“Let God,” said he, “decide the dispute between us.  Let us enter into the open field with our two armies, and submit the question to the arbitrament of battle.  You may choose either side of the river which you please.”

Vsevelod did not condescend to make any reply to the rebellious prince.  Seizing his embassadors, he sent them as captives to Vlademer, a fortress some hundred miles east of Moscow.  He hoped thus to provoke Sviatoslaf to attempt the passage of the stream.  But Sviatoslaf was not to be thus entrapped.  Breaking up his camp, he retired to Novgorod, where he was received with rejoicings by the inhabitants.  Here he established himself as a monarch, accumulated his forces, and began, by diplomacy and by arms, to extend his conquests over the adjacent principalities.  He sent a powerful army to descend the banks of the Dnieper, capturing all the cities on the right hand and on the left, and binding the inhabitants by oaths of allegiance.  The army advancing with resistless strides arrived before the walls of Kief, took possession of the deserted palaces of this ancient capital, and Sviatoslaf proclaimed himself monarch of southern Russia.

But while Sviatoslaf was thus prosecuting his conquests, at the distance of four hundred miles south of Novgorod, Vsevelod advanced with an army to this city, and was in his turn received by the Novgorodians with the ringing of bells, bonfires and shouts of welcome.  All the surrounding princes and nobles promptly gave in their adhesion to the victorious sovereign, and Sviatoslaf found that all his conquests had vanished as by magic from beneath his hand.

Under these circumstances, Vsevelod and Sviatoslaf were both inclined to negotiation.  As the result, it was agreed that Vsevelod should be recognized as the monarch of Russia, and that Sviatoslaf should reign as tributary prince of Kief.  To bind anew the ties of friendship, Vsevelod gave in marriage his beautiful sister to the youngest son of Sviatoslaf.  Thus this civil strife was terminated.

But the gates of the temple of Janus were not yet to be closed.  Foreign war now commenced, and raged with unusual ferocity.  Six hundred miles east of Moscow, was the country of Bulgaria.  It comprehended the present Russian province of Orenburg, and was bounded on the east by the Ural mountains, and on the west by the Volga.  A population of nearly a million and a half inhabited this mountainous realm.  Commerce and arts flourished, and the people were enriched by their commerce with the Grecian empire.  They were, however, barbarians, and as even in the nineteenth century the slave trade is urged as a means of evangelizing the heathen of Africa, war was urged with all its carnage and woe, as the agent of disseminating Christianity through pagan Bulgaria.  The motive assigned for the war, was to serve Christ, by the conversion of the infidel.  The motives which influenced, were ambition, love of conquest and the desire to add to the opulence and the power of Russia.