Alfred Nicolas Rambaud

“ We know that the colonists carefully preserved the Greek civilization, cultivated the arts of their mother cities, repeated the poems of Homer as they marched to battle, loved eloquent speeches as late as the time of Dion Chrysostom, and offered a special cult to the memory of Achilles. Beyond the line of Greek colonies dwelt a whole world of tribes, whom the Greeks designated by the common name of Scythians, with whom they entered into wars and alliances, and who served them as middlemen in their trade with the countries of the north. ”

“ The Tatars had found Russia divided against herself. 3. Even though Russia had wished to form a confederation, the sudden irruptions of an army entirely composed of horsemen did not leave her time. 4. In the tribes ruled by Bati, every man was a soldier; in Russia the nobles and citizens alone bore arms: the peasants, who formed the bulk of the population, allowed themselves to be stabbed or bound without resistance. 5. It was not by a weak nation that Russia was conquered. The Tatar-Mongols, under Genghis Khan, had filled the East with the glory of their name, and subdued nearly all Asia. ”

“ Russian rivers and history In a country so extensive and so destitute of seaboard as Russia, rivers have an immense importance, and with rivers Eastern Europe is well endowed. It is her watercourses which prevent Russia from being a continent closed and sealed, like Africa or Australia. In place of arms of the sea, she has great rivers which penetrate to her centre, and have sometimes almost the proportions of seas. In the level plains they have not the impetuous current of the Rhone, they flow peacefully through great beds cut in the sand or clay. ”

“ In 1203 Kief was again sacked by the Polovtsi, whom the Olgovitches of Tchernigof had taken into their pay. On this soil, incessantly the prey of war and invasion, it was impossible to found a lasting order of things; it was impossible that a regular system of government should be established—that civilization should develop and maintain itself. Less richly endowed by nature, and less civilized, the Russia of the forests was at least more tranquil. ”

“ The Russian Slavs easily rose from the idea of a commune to that of a canton, with a chief chosen from the elders of the family; in an emergency they might permit a temporary confederation of all the cantons of one tribe (dlemia) , but we never find that there was a prince of the Severians, Polians, or Radimitches. Only princes of the volost could exist among them, like the prince of Korosthenes in the legend of Olga. The idea of the unity of a tribe, and a fortiori the unity of a Russian nation, was absolutely foreign to the race. ”

“ If we inquire what profit or loss she has brought this country, we must recognize that, thanks to her, Novgorod and Pskof were deprived of a free commerce with the West. Russia, in order to satisfy the first wants of civilization, fell into a complete independence. She was abandoned to the good pleasure and pitiless egotism of the German merchants. ”

“ This resolution of Sviatoslaf was fraught with immense danger to the Greek Empire. If Byzantium feared the neighborhood of an enfeebled Bulgaria, how was she to resist a power that extended from the Baltic to the Balkans, and which could add to the Bulgarian legions, disciplined after the Roman fashion by the Tzar Simeon, the Varangians of Scandinavia, the Russian Slavs, the Finnish hordes of the Vesses, Tchouds, and Merians, and even the light cavalry of the Patzinaks? ”

“ Russian became the official tongue; it even seemed as if orthodoxy was to become the ruling faith, and the victors were to be absorbed by the vanquished, and Russified by their conquest. An unexpected event turned the natural course of history. The Angevin and French dynasty in Poland had lately been extinguished in the person of Louis of Hungary, whose only heir was his daughter Hedwiga. The Polish nobles felt that the best way of putting a stop to the eternal warfare with the Lithuanians was by marrying their queen to the powerful Prince of Wilna. ”

“ The Tatars next plunged into the deep forests of the Volga, and sent a sorcerer and two officers as envoys to the princes of Riazan. The three princes of Riazan, those of Pronsk, Kolomna, Moscow and Mourom, advanced to meet them. “If you want peace,” said the Tatars, “give us the tenth of your goods.” “When we are dead,” replied the Russian princes, “you can have the whole.” Though abandoned by the princes of Tchernigof and the Grand Prince George II., of whom they had implored help, the dynasty of Riazan accepted the unequal struggle. ”

“ Western Europe, so jagged in its contour, is no less broken in its surface. Without speaking of the vast central mass of the Alps, there is not one European land which does not possess, either in its length or breadth, a great mountain system forming the scaffolding or the backbone of the country. ”

“ But the priests who came from Constantinople brought with them an ideal of government; in a little while it was that of the Russians who entered the ranks of the clergy. This Greek ideal was the Emperor, the Tzar of Constantinople, heir of Augustus and Constantine the Great, Vicar of God upon earth, the typical monarch on whom the eyes of the barbarians of Gaul as well as those of Scythia were fixed. He was a sovereign in the fullest sense of the word, as, by a legal fiction, the people by the Lex Regia was supposed to have yielded its power to the imperator. ”

“ At the head of an army composed of Varangians, Slavs and Finns, he marched to the south, received the submission of Smolensk and Loubetch, and arrived under the walls of Kief. By means of treachery he took Askold and Dir prisoners, and put them to death, observing: “You are neither princes yourselves, nor the blood of princes; this is the son of Rurik,” pointing to Igor. The tomb of Askold is still shown near Kief. Oleg was charmed with his new conquest, and took up his abode there, saying, “Let Kief be the mother of Russian cities.” ”

“ Iaroslaf the Great, as a reward for their devotion, accorded them immense privileges, of which no record can be found, but which are constantly invoked by the Novgorodians, as were the true or false charters of Charles the Great by the German cities. These republicans could not exist without a prince, but they rarely kept one long. The assembly of the citizens, the vetché, convoked by the bell in the Court of Iaroslaf, was the real sovereign. The republic called herself “My Lord Novgorod the Great” (Gospodine Velikii Novgorod) . “Who can equal God and the great Novgorod?” ”

“ To cement his alliance with the Russians, Basti, khan of the Polovsti, embraced orthodoxy. The Russian army had already arrived on the Lower Dnieper, when the Tatar ambassadors made their appearance. “We have come by God's command against our slaves and grooms, the accursed Polovtsi. Be at peace with us; we have no quarrel with you.” The Russians, with the promptitude and thoughtlessness that characterized the men of that time, put the ambassadors to death. ”

“ Isiaslaf and Vsevolod, Grand Princes of Kief, had despoiled the sons of Sviatoslaf, their brother, depriving them of the rich territory of Tchernigof, and only leaving them Tmoutorakan and the Finnish country. Even Vladimir Monomachus, whom we have seen so disinterested, had accepted a share of the spoil. The injured princes were not people to bear this meekly, especially the eldest, Oleg Sviatoslavitch, one of the most energetic men of the 11th century. He called the terrible Polovtsi to his aid, and subjected Russia to frightful ravages. ”

“ The rivers seem to hesitate at their rise between two opposite courses: some of them never make up their minds, like the sluggish Cheksna which connects the White Sea and the Volga. This interlacement of the water-system, which makes the northern Dwina, the Neva, the Niemen, and the southern Dwina mere prolongations of the Volga and the Dnieper, and puts the four Russian seas in unbroken communication, is in itself a sufficient explanation of the extent of the conquests and great commercial position of Novgorod the Great. ”

“ They belong to one of the great races of pioneers and backwoodsmen. All the history of the Russian people, from the foundation of Moscow, is that of their advance into the forest, into the Black Land, into the prairie. ”

“ His wars with the Patzinaks are recorded by Nestor with all kinds of episodes borrowed from the epic poetry. There is the Russian champion who tears in pieces the furious bull, or stifles a Patzinak giant in his arms; there are the inhabitants of Bielgorod, who, having been reduced to famine by the barbarians, let down into wells two large caldrons, one full of hydromel and the other of meal, to make the Patzinaks believe these were natural productions of the soil. We see in the popular songs of what a marvellous cycle of legends Vladimir has become the centre ”

“ While the funeral pile blazed, one of the Russians said to our narrator, “You Arabs are fools: you hide in the earth the man you have loved best, and there he becomes the prey of worms. We, on the contrary, burn him up in the twinkling of an eye, that he may the quicker enter paradise.” Nestor found the rite among the Russian Slavs. The excavations made in a great number of kourgans (barrows) confirm his testimony. The discoveries recently made in the tombs of Novgorod by M. Ivanouski, prove that the Slavs of Ilmen had preserved or adopted the custom of burying their dead. ”

“ From the 11th to the 13th century, in passing from the basin of the Dneiper to the basin of the Volga, we can already watch the formation of Great and Little Russia. The principalities of Kief, Tchernigof, Novgorod-Severski, Riazan, Mourom, and Souzdal, situated on the side of the steppe with its devastating hordes, formed the frontier States, the Marches of Russia. ”

“ As for saying that the inhabitants of New Russia are nothing but Finns and Russified Turks, one might as well pretend that the 30,000,000 or 40,000,000 of North America are Red-skins who have learnt English and embraced Protestantism.
We must recognize that the Russian, almost as much as the Anglo-Saxon, has the instinct which drives men to emigrate and found colonies. The Russians do in the far East of Europe what the Anglo-Saxons do in the far West of America. ”

“ The Russian princes that we find in the early miniatures, are clothed and armed like the Norman chiefs in the Bayeux Tapestry of Queen Matilda. It is therefore not surprising that, in our own age, art has made almost identical representations of Rurik on the monument lately erected at Novgorod, and of William the Conqueror on the monument at Falaise. The Varangians, like the Normans, astonished the nations of the South by their reckless courage and gigantic stature. ”

“ From a social point of view, the constitution of Novgorod presents other analogies with the constitution of Poland. Great inequality then existed between the different classes of society. An aristocracy of boyards had ultimately formed itself, whose intestine quarrels agitated the town. Below the boyards came the dieti boyarskïé, a kind of inferior nobility; then the different classes of citizens, the merchantmen, the black people, and the smerdes or peasants. The merchants formed an association of their own, a sort of guild, round the Church of Saint John. ”

“ The Drevlians, when they learnt that Igor was returning, held council with Mal their prince. ‘When the wolf enters the sheepfold he slays the whole flock, if the shepherd does not slay him. Thus it is with us and Igor; if we do not destroy him, we are lost.’ Then they sent deputies and said to him, ‘Why dost thou come anew unto us? Hast thou not collected all the tribute?’ But Igor would not hear them, so the Drevlians came out of the town of Korosthenes, and slew Igor and his men, for they were but a few. ”

“ Two hundred thousand workmen flock from all parts of Russia to its banks. Fifteen thousand ships and 500 steamboats plough its waters. Kostroma, Nijni-Novgorod, Kazan, Simbirsk, Samara, Saratof, Astrakhan, are filled with noise and movement. The whole life of Russia seems concentrated on the Volga. ”

“ Since Mythology reproduces under so many forms the struggle of the heroes of the light with the monsters of darkness, it is possible that she may have admitted a bad principle at variance with a good principle, an ill-doing god, of whom Morena, Kochtchei, Baba-Yaga, the dragon, the mountain-serpent, are only types. We cannot find any positive confirmation of this hypothesis, as far as the Russian Slavs are concerned, but Helmold asserts that the Baltic Slavs recognize Bielibog, the White God, and Tchernobog, the Black God. ”

“ The news of the death of Oktaï, second Emperor of all the Tatars, in China, recalled Bati from the West, and during the long march from Germany his army necessarily diminished in number. The Tatars were no longer in the vast plains of Asia and Eastern Europe, but in a broken hilly country, bristling with fortresses, defended by a population more dense and a chivalry more numerous than those in Russia. To sum up, all the fury of the Mongol tempest spent itself on the Slavonic race. ”

“ A Prince of Minsk who had the temerity to kindle a civil war, was promptly dethroned, and died in captivity at Kief. The Novgorodians saw many of their boyards kept as hostages, or exiled. The Prince of Vladimir in Volhynia was deposed, and his states given to a son of the Grand Prince.
Monomachus has left us a curious paper of instructions that he compiled for his sons, and in which he gives them much good advice, enforced by examples drawn from his own life. “It is neither fasting, nor solitude, nor the monastic life, that will procure you the life eternal—it is well-doing. ”

“ This mingling of the adventurers and the indigenous race explains the rapidity with which both the Normans of Russia and the Normans of France lost their language, customs and religion. The Varangians only retained one thing, their military superiority, the habit of obeying the chosen or hereditary chief. Into the Slav anarchy they brought this element of warlike and disciplined force, without which a State cannot exist. ”