CHAPTER II THE COMING OF THE VARANGIANS AND THE BUILDING OF KIEVIAN RUSSIA
Whatever the nature of the causes that led up to this irruption of stranger folk, the fact and, to a certain extent, the manner of their coming is substantially set forth in the old chronicles. Like ocean demi-gods riding out from the sea into the ken of mortal men came three Russ-Varangian brothers, Rurik, Sineus, and Truvor, with a mighty host of kinsfolk and followers, steering eastward in their long, narrow-beaked boats through the waterways that lead from the Finnish Gulf into the lake-land of the Slavs. Separating their forces, Rurik established himself at—according to some accounts, built—the town of Ladoga, on the banks of the Volkhov, twelve miles from its entrance into the Lake Ladoga, thus interposing himself between Novgorod and the sea. His brothers settled at Bielozersk and Izborsk respectively, the latter occupying an important position near Lake Peipus and the Liv border, the former pushing a Varangian outpost among the Finnish tribes to the east; all three, whether from accident or design, choosing the vicinity of an open stretch of water. The date of this immigration is fixed by the chronicler at 862, which is regarded as the starting-point of the Russian State. Two years later Rurik, by the death of both his brothers, was left in sole chieftaincy of the adventurers. From his first stronghold he soon shifted his headquarters to a point farther up the Volkhov’s course, over against Novgorod, where he built himself a citadel; from thence he eventually made himself master of the town, not apparently without some opposition from the inhabitants. Henceforward the Skandinavian chief was undisputed prince of the Slavonic people who had invited him into their country; the neighbouring districts of Rostov and Polotzk were brought under his authority, and Novgorod became the capital and centre of a state which reached from Lake Peipus to the Upper Volga, and from Ladoga to the watershed of the Dvina and Dniepr. In thus extending and consolidating his power and welding his Skandinavian following and the discordant Slavic elements into one smoothly-working organisation, Rurik evinced qualities of statesmanship equal in their way to those displayed by William the Norman in his conquest and administration of England. The absence of any national cohesion among the Slavs, while facilitating the Norse intrusion and settlement, increased the difficulty of binding them in allegiance to a central authority; yet within the space of a few crowded years the Varangian ruler enjoyed an undisputed sway in the lands of his mastery such as few princes could in those unordered times rely on. Not the least difficult part of Rurik’s task must have been the control of his own wanderlusting countrymen, turned loose in an extensive and vaguely-defined region, with rumours of wealth and plunder and fighting beckoning them to the south. In the nature of things such temptation would not be long resisted, especially as the Dniepr offered a convenient if insecure passage to the desired lands, and a short time after the first Norse settlement two Skandinavian adventurers, named Askold and Dir, broke away from the main body with a small following, possibly with the idea of enlisting themselves in the Varangian Guard at Byzantium. They did not immediately pursue their journey, however, farther than Kiev, a townstead of the Polian Slavs,[8] standing on a low bluff above the west bank of the Dniepr. Here they established themselves as Rurik had done at Novgorod, and, reinforced perhaps by roving bodies of their countrymen, set up a second Russian State, without losing sight, however, of the original object which had drawn them southwards. Consequently in the summer of 865 an expedition of from ten to fifteen thousand men, presumably recruited from both Slavs and Norsemen, embarked in their long, narrow war-boats and sailed for Byzantium, plundering and burning along the coast of the Black Sea, and finally riding into the harbour. The audacity of the attack, or perhaps the warlike reputation of the invading host, seems to have paralysed the inhabitants of the city, and the authorities had recourse to supernatural invocation to deliver them from this new danger. The robe of the Virgin was removed from its venerated shrine in the Blacherne Chapel, escorted in solemn procession to the shores of the harbour, and dipped in the water, whereupon arose a tempest that drove the heathen fleet in disorder out to sea. That, at least, is the account of the transaction given by the Byzantine chroniclers.
Whether such a command over the atmospherical forces impressed the barbarian chiefs with the desirable qualities of so militant a religion, or whether the glories of the Tzargrad as seen dimly from their boats had insensibly attracted them to the worship of the “cold Christ and tangled trinities,” which was so much a part of the Byzantine life, it was said that Askold, shortly after the miscarriage of the expedition, professed the Christian faith. This much at least seems certain, that the Greek patriarch Photius was able in the year 866 to send to Kiev a priest with the title, if not the recognition of Bishop, and that from that time there existed a small Christian community in that town.
The Chronicle of Nestor, almost the only record of this period of Russian history in existence, is silent on two interesting points, namely, the works and fightings in which Rurik was presumably engaged on behalf of his infant state, and the attitude of the Khazars towards the adventurers who had filched Kiev and the adjoining territory from their authority.
The only further item in the Chronicle relating to Rurik is the announcement of his death in the year 879, his child son Igor and the governance of the country being entrusted to Oleg, a blood relation of the late Prince. The reign of this chieftain was of great importance to the fortunes of the germinating Russian State, and if Rurik played the part of a William the Bastard, Oleg may not unwarrantably be compared with Charles the Great. The rumours which had reached the North of a Varangian power that had sprung up among the tribes of the Slavic hinterland had attracted thither streams of roving warriors, eager to share the dangers and divide the fruits of their kinsfolks’ enterprise. Thus both Rurik and the Kievian adventurers had been able to maintain an easily-recruited standing force of their own countrymen for purposes offensive and defensive. The larger designs of Oleg, however, required a larger army, and he enlisted under his captaincy Slavs and Finns in addition to his Varangian guards. Having spent three years in gathering and perfecting his resources, he advanced in 882 into the basin-land of the Dniepr and moved upon Smolensk, the stronghold of the independent remnant of the Slav tribe of Krivitches. By virtue, possibly, of his position as leader of an army partly drawn from men of that tribe, he was allowed to take undisputed possession of the place, which was henceforth incorporated in the Russ dominion. Still following the course of the Dniepr, as Askold and Dir had followed it before him, he entered the country of the Sieverskie Slavs and made himself master of their head town, Lubetch.
By these successive steps Oleg had brought himself nigh upon Kiev, the headquarters of the rival principality, which was possibly the object he had had in view from the commencement of his southward march. For to the rising Russ-Slavonic State Kiev was at once a menace and an injury; not only did it offer an alternative attraction to the Norsemen pouring into the country, the natural reinforcements of Oleg’s following, but its separate existence cut short the expansion of the northern territory, and, above all, hindered free intercourse with Byzantium and the south. To the sea-rovers, reared among the rude and penurious lands that lay dark and uncivilised between the Baltic and the Arctic Sea, Byzantium was a dazzling and irresistible attraction; rich beyond their comprehension of riches, luxurious to a degree unknown to them, renowned for everything except renown, she seemed a golden harvest ripe for the steel of the valorous and enterprising. Between this desired land and the Novgorodian principality the territory of Askold presented a vexatious obstacle, and it was inevitable that the sagacity of Oleg should aim at its destruction. At the same time it was understandable that he should seek to avoid an armed conflict with his fellow-countrymen, the Varangians of Kiev, and to effect his purpose by stratagem rather than by force. To this end he approached the town, laid an ambuscade on the banks of the Dniepr, and in the guise of a trader travelling from Novgorod to Byzantium, sought speech with the Kievian rulers. Askold and Dir came out unwittingly to see this wayfarer, and found no man of wares and whining suppliance; found rather one whose face they well knew, and with him a small lad whose significance was swiftly made plain to them. “You are not of the blood of princes,” cried a voice of triumph and boding in their ears, “but here behold the son of Rurik.” And therewith rushed out the hidden ones and slew the unsuspecting chieftains. And in guerdon of this stroke Oleg was accepted as sovereign by the people of Kiev, the Russian State was solidified, and the supremacy of Rurik’s dynasty received a valuable recognition.
The town of Kiev, advantageously situated at a pleasant elevation above the west bank of the Dniepr, and commanding the waterway to the coveted south, compared favourably with Novgorod, built among the flat marshes that bordered Lake Ilmen and surrounded by the Finn-gripped coasts of Ladoga. The advantages of the former were not lost upon its conqueror, who saluted it with the title of “mother of all Russian cities” (so the Chronicles), and thenceforth it became the capital of the country. It was now necessary to secure the connection between the newly-won territory and the districts lying to the north. West and north of Kiev dwelt the Drevlians, a fierce and formidable Slavic tribe, whose country was fortified by natural defences of forest and marsh. Against them Oleg turned his arms, and once more victory went with him; the Drevlians, while retaining their own chieftain, were reduced to the standing of vassals, and an annual tribute of marten and sable skins was imposed upon them. Within the next two years the Russian ruler completed the subjugation of the Sieverskie and enthralled the remaining lands of the Krivitches, both of which tribes had hitherto owned allegiance to the Khazars. The growing Russian dominions were now put under a system of taxation, the sums levied being devoted in the first place to the payment of the Varangians in the Prince’s service. The contribution of Novgorod was assessed at the yearly value of 300 grivnas, a token of its substantial footing at this particular period.
It was about this time that the Ougres or Magyars, the ancestors of the modern Hungarians, squeezed out of their Asiatic home by the pressure of the Petchenigs, burst through the Khazar and Kievian territories and settled themselves in Moldavia and Wallachia, and finally in Hungary. Their passage through the Dniepr basin-land would scarcely have been undisputed, and the Magyar Chronicles speak of a victory over Oleg; the Russian chronicler is silent on the subject. This scurrying horde of nomad barbarians, unlike the Avars who preceded them, or the Petchenigs and Kumans who followed in their wake, crystallised in a marvellously short space of time into a civilised European State, and became an important neighbour of the Russian principality.
In 903 the young Igor was mated to a Varangian maiden named Olga, who, by one account, was born of humble parents in the town of Pskov and attracted the Prince by her beauty. Other accounts make her, with more probability, a near relative of the Regent, of whose strength of character she seems to have inherited a share.
In 907 Oleg was in a position to put into practice a project which had probably never been lost sight of, the invasion, namely, of the Byzantine Empire, including an attack on Constantinople itself, a project dear to the Russian mind in the tenth century as well as in later times. His footing differed essentially from that of Askold and Dir in their attempt at a like undertaking. No longer the leader of a mere troop of adventurers, Oleg swayed an army inspired by a long series of successes and confident in the sanction and prestige of the princely authority. Slavs, Finns, and Varangians were bonded together in a representative Russian army, trained, disciplined, and, above all, reliant on the ability of their captain. In their long, light barques they went down the Dniepr, hauling their craft overland where the rapids rendered navigation impossible, and thence emerged into the Black Sea; the boats were escorted along the river-banks by a large body of horsemen, but the Chronicle does not tell whether this branch of the expedition made its way through Bessarabia and Bulgaria into the Imperial territory, and probably it only served to guard the main body from the attacks of hostile tribes in the steppe region. Arrived in the waters of the Bosphorus the invaders landed and ravaged the country in the vicinity of Constantinople, burning, plundering, and slaughtering without hindrance from the Greek forces. Leo VI., “the Philosopher,” shut himself up in his capital and confined his measures of defence to placing a chain across the entrance of the harbour. So much had the Eastern Empire become centralised in the city of Constantinople, that it was apparently a matter of small concern if the very suburbs were laid waste, or else Leo was waiting with philosophic patience for a supernatural intervention. The Virgin, however, not obliging with another tornado, the invaders turned their impious arms against the city itself. According to popular tradition, Oleg dragged his boats ashore, mounted them on wheels, spread sail, and floated across dry land towards the city walls. Possibly he attempted the exploit, successfully carried out some five hundred years later by Sultan Mahomet II., of hauling his vessels overland into the waters of the harbour, a labour which would be facilitated by the lightness and toughness of the Russian craft. At any rate the effect of the demonstration was salutary; the Emperor, alarmed at such a display of energy, determined to come to terms with his barbarous enemy, first, however, the Russian chronicler alleges, trying the experiment of an offering of poisoned meats and fruits to Oleg and his warmen.[9] A study of the history of Byzantium fully supports the likelihood of such a stratagem, which, had it succeeded, would have been hailed as a miraculous epidemic, sweeping the heathen away from the threatened city. The gift was prudently declined, and the more prosaic and expensive method of buying off the invaders had to be resorted to. The treaty which was concluded between the Greeks and the Russians shows that the latter were fully alive to the advantages accruing from a free commercial intercourse with Constantinople. Besides the levy of a fixed sum for every man in the invading fleet, contributions were exacted for Kiev and other towns under the Russian sway, which arrangement gave to all a share in the national victory. More solidly advantageous, under certain specified conditions, Russian merchants were to be permitted right of free commerce at Constantinople.
The Christian Emperor and the pagan Prince called upon their respective deities to witness the solemn pact between them, and Oleg, having hung his shield in triumph on the gate of the Tzargrad, returned to Kiev loaded with presents and covered with the glory of a successful campaign. Five years later the great Varangian, loved and honoured by his people, feared and respected by his foes, finished his long reign of three-and-thirty years. Tradition has it that the soothsayers foretold that his death should be caused by his favourite horse, whereupon he had it led away and never rode it more. Years after, learning that it was dead, he went to see the skeleton, and placing his foot upon the skull, taunted the warlocks with their miscarried prophecy, whereupon a snake wriggled out and inflicted a bite, of which he died. The same legend crops up in the folk-lore of many lands.
In venturing to compare Oleg with Charles the Great, whose life-work lay in somewhat similar lines, it may be noted of the former that his results were obtained with comparatively little bloodshed, and that he strengthened the position of the dynasty while forming the empire over which it was to rule. The fairest and most fertile districts of Russia were added to the principality during his regency, and, more important still, the peoples whom he subjugated were permanently welded into the confederation. The Slavs of Kiev in the later years of Oleg were essentially the “men” of the Russian State, a rapidity of assimilation which was scarcely observable in the case of the Bavarians and Frisians of the Frankish Empire, or the Saxons of Norman England. In the matter of religion, too, the heathen Prince contrasts favourably with the great Christian Emperor, and though the worshipper of the Christ who “came not to send peace but a sword” into the world may have butchered his nonconforming subjects with the honestest conviction of well-doing, it is pleasanter to read of the toleration which the follower of Peroun extended to the Christian communities within his realm.
912
Igor, who after a long minority succeeded to a more extensive and firmly established principality than his father had bequeathed him, was occupied at the commencement of his reign in suppressing a revolt of the Drevlians and Ulitches, the least well affected of the Slav tribes subject to his rule, who had refused payment of the yearly tribute. The gathering-in of this impost was entrusted to Svenald, a Varangian to whom Igor deputed the internal management of the realm; after a three-years’ struggle the rebels were mastered and the amount of their tribute increased. A new source of uneasiness arose at this juncture from the arrival in South Russia of the Petchenigs, a Finn-Turko tribe who migrated from the plains of Asia in the wake of the Magyars and settled in the steppe-land on either side of the Dniepr. The city of Kiev enjoyed an immunity from attack from their horde by reason of the strong force at hand for its defence, and the Russians, moreover, were interested in keeping up a good understanding with neighbours who commanded the waterway to the south. But to the newly-erected Hungarian State the new-comers were a veritable thorn in the flesh, and Moldavia became a debatable ground between the two peoples. It was an act of weakness on the part of Igor and his advisers, with a large fighting force at their disposal, to have permitted the establishment of a dangerous enemy or doubtful ally in such undesirable nearness to their capital, and in a position which threatened their principal trade-route. This policy of peace was all the more ill-judged as the restless spirit of the Varangian warmen required some outlet for its employment, and might fittingly have been turned to the advantage of the State. Their lust for adventure and pillage found vent instead in independent raids, and in the year 914 a fleet of 700 Russian ships appeared, somewhat like the proverbial fly in amber, on the waters of the Kaspian, where they plundered along the Persian coast.[10] Another troop penetrated into Italy in the service of the Byzantine Emperor.
If the saying, “Happy is the country that has no history” will hold good in every case, the bulk of Igor’s reign must have been a period of prosperity, for nothing further is heard of Russia or its Prince till the year 941, when, like a recurring decimal, an expedition against Constantinople is recorded by both Greek and Russian annalists. Whether difficulties had arisen in the trading relations of the two countries, whether the rupture was forced by a war party among the Varangians, or whether Igor was fired with the ambition, to which old men are at times victims, of doing something which should shed lustre on his declining years—he was now not far off seventy—the Chronicles do not indicate, and “what was it they fought about” is lost sight of in the details of the fighting. With a fleet variously written down at from 1000 to 10,000 boats, Igor descended by the old waterway into the Black Sea and ravaged and plundered along the coasts of the Bosphorus. The Imperial fleet was absent on service against the Saracens, with the exception of a few vessels scarcely deemed fit for action, which were lying in the harbour. It occurred to the Greek Emperor Romanos, after many sleepless nights, to arm these despised ships and galleys with the redoubtable Greek fire and steer them against the hostile flotilla, a desperate expedient which was crowned with success; the mysterious flames, which the water itself was unable to quench, not only enwrapped the light barques of the Russians but demoralised their crews, and a hopeless rout ensued. The Greeks were, however, unable to follow up their advantage, and Igor rallied his men for a descent on the coast of Asia Minor, where he consoled himself by pillaging the surrounding country. Here he was at length opposed by an army under the command of the patrician Bardas and forced to make his way to Thrace, where another reverse awaited him. With the remains of his army the baffled prince made his way back to Kiev, leaving many of his hapless followers in the hands of the Greeks. Luitprand, Bishop of Cremona, present at Constantinople on an embassy, saw numbers of them put to death by torture. The Northman was not, however, at the end of his resources; with an energy surprising for his years, he set to work to gather an army which should turn the scale of victory against the Byzantians, their magical fire and intimacy with the supernatural notwithstanding. To this end he sent his henchmen into the bays and fjords of the Baltic to call in the sea-rovers to battle and plunder under his flag. The invitation they were not loth to accept, but many of them showed a disinclination to bind themselves under the leadership of the Russian Prince, and rushed instead, like a brood of ducklings breaking away from their foster-mother, into the charmed waters of the Kaspian, where they carried on an exuberant marauding expedition. A sufficient number, however, followed Igor in his second campaign against the Tzargrad to swell his ranks to a formidable host, and word was sent to the Greek capital, from Bulgarian and Greek sources, that the waters of the Black Sea were covered with the vessels of a Russian fleet. The Emperor did not hesitate what course to adopt, but hastily despatched an embassy to meet the invader with offers to pay the tribute exacted by Oleg and renew the treaty between the two countries. The Imperial messengers fell in with Igor at the mouth of the Danube, and their proposals were agreed to after a consultation between the Prince and his droujhiniki,[11] who in fact gained without further struggle as much as they could have hoped for in the event of a victory. Igor returned to Kiev as a conqueror, loaded with presents from Romanos, who sent thither in the following year his ambassadors with a text of the treaty. This was sworn to by the Prince and his captains before the idol of Peroun, except in the case of the Christian minority, who performed their oath at the altar of S. Elias. The fact of a Christian cathedral—a designation probably more ambitious than the building—being established at Kiev at this period speaks much for the toleration shown to the foreign religion by the followers of the national god.
Igor did not long enjoy the fruits of this success. Baulked of their expected campaign, his men of war chafed at the inaction of the old man’s court, and envied the comparative advantages thrown in the way of Svenald’s body-guards. It was a custom of the Russian rulers to spend one-half of the year, from November till April, in visiting the scattered districts of their dominion, for the double purpose of keeping in touch with their widely-sundered subjects and gathering in the revenue. This winter harvesting of the tribute (which Igor in his declining years left in the hands of his deputed steward) is interesting as being probably the earliest stage of Russian home trade. For the most part the payment in kind consisted of furs and skins, the bulk of which went from the various places of collection in boat-loads down to Kiev, from thence eventually making its way to the sea marts of Southern Europe. The forest country of the Drevlians, rich in its yield of thick-coated sables and yellow-chested martens, lay in convenient neighbourhood to Kiev, and thither the Prince’s men clamoured to be led for the purpose of gleaning an increased tribute. In a moment of fatal weakness Igor consented, and in the autumn of 945 set out to close his reign as he had begun it, in a quarrel with “the tree people” over the matter of their taxing. The armed host which accompanied the Prince overawed the resentment bred by this stretching of the sovereign claims, but the apparent ease with which the imposts were gathered in tempted Igor to linger behind his returning main-guard for the purpose of exacting a further levy. The exasperated Drevlians, hearkening to the counsel of their chieftain, Mal, “to rise and slay the wolf who was bent on devouring their whole flock,” turned suddenly upon the fate-blind Igor in the midst of his importunings and put him to a hideous death. Two young trees were bent towards each other nearly to the ground, and to them the unfortunate tyrant was bound; then the trees were allowed to spring back to their normal position. Thus did the tree people avenge their wrongs.
The safest standard by which to judge a reign of the inward history of which so little can be known is the measure of stability which it leaves behind it. The widow of the murdered Prince and his young heir Sviatoslav came peaceably into the vacant throneship, and it is no small tribute to the statecraft of Rurik and his successors that the grandson of the Varangian stranger and adventurer should inherit, at a tender age and under the guardianship of a woman, the Russian principality without opposition and without question.
The young Kniaz,[12] notwithstanding the Slavonic name which he was the first of his house to bear, was brought up mainly among Skandinavian influences, his person and the domestic management of the State being entrusted to Varangian hands. His mother Olga bore no small share of the administration, and the vigour and energy of her doings were well worthy of the heroic age of early Russia. The first undertaking which was called for, alike by political necessity and the promptings of revenge, was the chastisement of her husband’s murderers. With the idea possibly of averting the storm by a bold stroke of diplomacy, the latter had sent messengers to the widowed princess suggesting a connubial alliance with the implicated chieftain Mal, a proposal which was met with a feigned acceptance. Having lulled the apprehensions of the Drevlians, Olga marched into their country with a large following and turned the projected festivities into a massacre, after which she besieged the town of Korosten,[13] the scene of Igor’s death, and the last refuge of the disconcerted rebels. The Chronicle of the monk of Kiev gives a quaint, old-world account of the manner of the taking of Korosten. All the summer the inhabitants defended themselves stubbornly, and the princess at last agreed to conclude a peace on receipt of a tribute, which was to consist of a live pigeon and three live sparrows from each homestead. How they caught the sparrows is left to the imagination, but the tribute was gladly paid. At the approach of evening Olga caused the birds to be set free, each with a lighted brand fastened to its tail, whereupon their homing instincts took them back to their dwellings in the thatched roofs and barns of Korosten, with the result that the town was soon in a blaze, and the inhabitants fell easy victims to the swords of the besiegers. Thus was avenged the death of Igor, the son of Rurik.
Shortly after this exploit Olga left Kiev and went into the northern parts of her son’s realm, fixing her court for some years at Novgorod and Pskov, and raising the prosperity of those townships by keeping up a connection with the Skandinavian lands. Later she turned her thoughts towards the south, not with warlike projects, as her forerunners had done, but with peaceful intent. Accompanied by a suitable train she journeyed, in the year 957, to Constantinople, where she was received and entertained with due splendour by the Emperor Constantine-born-in-the-Purple and the Patriarch Theophylact. Here, in the metropolis of the Christian religion, surrounded by all the splendours of ritual of which the Greeks were masters, this surprising woman adopted the prevalent faith, received at the hands of her Imperial host and sponsor the baptismal name of Helen, and became “the first Russian who mounted to the heavenly kingdom”—a rather disparaging reflection on the labours of the early Church at Kiev.
Loaded with presents from the Imperial treasury, Olga returned to her son, whom she strove fruitlessly to detach from the gods of his fathers to the worship of the new deities she had brought from Constantinople. The Russian mind was not yet ripe for the mystic cult of the Greek or Latin Church, and the conversion of the Prince’s mother made little impression on either boyarins or people. In the year 964 Sviatoslav definitely assumed the government of the country, and struck the key-note of his reign by extending his sway over the Viatitches, the last Slavonic tribe who paid tribute to the Khazars. This was only preliminary to an attack on that people in their own country. The fate of their once powerful empire was decided in one battle; the arms of the young Kniaz were victorious; Sarkel, the White City, fell into his hands, the outlying possessions of the Khazars, east and south, were subdued, and the kakhanate was reduced to a shadow of its former glory. It would have been a wiser policy to have left untouched, for the time being, the integrity of a State which was no longer formidable, and which interposed a civilised barrier between the Russian lands and the barbarian hordes of the East, and to have pursued instead a war of extermination against the Petchenigs. Sviatoslav was himself to experience the disastrous results of this mistake.
968
In the following year the centre of interest shifts from the south-east to the south-west. The Greek Emperor, Nicephorus Phocas, irritated against his vassal Peter, King or Tzar of Bulgaria, in that he had not exerted himself against the Magyars, who were raiding the Imperial dominions, turned for help, according to the approved Byzantine policy, to another neighbour, and commissioned Sviatoslav to march against Bulgaria. A large sum of Greek gold was conveyed to Kiev by an ambassador from the Emperor, and in return the Russian Prince set out for the Danube with a following of 60,000 men. The onset of the invaders was irresistible, and the Bulgarians scattered and fled, leaving their capital, Péréyaslavetz, and Dristr, a strongly fortified place on the Danube, in the hands of the conqueror. To complete the good fortune of Sviatoslav the Tzar Peter died at this critical moment, and the Russian Prince settled down in his newly-acquired city, undisputed master of Bulgaria. East and west his arms had been successful, but in the very heart of his realm he had left a dread and watchful enemy, who would not fail