CHAPTER VI
DESTRUCTION OF KIEF
Igor lived in captivity among the Polovtsi, but without hardship. His servants were left with him; he had his own equerry. He was even allowed to hunt. Men set to guard his tent showed the prince honor. One of those guards, Lavor, grew to love Igor greatly, and to serve him in Russia became finally his one thought, hence he planned an escape, which succeeded. During night hours the guard over Igor was strict; for whole days, and for weeks even, he was never from under the eye of some watcher. This was true especially in the first days of his captivity. He was least under guard after sunset, when, during supper, the Polovtsi drank their kumys and grew tipsy. On the night of escape, Lavor was waiting with horses beyond the river. When darkness came down, Igor rose in his tent, and after making the sign of the cross on himself with a small holy image, hanging this image and a cross around his neck, he pulled aside the tent curtain, stepped out and walked rapidly away to the river. The guards were drinking kumys, and thought the prince safe in his tent. Igor waded through the water and found Lavor on the other bank waiting with two horses.
Great rejoicing spread through Russia when news came of Igor’s return. He went first to Kief to visit Sviatoslav, and the aged prince, with tears of delight in his eyes, embraced him.
Igor’s young son, Vladimir, while in captivity with his father, fell in love with the Khan’s daughter and married her. “The Khans have entangled him with a beautiful girl,” was the saying, but he was ransomed and the marriage was celebrated with great solemnity in Russia. As war with the Polovtsi did not prevent Russian princes from being friendly and intermarrying, so also their connections did not prevent them from warring, as the princes [[134]]who became related with the Polovtsi through marriage often warred with them afterward. Hence Igor warred with the Polovtsi after this marriage, as well as before it.
The raids of the Polovtsi and the campaigns of Russian princes against them were so many that it would not be possible to describe them in detail. They were an incurable evil in Russia, and continued to be so till the Mongol invasion and conquest put an end to them.
While Kief, the mother of Russian cities, was declining, Galitch was forming a separate principality, and the influence of its western neighbors rose more and more. Hungarians and Poles, who had joined Latinized nations, could boast at this time that they formed in Eastern Europe the foremost advance of Latin influence, the remotest boundary of the Holy Roman-German Empire, beyond which was Russia. In the life of Poles and Hungarians, there were many traits in common. First came subjection of all the people by nobles, while the sovereign merely focused the splendor of nobles and magnates. The sovereign held office to preserve supreme privileges for nobles; beyond that he meant nothing to them, and for the people he had no meaning whatever. From the nobles came the laws, the disposition of wealth, the amount of taxation and its character. The income from lands and towns, and all the government of the country was in possession of the upper class solely, hence the amazing concentration of wealth in their hands. The nobles did as they pleased, while the people endured all that was put on them. Hungarians and Poles yielded themselves to the West in religion. Their learning was Western, and, for the greater part also, their vices. They imparted these vices to their neighbors of Galitch, where they found a place in the palace and brought about a great riot, which ended in the burning alive of Anastasia, the mistress of Eight Minds, whose legal wife had fled to seek an asylum with her brother Vsevolod, Prince of Vladimir, at that time generally called Big Nest. Later on riots were frequent, and the power of the boyars grew daily.
In 1187, the famous Yaroslav Eight Minds, feeling that death was near him, summoned his advisers and the clergy, and commanded them to open his palace to every one, to rich and poor, great and small, to all people, and he bade farewell to every person, saying: “Fathers, brothers, sons, forgive me as I go from this [[135]]world of vain effort. I have sinned more than any man. Another like me there has not been. Fathers and brothers, forgive me.” He wept for three days. Three days did the people come to see him from all sides. The dying man ordered his goods to be given to the needy and to monasteries. “I did what I could,” said he, “to defend those who were wronged, and to dispose taxes so that they should not be a burden to some beyond others. I tried not to listen to informers, and to drive off the evil-minded; some I exposed to the public, others I punished in private. I had many vices myself, I could not control all of them. I beg now forgiveness of every one.” Many poor people received gifts, and much wealth was distributed. “God sees,” continued Eight Minds, “that I wished for the good, but through weakness I could not obtain it.”
The intimate boyars and the older clergy surrounded the death-bed of Eight Minds; others were in remoter chambers, and the people filled every entrance. He disposed of the principality to his sons in this fashion: “To Oleg,” said he, “I bequeath Galitch; to Vladimir, I give Peremysl,” and he commanded the people to take oath to the princes in that sense. Oleg was the son of Anastasia, his mistress, and was dear to him.
Soon after Eight Minds’ death came boundless confusion in Galitch. Among common people intense hatred of Anastasia was general, and all the boyars detested Oleg, her son. There was such a variety of factions that an armed outbreak seemed likely. Though some had kissed the cross to Oleg, they favored Vladimir; others wished neither son and were ready to call in Roman, son of Mystislav, Prince of Volynia. A third group would hear nothing of either son, or of Roman, but declared openly for Hungary.