In 1238, when eighteen years old, Alexander married a Polovtsi princess. From the wedding feast he was forced to go to the banks of the Sheloni, where there were many and bloody attacks of the Chuds, urged on by the Germans of Riga, and led by them, aided also by Lithuanians at the direct and indirect instance of the Knights of Livonia. These attacks became more and more threatening, and at last were insufferable. Alexander defeated those invaders, but at this time new enemies showed themselves,—the Swedes, who strove to rouse the more eastern tributaries of Novgorod, and to fix their power in the Chud regions, where St. Petersburg now stands. The Mongol yoke, in addition to other evils, roused all the enemies of Russia to greater activity. The Livonian Knights put aside every ceremony, and their haughtiness went beyond bounds. They seized for all time, as they thought, the lands named by them Esthonia, and threatened to take Pskoff and even Novgorod. The Pope demanded from Waldemar of Denmark, the destroyer of Wends, and from the Swedes, too, a campaign against the “faithless Ruthenians.” He demanded the subjection of Russian lands bordering on Sweden, so that all might be brought to the one true religion. In 1240, when the Mongols were marching on Kief, Swedish ships entered the Neva and closed the old Russian way to the Baltic. The Chud tribe, Ijora, long subject to Novgorod, was defenseless; the Swedes claimed the whole country. The Swedish king’s son-in-law, Birger, sent this message to Alexander: “If thou hast courage, come hither; I have taken thy land and am occupying it.” Novgorod lands were now in great peril and a cry of discouragement rose throughout the city. Novgorod regiments were summoned immediately, and the city sent to Yaroslav of Vladimir for assistance. But Alexander would not wait for reinforcements; he was satisfied with the moderate forces of Novgorod, and was ready to set out at once. After mass in Holy Sophia, the bishop went to the square with Alexander and blessed him for action. Then the prince said to all, in the words uttered on that same square by Mystislav, his grandfather: “God is not with might, but with justice.”