The occupant of the throne of S. Stefan was not the only interested onlooker at the spectacle of misgovernment provided by the Prince of Galitz; his nearest neighbour on the Russian side was Roman of Volhynia, the same Roman who had held Novgorod against the might of Andrei, and who had been thrown over to procure for the city a substantial peace. This prince, whose forefathers in the direct line back to the first Igor had all been sovereigns of Kiev, was possessed of exceptional qualities of energy and enterprise, and saw himself fitted to replace the effete and impolitic Vladimir in the important and Magyar-threatened principality of Galitz. Between the warlike and strenuous efforts of this battle-loving kniaz, who was renowned for the eagle-swoop rapidity with which he was wont to hurl himself upon his enemies, the assiduous intrigues and invasions of Bela III. of Hungary, and the occasional intervention of the princes of Poland, the West Russian lands were kept in a continual ferment; in the words of the saga, “Men’s lives were shortened by the wars of the brother princes. Then seldom in the Russian land was heard the call of the husbandman, but often indeed the ravens croaking as they divided the corpse among them, and the cry of the corbies as they called to each other to come to the banquet.” Long time the clashing factions warred and schemed, but Roman at last broke down all opposition without and within. In dismal plight were then those notables of Galitz who had resisted his incoming; according to Polish accounts he treated the disaffected boyarins with a savagery unworthy of a brave prince. The unfortunate objects of his ill-will were dismembered, flayed, riddled with arrows, buried alive, and done to death in various other barbarous ways.[32] “To eat a drop of honey in peace, one must first kill the bees,” was his explanation of this severity. This prince, who, in the words of the Russian Chronicles, “walked in the ways of God,” was soon called upon to defend his “drop of honey” against the Princes of Tchernigov and Kiev--a coalition brought together by jealousy and dislike of the vigorous Roman, for whom, however, it was no match. Gathering together his Galician and Volhynian retainers, and calling to his aid the Tchernie-Kloboukie (“Black-caps,” a name given to the nomads of the western steppes other than the Polovtzi), he threw himself with the famous eagle-swoop upon Kiev, the centre-point of his enemies. In vain did its Grand Prince Rurik and the Kniaz of Tchernigov apply themselves to repel his attack; the Kievians, who had a trained eye for the strongest side, threw open the Podolian Gate, and the redoubtable Roman swirled with his warriors into the lower city. His opponents did not stay to dispute the upper quarter with him, and the victorious Prince of Galitz was able, with the assent of Vsevolod of Souzdal, to bestow the time-worn capital on one of his own kinsfolk. [Sidenote: