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While the Golden Horde was dealing out death and destruction in the neighbouring western kingdoms, Russia was exerting her powers of recuperation to regain some of the life that had been crushed out of her. Like unscathed pheasants stealing back one by one to the coverts from which the beaters had sent them whirring forth, the fugitive princes returned to the wrecks of their provinces. Daniel re-established himself at Galitz, Mikhail at Kiev; Tchernigov was still infested by roving bodies of Mongols. Meanwhile the Novgorodskie, in their own little world in the North, pursued as usual a political existence isolated from that of Central and Eastern Russia. On the top of their quarrels with the German knights they became involved in a question of frontier lands with the crown of Sweden. Under the command of the Skandinavian Prince Birger, an army of Swedes, Norwegians, and Finns disembarked at the mouth of the Ijhora, an affluent of the Neva, and threatened an attack upon Ladoga. 1240Aleksandr Yaroslavitch, the young Prince of Novgorod, gathering together the few men at his disposal, flung himself on the Swedish camp and gained a brilliant victory, wounding Birger himself in the face with his lance. In honour of which battle he ever after bore the added name of Nevski (“of the Neva”).

While the young Yaroslavitch waged brilliant, if not particularly fruitful, campaigns against German and Lit’uanian enemies, matters were settling down in gloomy mould in the other Russian provinces. The great Mongol inundation, which had submerged the Palearctic region (no less comprehensive definition is adequate), from the basin of the Amur to the Dalmatian sea-board, had receded so far as to leave the Polish, Hungarian, and Bulgarian lands high and dry, though strewn with the wreckage of its violence. But here the shrinkage stopped. The conqueror Batu halted his retiring hordes in the steppe-land of the lower Volga, on the left bank of which river he established his camp-city, Sarai. From here he was able to maintain the ascendancy which his arms had won him over the Russian princes, and to guard the supremacy of the great Mongol Empire in the western portions of its extensive territory. And now comes perhaps the saddest period of Russian history—certainly the meanest. The locust-plague that had swept through the land had blighted the fair promise of its growth; Russia was no longer free, and her princes ruled, not by the grace of God, but by favour of the Grand Khan, Kuyuk, last heard of before the crumbling walls of Kiev. To the peasantry, perhaps, it mattered little in whose name they were taxed or pillaged, whether they beat the forehead to Russian kniaz or Mongol khan; but to the Princes of the Blood, proud of their heirship of the throne of Rurik, treasuring their religion as a personal glory-reflecting possession, jealous of their standing with the royal houses of Europe, it was a terrible and bitter humiliation to have to own allegiance to this desert chief, this Asiatic barbarian, as he must have been in their eyes, this pagan sun-worshipper, who derived his authority neither from the keys of S. Peter nor from the sceptre of the Cæsars. Yet, so adaptable to altered circumstances is nature, that even this galling yoke ceased after a while to deaden the political energies of its wearers, which found vent, unhappily, not in struggles towards emancipation, but in a renewal of the old miserable squabbles between prince and prince. In this internal strife the power of the Khan was even invoked to overwhelm an opponent, a state of things which, however degrading it may appear, is not unique in the history of peoples, and proud peoples moreover. The Jewish factions in the days of Josephus, groaning under the abhorred dominion of Rome, expended their energies in fighting each other with any weapon that came to hand, including the Gentile-wielded authority, and in this same thirteenth century the Scottish nobles did not scruple to turn the English suzerainty to account in their party schemes and feuds.

1244

The first to tender his submission at the Court of the Mongol chief was Yaroslav, Grand Prince of Souzdal, whom Batu confirmed in his principality and added thereto that of Kiev. Two years later, however, Yaroslav was required to present himself at the headquarters of the Grand Khan, in the Amur valley, where he bowed the knee before his Mongol master and obtained permission to return to his province, dying, however, before the weary homeward journey was accomplished. Mikhail of Tchernigov, forced to undertake the same humiliating pilgrimage, died at the hands of the Mongol priests, a martyr to his religion. His son Rostislav, a voluntary exile in Hungary, became Ban of Sclavonia and of Makhov in Bosnia.43 Daniel of Galitz, farthest removed from the power of the Khan, was one of the last to surrender his independence and journey across Russia to the tent of Batu, who received him with more consideration than had been shown to the other princes. Little indeed might such humouring avail to gild the bitter pill, that the proud Romanovitch, whose favour had been sought by princes and Pope, should go forth from the Mongol presence wearing the title, “Servant of the Grand Khan.” The enormous fighting-strength at the disposal of the conquerors, the rapidity with which it could be put in motion, and the terror inspired by a long succession of victories and attendant cruelties, helped to uphold their authority as it had contributed to the ease of their conquests. “In Asia and Eastern Europe scarcely a dog might bark without Mongol leave, from the borders of Poland and the coast of Cilicia to the Amur and the Yellow Sea.”44 Even the hero of the battle of the Neva found it expedient to toil through some thousand miles of desert to the habitation of the Grand Khan, and pay the same distasteful homage to the great barbarian. In his absence important events were happening at Souzdal. 1248His uncle, Sviatoslav, who had succeeded to the Grand Principality on the death of Yaroslav, was chased out of this dignity by Mikhail, Aleksandr’s younger brother. The same winter Mikhail lost his life in battle with the Lit’uanians. His place was filled by Andrei, another brother, who had just returned with Aleksandr from the eastern pilgrimage. While the greater part of Russia was passing into the hands of the Souzdal family, Daniel was leaning more and more towards Western Europe and dallying openly with the Pope. No stone was left unturned by the strenuous Pontiff (Innocent IV.) to tempt the Galician Prince into the Roman communion, and Daniel certainly nibbled at the bait. Russia had become a province of Tartary; Constantinople no longer harboured the Orthodox faith; only in Catholic Europe did the worship of Jesus and the glory of princes go hand in hand. Hence it is not to be wondered at that a Russian prince should lose heart in the faith of his fathers, and seek for support against the Mongols in an alliance with the Holy See and neighbouring Catholic powers. In 1254 matters had so far progressed in this direction that, after much beating about the bush on both sides, the Abbot of Messina, in the capacity of Papal Legate, placed on Daniel’s head a royal crown and hailed him King of Galicia. Innocent followed this up by an appeal to the sovereign Princes of Bohemia, Poland, etc., to unite with Daniel in a crusade against the Mongols; but Catholic Christendom was at that moment too divided against itself, in the strife of the Papacy with the Hohenstaufen emperors, to show a united front to any enemy. The Russian Prince, who had not definitely committed himself to a change of creed, saw that he was not likely to obtain any substantial support from the western princes, and broke off relations with Rome.45 In the north Aleksandr was seeking to conserve his power and that of his family by a different policy—by cultivating a good understanding, namely, with the rulers of the Horde. Had he chosen the more heroic line of resistance, and sacrificed his religious scruples to the Latin Pope rather than to the Mongol Khan, he might, with the alliance of the Swedes and Teutons, have defied the armies of the desert from behind the swampy forests which girdled Novgorod. This would have meant, however, abandoning Kiev and Souzdal as well as the Orthodox faith, possessions which he was able to retain by acquiescing in the Mongol supremacy. (1252)His less subservient, or less tactful brother, Andrei, had found it necessary to depart hurriedly from the Grand Principality, before the advent of the Horde’s agents, sent to punish him for insubordination to the Grand Khan; Aleksandr, by a friendly visit to Sardak (son of Batu), obtained the reversion of the escheated fiefs, and thereby sealed his obligation to his Tartar masters.46 Five years later he had to acquiesce in another humiliation, the numbering and taxing of his provinces by the agents of the new Khan Berke. This was followed in due course by a command that Novgorod should submit to the same operation, and Aleksandr, who had defended that city against all comers, had now to undertake the unpleasant task of reconciling the citizens to this indignity. Velikie Novgorod hummed like a hive at the shameful proposal. Alone of all the Russian lands she had kept her liberty; she had checked the encroachments of Sweden and the missionary efforts of the German military Orders; had kept the House of Souzdal on its good behaviour, and dismissed princes, posadniks, and archbishops with a prodigality of independence; and now, at the hands of her well-beloved Nevski, this hateful thing was thrust upon her. No wonder the “proud city of the waters” throbbed with indignation, and the great bell of Yaroslav echoed the popular tumult. 1259But the insistence of the Khan, coupled with the Grand Prince’s influence, wore down the noisy opposition, and the Novgorodskie, spent with fury, admitted the Mongol assessors into their houses, and became the tributaries of the Golden Horde.

While Aleksandr had been employed in linking the northern province on to the Mongol chain, Daniel had been making tentative experiments in the direction of freedom, which brought a considerable detachment of the Horde galloping into his territory. The Galician Prince averted the storm by a hasty submission, and had the satisfaction of seeing the monster he had called up vent its fury on his doubtful allies, the Lit’uanians. (1258)But the conquest of a people who had no towns worth speaking of, and who were adepts in the art of eluding pursuit, did not exhaust the Mongol craving for loot and slaughter, and the following year found them still on the war-path, this time in Polish territory. “From Lublin they circled round to Zavikhvost, passed across the Vistula, captured Sendomir and the town of Listz.”47 Then, having given Daniel an object-lesson in obedience, the Horde melted away into the steppe—and the Lit’uanians issued anew from their fastnesses and renewed their border warfare in the surrounding lands. The attack of the Mongols adds another item to the long list of enemies against whom these irrepressible people had to battle for their liberty and their existence. Livlandish knights, the citizens of Pskov and Novgorod, the Princes of Polotzk, Souzdal, and Galitz, the palatines of Mazovia, and now the nomads of the desert, battered and smote perseveringly upon this pre-eminently “buffer State,” whose security lay partly in the nature of its physical conformation, partly in the disunion of its enemies. In the fierce struggle for life and growth which was going on in this corner of Europe the result would necessarily be a survival of the fittest, and which that fittest was (under the conditions then obtaining) a glance at a graduated political map of the region will demonstrate.48 The very stress of external attack which bore upon them from all sides, drove the Lit’uanians into closer fusion and welded them together under the leadership of a single chief. In the person of Mindovg appears the first historically reliable Duke of Lit’uania, and under his auspices spring up the towns, or strongholds, of Kernov and Grodno. A few years later his nephew Tovtivl is installed, whether by conquest or election is not clear, in the neighbouring Russian kniazdom of Polotzk. In 1262 occurs the first recorded aggressive alliance between the Russians and Lit’uanians; during one of Aleksandr Nevski’s frequent pilgrimages to the Mongol headquarters, his son Dimitri and his brother Yaroslav (Prince of Tver), in conjunction with Mindovg and Tovtivl, banded their forces together in an attack on Uriev, called by the Germans Dorpat. This town, which had long been a bone of contention between the Knights of Jesus and the north Russian princes, and had experienced more than once the fate of a border burg, suffered considerably on this occasion, and its blazing outworks lit home the booty-laden raiders—roused also to vengeance, according to some accounts, the Landmaster Werner von Breithausen, who led his knights, burning and plundering, into Russian land till failing strength constrained him to return homewards.49

The return of Aleksandr from Sarai, where he had for several months been the guest—or prisoner—of the Khan, was soon followed by his death, in November 1263—an event which, according to some of the older Russian historians, was universally wept and deplored by his bereaved subjects. The people of Novgorod, with whom he should have been especially popular, seem to have successfully dissembled their grief, and marked their attachment to his memory by expelling his son Dimitri, killing Mikhail Stefanovitch, the posadnik of his choosing, and electing to that office Mikhail Thedorovitch, a boyarin opposed to the late Prince’s interests. 1264Having thus thoroughly broken “off with the old love,” they dispatched their new posadnik and a deputation of citizens to offer their allegiance to Yaroslav, who had succeeded, with the consent of the Khan, to the grand princedom; Andrei, who lay under the displeasure of the Horde, having further disqualified himself by dying a few months after his brother. The terms of the deed by which Yaroslav was invited to assume the sovereignty of Novgorod are interesting as throwing valuable light on the position occupied by the city at that period. The Prince was to swear by the cross to govern Novgorod “conformably to her ancient laws”; to content himself with presents from the country districts and dependencies, in place of levying tribute; to govern them only by Novgorodian magistrates, chosen with the assent of the posadnik; he was only permitted to visit the vassal town of Staraia Rousa in the autumn, while Ladoga was out of bounds for himself or any member of his household, except his fisherman and brewer; his judicial and domestic officials were to pay “with money” for the use of horses on their travels, but the military couriers were permitted to impress what they wanted in this respect for their service; on the other hand, it was engaged that Novgorodian merchants journeying in the Grand Principality were to pay “two squirrel-skins for boat, cart, and measure of flax or hops.” “In consequence, and for guarantee that you execute these conditions, kiss you the holy cross in presence of the ambassadors of Novgorod: on that, Prince, we salute you.” 1265This document, which was made out in the name of the Archbishop, posadnik, boyarins, and people of Novgorod, “from the oldest to the youngest” (a Russian equivalent for high and low, or great and small), was subscribed to by Yaroslav, who thereon became Prince of Novgorod. Among other things to be gleaned from this covenant is the fact that the Prince was supposed to be supported “by voluntary contributions”; that minute fiscal and domestic regulations (similar in nature to those existing in some of the Swiss cantons in the Middle Ages) were enforced in the lands of the republic and in relation with other Russian provinces; and that fur-pelts had not yet been wholly displaced, as a medium of payment, by the circulation of money. The petty and irritating nature of some of these restrictions may have been the effect, rather than the cause, of the long series of quarrels between princes and citizens, but they could hardly fail to produce friction under the most favourable circumstances. Yaroslav soon had proof of the independent dispositions of his northern subjects, who peremptorily thwarted his design for a campaign against the sister republic of Pskov, which had elected a Lit’uanian chief as its ruler without consulting the Grand Prince. The latter soon after returned to the more congenial atmosphere of Vladimir, leaving as his representative his nephew, Urii Andreievitch. Relieved of the presence of the Velikie-kniaz, the Novgorodskie, allied with Dovmont, the aforesaid Prince of Pskov, marched with an army 30,000 strong, furnished with battering-rams and other siege engines, into the charmed region of the Baltic provinces, where German knights, the Archbishops of Riga, Danes, Swedes, Lit’uanians, and Russians disputed over and over again, with never-flagging zest, every corner of that most debatable land. The objective of the Russ-Lit’uanian army (with which marched Dimitri, the whilom Prince of Novgorod), was the Dane-held town of Rakovor (Wesenberg), in Estland; as they approached the town, however, the Russians found themselves confronted by a strong force of “the gentlemen of God” (as they magnanimously, or satirically, styled the Teutonic knights), under the command of their Landmaster, von Rodenstein—the last people they were anxious to meet. The dark winter day (18th February 1268) was all too short to decide the furious combat which ensued, and many a noted leader, many a thousand men-at-arms, fell on either side without the issue being settled one way or the other. The Novgorodskie lost their posadnik and the tisyaszhnik50 Kodrat, while on the other side Alexander, Bishop of Dorpat, was among the slain. Better armed and better disciplined, it is probable that the knights of the Order inflicted the heavier loss on their opponents, and the Russians had to abandon their projected attack on Rakovor. The spring of the next year brought von Rodenstein and his pied-mantled warriors into the territory of Pskov, where they burnt Izborsk, the old pre-Rurikian town on the Lake Peipus, and stormed Pskov itself. Its Lit’uanian Prince was a match for the Teutons, and for ten days steel and iron and stone clashed and hurtled round the tottering ramparts. Dovmont himself wounded the Landmaster, and held the enemy at bay till the bear-blazoned standard of Velikie Novgorod waved in the distance and warned the knights to retire beyond the border. The Order, however, by a treaty with the powerful Hanse city of Lubeck, was able to strike Novgorod in a more vulnerable spot than the shores of Lake Peipus, and a combination directed against her shipping caused her to conclude a peace with her German neighbours.51

This war, in which both sides had lost heavily in men, while neither had gained any distinct advantage, had been sustained by Novgorod without the assistance and without the sanction of the Grand Prince, and now that it had come to a lame conclusion mutual recriminations were indulged in by the citizens and by Yaroslav. 1270The sins of the father were visited on the child, so to speak, and Urii, like so many of his forerunners, was “shown the way” out of the city, and the old quarrel between the Princes of Souzdal and the great republic broke out anew. In all the misery and humiliation of their subject position the Russians clung to the luxury of their private feuds, as a fate-cursed man takes to a soothing narcotic. Yaroslav even rose to the brilliantly despicable idea of turning the national misfortune to account by employing the Mongol hordes to bear upon the defensive array of the turbulent city. A boyarin sent by him to Sarai depicted the attitude of the citizens as one of revolt against the Grand Prince and the authority of the Horde, and invoked the aid of the Khan to quench this dangerous disaffection. Fortunately for the men of Novgorod they had a friend at court in the person of Vasili, the Grand Prince’s youngest brother, who stated their side of the case and obtained the recall of the punitive force which had been dispatched against them.52 The credit of restoring good relations between the proud republic and the irritated Prince rests with the Metropolitan Kirill, who was ever ready to exert the influence of his office in the interests of peace.

While these events had been passing in the north, Daniel Romanovitch had quietly slipped out of existence, the date of his death being vaguely fixed “between 1264-1266.”53 Taking into consideration the very open question which the possession of his province had been when he first enforced his claims upon it, the scant notice which his death attracted was rather a compliment to his statecraft. “King of Galitz,” where his forerunners had been simply princes, he was probably the only sovereign in Europe who had outwitted Innocent IV., and swallowed unconcernedly the bait which was to have lured him into the Catholic fold. Of his four sons, Roman (who had been successively dazzled, utilised, and disillusioned by Bela IV. in the expectation of the reversion of the contested Austrian lands) had died before him, and the remaining three—Lev, Mstislav, and Shvarn—were established at Pérémysl, Loutzk, and Galitz respectively, while their uncle Vassilko reigned at Vladimir. The influence of the latter, who had loyally supported his brother in all his vicissitudes, prevented the province from falling to pieces, and an unlooked-for event gave Galicia new importance. Voeshelk, son of Mindovg, who had succeeded to a reduced share of his father’s dominions and authority, had adopted the Christian religion, and displayed from time to time the uncomfortable zeal of a convert; already he had tasted the sweets of monastic retirement, and after the short interval of a rule which was not remarkable for over much mercy towards his subjects, he wished again for the solitude of the cloister. It was necessary to appoint a successor, and as a Christian prince was preferred in that capacity, his choice fell upon Shvarn Danielovitch, who possessed the further recommendation of having married the Lit’uanian chief’s daughter. Thus Galitz and the greater part of Lit’uania became united under one ruler, and it seemed possible that in this direction was to be looked for the building up of a Russian monarchy—a development from the West rather than from the East. The union of the States, however, was followed by a dark and ill-omened deed, when the Prince of Pérémysl, incensed by the preference shown to his youngest brother, murdered the monk-prince Voeshelk after a banquet in the city of Vladimir. The sudden death of Shvarn (1270) ended the union so inauspiciously inaugurated; Lev succeeded to the fief of Galitz, and Lit’uania was wrested from Russia and Christianity by the heathen Prince Troiden.

1272

Two years after this event died Yaroslav-Yaroslavitch, Grand Prince of Souzdal-Vladimir and Prince of Novgorod. In the former province he was succeeded peaceably by his brother Vasili; at Novgorod, naturally, affairs did not pass off so smoothly. Dimitri Aleksandrovitch was chosen by the posadnik and many of the citizens in opposition to Vasili, and another contest between Novgorod and Souzdal seemed imminent. The peace party in the former province averted the threatened rupture by out-voting the adherents of Dimitri, and Novgorod was once more united with the Grand Principality. It is interesting to note that the rulers of the republic were being chosen more and more exclusively from the reigning family of Souzdal-Vladimir, and here may be seen for the first time since the death of Vladimir the Holy a reliable hint of the germ-growth of “all the Russias.” With Pskov and Polotzk in Lit’uanian hands, Kiev and the steppes little more than Mongol outposts, and Tchernigov enjoying but a shadow of its former importance, Novgorod, Souzdal, and Galitz between them make up very nearly the total of the Russian-ruled lands; and of these three provinces the two largest have settled down under one family. Like the acorn-seed, Russia had to decay and shrivel to a certain extent before she could begin to grow; but the process of decomposition and denudation was not yet arrested.

Again did the Russian Princes of Galicia, Volhynia, and Smolensk call in the aid of the Mongols—this time against the Lit’uanians, who were becoming more and more uncomfortable neighbours. In two campaigns the latter held their own against the combined Tartar-Russian attack, and the idolaters of Grodno and Novgorodek successfully resisted the forces of Christianity and Islam—to which latter creed the Mongols had a few years previously been converted.

In 1276 Vasili Yaroslavitch was gathered to his fathers, and Dimitri came in, as peacefully as the proverbial lamb, to the possession of the Grand Principality and of Velikie Novgorod. Not long had he been on the throne ere the wildest anarchy broke out in his dominions; scarcely had the inevitable quarrel with Novgorod been smoothed over than civil war desolated the grand province. Andrei Aleksandrovitch, kniaz of the appanage of Gorodetz on the Volga, was brother to Dimitri—by the accident of birth a younger brother; an accident which he proposed to correct with the assistance of the Horde. In league with these formidable warriors and with his uncles Thedor and Mikhail, Andrei let slip the dogs of war on the unhappy province, and drove Dimitri from the field. After the Mongols had worked their will on the wretched inhabitants, and established Andrei as Grand Prince of a ravaged and depopulated territory, they retired with their booty and captives and left the two princes to fight out their own quarrels. 1283Andrei soon had to call them in again, and Dimitri, not to be outdone, played Mongol against Mongol, and secured the support of Nogai, the almost independent Khan of the Oukrain steppes. The people, as usual, suffered heavily at the hands of the nomad squadrons: the “Scourge of God” has a way of falling on the most innocent shoulders. The condition of the Russian peasant and tiller of the soil was at this time deplorable. Debarred from exercising his labour on the fertile, but robber-haunted lands of the south, he was obliged to struggle patiently with the mighty forces of the northern forests, like the Indian ryot fighting against the encroachments of the jungle; only in place of elephant, boar, and sambur, which ruin from time to time the fruits of the latter’s toil, the former had periodically to bewail the devastations of Kuman, Mongol, and, not seldom, Russian raiders.

With intervals of exhaustion, the war of the brothers dragged on for many years, kept alive, now by intrigues at the Mongol Courts, now by raid and rapine in the lands of Souzdal and Péréyaslavl. Out of this seething incoherent dust-storm rises one tangible fact, the independence of the province of Tver; born of anarchy, this little principality shall contribute its quota to the red page of Russian history ere it sinks back into obscurity. Under its young Prince, Mikhail Yaroslavitch, it has taken advantage of the weakness and embarrassments of Dimitri to secure for itself a separate existence, and to impair the solidity of the grand province. The Novgorodians, but languidly attached to the interests of the rival princes, started a domestic war of their own, one of those vigorous, exuberant burgh-strifes peculiar to the free cities of Northern Europe in the Middle Ages—a strife in which the whole population took part, from the Archbishop, posadnik, and boyarins, down to the “youngest people”; a strife which has been handed down blurred and sketchy, devoid of meaning and purpose, if it ever had any, but still instinct with life and movement. Wild crowds skirling through narrow streets, hunting the posadnik into the protection of the Archbishop, hammering on the closed door of the sanctuary, the Cathedral of S. Sofia; tumultuous gatherings in the great square, angry dooming of citizens, hurlings of struggling victims from the bridge into the Volkhov; and above all these scenes of disorder, the great bell of Yaroslav clanging and dinning, like some evil spirit of unrest prisoned in its owl-tower. The picture lives.

Western Russia also had its own troubles, or rather it had become involved in those of Poland, where, the scruples of Boleslas “the Chaste” having prevented him from reproducing his species, his death in 1279 was followed by a scramble for his throne. Where there is no heir there are many, may not be a proverb, but it has all the qualifications for one. The Dukes of Mazovia, Krakow, Silesia, and Kujavia put forward their interests, and the cousins Lev of Galitz and Vladimir of Volhynia entered into the fray without any more substantial claim than a backing of Mongol horsemen, borrowed from the Horde. Even this powerful argument broke down when the supporters of the new Duke, Lesko the Black, defeated the Russ-Mongol army near Sendomir with great slaughter (1280). The following year Galicia and Volhynia received return visits from the Poles, but the dissensions which soon after broke out in the palatinate of Mazovia again gave the Red Russian princes the opportunity of interesting themselves in Polish affairs.

In Eastern Russia Andrei had practically established his authority in the Grand Principality; the Tartar-hunted, fate-cursed Dimitri, driven even from his beloved domain of Péréyaslavl, was compelled at last to seek refuge with his cousin and erstwhile enemy, Mikhail of Tver, and renounce his claim to the grand province, stipulating only for the possession of his hereditary fief. This was conceded him, and the wanderer turned his weary steps towards his burnt and plundered Péréyaslavl, which he was not to see.

The dead man rode through the autumn day

To visit his love again.

1294On the road to Volok died Dimitri Aleksandrovitch, and Ivan his son reigned at Péréyaslavl in his stead.

Andrei’s position as Grand Prince was more than ever assured, but the long struggle had sapped the authority formerly attaching to that dignity in the lands of Souzdal; not only Tver, but Moskva and Péréyaslavl had taken unto themselves a greater measure of independence—apart, that is to say, from their subjection to the Horde. Unable to overawe this dangerous coalition by superior force, Andrei laid his griefs at the feet of the Khan, hoping to establish his ascendancy by the same means with which he had overthrown his brother’s. 1296The result of this move was a renewal of the old “council on the carpet”; most of the princes interested, with the Bishops of Vladimir and Sarai, gathered at the former city in obedience to the summons of the Khan’s deputy, who presided with Oriental gravity over their somewhat heated deliberations. Even this significant reminder of their servitude could not depress the princes into the decencies of debate; angry words flashed out, and swords leapt from their scabbards, and had not the Vladuika54 Simeon, Bishop of Vladimir, parted the combatants, the blood of Rurik might have been squandered on the carpet. In the end Andrei had to accommodate himself with the vassal princes, who were too strong for him to subdue, and a peace was effected in 1304 between the two parties. Two years previously Ivan Dmitrovitch, dying without issue, had bequeathed his province of Péréyaslavl to his uncle, Daniel of Moskva—a circumstance which added considerably to the importance of the latter principality.

Thus drew to a close a century which had witnessed a vital dislocation in the course of Russian history, which had been fraught with important changes in Europe generally. The House of Hohenstaufen, which had played so bold a part in the affairs of Germany, Italy, and Palestine, had gone down in the death-struggle with the Papacy, and out of the ashes of its ruin had risen, phœnix-like, the House of Habsburg, which one day was to prove the surest bulwark against the enemies of the Holy See; in Rudolf, petty Count of Habsburg and Kyburg, the Empire had found the strongest master it had known since the death of its founder. In that other Empire, whose luxurious capital seemed to enervate and paralyse the manhood of its rulers, the Catholic dynasty had drooped and shrivelled, and when the trade jealousies of Genoa led her to strike with the Greeks against the Latin allies of her hated rival, Venice, the end was at hand; the House of Courtenay gave way to that of Paleologus, and the formula “proceeding from the Father by the Son” re-echoed once more in the high places of S. Sofia. In Hungary died out with the century the male line of the princely House of Arpad, which had given sovereigns to that country since the first erection of the Magyar State; from this point the crown of S. Stefan became the ambition and prize of the surrounding princes, a fate similar to that which overtook the neighbouring kingdom of Bohemia a year or two later. The Livlandish debatable lands still seethed and bubbled with the wars of the rival immigrants. The gentlemen of God maintained a vigorous contest with the See of Dorpat, with the city and Archbishop of Riga, and with the Lit’uanians. In Riga the burghers burnt the church and chapel of the Order and killed sixty of the convent brothers (1297). On the other hand their Archbishop, Johann of Schwerin, was besieged in his castle of Treiden and taken prisoner by the Order, to the scandal of Pope Boniface VIII. The heathen Lit’uanians, headed by their Prince, Viten, and allied with the Church troops of Riga and Dorpat, fought against the knights “in eighteen months nine bloody battles.” In 1298 they won a decisive victory over the Landmaster Bruno, in which the latter and many of his knights lost their lives. The Komthur Berthold, with reinforcements from Prussia, wiped out this reverse by a victory at Neuermühlen, and later the new Landmaster ravaged the archiepiscopal territory. Ultimately the release and withdrawal of the militant Archbishop and the appointment of Isarnus Tacconi, the Pope’s chaplain, to the See of Riga, relieved the situation and gave some measure of peace to this over-apostleised land.55

In 1300 the Novgorodians witnessed a descent of the Swedes upon the banks of the Neva, where they built the fortress of Landskron, which position was promptly attacked and destroyed by the troops of the republic, supported by those of the Grand Prince. 1304Four years later the death of Andrei involved Northern Russia in a contest between Mikhail of Tver and Urii Danielovitch of Moskva for the vacant sovereignty. Novgorod and the greater number of the Souzdalskie boyarins declared for the former, but both candidates hastened to put their respective cases before the tribunal of the Khan, leaving their followers meanwhile to fight the matter out between themselves. A march of the Tverskie boyarins against Péréyaslavl was intercepted by Ivan, brother of the Prince of Moskva, and their voevoda Akinf (Hyacinth) perished in the battle which ensued. The decision of the Khan in favour of Mikhail did not end the contest. The town of Moskva twice repelled the attack of the Prince of Tver, who was, however, successful in establishing his authority in the remaining portions of the grand province and at Novgorod. The accession of a new Khan, by name Usbek, necessitated the departure of Mikhail to Sarai, where he remained long enough to lose the affections of the Novgorodskie, who transferred their allegiance to the Prince of Moskva, grandson of their champion Nevski. This readjustment of the political balance enabled Urii to reopen the contest with the Grand Prince; long time the struggle dragged on, indefinitely protracted by the shifting policy of the Khan. For the practice of appealing to Sarai to reverse the decisions of Souzdal had become with the Russian princes a habit, confirmed, like opium smoking, by constant indulgence. Both candidates for the Grand Principality were constantly to be found at the Court of the Khan, or devastating their opponent’s provinces with Tartar troops; Urii even contracted a matrimonial alliance with the sister of Usbek. Nor were the princes the only competitors for the Mongol favour; the Metropolitan Petr, in 1313, sought and obtained from the Khan an exemption from taxes for the priests and monks, and a confirmation of the clerical privileges,—concessions which would seem to indicate that the Mongols united with their Mohametanism the toleration which distinguished their early Shamanism—or did the wily Khan gauge the measure of Holy Church, and conciliate her on her most susceptible side? Whatever the clergy might gain by the Mongol patronage, to the princes it brought nothing but disaster. 1319Mikhail himself was destroyed by the agency he had invoked, and Urii had the miserable triumph of seeing his rival stabbed to death by the officers of the Khan. Six years later Dimitri Mikhailovitch avenged his father’s death by spitting Urii on his sword in the Tartar camp, an affront which was punished by the strangulation of the offender. Aleksandr, another son of the ill-fated Mikhail, succeeded to the principality of Tver and to the dignity of Grand Prince, but a mad act of fear-impelled violence drew down on himself, his family, and province the consuming fury of the Khan. A harmless, or at any rate customary, visit from a Mongol envoy to the city of Tver, roused the apprehensions of Prince and people, who feared that an attempt was to be made to convert them forcibly to Islam. Taking courage from the fact that the stranger had but a feeble escort—a circumstance which should have confuted his suspicions—Aleksandr roused his subjects, (gathered in great numbers at Tver for the Feast of the Assumption), to fall upon and annihilate the Mongol band. 1327The Russians can scarcely be condemned for an act of treachery towards an enemy who had never shown a scrupulous regard for honour and good faith, but the deed was one of criminal folly, and even its heroic aspect is blighted by the fact that Aleksandr had remained subservient to the Khan despite the murder of his father and brother, and was only roused to rebellion by an alarm of personal danger. The vengeance of Usbek took a cynical turn; instead of sending his hordes killing and harrying into the devoted province, he entrusted the vindication of his outraged majesty to a Russian prince and Russian troops. Ivan Danielovitch of Moskva, with his own forces and those of Souzdal, reinforced by a strong detachment of Mongols, marched, nothing loth, into the domains of his rival, and scattered desolation around him with a thoroughness which left the Khan nothing to complain of. 1328The Prince of Tver did not wait to share with his people the chastisement he had drawn down upon them, and Ivan obtained permission to assume the well-earned title of Grand Prince.

So completely had the centre of Russian interests shifted eastwards towards the valley of the upper Volga, that the lands of the Dniepr basin, Kiev, Volhynia, Galitz, etc., once the heart of the confederation, were now scarcely to be ranked as outlying members of it. The influences which were responsible for this gradual alienation from the main body, and for the apathy with which the Grand Princes regarded this rounding-off of their dominions, may probably have arisen from the same cause, namely, the Mongol over-mastery. On the one hand, so bound up had the East Russian princes become with the neighbouring khanates, that intercourse with Souzdal meant intercourse with Sarai, and all its attendant humiliations; on the other, the rivalries which existed in the Grand Principality and the necessity its rulers found for frequent and prolonged visits to the Mongol Court, precluded them from giving much attention to the affairs of the western provinces. Thus it fell out that, failing the arising of an exceptionally vigorous local prince, a Roman or a Mstislav, these fertile Russian lands were at the mercy of the boldest bidder. The exceptional personality was at hand, but he was not a Russian. Gedimin, Prince of Lit’uania, whom the early historians depicted as having risen from the position of a court official to that of prince by the murder of his sovereign and master, attained that dignity by the more prosaic and respectable method of hereditary succession, being son of Lutouvier (1282-93) and brother of Viten (1293-1316).56 Under the latter the Lit’uanians had been united in large and well-disciplined armies, as the Poles and the Order knights knew well, and in the direction of both these neighbours their frontier had remained intact. This in itself was no small achievement, considering how the kindred lands of Prussia, Kourland, Livland, Estland, etc., had fallen beneath the persistent proselytising and colonising attacks of the western invaders. By Gedimin was carried into operation a policy of expansion in the detached Russian lands to the south and east,—a policy effected, like that of the Angevin kings of England in France, and of the Habsburgs in Austria, Bohemia, Karinthia, and the Tyrol, by a combination of conquest and matrimonial alliances. But it was not only by the absorption of neighbouring territory that Gedimin signalised his reign; he lifted the land which he had inherited from the position of an obscure chieftaincy to that of a formidable State. At war nearly the whole of his reign with the German knights, he nevertheless did not permit himself to be influenced by the cruelty and treachery which accompanied their religious zeal, but displayed on his part a toleration for different creeds and nationalities which might have been imitated with advantage by other European princes. From his stronghold at Vilna, where the ruins of his castle still mantle the heights above the town, he sent letters to Lubeck, Stettin, Rostok, and other cities of the Hansa league, offering the rights and privileges of that organisation and of the town of Riga, to all artisans, mechanics, and traders who should care to settle in his principality—an invitation which was eagerly responded to. In the wars waged by him against the Order, both in Prussia and Livland, one figure is very conspicuous—that of David, starosta of Grodno, who appears in the Teutonic Chronicles under the picturesque title of Castellan von Garthen. It was this boyarin who held the troubled border against the incessant attacks of the Knights of Mary, and led many a foray into their territory.57 One of the most notable of these was in the winter of 1322-23, when the cold was so severe that even the forest trees were nearly killed, and men erected inns on the ice of the Baltic Sea for the travellers to and from Germany and the nearest Skandinavian lands—this self-same winter came the Lit’uanians following hard on a raid-march of the Cross Brethren, burning and wasting from Dorpat to Memel, and returning through the bleak and frozen march-lands with great spoil of cattle and 5000 prisoners. Truly a winter to be remembered.58 Victory did not blind Gedimin to the advantages of a durable peace with the Order, to secure which he was even ready to adopt the faith of the foes he had so often conquered. 1323Accordingly, at his initiative, a peace was compacted between the various units which existed side by side in the East sea provinces; the Archbishop of Riga, the Bishop of Oesel, the towns of Riga, Revel, and Dorpat, the Teutonic Order, and the principality of Lit’uania, entered into a religious, territorial, and commercial treaty one with another, and Gedimin wrote to the Pope (John XXII.), to inform him that he was ready to become a Christian and to recognise the supremacy of the Holy See. Gladly did the French Pontiff prepare to receive this important lamb into the Catholic fold, and at the same time put a limit to the Teutonic conquests in the Baltic lands, and two legates (the Bishop of Alais and the Abbot of Puy) were dispatched forthwith to Vilna. But in the meanwhile Gedimin had had a lesson as to the value of “the true faith of a Christian,” and informed the disconcerted churchmen that he intended to die in the beliefs of his fathers, and would have none of their religion or their Pope. “Where,” he demanded, “will you find more crime, more injustice, violence, corruption and usury, than with the Christians, particularly with the priesthood and the Knights of the Cross?” Travel is said to enlarge and educate the mind, but it was scarcely necessary to come all the way from Avignon to learn that. 1324The Order had not considered itself bound by a compact with a pagan, and, in alliance with the unwilling Bishops of Oesel and Dorpat, had burst into the Lit’uanian lands and plundered the capital, Vilna; in return for which treachery, or elasticity of honour, Gedimin sacked the town of Rositter and renounced the creed of the Christmen.59 Catholic Europe was angry at this backsliding, if one may judge by the epithets showered on the half-saved soul; a depth of sorrowing wrath is revealed in the expressions “double-headed monster, abominable mockery of nature, precursor of Antichrist.” Much mud might they throw, bitterly might they anathematise in those far-off days, yet not thus does history remember the grand old pagan whose castle ruins crown the heights above the Vilia.

In the year of Gedimin’s accession (1316) died Urii Lvovitch, of Galitz and Volhynia, who was succeeded in those fiefs by his sons Andrei and Lev respectively. Colourless princes, these latter representatives of the Roman-Mstislavitch family, known only to history by the alliance which the instinct of preservation led them to make with the Teutonic Order. That they both died in the year 1324 appears from a letter of the Polish King Ladislas to Pope John, in which that fact is mentioned; the two provinces devolved upon Urii Andreievitch, the last Russian Prince of Galicia, the last for many a hundred years who ruled Volhynia. His death (about 1336) ended the male line of his family, and left as heiress of Galitz his sister Mariya, who married the Polish prince, Troiden of Tchersk. By the marriage of another heiress, the daughter of Lev of Volhynia, with Loubart, a son of Gedimin, that province was brought into the Lit’uanian dominion, which was further extended by the succession of Olgerd (Gedimin’s eldest son) to the fief of his wife’s father the Prince of Vitebsk.60 The annexation of Kiev, attributed by many historians to Gedimin, was undoubtably of a later date, as the Chronicles make mention of a Russian Prince Thedor, ruling in that city under Mongol supervision, as late as 1361.61 Even so, the Russian lands owning the sovereignty of Gedimin—Polotzk, Pinsk, Tourov, Volhynia, Loutzk, and Vitebsk sufficiently justify his title, rex Letwinorum et multorum Ruthenorum, and the Grand-duchy of Lit’uania might claim to be more Russian than the Grand Principality of Souzdal, with its Slav-Finn-Turko population.

But here, under the fostering care of Ivan Danielovitch, the new Russia, the Russia of the East, was germinating amid the decay of shedded provinces and lost liberties. Pocketing his pride and leaving outlying lands to take care of themselves, the Grand Prince sought to secure for his family and for his capital a preponderance over the other Souzdalian fiefs. His first step was to secure the Church, in the person of the Metropolitan, to grace with its presence the city of Moskva; lured thither from the now unfashionable Vladimir by the erection of a magnificent new church of the Assumption (fit dedication, for had not Tver wrought her ruin on the date of that festival?) the sainted Petr not only lived, but died and was buried in the budding capital; where also the succeeding Metropolitan, Theognost, took up his residence. In cultivating the good graces of the Khan Ivan was equally successful, but he had to work hard for the attainment of his object. Konstantin Mikhailovitch had been recognised by all parties as Prince of Tver, but Usbek was anxious to possess himself of the person of Andrei, and the Grand Prince had to go seek at the Khan’s behest, and bring the wanderer home. Andrei preferred to remain at Pskov rather than visit Sarai, to which place the princes of Tver, like the animals who ventured into the lion’s den of the fable, went oftener than they returned. The burghers of Pskov refused to give up the fugitive, and Russia beheld the spectacle of the Grand Prince, the Archbishop Moses of Novgorod, and the Metropolitan Theognost, hurling threats, reproaches, and excommunication at the defiant republic on behalf of the Mongol Khan,—the latter weapon all the more terrifying in that it was here used for the first time. Yet the result of all this chiding and banning was not commensurate with the energy expended; Andrei sheltered himself in Lit’uania, and again at Pskov, and not till ten years later did the homing instinct lead him to submit to the pleasure of the Khan, and receive at his hands pardon and restoration (1338). In the absence of his rival, Ivan had steadily and placidly pursued his fixed policy of Moskovite aggrandisement, and gradually established his authority over the neighbouring Princes of Souzdal, Rostov, and Riazan. With Novgorod he had the usual differences, unavoidable between a prince with high ideas of authority and a people with wide views of independence, but the restless citizens grew tired of quarrelling with a man who was always dangerous yet never struck; also they had an absorbing feud on hand with the Pskovitchi, who presumed to have a bishop of their own, instead of depending for spiritual guidance upon Novgorod. On this account the Archbishop of the latter city, the strenuous Vasili, was able to effect a reconciliation between prince and people. Thus things worked smoothly with the smoothly-working kniaz, Ivan Kalita, as they called him, from the kalita (bag or pouch) which he carried at his girdle, and from which he was wont to distribute alms to the needy. Some have unkindly suggested that the bag was intended for receipts rather than disbursements, in which case, if parsimony is to be added to his piety, superstition, and unscrupulous politics, he may well pass for a Russian edition of Louis XI.

The return of the exile Andrei, restored to his principality and to the favour of the Khan, was a disagreeable interlude in the harmony of Kalita’s reign. Following an instinctive habit, he went to Sarai. Shortly after his return to Moskva, his cousin of Tver was summoned to present himself at the Horde. It did not need the pale faces of his courtiers and family, nor the ill-boding presages which their fancy conjured up, to warn the doomed prince of his impending fate; down the broad current of the Volga he drifted, to “Sarra, in the Londe of Tartarie,” where “dwelt a king that werried Russie.”62 1339The judgment of Usbek removed the source of disquietude from Ivan’s path, and the headless corpses of Andrei and his son Thedor, arrived at Tver one winter’s day, grim flotsam of a perished freedom. To complete the object-lesson of their subjection, the citizens beheld the great bell of Tver removed from their cathedral and transferred to Moskva. 1341Not long, however, did its iron-throated music soothe the pride of Ivan-with-the-money-bag, whose death-knell it tolled some twelve months later. And while they conduct the dead prince to his rest, with aid of chant and litany, wailing dirge and gleaming taper, and invocations to saints, archangels, and all the glorious host of Heaven, in different wise are they helping that other master-builder of kingdoms into the Unknown; with pagan rite, with blazing pyre, favourite horse and faithful henchman, goes great Gedimin to his fathers, to his dreamt hereafter, where “on the distant plain the warrior grasps his steed again.” Each to his own; at any rate both are dead, and whether they ride over a boundless plain or stand by a tideless sea, in “blue obscurity” or in a “great white light,” their place knows them not, and Lit’uania and Moskva must have new masters.

In both countries the drift towards cohesion and centralisation is strong, but custom is stronger; Gedimin’s realm is for the present parcelled out among his seven sons and his brother Voin; the lands of Moskva are divided between the three surviving sons of Kalita, Simeon, the eldest, having the capital city and the title of Grand Prince subject, of course, to the consent of the Khan. It was a critical moment in the fortunes of the House of Moskva, when the young prince presented himself for approval at Sarai, with a respectful appeal for a renewal of past favours. The news of the death of Ivan had sent more than one kniaz in eager haste across Russia to the picturesque city on the Volga’s shore; the two Konstantins (of Tver and Souzdal) hoped to undermine the Mongol support which propped up the ascendancy of Simeon, and ruin their rival by the same means with which his father had kept them under. But the Prince of Moskva, with the treasures of the Grand Principality and the tribute of Velikie Novgorod at his disposal, was able to put his case in the most favourable light before the Khan and his officers, and the inherited instinct of almsgiving helped him no doubt to retain the hereditary dignities.

43 A. M. H. J. Stockvis, Manuel d’histoire, de généalogie, etc.

44 Colonel Yule, The Book of Ser Marco Polo.

45 Karamzin.

46 S. Solov’ev, Istoriya Rossie. Karamzin.

47 N. P. Dashkevitch, Knazenie Daniela Galitznago.

48 E. A. Freeman, Historical Geography of Europe.

49 S. Solov’ev, Istoriya Rossie.

50 Commander of a thousand men.

51 Geschichte der Ostseeprovinzen. Karamzin. S. Solov’ev.

52 Karamzin.

53 S. Solov’ev.

54 Vladuika—a title of respect given to the highest clergy.

55 Geschichte der Ostseeprovinzen.

56 V. B. Antonovitch, Otcherk istorie Velikago Kniajhestva Litovskago. Th. Schiemann, Russland, Polen, u. Livland. A. Stokvis, Manuel d’histoire, etc.

57 V. B. Antonovitch.

58 Geschichte der Ostseeprovinzen.

59 Geschichte der Ostseeprovinzen.

60 V. B. Antonovitch. Th. Schiemann.

61 V. B. Antonovitch.

62 Chaucer.