could not execute justice without the concurrence of the posadnik, nor reverse a judgment nor take a suit away from the city. In conflicts between citizens and the prince's men a mixed tribunal decided. He could impose no garrison nor colony on them. The chief officer of the city was the posadnik. He was charged with the defense of civic rights, and shared with the prince the judicial powers and the apportionment of taxes. He governed the city, commanded the army and directed its diplomacy. The next in authority was the teusatski, who was military chief and entrusted with the defense of the rights of the people as a sort of tribune. Novgorod also preserved its spiritual independence by electing its own archbishop, who ranked among the chief dignitaries of the city. The citizens not only elected but retained the power to depose him. Novgorod became a German market, and German settlements were made not only at Novgorod but also at Ladoga and Pskof. Their markets were protected by stockades, and they maintained a monopoly of the western trade. Pskof and Viatka developed later, about the twelfth century, as little republics similarly constituted to Novgorod. The period following the death of Iaroslaf in 1054 till the appearance of the Tartars in 1224 was one of fierce and cruel wars, due largely to the division of the country among the heirs of deceased princes, aggravated by a conflict as to the rule of inheritance between the old Slavonic leadership of the oldest member of the family, by which brother succeeded brother, and the claims of the sons. From the dreary accounts of bloody cruelty and constant wars no new lesson can be drawn. It has had its counterpart in the history of nearly every nation on earth. The advent of the Mongols in 1224 marks the beginning of an important epoch in Russian history. The dominion of Genghis Kahn had already been extended over Manchuria, Northern China, central and western Asia. Nothing could exceed the fierceness and barbarity of his conquests. Indiscriminate slaughter, rapine, destruction of cities and property, death, desolation and ruin everywhere, were the penalties of resistance, and submission often gained no protection. His armies were recruited from all nations, and with

prestige once established he drew to his aid a heterogeneous army, made up from all the nations with which he came in contact. Against his hordes the ever jealous and warring petty princes, who ruled in the dismembered states of Russia, could oppose no effectual resistance. The Russians of that time were not very superior in their rules of warfare to the Mongols. When the ambassadors of the latter came to them asking that they abstain from interference in their contest with the Paluvtsin, the Russians responded by killing the ambassadors. In the battle which followed the Russian army was annihilated. This battle however was not followed by the immediate subjugation of any large territory. The Mongol hordes returned to the east, where they were occupied with other conquests. In 1237 Oktai, one of the sons and successors of Genghis, sent his nephew Batu with an immense army into Russia. He quickly overran the grass country of the south and spread ruin and desolation everywhere. His army penetrated the forests to within fifty miles of Novgorod. Mangu, a grandson of Genghis, took and destroyed Kief and put its people to the sword. The difficulties of a hilly timbered country impeded the progress of a horde accustomed to the open plains, and the obstinate defense of Olmutz in Moravia checked their advance. The death of Oktai recalled Batu to the east, and the wave of conquest had reached its western limit. Though they passed through Hungary into Germany, they gained no permanent foothold beyond Russia. Batu established his capital at Sarai on the lower Volga, where as representative of the great Kahn he ruled in barbaric splendor. By the persuasion of Alexander Nevski Novgorod paid tribute to the Mongols. Russian princes were required to appear at the capital of the Golden Horde and do homage to its chief. In many instances they were compelled to appear in the court of the Great Kahn on the further side of Asia. The rule of the Mongols was that of military chiefs, interested in extorting tribute and extending their power, but taking no interest in the local affairs of the people. They left those they spared with their social system, their local courts and laws unchanged, and with possession of their lands, which their nomad con

querors had no desire to cultivate. The conquered people were required to pay a capitation-tax, levied on rich and poor alike, to be paid in money or furs. The revenue was collected by farmers supported by the agents and guards of the Kahn. In course of time the princes of Moscow undertook the collection from their own subjects. The Russians were also required to furnish their quota of troops. While the Russian princes were allowed to retain their places, it was as subjects of the great Kahn, to whose decision they were required to submit their controversies instead of fighting them out. The corruption of the Kahn's court is reputed to have been extreme. The Mongols were converted to Mohammedanism about 1272. After they ceased to extend their dominions by conquest, their manners softened and we hear no more of their extreme ferocity. During the time of their ascendency the Russians waged successful war with the Swedes and Livonians and strengthened their position on the west and north. With the rise of Poland there was a tendency to Russian concentration about Moscow.

In the reign of Ivan III the Muscovite autocracy began to again consolidate the Russian states. Novgorod had changed from a democracy, devoted to the common welfare, to an aristocracy divided into discordant factions. In 1470 it submitted to the sway of Ivan. By assuming the rôle of judge between the warring factions he took away from them their ancient and highly prized privilege of determining all their causes at home. They rebelled and he subdued them and finally abolished the vetche and posadnik, and in 1478 the republic of Novgorod ceased to exist. The Tartar empire had broken into fragments, and Ivan finally threw off the yoke of the Horde. Vasili Ivanovitch took away the liberties of Pskof as his father had those of Novgorod, abolished its vetche, carried off its bell, placed his lieutenant in it as governor and transplanted its principal citizens in remote parts, as his father had those of Novgorod. Ivan IV, the terrible, extended the boundaries of his empire and at the same time hardened the autocracy. His merciless executions were numbered by thousands and included many of the proudest boyars of the empire.

In 1556 he assembled the States General for the first time, and he was the organizer of the strelitz or National Guard. The long and vigorous reigns of Ivan III, Vasili and Ivan IV, extending from 1462 to 1584, witnessed the consolidation of the empire, the termination of the policy of dividing it as an inheritance and the centralization of power in the hands of the Czar. The policy of these monarchs was mainly directed toward the firm establishment of the power of the Czar over the nobility. The drujina, who were his companions in the palace in peace and in the camp in war, had no taste for administrative details, and in the organization of the bureaucratic system, through which the central power acts on the multitude, it became necessary to call in the more humble and more scholarly sons of merchants and priests. A great number of these bureaus, twenty to thirty, with varying and illdefined functions were instituted. One had charge of supplying the table of the Czar, the princes of the blood and nobles whom he fed. Others looked after other domestic and court matters. Then there were the prikazin of the palace, of the revenue, of secret affairs, petitions, posts, police, buildings, slaves, monasteries, army, embassies and of the provinces. The revenues were derived from the products of crown lands, paid in kind or in money, from a tax on corn, on fires, customs, crown taverns, fines and confiscations. Certain branches of trade were also monopolized by the Czar and used as a means of extorting money from the merchants.

Three grades of courts of justice were established, that of the starosta of the district, a magistrate for every hundred plows, the voievod in the chief city of each province and the Supreme Court of Moscow. Trials were had on written or oral proofs, a party being allowed to testify in the absence of other proof, or by judicial combat. Debtors were treated with the greatest rigor. An insolvent was liable to be flogged daily for thirty or forty days, after which, if no one would pay his debts, he was sold and his wife and children hired out to service. Persons charged with theft, murder or treason were subjected to a great variety of tortures. Heretics and sorcerers were burned. Counterfeiters had hot metal poured down

their throats. These were for the humble subjects. A nobleman who slew a mujik was only fined or whipped, and if he killed his slave there was no penalty, for he might do as he pleased with his chattel. The church was made subservient to the Czar, and the clergy were instructed in the performance of imposing ceremonies, but knew little of religion or morality. The army was mostly cavalry. The imperial guard of about eight thousand was made up of young courtiers. All the nobles of the empire, counted at about eighty thousand, served on horseback and defrayed their expenses from the revenues of their lands. The levy of the free peasants amounted to about three hundred thousand. The strelitzi, organized by Ivan IV and kept at Moscow, numbered twelve thousand. Many foreigners were taken into the service. Soldiers furnished their own rations mainly for short campaigns. Diplomatic relations were established with other countries of Europe. The lower orders of Russia were made up of: 1, chattel slaves; 2, peasants attached to the lands of the nobles, legally free in person but bound to till their masters' lands, and 3. free cultivators, who had the right to move from place to place and change masters. The second class was by far the most numerous. These considered themselves the real proprietors of the land, not as individuals, but as communities, mirs. The mir, not the individual, paid taxes to the Czar and dues to the landlord. The towns were governed either by a voievodni, appointed by the prince, or a starosta, elected by the assembly from among the gentry. In assessing the imposts the starosta convoked the elders of the towns and rural mirs. In the family the father had arbitrary power over wife, children and sons' wives.

The nobleman always had a retinue of slaves, which he kept about his person and ruled with such rigor as accorded with his disposition. The practice of secluding the women at home and veiling when away prevailed. Drunkenness and debauchery were common in a state of society where illiteracy was almost universal. Superstition and ignorance, there as elsewhere, were inseparable companions. Holy water and relics were more relied on for miraculous cures than the medicines of the physicians, and were perhaps safer in the