. Andrew was anxious to make
Vladimir a metropolitan city. At the same time that
he robbed Kief of the grand principality, he would
have deprived her of the religious supremacy of
Russia, and given his new city the spiritual as well
as the temporal power. This time the patriarch
refused, but the attempt was one day to be renewed
by the princes of Moscow.

What more particularly proves this prince—who
had risen from the conception of appanages to that
of the indivisible modern state—to have been superior
to his century, to have had sure instincts as to the
future, is that he declined to share his dominions
with his brothers and nephews. In spite of the
testamentary directions of George, he expelled his
three brothers from Souzdal, and they retired with
their mother, a Greek princess, to the court of the
Emperor Manuel. It appears that this measure was
advised by the men of Souzdal. The subjects then
had the same instinct of unity as the prince. If he
broke with the patriarchal custom of appanages, and
wished to reign alone in Vladimir, he broke equally
with the Varangian tradition of the *droujina*; he
treated his men, his boyards, not as companions, but
as subjects. Those who refused to bow to his will
had to leave the country. We may say that Andrew
Bogoliubski created autocracy 300 years before its
time. He indicated in the 12th century all that the
Grand Princes of Moscow had to do in the 15th
and 16th centuries, to attain absolute power. His
mistrust of municipal liberty, his despotic treatment
of the boyards, his efforts to suppress the appanages,
his proud attitude towards the other Russian princes,

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HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

his alliance with the clergy, and his project of trans-
porting to the basin of the Oka the religious metro-
polis of all the Russias, are the indications of a poli-
tical programme that ten generations of princes did
not suffice to carry out. The moment was not yet
come; Andrew had not enough power, nor Souzdal
resources enough to subjugate the rest of Russia.
Andrew succeeded against Kief, but he endured a
double check from Novgorod the Great, and from
Mstislaf the Brave, and the princes of the south.
His despotism made him terrible enemies. His
boyards, whom he tried to reduce to obedience,
assassinated him in his favourite residence of Bogo-
lioubovo (1174).

GEORGE II. (1212-1238)—WARS WITH NOVGOROD—
BATTLE OF LIPETSK (1216) — NIJNI-NOVGOROD
FOUNDED (1220).

The death of this remarkable man was followed by
great troubles. The common people attacked the
houses of rich men and magistrates, gave them up
to pillage, and committed so many murders that to
establish quiet the clergy were forced to have a pro-
cession of images. The unpunished murders show
how premature was the autocratic attempt of Andrew.
His succession was disputed between his nephews and
his two brothers Michael and Vsevolod, who had
returned from Greece. The nephews were supported
by the old cities of Rostof and Souzdal, which were
animated by a violent hatred of the *parrenue* city
of Vladimir, that had torn from them the title of
capital, and had taken up the cause of Michael and
Vsevolod. "The Vladimirians," said the Rostovians,
"are our slaves, our masons; let us burn their town,

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and set up there a governor of our own." The Vladi-
mirians had the advantage in the first war, and
caused Michael, the elder of Andrew's brothers, to be
recognised Grand Prince of Souzdal. At his death
the Rostovians refused to recognise the other brother
Vsevolod, surnamed the *Big-Nest*, on account of his
numerous posterity. They resisted all proposals of
compromise, declaring that "their arms alone should
do them right on the vile populace of Vladimir."
It was, on the contrary, the vile populace of Vladi-
mir who put the boyards of Rostof in chains. The
two ancient cities were forced to submit; Vladi-
mir remained the capital of Souzdal. Vsevolod
(1176-1212) managed to secure himself on the
throne by defeating the princes of Riazan and
Tchernigof. He extended his influence to the distant
Galitch, and contracted matrimonial alliances with
the princes of Kief and Smolensk. He reduced the
Novgorodians to beg for one of his sons as their
prince. "Lord and Grand Prince," said the envoys
of the republic to him, "our country is your patri-
mony; we entreat you to send us the grandson of
George Dolgorouki, the great-grandson of Mono-
machus, to govern us." The princes of Riazan having
incurred his displeasure, he united their states to
his principality. Riazan rebelled, and was reduced
to ashes, and the inhabitants transported to the soli-
tudes of Souzdal. This prince, who has likewise
been called "The Great," exhibited in his designs
the prudence, the spirit of intrigue, constancy, and
firmness which characterised the princes of the
Russia of the forests. At his death (1212) the
troubles began again. Dissatisfied with his eldest
son Constantine, prince of Novgorod, Vsevolod had
given the grand principality of Novgorod to his

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second son, George II. Constantine had to con-
tent himself with Rostof; a third brother, Iaroslaf,
prince of Perciaslavl-Zaliesski, had been sent to
Novgorod.

Iaroslaf quarrelled with his turbulent subjects, left
their town and installed himself at Torjok, a city in
the territory of Novgorod, where he betook himself
to hindering the passage of the merchants and
boyards. Their communications with the Volga were
intercepted; he prevented the arrival of corn, and
reduced the town to starvation. The Novgorodians
were obliged to eat the bark of pines, moss, and
lime-leaves. The streets were filled with the bodies
of the wretched inhabitants, which the dogs devoured.
Iaroslaf was implacable. He persisted in remaining
at Torjok, refused to return to Novgorod, and
arrested all envoys sent to him. He treated Nov-
gorod as his father had treated Rostof and Souzdal.
But help arrived to the despairing citizens in the
person of a prince of Smolensk, Mstislaf the Bold,
son of Mstislaf the Brave. "Torjok shall not hold
herself higher than Novgorod," he cried; "I will
deliver your lands and your citizens, or leave my
bones among you." Thus Mstislaf became prince of
Novgorod; and as he saw that the Grand Prince
of Vladimir supported his brothers, he sought an
ally in Constantine of Rostof, who was discontented
with his inheritance. The Novgorodian quarrel
speedily expanded into a general war, and Mstislaf
contrived to make Souzdal the scene of strife. Before
a battle he tried to effect a reconciliation between
the two princes of Vladimir and Rostof. But George
answered, "If my father was not able to reconcile
me with Constantine, has Mstislaf the right to judge
between us? Let Constantine be victorious and all

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will be his." This strife between the three sons of Big-Nest had all the feroceness of fraternal warfare. Before the battle George and Iaroslaf issued orders that quarter was to be given to no one, to kill even those who had "embroideries of gold on their shoulders;" that is, the princes of the blood. Already they had decided on the partition of Russia. But the troops of Novgorod, Pskof, and Smolensk attacked them with such fury that those of Souzdal and Mourom gave way, and it was the soldiers of Mstislaf who in their turn gave no quarter. Nine thousand men were killed, and only sixty prisoners taken. George threw off his royal clothes, wore out the strength of three horses, and with the fourth just managed to reach Vladimir. (Battle of Lipetsk, near Perćiaslavl-Zaliesski, 1216.) Constantine then became Grand Prince of Vladimir, and ceded Souzdal to his brother George. Iaroslaf was obliged to renounce Novgorod, and release the captive citizens.

At the death of Constantine (1217) George re-gained the throne of Vladimir. Under him the expeditions against the Bulgarians of the Volga and the Mordvians were continued. These expeditions were organised both by land and water; the infantry descended the Oka and the Volga in boats, the cavalry marched along the banks. They attacked and burnt the wooden forts of the Bulgars, and destroyed the population.

During a campaign, conducted by George in person along the whole length of the Volga, he noticed a small hill on its right bank, near its junction with the Oka. Here, in the midst of the Mordvian tribes, he founded Nijni-Novgorod (1220). A Mordvian tradition gives its own account of this important event. "The prince of the Russians sailed

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of Polish and Hungarian ideas the boyards had raised themselves above the mass of the people, and formed a strong aristocracy which really ruled the country. When Iaroslaf Osmomysl (glorified in the Song of Igor) neglected his lawful wife Olga for his mistress Anastasia, the nobles rose, burnt Anastasia alive, and obliged the prince to send away his natural son, and to recognise his legitimate son Vladimir as his heir.

When Vladimir became prince, he lost no time in incurring their hatred. He was accused of abandoning himself to vice and drunkenness, of despising the councils of wise men, of dishonouring the wives and daughters of the nobles, and of having married as his second wife the widow of a priest. It did not need all this to exhaust the patience of the Gallicians. They summoned Vladimir to give up the woman that they might punish her. Vladimir took fright, and fled to Hungary with his family and his treasures. This was all the boyards desired, and they offered the throne to Roman, prince of Volhynia (1188). But Bela, king of Hungary, brought back the fugitive prince with an army, and entered Galitch. There he suddenly changed his mind, and coveted this beautiful country, rich in salt and minerals, for himself. He threw his *protéyé* Vladimir into prison, and proclaimed his own son Andrew. The Hungarian yoke seemed naturally more heavy to the Gallicians than the authority of their easy-going princes. They expelled the strangers, and recalled Vladimir, who had found means to escape, and had taken refuge with Frederick Barbarossa. When Vladimir died, Roman of Volhynia resolved at all hazards to enter Galitch. His rival had previously appealed to the Hungarians, so he applied to the Poles, and, with an

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HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

auxiliary army given him by Casimir the Just, he reconquered Galitch. The turbulent boyards had at last found their master.

This time Roman held the crown, not by election, but by conquest. He resolved to subdue the proud aristocracy. The Polish Bishop Kadloubek, a contemporary writer, who sympathised with the oligarchs, draws a frightful picture of the vengeance exercised by Roman on his enemies. They were quartered, buried alive, riddled with arrows, delivered over to horrible tortures. He had promised pardon to those who had fled; but when they returned, he accused them of conspiracy, condemned them to death, and confiscated their goods. "To eat a drop of honey in peace," he said cynically, "you must first kill the bees." The Russian chroniclers, on the contrary, praise him highly. He was another Monomachus, an invincible and redoubtable hero, who "walked in the ways of God, exterminated the heathen, flung himself like a lion upon the infidels, was savage as a wild cat, deadly as a crocodile, swooped on his prey like an eagle." More than once he vanquished the Lithuanian tribes and the Polovtsi; in the civil wars of Russia he was likewise victorious, and gave to one of his relations the throne of Kief. He attracted the attention of the great Pope, Innocent III., who sent missionaries to convert him to the Catholic faith, promising to make him a great king by the sword of Saint Peter. Drawing his own sword, Roman proudly answered the envoys of Innocent: "Has the Pope one like mine? While I wear it at my side, I have no need of another's blade." In 1205, when he was engaged in a war with Poland, he imprudently ventured too far from his army on the banks of the Vistula, and perished in

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125

an unequal combat. His exploits were long re-
membered in Russia, and the ‘Chronicle of Volhynia’
gives him the surname of “the Great,” and “the
Autocrat of all the Russias.” A historian of
Lithuania relates that, after his victories over the
barbarous inhabitants of that country, he harnessed
the prisoners to the plough. Hence the popular
saying, “Thou art terrible, Roman; the Lithu-
anians are thy labouring oxen.” Roman of Vol-
hynia is a worthy contemporary of the autocrat of
the north-west, Andrew of Souzdal.

Roman left two sons, minors. Daniel the elder
was proclaimed prince of Galitch (1205-1264), but
in such a turbulent country, rent as it was by
factions, it was impossible for a child to reign
under the guardianship of his mother. Red Russia
fell a prey to a series of civil wars, complicated by
the intervention of Poles and Hungarians. The
ferocity shown by the Gallicians in their intestine
struggles has gained for them the name of *atheists*
in the Kievian Chronicles. The princes of the blood
of Saint Vladimir were tortured and hung by the
boyards. Daniel was first replaced on the throne,
then expelled, then again recalled. His infancy was
the toy of intriguing factions. Mstislaf the Bold
also came hither in search of adventures. He chased
the Hungarians from Galitch, took the title of Prince,
and married his daughter to Daniel. Both were
immediately obliged to turn their arms against the
Poles. Daniel, whose character had been formed in
such a rough school, displayed remarkable energy
and courage in these campaigns. The aid of the
Polovtsi had to be sought against these enemies from
the west, the Hungarians and the Poles—now rivals,
now allies. At the death of Mstislaf the Bold (1228).

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HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

Daniel, who five years previously had taken part in
the battle of Kalka against the Tatars, became prince
of Galitch. Towards the boyards, whose turbulence
had ruined the country, he acted with the salutary
policy of Roman, though without employing the
same severity.

The great Mongol invasion once more expelled
him from Galitch, which it covered with ruins.
Daniel, who had fled to Hungary, did his best to
help his unhappy country. To fill up the void
made by the Mongols in the population, he invited
Germans, Armenians, and Jews, whom he loaded
with privileges. The economic consequence of this
measure was a rapid development of commerce and
industry; the ethnographic consequence was the
introduction into Gallicia of a Jewish element, very
tenacious and very persistent, but alien to the domi-
nant nationality, and forming a separate people in
the midst of the Russians. Daniel was one of the
last princes to make his submission to the horde.
"You have done well to come at last," said the
khan of the Mongols. Bati treated him with dis-
tinction, allowed him to escape the ordinary humili-
ations, and, seeing that the fermented milk of the
Tatars was not to his taste, gave him a cup of wine.
Daniel, however, bore with impatience the yoke of
these barbarians.

Feeling himself isolated in the general abasement
of the orthodox world, the prince of Galitch turned
towards Rome, and promised to do his best for the
union of the two Churches and to add his contingent
to the crusade preached in Europe against the
Mongols. Innocent IV. called him his dear son,
accorded him the title of king, and sent him a crown
and sceptre. Daniel was solemnly crowned at Drog-

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uitchine by the abbot of Messina, Legate of the Pope (1254). Both the crusade against the Asiatics and the reconciliation between the two Churches came to nothing. Daniel braved the reproaches and threats of Alexander IV., but kept the title of king. He took part in the European wars with great success. "The Hungarians," says a chronicler, "admired the order that reigned among his troops, their Tatar weapons, the magnificence of the prince, his Greek habit embroidered with gold, his sabre and his arrows, his saddle enriched with jewels and precious metals richly chased." Encouraged by the Hungarians and the Poles, he tried to shake off the yoke of the Mongols, and expelled them from a few places; but he was soon obliged to bow to superior force, and dismantle his fortresses. No prince better deserved to free Southern Russia, but his activity and talents struggled in vain against the fate of his country. He terminated in 1264 one of the most memorable and most chequered careers in the history of Russia. The civil wars of his youth, the Tatar invasion in his ripe age, the negotiations and wars with Western Europe, left him no repose. After him, Russian Galitch passed to different princes of his family. In the 14th century, she was absorbed into the kingdom of Poland. She was lost to Russia.

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HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE RUSSIAN REPUBLICS: NOVGOROD, PSKOF, AND VIATKA, UP TO 1224.

Novgorod the Great — Her struggles with the princes — Novgorodian institutions — Commerce — National Church — Literature — Pskof and Viatka.

NOVGOROD THE GREAT—STRUGGLES WITH THE PRINCES.

NOVGOROD has been, from the most remote antiquity, the political centre of the Russia of the North-west. The origin of the Slavs of the Ilmen, who laid her foundations, is still uncertain. Some learned Russians, such as M. Kostomarof, suppose them to belong to the Slavs of the South, others to the Slavs of the Baltic; others, again, like M. Bielaef and M. Ilovaïski, make them a branch of the Krivitch or Smolensk Slavs. We find the Novgorodians, at the opening of Russian history, at the head of the confederation of tribes which first expelled and then recalled the Varangians to reign over Russia.

Novgorod, from very ancient times, was divided into two parts, separated by the course of the Volkhof, which rises in lake Ilmen and falls into the Ladoga. On the right bank was the *side of Saint Sophia*, where Iaroslaf the Great built his celebrated cathedral; where the Novgorod kremlin was situated, enclosing both the palaces of the archbishop and the prince; and where the famous Russian monument was conse-

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crated in 1862. On the left bank, the *side of commerce*, with its *Court of Iaroslaf*; the bridge which joins the two halves of the city is celebrated in the annals of Novgorod. The side of Saint Sophia includes the Nerevian quarter as well as those of "beyond the city," and of the potters (*Nerevski, Zaporodni, Gontcharni*). The side of commerce comprised the quarters of the *carpenters* and *Slavs*. Ancient documents also speak of a *Prussian* (Lithuanian) quarter. Some of these names seem to indicate that many races have concurred, as in ancient Rome, to form the city of Novgorod. Gilbert of Lannoy, who visited the republic about 1413, has left us this description of it: "Novgorod is a prodigiously large town, situated in a beautiful plain, in the midst of vast forests. The soil is low, subject to inundations, marshy in places. The town is surrounded by imperfect ramparts, formed of gabions; the towers are of stone." Portions of these ramparts still exist, and allow us to form an idea of the immense extent of the ancient city. The kremlin forms its acropolis. The cathedral has preserved its frescoes of the 12th century, the pillars painted with images of saints on a golden ground, the imposing figure of Christ on the cupola, the banner of the Virgin, which was to revive the courage of the besieged on the ramparts; the tombs of Saint Vladimir Iaroslavitch, of the Archbishop Nikita, by whose prayers a fire was extinguished, of Mstislaf the Brave, the devoted defender of Novgorod, and of many other saints and illustrious people. Without counting the tributary cities of Novgorod, such as Pskof, Ladoga, Izborsk, Veliki Louki, Staraya Roussa (Old Russia), Torjok, Biejitchi, her primitive territory (the "ager Romanus" of the republic) was divided into five *fifths*.

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(piatines), the Vodskäia, the Chelonskaïa, the Obonej-
skaïa, the Biejetskaïa, and the Derevskäia, which in-
cluded the land to the south of the lakes Ladoga and
Onega. Her conquests formed five bailiwicks or
volosts, occupying the whole of Northern Russia, and
extending as far as Siberia. These bailiwicks were
the Zavolotchić, between the Onega and the Mezen;
the Tré, or Russian Lapland; Permia, on the Upper
Kama; Petchora, on the river of the same name; and
Iougria, on the other side of the Oural mountains.
To these we must add Ingria, Carelia, and part of
Livonia and Esthonia.

Novgorod, which had summoned the Varangian
princes, was too powerful, with her 100,000 inhabi-
tants and 300,000 subjects, to allow herself to be
tyrannised over. An ancient tradition speaks
vaguely of a revolt against Rurik the Old under the
hero Vadim. Sviatoslaf, the conqueror of the Bul-
garia of the Danube, undertook to govern her by mere
agents, but Novgorod insisted on having one of his
sons for her prince. "If you do not come to reign
over us," said the citizens, "we shall know how to
find ourselves other princes." Iaroslaf the Great, as
a reward for their devotion, accorded them immense
privileges, of which no record can be found, but which
are constantly invoked by the Novgorodians, as were
the true or false charters of Charles the Great by the
German cities. These republicans could not exist
without a prince, but they rarely kept one long.
The assembly of the citizens, the vetchć, convoked
by the bell in the Court of Iaroslaf, was the real
sovereign. The republic called herself "My Lord
Novgorod the Great" (Gospodine Velikii Novgorod).
"Who can equal God and the great Novgorod?" was
a popular saying. From the distance of the city

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from the Russia of the Dnieper, and her position
towards the Baltic and Western Europe, she took
little part in the civil wars of which Kief was the
object and the centre. She profited by this in a
certain sense; for in the midst of the strifes of
princes and of frequent changes in the grand princi-
pality, no sovereign was strong enough to give her a
master. She could choose between princes of the rival
families. She could impose conditions on him whom
she chose to reign over her. If discontented with
his management, she expelled the prince and his band
of *intrusions*. According to the accustomed formula,
"she made a reverence, and showed him the way" to
leave Novgorod. Sometimes, to hinder his evil
designs, she kept him prisoner in the archbishop's
palace, and it was left to his successor to set him at
liberty. Often a revolution was accompanied by a
general pillage of the partisans of the fallen prince,
even by *noyades* in the Volkhof. A Grand Prince
of Kief, Sviatopolk, wished to force his son on them.
"Send him here," said the Novgorodians, "if he
has a spare head." The princes themselves con-
tributed to the frequent changes of reign. They
only felt themselves half-rulers in Novgorod, so
they accepted any other appanage with joy. Thus,
in 1132, Vsevolod Gabriel abandoned Novgorod to
reign at Peréiaslavl. When his hopes of Kief were
crushed, and he wished to return to Novgorod, the
citizens rejected him. "You have forgotten your
oath to die with us, you have sought another princi-
pality; go where you will." Presently they thought
better of it, and took him back. Four years after-
wards he was again obliged to fly. In a great *vetché*,
to which the citizens of Pskof and Ladoga were sum-
moned, they solemnly condemned the exile, after

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reading the heads of very characteristic accusations:
"He took no care of the poorer people; he desired
to establish himself at Perćiaslavl; at the battle of
Mount Idanof, against the men of Souzdal, he and
his *droujina* were the first to leave the battle-field; he
was fickle in the quarrels of the princes, sometimes
uniting with the Prince of Tchernigof, sometimes
with the opposite party."

The power of a prince of Novgorod rested not only
on his *droujina*, which always followed his fortunes,
and on his family relations with this or that powerful
principality, but also on a party formed for him in
the heart of the republic. It was when the opposing
party grew too strong that he was dethroned, and
popular vengeance exercised on his adherents. Nov-
gorod being above all a great commercial city, her
divisions were frequently caused by diverging eco-
nomic interests. Among the citizens, some were
occupied in trade with the Volga and the East,
others with the Dnieper and Greece. The former
naturally sought the alliance of the princes of
Souzdal, masters of the great Oriental artery; the
latter that of the princes of Kief or Tchernigof,
masters of the road to the south. Each of the two
parties tried to establish a prince of the family whose
protection they sought. If he fell, yet succeeded
in escaping from the town, he tried to regain his
throne by the arms of his family, or to instal himself
and his *droujina* either at Pskof, like Vsevolod-
Gabriel, who became prince of that town, or at Tor-
jok, like Iaroslaf of Souzdal, and thence blockaded
and starved the great city. The prince of Souzdal
was soon the most formidable neighbour of Nov-
gorod. We have seen that Andrew Bogolioubski
sent an army against it, then that his nephew Iaroslaf

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besieged his ancient subjects till Mstislaf the Bold freed them by the battle of Lipetsk (1216). He was the son of Mstislaf the Brave, who had defended them against Vsevolod Big-Nest, and against Souzdal and the Tchouds. The remains of "the Brave" rest at Saint Sophia, in a bronze sarcophagus. His son, "the Bold," was of far too restless a nature to leave his bones also at Novgorod. He reduced the principality to order, and then assembled the citizens in the Court of Iaroslaf, and said to them, "I salute Saint Sophia, the tomb of my father, and you. Novgorodians, I am going to reconquer Galitch from the strangers, but I shall never forget you. I hope I may lie by the tomb of my father, in Saint Sophia." The Novgorodians in vain entreated him to stay (1218). We have seen him use his last armies in the troubles of the South-east, and die Prince of Galitch.

After his departure, the republic summoned his nephew, Sviatoslaf, to the throne; but he could not come to terms with magistrates and a populace equally turbulent. The *possadnik*, Tverdislaf, caused one of the boyards of Novgorod to be arrested. This was the signal for a general rising; some took the part of the boyard, others that of the possadnik. During eight days the bell of the kremlin sounded. Finally both factions buckled on their cuirasses and drew their swords. Tverdislaf raised his eyes to Saint Sophia, and cried, "I shall fall first in the battle, or God will justify me by giving the victory to my brothers." Ten men only perished in this skirmish, and then peace was re-established. The prince, who accused Tverdislaf of being the cause of the trouble, demanded that he should be deposed. The *vetché* inquired what crime he had committed.

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"None," replied the prince, "but it is my will."
"I am satisfied," exclaimed the possadnik, "as they
do not accuse me of any fault; as to you, my brothers,
you can dispose alike of possadniks and princes."
The assembly then gave their decision. "Prince,
as you do not accuse the possadnik of any fault,
remember that you have sworn to depose no magis-
trate without trial. He will remain our possadnik—
we will not deliver him to you." On this Sviatoslaf
quitted Novgorod (1219). He was replaced by
Vsevolod, one of his brothers, who was expelled two
years later (1221).

The Souzdalian party having made some progress,
they recalled the same Iaroslaf who was beaten at
Lipetsk, but the princes of Souzdal were too absolute
in their ideas to be able to agree with the Novgoro-
dians. Iaroslaf was again put to flight, and replaced
by Vsevolod of Smolensk, who was expelled in his
turn. The Grand Prince of Souzdal now interposed,
levied a contribution on Novgorod, and a prince, of
Tchernigof was imposed on them, who hastened in
1225 to return to the south of Russia. In seven
years the Novgorodians had five times changed their
rulers. Iaroslaf himself came back for a third and
even a fourth time. A famine so much reduced the
Novgorodians that 42,000 corpses were buried in two
cemeteries alone. These proud citizens implored
strangers to take them as slaves for the price of a
morsel of bread. The same year a fire destroyed the
whole of one quarter of Novgorod. These calamities
subdued their turbulence. Iaroslaf succeeded in
governing them despotically till he was called to fill
the throne of the Grand Prince (1236). He left
them, as their prince, his son Alexander Nevski.

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NOVGORODIAN INSTITUTIONS—COMMERCE—THE NATIONAL CHURCH—LITERATURE.

From the fact that no dynasty of princes could establish itself at Novgorod, that no princely band could take a place among the native aristocracy, it follows that the republic kept her ancient liberties and customs intact under the short reigns of her rulers. In all Russian cities, it is true, the *country* existed side by side with the prince and boyards, the assembly of citizens side by side with the prince's men, and the native *militia* side by side with the foreign *droujina*; but at Novgorod, the *country*, the *retche*, and the municipal *militia* had retained more vigour than elsewhere. The town was more powerful than the prince, who reigned by virtue of a constitution, traces of which may be observed, no doubt, in other regions of Russia, but which is found in its original form at Novgorod alone. Each new monarch was compelled to take an oath, by which he bound himself to observe the laws and privileges of Iaroslaf the Great. This constitution, like the *pacta conventa* of Poland, signified distrust, and was intended to limit the power of the prince and his men. The revenues to which he had a right, and which formed his civil list, were carefully limited, as also were his judicial and political functions. He levied tribute on certain *volosts*, and was entitled to the *vira* (German *Wergelb*) as well as to certain fines. In some bailiwicks he had his own lieutenant, and Novgorod had hers. He could not execute justice without help of the possadnik, nor upset any judgment; nor, above all, take the suit beyond Novgorod. This was what the Novgorodians feared most, and with reason. The

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day when the people of Novgorod bethought themselves of appealing to the tribunal of the Grand Prince of Moscow, was fatal to the independence of the republic. In the conflicts between the men of the prince and those of the city, a mixed court delivered judgment. The prince, no more than his men, could acquire villages in the territory of Novgorod, nor create colonies. He was forbidden to hunt in the woods of Staraïa Roussa except in the autumn, and had to reap his harvests at a specified season. Though they thus mistrusted their prince, the Novgorodians had need of him to moderate the ancient Slav anarchy. As in the days of Rurik, "family armed itself against family, and there was no justice."
In Novgorod the *vetché* had more extensive powers, and acted more regularly than in the other Russian cities. It was the *vetché* which nominated and expelled princes, imprisoned them in the archiepiscopal palace, and formally accused them; elected and deposed the archbishops, decided peace and war, judged the State criminals. According to the old Slav custom (preserved in Poland till the fall of the republic), the decisions were always made, not by a majority, but by unanimity of voices. It was a kind of *liberum veto*. The majority had the resource of drowning the minority in the Volkhof. The prince as well as the possadnik, the boyards as well as the people, had the right of convoking the *vetché*. It met sometimes in the Court of Iaroslaf, sometimes in Saint Sophia's. As Poland had her confederations, her "diets under the shield," Novgorod occasionally saw on the banks of the Volkhof two rival and hostile *vetchés*, which often came to blows on the bridge. Before being submitted to the general assembly, the questions were sometimes deliberated in a smaller

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council, composed of notable citizens, of acting or
past magistrates.

The chief Novgorodian magistrates were: 1. The *possadnik*, called by contemporary German writers the *burgomaster*, who was changed nearly as often as the prince. The possadnik was chosen from some of the influential families, one of which alone gave a dozen possadniks to Novgorod. The first magistrate was charged to defend civic privileges, and shared with the prince the judicial power and the right of distributing the taxes. He governed the city, commanded her army, directed her diplomacy, sealed the acts with her seal. 2. The *tysatski* (from *tysatch*, thousand) bears in German documents the title of *dux* or *herzog*; he was therefore a military chief, a chiliarch who had the centurions of the town militia under his orders. He had a special tribunal, and seems to have been specially entrusted with the defence of the rights of the people, thus recalling the Roman tribunes. 3. Besides the *centurions* there was a *starost*, a sort of district mayor, for each quarter of the town.

The chief document of the Novgorodian law is the *Letter of Justice* (Soudnaïa Gramota), of which the definite publication may be placed at 1471. It contains the same principles as the *Rousskaïa Prarda* of Iaroslaf the Great. As in all the early Germanic and Scandinavian laws, we find the right of private revenge, the fixed price of blood, the “boot” or fine for injury inflicted, the oath admitted as evidence, the judgment of God, the judicial duel, which was still resorted to by Novgorod even after her decadence, in the 16th century. We also find records of corporal punishments. The thief was to be branded; on the second relapse into crime, he was to be hung. Territorial property acquires a greater importance, and,

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a sure evidence of Muscovite influence, a second court of appeal is admitted—the appeal to the tribunal of the Grand Prince.

From a social point of view, the constitution of Novgorod presents other analogies with the constitution of Poland. Great inequality then existed between the different classes of society. An aristocracy of boyards had ultimately formed itself, whose intestine quarrels agitated the town. Below the boyards came the *dieti boyarskié*, a kind of inferior nobility; then the different classes of citizens, the merchantmen, the *black people*, and the *smerdes* or peasants. The merchants formed an association of their own, a sort of *guild*, round the Church of Saint John. Military societies also existed, bands of independent adventurers or *droujinas* of some boyard who, impelled by hunger or a restless spirit, sought adventures afar on the great rivers of Northern Russia, pilaging alike friends and enemies, or establishing military colonies in the midst of Tchoud or Finnish tribes.

The soil of Novgorod was sandy, marshy, and unproductive: hence the famines and pestilences that so often depopulated the country. Novgorod was forced to extend itself in order to live; she became therefore a commercial and colonising city. In the 10th century, Constantine relates how the Slavs left *Nemogard* (Novgorod), descended the Dnieper by *Milinisca* (Smolensk), *Telioutza* (Loubetch), Tchenigof, Vychegorod, Kief and Vititchevo; crossed the cataracts of the Dnieper, passed the naval stations of Saint Gregory and Saint Etherius, at the mouth of the river, and spread themselves over all the shores of the Greek empire. The Oriental coins and jewels found in the *kouryans* of the Ilmen show that the

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Novgorodians had an early and extensive commerce with the East. We see them exchange iron and weapons for the precious metals found by the Iougrians in the mines of the Ourals. They traded with the Baltic Slavs; and when the latter lost their independence, and a flourishing centre, Wisby, was formed in the Isle of Gothland, Novgorod turned to this side also. In the 12th century there was a Gothic trading *dépôt* and a Varangian Church at Novgorod, and a Novgorodian Church in Gothland. When the Germans began to dispute the commerce of the Baltic with the Scandinavians, Novgorod became the seat of a German *dépôt*, which ended by absorbing the Gothic one. When the Hanseatic League became the mistress of the North, we find the Germans established not only at Novgorod, but at Pskof and Ladoga, at all the mouths of the network of Novgorodian lakes. There they obtained considerable privileges, even the right to acquire pastureland. They were masters, and at home in their fortified *dépôts*, in their stockade of thick planks, where no Russian had the right to penetrate without their leave. This German trading company was governed by the most narrow and exclusive ideas. No Russian was allowed to belong to the company, nor to carry the wares of a German, an Englishman, a Walloon or a Fleming. The company only authorised a wholesale commerce, and, to maintain her goods at a high price, she forbade imports beyond a certain amount. "In a word," says a German writer, "during three centuries the Hanseatic League concentrated in her own hands all the external commerce of Northern Russia. If we inquire what profit or loss she has brought this country, we must recognise that, thanks to her, Novgorod and Pskof

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were deprived of a free commerce with the West. Russia, in order to satisfy the first wants of civilisation, fell into a complete independence. She was abandoned to the good pleasure and pitiless egotism of the German merchants." (Riesenkampf, 'Der deutsche Hof.')

The ecclesiastical constitution of Russia presents a special character. In the rest of Russia the clergy was Russian-orthodox. At Novgorod it was Novgorodian before everything. It was only in the 12th century that the Slavs of Ilmen, who had been the last to be converted, could have an archbishop that was neither Greek nor Kievian, but of their own race. From that time the archbishop was elected by the citizens, by the *vetché*. Without waiting for the metropolitan to be invested at Kief, he was at once installed in his episcopal palace. He was one of the great personages, the first dignitary of the republic. In public acts his name was placed before the others. "With the blessing of Archbishop Moses," says one letter-patent; "possadnik Daniel and tysatski Abraham salute you." He had a superiority over the prince on the ground of being a native of the country, whilst the descendant of Rurik was a foreigner. In return, the revenues of the archbishop, the treasures of Saint Sophia, were at the service of the republic. In the 14th century we find an archbishop building at his own expense a kremlin of stone. In the 15th century, the riches of the cathedral were employed to ransom the Russian prisoners captured by the Lithuanians. The Church of Novgorod was essentially a national Church; the ecclesiastics took part in the temporal affairs, the laics in the spiritual. In the 14th century the *vetché* put to death the heretical *strigolniks*, proscribed ancient

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superstitions, and burnt the sorcerers. As Novgorod nominated her archbishop, she could also depose him. The orthodox religion extended with the Novgorod colonisation among the Finnish tribes. In face of the Finns, the interests of the Church and the Republic were identical. It was religion that contributed to the splendour of the city, and that specially profited by her wealth. Novgorod was full of churches and monasteries, founded by the piety of private individuals. Novgorod, which had shaken off the political supremacy of Kief, wished also to free herself from its religious domination, and no longer to be obliged to seek on the Dnieper the investiture of her archbishop, but to make him an independent metropolitan. She failed. When Moscow became of importance, she threatened not only the political, but the religious supremacy of Novgorod. Religion was, in the hands of the Muscovite princes, an instrument of government. The Novgorodian prelate always made common cause with his fellow-citizens, and endured with them their master's bursts of anger.

The literature of Novgorod was as national as the Church herself. The pious chronicles of the Novgorodian convents shared all the quarrels and all the passions of their fellow-citizens. “Even their style,” says M. Bestoujef, “reflects vividly the active, business-like character of the Novgorodians. It is short, and sparing of words; but their narratives embrace more completely than those of other Russian countries all the phases of actual life. They are the historians not merely of the princes and boyards, but of the whole city. The lives of the saints are the lives of Novgorodian saints; the miracles they relate are to the glory of the city. They tell you, for example, that Christ appeared to the artist charged

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with the paintings under the dome of Saint Sophia, and said to him: 'Do not represent me with my hand extended for blessing, but with my hand closed, because in it I hold Novgorod, and when it is opened it will be the end of the city.'" The tale of the panic excited among the soldiers of Andrew Bogoliubski by the image of the Virgin wounded by a Souzdalian arrow, was spread abroad. Novgorod has her own cycle of epic songs, of *bylinas*. Her heroes are not those of the Kievian epopee. There is Vassili Bouslaé-vitch, the bold boyard, who with his faithful droujina stood up to his knees in blood on the bridge of the Volkhof, holding in check all the mougiks of Novgorod, whom he had defied to combat. Vassili Bouslaé-vitch is the true type of these proud adventurers, who knew neither friend nor enemy—a true Novgorodian oligarch, a hero of civil war. Still more popular was Sadko, the rich merchant, a kind of Novgorodian Sindbad or Ulysses, a worthy representative of a people of merchants and adventurers, who sought his fortunes on the waves. A tempest rose, and men drew lots to decide who should be sacrificed to the wrath of the gods. Sadko threw a little wooden ring into the water, the others flung in iron rings: O prodigy! the others swam, his sank. He obeyed his destiny, and threw himself into the waves, but he was received in the palace of the king of the sea, who tested him in various ways, and wished him to marry his daughter. Then suddenly Sadko found himself on the shore with great treasures, but what were these compared to the treasures of the city? "They see that I am a rich merchant of Novgorod, but Novgorod is still more rich than I."*

* A. Rambaud, 'La Russie épique,' p. 130.

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PSKOF AND VIATKA.

Of all the towns subject to Novgorod, Pskof was the most important. On the point formed by the junction of the Pskova and the Velikaia rises her kremlin, with its crumbling ramparts, its ruined gates and towers. These once famous walls are to-day a mass of ruins, and the street-boys amuse themselves by throwing stones in the Pskova to frighten the laundresses. Pskof is only a poor little place with 10,000 souls. There only remains of her past splendour the cathedral of the Trinity at one end of the kremlin. There rest in metal coffins the bones of the best-loved princes, Vsevolod-Gabriel and Dovmont, a converted Lithuanian who came in the 13th century to defend the republic against his own compatriots. This old town has preserved many churches and monasteries. The distant view of Pskof is beautiful, and on fêtes-days the dead city seems to awake at the chimes of her innumerable bells, which sound as loudly as in the days of her glorious past.

Nestor makes Pskof the native land of Saint Olga. The sum of his history is nothing more than these two facts: first, the struggle against the Tchouds, and, later, against the Germans of Livonia; second, the efforts of Novgorod to secure her freedom. The independence of the city was ultimately secured by her wealth and her commerce. The first prince who ruled her as a separate state, Vsevolod-Gabriel, was expelled by his subjects, and therefore was welcomed with the greater eagerness by the Pskovians. When the Souzdalian party ruled at Novgorod, it was generally the contrary party that triumphed in Pskof. About 1214 the little republic contracted an offensive and defensive alliance with the Germans; she under-

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took to help them against the Lithuanians, and they
were to support her against Novgorod. This was
playing rather a dangerous game. In 1240, one
Tverdillo delivered up Pskof to the Livonian knights;
she did not free herself till 1242. From this moment
Pskof ceased to mix in the civil wars of Novgorod.
She had enough to do with her own affairs and her
struggle against the Germans, Swedes, and Lithu-
anians. She also called herself "My Lord Pskof the
Great;" but it was only in 1348 that the Novgo-
rodians, needing her help against Magnus, king of
Sweden, formally recognised her independence, by the
treaty of Bolstof, and concluded with her a bond of fra-
ternal friendship. Novgorod became the elder sister,
and Pskof the younger. The organisation of Pskof
is almost that of her ancient metropolis. We again
find the prince, the vetché, the division into quarters,
up to the number of six, each one having its starost.

In the 12th century a new Novgorodian colony
was formed between the Kama and the Viatka,
which remained a republic till the end of the 15th
century. "This distant country," says M. Bestoujef-
Rioumine, "is still quite Novgorodian. When the
traveller has passed the Viatka, he meets with a
peculiar mode of constructing the huts. There are no
longer whole lines of isbas joined one to the other, as
on this side of the river, but there is a high house,
where the court, rooms, and offices are surrounded
by a rampart of pales, and united under the
same roof; in a word, it was a Novgorodian house.
You hear the Novgorodian patois, you see the
Novgorodian cap. It is the Novgorod colonisation
still living." In 1174 some adventurers from the
Great Republic came from the Kama to the Viatka,
and advanced from east to west, and founded a

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colony on this river, which is to-day the village of Nikoulitsyne. Another band defeated the Tche-remisses, and on their territory raised Kochkarof, at present called Kotelnitch. Then the two bands re-united, and penetrated into the Votiak country. On the right bank of the Viatka, on the summit of a high mountain, they perceived a city surrounded by a rampart and a ditch, which contained one of the sanctuaries of the people. As pious as the companions of Cortez and Pizarro, the Russian adventurers prepared themselves for the assault by a fast of several days, then invoked Saints Boris and Gleb, and captured the town. Next, at the mouth of the Khlynovitsa, in the Viatka, not very far off, they built the city of Khlynof, which became, under the name of Viatka, the capital of all their colonies. She had no walls, but the houses, built close together, formed an unbroken rampart against the enemy, a wall and defence. At the news of this success, other colonists flocked from Novgorod and the forests of the north, and founded other centres of population. These bold pioneers had more than once to re-unite, sometimes against the aboriginal Finns or the Tatar invaders, sometimes against the pretensions of Novgorod, or the Grand Prince of Moscow. We find among them, as in the metropolis, boyards, merchants, and citizens. They had voïevodes or *atamans* for their military chiefs. Their spirit of religious independence equalled their political independence. Jonas, metropolitan of Moscow, writes angrily about the indocility of their clergy, and avenges himself by blaming their morals. "Your spiritual sons," he wrote to the priests of Viatka, "live contrary to the law. They have five, six, or even seven wives. And you dare to bless these marriages!"

VOL. I.

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CHAPTER IX.

THE LIVONIAN KNIGHTS: CONQUEST OF THE BALTIC PROVINCES BY THE GERMANS.

*Conversion of Livonia—Rise of the Livonian knights: union with the Teutonic knights.*

THREE new races of men, three invasions (from the 12th to the 13th century), were to modify the historical development of the different parts of Slavonia; the Russia of the north-west was to make acquaintance with the Germans, Russia of the east and south with the Tatar-Mongols, Russia of the west with the Lithuanians.

Part of the Tchoud or Lett tribes of the Baltic were considered by the Russian princes and republics of the north-west as their subjects or tributaries. If the Danish Cnut the Great had conquered Estonia, Iaroslaf the Great had founded Iourief (Dorpat) on the Embach which falls into the Peipus, and then separated the Danish and Russian dominions. It separates to-day the country of the Finns into two peoples speaking different dialects, the dialect of Revel and that of Dorpat. A Mstislaf, son of Vladimir Monomachus, had conquered the city of Odenpaeh (Finnish *bear's head*) from the Tchouds. In the Lett country the princes of Polotsk had captured the native fortresses of Gersike and Kokenhausen on the Dwina, and extended their influence along this river to Thoreida and Ascheraden.

With the German merchants Latin missionaries

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soon began to make their appearance on the Baltic. The monk Meinhard, sent by the Archbishop of Bremen, converted the Livonians, and was created bishop of Livonia. That which the Germans really brought, under the cloak of Christianity, to the Letts and descendants of the Tchoud hero Kalevy, and to many other Slav, Lithuanian, or Finnish tribes, now extinct, was the ruin of their national independence and servitude. The German merchant and the German missionary appeared almost at the same time on the Dwina. The apostle Meinhard built a church at Uexküll, and a fortress round the church (1187). From this fatal day these brave tribes lost their lands and their liberty. The Livonians soon saw to what this mission tended. They rose against the missionaries, and in 1198 the second bishop of Livonia perished in battle. The natives returned to their gods, and plunged in the Dwina to wash off the baptism they had received, and to send it back to Germany. Then Innocent III. preached a crusade against them, and Albert of Buxhœwden (1198-1229), their third bishop and the true founder of the German rule in Livonia, entered the Dwina with a fleet of twenty-three ships, and built the town of Riga, which he made his capital (1200). The following year he installed the Order of the Brothers of the Army of Christ, or the Sword-bearers, to whom the Pope gave the statutes of the Templars. They wore a white mantle, with a red cross on the shoulders. The greater number were natives of Westphalia and Saxony. Vinno de Rohrbach was their first grand master. The Livonians, after having implored the help of the princes of Polotsk, marched on Riga, and suffered an entire defeat (1206). The prince of Polotsk in his turn besieged the city during the

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absence of the bishop, but it was saved by the arrival
of a German flotilla.

Three causes were particularly favourable to the success of the knights of the sword, namely: the weakness of the princes of Polotsk, the intestine quarrels of Novgorod, which prevented her from watching over Russian interests, and the divisions among the natives who had not yet been able to raise their minds from the conception of the tribe to that of the nation. The knights were likewise far superior in their arms and tactics. The German fortresses were solidly built in cemented stone, while those of the natives were ramparts of earth, wood, or loose stones. In vain they tried to drag down with ropes the palisades of the German ramparts. The Sword-bearers afterwards undertook a series of campaigns against the Livonians and the Semigalli of the Dwina, and against the Tchouds of the north and the Letts of the south-east. If a tribe declined baptism and obedience, it was delivered a prey to fire and sword; when it submitted, hostages were taken, and castles built on its territory, these being often merely German reconstructions of the ancient native fortresses.

It was in this manner that Riga, Kirchholm, Uexküll, Lennewarden, Ascheraden, and Kreuzburg were built on the Dwina; Neuhausen, near the Peipus, Wolmar, Wenden, Segevold, and Kremon on the Aa; Fellin and Weissenstein among the Northern Tchouds. The strangers managed to take Kokenhausen and Gersike from the princes of Polotsk, Odenpaeh and Dorpat from the Novgorodians; Pskof was threatened. In the north Kolyvan was bought from the king of Denmark, after the fiercest disputes. Under its rock lies Kolyvan, a Titan hero

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of Finnish mythology. The town is now called Revel.

The conquered country was divided into fiefs, some of which belonged to the Order by whom they were distributed among the knights, the rest were at the disposal of the archbishop, who enfeoffed his own men. The new towns received the constitution of the merchant cities of Lubeck, Bremen, or Hamburg. Riga was the most powerful of them. The archbishop of Riga, the chapter, the town and the grand master of the Order, often quarrelled over their respective rights. Their divisions were one day to bring about the decline of the institution.

About 1225 another military fraternity was established among the Prussian Lithuanians, the *Teutonic Order*, which, on the remains of the subject pagan tribes, raised Thorn, Marienberg, Elbing and Kœnigsberg. The Teutons of Prussia and the knights of Livonia were certain to be friendly; the black cross fraternised with the red, and, in 1237, the two orders united into one association. The Teutonic landmeister, Hermann de Balk, became landmeister of Livonia. The grand master of the Teutonic Order took precedence of all the landmeisters. Strengthened by this alliance, the "brothers of the army of Christ" were able to impose the most cruel servitude on the aboriginal Letts, Livonians, and Finns. These brave barbarians soon became peasants attached to the glebe. The German nobility restored them their liberty at the beginning of this century, but it did not restore them their lands.

The conquering and conquered races are always separate. To the Tchoud, the word *Saxa* (Saxon, German) always signifies the *master*. A song of the Tchoud country of Pskof, called *The days of Slavery*,

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HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

deplores the time when "the banners of the strangers waved, when the intruders made us slaves, enchained us as the serfs of tyrants, forced us to be their servants. Brother, what can I sing? Sadly sounds the song of tears. The lot of the slave is too hard." Another song of Wiesland (Esthonia) is entitled *The Days of the Past*. "The past, that was the time of massacre, a long time of suffering . . . Destroying fiends were unchained against us. The priests strangled us with their rosaries, the greedy knights plundered us, troops of brigands ravaged us, armed murderer cut us in pieces. The *father of the cross* stole our riches, stole the treasure from the hiding-place, attacked the tree, the sacred tree, polluted the waters and the fountain of salvation. The axe smote on the oak of Tara, the woful hatchet on the tree of Kero." (Richter, 'Geschichte der deutschen Ostsee-provinzen.')

In the *Kalevy-poeg*, or "the Son of Kalev," the national poem of the Tchoud-Esthonians, the hero, who is the personification of the race, displays in his various adventures a wonderful Titanic force. He swam the Gulf of Finland, he rooted up oak-trees to make his clubs; with his horse and his colossal harrow he ploughed up the land of Esthonia; he exterminated the bears and the beasts of prey; he conquered the magician of Finland, and the genii of the caves; he descended into hell and fought with Sarvig the horned; he sailed away to explore the utmost limits of the world, and when the hot breath of the spirits of the north burnt up his wooden vessel, he disembarked in a vessel of silver with fittings of metal. He braved whirlwinds at sea; discovered the isle of flame (which is perhaps Iceland, where the three volcanoes vomit forth fire), of smoke, and boil-

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ing water; he encountered a gigantic woman who
plucked up several sailors with the grass for the
kine, as if the men had been insects; he rallied the
courage of his pilot, horror-stricken by the flames
with which the spirits of the north filled heaven, and
said to him, "Let them send their darts of fire, they
will only lighten us on our way, since the daylight
would not accompany us, and the sun has long since
gone to rest." He fought with men whose bodies
were like dogs (possibly the Esquimaux of Greenland),
and only retraced his steps because a magician assured
him "that the wall of the world's end was still far off."
It is at the close of the poem, when he is told that
the men of iron (*raudamched* in Tchoud) have landed,
that his unconquerable heart is troubled. The iron
cannot penetrate their armour, nor the axe break it.
In vain he seeks counsel at the tomb of his father;
the tomb is silent, "the leaves murmur plain-
tively, the winds sigh drearily, the dew itself is
troubled, the eye of the clouds is wet;" all Esthonian
nature shares in the sinister forebodings of the
national hero. He raised, however, the battle-cry,
and his warriors assembled on the Embach. Bloody
is the battle! The Esthonians gain the victory, but
what a victory! The bravest of them are dead,
the two brothers of Kalevy-poeg perish, his charger
is struck down by the axe of a stranger. The end
of Esthonia, the age of slavery has arrived; it is time
that Kalevy-poeg, the representative of the heroic
age, should disappear; he who had vanquished the
demon Sarvig, the sorcerers of Finland, and the
spirits of the pole, could not subdue these men whom
an unknown, irresistible force sustained, superior to
that of the gods. Behold him, the captive of Mana,
god of death, his wrist held fast in a rock, which is

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CHAPTER X.

THE TATAR MONGOLS: ENSLAVEMENT OF RUSSIA.

Origin and manners of the Mongols — Battles of the Kalka, of Riazan, of Kolomna, and of the Sit — Conquest of Russia — Alexander Nevski — The Mongol yoke — Influence of the Tatars on the Russian development.

ORIGIN AND MANNERS OF THE MONGOLS.

UP to this time the destinies of Russia had presented some analogy with those of the West. Slavonia, like Gaul, had received Roman civilisation and Christianity from the South. The Northmen had brought her an organisation which recalls that of the Germans; and under Iaroslaf, like the West under Charles the Great, she had enjoyed a certain semblance of unity, while she was afterwards dismembered and divided like France in feudal times. But in the 13th century, Russia suffered an unheard-of misfortune—she was invaded and subjugated by Asiatic hordes. This fatal event contributed quite as much as the disadvantage of the soil and the climate to retard her development by many centuries. "Nature," as M. Solovief says, "has been a step-mother to Russia;" fate was another step-mother.

"In those times," say the Russian chroniclers, "there came upon us for our sins, unknown nations. No one could tell their origin, whence they came, what religion they professed. God alone knew who they were, God and perhaps wise men learned in

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books.” When we think of the horror of the whole
of Europe at the arrival of the Mongols, and the
anguish of a Frederick, of a Saint Louis, an Inno-
cent IV., we may imagine the terror of the Russians.
They bore the first shock of those mysterious foe-
men, who were, so the people whispered, Gog and
Magog, who “were to come at the end of the
world, when Antichrist is to destroy everything.”
(Joinville.)

The *Ta-ta* or *Tatars* seem to have been a tribe of
the great Mongol race, living at the foot of the
Altai, who in spite of their long-continued discords
frequently found means to lay waste China by their
invasions. The portrait drawn of them recalls in
many ways those already traced by Chinese, Latin,
and Greek authors, of the Huns, the Avars, and
other nomad peoples of former invasions. "The
*Ta-tzis* or the *Das*," says a Chinese writer of the
13th century, "occupy themselves exclusively with
their flocks; they go wandering ceaselessly from
pasture to pasture, from river to river. They are
ignorant of the nature of a town or a wall. They
are unacquainted with writing and books; their
treaties are concluded orally. From infancy they
are accustomed to ride, to aim their arrows at rats
and birds, and thus acquire the courage essential to
their life of wars and rapine. They have neither
religious ceremonies nor judicial institutions. From
the prince to the lowest among the people all are
nourished by the flesh of the animals whose skin
they use for clothing. The strongest among them
have the largest and fattest morsels at feasts; the
old men are put off with the fragments that are left.
They respect nothing but strength and bravery;
age and weakness are condemned. When the father

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dies, the son marries his youngest wives.” A
Mussulman writer adds, that they adore the sun,
and practise polygamy and the community of wives.
This pastoral people did not take an interest in any
phenomenon of nature except the growth of grass.
The names they gave to their months were suggested
by the different aspects of the prairie. Born horse-
men, they had no infantry in war. They were
ignorant of the art of sieges. “But,” says a Chinese
author, “when they wish to take a town, they fall
on the suburban villages. Each leader seizes ten
men, and every prisoner is forced to carry a certain
quantity of wood, stones, and other materials. They
use these for filling up fosses, or digging trenches.
In the capture of a town, the loss of 10,000 men
was thought nothing. No place could resist them.
After a siege, all the population was massacred,
without distinction of old or young, rich or poor,
beautiful or ugly, those who resisted or those who
yielded; no distinguished person escaped death, if a
defence was attempted.”

It was these rough tribes that Temoutchine or
Genghis-Khan (1154-1227) succeeded in uniting
into one nation after forty years of obscure struggles.
Then in a general congress of their princes he pro-
claimed himself emperor, and declared that, as there
was only one sun in heaven, there ought only to be one
emperor on the earth. At the head of their forces he
conquered Mantchouria, the kingdom of Tangout,
Northern China, Turkestan, and Great Bokhara,
which never recovered this disaster, and the plains
of Western Asia as far as the Crimea. When he
died, he left to be divided between his four sons the
largest empire that ever existed.

It was during his conquest of Bokhara that his

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lieutenant Tchepe and Souboudaï-bagadour subdued
in their passage a multitude of Turkish peoples,
passed the Caspian by its southern shore, invaded
Georgia and the Caucasus, and in the southern
steppes of Russia came in contact with the Polovtsi.

BATTLES OF THE KALKA, OF RIAZAN, OF KOLOMNA,
AND OF THE SIT-CONQUEST OF RUSSIA.

The hereditary enemies of the Russians proper,
the Polovtsi, asked the Christian princes for help
against these Mongols and Turks, who were their
brothers by a common origin. "They have taken
our country," said they to the descendants of Saint
Vladimir; "to-morrow they will take yours."
Mstislaf the Bold, then prince of Galitch, persuaded
all the dynasties of Southern Russia to take up
arms against the Tatars: his nephew Daniel, prince
of Volhynia, Mstislaf Romanovitch, Grand Prince
of Kief, Oleg of Koursk, Mstislaf of Tchernigof,
Vladimir of Smolensk, Vsevolod for a short time
prince of Novgorod, responded to his appeal. To
cement his alliance with the Russians, Basti, khan
of the Polovtsi, embraced orthodoxy. The Russian
army had already arrived on the Lower Dnieper,
when the Tatar ambassadors made their appearance.
"We have come by God's command against our
slaves and grooms, the accursed Polovtsi. Be at
peace with us; we have no quarrel with you." The
Russians, with the promptitude and thoughtlessness
that characterised the men of that time, put the
ambassadors to death. They then went further into
the steppe, and encountered the Asiatic hordes on
the Kalka, a small river running into the Sea of
Azof. The Russian chivalry on this memorable day

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157

showed the same disorder and the same ill-advised eagerness as the French chivalry at the opening of the English wars. Mstislaf the Bold, Daniel of Galitch, and Oleg of Koursk were the first to rush into the midst of the infidels, without waiting for the princes of Kief, and even without giving them warning, in order to gain for themselves the honours of victory. In the middle of the combat, the Polovtsi were seized with a panic and fell back on the Russian ranks, thus throwing them into disorder. The rout became general, and the leaders spurred on their steeds in hopes of reaching the Dnieper.

Six princes and seventy of the chief boyards or voïevodes remained on the field of battle. It was the Creçy and Poictiers of the Russian chivalry. Hardly a tenth of the army escaped; the Kievians alone left 10,000 dead. The Grand Prince of Kief, however, Mstislaf Romanovitch, still occupied a fortified camp on the banks of the Kalka. Abandoned by the rest of the army, he tried to defend himself. The Tatars offered to make terms; he might retire on payment of a ransom for himself and his *droujina*. He capitulated, and the conditions were broken. His guard was massacred, and he and his two sons-in-law were stifled under planks. The Tatars held their festival over the inanimate bodies (1224).

After this thunderbolt, which struck terror into the whole of Russia, the Tatars paused and returned to the East. Nothing more was heard of them. Thirteen years passed, during which the princes reverted to their perpetual discords. Those in the north-east had given no help to the Russians of the Dnieper; perhaps the Grand Prince, George II. of Souzdal, may have rejoiced over the humiliation of the Kievians

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other Greeks to translate the Greek books into Slavonic, and put his library in order. Maximus is said to have been astonished to find in the Kremlin such a large number of ancient manuscripts: he vowed that neither in Italy nor in Greece was to be found such a rich collection. After having finished the translation of the Psalter, he wished to return to Mount Athos. Vassili retained him, made him his favourite, and often granted him the lives of condemned boyards. His works, his science, as well as his favour, gained him the hatred of ignorant and fanatical monks. The Metropolitan Daniel declared against him. When Vassili repudiated against her will his wife Solomonia, because of her sterility, the *philosopher*, it seems, ventured to blame the prince, who then abandoned him to his enemies. Denounced before an ecclesiastical tribunal, accused of heresy and of false interpretation of the sacred books, he was banished to a monastery at Tver. Later he obtained leave to retire to that of Troitsa, where there is still shown the tomb of the man who was, in Russia, one of the apostles of the Renaissance.

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CHAPTER XV.

IVAN THE TERRIBLE (1533-1584).

Minority of Ivan IV.—He takes the title of Tzar (1547)— Conquest of Kazan (1552), and of Astrakhan (1554)—Contests with the Livonian Order, Poland, the Tatars, Sweden, and the Russian aristocracy—The English in Russia — Conquest of Siberia.

MINORITY OF IVAN IV.—HE TAKES THE TITLE OF TZAR (1547).

THE *rôle* and the character of Ivan IV. have been and still are very differently estimated by Russian historians. Karamsin, who has not subjected to a criticism sufficiently severe the narratives and documents from which he has drawn his information, has seen in him a prince who was born cruel and vicious, but was miraculously brought back into the paths of virtue. Under the guidance of two excellent ministers, he gave some years of repose to Russia; then abandoning himself to his passions, astounded Europe and the empire with what the historian calls the "seven periods of massacres." M. Kostomarof supports the verdict of Karamsin. Another school, represented by M. Solovief and M. Zabiéline, has shown more mistrust of the partial accounts of Kourbski, leader of the oligarchic party, of Guagnini, courtier of the King of Poland, of Taube and Kruse, traitors to the sovereign whom they served. Above all, they have taken into consideration the time and the environment of Ivan the Terrible.

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HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

This party concerns itself less with his morality as an
individual, than with the part he played as the agent
of the historical development of Russia. Did not
the French historians for a while refuse to recognise
the immense services rendered by Louis XI. in the
great work of consolidating the unity of France, and
the creation of a modern State? He has been justi-
fied at last by an attentive examination of documents
and facts.

At the time that Ivan IV. succeeded his father,
the struggle of the central power with the forces of
the past had changed its character. The old Russian
States which had for so long held in check the new
power of Moscow—the principalities of Tver, Riazan,
Souzdal, and Novgorod-Severski—and the republics
of Novgorod, Pskof, and Viatka, had lost their inde-
pendence; their possessions had gone to swell those
of Moscow. All North and East Russia is now
united under the sceptre of the Grand Prince. To
the perpetual contests with Tver, Riazan, and Nov-
gorod succeed the great foreign wars; the crusades
against Lithuania, the Tatars, the Swedes, the Livo-
nian knights.

Precisely because the work of Great Russian
unity was accomplished, the internal resistance to the
authority of the Prince became stronger. The de-
scendants of the princely families which had been
dispossessed by money or force of arms, and the
retainers of these ancient reigning houses, enlisted
in the service of the master of Moscow. The Court
of the latter was full of uncrowned nobles, Belskis,
Chouïskis, Kourbskis, Vorotinskis, descendants of the
appanaged princes, proud of the blood of Rurik
which ran in their veins. Others sprang from
Gedimin, the Lithuanian, or from baptized Tatar

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261

mourzas. All these, as well as the powerful boyards of Tver, Riazan, and Novgorod, became the boyards of the Grand Prince. There was only one Court for all to serve—that of Moscow. When Russia was divided into sovereign States, discontented boyards were free to change their master, to pass from the service of Tchernigof to that of Kief, or from the service of Souzdal to that of Novgorod. Now, where could they go? Outside of Moscow there was nothing but foreign sovereigns, the enemies of Russia. To make use of the ancient right of changing your master, was to pass over to the enemy, to be a traitor. To change and betray became synonyms. From the Russian word izmiénit (change) is derived the word izmiénik (to betray). The Russian boyard could go neither to the Germans, to the Swedes, nor to the Tatars; he could only go to the Grand Duke of Lithuania, but that was exactly the worst sort of change, the blackest of treasons. The Prince of Moscow knew well that the war with Lithuania—that State which was Polish in the west, and exercised, by means of its Russian provinces in the east, a dangerous fascination on the subjects of Moscow—was a struggle for existence. Lithuania was an internal as well as an external enemy, with links and sympathies with the heart of the Russian State, even in the palace of the Tzar himself, and her formidable hand is found in all intrigues and conspiracies. The external struggle with Lithuania, and the internal struggle with the Russian oligarchy, are different phases of the same contest, the heaviest and most perilous of all sustained by the Grand Princes of Moscow. The dispossessed princes, the boyards of the ancient independent States, had renounced the strife with him on the battle-field, but

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they continued to combat his authority in his own
Court. There are no more wars of State against
State; henceforth the war is intestine, that of oli-
garchy against autocracy. Resigned to being sove-
reign princes no longer, the boyard princes of Moscow
were not yet content to be only subjects. The
narrower area intensified the violence of the contest.
The Court of Moscow was a fenced-in field, from
which none could go out without changing the Mus-
covite for the Lithuanian master—without *betraying*.
Hence the passionate character of the struggle be-
tween the two principles under Ivan IV. Besides,
the sovereigns of Moscow who had destroyed, after
so many efforts, the Russian States that held Moscow
in check, committed the same fault as the Capetians
or the early Valois. In constituting appanages for
the younger branches, they built up with one hand
what they pulled down with the other; to the sove-
reign princes of the 11th century succeeded the
princes of the blood, the appanaged princes of the
15th and 16th centuries. These also had their
domain, &c., their boyards, their *dieti boyarskié* (men-
at-arms). They were the brothers, uncles, cousins
of the Grand Prince, who became the chiefs of the
vanquished oligarchy, and organised the coalition of
the forces of the past against him. They stood to him
as the Capetians of Burgundy, Berri, Bourbon, and
Orleans, stood to the Capetian kings, Charles VII.,
Louis XI., and Charles VIII.

Vassili Ivanovitch left two sons, Ivan and Iouri,
under the guardianship of his second wife, Helena
Glinski. She had come into Russia with a family
of Podelian nobles, proscribed by Sigismond, and
accused of having plotted against his life. Helena
Glinski had subdued her old husband Vassili, not

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263

only by her beauty, but by her free and attractive
manners, an independence of spirit and character,
and a variety of accomplishments not to be found
among the Russian women of that day, condemned as
they were to seclusion. She was almost a Western.
Vassili was able to leave her, on his death-bed, with
the guardianship of her sons, and the care of strength-
ening his work and that of his ancestors. This
energetic woman knew how to put down all attempts
of princely and oligarchic reaction against the auto-
cracy of the Grand Prince. One of her husband's
brothers, Iouri Ivanovitch, convicted of rebellion,
was thrown into prison, where he died. Helena's
own uncle, Michael Glinski, an ambitious and turbu-
lent Podolian, after having enjoyed her confidence
for some time, was likewise arrested and died in
confinement. Andrew Ivanovitch, another brother
of the late Tzar, tried to escape into Poland to obtain
the support of Sigismond; he was stopped on the
way, and imprisoned. Lithuania attempted to come
to his aid, by taking up arms for the rebels of the
interior. This unimportant war was ended in 1537
by a truce. The Tatars of Kazan and the Crimea
suffered many defeats; and to place Moscow beyond
the possibility of being seized by a *coup de main*,
Helena enclosed with ramparts the quarter known
by the name of Kitai-gorod. As she could not en-
tirely rely either on the boyards or on the princes,
nor even on her own relations, she gave all her con-
fidence to the master of the horse, Telepnef, whom
the public voice charged with being her lover. A
government as energetic against its internal as
against its foreign enemies, gave little satisfaction to
the oligarchic party. In 1538 Helena died, the
victim of poison.

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HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

The boyards then took possession of the govern-
ment, after having put to death the master of the
horse, and imprisoned his sister Agrafena, Ivan's
nurse. The chief power was disputed specially by
two families—the Chouïskis and the Belskis. Russia
became a prey to anarchy, the governments and the
voïevodies were given by turns to the creatures of
these two families, and the people were cruelly
oppressed; the two factions even elevated and de-
posed at will the Metropolitan of Moscow. At last,
Andrew Chouïski overthrew the government of the
Belskis, and finally deposed the Metropolitan.

Whilst the nobles were thus intriguing for the
supreme power, Vassili's two sons were left by them-
selves. Iouri, the younger, was feeble in intellect,
but Ivan, like Peter the Great, whom in many
points he resembled, was a highly-gifted boy. He
suffered keenly from the contempt in which his tur-
bulent subjects held him. "We and our brother
Iouri," he afterwards writes, "were treated like
foreigners, like the children of beggars. We were
ill-clothed, we were cold and hungry." They saw
the boyards pillage the treasures and luxurious furni-
ture of the palace; Chouïski even threw himself in
Ivan's presence on the bed of the late Tzar. The
empire was plundered as well as the palace. "They
wandered everywhere," continues Ivan IV., "in the
towns and villages, cruelly tormenting the people,
inflicting all kinds of evils on them, exacting fines
without mercy from the inhabitants. Of our subjects
they have made their slaves; of their slaves, the
nobles of the State." He had seen all whom he
loved torn from him—his nurse Agrafena; the master
of the horse, Telepnef, who had been put to death;
and his favourite Voronzof, who was roughly handled

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and nearly killed by the boyards. It was enough for a courtier to take pains to please him, for him instantly to become an object of mistrust to the oligarchs. Ivan, like a neglected child, badly educated, never disciplined, had to be his own master. He read much, without method—the Bible, the Lives of the Saints, the Byzantine Chroniclers translated into Slavonic—whatever came in his way. Above all, he thought. He had imbibed from his reading a high idea of what it was to be a king, and knew well that he was the rightful master. These very boyards, so insolent towards him in private—did he not see them in public ceremonials, at receptions of ambassadors, rival each other in affected respect and servility? It was he who, seated on his throne, received the compliments of the foreign envoys; his signature was necessary to give the force of law to actions the most contrary to his will. These were no vain forms, but involved real power. Ivan, however, disassembled. After the Christmas fêtes of 1543, he suddenly summoned his boyards before him, addressed them in a menacing tone, and reproached them sternly for their manner of governing. “There were among them,” he added, “many guilty ones; but this time he would content himself with making one example.” He then ordered his guards to seize Andrew Chouïski, the chief of the government, and there and then had him torn to pieces by hounds. Some of the most turbulent and the most compromised were banished to distant towns. The author of this coup d'état was thirteen years old.

According to the invariable custom of Muscovite sovereigns, Ivan surrounded himself by his maternal relations, those on his father's side being naturally objects of suspicion. Then began what was called a

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vremia; that is, "a season of favour." The relatives of the Prince, the men of the season (vrémenchtchiki), the Glinskis, were charged to provide for the administration of the empire. In January 1547, Ivan ordered the Metropolitan Macarius to proceed with his coronation. He assumed at the ceremony not only the title of Grand Prince, but that of Tzar. The first title no longer answered to the new power of the sovereign of Moscow, who counted among his domestics, princes and even Grand Princes. The name of Tzar is that which the books in the Slavonic language, ordinarily read by Ivan, give to the kings of Judæa, Assyria, Egypt, Babylon, and to the emperors of Rome and Constantinople. Now, was not Ivan in some sort the heir of the Tzar Nebuchadnezzar, the Tzar Pharaoh, the Tzar Ahasuerus, and the Tzar David, since Russia was the sixth empire spoken of in the Apocalypse? Through his grandmother Sophia Palæologus, he was connected with the family of the Tzars of Byzantium; through his ancestor Vladimir Monomachus, he belonged to the Porphyrogeniti; and through Constantine the Great, to Cæsar. If Constantinople had been the second, Moscow was the third Rome—living heir of the Eternal City. We may imagine what prestige was added to the dignity of the Russian sovereign by this dazzling title, borrowed from Biblical antiquity, from Roman majesty, from the orthodox sovereigns of Byzantium. It recalled at the same time the recently-acquired freedom of Russia; the Slavonic authors likewise bestowed this august title on the Mongol khans, suzerains of the Muscovite princes. Now that fortune smiled upon Russia, it well became her prince to call himself "Tzar." Shortly after, Ivan, whose deserted youth had been

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soiled by debauchery, confirmed his return to virtue
by his marriage with Anastasia, of that family of
Romanof whose future destiny was to be so brilliant.
His Court was increased by vr'menchtchiki chosen
from the relatives of the Tzarina.

The vanquished party naturally would not consent
to be set aside without a struggle for revenge. Fortune soon gave them an opportunity. For four
years Ivan had governed absolutely, supported by
his connections, the Glinskis and the Romanofs, and
it was many years since Russia had been so tranquil.
Suddenly, in 1547, a terrible fire broke out and destroyed a great part of Moscow, and 1700 people
perished. The Tzar took refuge at Vorobief, and
thence contemplated with terror the destruction of
his capital. An inquiry was made, and the boyards
took advantage of it to insinuate to the people that
it was the Glinskis who had burnt Moscow. "It is
the Princess Anne Glinski," repeated voices among
the crowd, "who, with her two sons, has made
enchantments; she has taken human hearts, and
plunged them in water, and with this water has
sprinkled the houses. This is the cause of the destruction of Moscow." The enraged multitude burst
into the palace of the Glinskis. One of them, Iouri,
was stabbed in the porch of the Assumption. Then
the rioters proceeded to Vorobief, and demanded
Ivan's uncle, the old Glinski. The sovereign's own
life was in danger; it was necessary to use force to
disperse the rebels.

The events which followed are unintelligible from
the dramatised recital of Karamsin, but very clear if
we keep to the logic of facts. Ivan could hardly be
ignorant who had raised this revolt, and he was not
the man to give himself up to his ancient guardians.

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But his nervous, impressionable nature had been greatly struck by the spectacle under his eyes. Under the influence of this terror he examined his conscience, and resolved to amend his life. He took the priest Silvester, who had dwelt in his palace for nine years, and had a great reputation for virtue, as his spiritual director; he gave him at the same time the administration of ecclesiastical affairs. Alexis Adachef, one of the smaller nobility, was charged with receiving petitions, and the supervision of the interior and of the war. As long as the two new favourites confined themselves to their offices, the Court was tranquil. It was the happiest period of the reign of Ivan IV. The municipal administration was re-organised in the interior (1551). A new code (Soudubnik) was prepared, and a council assembled, whose hundred articles (Stoglaf) were occupied with Church reforms. In foreign affairs Russia conquered her ancient masters.

### CONQUEST OF KAZAN (1552), AND OF ASTRAKHAN (1554).

The kingdom of Kazan continued to be distracted by two opposing influences—that of Russia and that of the Khan of the Crimea. The latter seemed the stronger, and Safa-Ghirei, candidate for the Crimea, distinguished his accession by ravaging the Russian territory; the Khan supported him in these incursions by advancing with the whole Crimean horde as far as the Oka. When Safa died, leaving a son who was a minor, the Muscovite party took the upper hand in Kazan and bestowed the crown on Schig-Alei. He made himself detested by his new subjects, and things came to such a pass that the Kazanese

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appeared to prefer the direct rule of Moscow to this disguised subordination. At the request of the inhabitants Ivan recalled Schig-Alei, and sent them a viceroy, Mikoulinski. Suddenly a rumour was spread in Kazan that Mikoulinski was approaching with Russian troops with the object of exterminating the population. A rebellion broke out. The gates of Moscow were shut on the Muscovites, and men demanded a prince of the Nogaï Tatars. Ediger-Makhmet was proclaimed Tzar of Kazan.

Ivan determined to make an end of this Mussulman city. In June 1552, the same year that Henry II. obtained possession of the three bishoprics, the Tzar took the field. He was at once checked by the news that the Khan of the Crimea, wishing to save Kazan by a diversion, had invaded Moscow. Ivan advanced against him as far as the Oka; there he learnt that the barbarians, not being able to take Toula, had hastily retired. Upon this, Ivan's infantry, with 150,000 men and 150 pieces of cannon, descended the Volga in boats, while the cavalry followed along the banks, and directed their course to Kazan. The creation of advanced posts had diminished the distance that separated Kazan from Nijni-Novgorod. His father had founded Makarief and Vassilsoursk on the Volga; and he himself had established in 1551 the warlike colony of Sviajsk on the Sviaga. Later he founded those of Kosmodemiansk and Tcheboksary.

At the beginning of September Ivan encamped under Kazan, and surrounded it by a line of circumvallation, which cut off all communication between the town and the cavalry of the Mourza Iapantcha, which had taken the field. The garrison of Kazan, numbering 30,000 Tatars and 2500 Nogaïs, de-

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fended themselves energetically and incessantly, and managed by their *sorties* to hinder the work of the assailants. The Tzar repeatedly offered them honourable terms; he even hung up his prisoners on gibbets to frighten the Kazanese into surrendering, but the besieged only shot arrows against these unhappy wretches, crying that "it was better for them to receive death from the clean hands of their countrymen than to perish by the impure hands of Christians." The Russian army had to struggle with the unchained elements as well as with their enemies. The fleet, which bore their provisions and powder, was destroyed by a tempest. The voïevodes wished to raise the siege, but Ivan re-animated their failing courage. Prolonged rains flooded the Muscovite camp, caused, it was said, by the sorcerers of Kazan, who stood on the walls, their robes girt up, insulting the besiegers by their words and gestures. Ivan sent to Moscow for a miraculous cross, which dispersed the enchantments.

Ivan had secured the services of a German engineer, who laid mines under the very walls of the town. The ramparts of wood and bricks at many points fell with a great noise, and the Russian army entered the town by the breaches. A fierce hand-to-hand fight took place in the streets and around the palace. The bravest of the Kazanese, after having tried to defend their prince, cut their way through, but, pursued by the light cavalry, few escaped. In the town numbers were massacred: those only were spared who could be sold to slave-merchants. When the Tzar made his triumphal entry into the middle of these bloody ruins, he was moved, like Scipio at Carthage, by a feeling of pity for this great disaster. "They are not Christians," said he, weeping, "but

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yet they are men." The town was re-peopled by Russians, and even at the present day the Tatar population is confined to the faubourgs. In the Kremlin Ivan annihilated all the monuments of the Mongol past, and replaced them by churches and monasteries which attested his gratitude towards God and the triumph of the Cross over Islam.

The date of these events is already far distant, but they still live in the memory of the Russian people. Many epics are consecrated to this great victory. It is not only, as Karamsin says, because Kazan was the first fortress taken by the Russians after a siege according to the rules of war; it is because the capture of Kazan marks the culminating point in the history of the long struggle of the Slavs against the Tatars—a struggle which began by the total subjugation of Russia by the Mongols, but which has continued to our own day, and probably will only end with the conquest of the Tatar races by the Russian Empire. The victory of Ivan the Terrible is the first great revenge of the vanquished over the vanquishers, the first triumph at the expense of the conquerors, the first stage reached by European civilisation in taking the offensive towards Asia. In the Russian annals the expedition of Kazan occupies the same glorious place as the defeat of Abderahman in the history of the Franks, or Las Navas da Tolosa in the chronicles of Spain. It was more than a conquest—it was a crusade. During the assault Ivan did not cease to display the standard of the holy faith. It was remarked that the day the ramparts fell the Tzar was at church, and the deacon read the following verse from the Gospel for the day: "There shall be one flock, one shepherd." It was with the cry of "God with us!" that the Russians precipitated

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themselves into the town. The triumph of Moscow mingled with that of Christianity and orthodoxy.

The political consequences of the taking of Kazan were considerable. The five Finnish or Mongol tribes who had been subject to this royal city—the Tcheremisses, the Mordvians, the Tchouvaches, whom M. Radlow considers the descendants of the Bulgars of Bolgary, the Votiaks and the Bachkirs—after a resistance of some years, were obliged to do homage to Moscow. Ivan sent them missionaries at the same time as his voievodes.

The fall of the kingdom of Astrakhan soon followed that of Kazan. This great city was also divided between two parties. In 1554 Prince Iouri Pronski descended the Volga with 30,000 men, and established Derbych, the *protégé* of Russia, on the throne. Derbych, after a short time, was accused of having an understanding with the Khan of the Crimea; and Astrakhan was conquered a second time, and finally united to Russia. The Nogaïs, who wandered over the neighbouring steppes, were forced to accept the Muscovite protection. Thus the Volga—that famous river whose banks sustain so many ruined cities, Itil capital of the Khazars, Bolgary capital of the Bulgars, Sarai capital of the Golden Horde—that keep the memory of the ancient races who have vanished from history; the Volga—that grand artery of Eastern commerce—now flowed in the whole of its course from its source to its mouth through the land of the Tzars.

Persian Asia was thrown open to Russian influence by means of the Caspian; and already the petty princes of the Caucasus, always fighting either among themselves or with the Tatars of the Crimea, sought the alliance of the successors of the Greek Cæsars.

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In order to keep a firmer hold on the Horde of the Taurid, Ivan took under his protection one of the two warlike republics which had been formed in the neighbourhood of the Crimea: the Cossacks of the Don declared themselves subjects of Moscow, the Cossacks of the Dnieper remained Poles.

WARS WITH THE LIVONIAN ORDER, POLAND, TATARS, SWEDEN, AND ARISTOCRATIC RUSSIA.

Russia, which felt the growth of her forces, felt equally the need of throwing open the Baltic at the same time as the Black Sea. The Baltic was even the more necessary to the Russians, as by it only could they communicate with Western Europe, and receive vessels, artillery, and engineers. Thence Muscovy awaited the increase of power that civilisation could alone give her. Between Muscovy and the Baltic lay more than one enemy: Sweden, the Livonian knights, Lithuania, and Poland. In 1554 a war broke out about the rectification of the frontiers between Ivan the Terrible and the great Gustavus Vasa; but as the founder of the Swedish dynasty was not supported by his neighbours, the war was a short one. It terminated by a commercial treaty which opened India and China to the Swedish merchants by way of Russia; and to those of Russia, Flanders, England, and France, by way of Sweden. Moscow could not yet communicate with the West except through a jealous intermediary.

Ivan the Terrible, inspired by the same political and civilising ideas as Peter the Great, wished to "open a window" into Europe. For this purpose he coveted the ports of the Narva, Revel and Riga, then in the hands of the Livonian Order, against which

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Ivan had some grievances. About 1547 Ivan had
sent the Saxon Schlitte into Germany to engage for
him a certain number of engineers and artisans, and
Schlitte had managed to collect about a hundred
people. The jealousy of the Germans then awoke;
they feared that, as she became civilised, Russia
would also become strong. The Livonian Order de-
manded of the Emperor Charles VI. the right to stop
these strangers on their road. None ever reached
Moscow. Ivan, then occupied with Kazan, was
unable to avenge himself; but when in 1554 the
envoys of the Order came to Moscow to solicit a re-
newal of the truce, he summoned them to pay tribute
for Iourief, the ancient patrimony of the Russian
princes. Such a demand meant war. In 1558 the
Russian army took Narva, Neuhausen, Dorpat, and
seventeen other places. The Grand Master Kettler
asked help of his neighbours. Poland alone re-
sponded to his appeal, and Sigismond Augustus II.
concluded an offensive and defensive alliance with
the Livonian Order.

At this juncture an important revolution took
place in the palace of the Tzar. Ivan's relations
with his two counsellors Silvester and Adachef had
singularly altered. They had disagreed with respect
to the war with Livonia; they had desired that after
the capture of Kazan and Astrakhan Ivan should
turn in preference to the third Mussulman State, the
Khanate of the Crimea. M. Kostomarof gives ex-
cellent reasons for this preference, but the reasons in
favour of the opposite opinion are not less good. By
conquering the Crimea the safety of the empire
would be secured, and the conversion to Islamism,
the complete Tatarization of the ancient Taurian
tribes still professing Christianity, would be pre-

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vented; but by conquering Lithuania an ancient patrimony of the Russian princes would be recovered, and it would become possible to enter into direct relations with civilised Europe. The chances of success were equal. The Horde was then decimated by an epidemic, but the Livonian Order was in the act of dissolution by the result of the contest between Catholicism and Protestantism. The difficulties were equal. In attacking Livonia, Russia would come in contact with Sweden, Denmark, Poland, and Germany; but behind the Crimea were the Turks, then at the height of their power, and much irritated by the conquest of Kazan and Astrakhan. Peter the Great did not conquer Livonia till after twenty years' hard fighting with the Powers of the North; but how many Russian expeditions against the Crimea have not been stopped by the distance, the difficulty of communication, the sandy deserts, and the extreme temperatures? Catherine the Great only conquered the Taurid in the decadence of the Turkish Empire, and after many campaigns, when she not only brought into play her armies of the Danube, but sent a fleet to the Archipelago. In reality both enterprises were premature; Russia had not yet strength to carry them through. Neither the Tzar nor his counsellors were completely in the right, but the obstinacy of the latter had a fatal result. To content everybody, two wars were declared—which was to run the certain risk of a double check.

The misunderstanding between the Tzar and his two ministers dated from further back. Silvester abused his spiritual influence with the Tzar to multiply jobs of his own. He had ended by leaving him no liberty; and when Ivan's favourite son died, he

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told him brutally that it was a chastisement from
Heaven for his indocility. He had entered into
relations with boyards whom Ivan justly suspected;
he took their part against the Tzarina Anastasia,
whom he represented as a second Empress Eudoxia,
the persecutor of Chrysostom; against the Glinskis,
and against the Romanofs. Adachef followed the
same path. Like Haroun-al-Raschid's favourites,
the Barmecides, these two ministers had ended by
appropriating all the power of their master. Ivan
had patience with them, believing them to be
faithful; but in 1553 he fell dangerously ill, and
was thought to be at the point of death. Then the
boyards resumed their old arrogance; they obsti-
nately refused to swear allegiance to the son of the
Tzar, the young Dmitri, declaring that they would
not obey his maternal relations, the Romanofs. The
noisy discussions reached the bed of the sick man,
and his entreaties were despised. The boyards
approached Vladimir, cousin of Ivan IV., who had
also refused to take the oaths, and it was known
that the mother of this ambitious prince was dis-
tributing largesses to the army. Silvester took
the part of Prince Vladimir against those boyards
who remained faithful, and the family of Adachef
joined with the mutineers. The faithful boyards
even feared for the life of the Tzar; Ivan could not
be under any delusions as to the fate awaiting his
wife and his son, in case of his death.

"When God shall have worked His will on me,"
said Ivan to the few boyards gathered round him,
"do not, I pray you, forget that you have sworn an
oath to my son and to me; do not let him fall into
the hands of the boyards; fly with him to some
strange land, whithersoever God will conduct you.

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And you,” he continued, addressing the Romanofs, “wherefore these terrors? Do you think that the boyards will spare you? You will fall the first: die then rather—since die you must—for my son and for his mother; do not abandon my wife to the fury of the boyards.” Ivan IV. recovered, but he preserved a lasting impression of these days of anguish. When we see him, later in his reign, give himself up to revenge, and to apparently inexplicable fury, we must think of the terrible vigils of 1553, of the scenes of rebellion and violence that troubled the peace of his sick chamber, of the obstinate refusals to take the desired vow, of the declarations of hatred against the Tzarina and her relations, and of the intrigues woven round Vladimir against the Tzarévitch Dmitri.

He had no more confidence in his favourites; both were banished from the Court. Silvester retired to the monastery of Saint Cyril, and was afterwards exiled to Solovetski. Adachef was appointed voïevode at Fellin in Livonia, and later was forced to live at Dorpat. But they left behind them a complete administration, a perfect army of clients. They had peopled the Court, the governments, and the voïevodies with their creatures. Their partisans were certain to agitate and plot for the return of their chiefs. Who knew how far these plots might go? A short time after Adachef’s disgrace, that Anastasia whom he detested died suddenly. Ivan alleged that she was poisoned. Since the publication of M. Zabiéline’s careful studies on the ‘Private Life of the Tzarinas of Russia,’ this allegation and others like it do not appear as inconceivable as they seemed to Karamsin. The intrigues of the friends of Adachef forced Ivan IV. many times to have recourse

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to severity, but at this epoch he was comparatively merciful.

"When the treachery of that dog Alexis Adachef and his accomplices was discovered," Ivan afterwards writes, "we let our anger be tempered with mercy; we did not condemn the guilty to capital punishments, but only banished them to our different towns. . . . Then we put no one to death. Those who belonged to the party of Silvester and Adachef we commanded to separate from them, and no longer to recognise them as chiefs. This promise we made them confirm by a vow, but they paid no heed to our injunction, and trampled their oath under foot. Not only did they not separate from the traitors, but they aided them by all possible means, and schemed to render them back their ancient power, and to set on foot against us a perfidious plot. Then only, seeing their wicked obstinacy and unconquerable spirit of rebellion, I inflicted on the guilty the penalty of their faults." Capital punishment was indeed rare at this epoch. Ivan usually contented himself with demanding a fresh oath from those who were arrested on the road to Lithuania, and acted surety from them and their friends that they would not seek again to pass into Poland. Sometimes he condemned them to the easy durance of the monasteries.

What finally decided the Tzar to be more severe in his treatment was the defection of Prince Andrew Kourbski, who belonged to a family once royal, and descended from Rurik. He had distinguished himself against the Tatars on the Oka and at Kazan, and, being a zealous partisan of Adachef and Silvester, he was deeply irritated by their fall. Nominated general-in-chief of the army in Livonia,

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his carelessness allowed the Russians to suffer a
shameful defeat. 15,000 Russians were beaten by
4000 Poles; and even, if the Polish historian Martin
Belski is to be believed, 40,000 Russians by 1500
Poles. Kourbski had reason to fear the anger of the
Tzar. He had been for some time negotiating with
the King of Poland, being desirous of obtaining in
Lithuania a command, lands, and advantages equal
to those he would lose. At last, abandoning his
wife and children to the vengeance of the Tzar, he
left Wenden and crossed into the Polish camp.
Thence he sent to Ivan a letter by his servant
Chipanof, whose foot, according to the tradition,
Ivan nailed with his iron staff on to a step of the
*red staircase*, while the message was being read to him.

“Tzar formerly glorified by God!” wrote Kourbski, “Tzar who formerly shone like the torch of orthodoxy, but who, for our sins, art now revealed to us in quite a different aspect, with a soiled and leprous conscience, such as we could not find even among barbarian infidels! Exposed to thy cruel persecution, with a heart filled with bitterness, I wish notwithstanding to say a few words to you. O Tzar, why hast thou put to death the strong ones of Israel? Why hast thou slain the valiant voïevodes given thee by God? Why hast thou shed their victorious blood, their holy blood, on the profaned pavement of the churches of God, during the sacred ceremonies? Why hast thou reddened the porch of the temple with the blood of the martyrs? In what were they guilty towards thee, O Tzar? Was it not their valour which overthrew, which laid at thy feet, those proud kingdoms of the Volga, before which thine ancestors were slaves? Is it not their zeal, their intelligence, to which, after God, thou

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owest the strong towns of the Germans? And
behold thy gratitude to these unhappy ones! Thou
hast exterminated whole families amongst us. Dost
thou think thyself then immortal, O Tzar? or dost
thou think (seduced by some heresy) that thou canst
escape the incorruptible Judge, Jesus our God? No;
He will judge the whole world, and chiefly such
proud persecutors as thou art. My blood, which has
already flowed for thee like water, will cry against
thee to our Lord. God sees all consciences!"
Kourbski then invokes the victims of Ivan, and
shows them standing before the throne of God, de-
manding justice against their executioner. "Is it
that in thy pride thou trustest in thy legions to keep
thee in this ephemeral life, inventing against the
human race new engines of torture to tear and
disfigure the body of man, the image of the angels?
Dost thou reckon on thy servile flatterers, on thy
boon companions, on thy turbulent boyards, who
make thee lose thy soul and body, entice thee to the
debaucheries of Venus, and sacrifice their children to
the vile rites worthy of Saturn? When my last day
comes, I wish that this letter, watered with my tears,
should be placed on my coffin." He ended by
declaring himself a subject of Sigismond Augustus,
"my sovereign, who, I hope, will load me with
favours and consolations for my misfortunes."
Thus Kourbski spoke "in the name of the strong
ones of Israel, of the living and the dead," that is,
in the name of all the friends of Adachef; he made
himself the organ of their wrath and complaints; he
formulated their grievances, and exaggerated them;
he demanded an account of the Tzar of his conduct
towards them, threatening him with a higher tri-
bunal, and dared to ask if he thought himself

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immortal; he refused Ivan all participation in the
glory acquired at Kazan, insulted the boyards who
surrounded him, and boasted of the crime which was
the most unpardonable in the eyes of the Tzar—the
recognition of the Polish sovereignty.

Kourbski's letter was a manifesto. It helped to irritate the suspicions of the Tzar, already only too disposed to imagine plots. Ivan, who thought himself a man of letters, and was really one of the most learned men in his empire, conceived it necessary to answer the letter of Kourbski with a long vindication, adorned with quotations from sacred and profane authors. The Tzar and his rebel subject exchanged many epistles of this kind. Ivan, who had begun by this time to justify his surname of Terrible, gave, besides, another answer to Kourbski's manifesto—the punishment of his supposed accomplices.

Ivan felt that he could no longer govern with a
Court, a council of state (douma), and an adminis-
tration which were filled with the friends of Adachef
and Kourbski. Kourbski's conduct shows to what
depths of treason their rancour could bring them.
He was to return to devastate Russia with a Polish
army! Was the life of the Tzar safe in the midst of
such men? In December 1564 Ivan quitted Mos-
cow with all his friends, servants, and treasures, and
retired to the Slobode Alexandrof. He then wrote
two letters to Moscow—one to the Archbishop, com-
plaining of the plots and infidelity of the nobles, and
the complicity of the clergy, who, abusing the right
of intercession, prevented the sovereign from punish-
ing the guilty; in the other he reassured the citizens
and people of Moscow, by informing them that they
were not included in his censure. The terror of the

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capital was great; the people trembled at the
thought of falling again under the government of
the oligarchs; the boyards feared what the people
might do to them. Neither the one nor the other
could resign themselves to the anger of the sove-
reign. The boyards and the clergy resolved to ask
pardon, and, if necessary, to "carry their heads" to
the Tzar. They went in procession to the Slobode
Alexandrof, to beseech him to recall his abdication.
Ivan consented to resume the crown, but on his own
conditions. As he could neither govern with the
actual administration nor destroy it, as he was forced
to respect its vested interests, he made a sort of par-
tition of the monarchy. The greater part of the
empire continued to be governed by the *douma* of
the boyards, and constituted the *zemchtchina*, that is,
the "rule of the country." Over this part of Russia
Ivan only reserved a surveillance, and the right of
punishing treason. The other part was placed under
the "personal and individual" government of the
Tzar, and formed the "*opritchnina*." Leaving the
ancient Court, the ancient *douma*, and the ancient ad-
ministration still in existence, Ivan IV. formed with
his own creatures a new Court, a new council, and a
new administration, to which he confided the towns
and villages that had fallen to his share. He sur-
rounded himself with a special guard, called "the
thousand of the Tzar," or the *opritchniki*, who had
adopted, as *armes parlantes*, a dog's head, and a
broom suspended from their saddles. They were
ready to bite the enemies of the Tzar, and to *sweep
treason off the Russian soil*. This singular *régime*
lasted seven years (1565-1572).

Ivan made great use of his right to punish traitors,
or those whom he regarded as such. A perfect reign

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of terror hung over the Russian aristocracy, with
alternations of calm and renewed fury. We know
the names of his victims, but we do not always know
their crimes. The writers hostile to Ivan IV.,
Kourbski, the Italian Guagnini, then in the service of
the King of Poland, and the German refugees Taube
and Kruse, are not always agreed on the subject.

About the facts which can be clearly proved, we
can see that Ivan had real grievances against the
nobles whom he put to death. On the side of the
oligarchs the strife, though quiet and noiseless, was
not less bloody. We ought not to be deceived by
their demonstrations of humility and submission.
With their foreheads in the dust, they could still
conspire. We must beware of thinking Ivan's
enemies were any better than himself. They were
as cruel towards their inferiors as the Tzar was
towards them. This aristocracy of slave-masters,
habituated under the Tatar yoke to an insolent
disdain of human life and feeling, was not superior
in morality to its tyrant. It presented more than
one type similar to the French monsters Gilles de
Retz and the Sieur de Giac. Under very different
colours, it was the same battle that raged in Russia
and in France. But in France men fought in open
day, on the battle-fields of the Praguerie or of the
League of the Public Good; in Russia the contest
was carried on by silent plots, by noiseless attempts
to poison or slay by magic, met by the axe of the
executioner. In this sinister dialogue between the
master and his subjects, it was naturally the master
who spoke the loudest. In the absence of a sufficient
number of authentic documents, we risk nothing by
being a little more sceptical than Karamsin.

The principal episodes of this autocratic reign of

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terror are: 1. The deposition and perhaps the murder of St. Philip, Archbishop of Moscow, guilty of having nobly interceded for the condemned, and of hating the *opritchniki*. 2. The execution of Alexandra, widow of Iouri and sister-in-law of Ivan; of Prince Vladimir and his mother, the ambitious Euphrosyne, who thus expiated their intrigues of 1553. We must remark that Ivan, whatever Kourbski may say, spared Vladimir's children, and largely provided for them.

3. The chastisement of Novgorod, where the aristocratic party had entertained, it seemed to Ivan, the project of opening the gates to the King of Poland, and where the Tzar, according to his own testimony, put to death 1505 persons. 4. The great execution in the Red Place in 1571, where a certain number of Muscovites and Novgorodians were slain, and where many of Ivan's new favourites, notably Viazemski and the Basmanofs, underwent the same penalty as his old enemies.

A curious memorial has been left us of the vengeance of "the Terrible;" it is the synodical letter of the Monastery of St. Cyril, in which Ivan asks for each of his victims by name the prayers of the Church. This list shows a total of 3470 victims, of whom 986 are mentioned by name. Many of these names are followed by this sinister statement,—"with his wife," "with his wife and children," "with his daughters," "with his sons." It was this that Kourbski called "the extermination of entire families" (vsiorodno). The constitution of the Russian family at this epoch was so strong, that the death of the head necessarily involved that of the other members. Other collective indications are not less significant. For example: "Kazarine Doubrovski and his two sons, with ten men who came to their help."

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"Twenty men of the village of Kolmenskoé;" "eighty of Matveiché;" these were no doubt peasants and *dicti-boyarskié* who tried to defend their masters. There is this mention relative to Novgorod: "Remember, Lord, the souls of thy servants, to the number of 1505 persons, Novgorodians." Had not Louis XI. tender feelings of this nature? He prayed with fervour for the soul of his brother, the Duke de Berri.

Other records demonstrate that Ivan the Terrible thought he had serious reasons to fear for his life. His curious correspondence with Queen Elizabeth of England proves this, as he obtains of her the formal promise that in case of misfortune he is to find in England a safe asylum and the free exercise of his worship (1570). There is besides his will of 1572, which contemplates the case of his being "proscribed by his boyards and expelled by them from the throne, and being obliged to wander from country to country," and recommends to his sons to live on good terms with each other after his death, to learn how to restrain and reward their subjects, and above all to be on the watch against them.

During this terrible intestine strife, the war with Livonia and her ally the King of Poland continued. Notwithstanding the help of the latter, the Knights were everywhere beaten, and their fortresses taken by the Russian troops.

At last, ruined by so many blows, this famous Order dissolved. The Isle of Œsel sold itself to Denmark; Revel gave itself to the Swedes; Livonia was ceded by the Grand Master to Poland; Kettler reserved to himself Courland and Semigallia, which were erected into a hereditary duchy. There were no more Livonian knights, but Poland, as heir of the

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quarrels of Livonia, became more than ever ardent
in the struggle. The Russians sustained their new
reputation. In 1563 Ivan the Terrible, with a
numerous army and many guns, besieged and took
Polotsk, a very important position from its proximity
to Livonia and its situation on the Dwina, the grand
commercial route to Riga. In spite of a victory at
Orcha, the King of Poland demanded a truce (1566).

Ivan at this moment offered a strange spectacle
to Russia. To deliberate on the request of Sigismond
he assembled a council, composed of the higher clergy,
the territorial boyards on the frontiers of Lithuania
(and well acquainted with the local topography),
and finally the merchants of Moscow and Smo-
lensk. This despot, who founded autocracy in blood,
convoked real States-general; he made an appeal
to their opinion, as he had many times before,
when from the stone tribune of Lobnoé miesto he
harangued the three orders. The Assembly decided
that the King of Poland's conditions could not be
accepted, and offered men and money for the con-
tinuation of the war. This was prolonged for four
years, and ended in a truce. The Tzar, who saw diffi-
culties accumulating in Livonia, conceived an expe-
dient to enable him to escape them. No longer
hoping to be able directly to unite the Baltic ports to
his empire, he offered the title of King of Livonia
to the Danish Prince Magnus, and made him marry
a daughter of that same Prince Vladimir whom he
had put to death. Magnus, nominal King of Livonia,
soon perceived that he was only an instrument of
Muscovite policy. He intrigued against the Tzar
and was dethroned. Ivan the Terrible took Wenden
in person, which Magnus had garrisoned, and mas-
sacred the German soldiers to the last man.

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Unfortunately the war with Poland was complicated by the raids of the Tatars of the Crimea. Sigismond did not cease to work upon the Khan, who well understood that his cause was allied with that of Poland. The Tzar, however, overpowered the Khan, took Kief, and established towns on the Dnieper. And what could the Tatars gain there, after all? Had not Ivan overthrown two Mongol kingdoms? The Sultan of Stamboul, Selim II., was ready to join in the Holy War for Kazan and Astrakhan. In 1569, 17,000 Turks, commanded by Kassim Pacha, and 50,000 Tatars, led by the Khan, besieged Astrakhan. The operations dragged on; the Pacha wished to pass the winter there, but a sedition broke out in the army. He was obliged to raise the siege, and lost many of his men in the steppes of the desert. Two years after, the Khan Devlet-Ghirei invaded Russia with 20,000 men. Was he aided by the treachery of the voievodes? He crossed the Oka, and suddenly appeared under the walls of Moscow. He burned the faubourgs, and the fire spread to the town, which, except the Kremlin, was completely reduced to ashes. A foreign author gives the evidently exaggerated number of 800,000 victims. The Khan retired with more than 100,000 prisoners, and despatched the following insolent message to Ivan: "I burn, I ravage everything because of Kazan and Astrakhan. I came to you and I burnt Moscow. I wished to have your crown and your head, but you did not show yourself; you declined a battle, and you dare to call yourself a Tzar of Moscow. Will you live at peace with me? Yield me up Kazan and Astrakhan. If you have only money to offer me, it would be useless, were it the riches of the whole world. What I want is Kazan and Astrakhan. As to the roads to your empire, I

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have seen them—I know them." He returned the following year (1572), but Prince Michael Vorotinski met him on the banks of the Lopasnia, and inflicted on him a complete defeat.

The same year (that of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew) died Sigismond Augustus II., king of Poland. His reign was especially memorable for the union of Lublin (1569), in virtue of which Poland and Lithuania were henceforth to form only one State under an elective prince. Thus Poland enfeebled royal power at home, just when it acquired in Russia an extraordinary degree of energy. A party of nobles was formed at Warsaw who wished to elect the son of Ivan the Terrible as King of Poland. This was to prepare for the reunion of the two great Slav empires, separated less by language than religion, whose growing antagonism could only terminate in the ruin of one of them, to the great advantage of the German race. Ivan coveted the crown, not for his son, but for himself. Let us see him court the Polish ambassadors, and try to defend himself against the accusations of cruelty and tyranny which the banished Muscovites brought against him.

"If your pans, who are now without a king," said he to the Polish envoy Voropäi, "desire me for their sovereign, they will see what a good protector and kind master they will find in me. Many among you say that I am cruel. It is true that I am cruel and irascible—I do not deny it; but to whom, I ask you, am I cruel? I am cruel towards anyone that is cruel to me. The good! ah, I would give them in a moment the chain and the robe that I wear! It is nothing wonderful that your princes love their subjects, if their subjects love them. Mine have delivered me over to the Tatars of the Crimea. My voïevodes did not

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even warn me of the arrival of the enemy. Perhaps it was difficult for them to vanquish a force so superior to them in numbers; but even if they had lost some thousands of men, and only brought me a whip or a cane of the Tatars, I should have been grateful. Think of the enormity of their treason towards me. If some of them were afterwards chasised, it was for their crimes they were punished. I ask you—do you spare traitors?” Ivan then spoke of his grievances against Kourbski, and ended by promising “to observe the laws, to respect and even to extend the liberties and franchises of Poland.”

The ambassador of France at Warsaw finally carried the day, and Henri de Valois, duc d'Anjou, was proclaimed king. He did not stay long in Poland, and, after his flight to the West, a new Diet assembled, and the intrigues of the rival Courts began again.

Stephen Batory, voïevode of Transylvania, was elected king. He was a young, ambitious, and energetic prince, and no more formidable enemy to Ivan the Terrible in his old age could have been chosen. It was now not only a question of the conquest of Livonia which was pursued so laboriously in the face of so many obstacles, but, in placing the crown on his head, Batory had sworn to give back to Poland the towns conquered from her by the Muscovite princes. It was now a contest between the semi-barbarous army of Russia, her almost feudal soldiery, her Tatar cavalry, her tactics of routine, and her feeble artillery, and a really European army, a well-directed artillery, compact regiments of German mercenaries, and Hungarian veterans, seasoned by many combats. Ivan awaited his enemy in Livonia, when suddenly Batory appeared before Polotsk and

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took it, in spite of a vigorous resistance. The
Russian gunners hung themselves by their guns in
despair. This and the following years were marked
by the capture of many Russian fortresses. Batory,
the hero of the North—the Charles XII. of the
century of Ivan the Terrible—seemed ready to anni-
hilate the work of a long reign, and to check the
first effort of Russia to escape from a state of bar-
barism. The Swedes on their side, commanded by
De la Gardie, took Kexholm and Carelia, and in-
vaded Esthonia. Old Pskovian and Novgorodian
Russia was invaded. In 1581 Batory besieged
Pskof, whilst De la Gardie captured Narva, Ivan-
gorod, Iam, and Koporié. But Pskof marked the
limit of Batory's successes. This little town was
defended with so much energy by Ivan Chouïski,
that, after a three months' siege and many assaults,
Poles and Hungarians had to confess themselves
vanquished.

Ivan had ceased to appear at the head of his
troops, thinking that a prince who is not sure of
his peers would be foolish if he risked himself in
a battle; a conclusion to which Louis XI. had come
at Montlhéry. There still remained diplomacy to
direct. Threatened by Batory, he had recourse to
an expedient. He implored the mediation of Pope
Gregory XIII. between the Catholic king and him-
self. The Pontiff sent to Moscow the Jesuit Antonio
Possevino, with orders at the same time to negotiate
the union with the two Churches. The account of
Possevino shows us Ivan the Terrible in his true
colours; almost free-thinking, curious, and sometimes
humorous, with ideas of tolerance remarkable for his
time. If the Pope's envoy failed in the religious
part of his mission, he at least succeeded in con-

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291

cluding a truce between the two sovereigns, by which Ivan had to cede Polotsk and all Livonia. This bold enterprise for opening the Baltic Sea, which preceded by 150 years that of Peter the Great, had fallen miserably to the ground. The fruit of thirty years' efforts and sacrifices was lost (1582).

THE ENGLISH IN RUSSIA—CONQUEST OF SIBERIA.

Writers hostile to Ivan love to contrast the end of his reign—his *personal* government—with his early years, when Sylvester and Adachef were in power. In the first period there was nothing but success; Kazan and Astrakhan were conquered. In the second period the Russians were vanquished by the Poles and Swedes; were expelled from Livonia; they lost Polotsk, and saw Moscow burnt by the Khan of the Crimea. The meaning of these facts really is that the Russian arms were triumphant in the East against barbarians ignorant of the military art, and unfortunate in the West, where they had to contend with the artillery, the tactics, the discipline, and the troops of Europe. Ivan needed more wit to be defeated as he was in Livonia, than to win as he did in Kazan. It is no dishonour for the Russia of the 16th century to have failed in this great undertaking, since Peter, with all his genius, spent twenty-five years in the same task. This unlucky period of the reign of Ivan was not without fruit for the grandeur and civilisation of Russia. The Germans closed to her the Baltic, the English opened for her the White Sea.

Under Edward VI. a company of merchant venturers was formed for the discovery of "regions, kingdoms, islands, and places unknown and unvisited

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by the highway of the sea." Sebastian Cabot, chief
pilot of England, was nominated governor for life.
Three vessels, under the command of Sir Hugh Wil-
loughby and Chancellor, set sail towards the north-
east, towards that strange sea spoken of by Tacitus—
"a sluggish mere and motionless—which forms the
girdle of the world, where you hear the sound of
sun-rising!" That sea must lead, men thought,
to China. On the coasts of Scandinavia near Varde-
huus, a frightful tempest arose and dispersed the
squadron. Willoughby disappeared with the 'Buona
Speranza' and the 'Buona Confidenza.' Some fisher-
men afterwards found the two ships in a bay of the
White Sea, where they had been nipped by the ice,
and all the sailors who manned them were dead of
cold and hunger. Chancellor, with the 'Edward
Bonaventura,' succeeded in doubling Laponia and
the Holy Cape, penetrated first into an unknown sea,
and then into the mouth of a river, near which was
a monastery. The sea was the White Sea, the river
the Dwina, the monastery that of St. Nicholas.
Chancellor learned with astonishment that he was on
the territory of the Tzar of Moscow; he had found
Russia beneath the North Pole (1553). Further off
was the monastery of St. Michael, near which was
afterwards to be built in this desert, chiefly thanks to
the English, the commercial city of St. Michael the
Archangel, or, more shortly, Arkhangel. Chancellor
at once left for Moscow, and delivered to Ivan the
Terrible the letters which Edward VI., not knowing
where his subjects might land, had addressed vaguely
"to all the princes and lords, to all the judges of the
earth, to their officers, to whoever possesses any high
authority in all the regions under the vast sky."
Ivan IV. admitted the English "to see his majesty

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293

and his eyes,” feasted them in the Golden Palace, and gave them a letter for their king, in which he authorised the English to trade with his dominions, and made them promise to send ships to the Dwina.

Mary Tudor succeeded her brother, and shared the throne with her Spanish husband, Philip II. They confirmed the privileges of the company of merchant venturers, and in 1556 Chancellor, accompanied by Richard Gray and George Killingworth, again set sail for the mouth of the Dwina, and arrived successfully at Moscow. This time they obtained from the Tzar letters-patent formally authorising the members of the company to establish themselves at Kholmogory and at Vologda, and to trade east and west. During this time Stephen Burroughs, in the ‘Searchthrift,’ navigated the east, gained the shores of the country of the Samoyedes, touched on the islands of Nova Zembla and Vaigatz, and was only checked by the approach of the dark Polar winter.

Chancellor’s two vessels—the ‘Edward Bonaventura’ and the ‘Philip and Mary’—which had discovered the missing ships of Willoughby, departed for England. The former had on board Osip Nepei, governor of Vologda, the first Russian ambassador that had been seen in England, accompanied by a suite of sixteen Russians, and carrying a letter and presents from Ivan IV. A tempest scattered the fleet, sent the ‘Philip and Mary’ as far as the coast of Norway, sunk the ‘Speranza’ and the ‘Confidenza,’ and threw the ‘Bonaventura’ on the inhospitable rocks of Inverness. Chancellor succeeded in saving the Russian envoy, but perished himself with his son and nearly all the crew. The cargo and the presents of the Tzar were plundered by the savage natives of the country.

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Twelve miles from London Osip Nepei was received by eighty merchants of the company, mounted on magnificent horses, and adorned with heavy chains of gold. He now became acquainted with "all the solid respectability of old England." His *cortège* was increased by new squadrons of merchants and gentlemen as they approached the town, and he made his triumphal entry on February the 28th, 1557. Harangued by the Lord Mayor, received by the Queen and the King, feasted by the corporation of drapers, he departed for Russia with letters-patent according to Russian merchants in England a reciprocity of privileges. England did not bind herself down to much.

Nepei this time was accompanied by Jenkinson, an admirable type of an English sailor,—bold, indefatigable, ready for anything; a merchant, an administrator, a diplomat at need, who had already visited all the seas of Europe, and, in despair at England not being able to contest the Mediterranean with her Venetian rival, wished to secure her a new passage by Russia to the East. His open character and wide knowledge were wonderfully seductive to Ivan. He obtained from the Tzar a letter of recommendation to the Asiatic princes, descended the Volga, flew the first English flag on the Caspian, landed on the coast of Turkestan; plunged with camels loaded with merchandise into regions infested with brigands, and ravaged by the wars of the khans; was very nearly massacred, reached Bokhara, and was lucky enough to return before the city was sacked by the Sultan of Samarcand (1558-1559). In another voyage (1562) he again crossed the Caspian, and presented specimens of English manufacture and the letters of Elizabeth to Shah Thamas,

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295

King of Persia, who, warned by the friends of the
Turks and Venetians, received Jenkinson with an
insulting mistrust and coldness. When he retired
from the Court, a domestic followed him carrying a
basin of sand, and scattered it to efface the impure
footsteps of the *giaour* on the soil of the sacred
palace. Jenkinson brought back to Ivan IV. mes-
sages from many small princes, notably from those
of Chirvan and Georgia, who wished to place them-
selves under the Muscovite protection. The results
of these voyages were negative. Seeing the insta-
bility of the Asiatic regions, the English had for the
present to confine themselves to trading in the terri-
tories of the Tzar. The latter, in acknowledgment
of the services rendered him by Jenkinson, authorised
them to trade on all the rivers of the north, from
the Dwina to the Obi, and to establish themselves
in the principal Russian towns—Pskof, Novgorod,
Nijni-Novgorod, Kazan, Astrakhan, and Narva, which
had just fallen into the power of the Russians.

In 1568 Ivan wished to conclude with Elizabeth a
treaty of alliance, offensive and defensive, against
Poland and Sweden. He offered her in exchange a
monopoly of commerce with Russia, though this
right, by his own showing, weighed more heavily
on his empire than a tribute would have done. He
also requested her to sign an engagement, reciprocal
for the two sovereigns, to furnish each other with an
asylum in the event of the success of an enemy, or
the rebellion of their subjects, obliging them to
fly from their States. Elizabeth declined the offer
of alliance, and refused to accept for herself the
offered asylum, "finding, by the grace of God, no
dangers of the sort in her dominions." It was in
1570 that she signed the treaty mentioned above,

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and had it countersigned by Bacon and the principal statesmen. This, however, was far from contenting Ivan, as Elizabeth persisted in declining a refuge in Russia. The discussion on this "great affair," as Ivan calls it in his letters, was prolonged for some time longer. Elizabeth sent Randolph, Jenkinson, and Daniel Silvester to Russia. Ivan was represented in London by Andrew Sovine, Pisemski, and the English merchant, Horsey.

The last envoy of England in the reign of Ivan was Jerome Bowes, charged to explain to the Tzar the difficulties in the way of his project of marriage with Lady Mary Hastings, cousin of Elizabeth. Notwithstanding his heaviness and want of tact, Bowes obtained great credit with the Tzar, who sometimes said to him, "May it please God that my servants prove as faithful!" Bowes profited by his favour to get the privileges of the English augmented, but he made himself many enemies at Court, and was greatly maltreated during the reaction that followed the death of Ivan. The relations were renewed in Feodor's reign by Horsey, and, above all, by Fletcher, author of a curious account of Russia.

French merchants had also brought to Ivan a letter of Henry III., and had settled themselves in Moscow. Other envoys arrived from Holland, Spain, and Italy, to try to rival the English; but the latter, who had been the first to reach Russia, kept the pre-eminence.

In 1558 the Tzar had yielded to Gregory Strogonof ninety-two miles of desert land on the banks of the Kama. Here the Strogonofs created many centres of population, and began to explore the mineral wealth of the Ourals. Their colonists even

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passed the "mountain girdle," and came in contact
with the kingdom of Siberia. The Strogonofs, as
audacious as the Spaniards, dreamed of the conquest
of this vast empire, and requested authority of the
Tzar to take the offensive against the Tatars. To
fight, an army was necessary. Russia was so full of
vigour, that the most impure elements often became
the agents of her security and progress. The Good
Companions of the Don had more than once excited
the anger of the Tzar by pillaging the travellers
and boats on the royal road of the Volga. They
had not always respected the possessions of the
Crown. One of these brigand chiefs, the Cossack
Irmak Timofeevitch, obtained the pardon of the
Tzar, and took service with the Strogonofs. At
the head of 850 men—Russians, Cossacks, Tatars,
German, and Polish prisoners of war—he crossed
the Ours, terrified the natives by the novelty of
fire-arms, traversed the immense untrodden forests
of Tobol, defeated the Khan Koutchoum in many
battles, took Sibir, his capital, and made his cousin
Mametkoul prisoner. Then he subjugated the banks
of the Irtych and the Obi, and consoled the last years
of the Tzar by the news that he had conquered him
a new kingdom, and added to all his other crowns
that of Siberia. Ivan also sent bishops and priests
into his new dominions. Irmak, after having
finished his conquest and thrown open the commu-
nications with the rich Bokhara, only survived Ivan
a short time. One day he allowed himself to be
surprised by his enemies, and sank in trying to
swim the Irtych, from the weight of the cuirass
given him by the Tzar (1584). This rival of Pi-
zarro and Cortez, the conquistador of a new world,
was reckoned a hero by the people, and is honoured

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as a saint by the Church. Miracles were accom
plished at his tomb; epic songs celebrated his ex-
ploits. The Tatars have composed a whole legend
about him.

If Adachef had given to Russia in 1551 her first
municipal liberties, Ivan had assembled in 1556 the
first States-general, composed of the three orders.
The reformation of the Church under Silvester was
completed by the Council of 1573, which forbade
rich convents to acquire new lands; and, by the
Council of 1580, extending the prohibition to all
convents. The Church could no longer acquire
property. Ivan the Terrible restrained an abuse
which troubled all the public ceremonies, and more
than once imperilled the success of battles. We
know how powerful, in the Russia of the 16th cen-
tury, was the constitution of the family. When a
noble rose or fell, his whole family rose or fell with
him; even the memory of his ancestors and the
future of his youngest nephews were concerned.
This is the reason why a Russian noble never con-
sented to occupy an inferior place, if no precedents
on the subject existed. Court and camp were con-
stantly disturbed by the "quarrels of precedence"
(miestnitchestvo). Neither the knout nor the execu-
tioner's axe could subdue their resistance. They
would rather die than dishonour their ancestors.
The 'Books of Rank' were consulted on all occa-
sions, to know the respective precedence of the dif-
ferent families. Ivan IV. forbade all disputes of
rank to any noble who was not the head of his
family. This was only to restrain the evil; it had
yet to be extirpated.

Ivan the Terrible may be considered as the founder
of the National Guard of the *streltsi* or *strelitz*, who

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during two hundred years rendered great services to
the empire. He also organised, on the frontiers
threatened by the Tatars, a series of posts and camps
where the soldiers of the country might be exercised.

He gathered strangers about him. He authorised
the minister Wettermann, of Dorpat, to preach at
Moscow, listened to Eberfeld, and refused a discus-
sion with Rosvita, saying that he would not " cast
pearls before swine." He permitted the erection of
the first Calvinist and Lutheran churches at Moscow,
thus anticipating the toleration of the 18th century;
but, on seeing the people's dislike to them, he had
them removed two versts from the capital.

Ivan's character was a strange compound of great-
ness and barbarism. Cruel, dissolute, superstitious,
we see him by turns yielding himself, with his
favourites, to the most shameful excesses, or, covered
with a monkish garment, heading them in proces-
sions and other pious exercises. Like Henry VIII.,
he had many wives. After Anastasia Romanof he
married a barbarian, the Tcherkess Maria; next,
two legitimate wives; then two more whose union
the Church refused to sanction. By his seventh
wife, Maria Nagoï, he had a son, another Dmitri.
At the close of his days we see him seeking an
alliance with foreigners, and asking first the sister of
the King of Poland, and then a cousin of Elizabeth
of England, in marriage. His brutal habits and
the facility with which he used his iron staff, had
a tragic conclusion. In an altercation with his son
Ivan he struck him, and the blow was mortal.
Great and fierce was the sorrow of the Tzar. In
slaying his beloved son, he had slain his own work.
He had no longer a successor, since Feodor, the
elder of his remaining sons, was feeble in body and

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mind; and the second Dmitri was only an infant. It
was for foreign successors—for one of the detested
boyards—that, at the price of so much blood and so
many perils, he had founded autocracy. He only
survived his son three years, and died in 1584.
Without allowing himself to be biassed by Ivan's
numerous cruelties, the historian ought fairly to
compare him with men of his own time. He ought
not to forget that the 16th century is the century of
Henry VIII., of Ferdinand the Catholic, of Catherine
de Medici, of the Inquisition, of Saint Bartholomew,
and of *strapados*. Was the Europe of this era in-
deed so far advanced beyond Asiatic Russia, newly
escaped from the Mongol yoke? Ivan the Terrible,
in decimating, in suppressing, in tyrannising over
the aristocracy, at least put it out of their power to
establish after him that anarchic *noblesse*, the hidden
danger of Slav nations, which in Poland, under the
name of *pospolite*, began by enfeebling royalty, and
ended by enfeebling the nation.

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CHAPTER XVI.

MUSCOVITE RUSSIA AND THE RENAISSANCE.

The Muscovite government — The *kin* and the *men* of the Tzar
— The *prikazes* — Rural classes — Citizens — Commerce —
Domestic slavery — Seclusion of women — The Renaissance :
Literature, popular songs, and cathedrals — Moscow in the
16th century.

MUSCOVITE GOVERNMENT—THE RELATIONS AND MEN
OF THE TZAR—THE PRIKAZES.

THE Russia of the 16th and 17th centuries is an
Oriental state, almost without relations with Europe.
The Livonian knights, the Poles, the Swedes, and
the Danes, who understood that it was only her
barbarism which ensured her inferiority to her
weaker neighbours, took good care that neither the
men, the arms, nor the sciences of the West should
reach her. Sigismond threatened the English mer-
chants of the Baltic with death. He did not intend
that "the Muscovite, who is not only our present
adversary, but the eternal enemy of all free States,
should provide herself with guns, bullets, and muni-
tions; and, above all, with artisans who continue to
make arms, hitherto unknown in this barbaric
country." Moscow, thanks to those jealous precau-
tions, thanks also to the hatred of the Russians for
the "Mussulmans" and "heretics" of the West, re-
mained what the Tatar invasions had made her—
an Asiatic Empire. The patriarchal rule of ancient
Slavonia and the example of the Oriental sovereigns
contributed to maintain in her the despotic principle

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HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

in all its force. The Tzar was at once the father and
the master of his subjects, more absolute than the
Khan of the Tatars or the Sultan of Constantinople.
The persons and the goods of his subjects were his
property; the greatest lords, the princes descended
from Rurik, were only his slaves (kholopy). A peti-
tion in Russian signifies a "beating of the fore-
head" (tchelobitié). The nobles of the empire signed
their requests, not with their names, Ivan or Peter,
but with a lackey's nickname, a servile diminutive,
Vania or Pétrouchka. The Byzantine formula, "May
I speak and live?" is exaggerated in the Russian,
"Bid me not to be chastised; bid me to speak a
word." Men approached the Tzar in fear and
trembling; the people prostrated themselves before
that terrible iron staff with which Ivan was always
armed. He considered the empire as his private
property; he administered it with his own "people,"
who had succeeded to the droujina of former princes;
he governed it by the help of his own relations or those
of his wife. The sons of the greatest lords gloried
in serving him in the capacity of spalniki or gentle-
men of the bedchamber, and stolniki or waiters at
the royal table. These domestic functions led to the
rank of boyards or okolnitchié (surrounders of the
prince). The principal boyards formed the douma or
council of the empire, assembled in the chamber of
the prince, and were presided over by him. On
solemn occasions the sobor or general assembly was
convoked, which was composed of deputies from all
the orders, and was a sort of States-general of
ancient Russia. The proud Russian aristocracy did
not allow itself tamely to be reduced to this state of
independence; but the kniazes, scattered as provincial
or municipal governors through Siberia, Kazan, or
Astrakhan, or subjected in the capital to a rigorous

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surveillance, had become powerless. To ensure the
results of their cruel policy, the successors of Ivan IV.
forbade the bearers of certain too illustrious names
to marry.

When the Tzar desired to marry, he addressed a
circular to the governors of the towns and provinces,
commanding them to send to Moscow the most
beautiful maidens of the empire, or at all events those
of noble birth. Like Ahasuerus in the Bible, like
the Emperor Theophilus in the chronicles of Byzant-
tium, like Louis the Débonnaire in the narrative of
the 'Astronomer,' he made his selection out of all
these beauties. Fifteen hundred young girls were
assembled for Vassili Ivanovitch to choose from; after
the first meeting, 500 of these were sent to Moscow.
The Grand Prince then made a fresh selection of
300, then of 200, then of 100, then of 10, who were
examined by the doctors and midwives. The most
beautiful and the healthiest became the Tzarina; she
took a new name, as a sign that she was going to
begin a new existence. Her father, on becoming
father-in-law of the Tzar, also changed his name;
her relations became the nearest relations (*proches*)
of the prince, constituted his companions, undertook
the care of everything, and governed the empire like
the house of their imperial relative. The dispos-
sessed ministers and friends tried in secret to re-
conquer their lost power by putting the new sovereign
to death, and did not hesitate to have recourse to
magic and poison. Many of these imperial brides
never survived their triumphs, and, suddenly attacked
by mysterious maladies, died before their coronation-
day. All the successors of Vassili Ivanovitch, even
including Alexis Mikhaïlovitch, instituted these
assemblages of beauty for the choice of their wives.

304

HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

It was the privilege of the sovereigns of Moscow and of the princes of their blood.

The men of the *droujina* or of the *surrounding* of the prince thought it beneath their dignity or above their power to serve him otherwise than in war or justice. The work of the pen had to be confided to the sons of the priests and merchants—the *diaks*, whose beginnings were as humble as those of the Capetian lawyers, seated at the feet of the peers of France; like them, they ended by taking the place of the great lords. The administration of the State was entrusted to twenty or thirty *prikazes* or bureaux, whose numbers and functions varied at different times. There was notably the *prikaz* of provisions, that of drinks, and that of the pantry, which were all concerned with the commissariat of the Court. The duties were very heavy, as not only the Tzar, the Tzarina, and the princes of the blood kept an open table, but, in accordance with patriarchal and family ideas, the prince was supposed to feed from his own table the nobles and functionaries lodged beyond the palace. He was obliged to send them daily, cooked meats, wines, and fruits. There was the *prikaz* of the gold and silver cup, that of the wardrobe, of pharmacy, of horses, of the falconry, of games, to which belonged comedians, buffoons, dwarfs, fools, keepers of bears and dogs ready to fight with the bears, the menagerie of rare animals, chess, cards, and in general everything that served to amuse the Tzar. The *prikaz kazennyi*, or “of the crown,” had under its control the manufactures fabricating the golden and silken stuffs, of which the prince had a monopoly, and the dépôt of the precious Siberian furs. It furnished the presents to be distributed among the clergy, the boyards, the ambassadors of

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foreign powers, and the Greek monks who came
from Byzantium or Mount Athos, to ask for alms.
The *prikazes* of the great palace, of the *quarter*, of the
revenue, and of the tax on liquors, were concerned
with the finances. There were also those of the
imperial family, of secret affairs, of petitions, posts,
and police; of the buildings of the Tzar, slaves, monas-
teries, streltsi, embassies, and artillery. The *prikazes*
of Oustiougue, of Kazan, of Galitch, of Kostroma, of
Little Russia, and Siberia, had a territorial competence
Usually the expenses of such and such a bureau were
defrayed by the produce of taxes on a given town or
province.

The State revenues were composed: 1. Of that of
the demesne, including thirty-six towns and their
territory, the inhabitants of which paid their dues
either in kind or in money. 2. Of the *tayla*, an
annual impost on every 60 measures of corn. 3. Of
the *podate*, a fixed tax on every *dvor* or fire. 4. The
produce of the custom-houses, and of the excess of
the municipal dues. 5. The tax on the public baths.
6. The farming-out of the Crown taverns. 7. The
fines, the expenses of justice, the confiscations pro-
nounced by the "tribunal of the brigands." Fletcher,
who visited Russia in the time of Boris Godounof,
valued the whole of these revenues at 1,223,000
roubles of their money. The Tzar annually received
besides, furs and other things from Siberia, Permia,
and the Petchora; he exchanged them himself with
the Turkish, Persian, Armenian, Bokharian, or West-
ern merchants, who came to the fairs or landed at
the ports of the empire. Further, the Crown, after
having allowed the officers to gorge themselves some
time at the expense of the people, reserved to itself
the power of calling them to justice, and of depriving

VOL. I.

X

306

HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

them of part, or the whole, of their booty. The
Tzar, who, like the ancient despots of Egypt and the
East, had already monopolised certain branches of
commerce, kept up an undignified rivalry with his
own subjects. He sent agents into special provinces,
who seized on all the productions of the country, furs,
wax, and honey; forced the proprietors to sell them
to them at a low price, and then obliged the English
of Arkhangel or the merchants of Asia to buy them
at a high rate; he even laid hands on the goods
brought by these merchants, and made the Russian
tradesmen pay dear for them, forbidding them to
purchase from others till the warehouses of the Tzar
were emptied. Fletcher exposes many other means
of extortion, to which the Tzarian government
periodically had recourse.

The grades of courts of civil justice were three :
1. The tribunals of the starost of the district, and of
the hundred-man, a magistrate established for every
hundred ploughs. 2. The tribunal of the voïevode,
in the head-city of each province. 3. The Su-
preme Court of Moscow. In spite of the Codes of
Ivan III. and Ivan IV., the law was so confused
and uncertain that Fletcher said of it, "There is no
written law in Russia." The mode of procedure was
that of the Carolingian age; if a man could neither
produce witnesses nor written proofs, the judge could
take the oath of one of the parties. Often the value
of an oath was confirmed by a judicial duel. The
champions, says Herberstein, loaded themselves with
arms and heavy armour. They were so embarrassed
by all this weight of iron, that a Russian was in-
variably overcome by a foreigner, and Ivan III.
forbade foreigners to fight with his subjects. Often
the parties had themselves represented by hired

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champions, and then the combat became a comedy, the mercenaries only thinking how to spare themselves.

The legislation in the matter of debts equalled in rigour that of the Roman law of the Twelve Tables. The insolvent debtor was subjected to the *pravide*; that is, tied up half-naked on a public place, and beaten three hours a day. This punishment was repeated for thirty or forty days. If by that time no one was moved by his lamentations and cries to pay his debt for him, he was allowed to be sold, and his wife and children let out on hire; if he had none, he became the slave of the creditor. The penal legislation was frightful. In cases of accusation of theft, murder, or treason, the accused was subjected to tortures worthy of a Spanish Inquisitor. The punishments were infinitely varied: a man might be hung, beheaded, broken on the wheel, impaled, drowned under the ice, or knouted to death. A wife who had murdered her husband "was buried alive up to her neck;" heretics went to the stake; sorcerers were burned alive in an iron cage; coiners had liquid metal poured down their throats. We must not forget the death of "ten thousand pieces," the torment in which the sides were torn away by iron books, and all the varieties of mutilation. On the other hand, a noble who slew a mougik was only fined or whipped. The noble who killed his slave suffered no penalty; he could do what he liked with his own.

Before the creation of the patriarchate, the highest dignity in the Russian Church was that of the Metropolitan of Moscow. Then came the six Archbishops of Novgorod, Rostof, Smolensk, Kazan, Pskof, and Vologda; the six Bishops of Riazan, Tver, Kolo-

x 2

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HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

menskoé, Vladimir, Souzdal, and Kroutiski or Sarai, whose dioceses were immense. This Church was as dependent on the Tzar as that of Byzantium had been on the Emperors; at the expense of a few formalities he could create a prelate or a new see. The bishops were selected from the Black Clergy; that is, the monks who had taken the vow of chastity. Their revenues were large and their ceremonies imposing. "As for exhorting or instructing their sheep," says Fletcher, "they have neither the habit of it nor the talent for it, for all the clergy are as profoundly ignorant of the Word of God as of all other learning." With the secular or White Clergy, marriage was not only a right, but a duty. Their manners and education hardly distinguished them from the peasants, and, like them, they were sometimes subjected to the most degrading chastisements. The convents were numerous, very full, and very rich; that of St. Sergius, at Troitsa, possessed 110,000 souls,—that is, male peasants. All broken men took refuge there; on the other hand, the councils fulminated against the vagabond monks who infested the country. More than once the monasteries served as prisons for disgraced nobles, who there led a gay and noisy life, like the Frank nobles of other days in the cloisters of the Merovingian churches. Delicate meats were sent them from the table of the Tzar—sturgeons, sterlets, figs, dry raisins, oranges, pepper, and saffron.

In a letter to the monks of St. Cyril on the White Lake, Ivan IV. blames with a mixture of severity and irony their lenity towards the imprisoned boyards. "In my youth," he writes, "when we were at St. Cyril, if dinner happened to be late, and if the intendant asked a sterlet or any other fish of the

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cellarer, he would reply, ‘I have no orders about it; I have only prepared what I was ordered. Now it is night, and I can give you nothing; I fear the sovereign, but I fear God more.’” “See,” continues Ivan, “what was the severity of the rule. They fulfilled the word of the prophet: ‘Speak the truth, and have no shame before the Tzar.’ To-day my boyard Cheremetief reigns in his cell like a Tzar; my boyard Khabarof pays him visits with the monks. They drink as if in lay society. Is it a wedding? is it a baptism? The captive distributes pieces of iced fruits, spiced bread, and sweetmeats. Beyond the monastery there is a house filled with provisions. Some say that strong drinks are gradually smuggled into the cell of Cheremetief. Now in monasteries it is against the rules to have foreign wines; how much more, then, strong waters?”

The orthodox faith, deprived of the stimulus of liberty and instruction, tended to become mere routine. Salvation was gained by hearing long liturgies, by multiplying Slavonic orisons, by making hundreds of prostrations and genuflexions, by telling rosaries, and by frequenting shrines. The most celebrated centres were the catacombs of Kief, where sleep the incorruptible bodies of the saints, and where dwell their successors without ever seeing the light of day; the monastery of St. Cyril, on the White Lake; of St. Sergius, at Troitsa; and the cathedral of St. Sophia, at Novgorod. Men prostrated themselves at the tombs of St. Peter and St. Alexis of Moscow; before the wonder-working virgins of Vladimir, Smolensk, Tischvin, and Pskof. The most pious journeyed as far as the sacred Mount Athos, and the city of Constantinople, full of blessed relics, though polluted by the presence of the Turk; nay,

310

HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

further still, to the tomb of Christ, to Golgotha, to Mount Sinai, wherever orthodox communities disputed possession with Catholic communities.

The national army was, like the Tatar army, chiefly composed of cavalry. The *stolniki*, *spabniki*, and other young courtiers, formed an Imperial Guard of about 8000 men. All the gentlemen of the empire, *dvoriane*, or *dieti-boyarskié*, were confined to the mounted ranks; the revenues of their lands were counted as pay for these men of service (*sloujilié lioudi*); the ancient distinction between the *pomestie* (fiefs) and the *votchiny* (free allods) was almost abolished. It was nearly the *régime* of the fiefs of the West, or of the *ziams* and *timars* of Turkey. This noble cavalry could reckon 80,000 horsemen; with the levy of free peasants, it mounted up to 300,000. To this we must join the irregular cavalry, composed of the Cossacks of the Don and the Terek, of Tatars and Bachkirs. The national infantry was constituted —1, by the *datotchnié lioudi*, peasants of the monasteries, churches, and domains; 2, by the *streltsi*, free archers, or communal soldiers, organised in the time of Ivan IV., and who, in Moscow alone, formed a body of 12,000 men. Then came the artillery, and the soldiers told off to the *gouliagorod*, the “city that walks,” movable ramparts of wood, which were used both in sieges and in the open country, where the Russian troops, if they were not protected, showed little firmness. In the 15th century, foreign mercenaries began to be enlisted—Poles, Hungarians, Greeks, Turks, Scotch, Scandinavians, armed and disciplined after the European fashion, and enrolled under the names of *ritters*, soldiers, and dragoons. History has preserved the names of some of their leaders: Rosen the German, and Margeret the

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Frenchman, who has left us some curious memoirs of
the False Dmitri.

The equipment of the national troops was completely Oriental. They had long robes, high saddles, short stirrups, rich caparisons, scale or ring armour. The Tzar himself went into battle with his lance, bow and quiver. The army was always divided into five divisions—the main army, the right and left wings, the van and rear guards. Each was commanded by two voïevodes of unequal rank, without counting the voïevode of the artillery or of the movable camp, and the *atamans* of the streltsi and of the Cossacks. The grades of the regular army were those of the *tysatski* or chiliarch, the centurion, the commander of fifty, and the *deciatski*, or commander of ten. All obeyed the grand voïevode, or general-in-chief. Each soldier brought provisions for four months, and the Tzar furnished nothing, except occasionally some corn. The men lived almost entirely on biscuit, dried fish or bacon, and proved capable of enduring much fatigue. The campaigns never lasted long, and only part of the army was permanent.

From this time Russia sought to enter into regular relations with foreign Powers. Her diplomatic traditions were those of the East or Byzantium. Her first ambassadors were the Greek Dmitri Trakhaniotes, and the Italian Marco Ruffo, sent into Persia. They treated with most deference the neighbouring States, not those which were most powerful. Whilst they sent a simple courier (*gonets*) to the Emperor, and the kings of France, England, and Spain, they despatched boyards, accompanied by *diaks*, to Sweden, Denmark, and Poland. The *prikaz* of the embassies, which had under its orders fifty translators and seventy inter-

312

HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

preters of all languages, gave them their safe conduct, detailed instructions, letters for the foreign sovereign, presents, two years' pay, and a certain number of furs of costly materials from the *prikaz* of the Crown, which they were to do their best to sell at a high price. The Russian ambassador, like those of the Greeks and Tatars, was also a commission agent for the benefit of the Tzar. The envoys were recommended to avoid all insolence, and to watch their men, but to display the greatest luxury, to exact due payment of all honours, and, at the peril of their lives, never to suffer the Tzar's titles to be diminished—titles which were rather complicated, as he enumerated all his subject States. The mercantile preoccupations of the Russian ambassadors, and their eternal quarrels about etiquette, rendered them unbearable at all the European Courts. On their return they were summoned before the Tzar, gave him a detailed account of their mission, and handed over to him the journal of their tour and the notes of all that they had observed in the distant countries. From the 16th century a shrewd and observant spirit is noticeable in their relations, which is not unworthy of the wisdom of their masters, the Byzantines.

When foreign ambassadors arrived in Russia, they were treated with magnificence and distrust. From the time they crossed the frontier, they and their people were fed, housed, and provided with carriages, but a *pristaf* attached to their persons watched carefully that they obtained no interviews with the natives, nor information about the state of the country. They were taken through the richest and most populous provinces; the citizens were everywhere required to meet them on their route, dressed in their

314

HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

change his master, but who was soon to be mingled
with the preceding class.

It was the *inscribed peasants* who constituted almost
the whole of the rural population. In the ancient
provinces the peasant might consider himself as the
primitive inhabitant of the soil. He was only made
subject to the gentleman in order to secure to the
latter an income sufficient for military service; he
therefore continued to look on himself as the true
proprietor. In these rural masses, the primitive
features of the Slav organisation were preserved in
all their vigour. It was the commune, or *mir*, and
not the individuals, who possessed the land; it was
the commune that was responsible to the Tzar for
the tax, for the *corvée* and dues to the lord. This
responsibility armed the commune with an enormous
power over its members, and this power embodied
itself in the *starost*, assisted by elders. In the bosom
of the commune the family was not organised less
severely, less tyrannically than the *mir*. The father
of the family had over his wife, his sons, married
or single, and their wives, an authority almost
as absolute as that of the starost over the com-
mune, or the Tzar over the empire. The paternal
authority became harder and more stern from the
contact with serfage and the despotic rule. Ancient
barbarism was still intact among these ignorant
people: the graceful customs or the savage manners,
the poetic or cruel superstitions of the early Slavs,
were perpetuated by them. The Russian peasant
remained a pagan under his veneer of orthodoxy.
His funeral songs seem destitute of all Christian hope.
His marriage songs preserve the tradition of the
purchase or capture of the bride. The sad lot of the
rustic was yet to be aggravated during the three

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centuries of progress which the upper classes had still
to accomplish. In the view of the State, as of the
proprietor, he tended more and more to become a
beast of burden, a productive force to be used and
abused at pleasure.

The Russian towns were composed first of a fortress
or kreml, where at need a garrison of "men of the
service" could be sent, the walls being generally of
wood; next of faubourgs or possads, inhabited by
the citizens or possadskie. They were governed by
voievodes nominated by the prince, or by a starost or
mayor who was elected by an assembly of the in-
habitants, nobles, priests, or citizens, but was always
a gentleman. The starost governed the town and
the district depending on it. As the citizens paid
the heaviest taxes, they were forbidden to quit the
town; they were, as during the last days of the
Roman Empire, bound to the city glebe. Alexis
Mikhailovitch was afterwards to attach the pain of
death to this prohibition. To assess the impost, the
starost convoked at once both the deputies of the
town and those of the rural communes. The impost
of the tagla was paid by the town collectively, in
proportion to the number of fires, and all the people
were collectively responsible for each other to the
State.

In the burgess class may be counted the merchants,
whose Russian name of gosti (guests and strangers)
shows how far commerce still was from being accli-
matised in this land and under this régime. Muscovy
produced in abundance leather from oxen; furs from
the blue and black fox, the zibeline, the beaver, and
the ermine; wax, honey, hemp, tallow, oil from the seal,
and dried fish. From China, Bokhara, and Persia,
she received silks, tea, and spices. The Russian people

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are naturally intelligent and industrious, but still
commerce languished. Fletcher, the Englishman, has
assigned as the reason for this decay, the insecurity
created by anarchy and despotism. The mougik
did not care either to save or to lay by. He pre-
tended to be poor and miserable, to escape the ex-
actions of the prince and the plunder of his agents.
If he had money, he buried it, as one in fear of an
invasion. "Often," says the English writer, "you
will see them trembling with fear, lest a boyard
should know what they have to sell. I have seen
them at times, when they had spread out their wares
so that you might make a better choice, look all
round them, as if they feared an enemy would sur-
prise them and lay hands on them. If I asked them
the cause, they would say to me, 'I was afraid there
might be a noble or one of the "sons of boyards" here;
they would take away my merchandise by force.'"
"The merchants and the citizens," says M. Leroy-
Beaulieu, "could with difficulty become a powerful
class in a country cut off from Europe and the sea,
and cut off, too, from all great commercial routes by
the Lithuanians, the Teutonic Order, and the Tatars."
The citizen, like the inhabitant of the French towns
of the 14th century, was only a sort of villain; he
wore the costume of a peasant, and lived almost
like him. The merchants were really what they
were called by Ivan the Terrible—the mougiks of
commerce.

DOMESTIC SLAVERY—THE SECLUSION OF WOMEN.

Only two more facts were needed to give to Russian
society the same Asiatic character which we noted
already in the despotism of the Tzars and the com-

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317

munism of the people: domestic slavery, and the
seclusion of women.

Besides the peasants more or less attached to the
glebe, all Russian proprietors kept in their castles,
or in their town-houses at Moscow, a multitude of
servants like those who encumbered the senators'
palaces in imperial Rome. A great lord always
gathered round him many hundreds of these *dvorović*, both men and women, bought or born in the
house, whom he never paid, whom he fed badly, and
who served him badly in return, but whose numbers
served to give an idea of the wealth of their master.
The *cortége* of a noble on his way to the Kremlin may
be compared to that of a Japanese daimio. A long
file of sledges or chariots, a hundred horses, outriders
who made the people stand back by blows with their
whips; a crowd of armed men, who escorted the
noble; and behind a host of *dvorović*, often with
naked feet beneath their magnificent liveries, filled
with their stir and noise the streets of *Biélyi-yorod*.
These domestic slaves were subjected, without dis-
tinction of sex, to the most severe discipline, and
were forced to submit to all the cruel or voluptuous
caprices of their masters, and, like the slaves of
antiquity, were exposed to the most frightful chas-
tisements. Whilst the registered colon was attached
to the land, the *kholopy* could be sold, either by
heads or by families, without compunction. Wives
were separated from their husbands, and children
from their parents.

The custom of secluding women is older than the
Tatar invasion. The Russian Slavs were Asiatics,
even before they were subdued by the Mongols. By-
zantium had likewise far more influence than Kazan
on Russian manners. Now, in ancient Athens, and

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HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

in the Constantinople of the Middle Ages, the matron and the young girl were alike obliged to remain in the *gymnæcum*, which became in Moscow the *terem* or *verkh* (upper apartment). In Russia, as in the Rome of the Twelve Tables, the woman was always a minor. This was one consequence of the patriarchal organisation of the family. She always remained under the guardianship of her father, her husband's father, an uncle, an elder brother, or a grandfather. The Russian monks translated for her use the sermons of the monks of the Lower Empire, which enjoined the wife "to obey her husband as the slave obeys his master;" to consider herself only as the "property of the man;" never to allow herself to be called *gospoja*, or mistress, but to look on her husband as her *gospodine*, or lord. The father of the family had the right to correct her, like one of his children or slaves. The priest Silvester, in his 'Domostroï,' only advises him not to employ too thick sticks, or staffs tipped with iron; nor humiliate her unduly by whipping her before his men, but, without anger or violence, to correct her moderately in private. No woman dared to object to this chastisement; the most robust would allow herself calmly to be beaten by a feeble husband.

The Russian proverb says, "I love thee like my soul, and I dust thee like my jacket." Herberstein mentions a Muscovite woman who, having married a foreigner, did not believe herself loved, as he never beat her. At home the Russian woman was hid behind the curtains of the *terem*; in the street, by those of her litter. Over her face fell the *futa*, a sort of nun's veil. It was an outrage even to raise the eyes to the wife of a noble, and

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high treason to see the face of the wife of the Tzar. A stranger might have thought himself at Stamboul or Ispahan. It appeared so highly necessary that this fragile being should remain at home, that she was allowed to dispense even with going to church. Her church was her own house, where she had to occupy herself with prayers, pious reading, prostrations, genuflexions, and alms, and was surrounded by beggars, monks, and nuns. The priest Silvester also wished her to superintend her house, be the first to rise, to watch over her men and maid-servants, to distribute their tasks, and work herself with her own hands, like Lucrece of old, or the wise woman of the Proverbs. In reality she had many other ways of occupying her time. The toilette of the Russian boyarines was very complicated. "They paint themselves all colours," says Petreï; "not only their faces, but their eyes, neck, and hands. They lay on white, red, blue, and black. Black eyelashes they tint white, and white ones black, or some dark colour, but they put on the paint so badly that it is visible to every one. At the time of my visit to Moscow the wife of an illustrious boyard, who was exceedingly beautiful, declined to paint herself, but she was an object of scorn to all the other women. 'She despises our customs,' said they. They induced their husbands to complain to the Tzar, and obtained an imperial order to make her paint." Stoutness was the ideal of Turkish and Tatar beauty, so the Russians did all in their power to deform their slender figures, and, by means of idleness and drugs, managed to succeed. As to the men, they always wore a long beard and long dresses. To shave the beard like the European nations, was, said Ivan the Terrible, "a sin that the blood of all the martyrs

320

HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

could not cleanse. Was it not to deface the image of
man, created by God?

The influence of Byzantine monachism is also to
be found in the objection to all innocent amuse-
ments. Cards, and even chess, were forbidden;
music and songs glorifying the ancient heroes of
Russia were condemned as "diabolic;" the noble
exercises of the chase and dancing were not allowed.
"If they give themselves up at table," says the
'Domostroi, "to filthy conversation; if they play
the lute or the goussla; if they dance, or jump, or
clap their hands, then, as smoke chases the bees, the
angels of God are made to fly from that table by
those devilish words, and demons take their place.
Those who give themselves up to diabolic songs;
those who play the lute, the tambourine, or the
trumpet; those who amuse themselves with bears,
dogs, and falcons—with dice, chess, or tric-trac, will
together go to hell, and together will be damned."

Thanks to the general ignorance, there was no
intellectual life in Russia; thanks to the seclusion of
women, there was no society. Compared with the
gallant and witty society of Poland, Russia seems
a vast monastery. The devil lost nothing in the
long run. The nobles, living in the midst of slaves
subjected to their caprices, degraded themselves
while they degraded their victims. Debauchery and
drunkenness were the national sins. Rich and poor,
young and old, women and children, often dropped
down dead drunk in the streets, without sur-
prising anyone. The priests, in their visits to
their sheep, got theologically drunk. "Even at the
houses of the great lords," says M. Zabieline, "no
feast was gay and joyous unless every one was
drunk. It was precisely in drunkenness that the

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gaiety consisted. The guests were never gay if they were not drunk." Even to-day, "to be merry" signifies to have been drinking. The preachers, even, while attacking the national vice, touched it delicately. "My brothers," says one of them, "what is worse than drunkenness? You lose memory and reason, like a madman, who knows not what he does. Is this mirth, my friends, mirth according to the law and glory of God? The drunkard is senseless. He lies like a corpse. If you speak to him, he does not answer. He foams, he stinks, he grunts like a brute. Think of his poor soul which grows foul in its vile body, which is its prison. Drunkenness sends our guardian angels away, and makes the devil merry. To be drunk, is to perform sacrifices to Satan. The devil rejoices, and says, 'No; the sacrifices of the pagans never caused me half so much joy and happiness as the intoxication of a Christian.' Fly, then, my brothers, the curse of drunkenness. To drink is lawful, and is to the glory of God, who has given us wine to make us rejoice. The Fathers were far from forbidding wine, but we must never drink ourselves drunk."

Their only diversions were, in spite of the 'Do-
mostroï,' the jests of the buffoons, who, like the writers
of the French *fabliaux*, never spared Churchmen;
the coarse pleasantries of court fools and *folles*,
who were the inseparable companions of the great,
and were to be found even in the monasteries;
hunts with falcons and hounds, and bear fights. All
these festivities were accompanied with music, and
sometimes a blind singer would come and celebrate
the *bogatyrs* of Old Russia. The rich never willingly
went to sleep without being lulled by tales told by
some popular story-teller. Ivan the Terrible always

VOL. I.

Y

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HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

had three, who succeeded each other at his bedside. Soon, under Alexis Mikhailovitch, theatrical representations in imitation of Europe were to begin.

All Western superstitions were current in Russia, which also added follies of her own. The people believed in horoscopes, diviners, sorcery, magic, the miraculous virtues of certain herbs or certain formulae, the evils produced by "lifting the footmarks" of an enemy, in bewitched swords, in love philtres, in were-wolves, ghosts and vampires, which play such a terrible part in the popular tales of Russia. Their terror of sorcerers is shown by the horrible deaths they made them die. The most enlightened Tzars shared this weakness, and Boris Godounof made all his servants swear "never to have recourse to magicians, male or female, or to any other means of hurting the Tzar, the Tzarina, or their children; never to cast spells by the traces of their feet or of their carriages." They had more confidence in the receipts of a wise woman, in holy water in which the relics had been dipped, than in doctors, whom they only regarded as another variety of sorcerers. Nothing was more difficult and dangerous than the early exercise of this profession. If the doctor did not succeed in curing his patient, he was punished as a malicious magician. One of these unfortunate people, a Jew, was executed under Ivan III. in a public place for having allowed a Tzarévitch to die. Anthony, another, a German by nation, was accused of having put a Tatar prince to death, and delivered up his relatives to suffer by the lex talionis. He was stabbed. Towards the end of the 16th century the situation of doctors was somewhat ameliorated; but when a Tzarina or a great lady had to be attended, whose face they were never

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allowed to see, and whose pulse they might only
touch through a muslin covering, what proper means
had they of taking a diagnosis?

Such was ancient Russia,—that European China
discovered and described by the European travellers
of the 16th and 17th centuries, by Herberstein,
Mayerberg, Cobenzel, envoys of Austria; Chancellor,
Jenkinson, and Fletcher, envoys of England; the
Venetians Contarini and Marco Foscarini; the
Roman merchant Barberini; Ulfeld the Dane;
Petreï the Swede; the Germans Heidenstein, Eric
Lassota, Olearius; Possevino the Jesuit; the French
captain Jacques Margeret; the English doctor
Collins, &c. It now remains to speak of literature
and the arts.

THE RENAISSANCE: LITERATURE, POPULAR SONGS, AND
CATHEDRALS—MOSCOW IN THE 16TH CENTURY.

Ecclesiastical literature was chiefly composed of a
collection of ideas borrowed from the Fathers, of
‘Readings for Every Day in the Year,’ called ‘Waves
of Gold,’ ‘Months of Gold,’ ‘Emeralds,’ &c.; or of
collections of Lives of the Saints of the Greek or
Russian Churches. The most considerable monument
belonging to this last group is the ‘Tchetimineï,’ a
vast compilation of the Metropolitan
Macarius, one of the directors of the conscience
of Ivan the Terrible. The chronicles are still
produced, among others the ‘Stepennyïa knigi,’ a
history of the Russian princes after Vladimir. Besides
the great legal collection of the ‘Code’ and of
the ‘Stoglaf,’ we must mention the ‘Domostroï’
of the Pope Silvester, Minister of Ivan IV. This is
a collection of precepts instructing readers in the

Y 2

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HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

arts of keeping house and securing salvation. It enumerates the days on which swans, cranes, capons, egg-pasties, and cheese are to be eaten. It gives receipts for making hydromel, kvass, beer, gruel, and sweetmeats. It gives bills of fare, and at the same time teaches the master of the house how he ought to govern his wife, his children, and his servants; avoid the sin of wicked conversation; please God, honour the Tzar, the princes, and all persons of rank; how he should conduct himself well at table,—“to blow his nose, and to spit without noise, taking care to turn away from the company, and put his foot over the place.” The ‘Domostroï’ gives the characteristics of the Russian civilisation, as the *De Re Rusticâ* of the elder Cato gives those of the ancient Roman civilisation. From Cato to Silvester there is an evident progress. Whilst the Roman advises that the old oxen, the old iron, and the old slaves should be sold, the Pope Silvester enjoins that “the old servants who are no longer good for anything, be fed and clothed, in consideration of their former services: this ministers to the salvation of the soul, and we must fear the anger of God.” “Masters,” he says again, “ought to be benevolent towards their servants, and give them to eat and drink, and warm them properly; for, if they keep their *dvorovié* by force around them, and do not nourish them sufficiently, they turn them into bad servants, who lie, steal, are dissipated, spoil everything, and get drunk at the tavern. These foolish masters sin against God, are despised by their slaves, and contemned by their neighbours.”

“When a man sends his servant to honest people, he should knock softly at the great door; when the slave comes to ask him what he wants, he should

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reply, 'I have nothing to do with thee, but with
him to whom I am sent.' He should only say from
whom he comes, so that the other may tell his master.
On the threshold of the chamber he will wipe his feet
in the straw; before entering he will blow his nose,
spit, and say a prayer. If no one says *amen* to him,
he will say a second prayer; if they still keep silence,
a third prayer, in a louder voice than the preceding
ones. If they still do not speak, he will knock at the
door. On entering, he must bow before the holy
images; then he will explain his mission to the
master, and during this time he must take care not to
touch his nose, nor to cough, nor spit; he must con-
duct himself with propriety, without looking to the
right or the left. If he is left alone, he must examine
nothing belonging to the master of the house, and
touch nothing, neither to eat nor drink. If he is sent
to carry anything, he must not look to see what it is;
and if it should be eatable, neither his tongue nor his
fingers are to know it.'

At the head of the literary movement of the time,
Ivan the Terrible and his enemy Kourbski occupy a
place of honour. They exchanged many letters, in
which the one displayed a great knowledge of sacred
and profane literature, close reasoning, and bitter
irony; the other an indignant and tragic eloquence.
Besides these letters, Ivan addressed an admoni-
tion to the monks of St. Cyril, full of vigour and
mocking gravity. The same Kourbski has written,
in eight books, a passionate history of the Tzar who
persecuted "the strong ones of Israel, the high-born
heroes of Russia;" in his exile in Lithuania he
defended orthodoxy against the encroachments of
Jesuitism and Protestantism, compiled the 'History
of the Council of Florence,' and learnt Latin in

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HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

order to translate into Russian the Fathers of the Church.

Like his rival Louis XI. in France, Ivan the Terrible was in Russia the protector of printing, abhorred by the people as an impious art. Mstislavets and the deacon Feodorof printed the Acts of the Apostles, and a 'Book of Hours;' but later they were obliged to fly into Lithuania to escape from accusations of heresy and the hate of the people.

There existed a literature which could do without the art of Gutenberg, and which at this time attained its most splendid development. This was the literature which from the earliest centuries of Russian history had been kept alive on the lips of the people, in the memory of the peasants, and which, perpetuated by oral tradition, has at last been collected in our own day by Rybnikof, Afanasief, Schein, Sakharof, Kiriéevski, Bezsonof, Hilferding, Kostomarof, Koulich, Tchoubinski, and Dragomanof. The people had their lyric poetry, marriage-songs, funeral dirges, rural dance-songs, hymns for Christmas (koliadki), Epiphany, Easter, and the Feasts of St. George and St. John,—hymns in which they celebrated the death of winter, the birth of spring, the harvest, and preserved the recollections of the ancient religions and ancient Slav gods. There were epic songs which glorified the legendary exploits of the early heroes of Russia, the demi-gods of primitive paganism: Volga Vseslavitch, Sviatogor, Mikoula Selianinovitch, Polkane, Dounaï, &c. In these songs Vladimir, the "Beautiful Sun" of Kief, groups around him, like the Charlemagne of the chansons de gestes and the King Arthur of the Breton romances, a whole pleiad of bogatyrs. They have immortalised Ilia of

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Mourom, the hero-peasant; Dobryna Nikititch, the hero-boyard; Alécha Popovitch, conqueror of the gigantic dragon, Tougarine; Soloveï Boudimirovitch, navigator of the falcon-ship Potyk, whom the perfidy of an enchantress caused to descend alive into the tomb; Diouk Stépanovitch, who crossed the Dnieper at one leap of his horse; Stavre Godinovitch, the warrior-musician, released by a ruse of his wife from the prisons of Vladimir; Thomas Ivanovitch, whom the Princess Apraxie calumniated like another Joseph, but for whom God worked a miracle; Vassili, the hero-drunkard, who went from a tavern to save Russia; Sadko, the rich merchant of Novgorod, whose maritime adventures form an Odyssey; the Princess Apraxie, who is seated on the throne by the side of Vladimir her husband; the heroines Nastasia and Marina, the Penelope and Circe of the Russian epopee; Maria the White Swan, who belongs to the cycle of bird-women; and Vassilissa, who passed herself off as a bogatyr, and beat all the athletes of Vladimir. Such were the heroes of Kief and Novgorod.

Historical heroes belong to the cycle of Moscow: Dmitri, the vanquisher of the Tatars; Michael of Tchernigof, Alexander Nevski, and Ivan the Terrible, around whom are grouped the songs of the taking of Kazan, the conquest of Siberia, and the famous bylines entitled ‘The Tzar wishes to kill his Son,’ ‘The Tzar sends the Tzarina to a Convent,’ and ‘How Treason was introduced into Russia.’ This epic current flows on up to the 19th century; and others, born of the shock of events on the popular imagination, celebrate the deeds of Skopine Chouïski, the wars of Peter the Great, the victories of Elizabeth and Catherine II., the campaigns of Souvorof,

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HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

and even the invasion of Russia by the "King Napoleon."

Narratives, sometimes in prose and sometimes in poetry, glorify the heroes of the Eastern epopee: Akir of Nineveh, Solomon the Wise, Alexander of Macedon, and Rousslan Lazarévitch. Wonderful stories are told by the peasants of Helen the Fair, of the Tzar of the Sea, and of Vassilissa the Wise; of the Seven Simeons; of the adventures of Ivan, Son of the King, and of the lovely Nastasia; of the Baba-Yaga, and of the King of the Serpents. There were religious verses, which were carried by the blind *kaliéki*, who sang the praises of the Russian saints from village to village—St. George the Brave, and St. Dmitri of Solun, vanquishers of dragons and infidels; Boris and Gleb, sons of Vladimir the Baptist; St. Theodosius, founder of the catacombs of Kief; Daniel the Pilgrim, who visited Jerusalem; and others who belong almost as much to the Slav mythology as to the Christian hagiography. Lastly, there are satirical tales, light and biting as French fables, turning into ridicule the greed of the popes, and the interested calculations of their wives.

Thanks to the Greeks who fled from Constantinople, and their pupils the Italians, Russia had a sort of artistic Renaissance from the 15th to the 17th century, under the same influences as the West. The revolution was, however, less complete in Muscovy than in Russia; there was no need to substitute the round for the pointed arch, since Russia had no Gothic churches, and the Roman Byzantine style, borrowed in the 11th century by St. Sophia at Novgorod and St. Sophia at Kief from St. Sophia at Constantinople, was perpetuated, under the influence of religious ideas and unbroken traditions, as a legacy

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from Byzantium. There was no sort of change in
painting; and even in the present day, in the Russian
convents, the hieratic usage causes the saints and the
Mother of God to be painted as they might have
been painted by Pansélinos in the 10th century in
the churches of Mount Athos. The Renaissance
chiefly manifests itself by the number and magni-
ficence of the orthodox churches with which Italian
artists then "illuminated" Old Russia, and by the
greater perfection of their modes of building. It was
then that Moscow became worthy by her new monu-
mental splendours to be the capital of a great empire;
it was then that she became the "Holy City," with
forty times forty churches, with innumerable cupolas
of gold, of silver, and of blue, which the Russian
pilgrim, kneeling on the Hill of Prostrations, salutes
from afar off.

Moscow was at that time composed: 1. Of the Kreml
or Kremlin, a fortified enclosure in the form of a
triangle, of which the smallest side rests on the Mos-
kowa, and the apex is turned towards the north.
2. Of the Kitaï-gorod, not, as so many travellers
translate it, the China City, but perhaps derived from
Kitaï-gorod in Podolia, the birthplace of Helena,
mother of Ivan IV., foundress of the Kitaï-gorod of
Moscow, which encloses the bazaars and the palaces
of the nobles, and is separated from the Kremlin by
a vast space that they call the Red Place or Beautiful
Place. 3. Of the Biélyi-gorod, or White City, which
surrounds this double centre of the Kremlin and
the Kitaï-gorod as the outer skin of an almond
encloses the two cotyledons. 4. Of the Zemlianyi-
gorod, or City of the Earthen Ramparts, enveloping
in its turn the White City, enclosing the faubourgs,
gardens, woods, lakes, and vast unbuilt-on spaces,

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HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

then occupied by the *slobodes* of the *streltsi*. 5. On the outer circle of Moscow, like detached forts, stood the fortified convents with white walls, which more than once sustained the assault of the Poles and the Tatars. This huge Asiatic town was a city of contrasts. The buildings grouped themselves almost by accident along the wide, marshy, tortuous, hardly marked-out streets. *Isbas* of pine, like those of the Russian villages, stood by the side of the palaces of the nobles. The people either chose them ready made from the yards, or ordered them according to their measure. The carpenters built them in two days on the place pointed out: they only cost a few roubles.

Moscow is situated in that part of Russia which is totally lacking in stone, and where the forests were formerly thickest. In point of fact, it is a city of wood, which a spark might set on fire. It had been burned almost entirely under Dmitri Donskoï, and twice under Ivan the Terrible; it was to burn again during the Polish invasion of 1612, and the French invasion of 1812. The oukazes of the Tzars ordered certain precautions under the most severe penalties: all the fires had to be put out at nightfall; in summer it was absolutely forbidden to have lights in the houses, and cooking had to be done in the open air. There were no means of extinguishing the fires, and, when one broke out, the Muscovites showed themselves as passively fatalistic as the people of the East.

It was chiefly the Kremlin that profited by the embellishments undertaken by the two Ivans and their successors. The enclosure—of wood before the burning of Tokhtamych—was now of solid white stones, cut in facets (thence was derived the poetical name of “Holy mother Moscow with the white walls”);

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it was surmounted by high and narrow battlements
in the form of teeth. Eighteen towers protected it,
and five gates led into the interior. These five
gates present much originality and variety. That of
the Saviour was built in 1491 by Pietro Solario of
Milan. It is the sacred gate, that cannot be entered
covered; formerly obstinate people were forced to
kneel down before it fifty times. Criminals were
allowed to make their last prayer before the image
of the Saviour, and the new Emperor always made
his entrance through it on his way to his coronation at the Assumption. Another Italian built at
the same date the gate of St. Nicholas of Mojaïsk,
avenger of perjury, before whose image the suitors
made oath. That of the Trinity was built in the
17th century by Christopher Galloway.

The wall of the Kremlin, like that of the old
imperial palace of Byzantium, encloses a quantity of
churches, palaces, and monasteries. The most celebrated of these churches is the *Ouspienski Sobor*, or the
Cathedral of the Assumption, in which since the 15th
century the Tzars have always made a point of being
crowned. It is their Cathedral of Rheims. Its architect was Aristotele Fioraventi, who had already worked
for Cosmo de Medici, Francis I., Gian Galeazzo of
Milan, Matthias Corvinus, and the Pope Sixtus IV.,
and whom Tolbousine, ambassador of Ivan III., met at
Venice, and engaged for the service of the Tzar. One
can hardly believe that the Assumption is of the same
date as the luminous churches of the Renaissance.
The architect, or those who inspired him, has here
tried to reproduce the mysterious obscurity of the
old temples of Egypt and the East. The cathedral
has no windows, but only close-barred shot-holes in
the walls, which admit into the interior a doubtful

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HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

light, like that which filters through the hole of a
dungeon. This pale glow touches the massive
pillars covered with a tawny gold; on the tarnished
background stand out, severe and grave, the faces of
the saints and doctors; it dwells here and there on the
relief of the golden iconostase, covered by miraculous
images, sprinkled with diamonds and jewels; it
hardly lights the representations of the 'Last Judg-
ment' and the 'End of the World,' painted on the
walls of the church. All the upper part of the
temple is partly enveloped in shadows, like the crypts
of the Pharaobs; the pictures which cover the vault
can hardly be distinguished. The artist has evidently
made them for the eye of God, not for that of man;
for the eye of man can only contemplate them on the
rare occasions, such as the Feast of the Assumption
or a coronation-day, when the whole cathedral is
illumined to its furthest corners by innumerable wax
tapers. It seems that Aristotele built this church
according to a former plan of some other architect,
only it is said that, finding the constructions already
begun not sufficiently solid, he with a battering-
ram, perfected by himself, overthrew the walls;
that he caused new foundations to be dug; finally,
that he taught the Russians a better way of baking
bricks. At the Assumption is the tomb of St.
Peter, the first Metropolitan of Moscow, and people
come here to worship before the holy images
of Vladimir and Iaroslavl. The Cathedral of St.
Michael the Archangel, built in 1505, is the St.
Denys of the Tzars of Russia: here, in a coffin of pine
covered with red cloth, sleep Ivan the Terrible and
his two sons. In the Church of the Annunciation
with the agate pavement, the marriages of the princes
are celebrated. In that of the Ascension are the

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333

tombs of the sovereigns. The Tower of Ivan the
Great, 325 feet high, surmounted with a golden
cupola, with Slavonic inscriptions in letters of gold
which may be distinguished from afar, with thirty-
four bells in the carillon, was built in 1600 by Boris
Godounof.

Of the imperial palace built in 1487, only a few
fragments still remain: the little "Golden Palace,"
where the Tzarinas received the members of the
clergy; the "Palace of Facets," where the solemn
audiences of ambassadors were held; the "Red
Staircase," from the top of which the Tzar allowed
the people to contemplate "the light of his eyes;"
finally the "Terem," with the painted roof, where we
still find the dining-hall, the hall of council, and that
of the oratory—vaulted halls still complete, where
shine on golden backgrounds the images of the saints
who protect the Tzar. The Palace of Facets was
begun in 1487 by the Italian Mario, and finished by
Pietro Antonio. The other palaces are the work of
the Milanese Aleviso. In the Tzarian apartments,
rarities imported from the West already mixed
with the ancient Russian furniture. In 1594 the
German ambassador presented the Tzar Feodor with
a gilt clock, on which were marked the planets and
the calendar; and in 1597 with another clock, where
little figures played on trumpets, Jews' harps, and
tambourines each time the hour struck.

The most curious edifice in Moscow is perhaps the
Church of Vassili the Blessed, on the Red Place.
It was built by Ivan the Terrible in 1554, in me-
mory of the taking of Kazan, and is the work of an
Italian artist. The legend insists that Ivan put out
the eyes of the artist, to prevent his building a
similar marvel for others. We must imagine a

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church surmounted by six or eight round cupolas,
all of different heights and forms, "some beaten into
facets, others cut; these carved into diamond points,
like the ananas, those in spirals; others, again,
marked with scales, lozenge-shaped, or celled like a
honeycomb."* A powerful imagination has defied all
symmetry. From the base to the summit the church
is covered with colours, which are glaring, and even
crude. This many-coloured monster has the gift of
stupefying the most *blasé* traveller. "You might
take it," says Haxthausen, "for an immense dragon,
with shining scales, crouching and sleeping." Con-
ceive the most brilliant bird of tropical forests
suddenly taking the shape of a cathedral, and you
have *Vassili-Blagennoi*.

It was not only architects that Russia owed to Italy.
Aristotele Fioraventi coined money for Ivan III.,
built him a bridge of boats over the Volkhof during
the expedition to Novgorod, cast the cannons which
thundered against Kazan, and organised his artillery.
Paolo Bossio of Genoa cast for him the *Tzarpouchka*,
the king of guns, the giant piece of the Kremlin.
Pietro of Milan made him arquebuses. The art of
the founder shed its greatest brilliancy under Boris
Godounof, whose effigy adorns the queen of bells
(*Tzar-kolokol*), subsequently re-cast under Alexis and
Anne Ivanovna, the bronze Titan whose weight
of 288,000 pounds could be contained in no belfry,
which broke every scaffolding, and rests voiceless
like a pyramid of bronze on its pedestal of masonry,
constructed in the beginning of this century by
Montferrand.

* Théophile Gautier, 'Voyage en Russie.'

SUCCESSORS OF IVAN THE TERRIBLE. 335

CHAPTER XVII.

THE SUCCESSORS OF IVAN THE TERRIBLE: FEODOR IVANOVITCH AND BORIS GODOUNOF (1584-1605).

Feodor Ivanovitch (1584-1598) — The peasant attached to the glebe — The patriarchate — Boris Godounof (1598-1605) — Appearance of the false Dmitri.

FEODOR IVANOVITCH (1584-1598)—THE PEASANT ATTACHED TO THE GLEBE—THE PATRIARCHATE.

FEODOR, son of Ivan IV. and of Anastasia Romanof, resembled his father in nothing. He had neither his instinctive love of cruelty and debauchery, nor his lively intelligence, nor his iron will. The throne of the Terrible was occupied by a saint—a monk. The power passed naturally to the chamber of the boyards. Five among them had special influence over the government—Prince Ivan Mstislavski, a descendant of Gedimin; Prince Ivan Chouški, a descendant of Rurik, a member of a family disgraced in the early years of Ivan IV., but himself celebrated as the defender of Pskof; and Prince Bogdan Belski, another descendant of Rurik. After these three heads of princely families came two chiefs of boyard families. Both became sovereigns, and both owed their elevation to their wives. The importance of Nikita Romanof came from his sister, the first wife of Ivan IV.; Boris Godounof owed his to his sister Irene, wife of the Tzar Feodor. Minister of Ivan IV., brother of the reigning Tzar, Godounof was devoured

336

HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

by an insatiable ambition. Sorcerers who had
escaped from Ivan the Terrible are said to have pro-
phesied that he should become Tzar, but that his
reign was only to last for seven years. From that
time his policy consisted in putting aside all rivals—
in overcoming all the obstacles that lay between him
and the throne.

The Tzar Feodor had a brother, Dmitri, son of
Ivan's seventh wife. The *douma* of boyards feared
the intrigues of which this infant might be made the
centre, and, by the advice of Godounof, sent him
to his appanage Ouglitch, with his mother and her
relations, the Nagoïs. Belski, another descendant of
Gedimin, an intelligent and ambitious man, irritated
the people, who besieged the Kremlin, and demanded
his head. Boris took advantage of such a good oppor-
tunity, and despatched this rival to Nijni-Novgorod.
When Feodor at his coronation had placed on his
head the crowns of Russia, Kazan, Astrakhan, and
Siberia, it was his maternal uncle, Nikita Romanof,
who governed in his name; but at his death the
power passed to the natural chief of a new vlademia,
Boris Godounof. There still remained in the council
two rivals to Boris: Mstislavski allowed himself to
be implicated in a plot, and was forced to become
a monk; Prince Chouïski, who had tried to make
himself a party among the merchants, was accused of
treason, arrested with all his family, and all were
banished to different distant towns. The Metropolitan
Dionysius, who had taken his part, was deposed, and
replaced by Job, a man completely at the disposal of
Godounof, who now was supreme. He induced his
brother-in-law to grant him the title of Allied Chief
Boyard, the viceroyalties of Kazan and Astrakhan,
and immense territories on the Dwina and the Mos-

SUCCESSORS OF IVAN THE TERRIBLE. 337

kowa. His revenues were enormous, and he is said
to have been able to put a hundred thousand men in
the field. Nothing could be obtained from the
sovereign except through Boris; more powerful than
ever Adachef had been, he had an army of clients.
It was he who replied to the ambassadors, and who
received the presents of the Emperor, of the Queen
of England, and of the Khan of the Crimea. His
enemies were the enemies of the prince. He lacked
nothing that is royal but the title.

In foreign affairs, the regency of Godounof
strengthened the prestige of Russia. Batory, who
had never ceased to threaten revenge, died in 1586.
A new danger appeared in this quarter. Sigismond,
son of the King of Sweden, had schemed successfully
for the suffrages of the Polish electors. It was to be
feared that he would one day unite under the same
sceptre the two nations whom Russia had most cause
to dread in Europe. Rodolph of Austria, the other
candidate, was less dangerous. Austria and Russia
had the same interests with regard to Turks and
Tatars, and this identity was one day to result in
the almost perpetual alliance between the two
Powers. Boris put forward Feodor as a candidate
for the crown of Poland, and the idea of the union
of the two Slav monarchies under one prince. The
Poles refused to obey any prince who was not a
Catholic; they feared that, instead of a fraternal
union, the Muscovite would only "join their mon-
archy to that of Moscow, like a sleeve to a coat."
The interests of caste were added to national and
religious prejudices; the nobles, who only had in
view the weakening of the royal power, were not
likely to give themselves as master a sovereign as
absolute as the Tzar of Muscovy. Finally, nothing

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could be done without money in the Polish diets;
Boris was so mistaken as to spare it. The negotia-
tions fell to the ground, and the Prince of Sweden
was elected.

The war with Sweden began again vigorously;
Russia recaptured what had been taken from Ivan
the Terrible—Iam, Ivangorod, and Koporié. The
Poles, who, since they had a Swedish king, did not
care to augment the Swedish power, gave no assist-
ance. Sigismond Vasa, on his father's death in 1592,
did indeed see himself for a moment king of both
countries; but his zeal for Catholicism, which made
him dear to the Poles, caused him to be detested by
the Swedes. The latter wished for a separate
government, under the regency of Charles Vasa, and
they soon after offered him the crown. This union,
so much dreaded by the Russians, soon ended in a
rupture. The Poles and Swedes had never before
been such bitter enemies, and the hatred of the two
peoples and the two religions was complicated still
further by that of the two kings. The occasion was
favourable for Russia to undertake the conquest of
Livonia. Boris Godounof had never abandoned
this great scheme of Ivan the Terrible, only he
failed to take the proper means for realising it.
Instead of openly allying himself with Sweden
against Poland, or with Poland against Sweden, he
negotiated with both, tried to play off one against the
other, and ended by alienating both equally. The
former minister of Ivan the Terrible, the intriguing
Grand Boyard, was too fond of hidden paths.

To clear his way to the throne, it was not sufficient
for him to be master of the palace and the Court; he
must create himself a strong party in the nation.
Boris, who felt himself to be hated by the princes

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and boyards, sought the support of the small *noblesse* and the clergy. Hence resulted two of the most important actions of the reign of Feodor—the binding of the peasant to the soil, and the institution of the patriarchate.

The Russian peasant was in fact delivered over to the will of his master. In law, he remained a free man, as he was allowed to pass from the service of one proprietor to that of another. This right brought with it an abuse. The large proprietors, who, being the richest, could also be the most generous, tried to attract to their lands the peasants of the smaller landowners, by insuring them privileges and immunities. We must remember that at this epoch the population was very scanty, and land had of itself no value. It was precious according to the number of labourers who could be induced to settle on it. Thus the lands of the smaller proprietors ran the risk of being depopulated for the benefit of the great lords; if they lost their labourers, the value of the land became proportionately depreciated. Now the class of small landowners was at this period almost the only military class of Russia; the national cavalry was recruited almost entirely from it alone. If the source of their revenues were cut off, where would they get the money to equip themselves, to answer to the call of the Tzar, according to the text of the ordinances, “mounted, armed, and accompanied”? Their interest thus became con- founded with that of the empire, which was soon to become unable to support its armies. Boris Godounof found means to save the rights of the State, and gain for himself the gratitude of a numerous and powerful class. The comfort of the peasant did not trouble anyone at this epoch. He was an instrument of

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agriculture, a force—nothing more. An edict of Feodor forbade the peasants henceforth to go from one estate to another. The free Russian krestianine was now attached to the glebe, like the Western serf. In the name of the interest of the State and that of the military nobles, an immemorial right was extinguished. We must not think that these silent masses were insensible. The day of the “St. George,” when the ancient laws permitted the peasant to pass yearly from one domain to another, remained for centuries a day of bitter regret. He cursed for long the authors of this oukase, and even protested when he had the opportunity; but his protestation took more the form of flight than of revolt. The development of Cossack life has a close relation to the change in the rural *régime*; and the more men sought to bind the peasant to the soil, the more his spirit revolted, and the more the camps of the Don and the Dniester were filled. The Russian peasant never allowed the prescription of this new form of slavery to be established; in one way or another he has constantly resisted it. Boris Godounof afterwards partially repealed this oukase: while still forbidding them to pass from the service of the small to the great proprietor, they were allowed to change the mastership of one small landowner for that of another. The feeling of the time was not in favour of liberty; the more Russia tended to become a modern State, the more her expenses increased, and the more the Government was conscious of the need of assuring the revenues by fixing to the soil the population which was subject to the tax and corvée. It was the crushed peasant who bore the weight of the reform, awaiting the day, still very distant, when he also would profit by the progress accomplished.

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The other innovation made in the name of Feodor was the establishment of the patriarchate. The Russian ecclesiastics complained with reason of having to obey patriarchs who were themselves only slaves of the infidels. Ancient Rome was pol-luted by the Pope; Constantinople, the second Rome, was profaned by the Turk: had not Moscow, the third Rome, a right at least to independence? Boris encouraged these murmurs: it was his interest that at the death of the Tzar there should be a great eccle-siastical authority standing alone, and that this great authority should owe all to him. He profited by the arrival at Moscow of Jeremiah, Patriarch of Con-stantinople, to induce him to found the Russian patriarchate and consecrate Archbishop Job, who was a tool of Boris. The latter had now a powerful friend.

Boris had need to create for himself a strong party. Many eyes began to turn towards Ivan's second son, Dmitri. His mother's kindred, the Nagoïs, from their exile at Ouglitch, watched carefully all the variations in the health of the Tzar, and the movements of Boris. The death of Feodor would give the throne to Dmitri, and power to his relatives—power to avenge themselves for all. It would deliver Boris up to the reprisals of his enemies. He knew this only too well. In 1591, it was suddenly an-nounced that the young Dmitri had been slain. The public voice denounced Boris. To stifle suspicion he ordered an inquest, and his emissaries had the audacity to declare that the young prince cut his own throat in a fit of madness, and that the Nagoïs and the people of Ouglitch had put to death innocent men as murderers. The result of the inquiry was the extermination of the Nagoïs and the depopulation of

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Ouglitch. Seven years after, the pious Feodor died, and in the person of this vague and virtuous sovereign the race of bloody and violent men of prey who had created Russia was extinguished. The dynasty of Andrew Bogoliubski had accomplished its mission—it had founded the Russian unity. The task of obtaining the entrance of this semi-Asiatic State into the bosom of civilised Europe was reserved for another dynasty.

BORIS GODOUNOF (1598-1605) — APPEARANCE OF
THE FALSE DMITRI.

Boris Godounof had reached the aim of his desires—but at what a price! The murder of Dmitri, the last offshoot of St. Vladimir, of Monomachus, of George and the Ivans, was no ordinary crime. Russia had seen many horrors, but never one like this. The Tzar might have put the Russian princes to death, but they were his enemies, they were often guilty, and then he was the Tzar. Now a simple boyard sacrificed to his own ambition the son of his benefactor, the heir of his master, the last descendant of the founders of Russia. It was one of those crimes that ever deeply agitate the people. Boris believed vainly he had buried all in the earth with the corpse of the Tzarévitch.

After the death of Feodor, his widow Irene entered the *Dievitchi Monastyr*, and took the veil there, mourning her sterility, and lamenting that "by her the sovereign race had perished." The nobles and the people took the oaths to her, so that there should be no interregnum. A woman had the crown at her disposal, and that woman was the sister of Godounof. As she refused to govern, the *douma* had to discharge

SUCCESSORS OF IVAN THE TERRIBLE. 343

affairs under the presidency of the Patriarch Job,
who owed everything to Godounof. It was impossible
that the throne should escape Godounof; yet it seemed
strange that a simple boyard, a creature of Ivan IV.,
should take precedence of all the princes descended
in direct line from Rurik. However, the Patriarch
and his clergy, the boyards and citizens of Moscow,
appeared before the *Dievitchi Monastyr*, in which
Godounof was shut up with his sister. Job entreated
him to accept the crown. Godounof refused, appa-
rently from an excess of modesty—in reality, because
he wished to receive it from the hands of the nation.
The States-general were then assembled; the lesser
nobility and the clergy, that is, the friends of Boris,
formed the majority. After the despotism of Ivan,
it was a strange sight to see this assembly dispose
of the crown. The Russia of the Terrible had, like
Poland, her elective diet, but the lesson of obedience
had been so well learnt, that there was no fear of
anarchy. They were told that Ivan IV. on his
death-bed had confided to Boris his family and his
empire, and that Feodor had put round his neck a
chain of gold. Men made the most of the expe-
rience of government that he had acquired under
two reigns; they boasted of his skilful dealings with
Sweden, Poland, and the Crimea. The national voice
decreed to him the crown, and the States sent him a
deputation. He still feigned to hold back, and cast
out "the tempters;" but his sister "blessed him for
the throne," and thus consecrated the wish of the
people. Boris reigned.

His reign was not without glory. He took up the
designs of his master, Ivan IV., on Livonia; and as
the Terrible had his puppet king Magnus, Boris
sought first a Swedish prince Gustaf, and then a Danish

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prince John, to play the part of King of Livonia. John was to marry Xenia, daughter of the new Tzar, when he died suddenly. Denmark declared that he was poisoned; and in the Russia of that date everything is conceivable. The Khan of the Crimea, who had vainly tried to make two incursions, and who had then a quarrel with the Turks, sought the friendship of Boris. Affairs in the Caucasus were less happy. Alexander, prince of Kachetia, who had acknowledged himself vassal of Boris, was assassinated, and succeeded by his son, who was on the side of the King of Persia (Shah Abbas), and Islamism. In Daghestan a body of Russians sent to occupy the country were exterminated by the Turks. Russia had not yet approached near enough to the Black Sea to be able to take the field with assurance in those distant regions. In Siberia, Koutchoum, the dethroned khan, was vanquished; the battle was decisive, though the Russian voïevodes only had 400 men, and Koutchoum 500; but none the less did it decide the fate of Asia.

Boris continued to be sought by the Powers of the West, beginning with Austria. In 1600 he sent Gregory Mikouline to Queen Elizabeth. "He had learnt," says the letter of the Tzar, "that the Queen had furnished help to the Turks against the Kaiser of Germany. We are astonished at it, as to act thus is not proper for Christian sovereigns; and you, our well-beloved sister, you ought not for the future to enter into relationships of friendship with Bousourman (Mussulman) princes, nor to help them in any way, whether by men or silver; but on the contrary should desire and insist that all the great Christian powers should have a good understanding, union, and strong friendship, and make one against the Mus-

SUCCESSORS OF IVAN THE TERRIBLE. 345

sulmans, till the hand of the Christians rise, and that of the Mussulmans is abased."

Mikouline was received in London with great honours. In the audience given him by the Queen, "she arose from her throne and advanced some distance" to listen to his compliments; after which she bowed her head and asked for news of the health of the Tzar, the Tzarina, Maria Gregorievna, and of the Tzarévitch Feodor Borissovitch. She received "with great joy" the credentials, and, being seated, listened to the message of Mikouline. She replied to the passage touching on her relations with Turkey by protestations of friendship and union with all the Christian princes, gave her hand to be kissed by the envoy and also by the secretary of the embassy, Ivan Zinovief, and sent them to talk over their affairs with Lord Robert Cecil. The commercial interests of the two peoples were guaranteed anew. During his visit to London, Mikouline was present at the revolt of 1601, led by Essex, and saw the citizens rush through the streets armed with cuirasses and arquebuses to defend the Queen. He gives in his account many curious details of the Court of England at this epoch—the most brilliant of the reign of Elizabeth,—quitted London in May 1601, and arrived at Arkhangel in July.

The firm government of Boris gave confidence, and he continued to be sought by the Powers of the West, especially by Austria and England. Sweden and Poland could do him no hurt. He surrounded himself with soldiers, learned men, and artists. With their help he raised monuments, built the tower of Ivan the Great at the Kremlin, and had the "queen of bells" cast. It was he who first sent young Russians to Lübeck, England, France, and Austria, to study

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European arts. The fashions of the West penetrated to Moscow, and some of the nobles began to shave their beards.

This prosperity was all unreal. His services—even his charities—turned against him. "He presented to the poor," says a contemporary, "in a vase of gold, the blood of the innocents. He fed them with unholy alms." The oligarchic party, ashamed of obeying a simple boyard, began to agitate. After having pardoned his ancient rival Belski, Boris was obliged to throw him into prison. He acted with severity towards the Romanoffs, who were exiled, many of them having been previously tortured. Feodor, the eldest, was forced to become a monk under the name of Philarete, and his wife took the veil under the name of Marfa. From the son of this monk and this nun, emperors were to spring.

Feeling himself surrounded by plots, Boris Goudonof did not hesitate before any means of security, and received the denunciations of slaves against their masters. From 1601 to 1604 a frightful famine devastated Russia, and was followed by a pestilence. The famished peasants joined the servants of the disgraced nobles, and formed themselves into bands of brigands who infested the southern provinces, and even insulted the environs of Moscow. It was necessary to send a regular army against them. To these calamities was added the universal presentiment of others yet greater. The term of seven years assigned by the astrologers to the reign of Boris was approaching. The crime of Ouglitch, still unexpiated, had left a strange uneasiness throughout Russia. Suddenly there arose a rumour that the murdered Dmitri was living, and with arms in his hands was making ready to reconquer the empire.

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At the Monastery of the Miracle a young monk, Gregory Otrépief, had brought himself into notice. After having for a long while wandered from convent to convent at his own pleasure, he finally reached the Monastery of the Miracle; and the Patriarch Job, discerning his intelligence, made him his secretary. In discharge of these functions, he became acquainted with more than one State secret. "Do you know," he used to say to the other monks, "that I shall be one day Tzar of Moscow?" They spat in his face, and the Tzar Boris Godounof ordered him to be confined in the Monastery of the White Lake. He succeeded in escaping; again became a wandering monk, and, being well received at Novgorod-Severski, had the temerity to write to the inhabitants: "I am the Tzarévitch Dmitri, and I will not forget your kindness." Then he threw his frock to the winds, enrolled himself among the Zaporogues, and became a bold rider and a brave Cossack. He passed into the service of Adam Vichnevetski, a Polish pan; he fell ill, or feigned to do so, summoned a priest, and revealed to him, under the seal of confession, that he was the Tzarévitch Dmitri, who had escaped from the hands of the assassins at Ouglitch, by another child being substituted in his place. He showed a cross, set with jewels, that hung round his neck, given him by Mstislavski, godfather of the Tzarévitch. The Jesuit did not dare to keep such a secret to himself. Otrépief was recognised by his master, Vichnevetski, as the son of the Terrible. Mniszek, palatine of Sandomir, promised him his support and the hand of his daughter, Marina, who consented with joy to be Tzarina of Moscow. The strange news spread throughout the kingdom. The Pope's nuncio took the Tzarévitch under his protection, and

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presented him to King Sigismond. Were they really deceived ? It is more probable that they saw in him a formidable instrument of agitation, which the king flattered himself he would be able to use against Russia, and the Jesuits against orthodoxy. Sigismond feared to take on himself the rupture of the truce he had concluded with Boris, and expose himself to Russian vengeance. He treated Otrépief as Tzarévitch, but only in private; he refused to put the royal troops at his disposal, but he authorised the nobles, who were touched by the misfortune of the prince, to help him if they wished. The pans did not need the royal authority; many of them, with the levity and love of adventure which characterised the Polish nobility, took up arms in favour of the Tzarévitch. Then Boris recognised, says Lévéque, that the weakest enemy can make a usurper tremble.

No revolution, even if it were the wisest and most necessary, could be accomplished without putting in motion the dregs of society—without the clashing of a mass of interests, and the creation of a multitude who are outcasts from all classes. The transformation which was then taking place in Russia for the formation of the modern united State, had engendered all these elements of disorder. The peasant whom the laws of Boris had attached to the glebe, was everywhere sullenly hostile. The smaller nobility, for whose profit this law had been made, were scarcely able to live on their lands; the service of the Tzar had become ruinous, and many were inclined to supplement the insufficiency of their revenues by brigandage. The boyards and the great nobility were profoundly demoralised—they were ready for any treason. The warlike republics of the Cossacks of the Don and the Dnieper, the bands of serfs, of

SUCCESSORS OF IVAN THE TERRIBLE. 349

fugitive peasants, who infested the Russian territory, only waited for an opportunity to lay waste the country. The ignorance of the masses was profound, and their minds greedy of wonders and change; no other nation has allowed itself to be deceived so often by the same fable, the sudden apparition of a prince whom all believed dead. Adventures like those of Otrépief the false Dmitri, and of Pougatchef the false Peter III., could not be reproduced in any other European country. These two adventurers rendered themselves particularly famous, but the secret archives show us that in the Russia of the 17th and 18th centuries there were hundreds of impostors, of false Dmitri's, false Alexis, false Peters II., and false Peters III. We might almost think that the Russians, the most Asiatic of all European nations, had not renounced the Oriental dogma of re-incarnations and avatars. The Government was powerless, in a country so utterly without communication, to put a stop to the most absurd rumours. Besides, the ignorant and superstitious masses were hostile to it, and delighted to allow themselves to be deceived. So many elements of rebellion only required to be set in motion by the hand of a skilful agitator. The entrance of the impostor into Russia was the signal of dissolution.

As long as the power lay in the hands of the clever and energetic Godounof, he was able to maintain order, to restrain the authors of revolt, and to discourage the false Dmitri. The Patriarch Job and Vassili Chouïski, who had conducted the inquest at Ouglitch, made proclamations to the people affirming that Dmitri was really dead, and that the impostor was none other than Otrépief. Similar declarations were sent to the King and the Diet of Poland. Finally, troops were put in marching order, and a

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line of communications established with the Western frontier. But already the towns of Severia revolted at the approach of the Tzarévitch, and the boyards publicly announced "that it was hard to bear arms against your lawful sovereign." At Moscow the health of the Tzar Dmitri was drunk at feasts. In October 1604, the impostor crossed the frontier with an army of Poles, of Russians banished in the preceding reign, and German mercenaries. Severia at once rose, and Novgorod-Severski opened her gates to him. Prince Mstislavski tried to check his progress by a battle, but the soldiers were struck by the idea that the man whom they fought was the real Dmitri. "They had no hands to fight, but only feet to fly." Vassili Chouïski, Mstislavski's successor, did his best to rally their courage, and this time, in spite of his intrepidity, the impostor was defeated at Dobrynitchi. Boris believed the war finished; but in reality it had only begun. After Severia the Ukraine rebelled, and 4000 Cossacks of the Don came to rejoin "the brigand." The inaction of the Muscovite voïevodes proved that the spirit of treason had already penetrated the nobility.

In 1605 Boris died, commending his innocent son to the care of Basmanof, the boyards, the Patriarch, and the people of Moscow. But hardly had Basmanof taken the command of the army of Severia, than he understood that neither the soldiers nor the leaders were going to fight for a Godounof. Rather than be the victim of treason, he preferred being the author of it. The man in whom the dying Boris had placed all his confidence united with Galitsyne and Solykof, secret adherents of the impostor. He solemnly announced to the troops that Dmitri was in truth the son of Ivan the Terrible and the lawful

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HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE TIME OF THE TROUBLES (1605-1613).

Murder of the false Dmitri — Vassili Chouški — The brigand of Touchino — Vladislas of Poland — The Poles at the Kremlin — National rising — Minine and Pojarski — Election of Michael Romanof.

MURDER OF THE FALSE DMITRI—VASSILI CHOUÍSKI—
THE BRIGAND OF TOUCHINO.

THE event that had taken place in Russia is one of
the most extraordinary in the annals of the world.
A runaway monk entered Moscow in triumph as her
Tzar, among the joyful tears of the people, who
thought they beheld a descendant of their long line
of princes. Only one man had the courage to affirm
that he had seen Dmitri assassinated, and that the
new Tzar was an impostor. This was Vassili Chou-
ški, one of those who had directed the inquest at
Ouglitch, and who had defeated the Pretender at the
battle of Dobrynitchi. Denounced by Basmanof,
he was condemned to death by an assembly of the
three orders, and his head was actually on the block,
when he received a pardon from the Tzar. Men did
not recognise the son of Ivan the Terrible in this act
of clemency, and Otrépief had afterwards cause to
repent of it. Job, the tool of Godounof, was replaced
in the patriarchate by a favourite of the new prince,
the Greek Ignatius. The Tzar had an interview with
his pretended mother, Maria Nagoï, widow of Ivan IV.

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353

Whether because she wished to avenge her injuries, or merely to recover her honours, Maria recognised Otrépief as her son, and publicly embraced him. He loaded the Nagoïs, whom he regarded as his maternal relations, with favours; the Romanofs were likewise recalled from exile, and Philarete made Metropolitan of Rostof.

The Tzar presided regularly at the *douma*, where the boyards admired the clearness of his apprehension and the variety of his knowledge. As a monk he was a man of letters, and as a pupil of the Zaporogues an accomplished horseman, bold and skilful in all bodily exercises. He was fond of foreigners, and even spoke of sending the Russian nobles to be educated in the West. This taste for strangers went hand in hand with a certain contempt for the national ignorance and grossness. He offended the boyards by his raillery, and alienated the people and the clergy by his disdain of Russian customs and religious rites. He ate veal, never slept after dinner, did not take baths, borrowed money from the convents, turned the monks into ridicule, fought with bears, visited jewellers and foreign artisans familiarly, and took no heed of the severe Court etiquette. He pointed cannons with his own hand; organised sham fights between the national troops and the foreign mercenaries; was pleased to see the Russians beaten by the Germans; and surrounded himself by a European guard, with Margeret, Knutsen, and Van Dennen at its head. On his entry into Moscow a struggle took place between the clergy and the papal legate, and two bishops were exiled. He got no thanks for resisting the legate and Poland—for declining to help the one to effect the union of the two Churches, and refusing to cede to the other an inch

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of Russian land. The arrival of his wife, the
Catholic Marina, with a suite of Polish gentlemen,
who assumed an insolent demeanour towards the
Russians, completed the irritation of the Muscovites.
Less than thirty days after his entrance into the
Kremlin, men were ripe for a revolution.

Vassili Chouïski, pardoned by Otrépief, was the
head of the conspirators. The extreme confidence of
the Tzar was his ruin. One night the boyards
attacked the Kremlin, which had been left un-
guarded. Otrépief was thrown out of a window, and
stabbed in the court of the palace; Basmanof, who
defended him, being killed by his side. They took
the two corpses, put ribald masks on their faces, and
exposed them on the place of executions between a
flute and a bag-pipe. The widow of Otrépief, and
the Polish envoys sent to assist at the wedding, were
spared, but kept prisoners by the boyards. The
corpse of the "sorcerer" was burned, and a cannon
was charged with his ashes, which were blown to the
winds (1606).

It was now necessary to elect a new Tzar. Two
candidates, two chiefs of princely families, presented
themselves, Vassili Chouïski and Vassili Galitsyne.
Chouïski had signalised himself by his hatred of the
usurper, had defeated him in battle, had been con-
demned by him to death, and had been foremost in
the conspiracy. The boyards would have preferred
assembling the States-general, as in 1598, but Vassili
would not await their decision. More impatient and
less wise than Boris Godounof, he chose to owe his
crown to the Muscovites alone, and not to the dele-
gates of the whole nation. It was the original sin
of the new administration. Vassili had on his side
neither hereditary right, like the ancient Tzars, nor

TIME OF THE TROUBLES.

355

the vote of the three orders, like Boris. His claim
to the throne thus remained dubious in times of the
greatest disturbance. The Patriarch Ignatius, the
nominee of the impostor, was replaced by Hermo-
genes. Thus, at each change in the government, a
corresponding change took place in the first dignity
of the Church.

On ascending the throne, Vassili swore a solemn
oath to put no boyard to death without trial, not to
confiscate the goods of criminals, and to chastise
calumniators. True Russians felt profound sorrow
when they saw the Tzar thus despoil himself of his
sovereign rights, and alienate part of his autocratic
power for the benefit of the boyards. He was enter-
ing, indeed, on the path of the *pacta conventa*, which,
at every new election in Poland, deprived the king
of some of his attributes, and led to the enfeebling
of the crown, and the triumph of the aristocratic
anarchy of the nobles.

The provinces were discontented at not being con-
sulted in the choice of a sovereign. They learnt
almost at the same moment that Dmitri had regained
the throne of his forefathers; then that Dmitri was an
impostor, who had usurped the throne by the aid of
the devil; finally, that a new Tzar reigned over
Russia. They did not know what to believe, or in
whom to trust; everything seemed doubtful. The
Russian conscience was greatly troubled, and, in the
universal demoralisation, adventurers found an easy
road to success.

Vassili, who was fifty years old, wanted both
energy and prestige. He had specially distinguished
himself by his talents for intrigue, and even his
partisans reproached him with avarice. The elements
of disorder put in motion by the last two revolutions,

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were not yet appeased. Neither ambitious boyards, nor felonious nobles, nor insurgent peasants, nor brigands, nor the Cossacks and Zaporogues, nor the companies, nor the foreign mercenaries were satisfied. In such a situation it was inevitable that a new impostor should take the place of the former, and again furnish the worst passions with an outlet. Instead of one, there were two Pretenders: on one side a Cossack of Terek gave himself out to be the Tzarévitch Peter, a pretended son of the chaste Feodor; on the other, it was announced that Dmitri had, for the second time, escaped his murderers. The same transparent fable was always received with the same credulity, real or feigned. At Moscow the people recalled the fact that the face of the corpse exposed on the Red Place was covered with a mask. Vassili tried in vain to disabuse the people; he was not more successful than Boris. Had not Boris overwhelmed the Muscovites and the King of Poland with evidence? Severia and the turbulent cities of the South again rose; the discontented masses armed again for a new Otrépief against a new Godounof. In the South, a certain Bolotnikof, by birth a serf, called all the brigands, all slaves and peasants to his standard, and began a servile war. By his side, Prince Chakovskoi, Pachkof, one of the diéti-boyarSKIÉ, the voïevode Soundoulof, and the aristocratic Procopius Lapounof, organised the war of the nobles. On the banks of the Volga, the Tatars and Finnish tribes, under pretext of sustaining the son of Ivan the Terrible, proclaimed their national independence. The empire was menaced with total dissolution by the reaction of all the forces till then repressed by the strong hand of the Tzars.

The reappearance of the false Dmitri was announced

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throughout Russia. In reality no one had dared to take up this rôle; but the impostor was so universally necessary that he was everywhere recognised even before he existed. Bolotnikof and his peasants threatened the capital, and agitated the lower classes of Moscow. The Tzar Chouïski seemed lost, when he was saved by the military talents of his nephew, Skopine Chouïski. Lapounof and two other leaders took fright, and were disgusted with their popular allies; they separated from Bolotnikof, offered to submit to the Tzar, and were received at Moscow with caresses. Bolotnikof, left alone, fell back on Toula, and was so closely pressed that he wrote to Mniszek that all was lost if he could not produce the false Dmitri. At last the desired one, expected by all the rebels, appeared. His real name is undivulged; his origin is uncertain; he is only mentioned by the title of the "second false Dmitri." All we know of him is that he was a clever, intelligent man, tolerably educated, and very brutal. He came too late to save Toula. Bolotnikof was drowned, and the false Peter hanged.

Lissovski and Rojinski, two Polish nobles of great repute, soon came to the aid of the false Dmitri. The Zaporogues and the Cossacks of the Don, under Zaroutski, hastened to take part in the expected booty. It is a curious fact that there were in their ranks five or six impostors, who all gave themselves out as being sons or grandsons of Ivan the Terrible. With all these forces the impostor marched on Moscow, defeated the detachments of the Tzar's army, and established himself twelve versts from the capital, at the village of Touchino. This encampment has remained celebrated in the history of the troubles; it has gained for this second impostor the surname of the brigand of Touchino, and for his Russian parti-

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sans the designation of Touchinists. Thus in face of the Tzar of Moscow—the nominee of the Muscovites, who hardly seemed the Tzar of Russia—stood the Tzar of Touchino. He, like his rival, had his Court, his army, his administration. He distributed titles and dignities; and—evidence of profound popular degradation—an ambitious crowd was to be seen passing from one Court to the other, falling at the feet of both Tzars, receiving double pay, and, loaded with honours by Vassili, flying to Dmitri, to return again to Vassili. A *sobriquet* was invented to designate these refugees. They were called "birds of passage" (*pèreléti*).

Whilst Touchino menaced and braved Moscow, Polish reinforcements flocked to the camp of the brigand, in spite of the promises and assurances of the perfidious Sigismond. The celebrated voïevode, John Sapieha, came to join Lissovski, and they both tried to capture the Troïtsa monastery. This famous convent tempted them by its riches. With its ramparts and towers, it was a strong place of arms for the partisans of the Tzar; its monks were convinced that they knew how the country was to be saved, and did not cease to call all the neighbouring cities to take up arms "for the faith and the Tzar." These warlike monks, who were like the "Church militant" of the French League—though they, to be sure, defended at once the national and the orthodox cause—repelled all the assaults of the Catholic adventurers. After a siege of sixteen months, Sapieha had to acknowledge himself beaten. Abraham Palitsyne, treasurer of the convent, has narrated the exploits of his brethren. Souzdal, Vladimir, Peréiaslaf, Rostof, and eighteen other northern towns, not being able to decide which was the legitimate sovereign, opened their gates to the

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Touchinists. Chouïski was still disliked at Moscow, but they knew what they had to expect from the second false Dmitri. Honest people who did not look forward to the triumph of the brigand, and who saw no possible Tzar but Vassili, forced themselves to support him. What saved the capital was the bad discipline that reigned in the enemy's camp; new rebellions broke out against the rebel. Serfs and mougiks threatened their masters and ravaged the country, and the brigand was forced to employ part of his forces to suppress this brigandage.

About this time the Tzar Chouïski turned for help to Sweden; he ceded the town of Karela to Charles IX., contracted with him an offensive and defensive alliance against Poland, and received in return a body of 5000 Swedes, under the command of De la Gardie. With this reinforcement, Skopine Chouïski expelled the Touchinists from the cities of the North, advanced on Moscow, and obliged the brigand to evacuate Touchino. The perfidious policy of the Polish government, which armed the impostors against the Tzar and allowed their voïevodes to attack a friendly country, amply justified Chouïski in seeking an ally in Sweden. But this foreign intervention gave rise to another: the King of Poland, affecting to think himself endangered by the Tzar's alliance with his worst enemy, decided to drop the mask and openly interfere. It was thus that under the most fatal auspices the long rivalry began between these two Slav nations, whom statesmanship had once tried to unite under the same sceptre. Poland, governed by an instrument of the Jesuits, inflicted on Russia a frightful wrong. Sigismond disloyally affected zeal for a pretender whom he knew to be an impostor; he violated treaties and all the rights of nations;