The Giants of Russian Literature: The Greatest Russian Novels, Stories, Plays, Folk Tales & Legends. Максим Горький

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СКАЧАТЬ a Kniaz of Galitz, and burned alive by his boyarins.

94 Le père Pierling, La Russie et l’Orient.

95 Iz Istorie Moskvui.

96 S. Solov’ev. Karamzin. Pierling.

97 Unlike their compeers in Western Europe, who attached high importance to matters heraldic, the Russian princes were somewhat “fancy-free” in the employment of armorial bearings, and their devices took more the nature of barbaric totems than of feudal blazonry. Only in the reign of Vasili the Darkened had the S. George-the-Conqueror and dragon become the fixed stamp on the seals and coins of Moskva; an earlier form of this was a simple mounted figure, similar to that borne by the Grand Dukes of Lit’uania. The coins of Dimitri Donskoi are adorned in some cases with the image of a cock, above which is portrayed a small animal, which might represent a fox, beaver, or marten. Previous to this the tokens were usually stamped with a rude representation of the reigning prince or of a local saint.

98 Le père Pierling, La Russie et l’Orient.

99 Gennad Karpov, Istoriya Bor’bui Moskovskago Gosoudarstva s’ Pol’sko-Litovskim, 1462-1508.

100 The title Tzar, formerly reproduced in West European spelling as Czar, was, on the strength of a surface resemblance, assumed to be derived from Caesar, and given the equivalent value of the German Kaiser. With the Russians Tzar simply meant king or ruler, and was indiscriminately used for the Greek Emperors, the Tartar Khans, and the Syrian and Jewish potentates mentioned in the writings of the Old Testament; Caesar was rendered Kessar. The word korol, which also signifies king in their language, was perhaps borrowed from the Magyar kiraly, the Kings of Hungary being for a long time the only monarchs so designated with whom they had any dealings. The double-headed eagle, adopted at almost the same time as the title of Tzar, although the recognised symbol of “empire,” was not originally used with that significance in Russia; the device was employed (in the same way that the lilies of France were incorporated with the English arms) to show that the Prince of Moskva had married the heiress of the eastern empire, and for a long time the eagle occupied a secondary position to the S. George and dragon cognisance of Moskva on the seals and coins of the Grand Princes. The imperial idea was a plant of foreign conception and growth, and, indeed, at the time when the title Tzar first crept into use, the style of Emperor of all the Russias might have been borne with almost as much reason by the King of Poland as by the Prince of Moskva.

101 Schiemann, Russland, Polen, u. Livland.

102 Karamzin.

103 Geschichte der Ostseeprovinzen; Sartorius, Geschichte des Hanseatischen Bundes; S. Solov’ev, Istoriya Rossie.

104 A spiked iron ball attached by a flexible thong to a short staff.

105 The wolves. S. George occupies the delicate position of patron-saint of the wolves as well as of flocks and herds.

106 Karpov, Istoriya Bor’bui, etc.

107 A.E.I.O.U.

      Alles Erdreich ist Oesterreich unterthan.

       Austria est imperare orbi universo.

108 Baron Sigismund von Herberstein, Rerum Moscoviticorum commentarii.

109 It is hardly necessary to state that these remarks do not apply to the Russian soldier of modern history, who has displayed his best qualities under adverse circumstances.

110 Schiemann.

111 Schiemann, Karpov.

112 S. Solov’ev.

113 Geschichte der Ostseeprovinzen.

114 Geschichte der Ostseeprovinzen.

115 Herberstein.

116 Karamzin.

117 S. Solov’ev; Karamzin.

118 Karamzin gives the date as 8th of October. The day is fixed by Sigismund’s letter to Leo X., written on 18th September, in which he mentions the battle as taking place on “die natali beatissime virginis Marie, que erat VIII. Septembris.”

119 Acta Tomiciana, tom. III.

120 Much that appeared eastern or barbarous to outsiders was in fact only a survival of customs and costumes that had long died out in the west. Russia, cut off by many causes, already set forth, from the march of progress in occidental Europe, retained many things which had there been cast aside.

121 Herberstein.

122 Johannes Voigt, Geschichte Preussens.

123 Herberstein.

124 Herberstein.

125 Voigt.

126 Freeman, Historical Geography of Europe.

127 Schiemann; Voigt; Geschichte der Ostseeprovinzen.

      Note.—The German branch of the Order elected a new Grand-Master after the defection of Albrecht, and continued, at Mergentheim in Franconia, its existence as a religious organisation, till the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the Napoleonic maelstrom swept it away in common with many other worn-out institutions.

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