seen before. The guests, assembled in the metropolis of the khan, were
innumerable. Yaroslaf was compelled to promise allegiance to the
Tartar chieftain, and all the other Russian princes, who had survived
the general slaughter, were also forced to pay homage and tribute to
Bati.

After two years, the young prince, Constantin, returned from Tartary,
and then Yaroslaf himself was ordered, with all his relatives, to go
to the capital of this barbaric empire on the banks of the Amour,
where the Tartar chiefs were to meet to choose a successor to Octai,
who had recently died. With tears the unhappy prince bade adieu to his
country, and, traversing vast deserts and immense regions of hills and
valleys, he at length reached the metropolis of his cruel masters.
Here he successfully defended himself against some accusations which
had been brought against him, and, after a detention of several
months, he was permitted to set out on his return. He had proceeded
but a few hundred miles on the weary journey when he was taken sick,
and died the 20th of September, 1246. The faithful nobles who
accompanied him bore his remains to Vladimir, where they were
interred.

There was no longer a Russian kingdom. The country had lost its
independence; and the Tartar sway, rude, vacillating and awfully
cruel, extended from remote China to the shores of the Baltic. The
Roman, Grecian and Russian empires thus crumbling, the world was
threatened with an universal inundation of barbarism. Russian princes,
with more or less power ruled over the serfs who tilled their lands,
but there was no recognized head of the once powerful kingdom, and no
Russian prince ventured to disobey the commands even of the humblest
captain of the Tartar hordes.

While affairs were in this deplorable state, a Russian prince, Daniel,
of Gallicia, engaged secretly, but with great vigor, in the attempt to
secure the cooeperation of the rest of Europe to emancipate Russia from
the Tartar yoke. Greece, overawed by the barbarians, did not dare to
make any hostile movement against them. Daniel turned to Rome, and
promised the pope, Innocent IV., that Russia should return to the
Roman church, and would march under the papal flag if the pope would
rouse Christian Europe against the Tartars.

The pope eagerly embraced these offers, pronounced Daniel to be King
of Russia, and sent the papal legate to appoint Roman bishops over the
Greek church. At the same time he wished to c