The territory thus wrested from Russia became the German state of Prussia; and a future master of the Teutonic order, a Hohenzollern, was in later years its first King; and this was the beginning of the great German Empire which confronts the Empire of the Czar to-day.
So the conquest by the German Orders was added to the other woes by which Russia was rent and torn after the death of her Grand Prince at Suzdal.

To us it all seems like an unmeaning panorama of chaos and disorder.

But to them it was only the vicissitudes naturally occurring in the life of a great nation.

They were proud of their nationality, which had existed nearly as long as from Columbus to our own day.

They gloried in their splendid background of great deeds and their long line of heroes reaching back to Rurik.