About the time that Mystislav the Gallant came back to Novgorod in 1214, the insolence of the tribes incited by the archbishop had become unendurable. Mystislav at once led his warriors into that country, and went twice from side to side through the whole region. When he had finished the people bowed down to him, and began as before to send tribute to Novgorod. In 1216 Mystislav left Novgorod, but an example had been given, and Vladimir of Polotsk recovered his courage. Soon there was at Polotsk an immense congregation of warriors,—many Russians and a multitude of Livs. The army was ready to move, but as Vladimir was about to embark he stumbled in stepping from the shore to the boat, fell into the water, and died suddenly. That ended the expedition. Saved from Polotsk, the knights did not escape defeat from Novgorod. They had subjected again the places won by Mystislav, but Novgorod recovered them. With the death of Vladimir of Polotsk, that principality ceased, as one might say, to exist. In that region Russians and Lithuanians had so assimilated that they were difficult to distinguish. Vladimir was without a successor. After his death, where the German domain ended, the Lithuanian began. There was now an independent Livonia, and the Germans were seeking to include that region where they had built the castle of Fellin, a region which the Danes admired as the Revel coast. This was the Estland, or the Esthonia of Rome. After Mystislav the Gallant had shaken the power of the Vladimir principality by the battle of Lipetsk, and vanished forever from Novgorod, there was an interval of quiet, beginning with 1218, which greatly favored the Germans in their efforts to obtain Esthonia. But the Danish king was equally anxious to get possession of this country, or, according to his biographer, he wanted to purify his conscience from sin and show his devotion to the Riga Mother of God; therefore he disembarked on the coast of Livonia a numerous army. The Danes and the Riga Germans now did their best to excel each other at baptizing. Villages and settlements trembled at the appearance of the “cross-bearers.” Wherever there was a battle the conquerors became executioners, and in retaliation, whenever a soldier of the cross fell into the hands of the natives, they burned him alive as an offering to their god; sometimes they flayed a cross out of the flesh of his back before burning him.