ssia. According to the custom of those days the booty was
divided between the princes and the soldiers--each man receiving
according to his rank.

As the army returned in triumph to the Dniester, to their boundless
satisfaction they saw the pennants of a merchant fleet ascending the
river from Constantinople, laden with the riches of the empire. The
army crowded the shores and greeted the barges with all the
demonstrations of exultation and joy.

The punishment of the barbarians being thus effectually accomplished,
the princes immediately commenced anew their strife. All their old
feuds were revived. Every lord wished to increase his own power and to
diminish that of his natural rival. Andre, of Souzdal, to whom we have
before referred, whose capital was the little village of Moscow far
away in the interior, deemed the moment favorable for dethroning
Mstislaf and extending the area of such freedom as his subjects
enjoyed over the realms of Novgorod and Kief. He succeeded in uniting
eleven princes with him in his enterprise. His measures were adopted
with great secresy. Assembling his armies, curtained by leagues of
forests, he, unobserved, commenced his march toward the Dnieper. The
banners of the numerous army were already visible from the steeples of
Kief before the sovereign was apprised of his danger. For two days the
storms of war beat against the walls and roared around the battlements
of the city, when the besiegers, bursting over the walls, swept the
streets in horrid carnage.

This mother of the Russian cities had often been besieged and often
capitulated, but never before had it been taken by storm, and never
before, and never since, have the horrors of war been more sternly
exhibited. For three days and three nights the city and its
inhabitants were surrendered to the brutal soldiery. The imagination
shrinks from contemplating the awful scene. The world of woe may be
challenged to exhibit any thing worse. Fearful, indeed, must be the
corruption when man can be capable of such inhumanity to his fellow
man. War unchains the tiger and shows his nature.

Mstislaf, the sovereign, in the midst of the confusion, the uproar and
the blood, succeeded almost as by miracle in escaping from the
wretched city, basely, however, abandoning his wife and his children
to the enemy. Thus fell Kief. For some centuries it had been the
capital of Russia. It was such no more. The victorious Andre, of
Moscow, was now, by the ene