Though all Russia was under the Mongol, the yoke weighed with greatest burden on the lands in the center; that place which was the real heart of Russia, and had formed the principality of Vladimir. It was unspeakably more difficult for Yaroslav to manage than for princes in Volynia and Galitch. After Kief had been swept from the earth, so to speak, or crushed into it, and Batu had shown no wish to take Hungary or Poland, Galitch and Volynia, as being nearest those countries, were in the easiest position of all the principalities in Russia. Batu, in his first campaign, did not touch Smolensk in its western portions, and in the second he did not go beyond Brest in a northern direction. In the princes of Volynia and Galitch he had his last representatives. On the west was the country which for their own reasons the Russians represented to Batu as little dependent on their rule, in fact a foreign region, and purposely they called it not Rus, but Litvá. Thus of all Russian princes, the position of Daniel was most favored with reference to the Mongols. As to his rival in Chernigoff, Prince Michael, his possessions might have been called non-existent. Chernigoff and Kursk were in the worst position possible, because nearest the Mongols. Hence after the conquest, Daniel and Michael were, each in his own way, distinguished beyond other princes in Russia. Daniel knew not from childhood what rest was, and only in years of ripe manhood, after endless toil and great effort, did he secure Volynia and Galitch on the very eve of the Mongol tempest, to appear next in a fateful position from which he found no issue whatever. His principalities, which comprised the borderland of Southwestern Russia in the days of Kief supremacy, were attracted to the ancient capital from the earliest, but as the Russia of Kief times existed no longer, and as Northern Russia had been turned into a Mongol possession, the ruler of Volynia and Galitch had to do one of two things: either compact his lands into a new and special body and stand apart from the rest of Russia,—alone he could not stand, for he would be obliged to associate himself willingly or unwillingly with his western neighbors, the Poles and Hungarians, and, as they were in close connection with the Holy Roman-German Empire, he might not stand apart even from union with that power (he might be forced to join Rome, the Latin communion),—or he had the other issue: to recognize and strengthen the ancient bond of Volynia and Galitch with the remainder of Russia, with that Russia which had begun in Rurik’s day in Novgorod, and which was baptized in the Dnieper under Vladimir. But in this case, he would have to suffer Mongol captivity with it, and sacrifice his own land for the benefit of the common, much suffering country. He would have to cling to the princes of the house of Vladimir, who had been turned into slaves, and bear with them the same bitter burden which they were bearing.