The Empire of Russia: From the Remotest Periods to the Present Time. Abbott John Stevens Cabot
policy of the sovereign, or overawed by his power, cultivated the arts of peace. Constantin, however, was effeminate as well as peaceful. The tremendous energy of Mstislaf had shed some luster upon him, and thus, for a time, it was supposed that he possessed a share, no one knew how great, of that extraordinary vigor which had placed him on the throne. But now, Mstislaf was far away on bloody fields in Hungary, and the princes in the vicinity of Vladimir soon found that Constantin had no spirit to resent any of their encroachments. Enormous crimes were perpetrated with impunity. Princes were assassinated, and the murderers seized their castles and their scepters, while the imbecile Constantin, instead of avenging such outrages, contented himself with shedding tears, building churches, distributing alms, and kissing the relics of the saints, which had been sent to him from Constantinople. Thus he lived for several years, a superstitious, perhaps a pious man; but, so utterly devoid of energy, of enlightened views respecting his duty as a ruler, that the helpless were unprotected, and the wicked rioted unpunished in crime. He died in the year 1219 at the early age of thirty-three. Finding death approaching, he called his two sons to his bedside, and exhorted them to live in brotherly affection, to be the benefactors of widows and orphans, and especially to be the supporters of religion. The wife of Constantin, imbibing his spirit, immediately upon his death renounced the world, and retiring to the cloisters of a convent, immured herself in its glooms until she also rejoined her husband in the spirit land.
Georges II., son of Vsevelod, now ascended the throne. He signalized the commencement of his reign by a military excursion to oriental Bulgaria. Descending the Volga in barges to the mouth of the Kama, he invaded, with a well-disciplined army, the realm he wished to subjugate. The Russians approached the city of Ochel. It was strongly fortified with palisades and a double wall of wood. The assailants approached, led by a strong party with hatchets and torches. They were closely followed by archers and lancers to drive the defenders from the ramparts. The palisades were promptly cut down and set on fire. The flames spread to the wooden walls; and over the burning ruins the assailants rushed into the city. A high wind arose, and the whole city, whose buildings were constructed of wood only, soon blazed like a volcano. The wretched citizens had but to choose between the swords of the Russians and the fire. Many, in their despair, plunged their poignards into the bosoms of their wives and children, and then buried the dripping blade in their own hearts. Multitudes of the Russians, even, encircled by the flames in the narrow streets, miserably perished. In a few hours the city and nearly all of its male inhabitants were destroyed. Extensive regions of the country were then ravaged, and Bulgaria, as a conquered province, was considered as annexed to the Russian empire. Georges enriched with plunder and having extorted oaths of allegiance from most of the Bulgarian princes, reascended the Volga to Vladimir. As he was on his return he laid the foundations of a new city, Nijni Novgorod, at the confluence of two important streams about two hundred miles west of Moscow. The city remains to the present day.
It will be perceived through what slow and vacillating steps the Russian monarchy was established. In the earliest dawn of the kingdom, Yaroslaf divided Russia into five principalities. To his eldest son he gave the title of Grand Prince, constituting him, by his will, chief or monarch of the whole kingdom. His younger brothers were placed over the principalities, holding them as vassals of the grand prince at Kief, and transmitting the right of succession to their children. Ysiaslaf, and some of his descendants, men of great energy, succeeded in holding under more or less of restraint the turbulent princes, who were simply entitled princes, to distinguish them from the Grand Prince or monarch. These princes had under them innumerable vassal lords, who, differing in wealth and extent of dominions, governed, with despotic sway, the serfs or peasants subject to their power. No government could be more simple than this; and it was the necessary resultant of those stormy times.
But in process of time feeble grand princes reigned at Kief. The vassal princes, strengthening themselves in alliances with one another, or seeking aid from foreign semi-civilized nations, such as the Poles, the Danes, the Hungarians, often imposed laws upon their nominal sovereign, and not unfrequently drove him from the throne, and placed upon it a monarch of their own choice. Sviatopolk II. was driven to the humiliation of appearing to defend himself from accusation before the tribunal of his vassal princes. Monomaque and Mstislaf I., with imperial energy, brought all the vassal princes in subjection to their scepter, and reigned as monarchs. But their successors, not possessing like qualities, were unable to maintain the regal dignity; and gradually Kief sank into a provincial town, and the scepter was transferred to the principality of Souzdal.
André, of Souzdal, abolished the system of appanages, as it was called, in which the principalities were in entire subjection to the princes who reigned over them, these princes only rendering vassal service to the sovereign. He, in their stead, appointed governors over the distant provinces, who were his agents to execute his commands. This measure gave new energy and consolidation to the monarchy, and added incalculable strength to the regal arm. But the grand princes, who immediately succeeded André, had not efficiency to maintain this system, and the princes again regained their position of comparative independence. Indeed, they were undisputed sovereigns of their principalities, bound only to recognize the superior rank of the grand prince, and to aid him, when called upon, as allies.
In process of time the princes of the five great principalities, Pereiaslavle, Tchernigof, Kief, Novgorod and Smolensk, were subdivided, through the energies of warlike nobles, into minor appanages, or independent provinces, independent in every thing save feudal service, a service often feebly recognized and dimly defined. The sovereigns of the great provinces assumed the title of Grand Princes. The smaller sovereigns were simply called Princes. Under these princes were the petty lords or nobles. The spirit of all evil could not have devised a system better calculated to keep a nation incessantly embroiled in war. The princes of Novgorod claimed the right of choosing their grand prince. In all the other provinces the scepter was nominally hereditary. In point of fact, it was only hereditary when the one who ascended the throne had sufficient vigor of arm to beat back his assailing foes. For two hundred years, during nearly all of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, it is with difficulty we can discern any traces of the monarchy. The history of Russia during this period is but a history of interminable battles between the grand princes, and petty, yet most cruel and bloody, conflicts between the minor princes.
The doctrine of the hereditary descent of the governing power was the cause of nearly all these conflicts. A semi-idiot or a brutal ruffian was thus often found the ruler of millions of energetic men. War and bloodshed were, of course, the inevitable result. This absurdity was, perhaps, a necessary consequence of the ignorance and brutality of the times. But happy is that nation which is sufficiently enlightened to choose its own magistrates and to appreciate the sanctity of the ballot-box. The history of the United States thus far, with its elective administrations, is a marvel of tranquillity, prosperity and joy, as it is recorded amidst the bloody pages of this world's annals.
According to the ancient custom of Russia, the right of succession transferred the crown, not to the oldest son, but to the brother or the most aged member belonging to the family connections of the deceased prince. The energetic Monomaque violated this law by transferring the crown to his son, when, by custom, it should have passed to the prince of Tchernigof. Hence, for ages, there was implacable hatred between these two houses, and Russia was crimsoned with the blood of a hundred battle-fields.
Nearly all the commerce of Russia, at this time, was carried on between Kief and Constantinople by barges traversing the Dnieper and the Black Sea. These barges went strongly armed as a protection against the barbarians who crowded the banks of the river. The stream, being thus the great thoroughfare of commerce, received the popular name of The Road to Greece. The Russians exported rich furs in exchange for the cloths and spices of the East. As the Russian power extended toward the rising sun, the Volga and the Caspian Sea became the highways of a prosperous, though an interrupted, commerce. It makes the soul melancholy to reflect upon these long, long ages of rapine, destruction and woe. But for this, had man been true to himself, the whole of Russia might now have been almost a garden of Eden, with every marsh drained, every stream bridged, every field waving with luxuriance, every deformity changed into an object of beauty, with roads and canals intersecting every mile of its territory, with gorgeous cities embellishing the rivers' banks and the mountain sides, and cottages smiling upon every plain. Man has no foe to his happiness so virulent and deadly as his brother man.