The Norman adventurers who served in the body-guard of the Eastern emperors, under the name of Ros or Variags, reached the Queen City of the Bosphorus by Russian rivers, called the "Great Water Way." Clad in their coats of mail and pointed helmets, they embarked in long-boats, and, rowing across the Baltic, entered the Neva, or the Western Dvina.
We can see their fleets of war pillaging Novgorod, gaining the upper waters of the Dnieper, and swiftly descending past Kief, devastating the shores of the Black Sea, and bringing dismay to the nations of the south. Reckless was their courage, and gigantic their stature: the Arabs declared that they were as tall as palm-trees. According to the chroniclers, their compact ranks when they fought seemed like a wall of steel, bristling with lances and glittering with shields, and their clamor was like the waves of the sea. They sheltered Themselves behind huge bucklers taller than a man, and no arrow could reach them when they retreated. They fought like madmen. Never would they yield themselves up as prisoners; if the battle went against them, they stabbed themselves to the heart, lest, falling by the hand of an enemy, they should be forced to serve him in the world to come.
ON THE MEDITERRANEAN.
Ready always for war, they did not scorn the peaceful pursuits of trade. They exacted tribute from the tribes of Russia, and often made marauding expeditions down the Volga to fight with the Kozars and Bulgarians.
The old Monk of Kief tells us in his simple prose how the Northmen became the masters of Russia and the real founders of its future greatness:—
NORMAN GALLEY
"For many years the Normans, who dwell on the other side of the sea, took tribute from the Northern Slavs and their neighbors, the Finns. One year the tribes which they had conquered refused to pay their tribute, and, uniting together, drove out the strangers and tried to govern themselves, but there was no manner of justice among them. One family was set against another, and great quarrels arose among them, and at last they said:—
"'Let us find a prince who will govern us, and speak according to the law.'
"Then they sent their ambassadors across the sea to the Norman tribe, the Russ, and said unto them:—
"'Our land is great and fruitful, but order in it there is none. Come and be our princes, and rule over us.'
"A certain Rurik determined to heed this call, and he came with his brothers and all his followers, and settled on Lake Ilmen. From them our land was called Russia."
A little more than a thousand years ago Rurik the Peaceful, and his brothers the Victorious and the Faithful, crossed the stormy sea of the Variags to establish order and security, in place of misrule and dissension. They built strong castles on the borders of the Slav lands, the elder brother on Lake Ladoga, the Victorious on the White Lake, and the Faithful at Izborsk.
After the death of his two brothers, Rurik, or Roderik, the Peaceful, took up his abode in the old merchant city of Novgorod, and became the prince of all the land round about. He divided the power among his followers, and set them over fortresses to hold the unruly tribes in close subjection.
FOUNTAIN AND STREET IN CONSTANTINOPLE.
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.
When Igor was a young man, his kinsman left him in charge of Kief, and with a fleet of two hundred boats, each holding forty men, and with an army of cavalry, prepared to besiege Constantinople both by land and sea. His galleys rowed down the Dnieper, and the horsemen kept them company along the banks. As they drew near the Bosphorus, the inhabitants, panic-stricken, hastened to Constantinople and entrenched themselves behind palisades. Oleg landed his forces, and began to plunder the land, and burn the churches and convents. He put to the sword, or terribly tortured, all the Greeks whom he met. According to the legend, he fitted wheels to his vessels, and spread the sails, and soon a favorable wind arose and blew his fleet across the fields to the very gates of the city.