At the same time there mingled with this another stream from
Scandinavia, another judicial code which sanctioned private revenge,
the pursuit of an assassin by all the relatives of the dead; also the
ordeal by red-hot iron and boiling water. But to the native Slav race,
corporal punishment, with its humiliations and its refinements of
cruelty, was unknown until brought to it by stronger and wiser people
from afar.

When we say that Russia was putting on a garment of civilization, let
no one suppose we mean the _people_ of Russia. It was the Princes, and
their military and civil households; it was official Russia that was
doing this. The _people_ were still sowing and reaping, and sharing
the fruit of their toil in common, unconscious as the cattle in their
fields that a revolution was taking place, ready to be driven hither
and thither, coerced by a power which they did not comprehend, their
horizon bounded by the needs of the day and hour.

The elements constituting Russian society were the same in all the
principalities. There was first the Prince. Then his official family,
a band of warriors called the _Drujina_. This Drujina was the germ of
the future state. Its members were the faithful servants of the
Prince, his guard and his counselors. He could constitute them a court
of justice, or could make them governors of fortresses (_posadniki_) or
lieutenants in the larger towns. The Prince and his Drujina were like
a family of soldiers, bound together by a close tie. The body was
divided into three orders of rank: first, the simple guards; second,
those corresponding to the French barons; and, third, the _Boyars_, the
most illustrious of all, second only to the Prince. The Drujina was
therefore the germ of aristocratic Russia, next below it coming the