"The Romance of the Romanoffs" by Joseph McCabe. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.
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Joseph McCabe. The Romance of the Romanoffs
The Romance of the Romanoffs
Table of Contents
PREFACE
ILLUSTRATIONS
THE ROMANCE OF THE. ROMANOFFS
CHAPTER I. THE PRIMITIVE DEMOCRACY OF THE SLAV
CHAPTER II. THE DESCENT TO AUTOCRACY
CHAPTER III. THE MOSCOVITES BECOME TSARS
CHAPTER IV. THE RISE OF THE ROMANOFFS
CHAPTER V. THE EARLY ROMANOFFS
CHAPTER VI. A ROMANOFF PRINCESS
CHAPTER VII. THE GREAT PETER
CHAPTER VIII. CATHERINE THE LITTLE
CHAPTER IX. ROMANCE UPON ROMANCE
CHAPTER X. THE GAY AND PIOUS ELIZABETH
CHAPTER XI. CATHERINE THE GREAT
CHAPTER XII. IN THE DAYS OF NAPOLEON
CHAPTER XIII. THE FIGHT AGAINST LIBERALISM
CHAPTER XIV. THE TRAGEDY OF ALEXANDER II
CHAPTER XV. ENTER POBIEDONOSTSEFF
CHAPTER XVI. THE LAST OF THE ROMANOFFS
Отрывок из книги
Joseph McCabe
Published by Good Press, 2019
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There would be frequent calls for these village-councils, as the land, on which most of them worked, was held in common. The head of a family owned only his house and enclosure, and was entitled to the harvest of his own labour. Then there were the rights of hunting in the forest and fishing in the rivers, the constant need to send out new colonies into the eastern wilderness, and especially the need to protect these new colonies from the wandering Asiatics. Flanked by the Carpathians, up which they could not spread, the tribes had to push steadily eastward, and the land was full of Asiatics, for the most part swift and ruthless horsemen. Co-operative defence was as necessary as co-operative counsel. The elders of many neighbouring villages met together in a larger council. There was a rough organisation of villages into a canton or Volost. Again there would probably be a president, and some think that a temporary chief or leader might be appointed in an emergency. But the Slavs had no hereditary rulers, no heads of the various tribes.
It also helped to sustain their democratic and communistic life that they had no priests. When priests later come upon the scene we shall find them very easily becoming the instruments of autocracy. We shall find, as is usual, the autocrat enriching the clergy, and the clergy discovering very impressive legends upon which he may establish his title to rule. In the pagan days of the Slavs there were no priests. The religion was the kind of primitive interpretation of nature which we always find at that level of mental development. The fire of the sun, the roar of the storm, the mysterious fertility of the earth, and the awful solemnity of the forest filled the child-like mind with wonder and dread. These things were felt to have life, a greater life than the puny and limited life of man; and the Slavs learned to bow down to the mighty spirits of the sun and the river and the wind and the earth. In particular they mourned the death of the sun, and celebrated joyously its annual re-birth and restoration to full glory. But they had no priests. The heads of the family or the village performed the invocations and the sacrifices.
