History of Russia

The next year, as he was on a certain day fishing by the banks of the Dnieper, word was brought that the King of Poland was coming against him with a great army. Fiery Fame threw down his fishing-pole and left his fish, but he had little time to collect an army ere his enemy was upon him. The King of Poland clove the gate of Kief with his mighty sword which an angel was said to have given him, and took possession of the city. Fiery Fame escaped with only three companions to Novgorod, and gathered ships to cross the sea to the Normans, but the men of Novgorod were brave and burnt his ships, and said,—

"We will measure our strength once more with the enemy."

They raised taxes in furs and money and gathered a great army, and Fiery Fame again took the field.

IAROSLAF.

Meantime Holy Host had quarreled with his father-in-law and driven him away after massacring his men. Deprived of his powerful aid, Holy Host fled at his cousin's approach and brought against him an army of barbarians. The battle took place on the banks of the Alta, and the plain along the river was red with the blood of warriors. "Now it was a Friday," says the chronicle, "and since daybreak the battle had raged, and the combat became terrible and fierce; the like had never been seen in Russia. The fight was hand-to-hand; twice the tide of victory ebbed and flowed, and with such fury that the blood of the slain seemed like a mountain torrent. At last, at even-tide, Fiery Fame won the day." The impious usurper fled "pursued by the wrath of God," and perished miserably in the deserts of Bohemia.

The history of Vladimir's successors recalls that of the heirs of Clovis. The murder of the sons of Clodomir is paralleled by the assassination of Boris and Glieb, sons of Vladimir, by the order of Holy Host, the usurper of the throne of Kief. His two victims were canonized, and henceforth became inseparable in the orthodox calendar.

Fiery Fame, after many civil wars with his brothers and nephews, made himself master of all Russia and reigned gloriously at Kief. He founded new towns and made his name renowned from the Baltic to the Black Sea, in Finland and Bulgaria. He captured many cities belonging to the King of Poland, and he put to rout and entirely destroyed the Petchenegs who attacked Kiel in his absence. His dealings with the Eastern emperors were not so fortunate. He intrusted his son, the Prince of Novgorod, with the charge of an expedition to Constantinople to settle a mercantile dispute by dint of arms. The Greeks sent envoys to offer favorable terms, but Fiery Fame's son scornfully rejected them and drove them away loaded with insults.

A naval battle was fought in the Bosphorus and the Prince of Novgorod was vanquished; the Russians were not able to resist the terrible Greek fire; moreover a sudden tempest arose and scattered their fleet; eight thousand of their men who reached shore and tried to fight their way back to Kief by land were surrounded and cut to pieces; the Greeks took with them to Constantinople eight hundred prisoners and put out their eyes.

It is said that a prophetic inscription was found in the boot of one of the bronze statues of Byzantium, declaring that the day was coming when the capital of the Greek empire would fall a prey to the men of the North, but it was not the destiny of Fiery Fame to fulfill the prediction. To this day the Russians look with greedy eyes upon the tsar-city  of the Dardanelles.

Under Fiery Fame Kief reached the pinnacle of its glory. Like Constantinople it had its Cathedral of St. Sophia and its Golden Gate; it was surrounded with walls and ornamented with gilded towers. It was called the city of the four hundred churches, and the religious services gave employment to a host of Greek singers and priests. St. Sophia was Fiery Fame's special pride. Colossal mosaics on backgrounds of gold adorned "the indestructible wall." The frescos painted by the artists from Constantinople have been preserved or carefully restored, and everywhere cover the pillars and the gilded vaults. Many of the mosaics and the Greek inscriptions still exist, and the traveller marvels at the quaint images of saints and doctors, angels and cherubim, the Virgin Mother of God, and the Last Supper, where a double Christ is represented giving his body to six of his disciples and to six others his blood.

ANCIENT RUSSIAN GATEWAY.

Kief at this time was composed of three separate parts, each with its own fortifications, churches, and schools. Merchants came from Holland, Hungary, Germany, and the far North, and made the eight markets lively with their babel of tongues, and covered the Dnieper with their ships and boats. Situated on the Great Water-Way to Constantinople, the city seemed a part of the empire to the Western writers, who called it the rival of the sceptre of Constantinople and the most famous glory of Greece.