Russian Classics Ultimate Collection: Novels, Short Stories, Plays, Folk Tales & Legends. Максим Горький

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СКАЧАТЬ from the Oder and Weichsel filtering down from Novgorod or Polotzk, tidings would reach them of wild doings in Poland. Mieceslav II. had “passed in battle and in storm”; and diminished though his territories were under stress of German, Russian, and Bohemian filchings, they were more than a handful for his widow and youthful son to manage. Richense, daughter of Ehrenfrid, Pfalzgraf of the Rhine, tries to play the Queen-mother with the support of a hierarchy itself not yet firmly established; but she is no Olga, moreover she is a German. The bishops are German too, and throne, hierarchy, new religion, and all are involved in the whirlwind of a reaction that scatters them in all directions, Richense to the court of the Emperor in Saxony, her son, Kazimir, to France, where he enters the service of Mother Church as a monk of the celebrated Abbey of Cluny. Yaroslav, taking advantage of the weakness of his western neighbour, began in 1040 a series of campaigns against the tribes which inhabited the dense marsh and river-sected forests lying to the north-east of Poland, between Russia and the Baltic. The Yatvyags first occupied his attention, though it is doubtful if he acquired more than a transient sway over them. He next turned the weight of his arms against the Lit’uanians, upon a section of whom at least he imposed a tribute. The year 1041 found him actually in Polish territory, in the province or palatinate of Mazovia, which had separated from the lands of the Polish crown—if such a designation can be used during an interregnum—under the rule of a heathen noble named Mazlav, from whom the province took its name. Meanwhile the force of the reaction in Poland had spent itself, the bishops retook possession of their dioceses, and Kazimir was fetched, with the Pope’s permission, from the peaceful seclusion of the Burgundian monastery to the management of a country smouldering with the embers of anarchy and religious persecution. Yaroslav seized the opportunity to form an alliance with the young Duke of Poland, by virtue of which the contested Galician or Red Russian March was definitely ceded to the Grand Prince, who on his part helped Kazimir to defeat the rebel Voevoda20 of Mazovia and reannex that province to his duchy. The good understanding between the princes was cemented by the marriage of Kazimir with Mariya, sister of Yaroslav.

      Russia was thus freed from the apprehension of trouble both on the Polish frontier and on the side of the steppes, where the power of the Petchenigs was effectively broken. A new war-cloud, however, rose in the south, emanating from a quarrel among Greek and Russian merchants at Constantinople, in which one of the latter was killed. 1043Yaroslav demanded satisfaction from the Greek Emperor, Constantine Monomachus, and not obtaining it, he sent an army against the Greeks, confiding its direction to his eldest son Vladimir and a boyarin named Vyatcha. Scorning the overtures for peace which came at late moment from the frightened Emperor, the Russians met their enemies in a naval fight, wherein the Greek fire and the inevitable storm played their accustomed parts. Six thousand of Vladimir’s men were forced to abandon their damaged vessels and attempt to make good their retreat overland, led by Vyatcha, who would not desert them in their extremity. Constantine, instead of resting content with the victory which fortune had given him, or following it up with a vigorous pursuit, satisfied himself with half-measures, returning in premature triumph to his capital while he sent the remainder of his ships to hunt the Russians out of the Bosphorus. Vladimir meanwhile had rallied his fleet and turned fiercely at bay, destroying twenty-five of the Byzantine vessels and killing their admiral. Consoled by this success he returned home, carrying with him many prisoners. The division which had attempted the land passage was less happy; overpowered by a large Greek force near Varna, the survivors were taken captive to Constantinople, where many of them, including the brave boyarin, were deprived of their eyesight.

      This was the last of the series of expeditions made by the early rulers of Russia against Constantinople, expeditions which suggest a parallel with those against Rome which exercised such a fatal fascination over the Saxon and Franconian Emperors of Germany at the same period. Not for many a long century were the Russian arms to push again across the blue waters of the Danube into the land of their desire. In 1046 peace was formally concluded between the two countries, and the blinded prisoners were allowed to return to their native land.

      The remaining years of Yaroslav were years of peace and prosperity within his realm. Allied with the Court of Poland by the double marriage of his sister with Duke Kazimir, and of the latter’s sister with his second son Isiaslav, he was in like manner connected with the house of Arpad by the marriage of his youngest daughter Anastasia with Andrew I. of Hungary; with Harold the Brave, afterwards King of Norway, who espoused his eldest daughter Elizabeth; and with the royal family of France by the marriage of his second daughter Anne with Henri I. And not only by court alliances was the Russia of this period connected with the other states of Europe. Commerce had made great strides in the last half-hundred years, and Kiev, in the zenith of her fortunes, attracted traders from many lands; besides her 300 churches she had 8 markets, there were separate quarters for Hungarian, Hollandish, German, and Skandinavian merchants, and the Dniepr was constantly covered with cargo vessels. Novgorod was another important centre of trade and foreign intercourse. A more convenient medium of exchange, always a stimulating factor in commerce, was gradually superseding the hides and pelts which were the earliest articles of sale and barter; the first step had been to substitute leather tokens cut from the skins themselves, called kounas, from kounitza, a marten (being generally cut from a marten pelt). These were replaced, as silver grew more plentiful in the country, by coins of that metal, stamped with rude representations of the reigning prince.

      Following the time-hallowed custom of his forbears, Yaroslav in his last days divided the lands of his realm among his surviving sons. (Vladimir, the eldest, had died in 1052.) Isiaslav became, after his father’s death, Grand Prince of Kiev, his four brothers being settled respectively in the sub-provinces of Tchernigov, Péréyaslavl, Smolensk, and Volhynia. Polotzk was still held by the other branch of the family. Yaroslav died at Voutchigorod on the 19th February 1054. On a winter’s day his corpse was borne in mournful procession along the snow-clad road to Kiev, there to rest in a marble tomb in a side chapel of the Cathedral of S. Sofia.

Under Yaroslav Russia enjoyed a prosperity and position that was lost in the partitions and discords of his successors, and this circumstance was probably responsible for the somewhat flattering estimate that was formed of his character by subsequent chroniclers.21 As patron of Kiev and benefactor to the Church he was naturally glorious and good in the eyes of Nestor, and by some writers he has been styled “the Russian Charlemagne,” on account of the code of laws which he formulated for his country. Concerning his piety, he lived in an age when much giving from the State treasury to church or monastery counted for such, and it is recorded of him that his dying words charged his sons to “treat each other as brothers” and “have great tenderness” one for another. His own brother still lay in the prison that was his living tomb for over a score of years.

8 Kiev was subsequently invested with a past of respectable antiquity, the consecration of its site being attributed to the Apostle Andrew; it makes its entry on the pages of the Chronicle, however, simply as a gorodok, or townlet.

9 Chronicle of Nestor.

10 Schiemann, Russland, Polen, und Livland.

11 Members of war council.

12 Kniaz, Prince; velikie-Kniaz, Grand Prince.

13 Now Iskorosk, on the Usha.

14 Solov’ev.

15 Karamzin.

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