The character of this Prince, to whom the Church gave the title of “Holy,” and who was commemorated by his subjects as “the Great,” is a difficult one for the historian to appraise. The excesses of a stormy and well-spent youth were atoned for, in the eyes of the monkish chroniclers, by an old age of almsgiving and other decorative virtues, and in most respects the doings of his reign gave evidence of wise and wary management. The splitting up of his kingdom was a flaw in his statecraft which had, however, the sanction of custom in the times in which he lived.
The only member of the Grand Prince’s family within reach of Kiev at the moment of his death was his nephew Sviatopalk, ruler of the province of Tourov, in which capacity, according to the contemporary Chronicle of Ditmar, Bishop of Merseburg, he had, at the prompting of his father-in-law Boleslas, King of Poland, raised a rebellion against Vladimir. The attempt was frustrated and punished by the imprisonment of the rebel and his wife, but apparently a reconciliation had taken place between the uncle and nephew, and Sviatopalk was at large, and, what was more important, on the spot when the throne of Kiev became empty. The boyarins of the court, ill-disposed towards a prince who was outside the immediate family of their late master, tried to keep back the tidings of his death while they sent messengers to recall Boris from his fruitless campaign against the Petchenigs. The corpse was wrapped round in a covering, let down by ropes from a palace window in the dead of night, and borne hurriedly to the church of the Bogoroditza (Mother of God) at Kiev. Rumours of the Prince’s death, however, began to fly about the city, and all precautions were rendered abortive by the tell-tale sight of the crowds which flocked to lament over his body. Sviatopalk proclaimed himself Grand Prince, rallied the boyarins to his side by a timely distribution of gifts, and then proceeded to strike, with the instinct of self-preservation, at the several kinsmen who were within reach. Prince Boris was surprised and slain one night in his tent near the banks of the Alta, being, the Chronicles relate, engaged in prayer at the time of his murder. This circumstance procured for him the posthumous honour of sainthood, and he became a national fetish in the calendar of the Russian Church. His brother Glieb, decoyed from his principality of Mourom by a feigned message from his defunct father, was waylaid while travelling down the Dniepr and met the same doom—shared also in the attendant glory of subsequent canonisation. Sviatoslav, Prince of the Drevlian country, taking natural affright at Sviatopalk’s deeds, which seemed to foreshadow the extinction of the sons of Vladimir, fled towards Hungary; at the foot of the Karpathian Mountains, however, he was overtaken and killed by the Grand Prince’s men. From this scene of slaughter and violence there escaped a shivering fugitive, the Princess Predslava, a daughter of the luckless house of Vladimir, who made her way with all speed to Novgorod; there she found her brother Yaroslav red with the blood of his subjects, shed in cold vindictiveness rather than in hot quarrel. The hideous wrath and dole called forth by the doings of Sviatopalk mastered all other passions, and led the Prince to throw himself on the goodwill of his misused people; and the men of Novgorod, foregoing their private griefs, turned their rage and their weapons against the monster of Kiev. 1016A thousand Varangians and fourteen thousand Russians marched southward with Yaroslav against Sviatopalk, who on his part had got together a large force, including a troop of Petchenigs. A battle was fought on the Dniepr banks near Lubetch, which resulted in the overthrow of the usurper, who fled to Poland, leaving the throne of Kiev to his triumphant rival.
Yaroslav did not remain long time in peaceable possession. Boleslas “Khrabrie,” the warlike King of Poland, having by the Peace of Bautzen composed his outstanding differences with the Germanic Kaiser (Heinrich II.), burst into Russia at the head of a large army, defeated Yaroslav on the banks of the Bug, and reimposed his son-in-law upon the people of Kiev. The ousted prince withdrew to Novgorod, and but for the insistance of his subjects would have sought sanctuary, as his father had done under similar circumstances, in Skandinavian lands. The Novgorodskie, not wishing to be left to the wrath of Sviatopalk, kept their prince with them by the simple expedient of destroying all the boats available for his flight. Sviatopalk himself smoothed the way for a renewal of the strife on more equal terms. The Poles had been distributed in scattered winter quarters throughout the province of Kiev, and Boleslas himself had established his court in the city. Possibly the Russian Kniaz was impatient of the prolonged presence of the Poles in his lands, and deemed that heroic measures were needed to hasten their departure; anyhow he devised and carried out the plan of a general massacre of the unwelcome guests. Boleslas hastily left Kiev with the remnant of his men, bearing with him as much treasure as he could lay hands on, and retaining in his hold the Red Russian towns on his border. The departure of the Poles brought as a consequence the onfall of Yaroslav, and Sviatopalk was obliged to seek support among the Petchenigs before venturing to take the field against his cousin. 1019The two forces met near the banks of the Alta, and there was waged a fierce and stubborn battle, the like of which, wrote the Kievian chronicler, had never been seen in Russia. Towards evening Yaroslav’s men gained the victory, and Sviatopalk, half-dead with fatigue, delirious with fear, and unable to sit his horse, was borne litter-wise through the whispering night in wild flight across a wild country, hunted ever by phantom foemen, and moaning ever to his bearers piteous entreaty for added speed. The fugitive checked his spent course in the deserts of the Bohemian border, where he died miserably, and contemporary legend, recalling the circumstances of his birth, asserted that he was born for crime. In which case he fulfilled his purpose.
Yaroslav was now master of Kiev and Novgorod and Grand Prince of Russia, but the family arrangements of Vladimir’s many heirs had not yet adjusted themselves. From Isiaslav, Kniaz of Polotzk, sprang a line of turbulent princes who contributed a fair share to the domestic troubles of Russia during the next hundred years.18 Still more formidable for the time being was Mstislav, whose family portion was Tmoutorakan, a province bordering on the Black Sea. (1016)In conjunction with the Greek Imperial General Andronicus he had driven the Khazars from the Tauride and put a finishing touch to their existence as a European State. Other victories over the Tcherkess tribes in his neighbourhood swelled both his ideas and his resources, and he began to feel his remote steppe-girded province too small for him. In 1023, while Yaroslav was away in the Souzdal country, Mstislav burst with his warriors into the grand principality and seized upon Tchernigov in the Sieverski plain. The harassed Grand Prince fled to Novgorod—his usual city of refuge—and sent urgent messengers over the Baltic to call in the ever-ready Varangians to his aid. In response came a large force, led by one Hako (in the Russian Chronicle Yakun), who has come down to posterity as suffering from sore eyes and wearing a bandage over them broidered with gold—a human touch in the portrait of one of these half-mythical seeming vikings. The avenging army came into the Tchernigov land and met their foes on the banks of a small river, the two forces sighting one another just as night was falling and a nasty storm creeping upon them. As the storm broke over the Grand Prince’s host, accompanied by thunder peals and torrents of rain, out of the night there rushed in on them the war-men of the intrepid Mstislav, who rivalled with his wild battle-shock the tumult of the elements. In the darkness