On the 14th April 1212 came to an end the thirty-seven years’ reign of Vsevolod, the last days of which were clouded by a quarrel with his eldest son and natural heir, Konstantin. The latter, whether from statesmanlike motives or mere grasping ambition, refused to cede to his brother Urii the patrimony of Rostov designed for him, in consequence of which Vsevolod bequeathed to the injured younger son the succession to the grand principality of Vladimir-Souzdal, which would otherwise have been the share of Konstantin. Vsevolod, overweighted by the Russian chroniclers with the title of “Great,” shared in his youth the exile of his brothers on the accession of Andrei, and received his education amid Byzantine influences. In this connection it is interesting to note that the scheme of policy unfolded during his long reign bears some resemblance to that favoured by the Greek Emperors. Avoiding for the most part the employment of open force against Novgorod, he contrived, nevertheless, to be always to the fore in the affairs of the republic, in the aspect either of a bogey or a patron, in any case a factor to be reckoned with. Kiev he allowed to pass backwards and forwards from one hand to another, and in this way contributed to the decline of her importance and the consequent advancement of his own capital as the head-town of Russia. This pacific policy gave his Souzdalian subjects a measure of peace and tranquillity unknown to their brothers in the other provinces, but it permitted the dangerous aggrandisement of princes of lesser strength and more limited resources.
The Grand Prince’s Greek upbringing and possible Greek sympathies may have influenced the Russian hierarchy in the decision they were called upon to make during his reign between adherence to or desertion of the distressed Church of Constantinople. For evil times had fallen upon the Orthodox communion; since the eastern and western Christians had solemnly and bitterly quarrelled over the merits of the respective formulas “proceeding from the Father by the Son,” and “proceeding from the Father and the Son,”—the celebrated controversy of the Filioque,—the two Churches had drifted wider and wider apart, and the hatred existing between them found expression in the massacre of the Latin or Roman Catholic inhabitants of Constantinople in the year 1183, when young and old, sick and infirm of both sexes were indiscriminately slaughtered; when the head of the Pope’s Legate, severed from its legitimate body and tied to the tail of a dog, went bumping and thudding along the public streets to the accompaniment of hymns of praise and thanksgiving. Now (in the year 1204) it was the turn of the Latins to revenge themselves on the stronghold and headquarters of the rival religion; the French and Venetian Crusaders, turning aside from the pious object of their expedition, the rescue of the “Holy Land” from the infidels, had carried Constantinople by assault, replaced the fugitive Greek Emperor by a Latin prince, and sacked the Tzargrad with systematic thoroughness. The furniture and adornments of S. Sophia and other sacred buildings became spoil for the western soldiery, and the Lion of S. Mark waved triumphantly over the scene of pillage and desecration. Then did the head of the Roman Church, the splendid Lotario Conti (Innocent III.), beneath whose despotic sway chafed and trembled most of the princes of Christendom, follow up the triumph of the Latin arms by an attempt to draw the heretic Church of Russia into the Catholic fold. In a pastoral letter to the prelates and clergy of the Orthodox faith he pointed out the temporal ruin which had overtaken the heads of the schismatic religion, and invited the Russian Christians to attach themselves to the glories and benefits of Rome. The appeal fell on hostile ears, and the next Metropolitan was consecrated at Nicæa, where the dispossessed Emperor had established his court.
In other quarters the zeal and activity of the Roman Church brought her into contact with Russian “spheres of influence,” to use a modern term. 1201Albrecht, Bishop of the new Livlandish see of Riga, had instituted in that district the Order of the Warriors of Christ, or Sword Brethren, whose mission was to convert the pagan Livlanders by fire, and steel, and thong to the worship of Jesus, and teach them the lesson of peace on earth and goodwill towards men with which His name was associated. As the scope of their endeavours included a temporal as well as a spiritual ascendancy over the lands they were able to conquer, their arms soon clashed with those of Vladimir, Prince of Polotzk, who claimed the over-lordship of Livland. Reinforced by Danish warmen, sent to their assistance by King Waldemar at the instance of the Pope, the knights of the Order were able to hold their own against the Russian kniaz, and the Catholic Church scored another triumph in Europe to make up for her disappointments in Asia Minor.
Vsevolod left to his successors the heritage of a ready-made feud, in which the members of his family took different sides, some supporting Urii, who held Souzdal and Vladimir, others ranging themselves with Konstantin, who kept his grasp on Rostov. After a campaign in which neither side could obtain a decided advantage, the brothers agreed to divide the principality between them, Urii retaining the largest share, which included Vladimir, Souzdal, and Moskva. Another brother, Yaroslav, became in an unlucky hour the choice of the people of Novgorod. In course of time they quarrelled with him, as was their wont. Yaroslav shook the dust of the ungovernable city off his feet, and settled himself down at Torjhok to starve it into submission. Its imports of grain were systematically cut off, supplies of every kind were intercepted, and famine stalked through the streets of Novgorod. Want, in its most fearful form, the starvation of an entire populace, tamed the spirit of the proud citizens. Pine-bark and moss were chewed in place of the bread that could not be bought for money; the bodies of those who died of hunger lined the streets—the dogs at least were fed. What manner of man was this who sat gloating, vampire-like, over the misery of a province which he would neither govern nor renounce? Vainly embassies and petitions were sent by the stricken citizens, who tendered their submission and besought him to take up his rule over them; the spokesmen were cast into prison and the dearth continued. Then like a god from the blue appeared to the famishing and despairing Novgorodskie their erstwhile prince, Mstislav of Toropetz. The bitter cry of their extremity had reached him in Southern Russia and drawn him to their succour. After vainly attempting to bring Yaroslav to reason, Mstislav took up arms against him. The first-named prince could count on the support of Urii, but on the other hand Mstislav had engaged Konstantin on his side, so that the province of Souzdal was drawn, town against town, into this local quarrel. The armies of the two leagues, burning with resentment against each other, met on the plain of Lipetsk. 1216After a desperate battle the troops of Rostov, Smolensk, and Novgorod scored a decisive victory and hewed down their scattering foes during an April afternoon with the fierce joy that a triumph in civil warfare inspires. Over 9000 of the vanquished are stated to have fallen in the fight and subsequent slaughter. Four days later the inhabitants of Vladimir, consisting for the most part of women, children, monks, and priests, and men too old to have marched to the war, saw in the gray distance a single horseman making with weary speed for the city—a courier, they fondly imagined, sent to announce their Prince’s victory. The Prince (Urii) himself rode in through the startled crowd, the forlorn herald of the disaster which had overwhelmed his army. The depleted province was in no plight to withstand the victors, and the Grand Principality was practically at the disposal of the upstart Kniaz of Toropetz. Konstantin, by his decree, became Prince of Vladimir-Souzdal, naming Urii, however, to succeed him at his death. Mstislav returned in triumph to Novgorod, where he was hailed with acclamations by the citizens, to whom he had been a friend in need. It was a bitter irony of circumstance that almost the only prince for whom they had had a lasting affection could not find it well to stay with them. Perhaps he was fearful of outstaying his welcome, or wished to secure for himself a more assured possession than the government of the fickle republic, and the foreign encroachments which disturbed Russia on her western marches attracted his adventure-loving spirit to play the rescuer in that direction. In Livland, Volquin von Winterstadt, Grand Master of the Sword Order, was ever seeking to push forward his military outposts; the Lit’uanians, harassed by Catholics on one side and Orthodox neighbours on the other, were drawing closer together in self-defence, and becoming more formidable to Polotzk and Pskov, while Red Russia was a prey to Hungarian domination and Polish interference. It was by invitation of the latter power, in the person of Duke Lesko, that Mstislav undertook to drive the Hungarians out of Galicia, and in consequence bade an affectionate farewell to the people of Novgorod, the tomb of his father, and the Cathedral of S. Sofia.
While foreign war flamed lurid in the west, a peaceable restoration had been witnessed in the north-east, where Urii, on the death of his brother Konstantin (1219), had come into possession of the Grand Principality. In the north-west, again, important happenings were forcing themselves disagreeably on the notice of the border princes. Many causes contributed to complicate the struggle for mastery which was beginning to be waged in the pagan-inhabited lands at the mouth of the western Dvina and along the “Baltic gull-sought strand.” The institution of the Crusades and the erection of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem had aroused a spirit of religious and temporal colonisation and conquest, of which the seizure of Constantinople was a symptom, while on the other hand the comparative failure of the Asiatic expeditions and the recapture of Jerusalem by the Moslems had modified the crusading fervour and disinclined the champions of the Cross to seek adventures so far afield. Hence many Catholic princes and knights were glad to avail themselves of the Papal permission to divert their pious raids from the valley of the Jordan to the shores of the Baltic, a more convenient locality, where they might gain, in addition to their eternal salvation, welcome pieces of earthly territory. Danes, Swedes, the Sword Brothers, and later (in 1230) the Teutonic Order, fought indiscriminately with the native pagans, with the Russians, and with themselves for the advancement of the Catholic religion and of their own interests. Estland, Kourland, Livland, Lit’uania, and Prussia became happy hunting-grounds for these various adventurers and military companies, and the unfortunate inhabitants, confronted with an embarras du richesse in the way of spiritual guides, knew not which way to turn for safety. A Tchoud notable was hanged by the Danes for having received baptism from the Sword Order, and the Latin and Orthodox Christians systematically destroyed each other’s churches and settlements whenever they had the opportunity. Of the knights of the two Orders, however, it may be said that the cruelties and oppressions with which they sought to harry the heathen into their particular fold were in some measure condoned by the splendid bravery and devotion which they displayed in carrying out their self-imposed task. Moreover, it was to these northern crusaders that the Baltic provinces owed many of their most important towns: Riga was the creation of the Knights of Jesus; Thorn, Kulm, and Elbing marked the rise of the Teutonic Order; Revel sprang into existence under Danish auspices. It was during a combat in the neighbourhood of the latter town that the Danes received “from the clouds” the red flag blazoned with a white cross which has since remained their national standard—a mark of Divine favour which did not, however, cause the immediate withdrawal of their Christian competitors. The cruelties and dissensions of the invaders moved the inhabitants of Northern Livland to throw off the Catholic yoke and call the citizens of Novgorod to their assistance, propitiating them with a portion of the spoil they had wrested from the Germans and Skandinavians. Novgorod, by a curious revulsion of feeling, had, after a succession of princes of the house of Souzdal, elected the same Yaroslav who had treated her people with such heartless cruelty. Possibly, in the turn affairs were taking on their west, the Novgorodskie saw an opportunity for employing his malignant genius against their obnoxious enemies. But the warlike efforts of the men of Lake Ilmen and their Souzdalian prince were neutralised by the fact that the Germans, fighting behind the walls of their towns, were more skilled in the handling of the slings and stone-hurling engines, the rude artillery of the day; the old Russian proverb, “Who can resist God and Velikie Novgorod?” had to be modified in the face of such weapons of precision, and the Westerners remained masters of the greater part of the disputed territories.
Two hundred years of unending domestic strife, carving and shredding off into a crowd of incoherent provinces—Kiev, Tchernigov, Riazan, Souzdal, Smolensk, Polotzk, Novgorod, Pskov, Volhynia, Galitz, and others of less importance—had not fitted Russia to contend with the expanding powers of Catholic Christendom, or to show a solid front against the incursion of teeming Asiatic hordes on her east.
The Chronicles of Russian history at this period were wholly in the hands of the monks who wrote them around the deeds of the princes or of the luminaries of the Church; hence little can be gleaned from them of the social life and condition of the people, who existed therein solely for the purposes of supplying raw material for a massacre or a pestilence. The history of Novgorod is valuable as yielding occasional glimpses of the life-pulse that beat beneath the over-crust of court or cathedral annals, but this city was too impregnated with outside influences to furnish a faithful picture of the inward state of old-time Russia. Of the towns it may be broadly stated that they were yet little more in scope than walled villages; universities or seats of learning other than the monkish cloister there were none, and much of the trade was in the hands of foreign merchants. The wealthy boyarins had their houses and palaces clustered within the walls, and often possessed in addition other houses in the sloboda, or detached village, without, where there was more space available for gardens, etc. Freemen as well as slaves (the latter captured in war or bought) were in their service, but the abject poverty of the lower classes of freemen bound them in almost servile dependence on their masters. Even more grinding was the normal state of poverty in which the peasants eked out their livelihood, and the name smerd applied to them was one of contempt, something akin to our “rascallion.” For the most part the peasants tilled the soil for the landowners under a system which allowed them a half, or other fixed share, of the harvest produced, the freeman having this distinction from the kholop or bondman that he was able to move from one estate to another at will. Under these conditions of hand-to-mouth existence farm-craft remained at a very low ebb; with axe, scythe, and plough the peasant won precarious roothold for his crops, which might be blighted by an untimely frost-coming or damaged by a too-late thaw, leaving him to propitiate his appeal-court of saints by an involuntary emptiness of stomach. With cattle-stock, horses, and horned beasts, the Russian lands, of the north especially, were ill-provided, and possibly this was partly the outcome of the unsettled state of the country, which discouraged the multiplication of movable property, even the heaviest church bells being now and again swept off in the wake of some pilfering kniaz-raid.[34]