Mystislav of Chernigoff had one son, who died in 1032. He himself died in 1035, while out hunting.
Sudislav, Yaroslav’s youngest brother, ruled in Pskoff and did nothing to win more dominion. But in 1035, Yaroslav put him [[22]]in prison and kept him there. The chronicler states that men calumniated Sudislav, asserting that he was dissatisfied at not receiving a share in the lands of his dead brothers. The nephew, Bryacheslav of Polotsk, was more fortunate; he made himself unendurable, nay, dangerous, and, in view of this, Yaroslav added to Polotsk the two cities of Vitebsk and Usvyat.
While ruling in Novgorod, Yaroslav had struggled against tribute to Kief. Now, as Grand Prince, he gave that city a charter of freedom from tribute, and sent there as prince Vladimir, his eldest son. When Vladimir died, some two years later, he sent Izyaslav, another son. Because of these sons, Yaroslav quarreled with Kosnyatin, his grand-uncle, son of Dobrinya. We have seen how Dobrinya, the uncle of Vladimir, had made this son of Malusha, his sister, prince in Novgorod, and somewhat later Grand Prince of Russia.
Kosnyatin was a man of distinction in Novgorod, who fought devotedly for Yaroslav during his struggles with Sviatopolk. Kosnyatin was now imprisoned by Yaroslav, who put him to death two years later. The cause of this seemingly ungrateful treatment is not known, but doubtless Kosnyatin, demanding too much for himself and for Novgorod, opposed the prince as energetically as he had formerly fought for him. In other words, he encroached on the sovereignty of Yaroslav, and his actions became of the kind which rulers of states treat as criminal, and which they meet with one answer at all times and places,—that answer is permanent removal.
Yaroslav the Lawgiver, the man who completed the foundation of the ancient Russian state, ascended the throne in 1016 and ruled for thirty-eight years. This was the most prosperous period of ancient Russia. The hordes of the steppes were kept in subjection, and about one third of Finland added to Russia, who thus held both sides of the water highway on the north. But Yaroslav’s claims to the title of a great ruler rest on another basis. He was a legislator, an administrator, a founder of cities. He framed the first code of laws, the famous Russkaya Pravda, or Russian Right; he carried on the most orderly government known till that day. In the restoration of boundaries and in internal improvements his activity was not less important. He recovered Galitch, which Boleslav of Poland had seized on his way home from his [[23]]campaign with Sviatopolk the Accursed. He founded many towns and cities, two of which are well known in our time, Yaroslavl on the Volga, and Yurieff, now Dorpat. Wishing Kief to rival Tsargrad, he spent much of the revenue exacted from tributary peoples in adorning his capital. He established the first school in the north, at Novgorod, a school for three hundred students. He concluded more alliances and maintained a more extended intercourse with European sovereigns than any prince of ancient Russia. His later wars were mostly with the Petchenegs, those robbers of the steppe who had made a drinking-cup of his grandfather’s skull, and he at last succeeded in crushing them so completely that they never again took up arms against him, and even their name finally disappeared. All his children were from one mother, Ingigerd of Sweden. One of his daughters married King Andrew of Hungary; another became the wife of Harold Hardrada, King of Norway; a third, Anna, married Henry I of France and took with her the beautiful missal afterwards used in the Cathedral of Rheims at the coronation of the French kings. When Peter the Great visited that city in 1717, the missal was shown him as of the rarest antiquity, no one even knowing the language in which it was written. To the astonishment of all present, the Emperor exclaimed: “Why, this is my own Slavonic,” and he began to read in a loud voice. This missal, a masterpiece of penmanship, and one of the most ancient specimens of Slavonic writing, was copied no doubt under the supervision of Yaroslav himself.
Yaroslav died in 1054. He was not such a favorite with the multitude as his father, Vladimir, had been. He was more austere in character, a subtle-brained ruler of men, wise and far-seeing, but unbending, better fitted to inspire respect than love. The chronicler says of him: “Yaroslav was in his place. He was lame, but his mind was not halt. He was brave in war, he was a Christian, and read books.” He built many churches, among them Saint Sophia, the admiration of Kief, and Saint Sophia of Novgorod, a precious monument of ancient Russia.
Yaroslav, knowing well the evils of civil war, arranged the succession as follows. The eldest son was to rule at Kief, with the title of Grand Prince; the other sons were to have each a principality, proportioned in accordance to his age. On the death of the Prince of Kief, he was to be succeeded by his next brother, who, [[24]]on his decease, would be followed by the next to him, and so on to the youngest, whose heir was the eldest son of the eldest brother, or first Prince of Kief. In the second generation, the succession was to continue as in the first. This system was evidently copied from that of the Slavonic households, where it might operate well enough, because a younger brother held no position during the life of the elder. But in the ruling family each member governed a certain territory, and when the Prince of Kief died, there was a change all around, each ruler moving a step higher in the scale. The result was continual shifting, disorder, and civil war.
Yaroslav left five sons, and a number of grandsons, whose fathers were dead. To the sons he gave principalities; to the grandsons he left nothing; they must depend upon the kindness of their uncles; they were really excluded from sovereignty, and became in fact common people.
Before death Yaroslav enjoined mutual love on all his sons, and on the younger obedience to Izyaslav, the eldest, who would be to them in the place of a father. To Izyaslav he gave Kief, saying to him: “If any of thy brothers offend another, do thou protect the offended man.”
Besides Kief, Izyaslav was prince also in Novgorod, hence the road from the Baltic to the Greeks was at his command.