the day which was kept as the anniversary of the god, for the young
people to run about with sticks in their hands, striking one another
unawares.
As for the Russians in general, they discarded their old worship as
easily as the prince had thrown overboard their idols. One day a
proclamation was issued at Kief, commanding all the people to repair to
the river-bank the next day, there to be baptized. They assented without
a murmur, saying, "If it were not good to be baptized, the prince and
the boyars would never submit to it."
These were not the only signs of Vladimir's zeal. He built churches, he
gave alms freely, he set out public repasts in imitation of the
love-feasts of the early Christians. His piety went so far that he even
forbore to shed the blood of criminals or of the enemies of his country.
But horror of bloodshed did not lie long on Vladimir's conscience. In
his later life he had wars in plenty, and the blood of his enemies was
shed as freely as water. These wars were largely against the
Petchenegans, the most powerful of his foes. And in connection with them
there is a story extant which has its parallel in the history of many
another country.
It seems that in one of their campaigns the two armies came face to face
on the opposite sides of a small stream. The prince of the Petchenegans
now proposed to Vladimir to settle their quarrel by single combat and
thus spare the lives of their people. The side whose champion was
vanquished should bind itself to a peace lasting for three years.
Vladimir was loath to consent, as he felt sure that his opponents had
ready a champion of mighty power. He felt forced in honor to accept the
challenge, but asked for delay that he might select a worthy champion.
Whom to select he knew not. No soldier of superior strength and skill
presented himself. Uneasiness and agitation filled his mind. But at this
critical interval an old man, who served in the army with four of his
sons, came to him, saying that he had at home a fifth son of
extraordinary strength, whom he would offer as champion.
The young man was sent for in great haste. On his arrival, to test his
powers, a bull was sent against him which had been goaded into fury with
hot irons. The young giant stopped the raging brute, knocked him down,
and tore off great handfuls of his skin and flesh. Hope came to
Vladimir's soul on witnessing this wonderful feat.
The day arrived. The champions advanced between the camps. The
Petchenegan warrior laughed in scorn on seeing his beardless antagonist.
But when they came to blows he found himself seized and crushed as in a
vice in the arms of his boyish foe, and was flung, a lifeless body, to
the earth. On seeing this the Petchenegans fled in dismay, while the
Russians, forgetting their pledge, pursued and slaughtered them without
mercy.
Vladimir at length (1015 A.D.) came to his end. His son Yaroslaf, whom
he had made ruler of Novgorod, had refused to pay tribute, and the old
prince, forced to march against his rebel son, died of grief on the way.
With all his faults, Vladimir deserved the title of Great which his
country has given him. He put down the turbulent tribes, planted
colonies in the desert, built towns, and embellished his cities with
churches, palaces, and other buildings, for which workmen were brought
from Greece. Russia grew rapidly under his rule. He established schools
which the sons of the nobles were made to attend. And though he was but
a poor pattern for a saint, he had the merit of finding Russia pagan and
leaving it Christian.
[Illustration: CATHEDRAL AT OSTANKINO, NEAR MOSCOW.]
_THE LAWGIVER OF RUSSIA._
The Russia of the year 1000 lay deep in the age of barbarism. Vladimir
had made it Christian in name, but it was far from Christian in thought
or deed. It was a land without fixed laws, without settled government,
without schools, without civilized customs, but with abundance of
ignorance, cruelty, and superstition.
It was strangely made up. In the north lay the great commercial city of
Novgorod, which, though governed by princes of the house of Rurik, was a
republic in form and in fact. It possessed its popular assembly, of
which every citizen was a member with full right to vote, and at whose
meetings the prince was not permitted to appear. The sound of a famous
bell, the Vetchevoy, called the people together, to decide on questions
of peace and war, or to elect magistrates, and sometimes the bishop, or
even the prince. The prince had to swear to carry out the ancient laws
of the republic and not attempt to lay taxes on the citizens or to
interfere with their trade. They made him gifts, but paid him no taxes.
They decided how many hours he should give to pleasure and how many to
business; and they expelled some of their princes who thought themselves
beyond the power of the laws.
It seems strange that the absolute Russia of to-day should then have
possessed one of the freest of the cities of Europe. Novgorod was not
only a city, it was a state. The provinces far and wide around were
subject to it, and governed by its prince, who had in them an authority
much greater than he possessed over the proud civic merchants and money
lords.
In the south, on the contrary, lay the great imperial city of Kief, the
capital of the realm, and the seat of a government as arbitrary as that
of Novgorod was free. Here dwelt the grand prince as an irresponsible
autocrat, making his will the law, and forcing all the provinces, even
haughty Novgorod, to pay a tax which bore the slavish title of tribute.
Here none could vote, no assembly of citizens ever met, and the only
restraint on the prince was that of his warlike and turbulent nobles,
who often forced him to yield to their wishes. The government was a
drifting rather than a settled one. It had no anchors out, but was moved
about at the whim of the prince and his unruly lords.
Under these two forms of government lay still a third. Rural Russia was
organized on a democratic principle which still prevails throughout that
broad land. This is the principle of the Mir, or village community,
which most of the people of the earth once possessed, but which has
everywhere passed away except in Russia and India. It is the principle
of the commune, of public instead of private property. The land of a
Russian village belongs to the people as a whole, not to individuals. It
is divided up among them for tillage, but no man can claim the fields
he tills as his own, and for thousands of years what is known as
communism has prevailed on Russian soil.
The government of the village is purely democratic. All the people meet
and vote for their village magistrate, who decides, with the aid of a
council of the elders, all the questions which arise within its
confines, one of them being the division of the land. Thus at bottom
Russia is a field sown thick with little communistic republics, though
at top it is a despotism. The government of Novgorod doubtless grew out
of that of the village. The republican city has long since passed away,
but the seed of democracy remains planted deeply in the village
community.
All this is preliminary to the story of the Russian lawgiver and his
laws, which we have set out to tell. This famous person was no other
than that Yaroslaf, prince of Novgorod, and son of Vladimir the Great,
whose refusal to pay tribute had caused his father to die of grief.
Yaroslaf was the fifth able ruler of the dynasty of Rurik. The story of
his young life resembles that of his father. He found his brother strong
and threatening, and designed to fly from Novgorod and join the
Varangians as a viking lord, as his father had done before him. But the
Novgorodians proved his friends, destroyed the ships that were to carry
him away, and provided him with money to raise a new army. With this he
defeated his base brother, who had already killed or driven into exile
all their other brothers. The result was that Yaroslof, like his father,
became sovereign of all Russia.
But though this new grand prince extended his dominions by the sword,
it was not as a soldier, but as a legislator, that he won fame. His
genius was not shown on the field of battle, but in the legislative
council, and Russia reveres Yaroslaf the Wise as its first maker of
laws.
The free institutions of Novgorod, of which we have spoken, were by him
sustained and strengthened. Many new cities were founded under his
beneficent rule. Schools were widely established, in one of which three
hundred of the youth of Novgorod were educated. A throng of Greek
priests were invited into the land, since there were none of Russian
birth to whom he could confide the duty of teaching the young. He gave
toleration to the idolaters who still existed, and when the people of
Suzdal were about to massacre some hapless women whom they accused of
having brought on a famine by sorcery, he stayed their hands and saved
the poor victims from death. The Russian Church owed its first national
foundation to him, for he declared that the bishops of the land should
no longer depend for appointment on the Patriarch of Constantinople.
There are no startling or dramatic stories to be told about Yaroslaf.
The heroes of peace are not the men who make the world's dramas. But it
is pleasant, after a season spent with princes who lived for war and
revenge, and who even made war to obtain baptism, to rest awhile under
the green boughs and beside the pleasant waters of a reign that became
famous for the triumphs of peace.
Under Yaroslaf Russia united itself by ties of blood to Western Europe.
His sons married Greek, German, and English princesses; his sister
became queen of Poland; his three daughters were queens of Norway,
Hungary, and France. Scandinavian in origin, the dynasty of Rurik was
reaching out hands of brotherhood towards its kinsmen in the West.
But it is as a law-maker that Yaroslaf is chiefly known. Before his time
the empire had no fixed code of laws. To say that it was without law
would not be correct. Every people, however ignorant, has its laws of
custom, unwritten edicts, the birth of the ages, which have grown up
stage by stage, and which are only slowly outgrown as the tribe develops
into the nation.
Russia had, besides Novgorod, other commercial cities, with republican
institutions. Kief was certainly not without law. And the many tribes of
hunters, shepherds, and farmers must have had their legal customs. But
with all this there was no code for the empire, no body of written laws.
The first of these was prepared about 1018 by Yaroslaf, for Novgorod
alone, but in time became the law of all the land. This early code of
Russian law is a remarkable one, and goes farther than history at large
in teaching us the degree of civilization of Russia at that date.
In connection with it the chronicles tell a curious story. In 1018, we
are told, Novgorod, having grown weary of the insults and oppression of
its Varangian lords and warriors, killed them all. Angry at this,
Yaroslaf enticed the leading Novgorodians into his palace and
slaughtered them in reprisal. But at this critical interval, when his
guards were slain and his subjects in rebellion, he found himself
threatened by his ambitious brother. In despair he turned to the
Novgorodians and begged with tears for pardon and assistance. They
forgave and aided him, and by their help made him sovereign of the
empire.
How far this is true it is impossible to say, but the code of Yaroslaf
was promulgated at that date, and the rights given to Novgorod showed
that its people held the reins of power. It confirmed the city in the
ancient liberties of which we have already spoken, giving it a freedom
which no other city of its time surpassed. And it laid down a series of
laws for the people at large which seem very curious in this enlightened
age. It must suffice to give the leading features of this ancient code.
It began by sustaining the right of private vengeance. The law was for
the weak alone, the strong being left to avenge their own wrongs. The
punishment of crime was provided for by judicial combats, which the law
did not even regulate. Every strong man was a law unto himself.
Where no avengers of crime appeared, murder was to be settled by fines.
For the murder of a boyar eighty grivnas were to be paid, and forty for
the murder of a free Russian, but only half as much if the victim was a
woman. Here we have a standard of value for the women of that age.
Nothing was paid into the treasury for the murder of a slave, but his
master had to be paid his value, unless he had been slain for insulting
a freeman. His value was reckoned according to his occupation, and
ranged from twelve to five grivnas.
If it be asked what was the value of a grivna, it may be said that at
that time there was little coined money, perhaps none at all, in Russia.
Gold and silver were circulated by weight, and the common currency was
composed of pieces of skin, called _kuni_. A grivna was a certain number
of kunis equal in value to half a pound of silver, but the kuni often
varied in value.
All prisoners of war and all persons bought from foreigners were
condemned to perpetual slavery. Others became slaves for limited
periods,--freemen who married slaves, insolvent debtors, servants out of
employment, and various other classes. As the legal interest of money
was forty per cent., the enslavement of debtors must have been very
common, and Russia was even then largely a land of slaves.
The loss of a limb was fined almost as severely as that of a life. To
pluck out part of the beard cost four times as much as to cut off a
finger, and insults in general were fined four times as heavily as
wounds. Horse-stealing was punished by slavery. In discovering the
guilty the ordeals of red-hot iron and boiling water were in use, as in
the countries of the West.
There were three classes in the nation,--slaves, freemen, and boyars, or
nobles, the last being probably the descendants of Rurik's warriors. The
prince was the heir of all citizens who died without male children,
except of boyars and the officers of his guard.
These laws, which were little more primitive than those of Western
Europe at the same period, seem never to have imposed corporal
punishment for crime. Injury was made good by cash, except in the case
of the combat. The fines went to the lord or prince, and were one of his
means of support, the other being tribute from his estates. No provision
for taxation was made. The mark of dependence on the prince was military
service, the lord, as in the feudal West, being obliged to provide his
own arms, provisions, and mounted followers.
Judges there were, who travelled on circuits, and who impanelled twelve
respectable jurors, sworn to give just verdicts. There are several laws
extending protection to property, fixed and movable, which seem
specially framed for the merchants of Novgorod.
Such are the leading features of the code of Yaroslaf. The franchises
granted the Novgorodians, which for four centuries gave them the right
to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," form part of it. Crude
as are many of its provisions, it forms a vital starting-point, that in
which Russia first came under definite in place of indefinite law. And
the bringing about of this important change is the glory of Yaroslaf the
Wise.
_THE YOKE OF THE TARTARS._
In Asia, the greatest continent of the earth, lies its most extensive
plain, the vast plateau of Mongolia, whose true boundaries are the
mountains of Siberia and the Himalayan highlands, the Pacific Ocean and
the hills of Eastern Europe, and of which the great plain of Russia is
but an outlying section. This mighty plateau, largely a desert, is the
home of the nomad shepherd and warrior, the nesting-place of the
emigrant invader. From these broad levels in the past horde after horde
of savage horsemen rode over Europe and Asia,--the frightful Huns, the
devastating Turks, the desolating Mongols. It is with the last that we
are here concerned, for Russia fell beneath their arms, and was held for
two centuries as a captive realm.
The nomads are born warriors. They live on horseback; the care of their
great herds teaches them military discipline; they are always in motion,
have no cities to defend, no homes to abandon, no crops to harvest.
Their home is a camp; when they move it moves with them; their food is
on the hoof and accompanies them on the march; they can go hungry for a
week and then eat like cormorants; their tools are weapons, always in
hand, always ready to use; a dozen times they have burst like a
devouring torrent from their desert and overwhelmed the South and West.
While the Turks were still engaged in their work of conquest, the
Mongols arose, and under the formidable Genghis Khan swept over Southern
Asia like a tornado, leaving death and desolation in their track. The
conqueror died in 1227,--for death is a foe that vanquishes even the
greatest of warriors,--and was succeeded by his son Octoi, as Great Khan
of the Mongols and Tartars. In 1235, Batou, nephew of the khan, was sent
with an army of half a million men to the conquest of Europe.
This flood of barbarians fell upon Russia at an unfortunate time, one of
anarchy and civil war, when the whole nation was rent and torn and there
were almost as many sovereigns as there were cities. The system of
giving a separate dominion to every son of a grand prince had ruined
Russia. These small potentates were constantly at war, confusion reigned
supreme, Kief was taken and degraded and a new capital, Vladimir,
established, and Moscow, which was to become the fourth capital of
Russia, was founded. Such was the state of affairs when Batou, with his
vast horde of savage horsemen, fell on the distracted realm.
Defence was almost hopeless. Russia had no government, no army, no
imperial organization. Each city stood for itself, with great widths of
open country around. Over these broad spaces the invaders swept like an
avalanche, finding cultivated fields before them, leaving a desert
behind. They swam the Don, the Volga, and the other great rivers on
their horses, or crossed them on the ice. Leathern boats brought over
their wagons and artillery. They spread from Livonia to the Black Sea,
poured into the kingdoms of the West, and would have overrun all Europe
but for the vigorous resistance of the knighthood of Germany.
The cities of Russia made an obstinate defence, but one after another
they fell. Some saved themselves by surrender. Most of them were taken
by assault and destroyed. City after city was reduced to ashes, none of
the inhabitants being left to deplore their fall. The nomads had no use
for cities. Walls were their enemies: pasturage was all they cared for.
The conversion of a country into a desert was to them a gain rather than
a loss, for grass will grow in the desert, and grass to feed their
horses and herds was what they most desired.
So far as the warriors of Mongolia were concerned, their conquests left
them no better off. They still had to tend and feed their herds, and
they could have done that as well in their native land. But the leaders
had the lust of dominion, their followers the blood-fury, and inspired
by these feelings they ravaged the world.
One thing alone saved Russia from being peopled by Tartars,--its
climate. This was not to their liking, and they preferred to dwell in
lands better suited to their tastes and habits. The great Tartar empire
of Kaptchak, or the Golden Horde, was founded on the eastern frontier;
other khanates were founded in the south; but the Russian princes were
left to rule in the remainder of the land, under tribute to the khans,
to whom they were forced to do homage. In truth, these Tartar chiefs
made themselves lords paramount of the Russian realm, and no prince,
great or small, could assume the government of his state until he had
journeyed to Central Mongolia to beg permission to rule from the khan of
the Great Horde.
The subjection of the princes was that of slaves. A century afterward
they were obliged to spread a carpet of sable fur under the hoofs of the
steed of the khan's envoy, to prostrate themselves at his feet and learn
his mission on their knees, and not only to present a cup of koumiss to
the barbarian, but even to lick from the neck of his horse the drops of
the beverage which he might let fall in drinking. More shameful
subjection it would be difficult to describe.
Several princes who proved insubordinate were summoned to the camp of
the Horde and there tried and executed. Rivals sought the khan, to buy
power by presents. During their journeys, which occupied a year or more,
the Tartar bashaks ruled their dominions. Tartar armies aided the
princes in their civil wars, and helped these ambitious lords to keep
their country in a state of subjection.
Fortunately for Russia, the great empire of the Mongols gradually fell
to pieces of its own weight. The Kaptchak, or Golden Horde, broke loose
from the Great Horde, and Russia had a smaller power to deal with. The
Golden Horde itself broke into two parts. And among the many princes of
Russia a grand prince was still acknowledged, with right by title to
dominion over the entire realm.
One of these grand princes, Alexander by name, son of the grand prince
of Vladimir, proved a great warrior and statesman and gained the power
as well as the title. Prince of Novgorod by inheritance, he defeated all
his enemies, drove the Germans from Russia, and recovered the Neva from
the Swedes, which feat of arms gained him the title of Alexander Nevsky.
The Tartars were too powerful to be attacked, so he managed to gain
their good will. The khan became his friend, and when trouble arose with
Kief and Vladimir their princes were dethroned and these principalities
given to the shrewd grand prince.
Russia seemed to be rehabilitated. Alexander was lord of its three
capitals, Novgorod, Kief, and Vladimir, and grand prince of the realm.
But the Russians were not content to submit either to his authority or
to the yoke of the Tartars. His whole life was spent in battle with
them, or in journeys to the tent of the khan to beg forgiveness for
their insults.
The climax came when the Tartar collectors of tribute were massacred in
some cities and ignominiously driven out of others. When these acts
became known at the Horde the angry khan sent orders for the grand
prince and all other Russian princes to appear before him and to bring
all their troops. He said that he was about to make a campaign, and
needed the aid of the Russians.
This story Alexander did not believe. He plainly perceived that the wily
Tartar wished to deprive Russia of all its armed men, that he might the
more easily reduce it again to subjection. Rather than see his country
ruined, the patriotic prince determined to disobey, and to offer himself
as a victim by seeking alone the camp of Usbek, the great khan, a
mission of infinite danger.
He hoped that his submission might save Russia from ruin, though he knew
that death lay on his path. He found Usbek bitterly bent on war, and for
a whole year was kept in the camp of the Horde, seeking to appease the
wrath of the barbarian. In the end he succeeded, the khan promising to
forgive the Russians and desist from the intended war, and in the year
1262 Alexander started for home again.
He had seemingly escaped, but not in reality. He had not journeyed far
before he suddenly died. To all appearance, poison had been mingled with
his food before he left the camp of the khan. Alexander had become too
great and powerful at home for the designs of the conquerors. He died
the victim of his love of country. His people have recognized his virtue
by making him a saint. He had not labored in vain. In his hands the
grand princeship had been restored, Vladimir had become supreme, and a
centre had been established around which the Russians might rally. But
for a century and more still they were to remain subject to the Tartar
yoke.
_THE VICTORY OF THE DON._