provinces." The Russians on their side, feeling they were fighting for
orthodoxy, opposed the Latin crusade with a Greek one.

Alexander humbled himself in St. Sophia, received the benediction of
the archbishop Spiridion, and addressed an energetic harangue to his
warriors. He had no time to await reinforcements from Suzdal. He
attacked the Swedish camp, which was situated on the Ijora, one of the
southern affluents of the Neva, which has given its name to Ingria.
Alexander won a brilliant victory, which gained him his surname of
Nevski, and the honor of becoming, under Peter the Great, the second
conqueror of the Swedes, one of the patrons of St. Petersburg. By the
orders of his great successor his bones repose in the monastery of
Alexander Nevski.

The battle of the Neva was preserved in a dramatic legend. An Ingrian
chief told Alexander how, in the eve of the combat, he had seen a
mysterious bark, manned by two warriors with shining brows, glide
through the night. They were Boris and Gleb, who came to the rescue of
their young kinsman. Other accounts have preserved to us the
individual exploits of the Russian heroes--Gabriel, Skylaf of
Novgorod, James of Polotsk, Sabas, who threw down the tent of Birger,
and Alexander Nevski himself, who with a stroke of the lance
"imprinted his seal on his face," 1240. Notwithstanding the triumph of
such a service, Alexander and the Novgorodians could not agree; a
short time after, he retired to Pereiaslavl-Zaliesski. The proud
republicans soon had reason to regret the exile of this second
Camillus. The Order of the Swordbearers, the indefatigable enemy of
orthodoxy, took Pskof, their ally; the Germans imposed tribute on the
Vojans, vassals of Novgorod, constructed the fortress of Koporie on
her territory of the Neva, took the Russian town of Tessof in