This connection of Igor with Galitch brought ruin later on to his sons, but who in that day could foresee this? Just at the time of Vladimir’s visit, a wave of delight was passing over Russia. Sviatoslav’s victory over the Polovtsi was magnified as the “Erela triumph.” All men glorified this marvelous adventure. The Chernigoff princes had taken no part in it, so now the thought dropped into Igor’s mind to win glory in this very field, independently, and at all costs. He boasted of his own campaigns, and said to his warriors: “Though the Polovtsi came to those princes and they fought with them, they dared not follow them. But with you I will cross the Don and crush them. If true success comes, we will pursue them to places to which our grandfathers never thought, even in dreams, of advancing. We will win for ourselves splendid glory.” With his own men and a detachment of Chernigoff warriors, Igor set out on his adventure, April 23, 1185, accompanied by his son, now touching manhood, his brother Vsevolod the “Rushing Bull,” and a few neighboring princes with their forces. He met the Polovtsi in a desperate battle, and was vanquished with great slaughter. He and his fellow princes all went beyond the Don,—but they went as prisoners. “They were taken from the saddles of princes and put on the saddles of captives.” Along the whole Luko Morye (Sea of Azoff) shouts of delight rose from pagans. At the place where the Don River touches the Sea of Azoff, thousands of Polovtsi were singing and celebrating, not honor to Russia, but woeful disaster. “Little Polovtsi boys and beautiful Polovtsi maidens magnified the fame of their people.” This crushing defeat of Igor’s forces roused all the Polovtsi to greater activity, and gave them at once boundless insolence. They sent a message to Sviatoslav: “Come hither and ransom thy brothers, or wait at thy own place till we come for our people.” By this they referred to Kobyk and the other Khans captured on the Erela. And now the Polovtsi raced over Russia. They burned and plundered, and seized captives. The gallant Vladimir, son of Glaib, defended himself at Pereyaslavl on the Alta. “Wounded from head to foot,” he was borne out of battle dead, as his friends thought. A year later he died of those wounds, though he had apparently recovered, and had warred against the Polovtsi a second time. After Vladimir’s death there was no heir to Pereyaslavl on the Alta, hence the place went to Vsevolod of Vladimir. Sviatoslav’s grief was unspeakable when he heard what had happened to Igor and his comrades. “Striplings!” said he, overwhelmed with sorrow and bitterly bewailing their rash enterprise. “Why did they tarnish the glory of victory? Why did they ruin the work of an old man and his allies? Why did they destroy a God-given triumph?” He had walled up the road against pagans, and the “striplings” had thrown this wall down again.