before an assembly of Kievan boyars (nobles) and citizens, to be sentenced as the enemy of their prince. To this arrangement the boyars replied with embarrassment: “Prince, thy tranquillity is ours, and it is dear to us. If Vasilko is thine enemy, he merits death; but if David has calumniated him, God will avenge upon David the blood of the innocent.” Sviatapolk hesitating to do violence to the youth, delivered him to his uncle, who wickedly burned out his eyes. The crime aroused the wrath of Monomakh, and of the other kinsmen of the victim. These formed an alliance, in which Sviatapolk was compelled to join, for the punishment of David, who fled first to the Poles, and later to the Hungarians, but was ultimately deprived of his principality.

Monomakh conducted successful wars against the Polovtsui, the Petchenegs, the Torki, the Tcherkessi, and other pagan nomads. In one engagement with the Polovtsui, seventeen of their chiefs were among the captured or the slain. One of the khans offered enormous ransom, but the prince refused the gold, and cut the khan in pieces. These khans were brigands, who subsisted on the booty obtained from the Russian merchants and travelers. Monomakh deeply felt these injuries to his Christian subjects, nor would he treat with princes who kindled civil wars. To the end of his days he remained “the guardian of the Russian lands.” In his reign, the Slavs were established in Suzdal, and founded there a city called in his honor, Vladimir; a city of renown in the subsequent history of the empire. The magnanimity of this prince was shown in his giving refuge to the remnant of the Kazarui.[C] In the construction of fortifications and other buildings, and in other industrial arts, these people were more skilled than their conquerors. They had also numbers of flourishing schools. In the seventh century their empire included the regions of the lower Dnieper, the Don, the lower Volga, the shores of the Caspian and Azof seas; an area of 765,000 square miles.

The commercial importance of this empire gave it high rank in Byzantium, Arabia, and other Mohammedan countries, these being the only civilized states of the world in that era.

The paper of instructions left by Monomakh, for his sons, indicates the moral superiority of this half-barbaric prince. As early as his day, monasticism had become a recognized element of the national life. But he wrote: “Neither solitude nor fasting, nor the monastic vocation will procure for you the life eternal. Well doing alone will help you in this world, and be put to your credit for the next. Do not bury your riches in the earth”—a custom still practiced in Russia—“for that is contrary to the precepts of Christianity. Judge yourselves the cause of widows, and extend a fatherly protection to orphans. Put to death no one, not even the guilty; for the most sacred thing our God has made is a Christian soul. . . . Strive continually to get knowledge; and when you have learned aught that is useful, put it away carefully in your memory. Without ever leaving his palace, my father Vsevolod spoke five languages. This ability to learn foreign tongues, foreigners admire in us. . . . I have made altogether twenty-three campaigns, without counting some lesser ones. With the Polovtsui I have concluded nineteen treaties of peace, have taken at least a hundred of their princes prisoners, and have restored them their liberty; besides more than two hundred whom I threw into the rivers. No one has traveled more rapidly than I. If I left Tchernigof early in the morning, I arrived at Kief before vespers.” The distance between the two cities is eighty miles. The Russians are rapid travelers to this day. “Sometimes amidst sombre forests I caught wild horses, tied them together, and subdued them. How often have I been thrown from the saddle by buffalos, thrust at by deer, trampled upon by elands! A furious boar once tore my sword from its belt. A bear threw my horse, and rent my saddle. In my youth how often did I narrowly escape death, when, thrown from my horse, I received many wounds! But the Lord watched over me.” Such was the Russian hero-prince of the eleventh century,—valiant, hardy, magnanimous, pious; a sovereign whose duty did not permit him to repose on rose leaves.

The regalia that, according to a tradition circulated by the tsars of Moscow, belonged to their illustrious Kievan ancestor, is still preserved in the museum of the former city. It consists of a “bonnet” or crown, and collar of Byzantine elegance; with them is a throne and a cornelian cup, the latter said to have belonged to the Roman emperor Augustus. According to the tradition, the whole were gifts from the Greek emperor to his Russian kinsman, sent by the Bishop of Ephesus, who, in solemn state, crowned Monomakh sovereign of all Russia. The legend is an invention for the interest of the Muscovite tsars, but the crown and collar are still used at the ceremony of coronation: the collar representing the burden imposed upon him whose “shoulders” receive the weight of government. The first manifesto of the present tsar alludes to this painful “perilous burden.”

CHAPTER VI.
IURI DOLGORUKI, AND ANDREI BOGOLIUBSKI, FOUNDERS OF SUZDAL.

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