ezing on the plains. The alarm which spread through
the camp was instantaneous and terrible. The darkness of a November
night soon settled down over city and plain. With the first rays of
the morning the garrison were upon the walls, when, to their surprise,
they saw the whole vast army in rapid and disordered flight. The
plains around the fortress were utterly deserted and covered with the
wrecks of war. The garrison immediately rushed from behind their
ramparts united with their approaching friends and pursued the
fugitives.

The royalists, in their dismay, attempted to cross the river on the
fragile ice. It broke beneath the enormous weight, and thousands
perished in the cold stream. The remainder of this great host were
almost to a man either slain or taken captive. Their whole camp and
baggage fell into the hands of the conquerors. This wonderful victory,
achieved by the energies of Mstislaf, has given him a name in Russian
annals as one of the most renowned and brave of the princes of the
empire.

George, prince of Novgorod, son of Andre, escaped from the carnage of
that ensanguined field, and overwhelmed with shame, returned to his
father in Moscow. The king, in this extremity, developed true
greatness of soul. He exhibited neither dejection nor anger, but bowed
to the calamity as to a chastisement he needed from God. The victory
of the insurgents, if they may be so called, who occupied the
provinces in the valley of the Dnieper, was not promotive either of
prosperity or peace. Mindful of the former grandeur of Kief, as the
ancient capital of the Russian empire, ambitious princes were
immediately contending for the possession of that throne. After
several months of confusion and blood, Andre succeeded, by skillful
diplomacy, in again inducing them, for the sake of general
tranquillity, to come under the general government of the empire. The
nobles could not but respect him as the most aged of their princes; as
a man of imperial energy and ability, and as the one most worthy to be
their chief. He alone had the power to preserve tranquillity in
extended Russia. They therefore applied to him to take Kief, under
certain restrictions, again into his protection, and to nominate for
that city a prince who should be in his alliance. This homage was
acceptable to Andre.

But while he was engaged in this negotiation, a conspiracy was formed
against the monarch, and he was cruelly assassinated. It was the night
of the