was collected and discharged in the magazines of Kiow The month of June was the ordinary season of the departure of the fleet: the timber of the canoes was framed into the oars and benches of more solid and capacious boats; and they proceeded without obstacle down the Borysthenes, as far as the seven or thirteen ridges of rocks, which traverse the bed, and precipitate the waters, of the river. At the more shallow falls it was sufficient to lighten the vessels; but the deeper cataracts were impassable; and the mariners, who dragged their vessels and their slaves six miles over land, werc exposed in this toilsome journey to he robbers of the desert. 54 At the first island below the falls, the Russians celebrated the festival of their escape: at a second, near the mouth of the river, they repaired their shattered vessels for the longer and more perilous voyage of the Black Sea. If they steered along the coast, the Danube was accessible; with a fair wind they could reach in thirty-six or forty hours the opposite shores of Anatolia; and Constantinople admitted the annual visit of the strangers of the North. They returned at the stated seasor with a rich cargo of corn, wine, and oil, the manufactus of Greece, and the spices of India. Some of their counen resided in the capital and provinces; and the national treaties protected the persons, effects, and privi leges, of the Russian merchant. 55

In

But the same communication which had been opened fo The benefit, was soon abused for the injury, of mankind. a period of one hundred and ninety years, the Russians made four attempts to plunder the treasures of Constantinople: the event was various, but the motive, the means, and the object, were the same in these naval expeditions.56 The Russian

Constantine only reckons seven cataracts, of which he gives the Russian and Sclavonic names; but thirteen are enumerated by the Sieur de Beauplan, a French engineer, who had surveyed the course and navigation of the Dnieper, or Borysthenes, (Description de l'Ukraine, Rouen, 1660, a thin quarto;) but the map is unluckily wanting in my copy.

Nestor, apud Levêque, Hist. de Russie, tom. i. p. 78-80. From the Dnieper, or Borysthenes, the Russians went to Black Bulgaria, Chazaria, and Syria. To Syria, how? where? when? May we not, instead of Zugia, read Evavia? (de Administrat. Imp. c. 42, p. 113.) The alteration is slight; the position of Suania, between Chazaria and Lazica, is perfectly suitable; and the name was still used in the xith century, (Cedren tom. ii. p. 770.)

The wars of the Russians and Greeks in the ixth, xth, and xith

traders had seen the magnificence, and tasted the luxury of the city of the Cæsars. A marvellous tale, and a scanty supply, excited the desires of their savage countrymen: they envied the gifts of nature which their climate denied; they coveted the works of art, which they were too lazy to imitate and too indigent to purchase; the Varangian princes unfurled the banners of piratical adventure, and their bravest soldiers were drawn from the nations that dwelt in the northern isles of the ocean.57 The image of their naval armaments was revived in the last century, in the fleets of the Cosacks, which issued from the Borysthenes, to navigate the same seas for a similar purpose.58 The Greek appellation of monoxyla, or single canoes, might be justly applied to the bottom of their vessels. It was scooped out of the long stem of a beech or willow, but the slight and narrow foundation was raised and continued on either side with planks, till it attained the length of sixty, and the height of about twelve, feet. These boats were built without a deck, but with two rudders and a mast; to move with sails and oars; and to contain from forty to seventy men, with their arms, and provisions of fresh water and salt fish. The first trial of the Russians was made with two hundred boats; but when the national force was exerted they might arm against Constantinople a thousand or twelve hundred vessels. Their fleet was not much inferior to the royal navy of Agamemnon, but it was magnified in the eyes of fear to ten or fifteen times the real proportion of its strength and numbers. Had the Greek emperors been endowed with foresight to discern, and vigor to prevent, perhaps they might have sealed with a maritime force the mouth of the Borysthenes. Their indolence abandoned the coast of Anatolia to the calamities of a piratical war, which, after an interval of six hundred years, again infested the Euxine; but as long as the capital was respected, the sufferings of a distant province escaped the notice both of the prince and the historian. The storm which had swept along from the Phasis and Trebizond,

centuries, are related in the Byzantine annals, especially those of Zonaras and Cedrenus; and all their testimonies are collected in the Russica of Stritter, tom. ii. pars ii. p. 939-1044.

87 Προσεταιρισάμενος δὲ καὶ συμμαχικὸν οὐκ ὀλίγον ἀπὸ τῶν κατοικούντων ἐν ταῖς προσαρκτίαις τοῦ Ωκεανοῦ νήσοις ἐθνῶν. Cedrenus in Compend. p. 758.

18 See Beauplan, (Description de l'Ukraine, p. 54-61) his descriptions are lively, his plans accurate, and except the circumstance of fire-arms, we may read old Russians for modern Cosacks.

at length burst on the Bosphorus of Thrace; a strait of fifteen miles, in which the rude vessels of the Russians might have been stopped and destroyed by a more skilful adversary. In their first enterprise 59 under the princes of Kiow, they passed without opposition, and occupied the port of Constan tinople in the absence of the emperor Michael, the son of Theophilus. Through a crowd of perils, he landed at the palace-stairs, and immediately repaired to a church of the Virgin Mary.60 By the advice of the patriarch, her garment, a precious relic, was drawn from the sanctuary and dipped in the sea; and a seasonable tempest, which determined the retreat of the Russians, was devoutly ascribed to the mother of God.61 The silence of the Greeks may inspire some doubt of the truth, or at least of the importance, of the second attempt by Oleg, the guardian of the sons of Ruric.62 A strong barrier of arms and fortifications defended the Bospho rus: they were eluded by the usual expedient of drawing the boats over the isthmus; and this simple operation is describea 'n the national chronicles, as if the Russian fleet had sailed over dry land with a brisk and favorable gale. The leader of the third armament, Igor, the son of Ruric, had chosen a moment of weakness and decay, when the naval powers of the empire were employed against the Saracens. But if courage be not wanting, the instruments of defence are seldom deficient. Fifteen broken and decayed galleys were boldly launched against the enemy; but instead of the single tube of Greek fire usually planted on the prow, the sides and stern of each vessel were abundantly supplied with that liquid com.

59 It is to be lamented, that Bayer has only given a Dissertation de Russorum prima Expeditione Constantinopolitanâ, (Comment. Academ. Petropol. tom. vi. p. 265-391.) After disentangling some chronological intricacies, he fixes it in the years 864 or 865, a date which might have smoothed some doubts and difficulties in the beginning of M. Levêque's history.

When Photius wrote his encyclic epistle on the conversion of the Russians, the miracle was not yet sufficiently ripe; he reproaches the nation as εἰς ὠμότητα καὶ μιαιφονίαν πάντας δευτέρους ταττόμενον. Leo Grammaticus, p. 463, 464. Constantini Continuator, in Script. post Theophanem, p. 121, 122. Symeon Logothet. p. 445, 445. Georg. Monach. p. 535, 536. Cedrenus, tom. ii. p. 551. Zonaras, tom. ii. p. 162.

See Nestor and Nicon, in Levêque's Hist. de Russie, tom. i. p. 74-80. Katona (Hist. Ducum, p. 75-79) uses his advantage to disprove this Russian victory, which would cla id the siege of Kiow by the Hungarians.

bustible. The engineers were dexterous; the weather was propitious; many thousand Russians, who chose rather to be drowned than burnt, leaped into the sea; and those who escaped to the Thracian shore were inhumanly slaughtered by the peasants and soldiers. Yet one third of the canoes escaped into shallow water; and the next spring Igor was again prepared to retrieve his disgrace and claim his revenge.63 After a long peace, Jaroslaus, the great grandson of Igor, resumed the same project of a naval invasion. A fleet, under the command of his son, was repulsed at the entrance of the Bosphorus by the same artificial flames. But in the rashness of pursuit, the vanguard of the Greeks was encompassed by an irresistible multitude of boats and men; their provision of fire was probably exhausted; and twenty-four galleys were either taken, sunk, or destroyed.64

Yet the threats or calamities of a Russian war were more frequently diverted by treaty than by arms. In these naval hostilities, every disadvantage was on the side of the Greeks; their savage enemy afforded no mercy: his poverty promised no spoil; his impenetrable retreat deprived the conqueror of the hopes of revenge; and the pride or weakness of empire indulged an opinion, that no honor could be gained or lost in the intercourse with Barbarians. At first their demands were high and inadmissible, three pounds of gold for each soldier or mariner of the fleet: the Russian youth adhered to the design of conquest and glory; but the counsels of moderation were recommended by the hoary sages. "Be content," they said, "with the liberal offers of Cæsar; is it not far better to obtain without a combat the possession of gold, silver, silks, and all the objects of our desires? Are we sure of victory? Can we conclude a treaty with the sea? We do not tread on he land; we float on the abyss of water, and a common death hangs over our heads." 65 The memory of these Arc

68 Leo Grammaticus, p. 506, 507. Incert. Contin. p. 263, 264. Symeon Logothet. p. 490, 491. Georg. Monach. p. 588, 589. Cedren. tom. ii. p. 629. Zonaras, tom. ii. p. 190, 191, and Liutprand, 1. v. c. 6, who writes from the narratives of his father-in-law, then ambassador at Constantinople, and corrects the vain exaggeration of the Greeks.

64 I can only appeal to Cedrenus (tom. ii. p. 758, 759) and Zonaras, Įtom. ii. p. 253, 254;) but they grow more weighty and credible as they draw near to their own times.

66 Nestor, apud Levêque, Hist. de Russie, tom i. p. 87.

tic fleets that seemed to descend from the polar circle, left a deep impression of terror on the Imperial city. By the vul gar of every rank, it was asserted and believed, that n equestrian statue in the square of Taurus was secretly in scribed with a prophecy, how the Russians, in the last days hould become masters of Constantinople.66 In our own time, a Russian armament, instead of sailing from the Borysthenes, nas circumnavigated the continent of Europe; and the Turk, ish capital has been threatened by a squadron of strong and lofty ships of war, each of which, with its naval science and thundering artillery, could have sunk or scattered a hundred canoes, such as those of their ancestors. Perhaps the present generation may yet behold the accomplishment of the predic tion, of a rare prediction, of which the style is unambiguous and the date unquestionable.

By land the Russians were less formidable than by sea; and as they fought for the most part on foot, their irregular legions must often have been broken and overthrown by the cavalry of the Scythian hordes. Yet their growing towns, however slight and imperfect, presented a shelter to the subject, and a barrier to the enemy: the monarchy of Kiow, till a fatal partition, assumed the dominion of the North; and the nations from the Volga to the Danube were subdued or repelled by the arms of Swatoslaus,67 the son of Igor, the son of Oleg, the son of Ruric. The vigor of his mind and body was fortified by the hardships of a military and savage life. Wrapped in a bear-skin, Swatoslaus usually slept on the ground, his head reclining on a saddle; his diet was coarse and frugal, and, like the heroes of Homer,68 his meat (it was often

"This brazen statue, which had been brought from Antioch, and was melted down by the Latins, was supposed to represent either Joshua or Bellerophon, an odd dilemma. See Nicetas Choniates, (p. 413, 414,) Codinus, (de Originibus C. P. p. 24,) and the anonymous writer de Antiquitat. C. P. (Banduri, Imp. Orient. tom. i. p. 17, 18,) who lived about the year 1100. They witness the belief of the prophecy; the rest is immaterial.

7 The life of Swatoslaus, or Sviatoslaf, or Sphendosthlabus, is extracted from the Russian Chronicles by M. Levesque, (Hist. de Russie, tom i. p. 94-107.)

"This resemblance may be clearly seen in the ninth book of the Iliad, (205-221,) in the minute detail of the cookery of Achilles. By such a picture, a modern epic poet would disgrace his work, and dis gust his reader; but the Greek verses are harmonious a dead language can seldom appear low or familiar; and at the distance of two