ntine,
would have been glad to send him a dozen of them if he had expressed a
wish to that effect; but Vladimir was proud, and could not think of
asking a favor of anybody, least of all of the Greek emperors. No, he
would die a heathen rather than ask for an archbishop to baptize him.

Nevertheless, Vladimir had fully made up his mind to have himself
baptized by an archbishop. It was his lifelong habit, when he wanted
anything, to take it by force. He had taken two thirds of his dominions
in that way, and, as we have seen, it was in that way that he got his
wife Rogneda. So now that he wanted an archbishop, he determined to take
one. Calling his army together, he declared war on the Greek emperors,
and promising his soldiers all the pillage they wanted, he marched away
towards Constantinople.

The first serious obstacle he met with was the fortified city of
Kherson, situated near the spot where Sebastopol stands in our day. Here
the resistance was so obstinate that month after month was consumed in
siege operations. At the end of six months Vladimir became seriously
alarmed lest the garrison should be succored from without, in which case
his hope of getting himself converted into a Christian must be abandoned
altogether.

While he was troubled on this score, however, one of his soldiers picked
up an arrow that had been shot from the city, and found a letter
attached to it. This letter informed the Grand Prince that the
water-pipes of the city received their supplies at a point immediately
in his rear, and with this news Vladimir's hope of becoming a Christian
revived. He found the water-pipes and stopped them up, and the city
surrendered.

There were plenty of bishops and archbishops there, of course, and they
were perfectly willing--as they had been from the first, for that
matter--to baptize the unruly royal convert, but Vladimir was not
content now with that. He sent a messenger to Constantinople to tell the
emperors there that he wanted their sister, the Princess Anne, for a
wife; and that if they refused, he would march against Constantinople
itself. The Emperors Basil and Constantine consented, and although
Vladimir had five wives already, he married Anne, and was baptized on
the same day.

Having now become a Christian, the Grand Prince determined that his
Russians should do the same. He publicly stripped the god Perune of his
gorgeous golden whiskers, and of his rich vestments, showing the people
that Per