The Rise of the Russian Empire

by Saki

The return of the exile Andrei, restored to his principality and to the favour of the Khan, was a disagreeable interlude in the harmony of Kalita’s reign. Following an instinctive habit, he went to Sarai. Shortly after his return to Moskva, his cousin of Tver was summoned to present himself at the Horde. It did not need the pale faces of his courtiers and family, nor the ill-boding presages which their fancy conjured up, to warn the doomed prince of his impending fate; down the broad current of the Volga he drifted, to “Sarra, in the Londe of Tartarie,” where “dwelt a king that werried Russie.”[62] 1339The judgment of Usbek removed the source of disquietude from Ivan’s path, and the headless corpses of Andrei and his son Thedor, arrived at Tver one winter’s day, grim flotsam of a perished freedom. To complete the object-lesson of their subjection, the citizens beheld the great bell of Tver removed from their cathedral and transferred to Moskva. 1341Not long, however, did its iron-throated music soothe the pride of Ivan-with-the-money-bag, whose death-knell it tolled some twelve months later. And while they conduct the dead prince to his rest, with aid of chant and litany, wailing dirge and gleaming taper, and invocations to saints, archangels, and all the glorious host of Heaven, in different wise are they helping that other master-builder of kingdoms into the Unknown; with pagan rite, with blazing pyre, favourite horse and faithful henchman, goes great Gedimin to his fathers, to his dreamt hereafter, where “on the distant plain the warrior grasps his steed again.” Each to his own; at any rate both are dead, and whether they ride over a boundless plain or stand by a tideless sea, in “blue obscurity” or in a “great white light,” their place knows them not, and Lit’uania and Moskva must have new masters.

In both countries the drift towards cohesion and centralisation is strong, but custom is stronger; Gedimin’s realm is for the present parcelled out among his seven sons and his brother Voin; the lands of Moskva are divided between the three surviving sons of Kalita, Simeon, the eldest, having the capital city and the title of Grand Prince subject, of course, to the consent of the Khan. It was a critical moment in the fortunes of the House of Moskva, when the young prince presented himself for approval at Sarai, with a respectful appeal for a renewal of past favours. The news of the death of Ivan had sent more than one kniaz in eager haste across Russia to the picturesque city on the Volga’s shore; the two Konstantins (of Tver and Souzdal) hoped to undermine the Mongol support which propped up the ascendancy of Simeon, and ruin their rival by the same means with which his father had kept them under. But the Prince of Moskva, with the treasures of the Grand Principality and the tribute of Velikie Novgorod at his disposal, was able to put his case in the most favourable light before the Khan and his officers, and the inherited instinct of almsgiving helped him no doubt to retain the hereditary dignities.

CHAPTER VI
THE GROWING OF THE GERM

Never since the overthrow on the Sit had a Russian ruler been as emphatically and unquestionably Grand Prince as was Simeon Ivanovitch, yclept “the Proud.” Some of the most valuable provinces had indeed fallen away from the realm, but if the title Prince “of all the Russias,” which Simeon was the first to adopt, was little justified by the facts, at least he was, among his compeers, master of what remained. The very qualification of his powers which the over-lordship of the Khan implied, was in fact an added source of authority, for the Russian mind had come to accept the Mongol dominion with the same submissiveness, if with less enthusiasm, that it displayed towards the paternal tyranny of the Church. Supported by the double certificate of Heaven and Sarai, with the iarlikh[63] of Usbek in his hands and his compliant Metropolitan at his side, the Grand Prince stood head and shoulders above his brother princes and would-be competitors. And here may be noted an advantage which the builders of the Russian Empire possessed over the continuators of the Germanic one, and indeed over most of the princes of Catholic Europe. The Church “went with” the secular authority. In western Christendom the popes, after having entreated the services of emperors and kings as their surest agency for the destruction of the heathen religions, kicked down the ladder by which they had climbed to their high position, and convulsed Europe for many centuries by a bitter strife with the temporal sovereignties; till the up-springing of a new enemy, questioning the Divine authority of tiara and crown alike, drew Pontiff, Kaiser, and absolute monarchs together, like cattle herding in a storm. In Russia no such schism endangered the sanctity of the ruling forces, possibly because no such prosperity had been attained by either. “The palace rubbed shoulders with the Church and the monastery, and was scarcely distinguishable from them.”[64] The Grand Prince was holy and Orthodox, the Church was national and official. Ban and interdict, those bogies of mediæval west Europe, were here familiar sprites which worked at the bidding of the Grand Prince against his enemies. As the worship of the old Slavonic gods Peroun and Volos, Daszhbog, Stribog, etc. gave way by degrees to that of the One-in-Three and the dependent galaxy of saints, so did the old veneration for a crowd of Rurik-descended princes merge gradually into awe of one Heaven-born sovereign and a satellite-band of his officials, amongst whom were the hierarchy of the national Church. And in another respect the Russian rulers had their task simplified for them, namely, in the long-suffering docility of the bulk of their subjects. Here were no defiant goat-herds such as chased the might of the Habsburgs from the Graubunden Alps, no Bauernkriegern kindling the fires of civil war throughout an empire, no Jacquerie distracting an already distraught kingdom. The Slav peasant took all the added ills of life, droughts, famines, Polovtzi, Mongols, grasshoppers, and pestilences, tithes and taxes, with a fatalism he had brought with him from the East, a stoicism learnt possibly from the camel in his nomad days. A man who, in addition to the privations incidental to his poverty, will at the bidding of his Church fast “during the seven weeks of Lent, during two or three weeks in June, from the beginning of November till Christmas, and on all Wednesdays and Fridays during the year,”[65] can have little of the bread-rioter or throne-shaker in his constitution. The very placidity, however, with which he received the dispensations of Providence in whatever shape they chose to assume, rendered his allegiance a matter of circumstance rather than principle. He would accept the mastery of the Lit’uanians, for instance, as he had accepted the Mongols, as he had accepted the Varangians; like a dog of too accommodating disposition, he wagged his tail to whichever master shouted loudest, and just now the Lit’uanian princes were shouting loud indeed. Chiefly as yet among themselves. The death of Gedimin had left his country in a position which required skilful handling, while at the same time the division of the State into eight portions precluded any one prince from having a controlling voice in the direction of affairs—an arrangement which could only lead to disaster. Fortunately for Lit’uania the political foresight and energy of her defunct Grand Duke had descended in full measure upon one at least of his sons, Olgerd of Vitebsk. He, while engaged in ravaging the Order territories in Livland, watching for an attack from across the Polish border, or casting his eyes over the tempting Russian provinces ready to fall into his clutches, saw clearly that to live and expand, to prey and not be preyed upon, Lit’uania must have a guiding hand, one head instead of many. In order to attain his eagle-soaring ambition he borrowed the habits of the cuckoo, and ousted his brothers unceremoniously from the hereditary nest. An exception was wisely made in favour of Kestout, who equalled him in energy and military achievement, and without whose help the coup d’etat could scarcely have been effected. Acting in concert, the brothers seized on the capital, Vilna, and re-established the grand-dukedom; by a happy division of labour Kestout became warden of the Polish and Order-land marches, leaving Olgerd to pursue his conquests and acquisitions in the south-east—an arrangement which enabled the Grand Duke to add Briansk, Seversk, Kiev, and the surrounding district to his possessions, and to retain Volhynia against the King of Poland.[66] With the Prince of Moskva pursuing a policy of cautious inaction, the only safe course open to him under the circumstances, Olgerd was able not only to stretch his dominion from a foothold on the Baltic coast to the shores of the Black Sea, but to obtain a solid influence over the governments of Smolensk, Pskov, and Velikie Novgorod. As early as 1346 he appears to have had a hold on the councils of the latter city; the posadnik Evstaf (Eustace) had spoken unwisely and not well of the great Lit’uanian,—had in fact called him a dog. The indiscreet expression reached the ears of Olgerd, who demanded the death of the offending dignitary. The Vetché armed the city in defence of the posadnik, reconsidered the matter, and ended by sacrificing Evstaf to the resentment of the Grand Duke.[67] An action so opposed to the traditional temper of the proud republic that it is only to be explained by a strong motive of political expediency. And in fact an alliance with Lit’uania was valuable to Pskov and Novgorod, both as a bulwark against German aggression and as a counterpoise to the encroaching power of Moskva. In the former relation, the resisting power of the leagued principalities of the North was severely tested by the warrior monks of the Order; able to draw unfailing supplies of men and marks from the States of the Empire, the knights had bought Estland from the King of Denmark (1347), had inflicted a severe defeat on the Lit’uanian army (1348), and later carried war and desolation into the lands of Polotzk, Pskov, and Novgorod (1367). With the help of Olgerd the Russians were able to make a diversion upon Dorpat, and peace was at length effected with the Order in 1371.[68] From this it will be seen that the Grand Duke of Lit’uania was a far more prominent figure in the land than the Grand Prince “of all the Russias.” But of the policy of these two contrasted state-workers it may be said that while Olgerd built, the son of Kalita dug. Intrenching himself around the unit of Moskva, the last-named silently and persistently undermined the power of the neighbouring princes, and established his own authority on a sure foundation. Novgorod might wait; Lit’uania might wait; the Horde might wait. Thus delving and waiting ruled Simeon, so quaintly named “the Proud,” till death swept him into his cherished cathedral—a victim, possibly, to the terrible Black Pestilence which was then desolating Russia.

1353-1359

The succeeding Grand Prince, Ivan Ivanovitch, who found favour in the sight of the new Khan Tchanibek, displayed all his brother’s patience without any of his policy. His weakly pacific reign marked a partial thaw in the iron frost of Moskovite supremacy, which had bound North-east Russia in its grip under the rule of his three immediate predecessors. Souzdal, Riazan, and Tver blossomed anew into independence, and enjoyed a S. Luke’s summer of importance and anarchy. The Novgorodians, who had exerted themselves to obtain the election of Konstantin of Souzdal to the grand princedom, only recognised Ivan on the death of the former (1354), and were little troubled by the interference of their sovereign.[69] Their own domestic affairs were sufficiently exciting to absorb their attention; the election of a posadnik in the spring of 1359 gave rise to a fierce quarrel between the inhabitants of the Slavonic quarter and those of the Sofia ward, and for three days the hostile factions fought around the famous bridge, and were only separated by the intervention of their Archbishop and ex-Archbishop, whose combined exhortations at length restored peace to the agitated city.[70]

If Novgorod owed much to the well-directed influence of her prelates, the House of Moskva was even more indebted to the exertions and services of the Metropolitan Aleksis, who loyally supported its interests under the most discouraging circumstances. When the weary Ivan had closed his inglorious reign, when “having failed in many things,” he had “achieved to die,” the foundations painfully hewn out by his forerunners were almost swept away; a new Khan had arisen who knew not Moskva, and Dimitri Konstantinovitch of Souzdal entered Vladimir in triumph, with the iarlikh in his hand. Souzdal, Riazan, Tver, and Velikie Novgorod exulted in the downfall of their ambitious neighbour, and the work of generations seemed undone. Then was it that Vladuika Aleksis, seeing in Dimitri Ivanovitch more promising material than had existed in his father, took advantage of the chaos existing at the Horde—where Khan succeeded Khan in a whirlwind of revolutions—to obtain a counter-iarlikh for the young Prince of Moskva. Thus Dimitri was opposed by Dimitri, each boasting the favour of Sarai, but the Moskovite enjoying the support of Holy Church. New intrigues gave the Souzdal kniaz once more the countenance of the Horde, but Dimitri Ivanovitch dared to disregard the displeasure of a Khan who was here to-day and might be gone to-morrow; riding forth at the head of his boyarins and followers, long accustomed to be uppermost in the land, he drove his rival from Vladimir and carried the war into the province of Souzdal, besieging the capital. The Konstantinovitch submitted, and the grand princely dignity returned to the House of Moskva. 1362Well had Aleksis earned his subsequent canonisation.

A few years later the Black Death, brought into the district of Nijhnie-Novgorod by travelling merchants, recommenced its ravages throughout Central Russia. Its victims were counted by thousands, and though the account of its sweeping effect at Smolensk, in which city there were said to remain but five survivors,[71] is probably an exaggeration, an idea can be formed of its destructive nature by the number of princes who were stricken down in a single year. 1365The Grand Prince’s brother Ivan, Konstantin of Rostov, Andrei, brother of the Prince of Souzdal, and four of the Tverskie family, were victims of the dread pestilence, more wholesale even in its work than the Mongols in the first fury of their invasion.[72] In its wake sprang up a crop of quarrels, the result of such a legacy of vacant fiefs. Boris of Souzdal having seized on his deceased brother’s appanage (Nijhnie-Novgorod), to the despite of his elder, Dimitri, the latter was driven to throw himself into the hands of his namesake and rival, the Grand Prince of Moskva, who forced the supplanter to disgorge his prey. In Tver, likewise, the death of Simeon had brought his brother Ieremiya, his uncle Vasili, and his cousin Mikhail, into competition for his territorial possessions. The last-named was pursuing in Tver the same policy of aggrandisement and centralisation that had obtained such successful results for Moskva; naturally his proceedings were watched with jealous eyes by Dimitri, the Metropolitan, and the Moskovite boyarins, who took up the cause of Mikhail’s opponents and drove him more than once from his province. Mikhail invoked the aid of his wife’s father, Olgerd. 1369The great Lit’uanian, whose arms had checked the tide of Teutonic conquest and driven the Tartars from the Western steppes, who had wasted the outskirts of Revel and laid classic Kherson in ashes, marched now against the might of Moskva, his rival in the Russian lands. With him came his loyal brother Kestout, and, because he must, the Kniaz of Smolensk. The might of Moskva contracted within the high stone battlements of its Kreml, which, in the depth of winter, was too strong a hold for the Lit’uanians to attack. Olgerd contented himself with sacking the surrounding country, and carried back a spoil of cattle and church furniture as witness of his triumph. 1370The following year, however, Mikhail, again driven from his hereditary dominions, again appealed to Olgerd for assistance, and with the first November snows came the Lit’uanian-Smolenskie host against Moskva. History repeated itself; a second time the Kreml, rising fair and glittering in its sheen of white stone and silvery frost, above the blackened ruins that lay around it, defied the force that gathered against its walls. Olgerd hovered in vain around the impregnable obstacle to his crowning triumph. Russian troops, under Vladimir Andrevitch, the Grand Prince’s cousin, were gathering on his flank, those pied crows, the Knights of Mary, were croaking ominously on his northern frontier, while an early thaw threatened to impede his line of retreat through the snow-banked forests. Under these circumstances the old warrior slacked the rigour of his onslaught and made an honourable peace with the enemy whom he could not crush. 1371The indomitable Mikhail continued, nevertheless, to wage a fitful war with his hereditary foe, now invoking the support of Mamai Khan, the new master of the Golden Horde, now calling in the Lit’uanians, till at length, hotly besieged in his city of Tver, he was obliged to submit to the victorious Dimitri and recognise the supremacy of the House of Moskva. 1375Secure in his own dominions, the Grand Prince was able to turn his attention to the hostile forces which weighed on him on either side. In the West the crushing pressure of the Lettish power was for a time relaxed. 1377The Grand Duke Olgerd, “one of the greatest statesmen of the Middle Ages,”[73] the clangour of whose arms had vibrated round Polish castle and Order keep, had roused the echoes of the Moskva Kreml, and startled the pirates of the Black Sea coast, was now among “the quiet people”;[74] of his many sons, Yagiello succeeded him in the Grand Ducal dignity. Hampered by a large circle of brothers, half-brothers, cousins, and other inconvenient relatives, he set to work vigorously to weed out his superfluous kinsfolk; the aged Kestout, the companion-in-arms and faithful supporter of Olgerd, was one of the first victims of the son’s purging operations. Lured into his power, he was immured within the castle of Kreva, where he was found one day strangled; his son Vitovt escaped the same fate by a flight into the Order territory, while Andrei Olgerdovitch, Prince of Polotzk, sought at Moskva shelter from his half-brother’s hostility. Dimitri had the satisfaction of lending his support to this malcontent, as Olgerd had aided the Prince of Tver. But while Moskovite troops ravaged the Russian territories of Yagiello, Dimitri from his capital was watching the storm-clouds that had been slowly piling in the East. Nursed into their position of authority by the favour and support of the Horde, the Princes of Moskva had become too important and too exalted to continue their former humble attitude towards the Khans; like a wasp entangled in a spider-web, the Velikie Kniaz was over-big a captive to be held comfortably in the meshes of a degrading thraldom. Hence the altered relations between Moskva and Sarai, which had resulted in a series of desultory engagements, not openly avowed at the headquarters of either side, but tending steadily towards a more pronounced rupture. Nijhnie-Novgorod had twice suffered the fate of a border town in troublous times, and been laid in ashes by the Mongols; Riazan had experienced the like misfortune. On the other hand a more important collision had taken place on the banks of the Vodjha, where Dimitri had repulsed an army of raiders sent against Riazan by the Khan himself (1377). For three years the vengeance of Mamai had loomed, black and menacing, on the eastern horizon, like a slowly gathering storm that gains added horror from the unmeasurable approach of its outburst; at Moskva men watched for the horsemen who should one day ride out from the forest and clatter into the city with the news that the Hordes were coming. In the summer of 1380 the storm burst; Dimitri learned that the Khan was moving against them with a large army, that Yagiello, “who had small cause to love the Moskva Prince,” was in league with the Mongol, and that Oleg of Riazan was secretly preparing to throw in his lot with the invaders.[75] Was this to be the end of all the delving and striving? Was Moskva to lie in ruins, like another Kiev, a victim to her own renown? At least she should fall fighting. The Velikie Kniaz gathered under his standard the princes and soldiery of such Russian lands as he could command. From Bielozero, Rostov, Mourom, Souzdal, Vladimir, and other quarters, came pouring in the fractions of the first national army that had assembled in Russia since the old wars with the Polovtzi. Beneath the towers of the stately Kreml they mustered, 150,000 strong, to hail the birth of the new Empire, or, who knew, to share its ruin. Deep-mouthed clanged the bells of Moskva over the humming city, palely burned a thousand tapers before the shrines of good S. George and Mikhail the archangel; even the holy Sergie, founder of the famed Troitza lavra,[76] left his beaver-haunted solitudes to give his blessing on the high enterprise. Forth to the banks of the Don rode Dimitri Ivanovitch with his mighty army; before him went a sable banner, from whose folds gleamed the wan white Christ of Calvary; behind him came serried ranks of princes, the descendants of Rurik, save two who were the sons of dead Olgerd. On the wide plain of Koulikovo, the field “of the woodcocks,” by the blue waters of the Don, the might of Moskovite Russia crashed headlong against the strength of the Golden Horde, and fought through the red September day till wounds and weariness numbed their failing arms. Then through their ranks flashed the unpent reserves, led by young Vladimir Andreievitch, whirled the wild charge into the Mongol hosts, swept into rout the swarthy horsemen of Asia, swelled the hoarse shouts for S. George, for S. Glieb, and S. Boris, drowning the pealing war-yells for Allah; they break, they are killed, they are conquered, the God of the Christians has wakened, the Prince of the Russias has won a new title for ever, Dimitri Ivanovitch Donskoi! Dimitri of the Don.