a prominent member of the council which Vassili had
established, he had no influence in the government which had been
grasped so energetically and despotically by Helene and her paramour
Telennef. At length Andre, trembling for his own life, timidly raised
the banners of revolt, and gathered quite an army around him. But he
had no energy to conduct a war. He was speedily taken, and, loaded
with chains, was thrown into a dungeon, where, after a few weeks of
most cruel deprivations, he miserably perished. Thirty of the lords,
implicated with him in the rebellion, were hung upon the trees around
Novgorod. Many others were put to torture and perished on the rack.
Helene, surrendering herself to the dominion of guilty love, developed
the ferocity of a tigress.

Sigismond, King of Poland, taking advantage of the general discontent
of the Russians under the sway of Helene, formed an alliance with the
horde upon the lower waters of the Don, and invaded Russia, burning
and destroying with mercilessness which demons could not have
surpassed. Prince Telennef headed an army to repel them. The pen
wearies in describing the horrors of these scenes. One hundred
thousand Russians are now flying before one hundred and fifty thousand
Polanders. Hundreds of miles of territory are ravaged. Cities and
villages are stormed, plundered, burned; women and children are cut
down and trampled beneath the feet of cavalry, or escape shrieking
into the forests, where they perish of exposure and starvation. But an
army of recruits comes to the aid of the Russians. And now one hundred
and fifty thousand Polanders are driven before two hundred thousand
Russians. They sweep across the frontier like dust driven by the
tornado. And now the cities and villages of Poland blaze; her streams
run red with blood. The Polish wives and daughters in their turn
struggle, shriek and die. From exhaustion the warfare ceases. The two
antagonists, moaning and bleeding, wait for a few years but to recover
sufficient strength to renew the strife, and then the brutal, demoniac
butchery commences anew. Such is the history of man.

In this brief, but bloody war, the city of Staradoub, in Russia, was
besieged by an army of Poles and Tartars. The assault was urged with
the most desperate energy and fearlessness. The defense was conducted
with equal ferocity. Thousands fell on both sides in every mangled
form of death. At last the besiegers undermined the walls, and placing
be