460 
R U S 
and my people, and convey the true religion into my 
dominions.” His prayer was at length granted; and, rather 
by stratagem than force, he made himselfmaster of the town, 
and through it, of the whole Crimea. He might now have 
received baptism; but his desire of being initiated into the 
Christian faith seems to have been excited more by am¬ 
bition, than by true devotion. His ruling passion promised 
to be amply gratified by an alliance with the Grecian em¬ 
perors, as he would thus acquire some legal claim on the 
territories which they possessed. He therefore demanded in 
marriage, Anna, the sister of Basilius and Constantine, 
who jointly held the imperial dignity, threatening, that if 
they refused his proffered alliance, he would lay siege to 
Constantinople. After some deliberation, the emperors 
complied, on condition, that Vladimir and his people should 
become Christians; and these conditions being accepted, 
the Russian monarch was baptized, took the name of Basilius, 
received the Grecian princess, and, as the reward of his 
victories, carried off several popes and archimandrites, to¬ 
gether with sacred vessels and church books, images of 
saints, and consecrated relics. 
Whatever might have been the considerations that swayed 
with Vladimir in his conversion to the Christian faith, it is 
certain that his new religion had the happiest influence on 
his future life and conduct. He not only abjured idolatry 
himself, and destroyed the idols which he had caused to be 
raised in his dominions, but used every exertion to persuade 
and compel his subjects to follow his example. Before his 
conversion, he is said to have possessed five wives, and 
800 concubines, but after he became a Christian, he main¬ 
tained an unshaken fidelity towards the imperial princess. 
As a Pagan he had been lavish of human blood; but after 
he had changed his religion, he could scarcely be persuaded 
to sentence to death a single highway robber. His former 
delight had been in storming towns and gaining battles; 
but he now found his greatest pleasure in building churches, 
and endowing seminaries of education. He encouraged the 
raising of new cities and towns; peopled the waste districts 
of Ins country with the prisoners whom he had taken in 
war; and not only conducted himself as a sovereign who 
consulted the welfare of his dominions, but displayed many 
amiable qualities that highly endeared him to his subjects. 
On great festivals, he, was accustomed to give entertainments 
to the inhabitants of the capital, and to send refreshments to 
those who were prevented, by sickness or infirmity, from 
attending the public feast. By these marks of regard to the 
general and individual interests of his people, he contributed 
to win them from the old religion, and to give them a taste 
for the new doctrines which he professed. By showing that 
Christianity had made him both a milder and a wiser 
prince, he insured from his people a respect for the new 
religion, while the striking example of the sovereign, and his 
nobles could not fail to influence the minds of the inferior 
orders. Having one day issued a proclamation, ordering all 
the inhabitants of Kief to repair next morning to the banks 
of the river to be baptized, the people cheerfully obeyed the 
order, observing that if it were not gc od to be baptized, the 
prince and the boyars would never submit to the ceremony. 
The establishment of Christianity in the Russian domi¬ 
nions, forms one of the most prominent features in the reign 
of Vladimir, and gives him a much juster claim to the title 
of Great, which has been bestowed on him by historians, 
than all his numerous victories. We have therefore dwelt 
on it with the greater minuteness. Indeed the latter trans¬ 
actions of his reign afford but little interest. His last days 
were embittered by domestic vexations; his wife and one of 
his favourite sons died long before him, and another of his 
sons, Yaroslaf, on whom he had bestowed the government 
of Novgorod, refused to acknowledge him as his liege, and 
applied to the Varagians for assistance against his father. 
The aged Vladimir, compelled to march against a rebellious 
son, died with grief upon the road, after a glorious reign of 
35 years. 
The character of thi^ monarch may be easily collected 
from the account we have given of the transactions that 
S I A. 
marked his reign. He had certainly great, if not amiable 
qualities; and if he failed in communicating to his subjects 
the zeal for civilization and improvement which he himself 
possessed, it was the fault rather of the time, than of the in¬ 
structor. His country remained barbarous, because bar¬ 
barism was the characteristic of the age, and the monarch 
himself rose but little above the character of a barbarian, 
because the times in which he lived did not admit of superior 
refinement. It has been well observed by an ingenious 
writer on the history of Russia, that it is scarcely possible for 
a man to rise far above his cotemporaries, and that had 
Vladimir lived in the 17th century, the civilization and re¬ 
finement of Russia might have been imputed to him, as it is 
now imputed to Peter the Great. 
Notwithstanding the circumstances we have noticed, the 
improvement which Russia owed to this prince was great and 
permanent. With the Christian religion he imported from 
Greece the arts w'hich then flourished in that empire, and 
almost entirely new modelled the language of his country, 
by engrafting on it the more refined dialect of the Greeks, 
and adopting, in a great meausure, the letters of their 
alphabet. 
The dominions of Russia, which at first consisted of two 
principalities, that of Novgorod, bordering on the Baltic, 
and that of Kief, occupying no very large space on the east¬ 
ern bank of the Dnieper, were, by the victories of Vladimir, 
extended westward along the shores of the Baltic, into 
Lithuania and Poland; southward along the shores of the 
Euxine, so as to include the Crimea and great part of the 
Bulgarian territories; while to the east it extended to the 
Oka, the Don and the Volga. He still maintained the seat 
of government at Kief, of which he was styled grand prince, 
while the other districts were either tributary to that princi¬ 
pality, or held of it as their superior. 
Before his death, Vladimir had divided his extensive 
territories among his twelve sons, reserving to himself and 
his immediate heir, the grand principality of Kief. The 
consequences of this ill-judged distribution were disunion, 
contention, and almost perpetual warfare among the brothers. 
The most respectable, and in the end the most powerful of 
these, was Yaroslaf, or as he is commonly called Jarislaus, 
prince of Novgorod. This prince finding that Sviatopolk, 
who had raised himself to the sovereignty of Kief after his 
father’s death, attempted by assassination, or force of arms, 
to take possession of the neighbouring principalities, deter¬ 
mined to resist him in his encroachments. Collecting an 
army of Novgorodians, he, in 1016, drove Sviatopolk from 
Kief, and forced him to seek an asylum, with his father-in- 
law, Boleslaus, duke of Poland. Boleslaus was easily per¬ 
suaded to engage in the cause of his son-in-law, as he hoped 
to reap advantage from the quarrels among the descendants 
of Vladimir, and not only regain that part of his dominions 
which had been conquered by that prince, but enlarge his 
territory by encroachments on the Russian borders. He 
therefore accompanied Sviatopolk into Russia with an army, 
retook Kief, and obliged the Novgorodian prince to retire 
with precipitation. While he was endeavouring to collect 
fresh forces to renew the war with Boleslaus and Sviatapolk, 
the latter, by the treachery and perfidy with which he treated 
his Polish allies, contributed to his own downfall. He caused 
great numbers of the Poles to be secretly massacred, a trans- 
’ action by which Boleslaus was so incensed, that he plundered 
Kief, made himself master of several places on the Russian 
frontiers, and then left his perfidious son-in-law to shift for 
himself. Sviatopolk now sought assistance from the Pet- 
chenegans, and with an army of these auxiliaries, offered 
battle to Yaroslaf, not far from the place, where he had, four 
years before, caused one of his brothers to be murdered. The 
contest was long and bloody but terminated in favour of 
Yaroslaf. Sviatopolk was put to flight, and died soon 
after. 
By this victory Yaroslaf acquired possession of the greater 
partofhis father’s dominions, and testified his gratitude for 
the assistance given him by the Novgorodians, by the atten¬ 
tion which he paid to the particular improvement of that 
state. 
