The period extending from the year of Iaroslav’s death (1054) to the year of the appearance of the Tatars (1224) is one of the most troublous and confused epochs in the history of Russia. As the Scandinavian custom of partition continued to prevail over the Byzantine idea of political unity, the national territory was constantly divided. The princely anarchy of oriental Europe finds a parallel in the feudal anarchy of the Occident. Pogodine enumerates for this period sixty-four principalities which enjoyed a more or less protracted existence; two hundred and ninety-three princes who during these two centuries contended over Kiev and other Russian domains; eighty-three civil wars in which the entire country was concerned. Foreign wars helped to augment the enormous mass of historical facts. The chronicles mention against the Polovtsi alone eighteen campaigns, while these barbarians invaded Christian territory forty-six times. The ancient names of the Slav tribes have entirely disappeared, or are preserved only in the names of towns--as, for instance, that of the Polotchanes in Polotsk; that of the Severians in Novgorod-Seversk. The elements in the composition of Russia were thus rather principalities than peoples. No more is said of the Krivitchi or of the Drevlians; we hear only of Smolensk or of Volhinia. These little states were dismembered at each new division among the children of a prince; they were then reconstituted, to be again divided into appanages. In spite of all these vicissitudes, however, some among them had an uninterrupted existence due to certain topographical and ethnographical conditions. Setting aside the distant principality of Tmoutorakan, established almost at the foot of the Caucasus in the midst of Turkish and Circassian tribes and counting eight different princes, the following are, from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries, the principal divisions of Russia: (1) The principality of Smolensk, which occupied the important territory which is in a manner the central point of the orographic system of Russia; it comprises the old forest of Okov, where the three greatest rivers of Russia, the Volga, the Dnieper, and the Dvina, have their rise. Hence the political importance of Smolensk, which is attested by the many wars undertaken against her; hence also her commercial prosperity. It is noticeable that all her towns were built on some one of the three rivers; all the commerce of ancient Russia thus passed through her bounds. Besides Smolensk it is necessary to cite Mozhaisk, Viasma, and Toropets, the capital of a secondary principality, the domain of two famous princes--Mstislav the Brave and Mstislav the Bold.