CHAPTER V “THE YEARS THAT THE LOCUST HATH EATEN”
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.
1240
Aleksandr 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.
1248
His 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.
1259
But 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.
1264
Having 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.”
1265
This 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 tisyaszhnik[50] 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.
1270
The 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.
1283
Andrei 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.
1294
On 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.
1296
The 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 Vladuika[54] Simeon, Bishop of Vladimir, parted the combatants, the blood of Rurik might have been squandered on t