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Let goodly place be given to Minime and Pojarski, who drove forth barbarian invaders, goodly place also to Platov and Kutusov, who drove forth civilized invaders. Let there be high-placed niches for Ivan the Great, who developed order, for Peter the Great, who developed physical strength, for Derjavine and Karamsin, who developed moral and mental strength.
"Palaces and temples," says the Russian author, Karamsin, "monuments of art and miracles of luxury, the remains of ages long since past, and the creations of yesterday, the tombs of ancestors, and the cradles of children, were indiscriminately destroyed. Nothing was left of Moscow save the memory of her people, and their deep resolution to avenge her fall."
The philosophic Karamsin writes: "Ivan III. and Vassili knew how to establish permanently the nature of one government by constituting in autocracy the necessary attribute of empire, its sole constitution, and the only basis of safety, force and prosperity.
But Sviatoslaf was a wild, pleasure-seeking young man, who turned a deaf ear to all his mother's counsels. The unbridled license which paganism granted, was much more congenial to his unrenewed heart than the salutary restraints of the gospel of Christ. The human heart was then and there, as now and here. The Russian historian Karamsin says,
If we look for the causes which rendered the defeat of the brave Russian nation so complete, we may, with Karamsin, indicate the following: 1. Though the Tartars were not more advanced, from a military point of view, than the Russians, who had made war in Greece and in the West against the most warlike and civilized people of Europe, yet they had an enormous superiority of numbers.
"How could one suppose," writes the Russian historian Karamsin, "that an illustrious monarch and a princess, his daughter, could consent to the affront of submitting the princess to the judgment of a foreign minister, who might declare her unworthy of his master?"
"But Chemyaka," writes Karamsin, "still lived, and his heart, ferocious, implacable, sought new means of vengeance. His death seemed necessary for the safety of the state, and some one gave him poison, of which he died the next day. The author, of an action so contrary to religion, to the principles of morality and of honor, remains unknown.
This menace conquered the pride of the Novgorodians. The Mongols and their agents might go, register in hand, from house to house in the humiliated and silent city to make the list of the inhabitants. "The boyars," says Karamsin, "might yet be vain of their rank and their riches, but the simple citizens had lost with their national honor their most precious possession," 1260.
Boris gave out that the young man was the monk Otrafief, who had appeared in the army as his advocate and emissary; and some historians Karamsin and Bell among the number have accepted this theory; but a careful comparison of dates seems to contradict it.
The remains were then deposited by the side of his last wife, the Christian princess Anne, who had died a few years before. The Russian historian, Karamsin, says: "This prince, whom the church has recognized as equal to the apostles, merits from history the title of Great.
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