s, and
their military and civil households; it was official Russia that was
doing this. The _people_ were still sowing and reaping, and sharing
the fruit of their toil in common, unconscious as the cattle in their
fields that a revolution was taking place, ready to be driven hither
and thither, coerced by a power which they did not comprehend, their
horizon bounded by the needs of the day and hour.

The elements constituting Russian society were the same in all the
principalities. There was first the Prince. Then his official family,
a band of warriors called the _Drujina_. This Drujina was the germ of
the future state. Its members were the faithful servants of the
Prince, his guard and his counselors. He could constitute them a court
of justice, or could make them governors of fortresses (_posadniki_) or
lieutenants in the larger towns. The Prince and his Drujina were like
a family of soldiers, bound together by a close tie. The body was
divided into three orders of rank: first, the simple guards; second,
those corresponding to the French barons; and, third, the _Boyars_, the
most illustrious of all, second only to the Prince. The Drujina was
therefore the germ of aristocratic Russia, next below it coming the
great body of the people, the citizens and traders, then the peasant,
and last of all the slave.

Yaroslaf, the "legislator," known as the Charlemagne of Russia, died in
the year 1054. The Eastern and Western Empires, long divided in
sentiment, were that same year separated in fact, when Pope Leo VI.
excommunicated the whole body of the Church in the East.

With the death of Yaroslaf the first and heroic period in Russia
closes. Sagas and legendary poems have preserved for us its grim
outlines and its heroes, of whom Vladimir, the "Beautiful Sun of Kief,"
is chief. Thus far there has been a unity in the thread of Russian
history--but now came chaos. Who can relate the story of two centuries
in which there have been 83 civil wars--18 foreign campaigns against
one country alone, not to speak of the others--46 barbaric invasions,
and in which 293 Princes are said to have disputed the throne of Kief
and other domains! We repeat: Who could tell this story of chaos; and
who, after it is told, would read it?

It was a vast upheaval, a process in which the eternal purposes were
"writ large"--too large to be read at the time. It was not intended
that only the fertile Black Lands along the Dnieper, near t