A History of the Vikings
Chapter 5
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gates to the flood of vivifying Byzantine inspiration that was destined for so long to be the mainspring of art, thought, and fashion in the Russian state. The commercial treaty was not concluded until four years afterwards (911), when Oleg entrusted the final negotiations to fifteen envoys, all of whom bore Scandinavian names. According to the preliminary agreement following the expedition itself, the Russian traders were to have quarters outside the wars in the St. Mamas (now Béchik-Tach) suburb (1) of Constantinople during their annual visit, were to receive a maintenance allowance, and were to be absolved from the payment of taxes on their merchandise; but they were only allowed to enter the city itself by one specified gate and in detachments of not more than fifty men, all unarmed. To these fundamental principles that gave the Russian visitors to the Greek capital a recognized, though restricted, status, the treaty itself added various clauses defining their legal position during their sojourn among the Greeks and governing Greco-Russian international relations in general. (2)
To Oleg, as Grand Prince of Kiev, there succeeded in the second decade of the century Igor, the son of Rurik. He too went warring against the Greeks, this happening at the end of a long reign that had seen Russia at peace, except for the endless struggle with the Patzinaks. The cause of Igor's quarrel with Byzantium is unknown, but that he suddenly resolved to attack Constantinople is certain, and in the early summer of 941, when the Greek navy was away fighting against the Saracens, the Russian prince led a flotilla of 1,000 boats (3) over the Black Sea to raid the city. Once again the Greeks were at a disadvantage, but the Emperor Romanus Lecapenus caused fifteen old barques to be patched up and fitted out with apparatus for discharging Greek Fire; these he put under the command of the Protovestiarius Theo-
1. On this, see J. Pargoire, Échos d'Orient, XI (1908), p. 203.
2. The text of the treaty is recorded in the Russian chronicle, ch. XXII; the 944 treaty of Igor is given in ch. XXVII. This later treaty adds the conditions that the Russians were to bear passports and were not to spend the winter at St. Mamas, on Berezan, or at the Dnieper mouth, but were to return to their own country. An excellent summary of the treaties is given by J. C. S. Runciman, Romanus Lecapenus, Cambridge, 1929, p. 110, but for a detailed study, see D. Mejcik, J.M.N.P., 1915, Parts 57, 59, 60; 1916, Pts. 62, 66; 1917, Pt. 69.
3. I am following here the Italian Liudprand (Antapodosis, in Op. ed. Pertz, Hannover, 1839, p. 139) instead of the Greek authors who give the number as 10,000 or even 15,000; the Russian chronicle also says Igor had 10,000 ships. For references to the Greek texts and an English account of the expedition, see J. C. S. Runciman, loc. cit., p. 111 ff.
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phanes and sent them forth to guard the Bosphorus. They came upon the Russians near the east coast of the strait at Hierum, and there the overbold venture of Igor, so far as the safety of the capital was concerned, came to a sudden and humiliating end; for the Russians would not face the all-destroying fire that was belched against them from the grim old hulks of Theophanes and in terror they took to flight, scrambling out of the Bosphorus as best they could and rallying later on the north coast of Asia Minor. (1) When they had recovered from their fear they abandoned themselves to a reckless and bloodthirsty harrying of the provinces of Paphlagonia and Bithynia in the accustomed viking manner of their Swedish leaders. But while they thus robbed and murdered, the Greeks collected an army and at length they surprised and cut to pieces a landing-party of the Russians; this prevented all further forays and was the prelude to a decisive success, for when in the autumn the invaders sought to return to their own country they found their escape barred by Theophanes, this time commanding not fifteen creaking old boats, but a huge and majestic armament of Byzantine warships. Igor's little craft were a helpless prey; as though it were the visible wrath of Heaven the terrible fire poured down upon them from the Greek boats, and amid foul scenes of panic, drowning, and mad flight the Russians were broken and destroyed. A few, including Igor, escaped, and a large number were taken as prisoners to Constantinople where they were executed; but the rest were either burnt to death in the sea-battle or drowned.
Igor returned to Kiev shocked and humiliated, but planning revenge. Soon he began to recruit a new army, this time sending to Sweden for reinforcements and enlisting under his banner levies of the easternmost Slavonic tribes and hired hordes of the Patzinaks. In 944 the new and formidable Russian fleet, accompanied by a cavalry detachment on land, set out upon the great expedition; but once again Igor failed to reach Constantinople. For the Emperor Romanus, who had received a timely warning from the Bulgars of the movements of the huge host, sent off ambassadors to Igor bearing messages of conciliation and friendship, and these Greek envoys intercepted the invading force at the Danube delta. Igor was won over by costly gifts and
1. The Russian chronicle, followed in this respect by most historians, makes the arrival of the Russians in Asia Minor precede the attack on Constantinople. But this is an extremely improbable sequence of events and one that is contrary to the express statements of Cedrenus, Zonaras, Theophanes, and Liudprand.
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promises; he left his Patzinak troops, no doubt with the ready consent of the Greeks, to plunder at their will in Bulgaria, and himself led the Russians home; (1) diplomatic discussions followed his return to Kiev and in 945 another treaty was concluded between Russia and Byzantium on the same lines as that of 911, though this time the foreign policy of the principality of Kiev was controlled, for Igor swore that in return for occasional military aid from the Greeks he would neither permit the Bulgars to invade the Chersonese, now dominated by the Russians, nor allow his own countrymen to molest the Khazars who went fishing in the Dnieper mouth. Fifty Russian commissioners and merchant-delegates attended the negotiations that preceded this treaty and their names are recorded; the majority of them are in unrecognizable forms, but sixteen are unmistakably Scandinavian and only three are certainly Slavonic; it is also said that some of these envoys were Christians, for among the Varangians, so the chronicle relates, there were now many converts and in Kiev itself there was already a cathedral. (2)
When Igor died his son was but a boy, and it was his widow, Olga, who governed Russia after his death. This princess, the ¢rcontissa of Russia as the Greeks called her, was one of the Christians among the Varangians and during her regency proved herself an enlightened and industrious ruler; but her chief title to fame was won by the celebrated diplomatic visit paid by her in the year 957 to the court of Constantine Porphyrogenitus at Constantinople where she was received with a pomp and magnificence that have been described by the emperor himself. (3) After her the next ruler of the Russians
1. It is commonly stated that he consoled them by taking them across the Caucasus to ravage Azerbaijan and that his was the army that took Berdaa (p. 162); but the date of the Berdaa expedition is given by Ibn Miskawaih in the Tadjarib-el-Oman as 943 and it therefore antedates Igor's second war against the Greeks.
2. The conversion of the Russians is said to have begun at least as early as the '60s of the ninth century, and the Patriarch Photius, who considered the introduction of Christianity into the Russian state to have been one of the most notable achievements of the Byzantine Church in his day, even gave them a bishop (Epist. I, xiii, ed. Migne P. Graec. 102, cols. 736-7). But whether there was really any appreciable inclination on the part of the Russians to desert heathendom so early as this is a little doubtful. On this subject, and for full references, see F. Dvornik, op. cit., p. 145; for an English summary based upon E. Golubinsky monumental History of the Russian Church see M. Spinka, Journal of Religion, VI (Chicago, 1926), p. 40.
3. De Cerem. Aulae Byz., II, sect. 344 (ed. Migne).
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was Svyatoslav, her son and Igor's; he was the first prince of Kiev to bear a Slavonic name, but he was made of the stuff of his viking forefathers and spent the greater part of his reign in fighting, in the beginning with the praiseworthy intention of establishing new trading-depots in the east for the Russians, (1) and subsequently in the grand and dangerous hope of extending his Russian dominion over the Balkans. He defeated the Khazars and captured Sarkel near the delta of the Don at the head of the Sea of Azov and thereupon inaugurated a Russian protectorate of the Crimean Goths that endured until his death; afterwards he carried his victorious arms into the Kuban; in the north-west of his principality he attacked the Vyatiches of the Oka banks and forced them to pay tribute to Kiev; in the south-west he crossed the Danube and declared war upon the Bulgarians. This last campaign began in 967 and was the sequel to his failure in founding new trade-routes up the Don and Volga, for the Grand Prince eventually realized that his hardest task was to be the defence of the old Constantinople trade-route in face of the rivalry and hostility of the Bulgars. The war was actually inspired, so the tale goes, by the Emperor Nicephorus Phocas, for the Byzantine government needed allies against whom the anger of its relentless foes in Bulgaria might be diverted while he himself led the Greek armies forth upon the mighty struggle that was to end half a century later in the brilliant triumph of Byzantium over all her enemies. (2) But Svyatoslav, who knew the commercial importance of the Danube mouths, needed little urging and the Russians descended in a mighty host upon their new prey. The invasion was at first successful; all northern Bulgaria fell to them and at Pereislavets, near the modern Preslav at the mouth of the Danube, the Grand Prince endeavoured to establish a new capital, for he perceived the trading-possibilities of this town lying closer to central Europe and closer to Greece than did his own city on the Dnieper. But during his absence the Patzinaks attacked Kiev, so that Svyatoslav was forced to return. In the summer of 969
1. For Svyatoslav and his eastern foreign policy, see N. Znojko, J.M.N.P., N.S. XVIII (1908), p. 258.
2. The tale goes that the emperor's envoy was a Chersonese Greek named Calocyr and that this man tried to persuade Svyatoslav to withdraw his support from the reigning emperor, suggesting that the Grand Prince should be allowed to hold Bulgaria for himself while the hatcher of this plot, with the Russians as his helpers, should usurp the imperial crown. The story has little historical importance, but for a full account and discussion, see N. Znojko, J.M.N.P., N.S. VIII (1907), p. 229.
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he invaded Bulgaria again, this time leaving the Russian state divided into three portions, each under the nominal rule of one of his young sons, and as he had now collected an enormous army that included even Patzinak and Magyar auxiliaries, this time he swept victoriously through Bulgaria and descended upon Philippopolis on the Maritza, which town he took, massacring the inhabitants. But this brilliant raid was his undoing, for thereafter in his pride he saw himself not only the conqueror of the Bulgars but master of the Greeks themselves, and so he dared even to advance against Constantinople. It was an act of wild barbarian folly; Nicephorus at once levied the Greek armies, equipped squadrons of armoured cavalry, saw to the defences of the capital, and barred by a huge chain its sea-approach. It was not, however, Nicephorus, but his murderer and successor, that great general the Emperor John Zimisces, who drove the Russians back, who finally compelled Svyatoslav to sue for peace after the Byzantine army had trapped the retreating barbarians in Silistria and had defeated again and again the bloody and desperate sallies of the imprisoned Northmen and Russians. (1) The Grand Prince of Kiev was made to renew the terms of the existing treaties and in addition to declare that henceforth he would neither invade Bulgaria nor the Greek Chersonese; thus ended his dreams of a mighty Russia made by his strong arm mistress of Balkan and eastern commerce, and thus was the valour of his followers squandered and the fruits of his conquests wasted. And in the gloom of this reverse the adventurous reign of the ambitious warrior-prince closed, for on his way back to Russia in the year (972) after the capitulation at Silistria Svyatoslav was slain near the Dnieper cataracts during a sudden onslaught of a marauding troop of Patzinaks.
The principality of Kiev and the Dnieper trade-route, though the early history of Russia is almost exclusively occupied with them, were not the only scenes of Scandinavian commerce in this vast country. For there was another great waterway well known to the men of the north even in the dark days at the beginning of the ninth century before the voyage down the Dnieper had become an attractive adventure to the Swedes, and this was the Volga. Here the vikings sailed south to traffic with the White Bulgars and the Khazars, or dared to venture through the lands of these folk far south into
1. For an account of the Russian war up to the time of the death of Nicephorus, see G. Schlumberger, Un empereur byzantin au 10e siècle, 1923, pp. 461-474, 610 ff.
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