t this time, of the scourge of famine added to the miseries
of war. All the northern provinces suffered terribly from this frown
of God. Immense quantities of snow covered the ground even to the
month of May. The snow then melted suddenly with heavy rains, deluging
the fields with water, which slowly retired, converting the country
into a wide-spread marsh. It was very late before any seed could be
sown. The grain had but just begun to sprout when myriads of locusts
appeared, devouring every green thing. A heavy frost early in the
autumn destroyed the few fields the locusts had spared, and then
commenced the horrors of a universal famine. Men, women and children,
wasted and haggard, wandered over the fields seeking green leaves and
roots, and dropped dead in their wanderings. The fields and the public
places were covered with putrefying corpses which the living had not
strength to bury. A fetid miasma, ascending from this cause, added
pestilence to famine, and woes ensued too awful to be described.

Immediately after the death of Mstislaf, the inhabitants of Kief
assembled and invited his brother Vladimirovitch to assume the crown.
This prince then resided at Novgorod, which city he at once left for
the capital. He proved to be a feeble prince, and the lords of the
remote principalities, assuming independence, bade defiance to his
authority. There was no longer any central power, and Russia, instead
of being a united kingdom, became a conglomeration of antagonistic
states; every feudal lord marshaling his serfs in warfare against his
neighbor. In the midst of this state of universal anarchy, caused by
the weakness of a virtuous prince who had not sufficient energy to
reign, Vladimirovitch died in 1139.

The death of the king was a signal for a general outbreak--a
multitude of princes rushing to seize the crown. Viatcheslaf, prince
of a large province called Pereiaslavle, was the first to reach Kief
with his army. The inhabitants of the city, to avoid the horrors of
war, marched in procession to meet him, and conducted him in triumph
to the throne. Viatcheslaf had hardly grasped the scepter and
stationed his army within the walls, when from the steeples of the
city the banners of another advancing host were seen gleaming in the
distance, and soon the tramp of their horsemen, and the defiant tones
of the trumpet were heard, as another and far more mighty host
encircled the city. This new army was led by Vsevolod, prince