A settled succession is the great secret of royal peace: but among those bold riders of the desert, nothing was ever settled, save by the sword; and the first act of all the sons, on the decease of their father, was, to slaughter each other; until the contest was settled in their graves, and the last survivor quietly ascended the throne. But war, on a mightier scale than the Russian Steppes had ever witnessed, was now rolling over Central Asia. The cavalry of Genghiz Khan, which came, not in squadrons, but in nations, and charged, not like troops, but like thunderclouds, began to pour down upon the valley of the Wolga. Yet the conquest of Russia was not to be added to the triumphs of the great Tartar chieftain; a mightier conqueror stopped him on his way, and the Tartar died. His son Toushi, lit the beginning of the thirteenth century, burst over the frontier at the head of half a million of horsemen. The Russian princes, hastily making up their quarrels, advanced to meet the invader; but their army was instantly trampled down, and, before the middle of the century, all the provinces, and all the cities of Russia, were the prey of the men of the wilderness. Novgorod alone escaped. The history of this great city would be highly interesting, if it were possible now to recover its details. It was the chief depot of the northern Asiatic commerce with Europe; it had a government, laws, and privileges of its own, with which it suffered not even the Khan or the Tartars to interfere. Its population amounted to four hundred thousand—then nearly equal to the population of a kingdom. In the thirteenth century it connected itself still more effectively with European commerce, by becoming a member of the Hanseatic League; and the wonder and pride of the Russians were expressed in the well-known half-profane proverb, “Who can resist GOD, and the great Novgorod?” There is always something almost approaching to picturesque grandeur in the triumphs of barbarism. The Turk, until he was fool enough to throw away the turban, was the most showy personage in the world. The Arabs, under Mahomet, were the most stately of warriors, and the Spanish Moors threw all the pomp, and even all the romance, of Europe into the shade. Even the chiefs of the “Golden Horde” seemed to have had as picturesque a conception of supremacy as the Saracen. Their only city was a vast camp, in the plains between the Caspian and the Wolga; and while they left the provinces in the hands of the native princes, and enjoyed themselves in the manlier sports of hunting through the plains and mountains, they commanded that every vassal prince should attend at the imperial tent to receive permission to reign, or perhaps to live; and that, even when they sent their Tartar collectors to receive the tribute, the Russian princes should lead the Tartar’s horse by the bridle, and give him a feed of oats out of their _cap of state_!