and Denmark, Muscovy and Poland—whose enmity it stirred, and as to the interests—industry and commerce, religion and culture—it involved. Up till about 1540, Moscow's part in the matter was quite a small one—that of an auxiliary of the two Scandinavian Powers. But at that period the common adversary, the Hanseatic Towns, was almost worn out, and as an inevitable consequence, the quondam allies fell out over the division of the spoils.
Historically speaking, the claims of the Muscovite competitor were the most ancient. Even such early works as Nestor's have been argued to contain proof that Livonia and Esthonia formed an integral part of the ancient Russian Empire. When the old chronicler enumerates the peoples Sader the yoke of the Varegian Princes, he speaks of Liv and Tchoud, settled on the Baltic coasts. But such proofs as these are rather dubious in their nature. The first undoubted attempt by the Russians to get a footing on the Livonian coast dates from the year 1030, when the town of Iouriev was founded on Tchoud territory, under Jaroslav the Great. But the existence of this establishment, which received a serious check at the hands of the Semigalian inhabitants of that neighbourhood, soon became most precarious, and it was threatened, in the following century, by a still more redoubtable competitor—the Germans were close at hand.
The history of the German colony in Livonia goes back to the foundation of Lubeck by Henry the Lion, about the year 1158. The merchants of the new city, seeking an opening in the direction of the Scandinavian countries and the Far East, played the part of Columbus to that other America. A struggle then arose between Germans, Russians, and Scandinavians, each seeking to get first possession of the course of the Eastern Dvina, already connected with the whole river system of Russia, and even with the basin of the Dnieper. Livonia was the key of this situation, and here, as in many places, then and even nowadays, German colonization was backed up by German missionaries. During the latter half of the twelfth century—the exact date is not settled—Meinhard, a canon of the Augustine Order, built a church near the town of Uexkull, which became the seat of a bishopric and the nucleus of a fortified town. Meinhard's successor, a Cistercian, Bishop Berthold, was a prelate after the manner of Barbarossa, who wore a sword on his hip, and used it oftener than his crozier. In the year 1198, backed by a crusading Bull from the Pope, he appeared with an army and a fleet at the mouth of the Dvina. A series of successes and reverses ensued, and it was not till the days of the third Livonian Bishop, Albert, a descendant of a noble Bremen family, who founded Riga, and
