History of Russia

Among Rurik's captains were two Norman nobles of his own blood, Askold and Dir, who, without asking for leave, deserted their brothers, and with a small band of warriors set out for a marauding expedition down the Dnieper. On their way they came to a city, beautifully situated on a high hill, commanding the river. The inhabitants, seeing the Norman troop approaching in their galleys, hastened to the bank and welcomed them, and told them that their city was called Kief, and that they were compelled to pay tribute to the Kozars. Askold and Dir established themselves among the Field Folk and freed them from their oppressors, and ruled over their land.

This was the beginning of the heroic age of Russia.

How the Russians Made Expeditions

against Constantinople

While Rurik was busy quelling insurrections among the people of Novgorod, and teaching them to obey, Askold and Dir, with two hundred long-boats filled with Norman Vikings and soldiers, made a descent upon the Grecian Empire.

Constantinople, the richest city of the East, the rival of Rome, built on seven hills, beside the blue waters of the Bosphorus, with its many-domed churches, its precious relics of bygone days, with its fisheries and its tolls, its bazaars, where merchants from every nation of Europe and Asia brought their costliest wares, the capital of Constantine the Great, the old. Byzantium of the Greeks, the Istanbul of the Faithful, the Tsar of Cities, was ever the goal of the eager hordes which sought their fortunes in the fields of war. Innumerable sieges its towers and walls sustained; Goth and Hun, Turk and Tartar, Norman and Russian alike, looked with envious eyes on the beautiful city by the Golden Horn, which guards the Dardanelles and commands the sea of Marmora, the Euxine, and the Mediterranean.

RURIK.

The Emperor Michael was waging war with the Arabs on the shores of the Black Sea, when a messenger came post-haste with the news that Askold and Dir were putting his subjects to death and laying siege to Constantinople. He hastened back to his capital, and with the Patriarch spent the night in prayer before the shrine of the Holy Mother of God in the church built by his ancestor, the Emperor Marcian.

At daybreak the Patriarch took the wonder-working robe which the Virgin Mary had worn, and dipped it into the Bosphorus, while the priests chanted the canticles, and the choirs of boys sang sacred hymns.

"Instantly," says the chronicle, "the waves, which before were smooth and still, arose in anger and began to roar, and the ships of the idolatrous Russians were dispersed, dashed upon the shore and broken to pieces, so that few escaped the disaster or chanced to reach their own land again." The leaders of the fleet came back to Kief, and there reigned.

Meanwhile, Rurik the Peaceful, after ruling Novgorod for seventeen years, died and left his son Igor, a boy four years old, in care of his kinsman Oleg, a prince of talent and enterprise.

Oleg immediately gathered together an army of Normans, Finns, and Slavs, and proceeded to enlarge his boundaries. He went against the southern tribes by the Great Water Way, captured many cities, and at last reached the walls of Kief, which he took by means of a stratagem. Leaving the greater part of his army behind him, and hiding a band of trusty warriors in a galley or two, he approached the city in the guise of a Norman merchant, and sent a messenger to the princes Askold and Dir, saying:—

"Come and buy pearls and a thousand beautiful things of some Norman merchants, your countrymen, who are on their way to Greece."

Hardly had the over-trustful princes drawn near the river, when Oleg's soldiers leaped from their hiding-places, and seized them, and Oleg cried:—

"You are neither princes nor boyars, but I am a prince."

Then pointing to the boy Igor, whom he held by the hand, he said:—

"This is the son of Rurik, and your master."

Askold and Dir were put to death, and buried in one tomb. Oleg was pleased with the situation of Kief, and resolved to settle there, saying:—

"Let it be henceforth the mother of Russian cities."

He also united under his sceptre all the Slavic tribes along the Dnieper, forced them to pay him a tribute of marten skins, and build strongholds in their lands.