The Drujina was therefore the germ of aristocratic Russia, next below it coming the great body of the people, the citizens and traders, then the peasant, and last of all the slave.
Yaroslaf, the "legislator," known as the Charlemagne of Russia, died in the year 1054.

The Eastern and Western Empires, long divided in sentiment, were that same year separated in fact, when Pope Leo VI.
excommunicated the whole body of the Church in the East.
With the death of Yaroslaf the first and heroic period in Russia closes.

Sagas and legendary poems have preserved for us its grim outlines and its heroes, of whom Vladimir, the "Beautiful Sun of Kief," is chief.

Thus far there has been a unity in the thread of Russian history--but now came chaos.

Who can relate the story of two centuries in which there have been 83 civil wars--18 foreign campaigns against one country alone, not to speak of the others--46 barbaric invasions, and in which 293 Princes are said to have disputed the throne of Kief and other domains! We repeat: Who could tell this story of chaos; and who, after it is told, would read it?
It was a vast upheaval, a process in which the eternal purposes were "writ large"-- too large to be read at the time.