Russian Classics Ultimate Collection: Novels, Short Stories, Plays, Folk Tales & Legends. Максим Горький

the early princes, and examine the drift and purpose underlying the chronicle of their doings. Frankly the result is not edifying. It is an unpleasant accusation to hurl against a people, but in these early centuries of their history they may be aptly likened to the “gray apes” portrayed by Kipling’s magic pen,—always setting out to do some great thing, never quite remembering what it was they had meant to do, holding fast to a thing one moment, letting it go the next, restless and ambitious, without any clear idea of what they desired, such is the character that must reluctantly be given them. These blind devotions to the Princes of the Blood, these aimless rebellions against their authority, these fervid worshippings of Mother-of-God and saints, these impious plunderings of cathedrals and monasteries, these kissings and swearings on the cross, these shameless breaking of oaths, these holy wars against the Polovtzi, these frequent military and matrimonial alliances with them, these sacrifices to keep in touch with the Greek Empire and the south, this abandoning of the south lands to Turko nomads and Italian merchants, these internal complications, revolutions, banishments, recalls, leagues, and counter-leagues, shifting as the sands of a river-bed, what do they bring to mind but a family of children squabbling and loving and squabbling again in ever-varying combinations, or, nearer still, the former simile, the gray apes. Other countries and peoples were, it is true, going through the same period of anarchy and disorder, but there was at least some method in their madness. In Italy, amid the wild chaos of republics, principalities, and imperial cities, there can plainly be discerned in the as yet scarcely named factions of Guelph and Ghibelline the Papal power seeking to extend itself on the one hand, and the Imperial interest striving to establish itself on the other, and a third party playing off one against the other for the attainment of its own independence. In Germany, Emperor, electors, prince-bishops, free cities, and the other constituents of the commonweal are balanced one against the other in an intricate but perfectly understandable whole, each working to a definite and rational end. In France and England king and barons fight out the old battle of monarchy against aristocracy, which is to be merged one day in a conflict with a newer force—if anything is new under the sun. But where is the aim or interest in these minutely-recorded Russian struggles? Hidden away in the forests of Souzdal, perhaps, lies the embryo or germ of a state policy, if it ever be hatched into life. Meanwhile Russia is losing ground, literally and metaphorically, in many directions. Southward, as has been noticed, a broad zone of steppe, inhabited by Turko tribes, shuts her off from the coast cities of the Black Sea, where the pushing Genoese have ensconced their factories. Galicia, with its population of White Kroats, is becoming less Russian every day. Lit’uania, no longer held under by the neighbouring provinces, threatens to expand at their expense. The Baltic lands are drifting into Teutonic and Catholic hands. Velikie Novgorod herself, absorbed in the details of parochial administration, has let her magnificent foreign trade slip into the grip of strangers. For Novgorod was not, as Howorth imagines, “a famous member of the Hanseatic League”; the League, now beginning to play an important part in the annals of Northern Europe, merely had a factory and station there, as it had at London and Lisbon, and this factory speedily monopolised the oversea trade of the great Russian emporium; “during three centuries the Hanseatic League concentrated in her own hands all the external commerce of Northern Russia.”37 Finally, on the eastern marches hovered the shadow of the late incursion, an incursion which might at any moment be repeated.

      While the war-clouds were lowering dark and ill-boding over the land, sank in the west that day-star of Russian chivalry, Mstislav Mstislavitch, more or less Prince of Galitz. 1228Brave as a boar in battle, in council he was about as intelligent; “nothing is sadder than victory, except defeat,” and with him certainly a success was almost as expensive as a reverse could have been. His brilliant achievements gained no advantage for his family or for Russia, and on his death Andrew, son of the Hungarian king of that name, stepped into the vacant sovereignty. This border province, with its involved political conditions, had a magnetic attraction for the more adventurous spirits among the Russian princes, and a candidate was ready to hand to dispute its possession in the person of Daniel Romanovitch of Volhynia. Just such another knight-errant as Mstislav, Daniel possessed more of the ability to seize the contested throne than the address to establish himself firmly on it. The son of an imperious and overbearing father, he had many enemies. Vladimir Rurikovitch of Kiev, for instance, had not forgotten that Roman had made his father assume the tonsure against his inclinations, and in pursuance of this bequeathed quarrel formed a league against Daniel, which included the Princes of Tchernigov and Pinsk, and of course the Polovtzi. By detaching Kotian, the celebrated Polovtzi Khan, from this confederation, Daniel was able to gain a complete victory over his enemies. Scarcely was this accomplished than he whirled away, as his father had done, into the troubled affairs of Poland, where he supported Duke Konrad of Mazovia against the party opposed to his regency, his murdered brother, Duke Lesko V., having left his son and heir, Boleslas V., in his charge. 1229Elate with the success which attended his arms in this direction, on his return he flung himself, with the hereditary eagle-swoop, on to the city of Galitz, which fell into his hands, together with the person of Prince Andrew. This advantage he threw away by permitting his valuable prisoner to retire to Hungary, whither had already fled Soudislav, one of the most active of the boyarins who favoured the Magyar dynasty. The reward of this clemency was a new attack on Galicia by the Hungarians, led by Prince Bela (afterwards Bela IV.) The elements were unpropitious; torrents and floods damaged and hindered the invading army, and contributed to its defeat, and the Hungarians recrossed the Karpathians in evil plight. The position of Daniel was, however, too precarious to withstand for long the resources of Hungary, the disaffection of his subjects, and the enmity of some of his brother princes. Foremost among the latter was his cousin and inveterate enemy, Aleksandr of Belz, who, having been implicated in a plot which miscarried, fled to Hungary and roused the king to a new attempt on this fair and coveted province. The boyarins, who saw themselves, doubtless, of more authority and importance as the courtiers of a foreign prince than under the personal rule of a vigorous Russian kniaz, deserted to the Hungarian standard, and the young Andrew became once more “King of Galicia.” His death in 1234 paved the way for the restoration of the Romanovitch, and the boyarins of the Magyar party had to seek safety beyond the mountains. Less concerned, however, in strengthening his hold upon this slippery fief than in carrying his arms into quarrels which did not concern him, Daniel rushed to the assistance of his late enemy, Vladimir of Kiev, who was embroiled in a war with Mikhail of Tchernigov. Daniel ravaged the latter province, but disaster overtook him and Vladimir in the shape of a defeat by a Polovtzi army, led by Isiaslav, grandson of the immortalised Igor of Severski—a strange combination. 1236Kiev and Galitz both fell into the hands of the victors, Mikhail establishing himself in the latter principality, while Isiaslav held Kiev. On the departure of the Polovtzi he was obliged to restore the city to Vladimir, who in turn ceded it to Yaroslav Vsevolodovitch, prince and sometime persecutor of the Novgorodskie; he, on leaving Novgorod, placed in his stead his son Aleksandr, afterwards celebrated as “Nevski.” Daniel flitted about the neighbouring lands like a restless ghost, seeking aid against the intruding Olgovitch, even in Hungary, where Bela had succeeded his father Andrew (1235), and where the exile could obtain nothing more than promises, which were scarcely likely to be fulfilled. Nor did he receive warmer support from Duke Konrad.

      In the north-west things were in a somewhat chaotic condition; the year 1236 was marked by a disaster to the Sword Brethren, in which Volquin von Winterstadt and a large proportion of his knights lost their lives, having ventured rashly into the Lit’uanian country, where they were surrounded by the enemy and cut to pieces. The following year the Order was amalgamated with that of the Teutonic Knights, who had established themselves in Prussia under the Grand-Mastership of Herman von Salza. This province had been formally presented to them by the Emperor Frederick II., by the Duke of Mazovia, and by Pope Gregory IX., finally by Pope Innocent IV., notwithstanding which, the inhabitants of this much-bestowed country offered a vigorous resistance to their new masters.

      Out of their fools’ paradise of fancied security on their eastern border the Russians were rudely aroused by the news that the Volga lands were being devastated by the Mongols, that Bolgar was in ashes, that the heads of the Tartar horses had been turned west, and that their hoofs were now scoring broad tracks through the forests towards Riazan. 1237On before them journeyed an eerie harbinger of ill, a woman (described in the Chronicles as a sorceress), with two attendants,