t this time the Grand Duke of Souzdal
interfered; he made Novgorod pay him tribute, and appointed a prince
of Tchernigof as its duke; but he did not like the place and resigned.
Then the city suffered from a famine, when 42,000 citizens perished
and a fire destroyed a whole quarter of the city. Iaroslaf was made
duke for the fourth time; the spirit of the people was broken, and he
was permitted to rule over them as he pleased. He succeeded as grand
duke in 1236, when he left his son Alexander Nevski as duke in
Novgorod.

The east coast of the Baltic was considered tributary to Novgorod.
Several colonies had been established on the Duena and south of that
river, but in the 12th and 13th centuries missionaries and merchants
from Germany appeared and gradually penetrated as far as the Duena
where Bishop Meinhard, in 1187, built a Roman Catholic Church and a
fortress. The Livonians were converted much as St. Vladimir had made
Christians of the people of Kief; but in this case, the people of
Livonia revolted; in 1198 the second bishop was killed in battle, and
the natives returned to the heathen gods. Pope Innocent III ordered a
crusade against them. Another bishop sailed up the Duena with a fleet
of twenty-three ships, and in 1200 founded Riga. The year after a
religious society, the Sword-bearers, resembling the Templars, was
installed in Livonia, and the natives appealed to the Duke of Polotsk
for help. They marched upon Riga and were defeated in 1206.

German colonization proceeded actively under the Sword-bearers. (p. 061)
Several cities were founded, and the country was divided into fiefs,
according to the feudal system of Western Europe. The towns were
modeled after Hamburg, Bremen, and Luebeck. Riga grew into a large and
powerful city.

In 1225, another religious-brotherhood, the Teutonic Order, entered
into Lithuania, and twelve years later the two orders united. The
introduction of the Roman Catholic religion carried with it the
elements of Roman civilization, and did much toward estranging the
natives of the Baltic provinces from the Russians of the east.

Southwestern Russia, or Galitch, had, more than any other section,
preserved the old Slav character. "The duke was a prince of the old
Slavonic type. He was elected by a popular assembly, and kept his seat
by its consent."[4] The assembly was composed of boyards or nobles,
and sometimes disputes occurred between them and the duke, which ended
in more or