A Short History of Russia

rule the land; and it was the Novgorodians who were their least submissive subjects. When one of the Grand Princes proposed to send his son, whom they did not want, to be their Prince, they repl

d like the Italian cities, its politics were swayed by economic interests. Those in trade with the East through the Volga desired a Prince from one of the great families about that Oriental artery in the Southeast; while those whose fortunes depended upon the Greeks

ose upon them a Prince they did not want, and no Prince strong enough to oppose the will of the people; every act of his requiring the sanction of their posadnik, a high official-and every decision subject to reversal by the Vetché, the popular as

onceived the idea of the modern undivided state. He removed his capital from the old town of Suzdal, which had its Vetché or popular assembly, to Vladimir, which had had none of these things, assigning as his reason, not that he intended to be sole master and free from all a

l the resistance of native Finns and Slavs, there was created, and authorized by the Pope, an order of knighthood, called the "Sword-Bearers," with the double purpose of driving back the Slavonic tide which threatened Germany and at the same time Christianizing it. These were the "Livonian Knights," who came from Saxony and Westphalia, armed cap-à-pie, with red crosses embroidered upon the shoulder of their white mantles. Then another order was created (1225), the "Teutonic Order," wearing black crosses on their shoulders, which, after fraternizing with the Livonian Knights, was going to absorb them-together with some other things-into their own more powerful organization. Russia had no armed warriors to

ry thus wrested from Russia became the German state of Prussia; and a future master of the Teutonic order, a Hohenzollern, was i

lly occurring in the life of a great nation. They were proud of their nationality, which had existed nearly as long as from Columbus to our own day. They gloried in their splendid background of great deeds and their long line of heroes reaching back to Rurik. Th

when its overwhelming humiliation suddenly came, a degra

-which it is evident the chronicler was not! The invaders were Mongols-that branch of the human family from which had come the Tatars and the Huns, already familiar to Russia. But these Mongols were the vanguard of a vast army which had streamed like a torrent through the heart of Asia, conquering as it came; gathering one after another the Asiatic kingdoms in

Cathay, descriptions of which fired the imagination of Europe, and awoke a consuming desire to get access to its fabulous ric

Mongols sent messengers saying: "We have no quarrel with you; we have come to destroy the accursed Polovtsui." The Princes replied by promptly putting the ambassadors all to death. This sealed the fate of R

was heard of the Mongols-but a comet blazing in the sky awoke vague fears. Suddenly an army

ver desperately defended, met the same fate. The Grand Principality was a ruin; its fourteen towns were burned, and when, in the absence of its Grand Prince, Vladimir the capital city fell, the Princesses and all the families of the nobles took refuge in the cathedral and perished in the general conflagration (1238). Two years later Kief also fell, with its white

her defense as to the defense of Spain from the Saracens. Not until Poland and Hungary were threatened and invaded did the Western Kingdoms give any sign of interest. Then the Pope, in alarm, appealed to the Christian states. Frederick II. o