custody by the Duke of Brittany, and his descent, which seemed to give
him some pretensions to the crown, had been a great object of jealousy
both in the late and in the present reign. Symptoms of continued jealousy
in the reigning family of England seemed to give some authority to
Henry's pretensions, and made him the object of general favor and
compassion, on account of dangers and persecutions to which he was
exposed. The universal detestation of Richard's conduct turned still more
the attention of the nation toward Henry; and as all the descendants of
the house of York were either women or minors, he seemed to be the only
person from whom the nation could expect the expulsion of the odious and
bloody tyrant. But notwithstanding these circumstances, which were so
favorable to him, Buckingham and the Bishop of Ely well knew that there
would still lie many obstacles in his way to the throne. It was therefore
suggested by Morton, and readily assented to by the Duke, that the only
means of overturning the present usurpation was to unite the opposite
factions by contracting a marriage between the Earl of Richmond and the
princess Elizabeth, eldest daughter of King Edward, and thereby blending
together the opposite pretensions of their families.
The plan being laid upon the solid foundations of good sense and sound
policy, it was secretly communicated to the principal persons of both
parties in all the counties of England, and a wonderful alacrity appeared
in every order of men to forward its success and completion. But it was
impossible that so extensive a conspiracy could be conducted in so secret
a manner as entirely to escape the jealous and vigilant eye of Richard;
and he soon received intelligence that his enemies, headed by the Duke
of Buckingham, were forming some design against his authority. He
immediately put himself in a posture of defence by levying troops in the
North; and he summoned the Duke to appear at court, in such terms as
seemed to promise him a renewal of their former amity. But that nobleman,
well acquainted with the barbarity and treachery of Richard, replied only
by taking arms in Wales, and giving the signal to his accomplices for a
general insurrection in all parts of England.
But at that very time there happened to fall such heavy rains, so
incessant and continued, as exceeded any known in the memory of man; and
the Severn, with the other rivers in that neighborhood, swelled to a
height which rendered them impassable and prevented Buckingham from
marching into the heart of England to join his associates. The Welshmen,
partly moved by superstition at this extraordinary event, partly
distressed by famine in their camp, fell off from him; and Buckingham,
finding himself deserted by his followers, put on a disguise and took
shelter in the house of Banister, an old servant of his family. But being
detected in his retreat, he was brought to the King at Salisbury, and was
instantly executed, according to the summary method practised in that
age. The other conspirators, who took arms in four different places, at
Exeter, at Salisbury, at Newbury, and at Maidstone, hearing of the
Duke of Buckingham's misfortunes, despaired of success and immediately
dispersed themselves.
The King, everywhere triumphant and fortified by this unsuccessful
attempt to dethrone him, ventured at last to summon a parliament--a
measure which his crimes and flagrant usurpation had induced him hitherto
to decline. His enemies being now at his feet, the parliament had no
choice left but to recognize his authority and acknowledge his right to
the crown. His only son, Edward, then a youth of twelve years of age, was
created prince of Wales.
Sensible that the only circumstance which could give him security was
to gain the confidence of the Yorkists, Richard paid court to the Queen
Dowager with such art and address, made such earnest protestations of
his sincere good-will and friendship, that this Princess ventured to put
herself and her daughters into the hands of the tyrant. He now thought it
in his power to remove the chief perils which threatened his government.
The Earl of Richmond, he knew, could never be formidable but from his
projected marriage with the princess Elizabeth, the true heir of the
crown; and he therefore intended to espouse, himself, this Princess, and
thus to unite in his own family their contending titles. He flattered
himself that the English nation, seeing all danger removed of a disputed
succession, would then acquiesce under the dominion of a prince who
was of mature years, of great abilities, and of a genius qualified for
government, and that they would forgive him all the crimes which he had
committed in paving his way to the throne.
But the crimes of Richard were so horrid, and so shocking to humanity,
that every person of probity and honor was earnest to prevent the sceptre
from being any longer polluted by that bloody and faithless hand which
held it. All the exiles flocked to the Earl of Richmond in Brittany, and
exhorted him to hasten his attempt for a new invasion, and to prevent the
marriage of the princess Elizabeth, which must prove fatal to all his
hopes.
The Earl set sail from Harfleur, in Normandy, with a small army of about
two thousand men; and after a navigation of six days he arrived at
Milford Haven, in Wales, where he landed without opposition. He directed
his course to that part of the kingdom, in hopes that the Welsh, who
regarded him as their countryman, and who had been already prepossessed
in favor of his cause by means of the Duke of Buckingham, would join his
standard, and enable him to make head against the established government.
Richard, who knew not in what quarter he might expect the invader, had
taken post at Nottingham, in the centre of the kingdom; and having
given commissions to different persons in the several counties, whom he
empowered to oppose his enemy, he purposed in person to fly, on the first
alarm, to the place exposed to danger.
Henry, advancing toward Shrewsbury, received every day some reënforcement
from his partisans. The two rivals at last approached each other at
Bosworth, near Leicester, Henry at the head of six thousand men, Richard
with an army of above double the number; and a decisive action was every
hour expected between them. Stanley, who commanded above seven thousand
men, took care to post himself at Atherstone, not far from the hostile
camps; and he made such a disposition as enabled him on occasion to join
either party.
The van of Richmond's army, consisting of archers, was commanded by the
Earl of Oxford; Sir Gilbert Talbot led the right wing; Sir John Savage
the left; the Earl himself, accompanied by his uncle the Earl of
Pembroke, placed himself in the main body. Richard also took post in
_his_ main body, and intrusted the command of his van to the Duke of
Norfolk; as his wings were never engaged, we have not learned the names
of the several commanders. Soon after the battle began, Lord Stanley,
whose conduct in this whole affair discovers great precaution and
abilities, appeared in the field, and declared for the Earl of Richmond.
This measure, which was unexpected to the men, though not to their
leaders, had a proportional effect on both armies: it inspired unusual
courage into Henry's soldiers; it threw Richard's into dismay and
confusion. The intrepid tyrant, sensible of his desperate situation, cast
his eye around the field, and, descrying his rival at no great distance,
he drove against him with fury, in hopes that either Henry's death or his
own would decide the victory between them. He killed with his own hand
Sir William Brandon, standard-bearer to the Earl; he dismounted Sir John
Cheyney. He was now within reach of Richmond himself, who declined not
the combat, when Sir William Stanley,[3] breaking in with his troops,
surrounded Richard, who, fighting bravely to the last moment, was
overwhelmed by numbers, and perished by a fate too mild and honorable
for his multiplied and detestable enormities. His men everywhere sought
safety by flight.
There fell in this battle about four thousand of the vanquished. The loss
was inconsiderable on the side of the victors. Sir William Catesby, a
great instrument of Richard's crimes, was taken, and soon after beheaded,
with some others, at Leicester. The body of Richard was found in the
field, covered with dead enemies, and all besmeared with blood. It was
thrown carelessly across a horse, was carried to Leicester amid the
shouts of the insulting spectators, and was interred in the Gray Friars'
Church of that place.
The historians who favor Richard--for even this tyrant has met with
partisans among the later writers--maintain that he was well qualified
for government had he legally obtained it, and that he committed no
crimes but such as were necessary to procure him possession of the crown;
but this is a poor apology when it is confessed that he was ready to
commit the most horrid crimes which appeared necessary for that purpose;
and it is certain that all his courage and capacity--qualities in which
he really seems not to have been deficient--would never have made
compensation to the people for the danger of the precedent and for the
contagious example of vice and murder exalted upon the throne. This
Prince was of a small stature, hump-backed, and had a harsh, disagreeable
countenance; so that his body was in every particular no less deformed
than his mind.
[Footnote 1: Wife of Henry VI.]
[Footnote 2: The Queen's brother.]
[Footnote 3: Brother of Lord Stanley, _above_.]
IVAN THE GREAT UNITES RUSSIA AND BREAKS THE TARTAR YOKE
A.D. 1462-1505
Robert Bell
At the birth of Ivan III (1440) Russia was all but stifled between the
great Lithuanian empire of the Poles and the vast possessions of the
Mongols. In vain had a succession of Muscovite princes endeavored to give
unity to the little Russian state. Between the grand princes of Moscow
and those of Lithuania stood Novgorod and Pskof, the two chief Russian
republics, hesitating to declare their allegiance.
By the creation of new appanages the Russian princes continually
destroyed the very unity for which they labored. Moreover, at a time when
the great nations of the West were organizing, Muscovy or Russia had
no settled relations with their civilization. The opening of the
Renaissance, the progress of discovery, the invention of printing--by
these the best spirits in Russia were stirred to fresh aspirations for
national organization and participation in the great European movement.
According to the tradition, her deliverer had been foretold and was
expected. His triumphs were predicted at his birth. The man through whom,
or at least in whose name, Russia was to be restored to herself, to be
freed from the Mongol yoke, and brought into living connection with
Western Europe, was Ivan, son and heir of Vasili the Blind, Grand Prince
of Moscow.
This child became Ivan III, surnamed the "Great," because during his
reign, 1462-1505, the expectations of his country were largely realized.
He was the first who could call himself "Ruler of all the Russias," and
he is regarded as the original founder of the Russian empire. Already,
at his accession, the Muscovite principalities were beginning to draw
together, and circumstances were favorable to the prosecution of the task
upon which he was called to enter--the completing of their union and the
securing of their national independence.
Ivan was a man of great cunning and prudence, and was remarkable
for indomitable perseverance, which carried him triumphantly to the
conclusions of his designs in a spirit of utter indifference to the
ruin or bad faith that tracked his progress. Such a man alone, who was
prepared to sacrifice the scruples of honor and the demands of justice,
was fit to meet the difficulties by which the grand princedom of Moscow
was surrounded. He saw them all clearly, resolved upon the course he
should take; and throughout a long reign, in which the paramount ambition
of rendering Russia independent and the throne supreme was the leading
feature of his policy, he pursued his plans with undeviating consistency.
But that policy was not to be accomplished by open and responsible
acts. The whole character of Ivan was tinged with the duplicity of the
churchmen who held a high place in his councils. His proceedings were
neither direct nor at first apparently conducive to the interests of
the empire, but the great cause was secretly advancing against all
impediments. While he forbore to risk his advantages, he left an
opportunity for disunion among his enemies, by which he was certain to
gain in the end. He never committed himself to a position of the security
of which he was not sure; and he carried this spirit of caution to
such an extremity that many of the early years of his reign present a
succession of timid and vacillating movements, that more nearly resemble
the subterfuges of a coward than the crafty artifices of a despot.
The objects, of which he never lost sight, were to free himself from
enemies abroad and to convert the princedom at home into an autocracy. So
extensive a design could not have been effected by mere force of arms,
for he had so many domestic and foreign foes to meet at once, and so many
points of attack and defence to cover, that it was impossible to conduct
so grand a project by military means alone. That which he could not
effect, therefore, by the sword, he endeavored to perform by diplomatic
intrigue; and thus, between the occasional victories of his armies and
the still more powerful influence of his subtle policy, he reduced
his foes and raised himself to an eminence to which none of his most
ambitious predecessors had aspired. The powers against whom he had
to wage this double war of arms and diplomacy were the Tartars and
Lithuanians, beyond the frontier; and the independent republics of
Novgorod, Vyatka, and Pskof, and the princes of the yet unsettled
appanages within. The means he had at his command were fully sufficient
to have enabled him to subdue those princes of the blood who exhibited
faint signs of discontent in their appanages, and who could have been
easily reached through the widely diffused agency of the boyars; but the
obstinate republics of the North were more difficult of access. They
stood boldly upon their independence, and every attempt to reduce them
was followed by as fierce a resistance, and by such a lavish outlay of
the wealth which their commercial advantages had enabled them to amass
that the task was one of extraordinary difficulty. Kazan, the first
and greatest of the Tartar cities, too, claimed a sovereignty over the
republics, which Ivan was afraid to contest, lest that which was but a
vague and empty claim might end in confirmed authority. It was better to
permit the insolent republicans to maintain their entire freedom than
to hazard, by indiscretion, their transferrence to the hands of those
Tartars who were loosened from the parent stock.
His first act, therefore, was to acknowledge, directly or indirectly,
according to the nature of their different tenures, the rights of all his
foes within and without. He appeared to admit the justice of things as
he found them; betrayed his foreign enemies into a confidential reliance
upon his acquiescence in their exactions; and even yielded, without a
murmur, to an abuse of those pretensions to which he affected to submit,
but which he was secretly resolved to annihilate. This plausible
conformity procured him time to prepare and mature his designs; and so
insidiously did he pursue his purpose that he extended that time by
a servility which nearly forfeited the attachment of the people. The
immediate object of consideration was obviously the Golden Horde, because
all the princes and republics, and even the Poles and Lithuanians, were
interested in any movement that was calculated to embarrass the common
enemy. Ivan's policy was to unite as many of his enemies as he could
against a single one, and, finally, to subdue them all by the aid of each
other. Had he ventured upon any less certain course, he must have risked
a similar combination against himself. He began by withholding the
ordinary tribute from the Khan, but without exhibiting any symptoms of
inallegiance. He merely evaded the tax, while he acknowledged the right;
and his dissimulation succeeded in blinding the Tartar, who still
believed that he held the Grand Prince as a tributary, although he
did not receive his tribute. The Khan, completely deceived, not only
permitted this recusancy to escape with impunity, but was further
prevailed upon to withdraw the Tartar residents and their retinues, and
the Tartar merchants who dwelt in Moscow and who infested, with the
haughty bearing of masters, even the avenues of the Kremlin.
This latter concession was purchased by bribery, for Ivan condescended to
buy the interference of a Tartar princess. So slavish and degrading
was his outward seeming that his wife, a noble and spirited lady, the
daughter of the Emperor of Byzantium, could with difficulty prevail upon
him to forego the humiliating usages which had hitherto attended the
reception of the Mongol envoys. It had been customary on the part of the
grand princes to go forward to meet the Tartar minister, to spread a
carpet of fur under his horse's feet, to hear the Khan's letter read upon
their knees, to present to the envoy a cup of koumiss, and to lick from
the mane of the horse the drops which had fallen from the lips of the
negotiator: and these disagreeable customs Ivan would have complied with
but for the successful remonstrances of the Princess.
Kazan presented the most alluring point of actual attack. The horde that
had established that city subsisted by predatory excursions, and even the
other bands of the barbarians were not unwilling to witness the descent
of the Russians upon one of their own tribes that had acquired so much
power. The project was favored by so many circumstances that, although
his policy was evidently at this period to preserve peace as long as he
could, he was tempted to make a general levy, and to assemble the whole
flower of the population for the purpose of driving out of his dominions
the bold invaders who had intrenched themselves within the walls of a
fortified town. This was about 1468. At that very time the army of the
Golden Horde, inspired by some sudden impulse, was advancing into Russia.
It appears, however, that the multitudes assembled by Ivan were so
numerous that the Khan's troops retired upon the mere rumor of their
approach; so that the display of his resources had all the effect he
desired, and he won a signal victory without striking a blow. The old
Russian annalist dwells, with some pomp of words, upon this bloodless
triumph, and, in the true vein of hyperbole, says that the Russian army
shone like the waves of the sea illuminated by the sunbeams. We take the
expression for all it is worth, when we estimate the force as having been
more numerous than that of the Tartars.
It does not appear that Ivan was yet prepared, even with this great
armament, to risk his future objects by any hostile collision, so long
as such an extremity could be averted by intrigue; for in the following
year, when the anticipated march against Kazan was at last commenced,
he suddenly paused in the midst of his course, although the result was
almost certain. Were it of much consequence, it would not be easy to
decide the cause of this strange and abrupt proceeding; but it was
evident that the soldiery were resolved not to return home without
spoils. They rushed onward to the city; and even the general, who was
instructed by Ivan to countermand the attack, in vain attempted to
restrain them. With a leader of their own choosing, they fell upon Kazan,
and utterly routed the inhabitants. The Grand Prince, perceiving that
the enemy was powerless, now no longer hesitated; but, engaging all the
princes in his service, and throwing his own guards into the ranks, he
despatched his colossal forces to reduce the already dismembered hold of
the Tartars of Kazan. The event was a complete victory, but Ivan remained
safe at Moscow, to watch the issue of an undertaking which he could not
reasonably have feared.
The subjugation of Kazan left the field clear for his designs upon the
three domestic republics. Vyatka, insolent in its own strength, declared
itself neutral between Moscow and Kazan; and on the fall of the latter
city, Novgorod, apprehensive that Ivan would turn his arms immediately
against her, called upon the people of Pskof for aid, expressing her
determination to march at once against the Grand Prince, in order to
anticipate and avert his intentions. The Novgorodians were the more
determined upon this bold measure by the personal pusillanimity which
Ivan betrayed in a war where the advantages lay entirely at his own side.
They calculated upon the terror they should inspire; and judged that if
they could not succeed in vanquishing the Grand Prince, they should, at
all events, be enabled to secure their own terms. Marpha, a rich and
influential woman, the widow of a _posadnik_, and who was enamoured of a
Lithuanian chief, conceiving the romantic design of bestowing her country
as a marriage dower upon her lover, exerted all her power to kindle the
enthusiasm and assist the project of the citizens. Her hospitality was
unbounded. She threw open her palace to the people; lavished her wealth
among them in sumptuous entertainments and exhibitions, and caused the
_vetchooi kolokol_ ("assembling-bell"), which summoned the popular
meetings to the market-place, to be rung as the signal of these orgies of
licentiousness. The great bell in Novgorod was the type of the republican
independence of the citizens, and represented the excesses into which
they were not unwilling to plunge whenever it was necessary to testify
their sense of that wild liberty which they had established among
themselves. It was tolled on all occasions of a public nature, and the
people gathered in multitudes at the well-known call. If any individual
were accused of a crime against the republic or of any offence against
the laws, the judges appeared at the sound of the bell to hold a summary
court of justice, and the citizens surrounded the trial-seat, prepared to
execute the sentence. Every citizen, with his sons, attended, carrying
each two stones under his arms; and, if the accused were found guilty,
lapidation instantly followed. The house of the culprit was also
immediately plundered, cast down, confiscated, and sold for the benefit
of the corporation. Except in China, where a law still more sanguinary
and destructive prevails in cases of murder, there is hardly a similar
instance of deliberate legal severity to be found among nations elevated
above barbarism.
Inspired by the revelries of the ambitious Marpha, and the patriotic
associations she awakened, the Novgorodians expelled the officer of the
Grand Prince; possessed themselves of some land that belonged to him in
right of his fief; and, to confirm their revolt against his authority,
submitted themselves, by treaty, to Casimir, Prince of Lithuania. In this
position of affairs, Ivan wisely resolved to leave Vyatka to its own
course, confining his attention solely to Novgorod, and seeking to win
over Pskof and its twelve tributary cities, so that he might combine them
against the turbulent republic. The fall of Novgorod accomplished, the
conquest of the other obstinate cities was easily effected.