other northern barbarians to the Rome of the West attracted
the Varangians to the Rome of the East. The very migration of the
Russian capital--Rurik fixing it at Novgorod, Oleg removing it to Kiev,
and Sviataslaff attempting to establish it in Bulgaria--proves beyond
doubt that the invader was only feeling his way, and considered Russia
as a mere halting-place from which to wander on in search of an empire
in the South. If modern Russia covets the possession of Constantinople
to establish her dominion over the world, the Ruriks were, on the
contrary, forced by the resistance of Byzantium, under Zimiskes,
definitively to establish their dominion in Russia.

It may be objected that victors and vanquished amalgamated more quickly
in Russia than in any other conquest of the northern barbarians, that
the chiefs soon commingled themselves with the Slavonians--as shown by
their marriages and their names. But then, it should be recollected that
the Faithful Band, which formed at once their guard and their privy
council, remained exclusively composed of Varangians; that Vladimir,
who marks the summit, and Yaroslav, who marks the commencing decline of
Gothic Russia, were seated on her throne by the arms of the Varangians.
If any Slavonian influence is to be acknowledged in this epoch, it is
that of Novgorod, a Slavonian State, the traditions, policy, and
tendencies of which were so antagonistic to those of modern Russia that
the one could found her existence only on the ruins of the other. Under
Yaroslav the supremacy of the Varangians is broken, but simultaneously
with it disappears the conquering tendency of the first period, and the
decline of Gothic Russia begins. The history of that decline, more still
than that of the conquest and formation, proves the exclusively Gothic
character of the Empire of the Ruriks.

The incongruous, unwieldy, and precocious Empire heaped together by the
Ruriks, like the other empires of similar growth, is broken up into
appanages, divided and subdivided among the descendants of the
conquerors, dilacerated by feudal wars, rent to pieces by the
intervention of foreign peoples. The paramount authority of the Grand
Prince vanishes before the rival claims of seventy princes of the blood.
The attempt of Andrew of Susdal at recomposing some large limbs of the
empire by the removal of the capital from Kiev to Vladimir proves
successful only in propagating the decomposition from the South to the
centre.