on. Besides this, it was inhabited
by warlike agricultural races, who were not only capable of defending
their own territory, but even strongly disposed to make encroachments
on their eastern neighbours. Russian expansion to the westward was,
therefore, not a spontaneous movement of the agricultural population,
but the work of the Government, acting slowly and laboriously by means
of diplomacy and military force; it had, however, a certain historical
justification.

No sooner had Russia freed herself, in the fifteenth century, from
the Tartar domination, than her political independence, and even
her national existence, were threatened from the West. Her western
neighbours, were like herself, animated with that tendency to national
expansion which I have above described; and for a time it seemed
doubtful who should ultimately possess the vast plains of Eastern
Europe. The chief competitors were the Tsars of Moscow and the Kings
of Poland, and the latter appeared to have the better chance. In close
connection with Western Europe, they had been able to adopt many of the
improvements which had recently been made in the art of war, and they
already possessed the rich valley of the Dnieper. Once, with the help of
the free Cossacks, they succeeded in overrunning the whole of Muscovy,
and a son of the Polish king was elected Tsar in Moscow. By attempting
to accomplish their purpose in a too hasty and reckless fashion, they
raised a storm of religious and patriotic fanaticism, which very
soon drove them out of their newly acquired possessions. The country
remained, however, in a very precarious position, and its more
intelligent rulers perceived plainly that, in order to carry on the
struggle successfully, they must import something of that Western
civilisation which gave such an advantage to their opponents.

Some steps had already been taken in that direction. In the year 1553 an
English navigator, whilst seeking for a short route to China and India,
had accidentally discovered the port of Archangel on the White Sea, and
since that time the Tsars had kept up an intermittent diplomatic and
commercial intercourse with England. But this route was at all times
tedious and dangerous, and during a great part of the year it was closed
by the ice. In view of these difficulties the Tsars tried to import
"cunning foreign artificers," by way of the Baltic; but their efforts
were hampered by the Livonian Order, who at that time held the