Suddenly the people cried, “They are coming! they are coming!” A party of horsemen rode up. These were the men sent to kill Michael and Feodor, who were repeating aloud, “Thy martyrs, O Lord, who have not rejected Thee, suffering for Christ’s sake, undergoing many torments.” The executioners rushed at Michael, stretched apart his arms, and throwing him to the earth backward, they fell to beating the old man with fists on the breast and near the heart, with much violence. When he was half dead they turned him face downward and jumped on him, stamping with their heels till life left him. They had to murder him with blows, and not with the sword, since that was the Mongol method with princes. The corpse was then decapitated by one of the Mongol spectators. This man proved to be a thief and a renegade from Russia, who had gone over to the enemy. He whispered afterward to the boyar: “Bow down and thou wilt live. Perhaps they will give thee Michael’s dominion.” Feodor made no answer, but turning to the executioners he said: “I am ready to follow my prince.” And he was killed also. It was the Mongol custom to give the bodies of their victims to the dogs to be eaten, but the multitude of Russians living at the Horde gathered them nightly, when the dogs were loosened, and prayed above them. Thus the bodies of the martyrs were saved, and taken to Chernigoff, where they rested till Tsar Ivan Vassilivitch wished to have them. The bodies of Michael and his boyar are now in the cathedral of the Archangel Michael in Moscow. CHAPTER XII RUSSIA UNDER MONGOL RULE After Yuri’s death on the Siti, in 1238, the Vladimir throne of Dolgoruki and Big Nest was taken by his eldest brother, Yaroslav. Yaroslav thought of his birthplace in that splendid time when his father’s power covered Russia, and his capital, with its magnificent edifices, was considered as the chief of all cities. In his youth he had shared with Yuri, his brother, in the deeds and humiliation of that time when the first place among princes was won by Mystislav the Gallant, who took the Vladimir throne and gave it to their eldest brother, Constantine, after that prince had been deprived of seniority by Big Nest, because of disobedience. In manhood Yaroslav had worked with Yuri at one time, at another against him, in Chernigoff and Novgorod. He had ruled in Pereyaslavl; he had ruled in Novgorod many times in succession, and in Kief more than once.