Page:Notes upon Russia (volume 1, 1851).djvu/200

10 reins of government. This prince proceeded with his forces still further than his predecessor, and reached Heraclea and Nicomedia; at length, however, he was overthrown in battle and fled. He met his death subsequently at the hand of Maldittus, a prince of the Drevlians, at a place called Ciresti, and was there buried. As his son Svyatoslav’, whom he left an infant, could not reign on account of his tender age, his mother Olga became regent in the interim; and on one occasion, when the Drevlians sent twenty messengers to her with commands that she should marry their prince, Olga first ordered the messengers of the Drevlians to be buried alive, and then dispatched messengers of her own to them to say, that if they wished her to be their princess and mistress, they should send a greater number of wooers, and of higher rank: after this she scalded to death, in a bath, fifty picked men that had been sent to her, and again sent other messengers to announce their arrival, and ordered that they should prepare some aqua mulsa and other things which were usually considered necessary in providing for the obsequies of a deceased husband. Moreover, when she came to the Drevlians, she held a mourning for her husband, and having made the Drevlians drunk, slew five thousand of them: she then returned to Kiev, raised an army, and proceeding against the Drevlians, oppressed them with a siege which lasted a whole year, during which she persecuted those who fled to her camp, and finally obtained the victory. Terms of peace being afterwards agreed upon, she demanded a tribute from