It is only since that time, that we find the Slavi as
conquerors. Their empire rapidly extended in the course of the
following hundred and fifty years, and their power and external
influence also rose; while at the same time the ancient civil
institutions of the native Slavi were respected and improved.
In the beginning of the eleventh century, Jaroslav, the son of
Vladimir the Great, imitating his father's example, divided on his
death-bed his empire among his sons, and thus sowed the seeds of
dissension, anarchy, and bloody wars; a case repeated so often in
ancient history, that it seems to be one of the few from which modern
princes have derived a serious lesson. The Mongols broke into the
country; easily subdued the Russians thus torn by internal
dissensions; succeeded, A.D. 1237, in making them tributary; and kept
them for two hundred years in the most dishonourable bondage. During
this long period, every germ of literary cultivation perished. In the
middle of the fifteenth century, Ivan Vasilievitch III, [1] delivered
his country from the Asiatic barbarians, then weakened by domestic
dissensions; conquered his Russian rivals; and united Novogorod with
his own princedom of Moscow. From that period the power and physical
welfare of Russia have increased without interruption to the present
time.
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