He immediately traversed the different provinces in that region, and devoted himself to the tranquillity and prosperity of his people.  The popularity of the new sovereign was at its height.  All lips praised him, all hearts loved him.  He was declared to be a special gift which Heaven, in its boundless mercy, had conferred.  Unfortunately, this virtuous prince reigned but one year, leaving, however, in that short time, upon the Russian annals many memorials of his valor and of his virtue.  It was a barbaric age, rife with perfidy and crime, yet not one act of treachery or cruelty has sullied his name.  It was his ambition to be the father of his people, and the glory he sought was the happiness and the greatness of his country.

Southern Russia was still the theater of interminable civil war.  The provinces were impoverished, and Kief was fast sinking to decay.  Michel had a brother, Vsevelod, who had accompanied him to Moscow.  The nobles and the leading citizens, their eyes still dim with the tears which they had shed over the tomb of their sovereign, urged him to accept the crown.  He was not reluctant to accede to their request, and received their oaths of fidelity to him under the title of Vsevelod III.  His title, however, was disputed by distant princes, and an armed band, approaching Moscow by surprise, seized the town and reduced it to ashes, ravaged the surrounding region, and carried off the women and children as captives.  Vsevelod was, at the time, absent in the extreme northern portion of his territory, but he turned upon his enemies with the heart and with the strength of a lion.  It was midwinter.  Regardless of storms, and snow and cold, he pursued the foe like the north wind, and crushed them as with an iron hand.  With a large number of prisoners he returned to the ruins of Moscow.

Two of the most illustrious of the hostile princes were among the prisoners.  The people, enraged at the destruction of their city, fell upon the captives, and, seizing the two princes, tore out their eyes.

Vsevelod was a young man who had not acquired renown.  Many of the warlike princes of the spacious provinces regarded his elevation with envy.  Sviatoslaf, prince of Tchernigof, was roused to intense hostility, and gathering around him the nobles of his province, resolved with a vigorous arm to seize for himself the throne.  Enlisting in his interests several other princes, he commenced his march against his sovereign.  Vsevelod prepared with vigor to repulse his assailants.  After long and weary marchings the two armies met in the defiles of the mountains.  A swift mountain-stream rushing along its rocky bed, between deep and precipitous banks, separated the combatants.  For a fortnight they vainly assailed each other, hurling clouds of arrows and javelins across the stream, which generally fell harmless upon brazen helmet and buckler.  But few were wounded, and still fewer slain.  Yet neither party dared venture the passage of the stream in the presence of the other.  At length, weary of the unavailing conflict, Sviatoslaf, the insurgent chief, sent a challenge to Vsevelod, the sovereign.