The Giants of Russian Literature: The Greatest Russian Novels, Stories, Plays, Folk Tales & Legends. Максим Горький
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to Lubeck, Stettin, Rostok, and other cities of the Hansa league, offering the rights and privileges of that organisation and of the town of Riga, to all artisans, mechanics, and traders who should care to settle in his principality—an invitation which was eagerly responded to. In the wars waged by him against the Order, both in Prussia and Livland, one figure is very conspicuous—that of David, starosta of Grodno, who appears in the Teutonic Chronicles under the picturesque title of Castellan von Garthen. It was this boyarin who held the troubled border against the incessant attacks of the Knights of Mary, and led many a foray into their territory.57 One of the most notable of these was in the winter of 1322-23, when the cold was so severe that even the forest trees were nearly killed, and men erected inns on the ice of the Baltic Sea for the travellers to and from Germany and the nearest Skandinavian lands—this self-same winter came the Lit’uanians following hard on a raid-march of the Cross Brethren, burning and wasting from Dorpat to Memel, and returning through the bleak and frozen march-lands with great spoil of cattle and 5000 prisoners. Truly a winter to be remembered.58 Victory did not blind Gedimin to the advantages of a durable peace with the Order, to secure which he was even ready to adopt the faith of the foes he had so often conquered. 1323Accordingly, at his initiative, a peace was compacted between the various units which existed side by side in the East sea provinces; the Archbishop of Riga, the Bishop of Oesel, the towns of Riga, Revel, and Dorpat, the Teutonic Order, and the principality of Lit’uania, entered into a religious, territorial, and commercial treaty one with another, and Gedimin wrote to the Pope (John XXII.), to inform him that he was ready to become a Christian and to recognise the supremacy of the Holy See. Gladly did the French Pontiff prepare to receive this important lamb into the Catholic fold, and at the same time put a limit to the Teutonic conquests in the Baltic lands, and two legates (the Bishop of Alais and the Abbot of Puy) were dispatched forthwith to Vilna. But in the meanwhile Gedimin had had a lesson as to the value of “the true faith of a Christian,” and informed the disconcerted churchmen that he intended to die in the beliefs of his fathers, and would have none of their religion or their Pope. “Where,” he demanded, “will you find more crime, more injustice, violence, corruption and usury, than with the Christians, particularly with the priesthood and the Knights of the Cross?” Travel is said to enlarge and educate the mind, but it was scarcely necessary to come all the way from Avignon to learn that. 1324The Order had not considered itself bound by a compact with a pagan, and, in alliance with the unwilling Bishops of Oesel and Dorpat, had burst into the Lit’uanian lands and plundered the capital, Vilna; in return for which treachery, or elasticity of honour, Gedimin sacked the town of Rositter and renounced the creed of the Christmen.59 Catholic Europe was angry at this backsliding, if one may judge by the epithets showered on the half-saved soul; a depth of sorrowing wrath is revealed in the expressions “double-headed monster, abominable mockery of nature, precursor of Antichrist.” Much mud might they throw, bitterly might they anathematise in those far-off days, yet not thus does history remember the grand old pagan whose castle ruins crown the heights above the Vilia.
In the year of Gedimin’s accession (1316) died Urii Lvovitch, of Galitz and Volhynia, who was succeeded in those fiefs by his sons Andrei and Lev respectively. Colourless princes, these latter representatives of the Roman-Mstislavitch family, known only to history by the alliance which the instinct of preservation led them to make with the Teutonic Order. That they both died in the year 1324 appears from a letter of the Polish King Ladislas to Pope John, in which that fact is mentioned; the two provinces devolved upon Urii Andreievitch, the last Russian Prince of Galicia, the last for many a hundred years who ruled Volhynia. His death (about 1336) ended the male line of his family, and left as heiress of Galitz his sister Mariya, who married the Polish prince, Troiden of Tchersk. By the marriage of another heiress, the daughter of Lev of Volhynia, with Loubart, a son of Gedimin, that province was brought into the Lit’uanian dominion, which was further extended by the succession of Olgerd (Gedimin’s eldest son) to the fief of his wife’s father the Prince of Vitebsk.60 The annexation of Kiev, attributed by many historians to Gedimin, was undoubtably of a later date, as the Chronicles make mention of a Russian Prince Thedor, ruling in that city under Mongol supervision, as late as 1361.61 Even so, the Russian lands owning the sovereignty of Gedimin—Polotzk, Pinsk, Tourov, Volhynia, Loutzk, and Vitebsk sufficiently justify his title, rex Letwinorum et multorum Ruthenorum, and the Grand-duchy of Lit’uania might claim to be more Russian than the Grand Principality of Souzdal, with its Slav-Finn-Turko population.
But here, under the fostering care of Ivan Danielovitch, the new Russia, the Russia of the East, was germinating amid the decay of shedded provinces and lost liberties. Pocketing his pride and leaving outlying lands to take care of themselves, the Grand Prince sought to secure for his family and for his capital a preponderance over the other Souzdalian fiefs. His first step was to secure the Church, in the person of the Metropolitan, to grace with its presence the city of Moskva; lured thither from the now unfashionable Vladimir by the erection of a magnificent new church of the Assumption (fit dedication, for had not Tver wrought her ruin on the date of that festival?) the sainted Petr not only lived, but died and was buried in the budding capital; where also the succeeding Metropolitan, Theognost, took up his residence. In cultivating the good graces of the Khan Ivan was equally successful, but he had to work hard for the attainment of his object. Konstantin Mikhailovitch had been recognised by all parties as Prince of Tver, but Usbek was anxious to possess himself of the person of Andrei, and the Grand Prince had to go seek at the Khan’s behest, and bring the wanderer home. Andrei preferred to remain at Pskov rather than visit Sarai, to which place the princes of Tver, like the animals who ventured into the lion’s den of the fable, went oftener than they returned. The burghers of Pskov refused to give up the fugitive, and Russia beheld the spectacle of the Grand Prince, the Archbishop Moses of Novgorod, and the Metropolitan Theognost, hurling threats, reproaches, and excommunication at the defiant republic on behalf of the Mongol Khan,—the latter weapon all the more terrifying in that it was here used for the first time. Yet the result of all this chiding and banning was not commensurate with the energy expended; Andrei sheltered himself in Lit’uania, and again at Pskov, and not till ten years later did the homing instinct lead him to submit to the pleasure of the Khan, and receive at his hands pardon and restoration (1338). In the absence of his rival, Ivan had steadily and placidly pursued his fixed policy of Moskovite aggrandisement, and gradually established his authority over the neighbouring Princes of Souzdal, Rostov, and Riazan. With Novgorod he had the usual differences, unavoidable between a prince with high ideas of authority and a people with wide views of independence, but the restless citizens grew tired of quarrelling with a man who was always dangerous yet never struck; also they had an absorbing feud on hand with the Pskovitchi, who presumed to have a bishop of their own, instead of depending for spiritual guidance upon Novgorod. On this account the Archbishop of the latter city, the strenuous Vasili, was able to effect a reconciliation between prince and people. Thus things worked smoothly with the smoothly-working kniaz, Ivan Kalita, as they called him, from the kalita (bag or pouch) which he carried at his girdle, and from which he was wont to distribute alms to the needy. Some have unkindly suggested that the bag was intended for receipts rather than disbursements, in which case, if parsimony is to be added to his piety, superstition, and unscrupulous politics, he may well pass for a Russian edition of Louis XI.
The return of the exile Andrei, restored to his principality and to the favour of the Khan, was a disagreeable interlude in the harmony of Kalita’s reign. Following an instinctive habit, he went to Sarai. Shortly after his return to Moskva, his cousin of Tver was summoned to present himself at the Horde. It did not need the pale faces of his courtiers and family, nor the ill-boding presages which their fancy conjured up, to warn the doomed prince of his impending fate; down the broad current of the Volga he drifted, to “Sarra, in the Londe of Tartarie,” where “dwelt a king that werried Russie.”62 1339The judgment of Usbek removed the source of disquietude from Ivan’s path, and the headless corpses of Andrei and his son Thedor, arrived at Tver