While foreign war flamed lurid in the west, a peaceable restoration had been witnessed in the north-east, where Urii, on the death of his brother Konstantin (1219), had come into possession of the Grand Principality. In the north-west, again, important happenings were forcing themselves disagreeably on the notice of the border princes. Many causes contributed to complicate the struggle for mastery which was beginning to be waged in the pagan-inhabited lands at the mouth of the western Dvina and along the “Baltic gull-sought strand.” The institution of the Crusades and the erection of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem had aroused a spirit of religious and temporal colonisation and conquest, of which the seizure of Constantinople was a symptom, while on the other hand the comparative failure of the Asiatic expeditions and the recapture of Jerusalem by the Moslems had modified the crusading fervour and disinclined the champions of the Cross to seek adventures so far afield. Hence many Catholic princes and knights were glad to avail themselves of the Papal permission to divert their pious raids from the valley of the Jordan to the shores of the Baltic, a more convenient locality, where they might gain, in addition to their eternal salvation, welcome pieces of earthly territory. Danes, Swedes, the Sword Brothers, and later (in 1230) the Teutonic Order, fought indiscriminately with the native pagans, with the Russians, and with themselves for the advancement of the Catholic religion and of their own interests. Estland, Kourland, Livland, Lit’uania, and Prussia became happy hunting-grounds for these various adventurers and military companies, and the unfortunate inhabitants, confronted with an _embarras du richesse_ in the way of spiritual guides, knew not which way to turn for safety. A Tchoud notable was hanged by the Danes for having received baptism from the Sword Order, and the Latin and Orthodox Christians systematically destroyed each other’s churches and settlements whenever they had the opportunity. Of the knights of the two Orders, however, it may be said that the cruelties and oppressions with which they sought to harry the heathen into their particular fold were in some measure condoned by the splendid bravery and devotion which they displayed in carrying out their self-imposed task. Moreover, it was to these northern crusaders that the Baltic provinces owed many of their most important towns: Riga was the creation of the Knights of Jesus; Thorn, Kulm, and Elbing marked the rise of the Teutonic Order; Revel sprang into existence under Danish auspices. It was during a combat in the neighbourhood of the latter town that the Danes received “from the clouds” the red flag blazoned with a white cross which has since remained their national standard--a mark of Divine favour which did not, however, cause the immediate withdrawal of their Christian competitors. The cruelties and dissensions of the