Chief among the sons of Monomakh were Iuri Dolgoruki, father of the
princes of Suzdal and of Moscow, and Mtsislaf, father of the princes
of Galitsch and Kief. The dissensions between kinsmen, that had been
allayed by the firmness of Monomakh, and by the congress of Lübetch,
broke forth anew upon the death of this guardian of Russian unity.
Uncles, nephews, brothers, after the fashion of royal families in
past times, fell upon one another with tooth and talon. Iuri, bent
on obtaining Kief, disturbed the repose of the hoary Viatcheslaf,
his elder brother, the grand prince. “I had a beard when thou was
brought forth,” remonstrated the old man, citing the national law. The
intractable Iuri obtained an ally in Vladimirko, prince of Galitsch, a
renegade member of the congress of Lübetch. When reproached for his
perfidy, this Vladimirko attested the light faith of his race, by his
retort: “It was such a little cross—the one we kissed when we took
oath.” After many years of contention, Iuri made his entrance into the
capital, and had the short-lived honor of being grand prince, but died
while a league was forming for his expulsion from the principality.
(1157.) Upon hearing of his death, one of the conspirators exclaimed,
“Great God, we thank thee for having spared us the obligation of
shedding the blood of an enemy, a kinsman!” The lineage and name of
Iuri have been preserved through eight centuries. The paramour of the
late Alexander II, and an official attached to the Russian embassy
in England are Dolgorukis, of the blood of Rurik. But the character
of their ancestor Iuri, is not one to be adduced with pride by his
descendants. In it lay the germs of that tenacious baseness, that
persistent, unscrupulous rapacity, that are still further developed in
the succeeding princes of his line.
The rivalry of the princes, together with the increasing power of
Suzdal, the remote northeastern division of Russia, were destined to
bring ruin to the ancient, magnificent capital of the realm. Andrei
Bogoliubski, son of Iuri Dolgoruki, and prince of Suzdal, assembled
an army composed of the men of his three cities, Rostof, Vladimir,
Suzdal, and descended upon Kief. The Russia of the Forests, remote from
Byzantine and from western civilization, had been silently developing
resources of strength and of wealth from within; and was ready, at
this time, to measure lances with the Russia of the Steppes, a region
ever exposed to the invasions of barbarians, and of rival princes who
were willing to take the barbarians into military service against
Russian kinsmen. In this state of affairs, the peaceful advance of
industrial civilization, or a firm system of government could no longer
be hoped for upon its soil. The northern Russians took the city by
assault. “Many times had she been besieged and brought to extremity,”
writes Karamsin. “She had opened her Golden Gate to her foes; but
till that day, none had ever forced it. To their shame, the victors
forgot that they, too, were Russians. For three days the grandson of
Vladimir Monomakh pillaged the mother of his own cities. The houses,
monasteries, churches, the Temple of the Tithe, the sacred Saint Sophia
were demolished. The precious images, the priestly vestments, the books
and the bells”—the latter especially dear to the Russian heart—“all
were despoiled or borne away by the ruthless soldiery of Suzdal.”
Thus dishonored (1169) fell the capital of Oleg, Iaroslaf, and Vladimir
the Baptist; and with her was obscured the _prestige_, the power and
glory of Southern Russia. The metropolis of the realm, in the course
of subsequent events, was transferred from the Dnieper to the Moskova.
The Russia of the Steppes, gorgeous with Byzantine art, illustrious
with the learning, the wisdom of the Orient, the fertile, beautiful
realm whose fame had reached the ends of the earth, was left a prey to
the hordes that swarmed along its river banks, and to the Olgovitchi
of Tchernigof, unrelenting foemen, though kinsmen of her princes. Her
ancient glory was departed. Nothing was left save the “warm soil,” the
genial airs and golden sun that in the former days had allured the
mighty Variags from the borean forests of the north.
Russia Slavonia was without a center. The old Slavic love of liberty
predominated again over the Variag compactness, the cohesion necessary
for the organization of a state, Tchernigof, Galitsch, Suzdal on
the frontier, and other principalities, maintained an independent
existence, and their civil contentions waiting apparently for the
coming of another Rurik, another Iaroslaf, another Monomakh who should
bind together the divided sections of the country, and reëstablish its
unity. Reëstablished it was in time, but with marked modifications; nor
were those who restored it the simple, strong-hearted men, the fathers
and heroes of the opening era of the national history.
In far off Suzdal appears a new type of prince. Unlike his gallant,
light-hearted ancestor of the happy south, swayed by conflicting
passions, frank, impulsive—the men of the new dynasty were ambitious,
subtle, intriguing. Mephistophelian in the power of their intellect,
the coldness of their affections, the inhuman absence of moral
qualities. Pitiless, unscrupulous, cruel, they attained their ends at
whatever frightful cost, at whatever sacrifice of justice. The same
type in Spain became its grand inquisitors. “Gloomy and terrible of
mien, they bore on their brows the stamp of destiny.” Patient under
ill-fortune, alert to profit by good, they could wait many years for
their opportunity, but they never abandoned a purpose once formed. Such
were the princes of Suzdal, founders of the dynasty of the Tzars of
Moscow.
Iuri Dolgoruki gave form and name to this dominion of the frontier
forests, but he spent most of his time and energy upon the conquest of
Kief. To his son, Andrei Bogoliubski, was left the care of developing
the incipient state, and of indicating in his own character and temper
the type of the future rulers of the Russias. Andrei, ill at ease in
the cities of the Dnieper, where the freedom of the citizens sometimes
conflicted with the will of the princes, withdrew from his palace at
Virishegorod and established himself upon the Kliasma, at Vladimir,
which he enlarged by a suburb, named from its princely builder,
Bogoliuboro. A successful campaign against the Russian Bulgarians,
a compulsory alliance of several of the minor princes under his
standards, and his destruction of Kief, caused him rightfully to be
regarded as the strongest, the foremost of all the princes. After the
violation of the mother of Russian cities, he turned his arms against
Novgorod the Great, capital of the glorious principality of that name,
the state that had chosen and called Rurik, the mighty republic of the
north. But the subjugation of this powerful city was another affair
from that of Kief. “The Kievans, accustomed to a change of masters,
fought only for the honor of their princes,” writes Karamsin, “while
the Novgorodians were to shed their blood in defense of the laws, the
institutions, the liberties founded for them by their ancestors.” When
Mstislaf Andreivitch, captain of the army that had pillaged “the holy
city” of Kief, appeared at the gates of the free city of Novgorod, the
inhabitants took oath to die for Saint Sophia, the citadel of their
faith and their freedom. Their Archbishop, Ivan, bearing aloft an
image of the Mother of God, moved at the head of a solemn procession
around the ramparts. Tradition tells us that the beloved Ikon, struck
by a Suzdalian arrow, turned her face toward her city, and moistened
the episcopal vestments with her tears. An ecstasy of rage seized the
freemen. A panic smote the besiegers. “Novgorod! Saint Sophia!” a sharp
cry rushed as in a whirlwind around the ramparts. The Suzdalians fell
as falls the flock of small birds beneath the swoop of the eagle. After
the victory, the markets of Novgorod were so crowded with Suzdalian
slaves that any number could be bought for a marten’s skin.
Yet in time, even the Novgorodians made terms with their powerful
subtle neighbor. Suzdal controlled the Volga, by whose waters came the
corn supplies for the great, free city. Its citizens, “of their own
free will,” according to the invariable phrasing of their documents,
agreed to accept for their prince one of Andrei’s choosing.
The princes of Smolensk had been forced into an alliance with the
autocratic Andrei, but chafed under his despotic rigors. The brother
princes, Rurik, David, and Mstislaf, disregarding his menaces,
possessed themselves of Kief, whither soon came a herald of Andrei,
with the message: “You are rebels. The principality of Kief is mine. I
order Rurik to return to his patrimony: David shall go to Berlad; and
as for Mstislaf, the guiltiest of you all, I will no longer endure his
presence in Russia.” Now the chronicles aver that Mstislaf the Brave
“had fear of no mortal being: he feared none but God.” He cropped the
hair and beard of the herald—a mark of ignominy—and bade him take to
Andrei this response: “Up to this time we have respected you as a
father; but since you do not blush to treat us shamefully, since you
forget that you have to deal with princes, we will pay no heed to your
menaces. Execute them if you can. We appeal to the judgment of God.”
Twenty vassals of Andrei were sent “to demonstrate the judgment of God”
under the walls of Virishegorod. Mstislaf ingeniously succeeded in
dividing the assailants, and by a sudden sortie put them to flight.
Andrei so far cast off the Slavic customs of his ancestors as to
decline sharing his domains with any of the members of his family,
although the testamentary provisions of his father, Iuri, had included
these. Iuri’s widow, a Greek princess, with her three remaining
sons, was compelled to leave Russia, and take refuge at the court
of her kinsmen, the Emperor Manuel. Nor did this first of Russian
autocrats adhere to the Variag custom of fellowship with his drujïna.
Properly speaking, he had none. His boyars were his subjects, bound
to accomplish his will, but never consulted. If they chafed under
their servitude, they were banished from the country. Nor did he
regard with greater favor the ancient municipal liberties of the
great cities; liberties time-honored, and dating back to the original
occupancy of the Slav race. The Vetché, or assembly of citizens, he
would in no way recognize. His violation of Kief, and his attack upon
Novgorod the Great, sufficiently indicated his hostility to their
liberal institutions. In like manner Rostof and Suzdal, the two chief
cities of his State, were obnoxious to him on account of their Vetché.
At the risk of alienating the more powerful of his boyars, he held
his residence in the suburb or town of his own founding, alleging a
divinely inspired dream and a miraculous interposition as directing
him to this spot. He essayed to develop a new Kief out of his city,
Vladimir on the Kliasma, by crowding it with monasteries, erecting a
golden gate, and a Church of the Tithe, decorated by Byzantine and
western artists. Recognizing the priesthood as a strong force in the
civilization of a nation, he conferred wealth and honors upon it, and
propitiated its favor. He made assumptions of unusual piety; practiced
ostentatious vigils, and gave large alms in public. Commemorative
feasts were established on the days of his more signal victories;
and strenuous efforts were made to procure the religious supremacy
of Suzdal, by instituting a Metropolitan at Vladimir. The Patriarch
of Constantinople would not consent to this act, but later the
Metropolitan for the Russia of the Forests was secured. The designs
of Andrei were vast and premature. Ten generations of princes, ruling
through four successive centuries, were required for their ultimate
accomplishment. He outlined in the twelfth century what was executed
in the sixteenth by Ivan the Fourth, the Terrible. Like the despots
who were to spring from his loins, he had implacable enemies; and he
was overtaken by the fate ever impending over the autocrats of the
Orient and of Russia. His boyars, exasperated beyond measure by his
iron tyranny, assassinated him in his favorite residence of Bogoliuboro
(1174).
[To be continued.]
* * * * *
When a thought presents itself to our minds as a profound discovery,
and when we take the trouble to examine it, we often find it to be a
truth that all the world knows.—_Vauvenargues.