Historical Tales Volume Viii Part 2

This message had its effect. The chief men of the country were now sent as amba.s.sadors. They entered Kief over the grave of their murdered countrymen without knowing where they trod, and came to the palace expecting to be hospitably entertained.

Olga had a bath made ready for them, and sent them word,--

"First take a bath, that you may refresh yourselves after the fatigue of your journey, then come into my presence."

The bath was heated, and the Drevlians entered it. But, to their dismay, smoke soon began to circle round them, and flames flashed on their frightened eyes. They ran to the doors, but they were immovable. Olga had ordered them to be made fast and the house to be set on fire, and the miserable bathers were all burned alive.

But even this terrible revenge was not enough for the implacable widow.

Those were days when news crept slowly, and the Drevlians did not dream of Olga's treachery. Once more she sent them a deceitful message: "I am about to repair to you, and beg you to get ready a large quant.i.ty of hydromel in the place where my husband was killed, that I may weep over his tomb and honor him with the trizna [funeral banquet]."

The Drevlians, full of joy at this message, gathered honey in quant.i.ties and brewed it into hydromel. Then Olga sought the tomb, followed by a small guard who were only lightly armed. For a while she wept over the tomb. Then she ordered a great mound of honor to be heaped over it. When this was done she directed the trizna to be set out.

The Drevlians drank freely, while the men of Kief served them with the intoxicating beverage.

"Where are the friends whom we sent to you?" they asked.

"They are coming with the friends of my husband," she replied.

And so the feast went on until the unsuspecting Drevlians were stupid with drink. Then Olga bade her guards draw their weapons and slay her foes, and a great slaughter began. When it ended, five thousand Drevlians lay dead at her feet.

Olga's revenge was far from being complete: her thirst for blood grew as it was fed. She returned to Kief, collected her army, took her young son with her that he might early learn the art of war, and returned inspired by the rage of vengeance to the land of the Drevlians.

Here she laid waste the country and destroyed the towns. In the end she came to the capital, Korosten, and laid siege to it. Its name meant "wall of bark," so that it was, no doubt, a town of wood, as probably all the Russian towns at that time were.

The siege went on, but the inhabitants defended themselves obstinately, for they knew now the spirit of the woman with whom they had to contend.

So a long time pa.s.sed and Korosten still held out.

Finding that force would not serve, Olga tried stratagem, in which she was such an adept.

"Why do you hold out so foolishly?" she said. "You know that all your other towns are in my power, and your countrypeople are peacefully tilling their fields while you are uselessly dying of hunger. You would be wise to yield; you have no more to fear from me; I have taken full revenge for my slain husband."

The Drevlians, to conciliate her, offered a tribute of honey and furs.

This she refused, with a show of generosity, and said that she would ask no more from them than a tribute of a pigeon and three sparrows from each house.

Gladdened by the lightness of this request, the Drevlians quickly gathered the birds asked for, and sent them out to the invading army.

They did not dream what treachery lay in Olga's cruel heart. That evening she let all the birds loose with lighted matches tied to their tails. Back to their nests in the town they flew, and soon Korosten was in flames in a thousand places.

In terror the inhabitants fled through their gates, but the soldiers of the bloodthirsty queen awaited them outside, sword in hand, with orders to cut them down without mercy as they appeared. The prince and all the leading men of the state perished, and only the lowest of the populace were left alive, while the whole land thereafter was laid under a load of tribute so heavy that it devastated the country like an invading army and caused the people to groan bitterly beneath the burden.

And thus it was that Olga the widow took revenge upon the murderers of her fallen lord.

_VLADIMIR THE GREAT._

Vladimir, Grand Prince of Russia before and after the year 1000, won the name not only of Vladimir the Great but of St. Vladimir, though he was as great a reprobate as he was a soldier and monarch, and as unregenerate a sinner as ever sat on a throne. But it was he who made Russia a Christian country, and in reward the Russian Church still looks upon him as "coequal with the Apostles." What he did to deserve this high honor we shall see.

Sviatoslaf, the son of Olga, had proved a hardy soldier. He disdained the palace and lived in the camp. In his marches he took no tent or baggage, but slept in the open air, lived on horse-flesh broiled by himself upon the coals, and showed all the endurance of a Cossack warrior born in the snows. After years of warfare he fell on the field of battle, and his skull, ornamented with a circle of gold, became a drinking-cup for the prince of the Petchenegans, by whose hands he had been slain. His empire was divided between his three sons, Yaropolk reigning in Kief, Oleg becoming prince of the Drevlians, and Vladimir taking Rurik's old capital of Novgorod.

These brothers did not long dwell in harmony. War broke out between Yaropolk and Oleg, and the latter was killed. Vladimir, fearing that his turn would come next, fled to the country of the Varangians, and Yaropolk became lord over all Russia. It is the story of the fugitive prince, and how he made his way from flight to empire and from empire to sainthood, that we are now about to tell.

For two years Vladimir dwelt with his Varangian kinsmen, during which time he lived the wild life of a Norseman, joining the bold vikings in their raids for booty far and wide over the seas of Europe. Then, gathering a large band of Varangian adventurers, he returned to Novgorod, drove out the men of Yaropolk, and sent word by them to his brother that he would soon call upon him at Kief.

Vladimir quickly proved himself a prince of barbarian instincts. In Polotsk ruled Rogvolod, a Varangian prince, whose daughter Rogneda, famed for her beauty, was betrothed to Yaropolk. Vladimir demanded her hand, but received an insulting reply.

"I will never unboot the son of a slave," said the haughty princess.

It was the custom at that time for brides, on the wedding night, to pull off the boots of their husbands; and Vladimir's mother had been one of Queen Olga's slave women.

But insults like this, to men like Vladimir, are apt to breed bloodshed.

Hot with revengeful fury, he marched against Polotsk, killed in battle Rogvolod and his two sons, and forced the disdainful princess to accept his hand still red with her father's blood.

Then he marched against Kief, where Yaropolk, who seems to have had more ambition than courage, shut himself up within the walls. These walls were strong, the people were faithful, and Kief might long have defied its a.s.sailant had not treachery dwelt within. Vladimir had secretly bought over a villain named Blude, one of Yaropolk's trusted councillors, who filled his master's mind with suspicion of the people of Kief and persuaded him to fly for safety. His flight gave Kief into his brother's hands.

To Rodnia fled the fugitive prince, where he was closely besieged by Vladimir, to whose aid came a famine so fierce that it still gives point to a common Russian proverb. Flight or surrender became necessary.

Yaropolk might have found strong friends among some of the powerful native tribes, but the voice of the traitor was still at his ear, and at Blude's suggestion he gave himself up to Vladimir. It was like the sheep yielding himself to the wolf. By the victor's order Yaropolk was slain in his father's palace.

And now the traitor sought his reward. Vladimir felt that it was to Blude he owed his empire, and for three days he so loaded him with honors and dignities that the false-hearted wretch deemed himself the greatest among the Russians.

But the villain had been playing with edge tools. At the end of the three days Vladimir called Blude before him.

"I have kept all my promises to you," he said. "I have treated you as my friend; your honors exceed your highest wishes; I have made you lord among my lords. But now," he continued, and his voice grew terrible, "the judge succeeds the benefactor. Traitor and a.s.sa.s.sin of your prince, I condemn you to death."

And at his stern command the startled and trembling traitor was struck dead in his presence.

The tide of affairs had strikingly turned. Vladimir, late a fugitive, was now lord of all the realm of Russia. His power a.s.sured, he showed himself in a new aspect. Yaropolk's widow, a Greek nun of great beauty, was forced to become his wife. Not content with two, he continued to marry until he had no less than six wives, while he filled his palaces with the daughters of his subjects until they numbered eight hundred in all.

"Thereby hangs a tale," as Shakespeare says. Rogneda, Vladimir's first wife, had forgiven him for the murder of her father and brothers, but could not forgive him for the insult of turning her out of his palace and putting other women in her place. She determined to be revenged.

One day when he had gone to see her in the lonely abode to which she had been banished, he fell asleep in her presence. Here was the opportunity her heart craved. Seizing a dagger, she was on the point of stabbing him where he lay, when Vladimir awoke and stopped the blow. While the frightened woman stood trembling before him, he furiously bade her prepare for death, as she should die by his own hand.

"Put on your wedding dress," he harshly commanded; "seek your handsomest apartment, and stretch yourself on the sumptuous bed you there possess.

Die you must, but you have been honored as the wife of Vladimir, and shall not meet an ign.o.ble death."

Rogneda did as she was bidden, yet hope had not left her heart, and she taught her young son Isiaslaf a part which she wished him to play. When the frowning prince entered the apartment where lay his condemned wife, he was met by the boy, who presented him with a drawn sword, saying, "You are not alone, father. Your son will be witness to your deed."

Vladimir's expression changed as he looked at the appealing face of the child.

"Who thought of seeing you here?" he cried, and, flinging the sword to the floor, he hastily left the room.

Calling his n.o.bles together, he told them what had happened and asked their advice.

"Prince," they said, "you should spare the culprit for the sake of the child. Our advice is that you make the boy lord of Rogvolod's princ.i.p.ality."

Vladimir did so, sending Rogneda with her son to rule over her father's realm, where he built a new city which he named after the boy.

Vladimir had been born a pagan, and a pagan he was still, wors.h.i.+pping the Varangian deities, in particular the G.o.d Perune, of whom he had a statue erected on a hill near his palace, adorned with a silver head. On the same sacred hill were planted the statues of other idols, and Vladimir proposed to restore the old human sacrifices by offering one of his own people as a victim to the G.o.ds.