ontent to pause upon those plains which to the Asiatic
seemed not unlike his own home.

CHAPTER VII

UNDER MONGOL YOKE

Amid the wreck of principalities there was one state remaining erect.
Novgorod was defended by its remoteness and its uninviting climate.
The Mongols had not thought it worth while to attempt the reduction of
the warlike state, so the stalwart Republic stood alone amid the
general ruin. All the rest were under the Tatar yoke. Of Princes
there were none. All had either been slaughtered or fled. Proud
_boyars_ saw their wives and daughters the slaves of barbarians.
Delicate women who had always lived in luxury were grinding corn and
preparing coarse food for their terrible masters.

After the conquest was completed the Mongol sovereign exacted only
three things from the prostrate state--homage, tribute, and a military
contingent when required. They might retain their land and their
customs, might worship any god in any way; their Princes might dispute
for the thrones as before; but no Prince--not the Grand Prince
himself--could ascend a throne until he had permission from the Great
Khan, to whom also every dispute between royal claimants must be
deferred. Then when finally the messenger came from the sovereign with
the _yarlik_, or royal sanction, the Prince must listen kneeling, with
his head in the dust. And if then he was invited (?) to the Mongol
court to pay homage, he must go, even though it required (as Marco Polo
tells us) four years to make the journey across the plains and the
mountains and rivers and the Great Desert of Gobi!

When Yaroslaf II., third Grand Prince of Suzdal, succeeded to the
Principality, he was _invited_ to pay this visit. After reaching
there, and after all the degrading ceremonies to which he was
subjected--kissing the stirrup of his Suzerain, and licking up the
drops which fell from his cup as he drank--then this Prince of the
family of Rurik perished from exhaustion in the Desert of Gobi on his
return journey. But this was not all. The yoke was a heavy as well as
a degrading one. Each Prince with his _Drujina_ must be always ready
to lead an army in defense of the Mongol cause if required; and, last
of all, the poll-tax bore with intolerable weight upon everyone, rich
or poor, excepting only the ecclesiastics and the property of the Greek
Church, which with a singular clemency they exempted.

What sort of a despotism was it, and what sort of a bein