sia, but the first apostle of Christianity in
that heathen land; canonized by the Church, and remembered as "the
first Russian who mounted to the Heavenly Kingdom."

When the Drevlians sent gifts to appease her wrath at the murder of
Igor, and offered her the hand of their prince, she had the messengers
buried alive. All she asked was three pigeons and three sparrows from
every house in their capital town. Lighted tow was tied to the tails
of the birds, which were then permitted to fly back to their homes
under the eaves of the thatched houses. In the conflagration which
followed, the inhabitants were massacred in a pleasing variety of ways;
some strangled, some smothered in vapor, some buried alive, and those
remaining reduced to slavery.

But an extraordinary transformation was at hand; and this vindictive
heathen woman was going to be changed to an ardent convert to the
Christian faith. Nestor, who is the Russian Herodotus, relates that
she went to Constantinople in 955, to inquire into the mysteries of the
Christian Church. The emperor was astonished, it is said, at the
strength and adroitness of her mind. She was baptized by the Greek
Patriarch, under the new name of Helen, the emperor acting as her
godfather.

There were already a few Christians in Kief, but so unpopular was the
new religion that Olga's son Sviatoslaf, upon reaching his majority,
absolutely refused to make himself ridiculous by adopting his mother's
faith. "My men will mock me," was his reply to Olga's entreaties, and
Nestor adds "that he often became furious with her" for her importunity.

Sviatoslaf, the son of Igor and Olga, although the first prince to bear
a Russian name, was the very type of the cunning, ambitious, and
intrepid Northman, and his brief reign (964-972) displayed all these
qualities. He defeated the Khazarui, the most civilized of all those
Oriental people, and once the most powerful. He subjugated the
Pechenegs, perhaps the most brutal and least civilized of all the
barbarians. But these were only incidental to his real purpose.

The Bulgarian Empire was large, and had played an important part in the
past. It had a Tsar, while Russia had only a Grand Prince, and,
although now declining in strength, was a troublesome neighbor to the
Greek Empire. The oft-repeated mistake of inviting the aid of another
people was committed. Nothing could have better pleased Sviatoslaf
than to assist the Greek Empire, and when h