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It was the Novgorodians who invited the Norse Princes to come and rule the land; and it was the Novgorodians who were their least submissive subjects. When one of the Grand Princes proposed to send his son, whom they did not want, to be their Prince, they replied: "Send him here if he has a spare head."
Vassili himself, the son of Alexander, declared against a father "who brought servitude to freemen," and retired to the Pskovians. It needed a soul of iron temper to resist the universal disapprobation, and counsel the Novgorodians to the commission of the cowardly though necessary act. Alexander arrested his son, and punished the boyars who had led him into the revolt with death or mutilation.
Angry at this, Yaroslaf enticed the leading Novgorodians into his palace and slaughtered them in reprisal. But at this critical interval, when his guards were slain and his subjects in rebellion, he found himself threatened by his ambitious brother. In despair he turned to the Novgorodians and begged with tears for pardon and assistance.
The Novgorodians found themselves at issue with the Scandinavians on the subject of their possessions on the Neva and the Gulf of Finland. As they had helped the natives to resist the Latin faith, King John obtained the promise of Gregory IX that a crusade, with plenary indulgences, should be preached against the Great Republic and her protégés, the pagans of the Baltic.
The Novgorodians, terrified by the immense force Ivan had collected, which it seemed he only used to menace, and not to destroy, attempted to capitulate; but he was insensible to all their representations, and, even while he promised them their freedom, he refused to grant it. The armament, mighty as it was, which he had prepared, was kept aloof to threaten and not to strike.
The Novgorodians appalled by the fate of Kief, and by the horrors which had accompanied the march of Mstislaf, took a solemn oath that they would struggle to the last drop of blood in defense of their liberties.
The flames of the burning towns blazed along the horizon night after night, and the cry of the victims roused the Novgorodians to the intensest thirst for vengeance.
He sent word to the Novgorodians that he had decided to take their country under his protection that he had no wish for war, but that if they manifested any resistance, he should subdue them by force of arms.
Dmitri was then but twenty-seven years of age. And yet Usbeck seems to have had some regard for the cause of the young prince, for he immediately appointed Alexander, a brother of Dmitri, and son of Michel, to succeed Georges in the grand principality. The Novgorodians promptly received him as their ruler.
The Tatars of Sibir were Mahommedans and this town was the centre of the great fur trade. The Russians themselves had constant relations with the inhabitants of the Asiatic slopes of the Urals, and the Novgorodians were acquainted with the regions stretching "beyond the portages."
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