had now to pay dearly for assisting him. Roman seized their towns and made a vast number of prisoners. He freed Christian captives, and the delight at his victory was unbounded. Thus began a new reign in Kief. But while Ingvar sat there no one dreamed of calling him Grand Prince, for he was simply a lieutenant; moreover his rule had but one feature of brightness,—its brevity. The vanquished Rurik and Oleg’s descendants, who had been humiliated, could not forgive the Kief people their treason, and prepared to take vengeance. A crime was committed then that has not its like in Kief history. Though many evils had come upon the mother city they were slight in comparison with this one. Rurik with his people and Chermny with his troops, in January, 1204, brought to Kief countless legions of Polovtsi, promising those savage warriors and wild men of the steppes the plunder of the capital. It was said that “the whole land of the Polovtsi” was present. Kief was taken by storm; not only did the Polovtsi sack all the lower town, but they rushed to the upper part; they plundered the monasteries, Sophia cathedral, and the Tithe church; they stripped the holy images, and carried away the consecrated vessels and crosses. “The wild ones” seized the precious robes of ancient princes, of Saint Vladimir and his son, Yaroslav the Lawgiver, and other robes which had been kept in the churches and revered as sacred relics. The city was blazing. Along the streets captive people were driven in multitudes. Foreign merchants defended themselves in the stone churches so manfully that the Polovtsi bargained with them, taking a part of their merchandise as ransom. In general, the Polovtsi spared neither the great nor the insignificant, the rich nor the indigent. A multitude of old monks and nuns, and also the parish clergy, were slain with lances or cut down with swords, as were the lame, the blind, and all useless people. The healthy and young were taken captive. Not a house was left unplundered. In the churches not one sacred vessel was spared, or one holy image with its ornaments. When they had sated themselves with plunder and withdrawn from the city, Kief was a smoking ruin; only the groans of the dying broke the silence. The streets, stained with blood, were covered with corpses.